Chapter Text
Gazerbeam was going to die.
He should have known that when he found the supercomputer hidden behind the lava waterfall. He should have known that when the password he had found in Mirage’s office worked. He should have known that when he found the screen filled entirely with superheroes who had been marred with red bars across their faces.
Gazerbeam felt his heart stop and beat out of his chest at the same time, trying not to read the names as he scrolled past.
For the first time in his life being unable to look away.
“Universal Man: TERMINATED”
“Psycwave: TERMINATED”
“Everseer: TERMINATED”
“Macroburst: TERMINATED”
“Phylange: TERMINATED”
…No.
No, this was impossible.
That couldn’t be what he’s seeing.
Phylange wasn’t–
They weren’t all–
He had to grab the console to steady himself, heat building up behind his visor as those red lines forced their way into his eyes.
“Blazestone: TERMINATED”
“Downburst: TERMINATED”
“Hypershock: TERMINATED”
“Apogee: TERMINATED”
…Apogee?
Apogee was gone…?
That didn’t make any sense.
None of this made any sense.
How as Karen terminated?
“Blitzerman: TERMINATED”
“Tradewind: TERMINATED”
“Vectress: TERMINATED”
These weren’t even NSA supers.
So Syndrome was trying to…lure all of these supers here. Regardless of their allegiance.
To…what? …To…kill them?
The pressure behind his skull started to ache, each name ripping at the whites of his eyes. Begging him to at least let some light into the room that wasn’t emitting from the twisted faces on the screen.
Mirage had brought them to Nomanisan Island to kill them.
Syndrome brought them here to train the Omnidroid.
And they lured him here twice!
It was starting to make his head feel dizzy.
Simon had to mash his hand against his eyes to stop them from releasing a laser right through Vectress’s chest.
How could he have been so foolish?
So stupid to believe Syndrome and Mirage would hold up their end of the bargain after they had failed the first time?
Supers were still illegal, and all Gazerbeam’s actions had done was break one robot so it could be replaced with a better killing machine.
…Which meant he was supposed to die next.
So Gazerbeam was supposed to have died the first time he was on the island.
But, why?
His glove picked at the edge of the keyboard as Simon tried to force himself to step away from the glaring wall of deaths hanging over his head.
Simon had met senseless killers before, but this felt like it had a motive behind it.
There had to be a reason for such a methodical killing of a people.
He kept scanning back and forth across the screen, lunging from one corner to the next as he tried to piece together some semblance of understanding for why Syndrome had done this.
Why he had murdered every superhero from the Metroville-Municiburg precinct that Simon had known.
…Except, not all of them were on the list.
Before he could think of double-checking for something important like syndrome’s battle plans or the status of the Omnidroid Gazerbeam had destroyed on his last outing, Simon was searching for a different list of superheroes.
The one that showed him who Syndrome was planning on going after next.
There weren’t many left off the list, yet, strangely enough all of the Incredisquad was missing.
The killings had nothing documented about Mr. Incredible, Frozone, Elastigirl, or…
Simon clicked through a final entryway.
The red bars slashed over familiar faces were washed away by a teal screen.
The profile displayed very little. Much less than the person’s wild, chaotic life deserved.
There was just a short description listing the most basic of information. A paragraph describing his power set. A “last active” date just before the superhero ban, 16.10.1960.
“Threat rating: 7.9 exercise extreme caution,” Simon mumbled, hardly noticing he’d read that aloud until his own voice echoed back to him from across the black voice surrounding him.
It felt like the darkness itself was reaching up to try and drag him down into the pit below.
Especially when Simon was finally told the dreaded, horrid information he’d been praying he wouldn’t find.
But the computer was more than clear.
GAMMA JACK
LOCATION: KNOWN
A bolt of red slashed sight into the “O.” Like a bullseye that was now sparking from the laser Gazerbeam had accidentally shot into it.
…Known.
Syndrome knew where Gamma Jack was.
He knew where Jack was.
That meant he was coming for Jack soon.
He was going to contact Jack and get him to go to the island.
That meant Simon was supposed to die and he wasn’t going to have the chance to warn Jack.
Was there a way? There had to be. This was an island base, Syndrome must have a way to contact the mainland.
Which meant there must be a way for Gazerbeam to sneak a call to the NSA and bring the entire, deranged massacre to an end.
All Simon had to do was stay alive long enough to pull that off.
Which would have been a lot easier if Gazerbeam had been sent into the jungle at the time he had agreed to.
When the mercenaries came to fetch him from the guest room and found out he wasn’t there, the alarm had been triggered.
Which meant after Gazerbeam had carefully, methodically hidden his tracks in the supercomputer room, he was trying to pass through the hallways without gathering too much attention. “Acting normal” had never been his strong suit, even with the visor over his eyes hiding the way he could never look at the same place for too long, but he’d learned to pretend so well that no one seemed to notice half the time.
But it didn’t matter how hard he tried to pass off his presence as expected or nonchalant.
Syndrome knew he wasn’t at his scheduled battle with the Omnidroid.
So, he sent the Omnidroid to Gazerbeam.
It landed just outside the window of the hall where the super had been trying to flee, its red visor searing through the glass like a TERMINATED bar across Simon’s face.
The super wasn’t given the luxury of a reaction before the wall was demolished and one of the robot’s legs wrapped around his torso. Air was robbed from his chest as the Omnidroid smacked him into the ground outside. Stones and roots dug into Gazerbeam’s back as he felt his instincts takeover, the buzzing roar of laserfire exploding from behind his eyes.
The bolt knocked into the Omnidroid’s head, making it stumble just enough for Gazerbeam to crawl out from its clawed grasp.
The superhero kept his glowing eyes pinned on that red visor as he warily pushed himself onto his feet.
Perhaps he had an advantage from beating one of these before
On the other hand, this was a new model. Its abdomen had been rounded out, its head flattened even more so. It was possible Syndrome had used his previous battle to specially augment the new model so it would counteract Gazerbeam’s powers.
But Gazerbeam didn’t have much of an opportunity to analyse the changes as one of its legs transformed into a spinning blade that was flying in a direct path towards his neck.
Still, Gazerbeam narrowed his sights on the Omnidroid again, aiming his visor squarely against the spinning claw blade careening towards him.
The perfectly-aimed shot ripped against the claw, making it transform the blade back into a claw as it flailed through the air for a moment. Just for the robot to calibrate itself, and begin the push back against the laser.
The red tint overwhelming Simon’s eyes flickered for a moment.
He was right.
This Omnidroid could resist his powers
The leg broke through his laser visor and smashed him into the wall of the base.
Simon’s shoulder smashed into the concrete as he tried to catch himself.
The Omnidroid raised its claw again, preparing for an easy, quick kill against the super cornered against the building.
If Syndrome was watching from behind that red visor, it would have made sense to call Gazerbeam dead and call it a day. It wasn’t like he could fly or something, so he was as good as dead.
A fairly obvious train of thought.
That was completely dismantled as Gazerbeam ran right at the Omnidroid, rolling under its torso, and bolted into the jungles of Nomanisan Island.
This was going to be a long day.
Simon was much faster than most people would give him credit for. He wasn’t particularly agile, but his endurance was unmatched in all of the NSA, quite the impressive feat for someone whose powers had nothing to do with running.
Sure, he wasn’t going to be fast enough to outrun a military-grade superhero-killing machine.
But if he could just outlast it long enough to find a different way to escape, he was going to do it.
It’s just, naturally, it wasn’t going to be as easy as making a tactical retreat and the Omnidroid respecting his choice to not fight at the moment.
Because a tree dropped out of the sky, right in the barely-existent path he had been making.
Gazerbeam skidded out of the way of its shadow just as it would have broken his spine, sparing a glance in the direction he’d left the new model.
Just to be greeted by the sight of a rolling, black boulder of death chasing him down like Bob had just thrown his bowling ball into the jungle.
The Omnidroid crushed every tree in its path, snapping under its weight, sending branches and shrapnel raining overhead. Simon could hardly bother to dodge because it was sending debris into every direction, leaving no choice but to get bombarded by splinters and hope they weren’t going to impale him like an arrow. No twist or turn or abrupt change in direction could dissuade the robot from trying to run over his heels.
There had to be some sort of cover in the jungle. After all, it was a jungle. That’s part of its definition.
There was a river in the corner of his eyes that immediately reminded him of the waterfall he’d seen on the flight over the island that morning.
That…was very foolish, but it might work.
Simon galloped to the right, causing the Omnidroid to abruptly stop and change directions with him. It was just long enough for Simon to break through the foliage and stomp into the rushing water. The jungle dropped away around him, completely exposing the super to the Omnidroid as he tried to pick up a little more speed from the water trying to shove him over the waterfall not 5 yards away.
The rolling machine transformed back into its walking form so it could crash into the river. It sent a small tsunami down the rapids, grabbing the hero and throwing him head over heels and back again as he was engulfed in water.
Something unseen smashed against his face, knocking splinters of rock into his cheekbone as the wave subsided.
Gazerbeam had landed on the only small outcropping of stone overlooking the waterfall, a few droplets of blood against his cheek. The metallic smell wafted up through his nose, making his focus uneven and dizzying as he rose to his feet. Eyes set on the Omnidroid barring down on him.
The Omnidroid closed the distance between them with a slow, agonizingly triumphant pace. It was almost gloating in how it stared down Gazerbeam, its own red visor burning into his memory like a mockery. Letting him know the last thing he saw was supposed to be this putrid imitation of the same visor that had allowed Gazerbeam to exist. What allowed Simon to finally have a place in this world other than the quiet shadow in the corner.
The Omnidroid fired a few shots from its head cannon, pushing Gazerbeam further along the rock. Closer to the edge of the waterfall.
Heat bore down against Gazerbeam’s back, the breeze against the waterfall almost mockingly trying to assist him as he faced the robot coming to kill him. Sweat had begun to drip into his eyes, mixing with the blood on his face as he stepped into his battle stance.
The sound of the Omnidroid splashing through the river was nearly as loud as the ringing in his head.
He rubbed his eyes one more time, pinching the bridge of his nose long enough to try and ground himself in the moment. His breaths were steady gasps while his lungs rebelled against the metallic smell of blood against the fresh, tropical air. It felt like the Omnidroid was about to squish him, even though it was still taking its time getting closer to the hero…
This was a horrible plan.
But he needed Syndrome to think he had killed Gazerbeam.
The Omnidroid took one more step towards the hero, splashing water and dirt and chunks of unidentifiable debris into the air. The cannon on its head was primed and ready for firing.
But Gazerbema didn’t flinch. He didn’t have any reason to.
This robot was going to kill him, or it was going to get close to it. So it didn’t really matter if he was afraid or not.
This was what needed to be done. And if it meant saving more supers from slaughter, Simon was more than willing to put his life to the side in order to stop this madman.
The jungle seemed to retreat from the stand-off in the river. As if it knew that it shouldn’t watch the last few moments this man had to live. The river rushed around the outcropping, not bothering to spare a glance at the murder that was about to take place. Sunlight glinted off Gazerbeam’s helmet, highlighting the GB emblazoned on it.
Like it knew this could be the last time its hero saw the light of day.
The Omnidroid’s red visor overtook Gazerbeam’s own, glaring deep into his soul with no regard for the lasers that would have been shooting back at it by then.
It was possible that Syndrome was watching him right then, through the eyes on the Omnidroid. And if he was, he was about to get exactly what he wanted to see.
The Omnidroid aimed its cannon at Gazerbeam.
Simon ever so slightly shifted his weight to the other foot.
And the robot fired its cannon.
Perfectly-timed as Simon leapt off the edge of the outcropping.
The Omnidroid’s laser collided with the stony heart of the outcropping, blowing it into dozens of pieces that flew up into the air with the hero, and just as quickly fell down across the face of the waterfall.
A flailing silhouette could be seen desperately groping the air, like it could find purchase in one of the falling pieces of rubble as it got closer to the churning base of the waterfall below.
Gazerbeam’s body slammed into the river, getting thrown around with the other pieces of rubbish and wreckage of the short battle. One more laser flew up into the sky, like a final attempt to get a lucky hit on the Ombidroid, but it was snuffed out by the torrent of water dragging the superhero into his grave.
As Syndrome watched through the Omnidroid’s taunting red visor, a smear appeared in the water below.
A small stain of blood bruising the otherwise perfectly-clear, crystalline waters of Nomanisan.
It was followed shortly after by what was clearly a human body floating face-down in the waters at the bottom of the falls. Until a piece of the outcropping crushed its legs, dragging the body under the water, and out of sight forever.
Omnidroid v.5 was ordered back to the base for damage assessment as Mirage was informed to update the profile on the latest test subject.
Gazerbeam: TERMINATED
********
Simon clawed his hands against the jagged lip at the bottom of the cave, trying to kick his way out of the water lapping at his body. This was made even more difficult because he’d been clipped by one of the rocks the Omnidroid had blown up under his feet, and now his entire stomach felt like it was bruised through to his spine.
It was a miracle none of those rocks had impaled anything important when he had landed at the bottom of the waterfall. Something had stabbed through his boot into his calf, probably one of the sharpened stones in the water below. But that didn’t concern Simon that much when he’d just narrowly avoided a few pieces of shrapnel twice the size of his head while he ladder-crawled through the jagged stones embedded into the river’s bed.
It was even more of a miracle when he had spotted the cave entrance hidden under the water.
Syndrome would no doubt look for a body, and even though Simon had no intention of dying just yet, he needed to send Syndrome on a wild goose chase long enough to buy some time to recover. That way, Syndrome wouldn’t keep looking for Simon when he got back to the lair, and he could continue his search.
Which meant swimming into the cave opening, and pulling himself into the cold, but relatively-dry land inside.
No biggy.
Gazerbeam had made sure to stay in shape during the ban, so propelling himself onto the cavern floor was a slow, but successful task. Even with his abdomen feeling like he had swallowed a bag of cannonballs and his leg beginning to throb just a bit.
He had survived his second battle with an Omnidroid. That was something to be proud of.
There was the slightest twist of a grin forming on Simon’s face as he sat on the lip of the water hole.
He’d outwitted Syndrome, and the Omnidroid that had been made to kill him.
And that was…
That was…
The adrenaline was wearing off as Simon looked down to assess the wound in his leg.
The puncture was deep, slicing through Gazerbeam’s boots and the supersuit he had worn for years.
A jagged line of blood and flayed skin ran from just below Simon’s knee to his shin, letting a calm trickle of red liquid dribble down the toe of his boot and into the churning water below.
But that wasn’t what made Simon’s breath choke in his lungs. Or what made a sudden arc of pain lace all the way down his thigh and up his ribs and begin to gnaw at the visor that usually protected him.
That wasn’t a bruise.
His stomach had been ripped open by that rock and was splayed before him in fleshy chunks.
The uneven slits arched up and down his abs were deep enough to see the oozing fat pustules under his skin. Thick, tattered strands of muscles flopped uselessly out of his side, some partially contracting as he jumped in surprise, loosely twitching in protest. But what made Simon nearly keel over and vomit his guts up was just that: the sight of a bright, pink, worm-like tissue that wriggled around against the wall of his abdomen.
That was his small intestine.
Covered in blood and fully exposed to the elements.
Bad.
Bad.
Very bad.
Very, very bad.
There was too much blood coming out of his side.
There was too much blood.
It was leaking too fast.
Simon barely registered when he shoved his hand into his side, trying to push himself deeper into the cave just in case he was about to tip over and fall into the water again.
It didn’t look like his intestines were punctured, so that was a good sign. The bleeding was bad, but if his organs were intact, that meant he didn’t need surgery or stitches to stay alive.
Hopefully that was true and not just wishful thinking. He had only tried to be a doctor for about a month in college before his weak stomach had gotten the better of him.
…Heh. Weak stomach.
But even such an excellent joke wasn’t able to distract him.
Simon’s vision already wasn’t great, but usually his visor helped a little bit. The nightvision Edna had installed in his visor was some help, but hardly enough to break through the murky depths of the cave. Leaving him to blindly scrape against the ground, holding his intestines inside his body with his own bloody hands as he tried to find…something.
He didn’t even know what he was looking for.
An exit?
He could only go back to Syndrome’s lair. Now with his organs spilling out of his skin.
Simon could only imagine how badly that would go.
So, what else was there for him to do?
He’d lost to the Omnidroid. This was just a small after taste of life for him to savor. A quick thank you from the world, because even if there wasn’t any amount of luck that could save him, it didn’t want him to die on someone else’s terms.
Even though bleeding out in a cave really wasn’t his ideal choice either.
This was where everything led to? This was his death?
Slowly dying in a cave, knowing that he couldn’t stop a genocidal maniac from killing everyone who had ever treated Simon Paladino as more than a reliable, but forgettable mark in some court documents.
…That was all he had been in the end.
The man left in the dark, disregarded as little more than “he was helpful once.”
Maybe a couple people would remember him for a little while.
Of course his family would, but he had to brush those faces aside quickly before they lingered too long. Simon didn't dare try to think of how Veronica would react when she realized she would never hear from her brother again.
Maybe Bob, Lucius, and Helen would wonder what had happened to him. Eventually. He hadn’t seen them in, no, was it years? It had been years… Just the slow, gradual removal of themselves from each other’s lives. Malicious, just an old friendship growing cold after too many nights where their schedules conflicted and they had just stopped seeing each other.
…Simon had to hope that Jack would wonder about him.
Their last meeting had been…conflicting, to say the least.
There were so many things Simon wished he had said now that he was in that cave. So many things he wished he could have phrased differently. Maybe let Jack know where he was going in case something like this happened.
But that had been the reason he didn’t tell Jack what was happening. So, if Simon didn’t return, Jack wouldn’t fall into vengeance and try to find him.
Except that hadn’t worked because now Syndrome knew where Jack was.
Gamma Jack’s location was known to this mad man.
So not only did Simon fail in stopping the Omnidroid, and stopping Syndrome, and telling Jack what was happening, he hadn’t even warned JAck what type of battle he would be up against.
Jack was going to die because of him.
All of those evenings sitting on Jack’s couch watching movies until the blond fell asleep against his side, all of those nights when Jack would go to Simon’s office just to make sure he wasn’t overworking himself, all of those afternoons where they could walk and talk for hours about everything and nothing, so much of both that they knew the other better than they knew themselves…
All of those days of waiting, praying that Jack would finally stop being so oblivious and notice what all of that had meant to both of them.
None of that would be remembered by anyone.
Because not only was Simon dying, Jack was going to come to the island and fall for the exact same trick. Maybe fight the exact same robot. He would probably win against one, but…
…No. No, that wasn’t allowed to happen.
Gazerbeam wasn’t a helpless victim in the long chain of murders that had turned into a superhero genocide.
He was a hero. As incompetent as he might be, he was a hero.
And heroes don’t die until there’s no way for them to keep fighting.
Gazerbeam carefully unplugged the hole in his stomach, trying not to gag at the renewed smell of blood attacking his senses. He would have to figure out how to cauterize the wound later since he was immune to his own laser vision, so for now, he would have to worry about stopping the bleeding some other way.
He probably wasn’t going to desperately need his supersuit to be picture-ready anytime soon, so he buried his trembling fingers in his sleeve and ripped it down his arm.
The fabric was already partially dried, but still let out an unpleasant squelching sound that grinded against Simon’s ears as he pressed it into the wound. Just for good measure, he twisted the knob on his helmet to partially initiate its noise-cancelling function, providing just enough for a barrier between himself and the sound that he could stuff the cloth into the wound.
A few trickles of blood were still leaking through, but nothing nearly as concerning as the puddles that had been flooding his hip a few minutes before.
He repeated the procedure with his leg, sacrificing the part of his pants that had been cut open anyway. That wound wasn’t nearly as deep as the one on his side, so not nearly as much fabric was used to plug it. Simon even managed to create a makeshift bandage for it by taking an extra string of cloth from around his knee and using it to tie his slashed boot down over the laceration. Not tight enough to be a tourniquet, but tight enough to keep the stuffing from falling out of the cut.
Problem one: solved (temporarily).
That left two.
Find a way to alert someone about what Syndrome was doing.
So he had to find a way to survive.
But, just in case the latter was still impossible, Gazerbeam made sure his first order of business was to write Mirage’s password for the supercomputer into the wall.
If someone found it, that would be their best shot of figuring out what Simon already knew…
********
It had been…
What? Maybe a few days…
Maybe a week…
Two weeks…?
Three…?
Maybe it had been a month.
Maybe it had been a year.
Simon hadn’t figured out a way to tell from inside the perpetually dark cave.
The world was nothing more than a blank canvas of pitch black, only occasionally interrupted by spiders and cave mites.
And the perpetual ache in Simon’s body that had been getting worse lately.
He had dared to crawl back to the water hole a couple times to make sure he didn’t die of dehydration. A few times he’d tried to clean the wound in his side and his leg, but he didn’t know if he’d be able to pull himself back through the cave entrance if he tried.
Even though his laser vision couldn’t cauterize his wounds, the bacteria trying to infect them weren’t blessed with immunity to his powers. Which meant occasionally, between sleeping and waking up in a haze and figuring out if he needed water again, he would have to unwrap his bandaging to bake away the slight green tinge that had started to gather under his skin.
He did manage to clean some of the blood out of the mangled strips of fabric during his painful trips to the water hole, but it had been getting harder and harder as time crawled by. The lasers in his eyes were starting to fizzle out the longer he went without food or a way to fully bandage himself. Simon was so tired that most of the time, he had lost the energy to chatter his teeth when the cave got colder than normal, resorting to just lying there like a frozen corpse instead.
The hope that he originally had, of recovering enough to escape back to the surface, was becoming more and more distant as he felt himself dozing off more often, hunger gnawing at under his skin until he started to notice the remainder of his suit had become looser on his body.
The only thing keeping him sane after a while was the slow, methodic schedule of unwrapping and rewrapping his bandaging, followed by resting for a while, then checking the bandaging, then resting for a while. If he woke up and his bandages were intact, he would see if he felt up to going to the water hole, or he would sit in the dark and try to make out the word KRONOS in front of him. Somewhere, but too deep in the void for Simon to properly make out.
Simon had written more notes as the days (he assumed it must have at least been days. It would be very ominous for his future if it had just been a few hours) stretched on. What few passwords he remembered, a crud map he had worked out about Syndrome’s lair. He had started a list of all the superheroes he knew were dead, but that had been too much for his weakening powers to handle, so he’d been forced to give up and sleep again.
He was starting to hate sleep. Which probably spoke volumes for his situation.
That routine went uninterrupted for so long, it was becoming a struggle for Simon to clearly remember why he was there sometimes. Either from the ache of sleep always hovering over his head, or the hunger eating his own stomach, or the wounds already festering with more bacteria.
It was a mundane existence he was determined to break free from, but everyday that mundaneness felt more and more threatening than the last…
All the while, the red glow of the Omnidroid’s visor felt like it was watching him. Boring itself into his stomach and tearing out through his leg. Shattering the small amount of piece he took from being behind his visor by having its own red visor. His greatest comfort, what let Gazerbeam control the danger behind his eyes, was now a reminder of the sort of people who would commit a genocide to make sure supers didn’t exist.
Ironic for someone who had spent the past 10 years fighting against that very notion.
But, eventually, that cycle of semi-rest and somewhat recovery was unexpectedly broken.
At first, Simon thought he must be halfway into a dream.
Something had cracked through the heaviness of his eyelids that had been trying to drag him down into sleep: there was a light slowly making itself into the cave.
Not the yellow or white light at the end of the tunnel.
Not the blue light of Syndrome’s technology.
Not even the red light from the Omnidroid’s visor haunting him.
This light was bright green.
It almost seemed to crackle in the humid air, shifting shadows of the stalagmites and stalactites in wild directions as its bearer tried to figure out where they had ended up.
Did they climb up through the water hole entrance?
Was there another exit Simon hadn’t been able to find?
It didn’t matter, after so long in nearly complete darkness, Simon could feel himself leaning towards the light like a de-winged moth.
There was something familiar about it.
Like he should have recognized it just from the way it glowed against the dark walls of the cave.
A feeling like hope began to blossom in his chest, slowly beating away the ache that had been haunting his abdomen for longer than he could remember.
Only to have that hope stomped on and kicked into the water hole when the person wielding it stepped into his line of sight.
The green light was being emitted from the glowing hand…
…of one of Syndrome’s mercenaries.
Which already didn’t make sense, why would one of Syndrome’s mercenaries have a glowing hand?
But Gazerbeam was too tired and too half-dead to understand the strangeness of the situation.
He tried to find purchase in the stony ground to push himself back, but he could barely muster the strength just to lift his knee.
The mercenary had already seen him, shouting a startled, “Woah!” and doused the light from this hand, bearing his gun at the super on instinct.
Gazerbeam held his breath, waiting to feel a bullet tear through his ribs.
But, he didn’t fire.
The two of them stared at each other for a long moment. Trying to understand what they had stumbled across in the dark.
During the entire stand-off, the only sound was the river somewhere in the distance, lapping at the edge of the water hole.
“...” The mercenary let out a sigh.
It wasn’t disgusted or startled or even surprised.
Really it was the same kind of sigh you would hear when your alarm clock went off in the morning. Expectant, but so, so annoyed.
“Figures. I have a couple of pretend conversations with you, and now I’m hallucinating you. Isn’t that just my luck?” he declared, tossing his arms into the air like finding a half-dead super was the most inconvenient thing he’d done since waking up that morning.
Simon couldn’t find the energy to so much as grunt out a confused, “Huh?”
The mercenary wouldn’t have heard it anyway, he was distracted by tossing his gun back over his shoulder and loudly shuffling his feet along the ground, kicking at the occasional pebble as he crossed towards the superhero. “So, got any words of wisdom for me today? Or am I just going to keep having one-sided discussions with you? I’m happy to do it, but if you’re going to appear as…what is this? A trauma response? A ghost? If you’re going to appear as a trauma ghost, then I’d appreciate it if you at least had the decency to talk to me.”
…What?
What was this?
Sure, Gazerbeam was on the brink of many different kinds of insanity. But he didn’t think that would include hallucinating a supermercenary with a glowing hand that had, apparently, been having conversation with Gazerbeam? Somehow?
Was Simon closer to death than he already expected, or was this a side effect of the river water he’d been drinking?
Regardless, the mercenary seemed to be much more at ease with the situation than Gazerbeam was.
So much so, that the mercenary pulled back the black visor covering his eyes, and yanked the rubbery, grey hood off of his head.
The plastic-y fabric with its attached visor fell to the mercenary’s neck as he lifted his hand back into the air. The soft, green glow returning to the cave.
The mercenary had his face fully on display as he kept staring at Simon.
A pale, angular face that you could cut yourself on just by looking at it the wrong way.
Framed by a shock of golden blonde hair that fell into a messy but defined sort of bang.
A set of teal eyes mischievously sparkled as they were flooded with the same green light as in his hand.
And all of that anchored by a smirk. That trademark, cocky smirk.
Heat rushed through Simon’s body, the first time he hadn’t felt a chill buried in his bones since he had arrived in that cavern.
He knew this mercenary.
But there was no way he was here–
Absolutely not, how could he be–?
But then why is that his face?! And his radiation?! Glowing from his hand?!
With barely the ability to speak left in his, Simon’s forced something out of his throat. Something raw and unrecognizable as a voice, shrivelling up and in a daze between alive and dead. But what it said was an unmistakable, desperate question that he was terrified to hear the answer to.
“Jack…?”
Just one word. That was all it took for all of Simon’s fears to bounce through each corner of the cave, slither through every nook and cranny, until it landed in the mercenary’s ears so many times that it couldn’t possibly be mistaken as a trick of the cave.
But instead of the shocked realization that Simon would have expected if this was truly Jack, the blond just tilted his head to the side and let out a surprised grunt. “Yep. That’s me. Good guess, Si’s trauma ghost. What took you so long?”
…Was this Jack?
The Jack he knew wouldn’t be so flippant about finding his friend dying in a cave.
It was meant as a joke, no doubt. But Simon didn’t bother remembering that, or even noticing that his hopes had been confirmed, instead choosing the easiest path and feeling admonished. He hung his head against his chest, practically stabbing his own sternum. “I-I… *cough cough* Sorry…”
“‘Sorry’?” Jack scoffed, crossing the remaining distance between them with the nonchalance of someone walking up to their neighbor. “I don’t think that’s worth an apology. I mean, look at me, I’m wearing one of those uniforms made out of rubber gloves, how could you tell it was me?”
…Wait, what?
This was Jack?
Not a hallucination or a trick of Simon’s dreams.
This was, “Jack…?!”
“Yeah, I know, stop wearing out my name,” he chuckled, squatting in front of the other man. “You know, it’s kind of funny, I came in here to try and find your body, and instead I found your…spirit…?”
Those green eyes were so close to Simon’s now. So warm and vibrant and full of life.
And they were widened to the point where they were about to fall out of their sockets and into Simon’s lap.
Jack’s mouth gaped open as he looked at the bloody patches of cloth on his leg and stomach. Then as he scanned up his body, noting every wrinkle of cloth and protruding bone. Then into that red visor.
The same red visor he had known for over 10 years.
And the eyes behind it that you could just barely make out through the red tint.
They were wide and scared and filled with something that Simon himself could only describe as sheer, exhausted shock as Gamma Jack knelt in front of him in the cave that was supposed to claim Gazerbeam’s life.
The radiation around his hand flickered. “...Simon?!”
Before the half-dead super could react, he was overtaken by a broiling, living hug that made both of them topple halfway onto the ground before Jack got ahold of himself. And diverted his attention to adamantly trying to break every bone in Simon’s body through nothing but compassion.
“It’s you,” the younger super muttered, almost spitting out the word in case it refused to leave his thoughts and refused to be true. “It’s you, it’s you, it’s you–!”
“It’s you,” Simon parroted, not having the energy to come up with a more creative response because he needed to smile from ear to ear instead.
His best friend laughed, a wet, half-crazed laugh. “You’re supposed to be dead! Simon, you’re supposed to be dead!”
“Mm-hmm,” Simon grunted, already tired from the exertion and needing to go limp in Jack’s arms. “Supposed to…”
The embrace loosened just a little. Just enough to make Simon beg for the strength to lean forward and collapse against Jack’s chest.
“You are alive?” Jack’s words were quiet, almost timid. “I’m not going insane, and you’re not actually a weirdly-shaped rock in a cave, right?”
“You’re–” Simon coughed again, trying to brace himself for the herculean task of asking Jack a full question. “You’re real…?”
Simon’s hand was reaching for Jack’s face before he could stop himself. His cold, corpse-like fingers needed confirmation that this wasn’t just some dream his mind had made up to ease him closer to death.
But he could barely mount the strength to lift his hand to the height of Jack’s chest.
So, Jack took it upon himself to clasp Simon’s shaking hand in his own, stroking his thumb against their nearly skeletal shape. Jack’s voice was thick, eyes brimming with so many emotions that they didn’t know how to express themselves other than to let a loose trice of water fall down his cheek. “I’m real.”
Jack was there.
He had survived Syndrome, and he had found Simon.
How…? How was that possible…?
Simon couldn’t bring himself to ask outloud. Especially not when he saw sudden worry flash across Jack’s perfect face, making his brow wrinkle in concern. “You’re freezing! Come here–”
The younger super was wrapping his arms around Simon again. More delicately this time, trying not to do too much damage. Simon’s arms were pinned to his side, unable to move against Jack’s uniform as the flicker of green radiation began to dance across the super’s skin, partially engulfing both of them in more warmth and light than the cavern had seen.
Every chill and every worry in Simon’s body felt like it was slowly melting away as Jack’s steady breathing helped him regulate his own, falling into easy step with him as the hug stretched through minutes. Until Jack pulled back just slightly.
But enough for Simon to notice that their mutual joy in this unexpected reunion was entirely marred by a pretty obvious question: “What happened to you?”
Simon wanted to answer. He really did. But if he said anything else, he was scared it would either shatter this quick moment of serenity in his corner of the cave, or his throat would completely rip in two. So, the best he could offer was, “A lot…”
Jack snorted, no doubt feeling a little silly for asking. Slowly, just in case Simon protested, Jack tucked a hand around the bottom of Gazerbeam’s helmet and set it aside.
The shock of seeing color other than red-tinted stone for the first time since he fell into the cave was like being colorblind and suddenly seeing a rainbow. The green of Jack’s radiation was suddenly the most welcoming, soothing color he had seen in his entire life.
And even that was set to the side for a moment as he felt Jack’s hand cup his cheek. Jack’s fingers gently, almost delicately stroked the cuts on Simon’s face that had long since healed, but were still so painfully obvious that they might scar. Still, the touch almost made Simon collapse.
“I know…” Jack promised, his usually loud voice somehow managing to be soothing. “I know, it’s been so much…”
Simon swallowed. Even though there was barely anything left for him to swallow.
Jack, somehow, someway, had managed to find him. Simon could feel his skin so alive against his own deathly expression. He wanted to sink into that feeling and never let it leave again.
Never let himself walk away from Jack again. He’d been so foolish the last time they had met before he went to the island… Excusing himself from anything deeper than necessary because of “Jack’s safety.”
Now, Jack was in the cave, his radiation pooling around them like it was a thick blanket on a winter’s night.
“And we’ll have a lot to talk about between what we’ve both been up to, I’m sure,” Jack laughed, gesturing to his mercenary uniform. Which he interrupted to wipe his watery eye against his own shoulder. So he wouldn’t have to let go of Simon. “But I’m getting you out of this maggot-infested dungeon first.”