Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Hey, Red!” Buck calls out to the old man by the docks. He's probably far too chipper for 5AM Prometheus standard time.

The sun was rising up, unblocked by any cloud, painting Sobunar's Sea in a mesmerizing orange glow. He thinks the docks look picturesque like this—unburdened by a yet-to-start work day and goings-on here in the Autumn Island.

Red rises up to his full 5’4” height and audibly grunts making him chuckle. “It’s too early for you to be this chipper, Buck,” the old man says as if he read his mind. Well, you can't blame him. He has a good feeling about today.

“Never too early for enthusiasm, Red.”

The Arakki goes back to wrangling his fishing net into his small boat. “What do you want?”

He leans on the boat, partially sitting on it, trying to grab Red’s undivided attention. “You wound me, old man,” he says, jokingly clutching his chest, “do you know anyone who needs an extra set of hands?”

“You live in Arakko now. You best know there’s work for everyone,” Red barks and shoves him off the boat.

“Yeah, but who can give me the kind of work that’s more permanent?”

Red stares at him, “Don’t they tell you where you can find jobs in Immigration?”

He sighs, “Yeah, in Arakko Prime and the Diplomatic Zone. But I came here to get away from the big cities.”

“Try the Morrowlands. I heard a new factory for nonstop yappers just opened up.” Red pushes his boat into the waters and picks up his oar.

“C’mon, Red. I’ll owe you a marker!” he pleads with his best pouting puppy-dog impression even though the Arakki has his back to him.

The old man sighs in defeat, “Go to the Palace–”

“I thought that was off-limits?” he cuts Red off in shock.

“Do you want a job or not?” Red questions with a scowl and he just nods. “Go to the Autumn Palace and tell the Master there—Robert—tell him the Fisher King sent you. Then tell him what you want.”

“Wow! Fisher King… Mighty title, Red. What haven’t you been telling me?” he jests.

“Just go before I hit you with my oar!” Red says, bemused. The old Arakki paddles his boat to deeper waters as Buck watches. There’s a story there but he knows Red won’t just open up to a random Earth man he’s only known for a week.

Buck doesn’t go to the Palace right away. He knows where it’s at—he’s seen it when he first arrived and the locals told him never to approach the ominous place.

The Autumn Island is as big as Los Angeles but isn’t as industrially developed. He’s heard in immigration that the place resisted the urbanization attempts proposed by those from Port Prometheus. And from his talks with Red, the only real industry centers are the canning districts in the East coast and the touring camps in the North. The West coast where he's currently at, is a protected zone for some reason—he’s never really got a straight answer from Red or the locals. And the South is the only legal entry point for first time immigrants and tourists which needless to say is filled with small tourist trap-y pretend villages.

He decides it’s better to look around first, go to the places he hasn’t seen in the few days he’s been here.

He used some of his savings to buy a secondhand carriage when he got to the island. It isn’t an actual carriage. It’s actually a car developed by Arakkii that vaguely looks like a jeep. It was pretty pricey but he thinks it was worth it since he couldn’t bring his actual jeep to the red planet.

There are few highways in the Autumn Island. Most of them connect the South port to the East districts. The one he’s in now, goes straight to the canyon up North. Just a few miles in, he sees nothing but farmland that goes on as far as his powers reach. An endless stretch of ancient crops reintroduced to the now because of Arakko’s return. It’s barely past morning but everything is awash in warm orange-y hues, far-different from the cool greens of Earth. He just takes it all in.

Crossing the border to the North, he passes by the massive signboard pointing to the Northern canyon. For some inexplicable reason, from the moment he woke up today he was drawn to it. So, to it he goes.

Once there, he doesn’t bother joining any of the tour groups. If he's going to live in Arakko, he’s going to live like an Arakki.

He leaves his carriage at the tourist center and the Arakki canyon rangers brief him about prohibited zones and accident prone areas. In the past decade or so, the Arakkii were no longer averse to the concept of help. And because of that, they give him a radio he can use if he gets stuck in a situation beyond his capabilities. They normally don’t allow Earthlings without a tour group but since he’s a registered mutant, they allow it.

The young man by the desk kept reiterating that he should always ask for help to the point it annoyed him. But he didn’t let it show. The kid was just doing his job and since the kid was obviously Arakki—it might’ve taken a great deal for him to learn and say that help is a good thing.

It's midday when Buck decides to stop and rest. There’s a small river at the bottom of the canyon and some trees that can provide enough shade from the high sun. He uses the equipment given to him by the rangers to filter out the river water—and boy, does the water taste good. He compares what he knows of the mineral water he normally buys back on Earth to the natural one he just filtered. The unique composition gives it a distinct taste that borders on metallic but a bit tangy. He likes it.

He hears rustling and some stunted footsteps coming from his right. A young boy, who looks far too human and holding on crutches, wearing red-rimmed glasses, smiles up at him. His first thought is why was there a kid here? Could he have been separated from one of the tourist groups earlier? But he saw all of them and he never forgets people and the boy definitely wasn’t there.

“Hi!” the kid says, approaching closer. He doesn’t miss the way the kid stares at the bottle of filtered water in his hand.

“Uh, hello…?”

The kid couldn’t have been any older than eight. He looks around to look for any other adults that the kid could’ve been with. The Arakkii might be an abrasive and combative group of peoples but because of their history, they were fiercely protective of their young. It’s either this kid isn’t Arakki or he got lost.

“Can I have a drink?”

He hesitates a bit, unsure what the proper protocol was, but the chapped lips of the boy compels him to hand over the bottle. “Uh, sure!”

“Thank you,” the boy says shyly. He was surprised when the kid’s crutches float in the air when the boy reaches for the bottle. Definitely not human.

“That was refru-refreshing!” the boy exclaims after drinking everything. “My name’s Christopher. What’s yours?”

Christopher was definitely an Earth name. Maybe the boy’s from Earth like him. “Buck. My name’s Buck,” he answers, smiling. There’s something endearing about this kid’s boldness that the oddness of the situation is lost on him.

“That’s a funny name.”

“Well, I’m a funny guy.”

The kid—Christopher laughs and it’s the best sound he’s heard since he moved here.

“Christopher!” calls out a gruff voice.

They both turn to the direction of the voice. He sees a man, only slightly shorter than him, running down the slope by the canyon wall. When he gets closer, Buck sees that the man’s skin and flesh are translucent, letting his maroon bones peek through. Pitch black circles, the same color as his gorgeous hair, frame his stunning hazel eyes. The man reminds him of the Santa Muerte depictions back on Earth.

When the man reaches them, he stands behind Christopher, placing protective hands on the boy’s shoulders. “What did I tell you about running off like that?” the man tells Christopher.

“I was thirsty, dad!”

Christopher’s dad looks at him with furrowed brows, “And what did I tell you about taking things from strangers?”

Christopher tsks, “Dad, it’s okay. I looked through Buck’s head and he isn’t a bad guy!”

Both he and the other man are alarmed by what Chris said. If Christopher wasn’t a literal child, he might be fuming with anger right now. Buck can do something similar and he’s spent his whole life trying to avoid prying into people’s thoughts. Chris might still be learning—both how to control his powers and honor people’s boundaries.

“I am so sorry,” the dad apologizes, clearly unsure of what to do.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he placates the guy with a smile. “Kids, right?”

That earns him a breathy laugh from the man and he thinks that’s the second best thing he’s heard since he got here. “I still apologize. Christopher’s still learning.”

The man extends his hand, “I’m Edmundo by the way.”

He shakes the offered hand, “Nice to meet you, Edmundo. I’m Buck!” The name sounds vaguely Earth-like to him but it was also from an old language that he’s unsure of. For all he knows, it could be a same sounds, different meaning situation. That happens a lot in different languages. Pretty funny how often it happ—

“No, my dad’s from Arakko, alright!” Christopher interrupts his personal musings by apparently reading his thoughts and answering out loud.

Edmundo catches on and apologizes again. He can’t say he’s surprised though, if the past three minutes were anything to go by.

“Like, I said. It’s okay. I’m pretty sure if I wasn’t thinking it, I probably would’ve said it. And that would’ve been even more embarrassing,” he says with a wink to Christopher. The kids giggles and it seems to calm his dad’s nerves a bit.

“Why are you here though? We passed by some tour groups awhile ago—are you lost?” Edmundo asks.

He should answer honestly. “Uhm, well, I just moved to the island from Earth. I figured if I were to live in Arakko, I should live like an Arakki. Independent and strong. So, no, not lost.”

Edmundo purses his lips and simply nods, “Well, you’d make an Arakki yet, Buck.”

“I think he’ll be a great Arakki!” Christopher shouts, earning laughs from both of the men.

“Kindness is a form of strength, Earthman,” Edmundo starts with a smile, carrying Christopher. “Keep it up and you’ll have a place in the Broken Lands.” The father and son start floating up and Christopher shouts one last goodbye at him. He waves farewell animatedly much to the kid’s amusement.

The whole encounter leaves him feeling elated and happy. He hopes to meet the beaming boy and his gorgeous father again in the future and hear their beautiful laughter. Right now, he needs to find his own way back to the tourist center.

He has to set aside his trip to the Autumn Palace for tomorrow. Red will definitely hit him with his oar if he finds out he skipped on a potential job application over trekking. But hey, meeting Christopher and Edmundo might make getting hit worth it.

Scratch that. It’s definitely worth it.

Chapter Text

“Wake up!”

Buck wakes up with a jolt. More like he woke up because someone hit him with an oar to his right thigh. Judging from the seemingly perpetually irritated tone and the literal oar, it was Red.

“Jesus, Red! Ever heard of gently nudging people awake?” He groans, sitting up and rubbing his right thigh. The oar smells salty and he’s afraid welts will form on his skin because of it. He has pretty sensitive skin.

“Have you ever heard of not being a little shit.”

Little. Pretty ironic for the old man the same height as his tiny older sister to say. Huh, Maddie. He misses her. They haven’t talked in years but he still misses her. But those were thoughts for later.

“How’d you even get in my room?” he asks. He wants to rub his face awake out of habit but the dull ache on his thigh beat him to it. And apparently the sudden jolt had him speedrun his daily routine of reining his powers in.

“I know the innkeeper,” Red waves him off, taking the empty chair by the dresser. “You mind telling me why, when I went to the Palace, Robert said “No one by the name of Evan Buckley came by” huh?”

“I got distracted,” he tries for an excuse.

“Yeah? With what?”

There’s no point in lying to Red. He was the one who begged for a job opportunity but skipped out on it. “I went North and saw the canyon.”

Red chortles, “What’s there to see? It’s a huge crack in the ground. Big whoop!”

“I wasn’t distracted by the place. I met this kid, Christopher, and his dad, Edmundo, and we got to talking. The next thing I know, it was past noon and it was evening when I got back here.” He's drastically exaggerating the father-son duo’s contribution to his non-attendance but Red doesn’t know that. And to be fair, Chris and Edmundo did occupy his thoughts the entire drive back.

The old man just looks at him with this contemplative look. Any second longer, he would’ve squirmed under Red’s stare. Thankfully, the Arakki spoke up not a second later, “You really met and spoke with this Edmundo fella?”

“And Chris, too. They were nice people,” he answers.

It takes another moment for Red to answer, “Okay. I’m cashing in my marker now.”

“What? Really, now?!”

Red uses his oar to poke and prod at him. “Yeah, what I want you to do is stand up, get dressed, and drive straight to the Autumn Palace.”

“That’s it?” If he wasn't awake before. He sure is now. Most people ask for really elaborate things when cashing in markers. It’s really strange that Red is literally just asking him something that he already planned on doing today.

“Yeah, yeah. You better make sure you wash your mouth before you speak with Robert. Or else you’ll get the entire boat tomorrow morning.”

He doesn’t particularly have confidence in Red that he could carry his entire boat in his old age, but he won’t risk it. The man is in his 60s but still fishes from 5 to 3. That oar hurt so bad, he felt like he was back on Earth for a second.

The drive to the palace was strange. He couldn’t find his way on his own, even though the huge gaudy building was there in his line of sight. No matter which road he takes, whatever street he turns, the Autumn Palace just seemed to be miles away. It makes no sense. As someone whose powers deal with actual, real time information—it makes no sense to him, whatsoever. It was only when he asked for directions did the palace get closer. Even then, the people he asked looked at him as if he was crazy just by speaking the building’s name out loud.

After two hours of trying to even approach the Autumn Palace, he’s proud to say that he finally made it!

Stepping out of his carriage, directly onto the dirt driveway of the massive austere structure, he discovers the reason for his cognitive dissonance earlier. There’s a field of cognitohazards surrounding the palace—a psychic barrier meant to scramble people’s thoughts and perceptions of the structure. He thanks his powers for being able to know that. If he didn’t have them, he would’ve been scratching his head about it until next week.

In accordance to Autumn Island custom, the palace has no doors. A grand doorway stands empty, twenty-seven feet at its highest point and twelve at its widest. But grand is a generous word for it. It might as well be a glorified door jamb because of how bare and straight cut it was.

There’s a palpable relief to his thoughts when he passes through. The cognitohazard must have extended up to the outer walls of the palace. His mind became clearer and he suddenly realizes that his power went uncheck for a while there; making him see the specifications of not just the palace but the entire area.

He breathes out a sigh of relief.

“Who are you and what do you want?” a booming voice echoes throughout the bare receiving hall.

On the grand staircase’s landing is a tall, gruff-looking older man, probably in his 50s. The man wields a stance of authority and danger so well that he’s intimidated by the posture alone. He looks vaguely familiar though, he just can’t put his finger on it. Regardless of who he is in Buck’s terrified mind, this is probably Robert, the master of the palace.

“Uh, my name is Evan Buckley. The Fisher King sent me here because I’m looking for a more permanent job here in the Autumn Island. I want to help people. You see I’m not from here, I’m from Earth. And I came to Arakko to start fresh but that hasn’t really been working out,” he blurts out in a rush. Robert doesn’t stop him from rambling and his words slowly peter out because he’s practically squirming at the man’s distrustful stare. With his last bit of courage he shouts, “I’m not Krakoan!”

He suspects that that was the right thing to say as there was a subtle shift in Robert’s features.

“What’s your name, Evan Buckley?” Robert asks.

What? He’s confused. Even more so when Red woke him up with an oar to the thigh and cashing in his marker for something he was already set on doing. He introduced himself properly, right? And if his mind is no longer addled by the cognitohazard, he’s sure Robert mentioned his name. His head tilts to the side and his eyes squint involuntarily.

“What?”

“I’m asking you: what’s your name, Evan Buckley?”

He shovels through every information and memory he has trying to make sense of Robert’s question. His mind conjures up every moment in his life someone’s asked him his name. And every time a mutant asks him, they had the same tone very much like Robert’s. The same inquisitive one, Christopher used yesterday. They were asking for who he was, not what he was named. Who was he beyond human identification. What was the name he chose for himself. His mutant name.

“Buck. I’m Buck,” he breathes. It’s weird saying it aloud now with the context he’s just learned. He feels light in the same manner when he was talking with Edmundo and Chris.

In the five minutes since he entered the palace… he feels welcome.

Robert waves for him to come climb up. The master of the palace extends his hand and introduces himself, “I’m Robert Nash. It’s nice to meet you, Buck—call me Bobby.”

They climb further up the palace and into a sparsely decorated hall. At the end of it, is a nondescript wooden door. Bobby ushers him in. He doesn’t know what he expected but it was not this.

Beyond the wooden door is a kitchen that seemed out of place in the entire palace. The countertop’s pure immaculate granite and the cupboards are made from wood he can’t identify. There are multiple ovens, state of the art gas stoves, cast iron pots and pans and hot plates. Without using his abilities he can tell the silverware are actual silver judging from their gleam alone. And the knives, he doesn’t know what metal they’re made of but he can practically feel their sharpened edges cut him from fifteen feet away. The earthenware are all impeccably glazed and intricately detailed.

“You want to help people? Let’s start by you helping me with lunch.”

Bobby goes to the nearest fridge—there’s three of them—and brings out a ton of ingredients that gets Buck overwhelmed.

“This might seem weird, Buck, but I personally think that cooking can tell a lot about a person.”

He pulls on the collar of his shirt. Years of surviving off of instant ramen and takeout food is making him a little insecure. “Wi-well I don’t really know how to cook. But I’m willing to learn. Just tell me what to do, Bobby.”

A gentle smile tugs at Bobby’s lips, “See? I can already tell a lot about you from that. Now stop stalling and help me chop some cabbages.”

He feels giddy at that. There’s something he can't quite place in Bobby’s changed of tone that makes him feel nice. He smiles at the older man and looks at whatever ingredients were placed on the center island

These were Earth ingredients. Yeah, Bobby mentioned cabbages but these were honest-to-God Savoy cabbages. Then there were the carrots, bell peppers, and peppercorns. Even the meat! These were clearly pork and beef—he knows because the striations and marbling are different from the ones he’s seen in the markets. And then there was the salt, but then again, yesterday he found out salt’s a pretty universal cooking ingredient.

Being emboldened by Bobby’s change in attitude he says, “These are all Earth food, Bobby,” trying to steer the conversation.

“I am from Earth,” Bobby shrugs and it tells him that’s the end of that conversation.

Bobby hands him a knife and tells him to get chopping. It only takes thirty-five minutes to finish the two-meat stew that Bobby's planned.

“This is delicious, Buck!” the master of the palace says after swallowing a mouthful of stew.

He ducks to hide his blush, “You did most of it. You just asked me to chop the cabbages and carrots and then watch the fire.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have done it without you doing all those things.”

Chapter Text

He and Bobby eat in relative silence for the next ten minutes. The only noises he could hear are both their chewing, the whistling wind, and chirping that’s coming in from the outside through the grand windows of Bobby’s dining room.

“Okay, let’s talk,” Bobby starts right after wiping his face with a napkin.

“Uh-about what?” he asks sheepishly.

“Think of this as still part of your job interview,” Bobby says to which he nods in affirmation.

“Here in Arakko, you're never just given something. You fight for whatever you own and every task is supposed to be treated as a challenge or test.”

“What do you want to know?” He did ask for a job, might as well answer some interview questions.

“What’s your mutation?” Bobby asks, resting his elbows on the table in front of him.

He thinks, wording his thoughts carefully. “I don't exactly know what my power is but I download any and all information from my surrounding environment into my mind…”

He trails off when he sees Bobby’s scowl, brows furrowed. Everyone is cautious about that bit about his power and Bobby seems to be no different, though he understands. No one ever really wants to be an open book.

“I know what you’re thinking, I’m not reading your mind right now!” he says, hoping to mollify Bobby. But his words also cause more confusion.

“Poor choice of words,” he takes a moment to gather his thoughts. “I’m not telepathic! I-I’ve spent a great deal of my life learning how not to pry into other people’s heads. You never have to worry about me secretly reading your thoughts.”

“Okay.”

“Just okay? You’re gonna believe I didn’t use my powers on you just like that?” For the third time today, he’s utterly bewildered.

“Fisher vouched for you. I'll trust your word,” Bobby assures him.

“Well, uhm, like I said. I don’t exactly know what my power is but the immigration office at SWORD categorized it as spatial awareness.” Bobby just nods, but there was a minuscule tilt to the older man’s jaw that tells him that Bobby was making a mental note.

“And why Arakko…?”

He ponders on that. Will he tell a man he’d just met his embarrassing history or will he give him the pageant answer that would most likely get him through any job interview on Earth? Every task is supposed to be treated as a challenge or a test. Damn it, he has to live like an Arakki.

“I was a troubled kid. That didn’t really change when I grew up. I traveled around, looking for a place to belong until I saw a flier about Lake Hellas. I thought that maybe if I can’t find my place on Earth, maybe it’s somewhere else.”

“So, why the Autumn Island?”

“It’s not a metropolis like LA but at the same time very similar with being near the sea and all.”

“Oh, you’re an Angeleno?” Bobby asks, amused.

“Well, that was my last stop before moving. I was a firefighter there–”

“Really? Which station?” Bobby cuts with an unusually excited cadence.

“The one-eighteen, why?” he asks, feeling that this is a good opportunity to get to know more about the Arakki-Earthman even though it’s his job interview.

“Are you kidding me?” Bobby exclaims. Suddenly, there’s a completely different person in front of him. “I used to be captain for the A-shift! Last I heard, captain Wilkins took over my shift.”

Boom! The reason Bobby looked so familiar was because he was in one of the old photos Chimney showed him. Chimney. He should call him some time. It’s been almost a month since they last talked. He misses the guy’s annoying big brother energy.

There’re still bitter feelings about his last few days there. But they’re not appropriate to share to his apparent senior who seems to have fond memories of his time there. He doesn’t notice the silence falling until Bobby picks up both their plates and throws into the sink.

“Buck, I’m not going to ask what happened but if you still want to be a first responder, coming to me was the right thing.”

Next thing he knows, Bobby’s leading him through a private gateway in the palace—one that’s only accessible for Bobby and his guests.

He was intrigued—both with Bobby and the gateway. You have to be important to own a private gateway; only members of the Quiet Council and the Great Captains get to have private gateways. Not that he knows who gets to have private gateways. Nope, he definitely did not find out who the Quiet Council members are because a Krakoan ambassador’s caravan once drove through LA and he happened to be drunk and walking along their route.

He hasn’t gotten drunk since. Having Sue Blevins—the Omega-level telepath—speak in his hungover mind the next day, all scary and intimidating, practically threatening him to keep mum wasn’t the way he imagined becoming Buck 2.0.

He was so lost in thought, he didn’t notice passing through the gateway. Bobby claps his shoulder and gestures around them.

He might as well be back at Station 118 because this place looks practically the same. From the open floorplan to the industrial loft-style mezzanine. The only real difference is the robust Arakki walls and furnishings; and instead of fire engines, ladder trucks, and ambulances, they had two jet cruisers and an amphibious ambulance.

“The slightly lighter gravity in Arakko helps make flying faster and easier. At least that’s what our pilot says,” Bobby explains to him.

“Hey, cap! You’re late,” a dark-skinned woman approaches them. She’s wearing thick-rimmed glasses and her shaven head features a subtle scalp tattoo. He thought it was just growing hair at first, but when the light touched her head, it seemed to shimmer, showing a beautiful curvilinear Arakkii pattern. “Who’s this fresh meat?”

“This, Hen, is our newest recruit.”

“Oh, really now?” Hen looks at him, sizing him up. Maybe just a little bit. Her playful smirk betrays her.

He extends his hand, “Hi, my name’s Buck. Looking forward to working with you.”

Hen shakes his hand but raises her other, “Hold on. We don’t know if you’re working with me just yet.”

“Well, since Buck here used to be a firefighter in LA and LA firefighters are double certified… I might just make him your field partner,” Bobby gasses him up, shaking his head when Hen raises an impressed brow at him.

“Hen here is the paramedic–”

“Our only paramedic,” she corrects.

“…on our shift. Any time we get a priority medical call, we defer to her.”

He doesn’t know whether to be impressed or concerned. Yes, he might be a certified emergency medical responder but his job during medical calls aren’t as pressuring as the EMTs’. “How are you still walking?” he thinks out loud.

The paramedic laughs. “Well, my weapon gives me more stamina than most. And it helps that Arakkii have “mandatory” basic healing and disaster management training during childhood.”

Weapon. He’s only ever heard indigenous Arakkii refer to mutant powers as weapons. He feels conflicted with calling an essential part of who he is a weapon. The word itself might have different connotations for the Arakkii. And if he’s to stay here permanently—and he plans to—he should learn it.

Hen doesn’t seem to notice his slight change in mood and continues, “Most of the medical calls we get are from Earth immigrants. We do occasionally get ones from Arakkii who’re at their wits end with medical stuff or in a real tough spot.”

He hums. He might’ve been a firefighter on Earth but they definitely run things differently here. He has no doubt that Bobby will give him the training that he needs. He doesn’t care how long it's going to take. As long as he gets to be a part of… whatever their job is called, he’d be fine with it.

“Welcome to the Brotherhood of Arakko, Buck,” Bobby says, pushing him forward, “time to meet the rest of the crew!”

After touring the station and introductions, Bobby had him shadowing Voyta—one of their pilot engineers—to show him proper aircraft maintenance. Just the basic stuff like engine cleaning and fuel changes. And he learned a lot despite the pilot being a person of few words. They’re closer in age to Bobby but their youthful appearance doesn’t let it show.

They were showing him how to properly turn off the engine and disconnect the batteries for cleaning prep when he wondered what their mutant weapon was. Out loud. You can’t blame him though, they had small spikes on their cheeks, brows, and every other joint in their body. Most Earth mutants evolved to look “human” to blend in but the Arakkii didn’t because they never had to. They looked at him with a teasing smirk and answered “I can also fix the station’s oven.”

He had a ride along on the first call of the day. He added it to his growing list of confusing things. Shouldn’t Ravi be the one to join them? Instead the youngest crew member was man-behind for the day. Ravi is their actual probie. Bobby said he recruited him straight out of the Vile Schools. The kid was promising but lacks experience, so the kid stays behind more often than not until Bobby deems him prepared enough for field work.

The call was to a mining village near the East coast, a good few kilometers from the East harbor. Pfft, village. It looked more like a suburb than a rural neighborhood, really. The actual quarry was a great distance away from the village. So, it doesn’t make sense to him how a sinkhole opened in the village and swallowed half a house and the people living there.

After picking the crew members to send out, they rode on one of the cruisers. When he asked why they didn’t take the ambulance, Bobby informed him that the cruiser had enough life support equipment. And since Hen was already with them, those left at the station could use the ambulance if there was a medical call while they were out.

He stayed in the cruiser with Voyta, Bobby instructing him to observe and listen through the body cam feed. Apparently Bobby had their uniforms custom fitted with micro-cameras for documentation and performance reviews. “None of the other captains do it. Just Bobby,” Voyta share, prompting him to look at the uniform he was wearing. The spare that Bobby handed to him before leaving the station.

The way they handled calls with Arakkii was odd to him.

Children were priority, of course. The parents managed to secure the children onto a ridge on the wall of the sinkhole, twelve feet from the opening. They get them out in no time. The mother was Arakki though so getting her out was different case. One of their crew—Lucy—gave her their extra harness and crash helmet. Bobby instructs her on how to safely exit the hole and she listens intently and had this look of unwavering commitment. It takes her fifteen minutes because of her broken leg but she does it.

Their crew and the bystanders cheer for the Arakki mother and he can’t help but clap along as well. She thanks Bobby and informs him that her husband was Krakoan and might still be waiting for help down there.

Lucy, quick on the up take, says “On it, cap!” as she descends further. She lands on a horizontal tunnel, almost perpendicular to the sinkhole. When she turns another corner she sees blood on the tunnel walls. Not a second later, a large lizard thing jumps her and her camera goes out.

“Cap, we lost Lucy’s bodycam,” Voyta relays to Bobby. “Her mic’s still good though.”

“Lucy, sitrep. Are you okay?”

“Yes, cap. Thank my danger sense,” she says, catching her breath, “At least now we know the cause of the sinkhole.”

“Okay, I want you to put that danger sense to good use as you try to find that missing husband.”

“Odds are not looking good, Cap. There’s a lot of blood here and it isn’t mine.” For five seconds, no one speaks and all they hear from the coms are Bobby’s and Lucy’s breathing. The air is tense and he wants to just dive into the hole and save that poor man.

“Buck,” Bobby calls out into the coms.

“Yes, cap?” He turns to Voyta, hoping to get an answer why his name was called but they just shrug.

“You said your power is spatial awareness? I need you to find that man down there and be Lucy’s eyes and ears.”

He hesitates for a bit. He hasn’t said his weakness out loud but he remembers one of Red’s words to him: “How can you improve when you don’t admit your own weaknesses?”

“Bobby, I have to tell you that when I look for people specifically, they should be alive for my power to work,” he whispers, hoping the family doesn’t hear it.

Unfortunately, the mother catches his words still, “My husband is not so weak to be killed by something as simple as this.”

“You heard her, Buck,” Bobby says, his tone urging him on.

And so he tries. He tunes in to his surroundings, spreading his mind to his maximum five hundred meters. He focuses on the sinkhole—thirteen feet and an eighth inch wide, going kilometers deep, passing through a series of winding tunnels. Avoiding Lucy’s thoughts, he finds the husband further into the bloodstained tunnel. A low level geomancer who dug his own tunnel trying to escape the lizard.

The lizard on the other hand went deeper, away from Lucy and the husband. Strange. The lizard isn’t from the island.

Stashing that thought for later, “Found him!” he blurts out.

“Good job, Buck. Okay, Lucy. Bring him home!”

He instructs Lucy the best he can and she manages to reach the man and bring him to safety fifteen minutes later.

The Krakoan lost his left hand in the struggle to escape the animal. Hen had to quickly step in before they lose him due to blood loss. Seeing Hen in action, assessing the man’s wound and within a minute stops the bleeding, reminds him of Chimney and how efficient he was. She’s amazing at her job.

This team is amazing he thinks. And he can’t wait to be a true part of it once his training period was officially over.

Bobby calls for him and he sees the injured family huddled together—talking to Lucy, Hen, and Bobby. Their other crew members are busy packing up their rescue equipment.

“Thank you! This migraine has been killing me all week,” he catches the Krakoan say to Hen when she hands him some pain meds and a water bottle.

“You asked for me, cap?” he says with a smile. Before he steps any closer to the group, he tunes out.

“Thank you!” the mother tells him, standing up.

“You're… welcome?” he isn’t really sure what he’s being thanked for. Lucy was the one who actually saved her husband and Hen was the one who gave him first aid.

“Ah, I see. You're not of Arakko,” she shakes her head fondly. “What’s your name?”

“Buck.”

“I see you, Buck. You have a place in the Broken lands.”

He remembers Edmundo’s words just yesterday. His heart soars at being a step closer to being an actual Arakki. But he can’t seem to shake away the thought that there was something wrong with this first call. He files it under first day jitters when he sees the approving nods from the crew. His crew.

Chapter Text

Edmundo listens to the whispers. The unseen elders who have not passed on, speak of a man from the mother-world, guiding their kin through challenges worthy of the Great Ring. They chatter about a man with a stained brow born from the powerless—not from the island left behind nor from the Broken Lands—who knows.

He laughs. They’re talking about Buck. It’s been a full month since he and Christopher met the Earthman. Buck helped Christopher, so it’s only right for him to check up on how he was fairing in Arakkii soil. If he purposefully summons and communes with the spirits of his countrymen… Well, who could blame him? He’d return the man’s kindness one day and he’ll jump on any opportunity to do so.

Right. To pay back the kindness. He holds his cup of coffee a little tighter—the warmth as comforting as Buck’s smile in his memories. He is inexplicably drawn to him. All of the experiences in his old age don’t tell him why. He wasn’t even like this with his late wife.

“Daddy!” Christopher calls from the front door.

“Edito! Help me with the tamales,” abuela shouts right after.

He gives Christopher a quick, sweeping hug before taking the rather large container abuela was holding.

“Hey, abuela. How was Earth?”

Abuela took Christopher to Earth to finally introduce him to their relatives in the US and Krakoa. He would’ve gone with them but he can’t leave Arakko because of his duties.

“The gravity hurt my back,” she complains, walking into the kitchen to make more food no doubt—even though her tamales would last them a day or two.

“You’re still cooking? This is already too much,” he says, raising the container.

She looks at him disapprovingly, “Edito, estás fuera del infierno!” He chuckles, “You can’t keep feeding my bisnieto like you’re still at war.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” She really was. He knows that he hasn’t been at war in over a decade and he has to unlearn having survival instincts as his primary motivator.

He brings out some pots she might need from the cupboards as she arranges whatever ingredients she took from the fridge. Refrigerators. They are a marvel! Even with all the myriad weapons Arakkii possessed, technology was still a mystery to him. Greenway made sure Arakkii had no technological progress until after the fallow years. So, please excuse him if he’s awestruck by something as simple as a refrigerator.

“Thank you. Now, get out!”

“You’re removing me from my own kitchen?” he mock-protests.

“No, it’s your house. But it’s my kitchen! Now, go! Go! Estás fuera. Don’t come back until it’s time to set the table.”

“You know I never expected to enjoy living here,” Linda tells him during their break.

“Well, you had no choice because they closed the gates,” he teases.

“Now, now. I stayed even after they opened them up,” she half-heartedly defends herself.

He remembers her then, scared and missing her husband every waking minute. She was only supposed to stay for a few months to train dispatchers in the then newly built Autumn Island service center. Her cartomancy became crucial to winning the war and ultimately she decided to stay; even had her husband petitioned.

“That you did,” he toasts to her braveness. “I said this before but it needs reiterating. You have a place in the Broken Lands, Linda—”

He drops the mug as he keels over. His eyes burn a bright crimson and he feels the catastrophic loss of life in the Autumn Island. The unseen elders cry out to him, agonizing, lamenting whatever had had happened—crying for retribution.

“Edmundo!” Linda shouts, helping him up. There’s a sudden rise in activity in the work floor that catches both of their attentions, every agent suddenly engaged in panicked calls.

“Linda, our dispatchers will call in every available branch of the Brotherhood. Among them is a knower but he’s new and I need you to guide him,” he instructs her as he quiets the unseen elders’ cries in his mind.

“Guide who with what?”

“His name is Buck, from Earth but not Krakoan. There was a massive explosion at the mining village from that sinkhole last month. You’ll be coming with me and you’ll guide him through mapping the entire disaster site while I help with retrieval and evacuation.”

“Are you sure?” she asks reluctantly but then sees the conviction in his crimson eyes. “Okay, Omega-death seer. Got it. You Omegas are really freaky.”

It doesn’t take them long to reach the village. Well, it was as if the village never existed. There was a massive crater in its place. Instead of the loving families there are distraught first responders in hazmat suits, digging for bodies under the rubble.

He spots Bobby and calls out to him, catching the captain’s attention, “Loss takes command?”

Bobby nods then asks, “What brings you to the field, Edmundo?”

“Critical loss of life seems to be in my purview. No point in preserving history if everyone else is history,” he expresses and Bobby nods. “What's the situation here? We can help.”

“The massive airburst and radiation levels at least tell us it was nuclear. Everything and everyone within the blast zone was obliterated. We’ve been searching for any survivors within a two mile radius but so far all the rubble has been making it difficult.”

“Go further out. Everyone within two miles is dead,” he reveals. Bobby and Linda fall quiet and somber.

He lets his eyes turn a crimson red once again and every unpassed soul and some residual spiritual echoes appear all around the disaster site. Most of the first responders are startled or panicked at their sudden appearance but Bobby tells everyone to calm down through his radio.

“They’ll make it easier to locate the bodies and help find out what happened.” Bobby nods and relays to every first responder to coordinate with the ghosts in locating their remains or where they died.

Some cruisers fly overhead, towards the quarry. “Was the mine affected by the blast?”

“Total structure failure—suspected casualties, any survivors are still stuck inside. One of my people used his gift and saw that the lizard tunnels from last month helped create some undocumented fissures between here and the mine. It resulted in the collapse during the explosion. I asked dispatch to send all other remaining stations from the island there. ”

One of his people… “You mean, Buck?”

“You know him?” Bobby asks, both curious and shocked.

“Yes,” he answers plainly. He gestures to Linda beside him and only now notices her in a hazmat suit as well. When did she put that on? “Bobby, you remember Linda Bates. With her cartomancy, we can help Buck map out the entire area up to the mine.”

“I have someone with danger sense as well. If they form a circuit they could potentially pick out the areas still vulnerable to sudden collapse.”

He scowls. He was hoping that he could fill in that role and meet Buck again but it’s too much to ask for, he guesses.

They walk towards the center of the explosion. It took them several minutes without using any cars or aircraft that could potentially disturb the already unstable ground. Bobby’s Geiger counter is beeping loudly to his right. He wonders how deadly the radiation was if he wasn’t immortal.

He spots several spirits just sitting there, dead center of the crater. He points them out and they quickly make their way to them.

“Tell me what happened here,” he commands.

The three spirits immediately recognize him. One who was wearing a Vile School lead researcher nameplate speaks up, “We’re surveyors studying the sinkhole. Radar showed no voids and our weapons informed us that the tunnels were safe enough for manual survey.”

“Are you sure you didn’t use any explosives?” Bobby checks.

All three spirits look at Bobby, exasperated for even suggesting they brought a bomb that powerful in a geological survey. “We weren’t allowed to. The entire block might’ve been cleared out but the rest of the neighborhood was still occupied.”

“So, what caused it?”

The leader speaks again, “We saw a glint in one of the tunnel walls and thought it was an undiscovered vein.”

‘When I approached it to help clear the dirt covering it, it detonated,” another one of the spirits say. He takes a good look at him. He looks baseline human. Krakoan. His own inherited danger sense tells him that’s a huge factor in the explosion.

“If you wish to move on, I can assist you. But if you need to speak with any remaining family, I will send you to them,” he offers these unfortunate souls. They did not deserve their fate.

After asking a few more questions, and them telling him their last wishes, he sends them off to meet their families for one last time and break the news of their deaths themselves.

“What do we do now?” One of the captains asks. Rescue and retrieval is still underway but with his assistance and Lucy, Linda, and Buck’s circuit, they’re moving faster than planned. A detective from the Inward Watch and a SWORD liaison are also present since it was a suspected act of domestic terrorism.

“Not yet. We’re still waiting for the regent. This concerns her the most,” Bobby answers for him.

And not a second later, the regent teleports in. There was no gust of wind, no puff of smoke, no flashing light—just appearing out of thin air. Always one for entrances.

The Omega-teleporter walks up to the table and directly addresses him and Bobby, “Been awhile since I’ve seen the two of you in the Great Ring. Wish it was under better circumstances.”

“Nice to see you, too, Athena,” he greets her. “Thanks to Bobby’s people and one of my own, we confirmed it to be a nuclear strike.”

“How though? There are no facilities in Arakko that have that kind of technology to produce one—not even the black sites,” Athena ponders, saying that last bit under her breath.

“Is it a remnant of the civil war?”

“My thoughts exactly,” he admits. “Greenway had Earth-backers during the war and he even had agents infiltrate Autumn Island. They could’ve planted the bomb back then.”

“The fact that it only detonated when the Krakoan surveyor got near implied as much,” Bobby adds.

“And we think the sinkhole unearthed the bomb?” Rick, the Watch detective, inquires further.

“No,” Bobby answers flatly, “The lizard that caused the sinkhole isn’t endemic to the island. It was never introduced to it after the terraforming. It’s also terrestrial so we have no reason to believe it could’ve crossed the sea on its own.

“And even if it did, it just happened to create tunnels where the bomb was buried?” Athena says, skeptical.

“And right under a Krakoan geomancer’s home,” he tacks on.

He observes Athena study the disaster site map, lips pursed and brows poised for thought. She raises one hand and the Brotherhood captains leave. “Either Greenway’s faction has been playing the long game or someone found out about his old toys.”

Neither of those options are preferable. Someone’s deliberately killing his people. And if he’s not careful, he might provoke them to do more.

“We have someone from all three Tables,” Athena starts, “Motion for the Inward Watch to carry out investigations once operations here are over?”

“Table Dusk assents,” he says.

“So does Table Dawn,” Bobby agrees.

“Motion carried, good. We’ll let SWORD come up with a statement. We keep this only between us, SWORD, and the Seat of Law’s Inward Watch—Rick will lead the investigation. We don’t want to inspire panic.”

He realizes he needs to step back and let Athena and the Inward Watch conduct their investigation. He doesn’t have the necessary skills to perform one that won’t signal to any of their enemies. And most of all, it will be a challenge by insult to not trust in the regent. He will bide his time.

Right now, he will help the Brotherhood and he’s hoping to see Buck’s smile again.

Chapter Text

It's a slow day. Not that he isn't thankful that there haven't been any calls but… there hasn't been any calls since the shift started! He's ready to claw his eyes out just to have something to do. He's done everything from getting repeatedly demolished by Lucy at pool to twice cleaning the cruiser engines. Ravi isn't a conversationalist by any measure and there's just so much dad talk he can take from Bobby. All of their training exercises and chores are done as well. He's bored out of his mind.

He gets the bright idea to join Hen in restocking the ambulance and cruisers. But she wasn’t in any of the vehicles when he goes to look.

“Want do you want, Buckley?” Hen says from behind him. She’s carrying a to-go mug and some document binders, walking up the stairs.

He quickly follows her, “What’cha got there, Hen?”

“Some new EMS techniques cap wants me to review,” she waves the binders in front of him. “Why are you bugging me instead of talking Voyta’s spikes off?”

“He got tired of my nonresponse!” Voyta shouts from their perch by the window. Their paramedic chuckles and refills her mug with coffee.

“I’m going insane! It’s such a slow day and I’m wishing–” he pauses when Hen raises a brow at him, daring him to continue that sentence, “…that a-a cat was stuck in a tree somewhere we can respond to.”

“Nice save, Buck,” Lucy teases, coming in to pour herself her own cup of coffee.

“I don’t know. I think I prefer the quiet shifts,” Ravi says from the sofa. And it’s like the world stops and Ravi says the Q-word on repeat, getting slower and slower each repetition. He wanted something to do but angering the lords of chaos wasn’t one of them.

“NO!” Every crewmember shouts and Ravi panics at the unanimous disbelief.

“What?! I just said I prefer qu–”

“Don't say it again!” Lucy commands, voice stern.

“I don’t know. Maybe if he says it again it'll undo the curse,” Hen proposes, contemplating.

“I for one don’t want to test that theory,” he says.

“What happens? What’s wrong with me saying… the Q-word?”

They all breathe a sigh of relief. That is until Bobby comes out of his office saying, “Who said the Q-word?!” They all point Ravi to which their youngest just shrugs—the severity of his actions totally lost on the probie.

It was at that moment he feels it. The past month with the Brotherhood, Bobby had him practicing his weapon use—first blocking out human thoughts and memories, widening his range, performing mutant circuits. He's slowly, somehow, attuning to Autumn Island the more Bobby trains him. It’s because of that he feels it—the catastrophic loss of life. It was as if thousands of information banks in his brain suddenly disappeared, leaving voids that black out his vision.

If it weren’t for Lucy’s danger sense, he bets he would’ve hit his head on the kitchen counter. He thinks he might’ve lost consciousness for a bit because Hen was waving smelling salts around his nostrils.

“I will never say the Q-word again,” Ravi says.

“Buck, are you okay? Can you tell us what happened?” Bobby asks.

“The mining village…”

“What about it? Was there another sinkhole?”

“No. Something exploded. I think everyone’s dead,” he reveals. His teammates help him up and in just a few shakes he manages to collect himself. Everyone stares at him in shock, some have a look of doubt. He wants to argue that he isn’t lying but he doesn’t get the chance to because Bobby’s ordering everyone into all of their vehicles.

Five minutes later they see the massive dust cloud just settling. The neighborhoods they passed over had the residents staring at the massive death shroom in the distance. As they get closer, he detects that there’s fallout in that cloud and relays it to Bobby.

“Dispatch this is Brotherhood captain Nash, my team is approaching ground zero of a nuclear explosion in Stulgid. There is catastrophic loss of life and very low chance of survivors. Send in all available units. The Seat of Loss takes command,” Bobby radios dispatch who responds almost immediately.

“Affirmative, captain Nash. When Arakko faces loss, we defer to you.”

The Seat of Loss. He’s heard that before. Or rather he gathered it from that one Krakoan ambassador. Arakko is lead by the Great Ring that consists of three Tables, each with three Seats. Only Omega-level mutants, the ones with true limitless potential can be allowed to challenge for a Seat. The entire month he’s been with the Brotherhood, Bobby has never used his weapon, not even once—just how powerful is their captain?

“Hen, Lucy. Can you hear me?” Bobby asks through the coms and they respond quickly from the other cruiser and the ambulance.

Bobby clears his throat before speaking, “Everyone prepare yourselves. A lot of you have been in this game for a long time, some just a few years, and some even less. But what we’re about to see is a first since the civil war. It will be difficult and I guarantee you it will not be pretty.

“None of you were of fighting age during the civil war and none of you were there for the fallow years to have seen anything similar. If any of you tap out, I will not hold it against you. I guarantee you as holder of the Seat of Loss, you will not suffer the insult of losing this particular challenge. So, before I tell you to secure your hazmats…” their captain pauses, “…if any one of you wants to tap out, now is the time to do it.”

No one replies.

They reach the village outskirts and land there. Bobby asks him to assess the situation but the fallout is messing with his weapon, only getting bits and pieces of information.

“What do we do, cap?” one of their crew asks.

Bobby thinks for a bit. Their captain instructs him and Lucy to monitor the lizard-made tunnels below the village as best as they can, in case they collapse. Other instructions were doled out and everyone moves with intent. They find out the upper most tunnels already gave, pulling much of the village further down. They haven’t found any survivors in the desolation yet and they’re slowly losing moral. Thankfully it doesn’t take long before the other Brotherhood crews arrive at the scene.

He and Lucy discovered some fissures that lead to the mine. Bobby tasked them, along with Ravi and Sims, to check on the area when dispatch couldn’t connect with the head prospector. It was terrifying—the quarry was veiled behind dust and they saw the last pieces of the elevator shaft that lead to the actual mine fall down, disappearing into the dust. They radio their findings to Bobby right away.

On Bobby’s order, they make their way to captain Shore’s Northside crew to assist them. There were less houses here, being so close to the mine but people still lived here. Ravi was first to break when they saw a body, burnt into a silhouette on a concrete wall. That got their youngest vomiting and no one dared to comment. It wasn’t long before they reach captain Shore and she had them digging up bodies from the rubble.

Ravi shouts, catching everyone’s attention. A tiny translucent girl appeared in front of the probie, smiling as if she wasn’t a ghost. And that’s what she was. He can detect ectoplasmic energy keeping her physicalized and visible. Then one by one, other ghosts started to appear—some over their retrieved bodies, others over mounds of rubble and dirt.

Captain Shore’s radio is a cacophony of screaming and ghost sightings from the other captains. Bobby radios not a second later saying the Seat of History has come and they summoned the ghosts of the deceased to help with recovery.

Another Omega. Bobby did say this incident was a first in decades so he doesn’t put much thought into their presence. It was only natural for nation leaders to step up in situations like this. At least, that’s how they’re supposed to be.

His thoughts get interrupted by a teenaged ghost boy, asking for help because his mom is still alive in the rubble. A lot more people are probably stuck, dying, or both in similar situations and they probably won’t reach all of them in time. Captain Shore instructs three of her people to go with the boy instead because Bobby is calling him and Lucy back to base camp. With a nod to Ravi and Sims, the two make a break for it.

“So, you’re Buck!” the cartomancer from dispatch—Linda tells him. “Edmundo didn’t tell me you were a looker.”

“You know Edmundo?” he asks, baffled. Not a day went by that he hasn’t thought about Edmundo and Christopher since they met. A part of him celebrates at the possibility of it being mutual but now isn’t the time nor the place. “Is-is he around here?” he couldn’t help asking.

“Out there busy helping.”

Was Edmundo also part of the Brotherhood?

“Hate to break up this lovely chat but cap has a job for us,” Lucy reminds them.

On the planning table is a map of the village. Also with them is Isi—a telepath from another one of the crews, ready to mark the map with their findings and relay them to the captains.

He's worried he won’t be able to synchronize with Linda and Isi. It took him three weeks before he was able to with his own crew and even then, he still hasn’t avoided skimming their surface memories. But he has to. The ghosts were pretty helpful but they can’t tell if an area was dangerous or not.

“Don’t worry. I’ll guide you through it,” Linda assures him.

Linda takes Lucy’s and Buck’s hands, while they in turn put one each on Isi's shoulders. The dispatcher opens up her mind and suddenly he can see the entirety of Stulgid; from the devastation outside, to the tunnel system underground—everything within the village limits is laid out to him as if he were looking at a map. Now he does his part and filters all the information for Lucy to do hers.

“What the hell are those?” Lucy mutters under her breath.

He hones in on what she’s seeing. There are several pieces of metal, more irradiated than the others. They look like shrapnel spread around the blast zone and—Is that Bobby with Edmundo? Why isn’t he wearing a hazmat suit? He shelves his thoughts and focuses on their task. He gathers all the radioactive shrapnel in his mind and instinctively puts them all together. It’s a bomb—too sophisticated in its construction to be from anywhere in present day Arakko. It’s strange. The outer casing was made to look like naturally occurring metals in the area.

It wasn’t their job to speculate, though, and he’ll save it for the field report later. Their job is to make the search and rescue go easier and safer. Not ten minutes later they finish mapping out the village. They then move on to the tunnel system underneath in case some of the residents made their way down there.

Linda’s weapon has been of great help but the fallout was still making things a little difficult for him. That coupled with the fact that this is the first time he’s had to parse through this amount of information is stressing him out. Maybe later, when all of this is over, he can meet Eddie again and catch up. He’s thinking it would be the perfect closer to a pretty difficult day.

Chapter Text

It's his 48 off.

The explosion at Stulgid was well-covered by the news. Word of his involvement in the search and rescue got out for some reason. After that Q-word shift and in his jog earlier, locals keep telling him he has a place in Arakko. He thanks them but he doesn’t really think he deserves it. The praise should go to his crew and the rest of the Brotherhood—they actually did something and rescued the survivors from the rubble.

He's spending his off at his new apartment. Actually it’s a small bungalow near the East coast he rented to be closer to their station. Bobby gave him an advance on his salary so he could move out of the inn. Red hit him with an oar and gave him some premium tuna cuts as a farewell-slash-housewarming gift.

He asked Bobby for cooking lessons a week ago in exchange for half of the cuts. If he bought those cuts with his salary, he’d have been broke for three months that’s why he accepted them. But he’s just one man with a small fridge and those cuts will spoil before he could even eat half of them. So, why not give them to Bobby?

That’s where he finds himself, making Bobby’s baked tuna recipe, when suddenly his doorbell rings. He wonders who could it be. Only Bobby and Red know his new address and his neighbors were never the socializing type.

“In a second,” he shouts, making his way to the front door. He did not expect to see the man on the other side, “Edmundo?”

“Hello, Buck,” the Arakki says. He just stares in shock and the other man starts to fidget, “I know this is pretty inappropriate, pulling some strings to get your address, but I had to see you.”

He's dumfounded. This is the man who he spent less than five minutes talking with but has spent an entire month thinking about. “Come in,” is the only thing he says. He moves out of the way and leads Edmundo to the living room.

“Why do you have a front door?” Edmundo asks nervously, as if he’s trying to mask his anxiety.

 “It’s an immigrant neighborhood,” he answers. It’s the truth anyway. “But I’ve been meaning to take it down.” Which is true as well. But he’s been kept bust by his shifts and during his days off, he's studying and practicing Arakkii first aid techniques—he wants to be certified with EMS here as well. Today has been his only true day off in a while.

Edmundo looks at him tentatively, “I apologize for this. I wanted to catch you after the operation in Stulgid but—”

“Christopher. I understand, Edmundo,” he cuts him off, “If he were my kid, I’d be rushing to spend some time with him as well. And I wanted to see you, too!”

Because of the translucent flesh, he can’t tell if Edmundo’s blushing. But the man averts his gaze and the edges of his lips turn up ever so slightly. Now that he’s seen this bashful side of Edmundo, he wants to see it everyday.

“I, uh, I saw you when I was mapping the town with Linda and Lucy.”

“You did?”

“I was kind of scared for a moment to see you without a hazmat suit walking around in an irradiated landscape,” he admits.

“Oh, I don’t die like most people,” Edmundo says, scratching his nape.

“I kinda got that, mister Omega,” he jokes, taking the chance of playfully knuckling Edmundo’s shoulder.

Edmundo snaps at full attention, “You know?”

“Bobby told me that it wasn’t really a secret,” he says, winking. His captain asked him how he knew the Arakki after their shift and he found out that Edmundo was a member of the Great Ring.

“Yeah, yeah. You’re right,” Edmundo chortles.

The bell for his oven pings, signaling that the tuna’s ready. He turns to Edmundo and says, “Have you eaten yet? I made tuna. Premium cuts courtesy of the Fisher King himself.”

Edmundo follows him to the kitchen and takes a seat at the dining table. Even though his back is turned as he plates their meal, he can feel the Arakki’s eyes on him. He preens when he turns around to see Edmundo’s fond gaze. He hands the other man a plate and some utensils.

“You have friends in high places, Buck. Being personally recruited by Bobby and now you tell me you know the Fisher King?” Edmundo starts, picking up the utensils and taking his first bite. “Dios mio. This is delicious!”

He ducks his head, a little embarrassed to show how insanely flattered he is by Edmundo’s praise. “Well, it’s Bobby’s recipe.”

“I don’t see Bobby here. Increíble, Buck!”

Is the Arakki speaking Spanish? His curiosity must’ve shown on his face because Edmundo is waving his hand, “You must be wondering—I was Castellano before moving to the First Land. I learned modern Spanish when Arakko returned to Earth.

He blinks at that. Moving to the First Land… “But-but that would make you…”

“Old? I’m over a thousand years old, Buck,” Edmundo says, offering him a tentative look. “Is that a problem?”

“No! No, definitely not a problem,” he quickly replies, specifically omitting that he prefers older men actually. He doesn’t even know if Edmundo is interested in him like that. “Just got me curious.”

“Well, you can ask me anything,” Edmundo says after swallowing another bite.

He focuses on eating as he tries to think of something to keep the conversation flowing. But he’s content on the silence and Edmundo’s warm presence. It seems to be reciprocated because not once has Edmundo lost eye contact with him as they ate.

“So, you were there?”

“During the Fallow Years?” Edmundo gives him a tight-lipped smile, “I was. The elders of the First Land called on me to help raise their young to be strong-willed warriors. When the hole to that other dimension opened up, suddenly I was their first defender.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“The man who knows everything doesn’t know what to say,” Edmundo jokes.

“I don’t know everything, Eddie,” he argues, barely.

“Eddie?”

He curses internally. Most Arakki aren’t too keen on nicknames and they’re very particular with chosen names, “Oh, I’m sorry. I should’ve asked before—”

“I like it,” Edmundo beams at him, “I'd actually prefer if you called me that.”

And they just sat there, continuing their meal without breaking eye contact. It feels like every single cell of his body is trembling minutely—any second now all the minuscule shaking will make him explode from joy. Eddie. A nickname he bets that he alone can call the Arakki.

“How about you?”

“What about me?”

“I told you a bit of my past, tell me yours. I want to get to know you, Buck.”

With the smile Eddie gave him, who is he to say no? “Well, I’m originally from Pennsylvania.”

“Where’s that?” Right, Eddie wasn’t around when the Americas were colonized. “I’m just messing with you. United States, right?”

“You’re a little shit, Eddie,” he says, not really meaning it. He just wanted to say Eddie again.

“Where was I? Oh yeah, I’m from Pennsylvania but it never really felt like home. My home life—my home life wasn’t great. So, when I turned eighteen I started traveling around and eventually landed in Los Angeles where I became a firefighter.”

Eddie huffs, “Los Angeles… That's in the West coast if I’m not mistaken.”

“Been there for over a million years,” he quips.

“Smartass,” Eddie bites back, scratching the back of his ear. “I know people from there.”

“What? In Los Angeles?” he asks, the fact that Eddie still has ties to the modern day intriguing him.

“Uh, yeah. It’s embarrassing to say that my sister’s descendants were colonizers. Her line persisted in Mexico and one of them immigrated to the States—her name was Pepa. Imagine my shock when I didn’t just find Pepa there.”

Eddie’s sounding pretty enthusiastic right now so he tries to be a good conversationalist, “Who else did you find?”

“My abuela! Can you believe that?”

“Wait, your actual grandmother?” He’s genuinely fascinated right now. “How is that even possible?”

“Well, I had to get my weapon from somewhere.”

That’s a nice thought. Being able to share mutant gifts with your family. “I’m jealous. I’m the only mutant in my family. My parents and my sister have latent x-genes but they never activated them somehow.”

“There is one other person there I know who isn’t family,” Edmundo inserts, like he’s in deep thought about this specific person.

“Who?”

“I don’t know what name he goes by nowadays. But if you think I’m old, you should see him,” the Arakki says, chuckling a little.

“Really? There’s someone older than Mr. I'm-over-a-thousand-years-old here?” he jokes, taking Eddie’s empty plate and throwing both of theirs to the sink. He leans back on the kitchen counter and urges Eddie to continue.

“He was ancient by the time I was around. He kept saying “I was here before all of you, I’ll be here long after you’re gone,” always rubbing it in our faces.”

He laughs at that—mainly because Chimney says the exact same thing whenever someone new joined the 118. His former teammate was pretty impressive at survival, too. Chimney survived several life threatening injuries, including a rebar to the head. But as far as he knew, Chimney was human. His recovery after every near death experience was pretty baseline human—even had a few major surgeries where he was benched for months.

“I didn’t even know he was in LA. Just happened to cross paths when Pepa was touring me around,” Eddie continued.

“He wasn’t Arakkii?”

“There were no Arakkii back then—we were Okkaran. But no, he wasn’t from the First Land. I think he was from Jin…”

They moved the conversation to his couch soon after. He felt a rush whenever he noticed that Eddie was scooting closer to him. And when their knees touched, he wanted to explode and just be all over Eddie. He restrained himself, though. No matter how it felt like he’s known Eddie in forever, this is really just their second meeting. He’ll never go back to being Buck 1.0. That punk-ass kid wasn’t good for anything. Thank Blevins for scaring him into sobriety.

The time went by without either of them noticing. He didn’t even notice that his arm stretched out behind Eddie and the man’s hand was on his thigh. He felt hot. Not the erotic kind but he felt warm deep inside his chest and he wanted to recreate this moment tomorrow. And the next day and the day after that. So on and so forth.

But he knows Eddie’s time is limited and his attention divided, juggling his responsibilities to the Great Ring and being a dad. He steels himself, “Where’s Christopher by the way?”

“Oh, he's at home with abuela and our home care aid. I’m all yours, Buck. Don’t worry.”

A soft squeak escapes him because, boy, does that make him feel things all over.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie removes his hand from his thigh, “That was too forward.”

He misses the weight of the hand the instant it left. “No! It was okay. I like forward. It lets me know we’re on the same page.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” he assures the man, pulling Eddie’s hand back on his lap but never letting go, “really.”

They stare at each other for a while after that. He’s trying to memorize Eddie’s features. With the translucent flesh, the nuances of Eddie's face are hard to discern but he’s seeing them.

“You have a mole,” he states.

“What?”

“You have a beauty mark under your eye, Eddie,” he repeats, clearer this time.

“You’re kidding?” Eddie looks really confused right now. He stands up and looks around, “Do you have a mirror?”

“Wait, you really didn’t know?” he chuckles. He directs Eddie to the bathroom and follows him.

He watches Eddie from the reflection, leaning on the door jamb with his hands in his pockets. The Arakki is really getting up on his reflection and stretching parts of his face, trying to find the mole. He takes pity on Eddie, “Under your left eye, just beside your cheekbone.”

When Eddie’s eyes widen like saucers when he spots the mole, he couldn’t help but laugh at his guest. The sound of running water mixes with his laughter. Not a second later his laughter stops when Eddie flicks water on his face.

“Shut up!”

They return to the couch and Eddie pouts. “You really didn't know?” he asks, taking a gentler tone as to not sound he’s mocking this beautiful man beside him.

“Yes, Buck. I didn’t know,” Eddie’s scowling now. For some reason it's really bugging the man so he intervenes.

“Hey, Eddie, don't worry. Sometimes I discover new things about myself every day.”

Eddie raises a singular questioning brow. He takes the Arakki’s hand in his, “Well, for starters I found out today that my hand likes it when your hand is in it.”

“You’re a dork,” Eddie says, the edge of his lips jutting up.

“Eddie, I know we’ve only met twice in the past month and today has been our first real conversation…” he pauses a bit, “but I really like you. And I want to see where this goes.”

Eddie’s other hand perches on his neck, “Same page, right?”

He nods. Eddie leans in and he meets him half way. Their lips slot together and he can’t help but feel over the moon. Who knew kissing the Omega-death seer will give him life? It’s way too early to say it but he can see Eddie in his future. He wants to get to know the man and his son and spoil them both rotten.

If his parents were here, they’d be disappointed in him being with another mutant who didn’t look human. If Chimney were here he would tell him that he’s getting attached too quickly. If Maddie were here—he doesn’t really know how she’d react—it’s been so long. But they aren’t here.

The Arakkii keep telling him he has a place in the Broken Lands. Maybe that place is with Eddie and Christopher.

They’re interrupted by his phone ringing. He picks it up from the coffee table. It’s Hen. He answers it quickly. The month he's known her, she’s become both a mentor and an older sister figure.

“Hey, Hen. What’s up?”

“Hey, Buck. I know it’s your day off. But cap asked me to tell you to come to the station.”

“What, why?” he chances a look at Eddie. The man seems to be trying his hardest not to listen in, staring at the corner of the coffee table closest to him.

“Two people came in earlier looking for you. I don’t know who they are but Bobby just asked me to call for you. They’re in cap’s office right now.”

“Okay, Hen,” he sighs. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

He turns to Eddie and his heart breaks a little. He wants to spend more time with the man and forget about the outside world for a moment. After the past few days, he deserves it.

“Is there something wrong?”

“I’m being called to the station. There are people there looking for me.”

Eddie nods, standing up, clear disappointment in his eyes. “I understand, Buck.”

“Maybe we can do this again next time? I’m still free tomorrow, you can bring Christopher over.”

The grin on Eddie’s face right now at the mention Christopher is turning him into jelly. “He would love that,” Eddie says, “And I could come with you to the station.”

“No, I don't want you to wait for me, bored out of your mind.”

“Well, first of all, I wouldn’t be. I’ve been meaning to talk to Bobby as well after… you know? And I’m friends with Hen and Voyta. They could keep me company.”

“Oh, sure!” He thanks the universe that Eddie’s coming up with reasons to stay together.

“And can I ride with you? I don’t have my truck with me right now.”

“Edmundo, did you walk all the way to my house?” he teases. It’s that moment that he realized that Eddie never told him where he was before coming over.

Eddie pouts, “Don’t go back to calling me that!” The Arakki ducks his head sheepishly, “And yes, I walked here from dispatch. I thought it would buy me some time to come up with a way to talk to you.”

It’s too early to call what he’s feeling right now ‘love.’ But he thinks that might be where this is going.

Chapter Text

The station was Q-word. It’s not unusual for things to be this calm during shift turnovers. He and Eddie arrived alongside some of the third watch crew and they couldn’t help but stare in awe at Eddie. It isn’t everyday that a member of the Great Ring—other than Bobby—entered the station. The others on shift who were doing their chores stopped halfway to pay Eddie their respects.

Even Hen was surprised to see them walk in together, “First the Fisher King, then Bobby, and now you, Edmundo?” Hen whistles, “Buck, c’mon. Tell us who you really are. None of this I’m from Earth bullshit.”

The three of them laugh. Him knowing these very important people he met by chance would seem suspect. Lucy told him last week some guys from the other shifts think he’s a plant. Showing up at the station with Eddie in tow just fortifies those rumors.

“Hey, so where’s Bobby?” he asks, “What’s so important about these people that you couldn’t tell me over the phone?”

Hen raises her hands, “Hey, I just called you. I have no idea who they are. They’re still in Cap’s office.”

They climb up to the loft and wait by the kitchen table. He waves to some of the people he knows on shift by the couch. Which reminds him that he needs a new couch in his new place.

About a minute later, Cap’s door opens and out comes…

“Chimney?”

Chimney's here. Obnoxious rebar-head Howard Han just came out of Bobby’s office. He knows that Chimney used to work under Bobby but how and why was he in Arakko?

“Hey, Bu—” Chimney started but his eyes flickered towards Eddie. “Edmundo?”

“ ‘Chimney’? ” Eddie asks him, bewildered.

“You know him, Eddie?”

“You call him Eddie?!” Hen and Chim blurt out, as if the very concept of calling Edmundo a nickname is insane.

“People call you ‘Chimney’ now?!” Eddie asks.

Before Chimney could answer someone else walks out of the office—someone he hasn't seen in years.

“Hey, Evan.”

“Maddie!” he shouts, eyes fogging. He sweeps her in a bone-crushing hug, needing to know that she’s actually physically here. He’s had countless dreams about reuniting with his sister only for Doug to swoop in and drag her down in to the murky black in between his dreaming and screaming awake.

Doug. He suspected that he was physically hurting Maddie back then. As he pulls back, he can see the remnants of a just-healed black eye on his sister’s face. Her hair is just long enough that it hides the bruises on her neck. He’d even bet that underneath the sleeves of her cardigan there are more bruises.

His anger must be showing because Maddie cups his cheek. “Hey, I left him. I’m safe now,” she whispers so the others won’t hear.

“And I’ll keep you safe,” he replies, embracing her again

“Hey, I’ll leave you to catch up,” Eddie tells him, squeezing his shoulder, “I have to talk to Bobby.”

When Eddie and Cap disappear into the office, Maddie asks, “You can understand Arakkii?”

“What do you mean by—” he stops himself. He turns around and sees the amused look on Hen’s face and the confused one on Chimney’s. He listens in on the people actually on shift—their voices were low and Q-word and they weren’t speaking English. But he can understand them. I can understand them?!

He'll let himself spiral some other time. Maddie is more important.

Hen, competitive as she was, volunteered to assist third watch’s medical team when the alarm rang even though she's off-duty. It then occurred to him that their station is understaffed when it comes to medical professionals.

Bobby told him to stay put with their visitors and wait ‘til they return. They watch most of third watch climb into a cruiser and the amphib ambulance—probably a call by the coast.

Maddie sends him a soft look, telling him that they’ll catch up when it’s just them. And he agrees, not wanting either Eddie nor Chimney see him rage-filled when Maddie recounts everything Doug did.

“So, should we start calling you Bucky so all four of our names rhyme?” Chim teases.

“Hardi-har har, Howard,” he replies.

“You also go by ‘Howard'?” There’s a genuine confused look on Eddie’s face right now. “How many names do you have?”

It’s odd. He’s now very aware that Eddie’s speaking English. He hears the subtle Arakki accent Eddie hides behind the American one as he speaks.

“Let’s just say the name you knew me by wasn't my first.”

“How do you two know each other?” he couldn’t resist asking. He thinks he has an idea but he needs to hear it from them.

Eddie turns to him, “Remember the old-ass mutant I told you earlier?”

“Hey! If I’m old, you’re old!” Chimney shouts, indignant.

Yeah, he figured as much. He starts to wonder, “Who was in the 118 first? You or Bobby?”

“I was. Like I always say—”

“I was here before all of you, I’ll be here long after you’re gone,” he and Eddie drone out. Maddie chuckles, content to just observe for now.

“And don’t you forget it!”

“Would’ve been nice to have another mutant back in A-shift,” he thinks out loud and Chimney sighs.

“Buck, I’m sorry. I knew Wilkins made things difficult but there’s so much I’d have put at risk if I said I was mutant.”

“No, no. I understand. Old white men, right?” he tries with a lilt. He brought down the mood. Meeting Maddie and Chimney again after so long should be a celebration.

“Well, I’m much older.”

“Exactly, how old are you again?” Maddie joins in. There’s a twinkle in her eye that Chimney returns. Interesting. He’s going to have words with Chimney one of these days.

“Well, not that old. I was exaggerating.”

“He’s older than Christianity,” Eddie reveals, arm stretching on his backrest. He leans back and revels in the warmth. He doesn’t miss the way Maddie’s eyes flick momentarily at them before going back to Chimney.

Chimney sputters, trying to come up with something to say to Eddie. When he can’t, he just points one very angry finger at the Arakki making everyone laugh.

“How did you get to Arakko anyway?” He asks both Maddie and Chimney, sparing the latter from further embarrassment. “Are you just visiting or…?”

“I’m moving here!” Maddie proudly announces.

“Really? Oh my god, Maddie!”

“You better be good because I’m going to make up for all the times I wasn't there to scold you.”

He snorts, “I’d have you know that I have been on my best behavior for the past six years.”

“Oh, you didn’t almost get fired for stealing a firetruck?” Maddie asks, a mischievous brow rising ridiculously slow.

He turns to Chimney, betrayed, “You told her?!”

“Why’d you steal a firetruck?” Eddie asks, smirking. The Arakki runs a thumb along his shoulder blade and he feels warm.

“It’s not my proudest moment,” he ducks head away from Eddie.

“He stole it for a booty call,” Chimney reveals.

“Hey! No, shut up.”

“While on duty,” the paramedic continues, making everyone laugh even more.

He sinks in his chair and flops his head on Eddie’s arm. “I hate you right now,” he pouts. He sees Chimney shuffling closer to his sister and sees his out. “How did you two meet anyway?”

“Well, when I left,” Maddie pauses, “…when I left my ex, I looked for you in the last address in your last post card. Your old housemates said you moved out and I couldn’t remember which station you worked at—”

He remembers moving out of that frat house a week into his sobriety. Ali, one of his past saves turned hook up was the one who found his old loft. It was expensive but it was a good use for the money his parents were still sending him.

“—Then one night I was at a karaoke bar and met Howie there.”

“I recognized her from a picture you showed me once—walked up to her and introduced myself,” Chimney tells him.

“Speaking of pictures… That’s how I recognized Bobby when I met him. He’s in one of your old photos. You talked about every captain you’ve had since you started but never about Bobby.”

Chimney gives him a tight-lipped smile, “Well, Bobby cut ties with the LAFD and Krakoa...” the paramedic stops himself. “Sorry. Not my story to tell, Buck.”

“It’s okay,” This past month, Bobby has shown him nothing but kindness and has never pried into his past. He should give the same courtesy.

They fell into easy conversation about Buck’s exploits in Arakko. About twenty minutes later, Bobby and Hen got back and the two of them—no, the entire crew—smelled like sea water. It was another fifteen before the two joined them and Hen sat next to Eddie.

Bobby starts on dinner prep and as always, Buck stands up to help. He looks at the ingredients. Guess it’s six-cheese mac tonight. The call was probably too exhausting to cook anything more elaborate.

“You cook now?” Maddie asks.

“Buck has been helping me with meals in first watch since he started. Your brother’s a natural cook,” Bobby says, strangely proud.

“It’s all you, Cap,” he mutters and Eddie snorts.

“Excuse me, ‘first watch’? ” Maddie asks.

Bobby picks one of the hard cheeses and starts dicing. “Oh, it’s just how Arakkii divide work shifts—goes from first up to third watch.”

He doesn’t miss the strong ‘period’ in Bobby’s tone. He looks for a baking tray as an excuse to chance a look at Eddie who was pouting.

Hen, ever the gift-of-god she is, changes the topic, “I didn’t get to properly introduce myself. I’m Hen, paramedic.”

“Call me, Maddie,” his sister replies and Chimney follows suit.

“I’m Chimney—used to be Bobby’s paramedic as well.”

Hen is speaking English. She has a perfect SoCal accent that would weird him out if he didn’t know she studied medicine in Orange County.

“So, Maddie, what are your plans in Arakko? Just visiting your brother or are you on vacation?” Hen asks.

“Oh, I’m moving here, needed a change in scenery. Since Evan’s already here, I thought maybe I should follow his lead.”

“How did you get here though? Did Chimney take you through the gates?” he asks, as he preheats the oven.

“I just brought her to Bobby. She got here all on her own.”

“Well, it would’ve taken forever and I would’ve needed a job waiting for me here if I migrated directly from the U.S. So, I moved to Krakoa first before sending an application to SWORD.”

“What?” he isn't really following what Maddie was saying.

“Yeah, it was confusing for me as well. I had to get tested thrice to prove I have an inactive X-gene before I could claim Krakoan citizenship. Then the interviews and vetting from SWORD were gruesome. It took almost two months, but it was worth it and I’m here.”

What is she saying? “It only took me one interview and three days.”

Chimney scoffs, “What are you saying, Buck? I’m Krakoan but even mine took a month.”

“Yeah, same goes from here to Earth. My student visa took a while and I signed a lot of Arakkii-challenge waivers,” Hen adds.

“You're not here illegally, are you, Evan?” Maddie asks. She has the same look of concern she’s given him whenever he got in trouble as a kid.

“He’s not. HR double checked all of his documents when I hired him,” Bobby defends him. He catches Eddie and Bobby sharing a look. He’ll ask Eddie about it later.

“Buck, why don’t you call the guys downstairs? Tell them dinner's almost ready,” Cap orders him.

It’s strange how long it took Maddie and Chimney. It was a really quick process for him. He saw the flier, sent an email to SWORD, got an interview two days later and that same night received approval.

Chapter Text

He just got back into his trailer. He's loving his current face. It's handsome but boyish enough to be effortlessly charming. He couldn't get all the features right but he passed enough to be recognizable as the hero of Stulgid—the Knower! He doesn't know the man's name but it doesn't really matter.

This new face is fun. He isn't insecure about his own face but he just enjoyed playing as other people. And ever since he heard of the Knower and saw his face on the news, he knew he had to get some of that action!

No one would even know that it wasn’t him walking down the street.

Except for that one woman from Earth who just happened to recall that the Knower had a tea-stain birthmark on his left brow. He wasn’t able to get the shape and color right so he forewent with it. It’s not like the regular Arakki would know that very specific detail.

The reflection on the mirror got him so distracted that he forgot he just relieved himself. He opens his sink so he could flush his toilet. Something about the pressure or something the trailer park owner said. He hates this place but it’s all he’s got right now.

He literally got kicked out of his old apartment.

The US tech start up he was working for laid up some of the staff. He was the sum total of that some. Every bit of his money was spent paying his unpaid two months rent at his old apartment and using whatever’s left to pay for this trailer.

He went to the job center but there’s none for his specific skill set. They recommended modeling or acting in the Morrowlands but despite how good he was with his weapon, he can't act if his life depended on it. He could look like anyone but he can’t exactly be anyone other than himself.

But the late Omega-mimic—Nameless, the Shapeshifter Queen—she could! She could be anyone! She was so powerful she was top dog in the Great Ring until the Krakoan Omega-teleporter took her Seat. He idolized Nameless as a kid and even told his parents that one day he’ll catch up to her.

He no longer has that dream. He enjoys being able to see the world through literally someone else’s eyes. But at the end of the day, he’ll go back to his own face. His parents loved him too much for him to want to be someone else.

Unfortunately he’s been wearing the Knower’s face for two weeks now.

He was out and about, looking for odd jobs when he passed an appliance store with televisions by the display window. They were showing news clips of the Knower in Stulgid. He was fascinated and couldn’t help but shapeshift then and there.

There had been an old lady getting mugged in an alarmingly empty street. It could’ve been the adrenaline or the confidence that came with wearing the Knower’s face but he walked up to the mugger and told him off. The man recognized the face he was wearing and ran out of there. The old lady was so grateful that she went to the nearest ATM and withdrew some cash to give to him.

He thought maybe he could really cash in on his reputation.

And that’s how he went about these past two weeks—wearing the Knower’s face. He got so much attention he’s never gotten before. The best was when diners gave him free meals. He doesn’t plan on doing this forever, just until he can find more permanent employment.

It was bizarre, though. In any day, everywhere he went there was an accident always in his proximity. Relatively minor. Bystanders would see the face and expect him help before the Brotherhood could respond to the 9-1-1 call he made himself. It's a good thing that Arakkii have basic first aid training or else he would’ve been quickly found out as a fraud.

Which brings him back to the Earth woman. The Knower apparently used to be a firefighter in Los Angeles and she’s someone he saved in a past incident. She clocked right away he was an imposter because of the missing birthmark.

That was yesterday.

Today, he went around town early. He hoped to score a free meal in exchange for helping but it was quiet. He berates himself for wishing for an accident. After all, any accident was still possibly life-threatening. He gave up and remembered he bought some instant noodles using the old lady money.

He reaches for the pot in his top shelf and his hand goes a bit numb. Nothing new. Sometimes it gets like that when he forgets to shapeshift back into his real form for days at a time—and it has been two weeks.

It doesn’t take long for the noodles to get ready. When he turns to reach for a bowl, his legs give out. It was a good thing he turned off the stove before moving because an exploding overheated pot is not something he want on top of his suddenly immobile legs.

He'd like to say this wasn’t new as well but this has never happened before. But he relaxes and stops himself from even thinking about panicking. He knows the protocol and he wiggles his toes to see if they still had feeling. He can’t wiggle them. Dammit!

Even though something this extreme has never happened to him before, the numbing limbs usually go away when he shapeshifts back and his accelerated healing does its thing.

He just hopes the East coast Brotherhood isn’t the one dispatched when he calls 9-1-1. It would be really awkward if the Knower happened to be on duty. Granted he’ll probably be back in his real form but still… He still has a conscience.

What the fuck?!

He's not changing. His shape isn’t shifting. He breathes deep and tries not to panic. His numb hand, he can feel it… beating. He lifts it up and it's quite literally beating! Now he starts to panic.

Where’s his phone? Right, he tossed it on the bed. Using his good arm, he drags himself to the bed and phones 9-1-1. It was taking too long. But with the number of accidents that’s been happening these past two weeks, he wouldn’t be surprised that all operators are occupied.

He keeps the line ringing just in case.

A shooting pain passes through his entire arm just as the operator finally picks up. He sees his arm inflate like a balloon, starting from the fingertips. It also felt extremely warm, that if his youth training didn't betray him, is indicative of internal bleeding.

“9-1-1, what’s your damage?”

He was about to answer but both his legs flare up and his body was suddenly in an incline. His lower extremities are painfully inflated now like his arm.

“Hello…? I would like to remind you, nuisance calls are a federal crime. I will hang up—”

He growls in pain and the operator stops her spiel. He can feel the immense pain from his other arm inflating.

“Hello, sir? Are you okay?”

He's going to die like this. He knows it. Alone. Wearing someone else’s face. He also knows the Knower is walking up to his trailer right now.

Wait.

How did he know that? His panicked mind is probably making things up. Like, how he thinks the Knower will bang on his door and demand his impersonator ass to show up.

“Hey! Open up! I know you’re there, imposter! Open up!”

What?

“Sir, I can hear shouting. Is everything alright, sir?”

To good to be true but he's sure. The Knower's weapon tells him so. This is a tertiary evolution. His parents taught him that Earth mutants only really got one weapon and if they were lucky, they'd get a secondary evolution that usually changes their physical appearance. Arakkii on the other hand almost always started with two because of the fallow years but could receive a tertiary evolution because of necessity—because of survival.

This has to be it. His body was definitely trying to survive dying. It’s doing a pretty banged up job at it since his other arm started inflating as well.

He tries to laugh at the irony of it all but he ends up screaming in pain and gurgling blood instead. The park owner also lied about the sink-toilet pressure.

“Sir, are you still there?”

He doesn’t need to use the Knower’s weapon to know his torso is inflated—he feels it, ribs overstretching, tendons pulling taut. His right carotid rips and his neck feels warm and stiff.

The Knower—Buck—will change his tone. Frantic knocking and worried shouts calling for him replace the angry banging and shouting. On his phone, the operator is still trying to talk to him.

Buck’s weapon estimates he only has forty-seven seconds left. That’s plenty of time to make peace with what’s happening.

He recalls asking his parents if he’ll be as powerful as Nameless one day. His dad joked that he could literally be anyone he wants. He wanted to be as powerful as Nameless. But when his parents fought in the civil war and died…? All he wanted after that was to feel less lonely.

He's kind of like Nameless now. He was able to use Buck’s weapon much like her with others. He knows he’s not Omega, though. His own body’s limitation won’t allow for that. And now he’s dying, he won’t even get the chance to try.

At least in the thirty-four seconds he has left, he managed to experience what it’s like to be a fraction of two limitless people.

Twenty seconds left. His heart has already given out and his brain will soon stop because of the amount of pain he’s in. After that there’s no resuscitating him. It will take eight minutes total for the dispatcher to track his phone and for the Brotherhood to arrive at the scene. By then it would’ve been too late. At least Buck wasn’t on duty.

Hey, he can joke about his own death.

Arakkii do not fear a life that ends but he wants another chance. The Waiting Room exists and offers possibility of resurrection but you have to want it. But there’s a queue over a million names long according to knowledge Buck doesn’t even know he had. There’s something like a wall in Buck’s mind.

Seventeen seconds. Buck will apologize for kicking his door in. He broke his promise to his captain—Robert Nash who holds the Seat of Loss—to not use his weapon while off-duty. But Buck needed to know what was happening inside.

“If you can hear me, I’m sorry, man!” Buck kicks his door off its hinges.

He wants to ask Buck if captain Nash knew his parents. They did fight alongside the Brotherhood during the civil war. Maybe when he comes back from the Waiting Room, he’ll join the Brotherhood.

Ten seconds. Buck sees him and falls to his knees. He doesn’t know what to do in this situation. No training will prepare anyone how to best handle a hemorrhaging man inflated to infinity and beyond.

Five. He flicks his eyes towards the direction of his phone. Buck catches it and reaches for the phone. The Knower, this very kind, selfless man, who just a minute ago was angry at the violation of his personhood—is still trying to save him. Buck hastily tells the operator what happened.

Buck can read his thoughts and he relays that it’s okay. He apologizes and thanks him for even trying.

In the last eighth of the final second of his life, Buck tells him “Hey, it will be alright.”

He wanted to reply, “I know, you’ll catch him eventually,” but he sees his parents in the Waiting Room, smiling. And well, it’s rude to keep people waiting for so long.

Chapter Text

Preparing lunch with Bobby was usually a calming task. His captain knows he needs to keep busy or else his weapon gets out of control—normally, that is. His thoughts are so all over the place right now that no matter what he does, he's still downloading information from around him. 

Bobby thankfully has Isi on loan from the South-West station so she could help him manage other people's thoughts. Thanks to the telepath's supplementary training, he can limit himself to only surface thoughts or inner speeches.

Right now, Bobby’s thoughts were more attention grabbing than anyone else’s. His captain didn’t have an inner monologue—one of those people who think in images and word-to-feeling associations. It’s like Bobby's carrying a three hundred foot billboard of the Regent of Arakko: “ Athena!” in all caps beside a picture of her with a beaming smile.

Cap's thoughts are so loud that Isi stood up and said, “I’m heading for the bunks. It’s too loud in here.” 

He chuckled when Chimney guiltily defended that his thoughts were the quietest in the station. It was, in fact, a lie as Chimney’s thoughts were an endless stream of TV shows and movies, wondering if any of the Arakki in first watch has, well, watched.

“She means you, by the way,” he whispers to Bobby as he transfers the garlic he’s mincing into a bowl. 

Bobby looks up, “What do you mean me?”

“Why don’t you ask Athena out? She’ll say yes.” 

“That a fact courtesy of your “Knower” powers? Buck, she’s newly divorced and busy,” Bobby argued. 

He starts heating the pan while Bobby finishes up dicing the Autumn Wagyu. Slowly, he might add, because his captain was trying to come up with another reason to deflect.

The image that pops in Bobby's mind throws him off for a second; several incidents involving bloated bodies and orchestrated minor accidents. He momentarily loses control and downloads the surface thoughts of everyone in a ten-mile radius. He braces himself on the counter before straightening up immediately. Bobby might’ve had his back turned but Lucy, Hen, and Chimney saw him. They sport looks of varying degrees of concern.

“Not to mention we’re busy because of all these bloating incidents and orchestrated accidents.” 

Buck nods and brings out everything else Bobby needed from the cupboards. 

“Yeah, I was there for the very first one, remember?” 

“And you wouldn’t have been if you just listened to Chimney,” Hen joins in. She drops the book she was reading on the kitchen table and takes a seat. 

“Well, I’m sorry for getting angry that my identity was stolen,” he drawls, sarcastic.

“You became the prime suspect, Buck,” Bobby reminds him. “I would’ve reprimanded you but you were off-duty.” 

Even if he wasn’t on-duty, he should’ve been able to save the man. He was there for Arakko’s sake. The man was apologizing for stealing his face. The man was at his wit’s end and had to keep wearing his face just to survive from day to day.

His thoughts are interrupted when Bobby taps him with an oven mitt. “I don’t need your gifts to know what you’re thinking. It wasn’t your fault, Buck.”

“Bobby and I responded to that call, remember? The only reason he survived that long was his accelerated healing,” Hen hammers in. 

“Yeah, guess it was a good thing that dispatch records matched with the trailer park’s CCTVs,” he  pretends to concede but they don't buy it. “Still, you know…? He needed saving in more ways than one.”

“We can’t save all of them, Buck,” Bobby reminds him. Cap starts cooking so he goes wash the knives and chopping boards they used.

“Yeah, I know.” 

They got sent out after lunch. It’s close to the station so they took the new fire engine and the ambulance. Ironically, they’re headed for the vehicular research facility that donated the engine.

The engine was quite similar to ones used on Earth. But this model functioned as both an engine and ladder truck. He doesn’t know how it can manage the weight but he figures it isn’t his problem. Voyta and their other pilots seem to be content with just having a new toy.

“Dispatch says it’s a possible bloating incident,” Bobby informs everyone. He takes a deep breath and thinks Not again.

His luck has officially run out. He’s been lucky enough to be off-duty during calls to the other bloating incidents.

They arrive and the facility manager quickly leads them to the service garage, “This way! He’s one of our mechanics.”

“Do you have any idea how it started?” Bobby asks.

“No, we think he tripped and then got stabbed by the air pump nozzle,” the manager answers.

“Tell your people to lock down the facility. Nobody goes in or out.”

“Done. It was the first thing we did!”

“Thank you,” responds Bobby, actually thankful that someone was thinking straight during a call for once.

They arrive at the work floor and there’s a crowd of staff and customers gathered away from the victim. Bobby gives him a nod that tells him to take stock of everyone in there. One customer seems familiar but he can’t put a pin on where he saw her before.

Isi is staring directly at the crowd, eager to start reading thoughts to find the culprit but she can’t without the presence and permission of the Inward Watch. 

“Hen, Chimney, do your thing! Lucy, Ravi, go check on the crowd. See if anyone’s too shaken up,” Bobby commands. He takes note how Bobby left him and Isi out but he doesn’t think much of it.

“Jesus Christ,” Chimney exclaims. 

When he looks at their paramedics, he’s stunned to see their patient. The mechanic was even more bloated than the previous victims. Like, ridiculously bigger that he looked like a small parade balloon.

Hen touches the mechanic’s… whatever part that is. The bloating blurred the limits of each body part. The man was horribly rotund.

“His internal structure is fine but I don’t know for how long. Internal pressure is building up inside him. Expanded skin tissue’s obstructing almost every orifice in the man’s body,” she assesses.

“No outside injuries other than some lacerations to his left Achilles tendon and a now-sealed puncture wound in the lower back area,”  Chimney adds, head peeking from behind the patient.

“We pulled the nozzle out just before he lost consciousness,” another mechanic informs them.

“Explains the inflation. Guess this isn’t a bloating attack, cap,” Chimney tells Bobby.

Lucy pipes up as she finishes with her half of people, “I dunno, Chim. I still feel a bit tingly.”

“Doesn’t explain why he got this big,” Hen thinks out loud.

“He has rubber skin,” the manager tells them. “That’s his weapon.”

“You couldn’t have told us that earlier?!” Bobby levels the manager with his disapproving dad stare.

“Probably why he can still breathe despite the pressure build up,” Hen directs to Chimney who agrees.

Then suddenly the mechanic inflates even more, clothes tearing, ballooning to almost triple his original size.

“Woah! Woah! Woah!” the paramedics shout in chorus. They quickly press against the patient from either side, attempting to limit the further inflation. Bobby points to some car covers and strap clamps. He and Isi help the paramedics wrap them around the patient, successfully stopping any further size increase.

“This is the actual bloating!” he informs everyone. His weapon’s telling him that what’s happening to the mechanic’s body was consistent with all previous incidents. “His cells are stretching and the space in between them are increasing.”

Hen wastes no time, cutting a hole in the car covers so she can use her healing abilities to prolong the man’s life.

“Hen, Chimney, think of a way to safely deflate that poor man!” Bobby commands. Their captain makes subtle eye contact with him, Isi, and Lucy. They start looking for the culprit. 

It was clear that the most likely suspect was the familiar one—he now remembers that she was there in the trailer park. Isi pretends to inspect the other bystanders but she telepathically tells them that she can’t read the woman’s thoughts. Lucy paces back and forth “looking” at the crowd, but she always stops eleven feet away from the suspect—the offending weapon’s probable effective distance. 

When it’s clear that she’s busted, the suspect runs for the nearest side door and further into the facility. The three of them chase the culprit until she enters a door with a bunch of hazards and do not enter signs.

He extends his thoughts beyond the doors, “There’s an advanced and powerful electromagnetic field generator in there and it has no other exits.”

Bobby pushes past them and walks beyond the warning signs.

“NO! BOBBY!” he shouts after his captain. Why would Bobby just ignore the warnings and just enter the chamber like that.

“Buck, calm down! Bobby’s going to be fine,” Lucy tries to placate him. Why is he the only one concerned about Bobby right now?

He hears footsteps and sees the manager with Rick Romero from the Inward Watch. The man ruthlessly interrogated him during the first bloating incident before he was rightfully declared innocent.

He diverts his frustration at the supervisor, “Why do you house something that dangerous here?!”

“We use it to develop super magnets like the ones in your new truck!” the manager says, clearly offended with Buck’s tone.

“Buck, I assure you that captain Nash will be fine,” Rick tells him.

“How?!”

“If he somehow lost his weapon in the past month since Stulgid, I’d be worried. Otherwise, I think the Omega-shield will be alright.” 

Omega-shield?

They’re in the security room, watching Bobby talk to the culprit through a video feed. There’s no audio because mics don’t work inside the chamber.

“The camera’s too poor for lip reading.” 

“You don’t know how to lip read, Buck,” Isi reminds him.

He turns to the telepath, “You really can’t read their thoughts?” 

“Cap’s weapon can’t be turned off.”

“But you were able to read his thoughts earlier today!”

Isi rolls her eyes, “No, he was thinking so loud that even I could hear them.”

“How about her? Who the hell is she?”

“I can’t access her thoughts as well.”

“Red triangle or psi-blockers?” asks Lucy.

“Neither.” 

“How’s that even possible?” Rick asks.

“Severe psychological trauma. The brain tears itself when it undergoes dangerous amounts of stress. The brain repairs itself at a hellishly slow rate but the mind doesn’t know that. The mind inevitably tricks itself into mentally scabbing over and over the tear until…”

“You can’t see what’s underneath,” he finishes for her. Now he pities the murderer. Dammit!

Lucy calls everyone’s attention, “I think I have a work around Bobby's weapon and that woman’s… condition.”

“Shoot!” Rick says.

“Buck, when you use your weapon, information has no choice but to flow through you. Bobby’s weapon and that woman’s mental scarring would be moot to you if you just let it do its thing. Don’t limit yourself, just this once and Isi will relay whatever’s happening inside that chamber to only the people in this room.”

“I—” he hesitates. Doing that would mean downloading the thoughts of everyone in the facility. It’s one thing to hear surface thoughts but it’s another to fully access someone’s mind.

In the security feed, Bobby stands up with arms cautiously stretched towards the woman. The woman has placed her hand on the generator and their captain is clearly alarmed by it.

He'll debate the moral implications of this later. It’s now or never. He nods to Isi and opens his mind to her again. He lets go of his control and it almost overwhelms him. Chimney’s memories alone are enough to fill an entire library and it’s intimidating. He tunes everyone and everything out, like he does every morning, leaving only the chamber. With Isi’s help, he pays better attention to the tense conversation going on between Bobby and the nameless culprit.

“You can’t help me,” the woman tells Bobby, her voice lacking any emotion.

“We can! Just tell me why you’re doing this.”

“He–he took away my name! I du-don’t even know who I am. I have no memories; just this feeling that everything is missing. The only thing I know is my weapon because my body still remembers it. He said if I did stuff for him, he’ll return my identity.”

“You mean these were deliberate attacks?” 

“They need me to draw the true Knower out of hiding.”

The true Knower? What does that mean? Rick looks at him with a pensive stare and he averts his gaze.

“I–I failed. The shapeshifter… I thought it was him and he was angry. He killed a man in front of me. The man knew me! He recognized me before he… You can’t help me!”

“The Knower was there during the first incident. Why didn’t you attack him then?”

“Because you were there! He said that I need to get him away from his protectors. But he was always with you or the death seer or Table Night.”

Table Night? Like, Great Ring table? Weren’t there only three tables?

“Okay, just step away from the generator and we will help you! I know someone who can help you recover your memories. I swear on the Great Ring, we will protect you!”

“No. You can’t. Greenway is coming.”

The woman touches the generator and he can feel it split apart atom by atom. The only thing that comes to mind are the customers and staff still in the facility. No doubt only Bobby and Chimney will survive. There’s no running from it. The generator explodes.

He blinks and suddenly he’s outside of the facility, watching as it’s engulfed in flames. Everyone inside except for Bobby and the woman are at a safe distance away from the building.

He sees their new truck, driven by Voyta, pull close to the facility. Lucy, Ravi, and Isi run towards it and quickly grab hoses to start dousing the flames. Hen and Chimney are loading the mechanic into the ambulance—thankfully alive now that the culprit was gone. 

How is this possible?

“Rick!” a woman calls out. He recognizes her from Bobby’s memories. It was Athena. 

Not wanting another Sue Blevins incident, he unceremoniously shuts off his weapon. It dizzies him up a bit.

Athena takes a good look at him and smirks, “You must be Buck. I’m–”

“Athena. I’ve heard a lot about you! It’s an honor, ma’am,” he says, extending a hand that the regent—thankfully—shakes. Damn, his palms are sweaty. He should’ve wiped them first before offering a handshake.

“Oh, I like this boy, Rick.”

“Well, you and every other Seat Holder he comes across apparently. Not that I'm not thankful I get to live another day but what are you doing here?” 

“You have to thank Buck for that,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Mi-me…?”

“I’ve known Bobby for a long time. And for the past twenty years not once has my weapon ever located him. Until now, thanks to you. Immediately, I knew something was up.” 

“What?” 

Rick pats his shoulder, “You did good today, kid.” 

He feels elated, happy, but he doesn’t think he deserves it because he knows that the culprit still died being right next to the explosion. 

Hen calls for him to drive the ambulance while she keeps the mechanic stabilized. He first wonders where Chimney was but when he turns, he spots the man checking over the staff and customers.

“Go, we’ll tell Bobby where you’ve gone!” Athena tells him.

When he gets the ambulance rolling, he sees Bobby from the side mirror, emerging unscathed from the ruins of the facility. Yes, he was soaked in water and covered in soot but not even his uniform was damaged in the blast.

Suddenly a name he downloaded from Rick’s thoughts earlier comes to mind: Aegis. It was Bobby’s mutant name.

Chapter Text

Mars is a beautiful planet. Several hours ago it was a barren wasteland with less than a single percent chance of supporting life. Now—with the combined efforts of Krakoa's and Arakko's Omega-level mutants—it now has its own atmosphere and the right conditions to support life for millennia to come.

That's why Bobby's here on the floor of an infant sea, wearing nothing but scuba gear and waiting. Just waiting. None of the Earth's super powers or any of its tech moguls were privy to their plans and they didn't have a technopath or supermind that could calculate the exact point in time and space Athena could slingshot the entire island of Arakko to Mars’ surface safely. So, they were doing it the old fashioned way. 

He's the only one who could withstand the impact of a microcontinent and live. Aegis they called him. His role in this grand resuscitation of Mars is to be the anchor point in which Athena can throw the living island towards. He’s mentally prepared but he doesn’t think he’s prepared about actually being buried alive. Luckily, Marcy made Athena promise to teleport him out the second Arakko makes contact with the seafloor. And he trusts both women with his life.

“Are you ready, Bobby?” he hears Athena in his mind. Thanks to the Omega-telepath, Sue Blevins, the members of their terraforming team could communicate seamlessly. 

“Yeah, yeah. The question is… are you?” Bobby jokes.

He hears the teleporter scoff, “Oh, you did not just question my capabilities in front of every other living Omega and the Quiet Council?!”

Bobby laughs. There was no real offense in her words, just mild amusement.

“I can do it. First time teleporting a continent into another planet but, hey, beginner’s luck.” 

“Micro-continent,” he corrects her. 

“Oh, shut up, Nash,” she tells him. 

In an instant Bobby felt the pressure of an entire sea press on him. Guess there’s no counting 1-2-3 for her. He feels the billions of gallons of water part and move around as he’s sandwiched between the sea and the seafloor. His scuba gear is all but obliterated and he’s ever thankful that their reality warper made a diving suit out of his hair follicles for him. Not a minute later, the still-magmatic underside of Arakko greets him with a burst of steam and sulfur.

“Athena, any time now,” he called out. He really doesn’t want to dig his way out of a living island if she doesn’t pull him out. “Athena?” he telepathically screams one final time when the lava is probaby half-a-second from hitting him.

The next thing he knows, he’s topside with Sue and Athena looking down at him. Athena has this smug look on her and Sue’s quietly chuckling to herself. 

“You couldn’t pull me out of there any faster?” he complains jokingly.

The teleporter raises both brows at him, “Excuse me. I promised your wife to only get you out the second the island hits the seafloor. Plus it serves you right for questioning my skills.” 

“Okay, I’m sorry,” he apologizes. 

He looks around them and sees the Arakkii teleporting in by the thousands about fifty feet in the air. “Is this you?” 

“Who else can do this?” Athena shakes her head at him, “Of course it’s me, Clark Kent. No Arakki will just take the gate. They all need to survive the trip to their new home to be worthy of it.”

The mettle of the Arakkii continues to amaze him. He hopes one day he could ever match their dedication to overcome any obstacles. But that’s something hard to do when your power is literally to survive anything thrown at you.

Brook and Bobby Jr. are in awe of the scenery, looking out the window. They’re kids and everything’s supposed to be amazing to them but to be in a new environment, much more a new planet… let’s just say that the kids are beyond awestruck. 

It was Bobby that proposed they all move to Arakko. Marcy was getting restless because of the growing tensions between Earth’s superpowers and the mutant populace. The kids were getting bullied by virtue of being his children. At first, they tried out Krakoa but just two years later rumors started spreading that one of the superpowers was mobilizing forces in case the mutant nation “went rogue.” Not one to take chances, Bobby suggested they move to an entirely different planet—one that he helped breathe life to. The kids were ecstatic and called themselves prince and princess of Arakko. It broke his heart to tell them that there were no thrones in Arakko.

Immigration was a little difficult to deal with. Both the US and Krakoa weren't willing to let him go easily. Since there were rumors of war, they were keeping a tight leash on their greatest natural resource—Omega-level mutants. But he insisted, pulled some strings even and called in every favor and marker just to expedite the process.

Now he’s on a passenger cruiser with his family and one hundred and forty-five other people, on their way to Autumn Island where he purchased a house in advance. He can’t wait to start this new lease on life with his family, away from the threat of war.

“Awesome!” Bobby Jr. shouts, catching his and Marcy’s attention.

Brook turns to them with eyes filled with wonder, “Is that a shooting star?”

Before he even gets to look out the window, he feels his power envelop him. “No, no! Kids, get away from there!” he shouts quickly. “Everyone get away from the windows!” he screams to the rest of the passengers.

Marcy pulls the kids away from the window and asks why. But before he could answer, something hits the cruiser and an explosion engulfs everyone. Bobby loses consciousness. 

He gains consciousness on a beach and sees Orrdon holding a hand out to him. Orrdon—a member of the Great Ring—was one of the people he worked with to revive the planet, being the Mutant who bore a hole to the center of Mars so they could implant enough iron into the core. 

He tastes smoke and gasoline in his mouth and the air is dry as if the oxygen was sucked all around him. He sees the other passengers, all dead and covered in blood and debris. He frantically searches for his family in the rubble and sees their lifeless forms underneath a large metal panel. He bawls and his legs wobble and give in. Marcy has the kids wrapped in her arms, trying to save them until the very last minute of her life. She took the brunt of the damage, her skin burnt and hair completely singed off. The kids looked less damaged, covered in soot and a few bruises; his decades as a firefighter tells him that it was probably the impact that killed them.

Bobby hears Orrdon’s footsteps. “I am sorry for your loss, my friend.” 

“There were only civilians in that ship,” he grits through his teeth. The accident just happened and his grief was too sudden and too strong for him to feel and think of anything else. We were supposed to start fresh here, away from missiles and bullies and any threat of war.

“The ship bore the symbol of the Seat of History…” Orrdon says. 

“He was the one who sponsored the immigration.” He doesn’t know why he’s entertaining Orrdon. He needs to find a way to get everyone back to Port Prometheus, back to the mainland at least. 

“And I assumed he was in it. I did not know that he was not. I was given false information about the ship that would leave Port Prometheus today,” the Arakki says, nonchalant.

“What?” Did he mishear the other man?

“We made a vote; peace or war. The humans are insecure and dare to threaten Krakoa with their war machines. It is only a matter of time before they turn their weapons to Arakko. I opened the vote to bring the war to your world’s so called superpowers before they bring it to us.

“But Table Dusk wishes to start our history anew. They seek to change our ways with new ideas of peace solely because we are in a new world. But are we not the same people? It is an insult to Arakki culture—a challenge to all of Arakko. And I accepted their challenge.” 

Orrdon has to be lying, right? Orrdon who holds the Seat of Loss. Orrdon the Omega Rocket. Orrdon the Living Star. The words of Sue Blevins when she introduced the Arakki that would help make their new home possible echo in his mind.

A shooting star.

Bobby snaps and lunges for Orrdon, catching him by the neck and locking his arms around him. “You killed my family, you son of a bitch!” he cursed at him.

“Is this a challenge, Krakoan?” Orrdon questions, trying to shake him off. When he bites out a yes, the Arakki accepts and launches them off the ground.

They start careening through the skies and eventually reach the mainland. Orrdon barrels them through mountains and towering trees, into inland seas and out through undiscovered caves, leaving destruction and changing the landscape in their wake. He manages to keep his hold, still trying to choke Orrdon.

Eventually Orrdon throws them into Tharsis Montes, landing with such force that Bobby was afraid it would trigger an eruption from all twelve volcanoes. It takes the wind out of Bobby and Orrdon finally manages to throw him off. 

With all the pride and posturing of warlike Arakkii, Orrdon gets into his face and prematurely declares victory. “Yield, Robert. I win. Your weapon is but one thing and it is a shield. I am the Omega Rocket. The further I fly, the faster I soar. The faster I am, the more indestructible I become.” 

“Indestructible in flight, not invulnerable. That’s me,” he takes the chance to kick Orrdon’s kneecap in and puts his hands around the Arakki’s neck. “I don’t see you flying now.” 

Bobby swore an oath to never take a life when he was a firefighter on Earth. But he was no longer on Earth and he was no longer a firefighter. When people first find out he’s the Omega of all the immunity-powered mutants they fixate on that and tend to forget that he was also given super-human strength. But he’s never forgotten—the ability to lift two tons of concrete was crucial to saving lives.

But now he takes it. He snaps Orrdon’s neck even as the Arakki pleads and says he yields. 

Bobby literally drags Orrdon’s lifeless husk thousands of miles to Arakko Prime as a gift to the Great Ring, for allowing one of their number to murder his family. Planet Arakko’s most powerful are a mix of shocked, amused, and insulted as they realized whose body it was he was dragging to interrupt their meeting. Not everyone is present but this is enough.

He throws Orrdon in front of Table Dawn. Greenway, holder of the Seat of Victory looks at him with disdain, “You dare interrupt the Great Ring’s meeting with a murder of one of its own, Krakoan?!”

“Orrdon the Dead Star accepted my challenge. He took my family, so I took his Seat and his life,” he thought himself above blatant threats but he’s allowed to feel rage after everything he’s given for this planet. After everything it's taken from him. 

“How did he get in the meeting chamber? Where is your Inward Watch, Sarina?” Greenway demands an answer  from the Seat of Law.

“I bludgeoned them with Orrdon the Omega-cudgel,” he spits out, earning an impressed look from Sarina. He was not only a fire captain back on Earth but he was also one of the Great Captains of Krakoa. No group of glorified bodyguards could best him even with superior numbers.

“I rescind the previous vote under the Seat of Loss. I vote for peace. Accept my and Table Dusk’s proposition or you will all know the meaning of loss,” he throws out one final threat before walking away. 

“I am mistaken, then,” he hears Greenway’s poisonous voice call out. “You are not Krakoan, Robert Nash. You have a place in the Broken Lands!”

Not a week later the civil war began and Bobby found himself directly at the center of what he was running from. 

Chapter Text

He's in the safety of the cabin but he can still feel the steady breeze on the hull of the cruiser as if it were flowing over his skin. He's infinitely grateful that he's learned how to do that now.

“Nothing gets in or out of this boy's head” was what Athena told Bobby after the explosion at the facility. He couldn't blame her. After meeting Eddie, Bobby, and then Athena, he's now privy to state secrets involving their respective departments.

Isi and Sue Blevins herself has been teaching him how to control the flow of information in his head this past month. Sue's training is grueling but he expected no less from the most powerful telepath in history. He’s thankful during the days Isi takes over because she’s less, for the lack of a better term, boomer about the training.

He’s had many discoveries about himself since he joined the Brotherhood. But the most important is that he’s an Omega-level mutant. An Omega-level mutant. The Knower. At first he thought it was a cute title but as time went on he found out that the Arakkii didn’t give that title to just anyone.

Well, he didn’t find out as much as he recalled it. Because that’s how his weapon works apparently. Him “downloading” information around him was his mind just processing the information he already knew. And all the times he was turning his weapon “off” was just him cutting off his access to that endless sea of information.

As his title suggest, he just knows.

Speaking of knowing… They had a particularly violent call last week: a young Arakki in their late teens manifested their weapon for the first time—very late for the latest generation of mutants. The kid was pretty distressed, couldn’t control the bursts of concussive blasts they were emitting. He was thrown straight into a ten-inch thick wall and Bobby had to intervene before the kid hurt anyone else. Hen and Chimney obviously rushed to his side but they were baffled when they found him already healing on his own.

He was concussed, yes, but what should’ve been a fatal injury was rendered minor because of his accelerated healing. They took him to a hospital to run some tests. Doctors were baffled on how he developed a healing factor because his X-gene didn’t code for it. They said it was like his body just knows how to heal itself at an accelerated rate.

He had an idea but because of his concussion, he couldn’t be too sure. So, during his training session with Sue Blevins he asked the Omega-telepath to verify by plunging in his mind. At first he asked Isi but since he stopped inhibiting his weapon, his mind had gotten too vast for her.

It wasn’t long before Sue Blevins pulled up the memory of the imposter. The catfish with a healing factor died while wearing his body. He still recalls how they communicated during their last breaths using his own weapon. Simply put, his body now knows how to heal itself quickly because it now has the information how to do so.

“Should we expect you to start shapeshifting now, too?” Chimney jokingly asked two days later.

Sadly, the answer was a hard no. His X-gene still didn’t code for what can be classified as “extra-human bodily feats”. He can’t heal others like Hen or heal from death like Chimney or Eddie but he can survive typically major injuries now.

If he was being honest with himself? He’s very overwhelmed. Too many revelations happening in succession on top of the too large a quantity of information he apparently has to process each day. He is exhausted. He hasn’t had a time to himself to actually think about his place in all of this.

Eddie squeezes his inner thigh, pulling him away from his wondering thoughts.

Yesterday at Eddie’s was a change of pace. A permitted calm before the storm that is their meeting with the Great Ring today.

Christopher insisted on watching an Arakkii nature documentary. The kid made comments every now and then, mostly asking him whether certain plants and animals they had here also existed on Earth. The young psychic was particularly interested if Morrowland Wyverns can be found in Los Angeles or El Paso.

“You’re the Knower, Buck! You should know this!” Christopher said, matter-of-factly. As a matter of fact, he did know and none were extant on Earth save for some smuggled as exotic pets.

“Remember how Arakko used to be on Earth but now it’s on the planet we used to call Mars?” he starts, leaning closer to the kid.

Christopher nodded.

He gives the boy a smile and opens up his mind a little when he feels Chris trying to pry the information directly from his thoughts due to impatience.

“Chris, your—well, our homeland was taken to another dimension. All the wyverns we have now all descend from the ones from that other dimension. Which means…?” he said, urging Christopher to complete the thought.

“They’re not en-endemic to Earth.”

Sometimes it’s easier to teach Christopher that way. Speaking physically is difficult for both them.

“Does that mean dad’s older than the wyverns?” the kid said with a menacing grin.

Eddie protested but laughed with his son afterwards anyway.

He’d give every piece of information he has stockpiled in his head just to hear their beautiful laughter every day. It only takes one word, one sound from the father and son with him to drown out all the noise and information in his head—like their very first meeting in the canyon.

“We’re here,” Bobby says through the intercom.

Eddie squeezes his inner thigh again and then grabs his hand to kiss his knuckles. The moment they step out of the cruiser, Eddie and Bobby won’t be his boyfriend and his father-figure captain—they’ll be the Seats of History and Loss respectively. And with the rest of the Great Ring, they’ll decide his future in Arakko.

This is the most complete the Great Ring has ever been since the transition back to Earth. With two vacancies and one Seat attended by proxy, this is the closest to a full council they will ever get.

It's a bit intimidating to be surrounded by Arakko’s mightiest and most powerful. And he’s not only referring to the seat holders. Rick Romero and the rest of the Inward Watch have hardened gazes and postures ready for warfare. The Sobunar’s proxy, a tall and imposing humanoid-axolotl, sits on a chair behind Table Day; an Omega of the same caliber as her recluse father.

Athena, as the regent and holder of the Seat of All-Around-Us starts the meeting by introducing him and reminding the circle of recent events. Rick goes around and hands each Table, copies of incident reports and investigation findings.

He couldn’t help but gather whatever’s written in those documents. Similar events to what the Autumn Island Brotherhood has experienced have happened in Port Prometheus, the Morrowlands, Underplace, and Tharsis Montes. Seemingly unrelated events were found to be orchestrated by Greenway loyalists–

Tread carefully, Buckley.

He turns to his right and sees Sarina smirking at him, one brow raised.

She holds the Seat of Law. The Omega-hieromancer: one of a handful of conceptual mutants in recorded history, whose weapon is to interpret, enact, and enforce whatever law governs her people. From the rules of children’s games, to whatever allows for the four fundamental forces of nature too seamlessly function, to whichever metaphysical loopholes Eddie exploits to call upon the dead, she has control of them if she ever wishes.

At least the image of this dark-skinned woman sitting beside his boyfriend was smirking. The true Omega underneath appeared to–

Athena opens the floor before he can see through Sarina’s façade.

Eddie rises up from his seat, “My Great Ring–”

He’s taken aback a bit. Eddie’s clearly sporting an early, very robust Iberian accent over his usual Arakkii. He knew that this is what Eddie’s inner monologue sounded like but it was a bit entrancing to hear out in the open. Recalling how the Okkarans personally recruited Eddie in the past, he thought that his lover’s speech reverting to his old-self for a job he has held for millennia shouldn’t be surprising.

“–the audio clips you’ll be hearing are provided for us by the Seat of Above-Us’ emergency dispatch network.”

Oh, that’s right. Eddie told him that he was just a placeholder at dispatch until the Seat of Above Us gets filled. He never mentioned that he had been seat warming for two decades now.

He returns his attention to the recordings. All of them were of gruesome calls regarding attacks that can only be described as bio and ecoterrorism.

“Details of these incidents are in the documents handed to you earlier,” Eddie closes.

Rick stands up once again and takes over, “Historical records provided for by the Seat of History confirm that these attacks are recreations of incidents that lead up to the very first recorded appearance of Greenway during the fallow years.”

“And we’re sure that all this is Greenway and his cronies. They’re not just copycat criminals seeking to ride his reputation?” asks Vega, Seat of Victory.

The Seat of Victory used to belong to Greenway. If he returns, he’ll be gunning for her Seat.

Rick hums in acknowledgement and then he readies a few more audio clips. He already knows what it is so he focuses on Rick’s nasally drawl to keep his mind off of it even for a little while.

“We were never sure in the past. It’s why we never saw any connection. It was only until the explosion in Stulgid did we have any real evidence.”

The first clip that plays next was from the sinkhole that started it all. A neighbor was describing to the dispatcher what happened and their station being called in to respond.

The next was a recording from Bobby’s microphone from after the explosion. It was when Bobby and Eddie interrogated the survey team on what happened and how they unwittingly detonated the bomb. Listening to it, it was like he was pulled back in time where the fallout messed with his weapon and all of the death and destruction threatened to pull the rug from under him.

He recognizes the operator’s voice in the next one. It was the very first bloating incident. The one he happened to be present for. Thoughts of wishing he could’ve done more for the mutant who wasn’t even given the kindness to wear their own face as they died resurfaced. He can only look up at Eddie, borrowing strength from the man he loves.

“Mr. Buckley, we request your assistance in this next part,” Rick calls for him.

Bobby’s prepared him for this. His captain had warned him that the Inward Watch will request they enter the mind of the Knower during the meeting, to present a true account of events.

“Sarina, if you may?” Athena says. He reminds himself that this is merely a precaution to make sure that the information that comes out of his mind isn’t somehow booby trapped for the Great Ring.

The Seat of Law extends her illusory hand and he takes it. It feels incomprehensibly real. A little too real. So uncanny that it was molded to perfectly simulate real flesh.

Do you swear that you will show us the absolute unmitigated truth of the events at the Taki Vehicular Research Facility, unfiltered by your own inhibitions and untainted by any forms of psychic tampering or telepathic censorship?

“I swear,” he answers, concise. He feels a familiar pulse on their pressed palms, similar to when he made an oath renouncing his US citizenship during his immigration.

“Whenever you’re ready, Buck,” Rick says.

He breathes in. He can do this. Projecting his thoughts to others is easy enough, Isi taught him well. He would project his thoughts differently when it came to Bobby, though, but it doesn’t really matter. He can do this.

It's been hours since the meeting started. They went back and forth on specific details like how was the nuclear bomb constructed, or how scarred and damaged was the brain of the serial bloater, or what did Greenway look like in the eyes of the serial bloater. By the end of the first agenda, they elected to reinstate Greenway as an extant threat to national security. They immediately moved on from that as the responsibility would now be handed over to SWORD.

The next agenda on the meeting was his future in Arakko. The bloating attacks were specifically orchestrated to draw the Knower—him—out. If his being targeted were to continue, his presence alone would be a threat to public safety. Bobby even raised the matter of who expedited his immigration process.

Vega suggests temporary deportation be an option and both Athena and Sarina raised its benefits and difficulties. But Sandy, the Voice of Arakko, a comely perpetually high-looking woman with moss-covered skin speaks up.

“Suggestion rejected! Arakko says that the presence of the Knower is important for the Arakkii. The energy she’s been receiving from the Broken Lands has become stale and bitter except in the Autumn Island who are in the direct presence of Buckaroo over there,” Sandy explains, patting Arakko’s massive wooden cheek. “The big girl wants to remind everyone that we all owe our continued existence tonthe previous Knower.”

“Acknowledged!” says the Sobunar’s daughter. It's the first time she’s spoken all day. “The Seat of Below-Us was good friends with the previous Knower and wishes the successor to step up to the role. My father also expresses his dissatisfaction with the way History handles the responsibilities of Above-Us.”

He tries to signal Eddie to shut his mouth but his boyfriend is very stubborn and quick to anger. “Remind your father that if he wishes to express anything he is free to come out of hiding.”

Athena chastises both of them.

“I guess we have our solution then,” Sarina chimes in.

“How long has it been since we opened the Circle Perilous for auditions?” the Seat of Law continues. “Our first defender may have kept his multiple responsibilities well and the Morrowlands have not squandered their autonomy—but it’s high time we had a new Seat of Above-Us and a new Seat of Dreams.”

“And you think Buck is ready for such a responsibility?” Athena asks. There was no derision in her words, only concern for him and his inexperience.

Sarina reasons that he already knows how to but they will be there to guide him if he chooses to step up.

He wants to argue that there’s a huge difference between knowing how to do things and actually doing them. He isn’t ready for something as big as this. And frankly, he just doesn’t want to.

He was about to say his piece when Athena says “Every Omega-level mutant out there will flock to the Circle Perilous once we open the challenge.”

“Do you think Buck weak, Athena?” Eddie pipes. His heart warms at his lover coming to his defense. But at the same time he just wants Eddie to chill out or else he’ll make things worse.

“Keep it professional, Edmundo. All I’m saying is that Arakkii law allows for any Omega-level mutant to challenge for a Seat. Every Omega on Krakoa—not even just Krakoa—every Omega on Earth will answer the call just to escape the planet.”

Escape. He found out from Sue Blevins that the leash on Omega-level mutants has gone tighter ever since rumors of Greenway’s return spread. Even the Quiet Council of Krakoa took some convincing just so they’d let her visit him for his weekly training

Athena’s just trying to express her concerns he projects into Eddie’s head. Thankfully it had the intended effect of pacifying him.

“We’ll be prepared for them. We have their documents; my Inward Watch will have countermeasures for each of them once we start the auditions,” Sarina boasts.

“What about the undocumented ones?” he says, failing to keep it to himself.

Bobby gives him an affirming nod to continue. “What about the undocumented Omega-level mutants? There are only thirty-seven documented Omegas—present company included—and five of them are deceased or at least presumed to be.

“Back on Earth, I was just a nobody who just happened to acquire information from around me every now and then. It was only after moving here that I reached my potential and found out I’m an Omega-level mutant. And I’m not entirely convinced that I’m really at that level yet—at least not with my inexperience.”

“So, what’s your point, Buck?” Athena asks, growing impatient with his preamble.

“I am an undocumented Omega. And there’s probably more of us out there. If you open the auditions now while tensions are still high, I can guarantee you that there will be terrible displays of power from people trying to prove they’re the most powerful at what they do.”

It was quiet for a moment, he sees the Sobunar’s daughter write something down on her notes. His curiosity urges him to find out what but her raising a single external gill at him stops him in his tracks.

“You expected this,” Athena asks Andrea, Seat of Stalemate.

The Seat of Stalemate has been held by the most powerful precognitive mutants ever to exist—Omega-level mutants with weapons of clairvoyance or advanced probability deduction. Andrea Reyes has never made a wrong prediction in her life—a fact that she sadly regrets.

He hears Andrea’s voice for the very first time, “Yes, one of many possibilities. I wasn’t sure which one this timeline will take until Buck spoke his mind out of turn. I couldn’t act or speak because of the uncertainty but now I am confident that the timeline is set in place.”

“So, what are our options here?” Vega asks.

Sarina's avatar falls quiet on her Seat. Her weapon compels her to sit idly until the Regent calls for a vote. The Omega-future seer has made it known that the proceeding events are set in stone. The Omega-hieromancer will see that that will not change. The Knower observes the two until he snaps back into himself and wonders what came over him.

“We put the auditions into a vote now. By virtue of my Seat and the nature of the situation, I can only abstain. Greenway’s return and terrible displays of Omega-level power will come to pass. But your vote now will decide in which order they come in.”

He doesn’t have to listen to what happens next. Andrea looks at him and gives him an affirming nod. He hates fighting.

THE GREAT RING OF ARAKKO:

TABLE DAWN:

Seat of Victory - Vega (Biokinesis)

Seat of Stalemate - Andrea Reyes (Clairvoyance)

Seat of Loss - Robert Nash (Invulnerability)

TABLE DAY:

Seat of Above-Us - 

Seat of All-Around-Us - Athena Grant (Teleportation)

Seat of Below-Us - Sobunar III (Oceanic Blood)

TABLE DUSK:

Seat of Law - Sarina (Hieromancy)

Seat of History - Edmundo (Death Manipulation)

Seat of Dreams - 

TABLE NIGHT:

Seat of Nowhere - [REDACTED] [REDACTED]

Seat of Nothing - [REDACTED] [REDACTED]

Seat of Nobody - [REDACTED] [REDACTED]

ARAKKO:

Arakko the Living Island

Voice of Arakko - Sandy (Botomancy)