A/N 

Hallelujah, finals are over! That means that there will be more frequent updates and more time to watch the squad's videos again.

Dawn pushed open the bathroom stall door, the door swinging inwards and almost hitting Uni smack in the face. Although Uni had suggested the handicap stall for more space, he begrudgingly agreed to take a regular one. The two managed to comfortably stand in the stall with enough leg and arm room.

"Now, is there a reason why it had to be in a stall?" He asked, his arms crossed. Dawn closed the door behind him, making sure to lock it so he could lean against it.

"No, but it's more fun this way. It's like high school all over again!" The technician didn't actually know what a high school was like, he was homeschooled with the same other students for the majority of his life, but from what he could gather from others' experiences, it wasn't pretty.

"I don't know what type of high school you went to, but I certainly did not casually talk to my friends in bathroom stalls," Uni replied. "Anyways, what exactly did you want to talk about? I know I asked you about what we could do, but why did you want to talk in private?" Dawn was slightly hesitant to respond. He knew he had to say something about it.

"I don't completely buy the whole idea with Ashlie, Nick, and Fool's. It doesn't make any sense. If Fool's really wanted to get to Ashlie, it would've been easier if he had just tried to kill one of us instead of a friend she has. He would be threatening Ashlie and knocking out one of us. It also would've been easier to dig up one of our secret identities and ambush us in our civilian workplaces. Also, how does he even know that Nick and Ashlie are friends? We didn't even know, and we're close friends with her. I'm just saying that this conclusion is missing many key factors. I didn't want to tell this to you in front of them because I'm not 100% what Fool's is up to. If I knew, then we could take better actions to protect our friends," he confessed.

"I get where you're coming from. As dumb as it is that Ashlie's stuck in here, Nick is better off here than his own home," Uni stated. "I didn't really think of half the stuff you said," he finished. Before Dawn could say anything more, a loud, blaring siren was heard from the speaker on the outside.

"TEAM 107, REPORT TO THE LAUNCH BAY AT ONCE," The siren only sounded when there was an attack from a villain and the team assigned to them was in the base. 107 just so happened to be theirs.

"Another attack? It's only been like three hours! Who in their right mind attacks at night time?!" Uni complained. 

"Let's just go," Dawn replied, standing up straight and unlocking the bathroom stall door. They both walked out, single filed, only to be met with a not quite empty bathroom. 

Davis looked at them in confusion before swiftly melting into irritation and disappointment.

"I'm not going to even ask,"

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

Ashlie hadn't properly let the realization sink in until she heard the siren. She had been so busy talking to Nick that she hadn't really thought about her current situation. She was so excited and relieved when she finally told the secret, she was too distracted from the main issue.

So what was she going to?

Despite the voice over the intercom calling for her, she knew that she couldn't answer the call. The more and more she thought about it, the more and more she understood why Uni was so upset.

There wasn't anything she would be able to do anymore. It was back to the mundanity she loathed, back to the blandness of civilian life that everyone lived.

"How do you do it, Nick?" she asked, laying down on her bed. Nick pushed in his chair before sitting on the edge of her bed.

"How do I do what?" he asked. He sounded as if he didn't know what he was doing on a daily basis.

"How do you live your life like this? There's no action, no fun, nothing! It's just sitting around and waiting," Ashlie had never lived her life like this, it was always fighting the villain or controlling her powers or even pretending she was a normal person. She never had to worry about what she was going to do to occupy her time.

"It's just being normal, Ashlie. We don't all have amazing powers like you, so we just make the best of it,"

"But why? How?"

"If you don't know what to do, just think of what a normal person would do. Read a book, watch a video, play a game, stuff like that. Have you never had to do that?"

There was something weird about being around Nick. It was like he knew the answer to a lot of her questions, even though he might not fully understand her situation. It gave her a strange feeling like she could sense there was something different about him. She was sure that her relationship with him would never reach anything past friends (she didn't even want that), but he was someone she could talk to. Someone who would listen to her.

"...No? Why do you think I never let anyone in my house? I literally live here. It's basically all training here," his eyes seemed to light up.

"Never? Not even once? There are so many things you're missing out on!" he began to ramble on about all the experiences she missed out on. "You've never read all those great book series, you've never played any video games, Ashlie, the outside world is fun! Maybe not as cool as here, but it's fun nonetheless!"

"Well, then maybe you could show me something? We've got all the time in the world,"

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

There was something different about that human.

Jax hadn't been able to put his finger on it, but that human was different than the others. It wasn't because he could touch his amulet, no, he could sense something was different.

It was small, at first. Jax hadn't put too much thought into it, thinking that it was just the reason he could touch such a cursed item. But as time passed, he thought it felt familiar. He didn't remember much from after his death and sealing in the amulet, but he did remember this feeling. He thought it was just the same magic his previous bearers had, but why would it form in a completely unrelated normal human being?

It would be understandable for one of those heroes to have that feeling, even his host gave off a similar aura. But why him?

He could think of one reason, and he was disgusted by it. It couldn't be true. 

No matter, that wasn't his top priority at the moment. He just needed to cause enough havoc around the lake to catch the heroes' attention before eliminating the two of them. 

If the world burned around him, all the better. 

A/N

I have a weird discomfort of shipping in this fandom. I'll totally go for D-Squad shipping (let's be honest, Donchard is OTP) and shipping with characters like Lindsey (is that how you spell her name?), but the characters who are actual, real people make me slightly uncomfortable. However, if it's between a real person and a fictional character (Uni x Duni for example, I don't know the ship name), it's pretty fine in my books.

I don't care if you do it, you do you and you're great, but just to let you know, shipping will be really rare in my stories unless it serves a plot purpose. 

This is also why I clarify why Ashlie doesn't experience romantic feelings for Nick in this story, but in They Won't Even Notice, I establish that she does since it's canon and serves the plot.