Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Janus is standing in front of Virgil’s door.

Virgil knows this, not because his father has seen fit to let Virgil aware of his presence, but because of the break in light next to the crack between the door itself and the floor.

He’s been ignoring that shadow for the better part of five minutes. It’s much easier to sit with his legs dangling off his bed and play random notes on his guitar than it is to think about the “talk” Janus feels required to give him.

Admittedly, Virgil did have an anxiety attack at the dinner table and then refused to talk about it for the next hour, so it's probably a good thing Janus is standing in front of his door.

Finally, his dad knocks.

Virgil strums a random chord a bit louder and doesn’t respond.

“Virge?” Janus’s voice is not at all gentle, but Virgil’s lived with him long enough to know when he’s being kind. “Virgil, can I come in?”

Virgil hits another chord. “I don’t know, can you?”

There’s a very loud sigh from the other side of the door but it edges slightly on laughter. “Really?” His voice is dry now, but still softer than it would be normally. “We both know I’m not coming in without permission.”

It’s Virgil’s turn to sigh. He pushes the guitar onto his pillow and traces the side of it with one finger.

“Yeah.”

“Hm?”

“Yeah!”

“I need clear consent Virgil.”

“Oh my god Dad, come in.”

Janus is smirking a bit when he comes in but his smile falls when he sees Virgil.

Virgil offers him a bitter smile.

His hair is a disaster, mostly because Virgil spent about ten minutes curled with a weighted blanket in the corner of his room repeatedly tugging on the strands. He can’t see his face, but Virgil can easily imagine the dull brown of his eyes and the way his face feels to have lengthened.

“Oh Virge.” Janus shakes his head. “You’re looking well.”

And suddenly, everything Virgil has done to push his dad away comes tumbling down. It’s replaced with a desperate, almost tangible need to be held by him.

Virgil doesn’t say this of course. He just makes grabby hands.

Janus is by his side in a moment, pulling Virgil’s head against his chest and rubbing down his back with one hand. Virgil leans into it. He’s been taller than his dad for about four years now but when he’s just drained like this, it doesn’t matter. He feels just as small as the first day he met him.

“Today a good day then?” Janus asks and Virgil chuckles.

“It was.”

“I can tell.”

Virgil laughs again. Normally, he might pull back and glare at his dad, but the need for comfort hasn’t left so he lets Janus pull him closer.

“Can you tell me what’s going on?”

Virgil grumbles. “Do I have a choice?”

Janus’s hands pause on Virgil’s back. “Always,” he says, as Virgil knew he would. “However I do recommend telling someone.”

Virgil groans.

“You could keep bottling it up. Your therapist says that’s good for you—”

“Your mom.”

“Excellent response.”

For a second Virgil is silent. Then he turns his head into Janus' stomach so his eyes are buried and his mouth is just muffled enough with cloth that Janus won’t be able to make a noise without missing something Virgil says.

“I’m trying out for East Bridge tomorrow.”

Already he can feel a knot forming in the back of his throat and there’s a sort of stickiness to his chest that’s crowding his lungs and keeping him from being able to breathe.

Janus says nothing.

“I want to go. I do. I want to.”

“But…?”

“I don’t know!” A sob broke its way out of Virgil and his entire body trembles with the negligible effort to keep himself from allowing a second to escape. “What if I’m wrong? What if I go to East and I go into the superhero program, and I hate it!?”

“Then you drop out.” Janus says it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Virgil isn’t even close to done. “What if I don’t realize I dislike it until I’m 40, and it's too late to change, and I just have to live with the fact that my life is worthless—”

“Virgil.”

“—my life isn’t worthless, but that my life won’t ever be able to make me happy, and that there’s nothing I can do to change it!”

“If 40 is when your life ends, I must be ancient,” Janus says, not all too gently but still in that kinder tone he always uses when Virgil’s upset. “Virgil, what would you say if I told you I wanted to stop being a lawyer and become a shopkeeper?”

Virgil mumbles something.

“I’m just going to assume you said ‘go for it, Dad’ because anything else is unacceptable and I will ground you.”

A watery laugh replaces the sobs.

“Your life doesn’t start when you get to college and it isn’t over when you choose one job. Anything you pick is reversible.”

Virgil rolls his eyes. “I can’t just follow the dopamine.”

“Why not?” From anyone else the question would have sounded sarcastic, but from Janus it’s very clearly sincere.

“Because I’ll never get anything done?!” Virgil doesn’t pull away from Janus, but if he did he would be glaring at him. “Because short term happiness doesn’t mean long term happiness?”

“If you try something for a few years and hate it, you are always allowed to change what you’re doing. You have a safety net.” Janus’s hands card through his hair. “You’re allowed to explore.”

The words are nice.

Virgil can’t bring himself to believe them.

Chapter Text

There are at least 1000 kids in the room. Patton glances over at Virgil and is quick to offer a smile, hoping to soothe the twisting of his friend’s hand. The returning smile is weak, but better than nothing.

They’re standing in a space spanning at least the length of a football field. A large white dome covers the top of it, made of solid white material, and yet translucent enough that the ground is alight with sunlight. Barren brown dust floats up to just about their ankles and already Patton can see some of the kids coughing.

There’s a thump from above them. Half of the kids fall quiet. The others whisper, but every head points to the sky.

No other sound is made.

The whispers gradually turn back into conversations and Patton lets Virgil tug on his sleeve and pull him closer.

“We’re gonna do great!” He twists the pep in his voice to force away faint nausea. “It’ll be okay, Virgil!”

Virgil grimaces. “I hate everything.”

Patton’s response is a knee jerk tease, one he’s sure he uses at least five times a day. “Even me?”

When Virgil doesn’t immediately respond, Patton flicks his shoulder and can’t help but grin at the first genuine smile he’s seen on Virgil all day.

“Ow!”

“Tell me you love me!”

Virgil mutters something, flips Patton off, and finally grumbles; “I
love you, idiot.”

Patton smiles. “We will be okay, you know.”

He sounds like he’s trying to convince Virgil. If Patton pretends hard enough, he'll even believe it. It’ll have nothing to do with the shaking of his body, the rapid dance routine his heart commits to as it tries to thump its way out of his chest.

This is something Patton has wanted since before he got his power, since before he met Virgil. The dream to become a superhero has been ingrained in him since birth and for as long as Patton has been aware, it has consumed every waking thought.

Would this class help his East Bridge application?

How many hours should he be training?

Is this internship a good one?

How many weapons should he know how to use?

Is his quirk strong enough?

Does he have the right body type?

Now he’s here. Standing with Virgil, standing with people surrounding him on all sides, all also hoping for the chance to fulfill their dreams.

There’s another noise from the top of the dome they’re under. Silence falls just as fast as the first but the rumbling of different voices return much quicker this time.

“They have to be doing it on purpose, right?” Virgil’s voice is higher than normal. “Is it some kind of test?”

Patton blinks. He can hear himself speaking (“I’m sure it's fine, Virgil! If it’s a test, we’ll be able to figure it out!”) but his heart is beating faster and any thought his brain comes up with is immediately lost.

No. No. He’s sure it's fine. He’s sure.

(If he just keeps telling himself that, it will be.)

“It’s not a test.”

Patton turns towards the voice.

The boy he’s met with is about his age. His hair is cut short, but it hangs around his head at different angles, giving the impression that he’s just taken a pair of scissors to it and hacked. When he meets Patton’s eyes, Patton almost has to look away; they’re a dark blue, and colder than any blizzard he’d ever seen. His skin is white, almost sickly so, and he’s skinny enough that Patton wonders if he could pick up a 10 lb dumbbell with both hands.

“How do you know?” Virgil's voice is still high, now slightly defensive.

The boy’s gaze shifts over to look at Virgil. Unlike Patton, Virgil doesn’t even flinch under the ice in his eyes.

“It’s a guess,” he informs them. He pauses. “A good one.”

“So it’s just a coincidence?” Patton askes. He almost doesn’t want to, not as the person turns back to look at him but he needs to know.

“They’re trying to stress you out.” The boy’s lips twitch. “They want to see who works well under pressure. Anyone who’s too nervous right now will be more likely to fail the first test.”

“That’s horrible!” Patton wraps his arms around himself. “Why would they make things worse!?”

The boy doesn’t respond.

Patton’s breath comes out faster than before the boy had spoken, however, Virgil actually seems to have calmed down a little. When a third hit sounds against the dome, louder and more aggressive than the last two, he flips it off.

“Assholes.”

The boy's lips twitch again and this time his eyes soften a little.

“What’s your name?” Patton tries. He straightens out his shoulders and purposely adds a bit of pep in his voice. “My name is Patton! This is my bestest—” Virgil rolls his eyes— “friend Virgil!”

“I’m Logan,” the boy says. Logan stands slightly straighter. “He/him.”

“I— oh— I— sorry!” Patton is already mentally kicking himself. “I’m he/him as well, I’m so sorry! I should’ve started with that! Virgil is he/him too!”

Logan’s posture doesn’t shift at all but he offers Patton a weak smile.

Patton judged him too quickly. The cold from earlier has partly melted and he seems much more human now. The way he spoke was certainly a bit curt, but Patton thinks about how he had been spiraling; it had been the boy’s voice that stopped him from hitting the bottom.

“So…” Virgil’s voice trails off. Patton can practically see him racing for something to say and his eyes flit back and forth from Logan to Patton several times. “What’s your favorite color?”

If Logan finds the question odd, he doesn’t remark upon it. “I’m partial to navy blue. Yourself?”

“Black.” Virgil frowns. “Purple. Wait. Black. No, pur- black and purple.”

“Those are adequate colors. I understand your indecisiveness around them, they both can be very calming.”

“They express the inner darkness of my soul.”

Logan’s smile is close-lipped, but much more real than the one he gave Patton. “They’re adequate for that as well.”

The following silence is uneasy, but Patton seems to be the only one to notice it. Both Logan and Virgil are still and while they aren’t looking at each other, their faces are generally relaxed.

Patton’s fingers tap against the side of his leg. “So Logan!” he says happily. “Why did you choose to try out for East Bridge?!”

Logan’ s quiet, so Patton tries again.

“It's always been my dream to apply! I don’t really know when it started! It’s just so cool isn’t it!? You get to help people and stop all the bad guys!”

A muscle twinges in Logan’s jaw and still he doesn’t respond. Just before Patton can push a bit harder, a voice echoes over the dome, silencing everyone for a fourth time.

The voice is soft and musical, speaking the way a parent might to their toddler. It should calm Patton, but every part of him is suddenly on edge. His hair stands up, his fingers close in and out, and breathing becomes rather difficult.

Virgil looks to be about the same, if not worse. His breaths come hot and heavy and his face is gradually lightening. Patton reaches out for him and intertwines their shaking hands together.

Most people around them seem to be doing the same. A girl a couple of feet away is gripping her hair and whispering to herself; a boy keeps cracking his knuckles and he prances from foot to foot. There are a few however, who seem wholefully unaffected.

Logan is one of them.

“Welcome to East Bridge University Testing. My name is Siren and I will be your guide through this first test.”

Patton grits his teeth.

They might be successful in scaring him, but he could push through this. He just needed to keep out of his head, and stay calm.

He could do that.

He could.

“Virgil, it’ll be okay!” Patton stutters. “It’s just the voice. It’s okay!”

“I know.”

Logan purses his lips. “I think they’re going to have us fight each other.”

Patton is already tense and the very idea makes his skin crawl. He wants to be a superhero but there's nothing in him that wants to hurt anyone. He certainly doesn't want to take the chance to be a hero from someone else.

“How do you know?” Virgil asks.

“They’re trying to scare us to see how we’ll do in a fight when pushed to the limit.” Logan responds. “There’s nothing in this room but contestants and if they needed us to be worked up before a task, Siren would need to reuse their powers. Therefore, we have to be the first test.”

“I don’t want to hurt anybody!” The words burst out of Patton and he takes a deep breath to try and steady himself.

Logan’s tone is sharp. “I thought you wanted to be a hero?”

Patton has barely begun to wrap his head around that sentence when Siren’s voice slides through the air again, somehow softer and yet more anxiety inducing.

“Your first task starts now.” Siren’s voice goes up on the word now and Patton can feel his body rise with it. He fixes a smile on his face.

He’s good.

He’s fine.

“For the next five minutes, you will be fighting each other.” Patton can’t help the glance over at Logan. “If you are able to remain standing, you may move on. The timer starts now.”

The chaos doesn’t begin instantly but when it starts, it starts together. The rumbling of voices from earlier turns to a deafening, neverending scream that can’t quite hide the sickening sound of flesh on flesh and cracks from all around the room. Patton barely has time to recognize the sharp wind near his cheek before he’s throwing up his hand and pulling up from deep inside of him.

It’s more instinctual than anything else. Patton can’t describe the way he reaches, and it's been a long time since he thought about how his hands go flat. When he was little he had to point in the direction of the object; now, just moving his hand is enough for him.

A shining shield, glowing a light blue color, instantly covers him. The fist that would’ve sent him to the floor bounces off of it and some random kid hits the dirt. They instantly go to get up to their feet, but Virgil fixes them with a look and Patton watches the kid freeze.

Virgil cocks his head at the kid. “Don’t touch him.”

The kid screams and Patton’s stomach drops. He wants to tell Virgil to stop, and starts to open his mouth to do so but the kid cuts him off.

“Stop. Stop it. Stop. Please, please, please—

The kid’s eyes stare up at Virgil, but slightly to the left of his face. They reach out at nothing, then whimper and slide, covering their eyes with one hand and pleading.

Eyes shut against whatever they see, but Patton knows it makes no difference. You can’t close your eyes against images in your head.

Suddenly, the kid quiets. Whimpers still shudder past their lips but their eyes open and when they glance between Patton and Virgil, they’re able to meet their eyes.

They don't get up.

Virgil doesn’t ask the kid what they saw, though Patton knows that Virgil has no idea what he put into their head. Instead, Virgil just makes his way beside Patton, stepping around the kid and intertwining his and Patton’s hand together.

Patton pulls away. He kneels next to the kid and without looking, creates his own glowing blue dome over both him, Virgil and the kid.

“Are you okay?”

“Don’t— don’t— stay away. Do you understand? Stay away!”

Patton flinches. “It’s okay, okay? Virgil didn’t mean to make you upset, he was just all worried about me. I’m sorry we hurt you.”

The kid still isn’t moving.

“Can you tell me your name?”

“Leave me alone.”

“I’m—”

“Patton.” Virgil’s eyes are dark when he looks at him. “Leave them be.”

“They need help! We should help them! We hurt—”

“No, I hurt them. Come on Patton, let’s move on. They want to be left alone.”

Patton’s mind is racing. “Look, um, Mx, I’ll leave the force field over us, alright? The announcer lady said all we had to do was keep standing, okay? So I’ll keep everyone away and then the three of us will be able to move on to the next task, alright?”

The kid nods slowly. Their breathing is still hard and when Virgil moves they flinch.

Logan has long since disappeared. Patton wonders if he’ll be able to survive round one; while he certainly seemed clever, there was nothing about him that spoke to any kind of strength. Maybe his quirk is powerful enough to get him through this.

The next few minutes are painful. Patton stands in his forcefield, Virgil beside him and the kid is still on the ground. Every now and then he debates letting another person in but Virgil glares at everyone who passes so Pattin chooses to let it be.

All around them, people are screaming. Blood bounces against his forcefield more than once and all different kinds of fighting methods are brought out. One boy sends a wave of fire against a girl, only to watch it die in midair. Patton has to look away when his face turns blue. He can’t see air molecules, but if he could, he was sure all of the oxygen would have disappeared from under the firewielder's nose.

“Your five minutes are up.” This time when the Siren speaks Patton’s heart slows. All of his tapping stops and he almost lays on the floor, wondering if the sand of the dome is comfortable enough to sleep on. “Anyone who continues to fight will be suspended immediately.”

There isn’t silence and even the Siren’s voice isn’t enough to stop Patton from whimpering at the cries of the others. More than half of the contestants are on the ground, and only the very lucky are unconscious. Some are struggling to get onto their feet, crumpling on broken legs. Others just lay still on the sand sobbing.

Pattons cheeks are wet and Virgil folds him into a hug.

This is to become a superhero, he promises himself. That’s all he wants.

He wants to help people.

“If you are able to, please make your way to the five doors on the eastern side of the dome.”

Patton pulls from Virgil’s arms to spin in a slow circle. The dome had seemed solid a second ago; now he can locate five rectangles, the edges of which are glowing a faint gold.

He drops the force field.

All around him, people are making their way over to the door. A couple of people are running, a few gloatfully strutting, but most are moving the way Patton feels, slow and broken.

He spots Logan. The boy is kneeling next to one of the fallen, two fingers up against the top of their neck. For a second, he holds his breath and when Logan pulls his hand away, he can’t read the expression on his face.

Patton starts walking before he can see if Logan goes or stays.
Virgil instantly falls into step beside him and to Patton’s surprise, the person Virgil scared follows as well. They make their way up to a door on the side and quickly step into line.

“Are you okay?” Virgil whispers.

Patton nods on instinct. “Of course I’m okay! You?”

“I could be better.”

The line disappears in front of them. Virgil passes first through the frame, glancing back at Patton before stepping off to the left and out of view. Patton follows and just before he can turn with Virgil, he looks behind to watch the kid he’d protected try to follow as well.

The door shuts on their face.

Patton holds his breath staring. Surely it was a mistake. Yeah, the kid had lost to them, but they weren't down. They weren't done.

The door opens and somebody Patton doesn’t recognize steps through and the kid is gone.

They’re never going to be allowed in East Bridge.

Because of him.

Patton turns to follow Virgil.

Chapter Text

Virgil moves away from Patton when they make it into the next room. Patton doesn’t protest but he does point to a quiet spot against a wall and tell Virgil to meet him there at the first sign of trouble.

The moment Virgil is away from him, he closes his eyes.

The kid’s face joins a small group of others Virgil has ever dared to use that part of his quirk on.

His hands curl into fists.

Your quirk doesn’t make you evil, Virgil.

The voice sounds suspiciously like Janus.

The kid hadn’t followed Patton out of the dome. Virgil had looked for him, quietly so as to not frighten them more, but the look on Patton’s face had been enough to tell Virgil that the kid wasn’t going to be coming through. Whatever the Trainers had been looking for, that kid had lacked.

Because Virgil had used his quirk on him.

He swallows.

He doesn’t regret it. Patton certainly wants him to, even if he won’t say it, but Virgil had seen the way the kid was starting to get up. He had seen the fire in that kid's eyes, all directed at Patton. And most importantly, he had seen the fingers slowly shifting into small sharp blades.

So he had made sure the kid wouldn’t be able to use them.

“Virgil?”

Virgil swings around instantly, already on high alert. His quirk tickles the back of his throat, ready to jump up at a moment’s notice.

It’s Logan.

His hands are completely covered in blood, his face splattered with it. The clothes hanging from his frame are all black but Virgil can see how the end of his shirt droops lower, slightly darker than the rest.

“Are you okay?!” Virgil exclaims.

“What? Oh.” Logan looks down at himself. “Indeed. None of this is mine.” He gestures down at himself.

Something in Virgil's chest tightens. “How many people did you…?” his voice trails off, but Logan clearly gets his meaning because something in his eyes shifts.

“I didn’t harm anyone beyond very basic and quickly recoverable self-defense.” Logan attempts to wipe his hands on his shift and just ends up spreading the blood around. “Logically speaking, it makes absolutely no sense to attack someone. There’s a high chance that people have come in groups, such as you and Patton, so knocking down one would make you more likely to be a target. It makes much more sense to simply avoid the fighting until the five minutes are up.”

“Then why?” Virgil gestures wildly at Logan. “What did you do?”

All of the emotion on Logan’s face shudders to an abrupt stop. “I tried to help.”

Virgil cocks his head to the left.

“I’ve not been medically trained, but I’ve read a number of different books and… well, the point is, I was hopeful I could mitigate some of the damages that would need to be tended to immediately.” Logan stares down at his hands. “I believe I was partially successful.”

It’s the way his voice cracks just ever so slightly on partially, the one crevice in this wall of armor, that has Virgil reaching forward. His hand stops halfway in between them and he pulls back.

“Come on.” His voice is heavy. “Come sit with me and Patton.”

Logan blinks and for a moment, but at Virgil's wave follows. Patton’s already waiting at the spot he pointed to and when he sees Logan, he jumps up, eyes wide.

“Are you okay? I— when I saw you in the dome you didn’t have any blood on you! What happened?! Do you need a medic?”

“No.”

“He’s fine, Pat.” Virgil smiles over at his friend and Patton smiles back, almost instinctively. “Can he sit with us?”

Virgil isn’t sure what he would do if Patton said no, but luckily, Patton’s never one to exclude. Instantly, Patton is nodding, making room against the side of the metal gray dome they’ve entered for both Logan and Virgil to collapse against it.

All around them, other contestants are mostly doing the same. Some are giving themselves medical aid, a number whispering together, and almost all are taking the chance to sit back and breathe.

It takes less than a second of silence for Patton to try and fill it.
“It’s a really interesting first trial, right?” Patton asks. “How many trials do you think there’ll be? I’ve read online that there are usually like two but I’ve also seen people say there can be as many as eight.”

“My estimate is three more.” Logan uses one hand to constantly wipe one finger, turning and rubbing at the blood. All he manages to do is swap the red from one hand to the next. “At the beginning of the trail, I counted the number of kids in exactly ¼ of the dome and came to a total of 281 kids. If I use this to estimate the population of the total number of people in the dome, I get about 1124, give or take.”

His hands are still moving in an attempt to push the blood off. It’s much more frantic than it had been earlier and while Logan’s face remains filtered of all emotion, Virgil can see his chest rising and falling quicker and quicker, still smearing blood and unable to get it off.

“When I stayed behind, I counted the leftmost line to estimate how many people passed the first exam. There were 98 people who entered that door. If I once again use that to estimate the total number of people entering each line, I get a total of 490 people. That means that the first task reduced the number of contestants by 56.4%.”

His hands move much more rapidly now and Virgil watches him try to wipe it on his bloodsoaked shirt, only to pull his hands away with equal amounts of blood as before.

“If I assume that the next couple of tasks will do the same, it would take three more tasks to reduce our number to about 75 people. They’ve said that there are three trainers this year, Siren being one of them, so it's very likely that they’re only planning on admitting three classes. Each class will likely be of 25 people.”

Normally Patton would’ve zoned out, but the one thing that’s always been able to keep his friend’s attention is superheroes, regardless of how boring he finds math. He nods quietly, clearly commuting the numbers in his head and trying to apply it to the situation he’s in.

Shirt deemed insufficient, Logan has gone back to wiping his hands together. His lips are pursed, eyebrows down, and his chest is going up and down, up and down, up and then it stays up for far too long before sucking in deep.

Virgil shrugs off his jacket. He hadn’t come to the training tryouts in his normal attire; black ripped jeans, a basic black or purple long sleeve shirt and a puffy sweatshirt isn’t the best for physical activity. Instead, Virgil wears black running pants, a long sleeve purple running shirt, sneakers, and most importantly, a black sweatshirt hanging unzipped off his frame.

Now, he pushes it off. The hairs on the back of his neck rises almost immediately and Virgil has to resist the urge to glance behind him or fling the sweatshirt back on.

“Logan.”

The boy turns to look at him, hands still fruitlessly rubbing together.

“Can I…?” Virgil holds the jacket up. He’s not sure how to explain what he’s about to do, mostly because he can’t believe he’s making this decision.

Somehow however, Logan gets exactly what he means. His body locks up and for a moment, Virgil thinks he’s going to say no.

The nod Logan gives is stiff.

Virgil slowly shifts so his body is in front of Logan. Before he can stop himself, he lowers the sweatshirt over Logan's hands and mops off the top of his left hand, before shifting to mop his right.

Patton is staring at him, openmouthed. He looks down at the jacket, back at Virgil, and then down at the jacket again. Three times his mouth opens and closes and three times nothing comes out.

Virgil’s back feels very strange. He wants his jacket back.

Carefully, Virgil shifts Logan’s hands over and uses the end of his sweatshirt to slip in between his fingers and wipe the blood from each of the crevasses. Logan is frozen underneath him; he doesn’t even think the boy is breathing.

“Are you okay?” he mutters, quietly enough he wonders if even Patton, who’s sitting right beside him, can hear.

Logan’s nod is stuttered.

Virgil moves onto the next hand. He shifts his jacket back over to a clean spot and once again fiddles his way in between Logan’s fingers. This time, their hand brushes for the briefest moment and it’s like lightning shoots its way up Virgil’s arm. He manages to keep his expression blank, especially since Logan flinches at the touch, eyes wide.

When Virgil pulls back, both of Logan’s hands are purely white. The only sign of leftover blood is the dried stiffness of his shirt and the flecks spread up over his face, looking more like dark red freckles.

“Thank you,” Logan whispers. He pulls his legs towards his stomach, arms wrapping around them.

“Of course,” Virgil tells him.

Patton is still staring at the jacket in shock.

“Hello contestants.” Siren’s voice sounds over the metal dome. Unlike before, Virgil doesn’t feel his heartbeat rise with their voice and he lets out a quiet breath of relief.

He really prefers tasks that don’t mess with his emotions.

“Your next task begins now.”

Logan suddenly moves. He flips up to his feet, placing his heels right against the very edges of the metal dome and leaning fully against the edges. His hands curl against the smooth walls.

Virgil is halfway through getting up to copy him, fingers slipping against the smooth metal of the wall, when the entire floor gives out from under him.

Chapter Text

Roman is in the middle of a particularly funny anecdote about the expression on some girl’s face as he bashed her head into the ground when the floor opens up.

He scowls.

It’s a very easy trick; one his parents had pulled on Remus and Roman more than once in their training, and quite frankly, Roman is rather disappointed. He’d thought the test to get into East Bridge would be hard.

Clearly not.

With a sigh, and a frown (he had been cut off in the middle of his speech after all) Roman tilts his head to the side and imagines a parachute above him. He can almost feel the golden straps wrapping around his thick muscled frame and cold metal of the parachute handles in his hands.

And then, all of a sudden, he can.

The red and gold swirl cloth flaps slightly as it catches him, pulling him up. Then, the cloth expands out and Roman is left above the crowd, watching how his competitors tried to survive the sudden drop.

Remus, of course, is absolutely fine. He snaps his fingers rapidly and with every resounding click, a trampoline appears slightly lower than him for Remus to jump off of and onto the next. He whoops out loud as he does it, spinning in air to flash Roman a smile before leaping off to the next.

He looks like an idiot and Roman has to resist the urge to shout for him to take this seriously.

There are a couple of people with airbending quirks; Roman watches a girl catch herself immediately, and then gradually begin to lower herself to the unseen bottom. One boy transforms rapidly between a cat and a human, frantically trying to get himself to the wall, although for what Roman isn’t sure. The walls of the drop seem relatively smooth, besides a ring of bolts to hold up the plates of metal, so there’s nothing for the shapeshifter to grab onto.

One kid—a boy with smooth black hair, dark brown eyes, and tan skin—just falls. He was standing next to two other boys, one a dark brown with ruffled black hair and the other so white Roman has to wonder if he’s ever seen the sun before. It takes the east asian kid 20 feet before he realizes he needs to do something, and then his hands press flat and a blue shield spreads out underneath him.

When he hits it, he groans.

The other two boys have somehow not fallen and Roman realizes why a moment later.

Apparently, when the floor opened up, it left about two inches of floor right against the edge to continue standing on. The skinny white boy is able to remain standing, heels pressed right against the wall. The other boy hangs, one hand clenched tightening around that little bit of floor and the other desperately reaching for it.

“Virgil!” the shield boys yells out. “I’ve got you!” His hand presses flat and a blue shield spreads out underneath the hanging kid.

Roman rolls his eyes and turns away. Degenerate. This was a test. You don’t help people during a test; if they’re not strong enough to be able to complete it themselves, then they don’t deserve to be here.

It's as simple as that.

Not to mention, the idiot had used his hand as a method of his quirk. That was one of the techniques his parents had pressed out of him; in any dangerous situation, kidnapping, fight, etc, the first thing someone would do is try and tie back your hands.

The boy—Virgil apparently—drops, falling expertly (although Roman could do it better) and tumbling up into a standing position.

“Logan, you come too!” Patton yells. “I can make platforms for all of us!”

But the white kid shakes his head. “I’ll meet you at the bottom.”

“Logan?”

“It’s important I do every task myself.” Roman swears the boy's eyes flicker up to him. “I recommend the both of you go. I shall see you at the bottom.”

“Does your quirk-” Patton starts.

“I shall see you at the bottom,” Logan says again.

Roman’s nearly past where the white kid is standing now. He looks weirdly familiar, but Roman can’t imagine where he would’ve seen him before. Just the boy’s clothing is enough to let Roman know he’s lower class, so it’s not like he could’ve run into him at one of his dinner parties.

The familiar feeling won’t go away, especially as the boy glances at him again and Roman gets a full look at his face. He knows that face. It’s different somehow, but it makes his skin crawl in ways Roman’s only ever experienced under his mothers hard glare.

He must’ve passed him on the street somewhere. Roman can’t imagine where he would’ve passed someone who looks like that but it’s the only way he could’ve ever seen that kind of person before.

The boy takes a breath and then turns. Before Roman can blink, he’s dropped, hanging off of the edge of the floor just like the other boy had before him, both arms gripping the two inch ledge with all of his strength.

Despite himself, Roman is leaning forward. The kid looks weak. He looks like nothing. But he survived the dome fight without any visible marks and the blood of his enemies splattered on his face.

What was his quirk?

Whatever it is, he doesn’t use it. Logan’s forearms tremble as he drops the ledge with one hand and just as quickly grabs it about 3 inches to the left.

The boy is just out of view by the time Roman sees him lowering himself onto the tiny bolts on the wall.

The rest of the way down is relatively boring. There are a couple of other people going about Logan’s method and using the bolts as a way to rock climb. Most kids have just fallen.

Roman really hopes his parachute doesn’t land on anyone's dead body.

But when Roman reaches the bottom everyone looks completely fine, even the ones Roman watched scream past him. Remus saunters up to him as his parachute pops out of existence and greets him with a grin.

“What the fuck bro?” Roman greets. “What’s happening here?”

Remus’s torso swings back and forth, dancing to something only he can hear. “Elitra was here to catch their fall.”

Roman grumbles.

“I know! Boring!” Remus sings. “They should have gone crunch crunch crunch! Hey! You!” Remus reaches out and grabs a random boy. He cocks his head at him. “You should be dead, you know.”

The boy wretches his arm away.

“What was the fucking point of the drop then?”

“Dunno. Fun? Adventure? More stimulating fear?!!” Remus grins. “Tire out the people who can’t trust a little gravity?” He waves his fingers in front of Roman’s face as he says it, and Roman glowers at his brother as he slaps the hand away.

“Who would be tired out by this?” Roman shakes his head. “I expect better from some esteemed school.”

Remus’s smile is sharp. “Maybe they did it for fun!” He sings the words as he says it. “That’s why I’d do it! Surprise! You’re going to go splitter splatter!”

The two boys Roman saw using blue platforms land. Virgil glances up but Logan is long out of sight.

“It must be more than that,” Roman mutters.

They wouldn’t just randomly drop them for the fun of it, especially if they were going to give time for people to calm down after the fact. It doesn’t make any—

Roman hasn’t even finished the thought when everything goes pitch black.

Someone screams. Then, people are calling out names and the iron circle they’re located in fills with shuffling. Roman is touched by at least three people, all of which he fully chucks off to the side. He doesn’t need to call out to know if Remus is standing behind him; unlike the rest of these imbeciles, Roman’s been trained to recognize his brother’s heartbeat, his very breath.

The darkness doesn’t stay that way for very long.

Suddenly, a glowing blue dome appears off to the side. A whisper of fire shimmers in front of him, an actual flashlight to the left of that. But it's odd, what the light does.

Instead of illuminating the area, it just becomes a landmark. It's similar to seeing a tree in a field; the tree itself doesn't allow for more sight, but it gives more depth to an area, creating a marker for a walk back.

It goes very quiet.

Roman stands there, on edge and yet purposely relaxed. He doesn’t have to be a genius to know that this darkness isn’t natural, however, it is worrying that he doesn’t know who this quirk belongs to. Roman and Remus have been grilled since birth about all tiers of the government officials, including this school and not once did someone with the power of darkness come up.

Logic stands however, that if they can create darkness, they may also be able to see into it.

So Roman tucks away the little fear bubbling within him. After all, it’s not like he hasn’t been trained to fight in the dark. Even if it's not his most impressive skill, he’s certainly better than everyone else here (save Remus, although Roman would never admit that to his face).

There’s a thump off next to the dome and Roman wonders quietly if the boy he saw earlier has finally landed.

Chapter Text

The lights shut off as Logan climbs and instantly, Logan freezes. He blinks a couple of times, wondering if he should wait for his eyes to adjust, before his brain catches up with his natural reaction and he quietly scolds himself.

This is the work of the Spy.

The Spy doesn’t have a name. Or a face. According to the public actually, the Spy doesn’t exist at all. But enough newspapers have celebrated interestingly timed deaths in politics due to random power outages and, well, it wasn’t hard to figure out.

There would be no adjusting to this light.

So Logan closes his eyes and pulls up the image of the metal circle he’s crawling down. He can picture the smooth dark metal, the little nubs his fingers desperately cling to. His arms burn, and his legs are trembling underneath him.

It would be so easy to drop.

Logan could drop. East Bridge would never let an aspiring student die of their direct action, especially a task like this that required specific kinds of quirks. The entire experience is an obvious way to test reactions, creativity, and probably to disorient the students. The darkness is just the next step in that test.

But Logan can’t afford to lose points on a single one. He must be perfect, must be exceptionary.

He grits his teeth and eyes closed, Logan continues his way down the little nubs.

The image in his mind moves with him. Logan doesn’t remember counting the number of nails he has left to the bottom, but suddenly he knows the answer is 174 and he knows he’s about 30 ft up.

170.

163.

Logan’s breaths come in short gasps. That’s fine. He’ll keep going until his body can’t produce any more ATP and his muscles finally give out.

He has too.

He wonders for a moment, as he works his way down, why the Spy would reveal themselves like this. It doesn’t make the most amount of sense; if nobody knows that you exist and then you suggest you do, surely that’s an overall loss.

Logan answers the question almost as soon as he asks it. Why would the Spy not care? Because it no longer matters. The Spy’s work is done. They’ve retired.

Why would they help with the introductory exam then?

Logan answers that question too. They’re going to be one of the teachers.

3 ft left.

Logan lets himself drop onto the floor. He lands on his feet with a thump, squatting down to keep the blowback from his knees and then standing upright. His eyes open.

Fire sparks a bit in front of him, a flashlight off to the side of that. Logan immediately recognizes Patton’s glowing blue dome and he can only guess that both Virgil and Patton are underneath it.

His hands tingle.

He wants to go to them. There’s a strange pull in his chest, telling him to reach out to Virgil and Patton. Especially Virgil. He can still feel the way Virgil’s sweatshirt slid between his fingers, the almost painful instances where the sides of Virgil’s hands brushed across his.

Logan winces. He takes a step back from the blue dome.

When he has something, he’ll go to it. Something about what they should do in the test or any information. Then, they wouldn’t mind when he asks to join them.

He’d be useful.

Logan closes his eyes again.

There were 490 people that had entered the metal room. 10, not including himself and Virgil, had managed to keep themselves from falling by pressing themselves against the wall. 7 remained at the top.

He didn’t know how many had fallen, but he had seen around 94 people using their powers to slow or stop their fall. One person had used an air quirk, another repeatedly blasting fire. A couple had grown wings, and of course…

Roman and Remus used their ability to summon any real object. The power of creativity.

Logan blocks the thought out of his head.

Based on that, he’d estimate about 400 people just fully fell, quirk unhelpful in this situation. They wouldn’t have moved very much, so the arrangement of people would be similar to how they had been standing at the top, probably slightly shifted towards the wall.

He plants that image into his head. Logan adds Virgil and Patton standing under the blue dome and randomly guesses the depths of all the other people in the room.

Any time he hears a shuffle from one side of the room, the map he just created has a faceless body move with it, in accordance to whatever the shuffle might be. In general, nobody seems to be moving much at all.

That can’t have been what the Spy was going for.

Logan drops his map, placing it deep into the instinctual part of his brain for safekeeping, and then summons up a different image. It’s a block of a city, a clearly unfunded area where the buildings are crumbling and the streets have more potholes than cement. Logan expertly walks them, jumping over the trash left stewing after the pickup truck missed this neighborhood for 2 weeks and turning at the street sign “Magnolia.”

He picks up a box on the side of the road and opens it. Newspapers are almost overflowing, all on random clips of the Spy. He shifts through it rapidly.

... Storm Stella has shut down the entirety of the Northwest area…

...Prime Minister Dora got into an accident last night, after attempting to drive in the storm…

...Mayor Carson…

...Prince Edward…

...Senator Quilla…

…had a stroke…

…had undiagnosed diabetes…

…found dead…

…dead…

Logan shuts the box. He stood alone in the alleyway, pondering.

There was no way the Spy wants him to kill anybody. While that might’ve been their job, Logan can’t imagine they would be allowed to teach a bunch of 20 something year olds if they were outwardly that bloodthirsty.

But all of the Spy’s hits had a target. One person they were supposed to take out, one main objective.

Which meant the fall wasn’t just about creativity. It was to separate the students, to ensure nobody could be quite sure of their surroundings. And to see who would figure out whatever it was they wanted figured out first.

This is a game of wits.

Logan smiles.

This he could do.

He could easily metagame. In fact, Logan reckons he’s one of the only ones who could; most people don’t know the Spy exists.

However.

Metagaming would be used to make his accomplishment look cheap. It could discredit him.

Logan needs to solve this purely off of the hints he’s meant to use.

So Logan lets his city fall away and pulls the self-made map back into his mind’s eye. He isn’t sure how long he spent in his city, but the map hasn’t moved very much, which suggests it hasn’t been longer than five minutes.

Good.

Most of the people are around the edges, whether by design of the fall, or due to their desperation to find any friction possible. The few that are in the middle are the ones that have been able to catch themselves.

Roman and Remus are among them.

Logan shakes himself off. He has to think about this logically, apathetically. The drop had been meant to test reaction time, but it was likely that it was also meant to ensure those with a good reaction time were rewarded.

Which meant the first clue is in the middle.

Logan takes a step towards the center, arranging his map in his mind as he goes. He’s maybe four steps away from the center when he has to pause and take a moment to breathe.

Roman and Remus can’t see. They don’t know who he is. They don’t know what he is. Constant murmuring is covering up his well placed footsteps; there is no reason anyone should even know somebody is moving among them.

He’s fine.

He’s just being stupid.

Logan takes another step. At this point, he’s standing at the very center of the map. The blue dome is off to the left, fire much closer now, and the flashlight keeps bobbing in front of him, likely as the person shifts it from hand to hand.

Logan squats down. His right hand reaches out, brushing against the floor. For a brief moment, everything is perfectly smooth; his fingers don’t catch on any groove or even a piece of sand carried over by one of the students.

Then it does.

Almost instinctively, Logan brings up a second map of the room. He leaves the one of people off to the side, still in his mind’s eye but no longer encompassing his direct attention, and creates a snapshot of just the floor in front of him. He can’t see the color of the floor so he makes it a dark gray. Then, slowly, Logan traces the bumps again.

They’re small, patterned. Clustered not randomly, but in a straight line.

It’s braille.

Logan doesn’t even have to jump into his city to pull out the numerous signs he’s seen with braille underneath it. It takes him less than a second to construct the language in his head and he once again brushes his fingers over the groves.

A. M. I. I. N. T. H. E. R. O. O. M.

Am I in the room?

There’s another line underneath it.

C. A. N. Y. O. U. F. I. N. D. M. E.

Can you find me?

The final line is the one Logan holds onto.

P. R. E. S. S.

Press.

Logan pushes down.

He knows it's dumb as he does it; if there had been some kind of trick to it, he would’ve felt it in either the floor around it or the actual braille. Still, it would be dumber not to try.

Nothing happens and Logan stands.

Press.

A button? Pressure? Press conference? Press on nails?

On instinct, Logan goes to pull up all the newspapers he found on the Spy, wanting to apply context to the situation. He shoves them back down almost as soon as he pulls them up.

Metagaming isn’t allowed; he uses the hints he’s given and nothing else.

Am I in the room? Can you find me? Press.

His first thought is that the Spy is talking about themselves. Are they in the room? Can he find them?

Logan dismisses the thought. If the Spy was talking about finding themselves, “press” would’ve been first. It would be a command that would lead Logan to finding them.

He’s supposed to find the thing to press. Which is likely a set of buttons, purely because of the situation he’s in, and it’s likely against one of the walls because putting anything on the floor could lead to somebody accidentally stepping on it.

The buttons would have to be high enough up that nobody would find them accidently and low enough that Logan wouldn’t have spotted them before the Spy made everything go dark.

Which wall is it against?

Which way is the braille facing?

Logan hops up to his feet. He keeps his shuffling to a minimum, trying to keep anyone from noticing the commotion. Slowly, Logan makes his way to the right, sideways from Virgil and Patton’s blue dome and closer to the flashlight.

It’s easy to stop just before the wall; the map in his head has been pulled back up and he double-checks that he’s right up against it before reaching out and touching it with a single hand.

His fingers brush up against the same kind of knob he made his way down.

Already, Logan can feel his body beginning to tremble at the very idea of climbing back up. He already aches and he wants nothing more than simply drop beside the knobs and go to sleep.

Instead, Logan puts his fingers against the little knobs. He calls up the same image he used to climb down and forces his body to move.

He gets up 71 feet before he reaches out and brushes against the smooth metal.

Another foot. Smooth metal.

Another.

Another.

His fingers tap the edge of a carefully carved rectangle of stone.

Press.

Logan does.

“Welcome to your second trail!” A new voice sounds over the loudspeakers. Shuffling instantly increases but the whispering stops instantly.

Logan grips the little knobs tightly. Most of him is ready to start the trip down but he can’t get rid of that small instinct saying that he doesn’t know if his task is done yet.

“Your next task is to make it out of the room.”

There’s a loud groaning noise and Logan blinks. The groan almost shreeks, grinding metal against unforgivable metal.

He drops his map and opens his eyes.

It’s still black, but now the fire is partially hidden and it's slowly disappearing, as if somebody is raising a black wall up over it.

No, Logan corrects. Not as if somebody is raising a wall over it. Walls are rising, covering the light, separating the people even more.

They’re putting everyone in a maze.

“You have twenty minutes to find the exit,” the voice continues. “Good luck.”

Logan is about to jump down, when the voice continues, not out loud like it had before, but quietly, a whisper next to his ear.

“A floor will appear next to you. When you get on it, it will escort you to the exit and you will be free to get to the next task.”

Logan pauses.

“Spy?”

The voice pauses. “What?”
“I assume you’re the Spy? I could be wrong, of course, but I haven’t heard of anyone else with your quirk.”

“You’ve heard of me?”

The newspaper clippings give an instinctual hello.

“I’ve read about strange occurrences and was able to connect them.”

“Fascinating.” The voice hums. “I look forward to seeing how you proceed.”

But Logan is already shaking his head. “I have to complete the maze.”

“You completed my puzzle and survived the drop. That’s enough to prove yourself.”

“It’s not.”

Before the Spy can respond, Logan begins his way back down the wall and towards the further task in front of him.

Chapter Text

Virgil is already struggling to breath when there’s a loud screeching sound around him. On instinct, he reaches out and grabs Patton’s hand, drawing his friend closer. He can feel his quirk building within him, but he shoves it away. Without a target, using it would be like trying to stab air.

When the screeching finally stops, it's almost worse. He winces with the quiet, breaths picking up, and he can feel his insides sucking in on themselves. His chest is so tight it's painful and while his eyes aren’t at the point of burning yet, they are beginning to prick with the efforts of shoving tears back.

Then the floor begins to move. It rises all around him, not quickly, and not fast enough to be harmful, but just like the walls, changing around him while he can’t do anything to stop it.

He goes to reach into his sweatshirt pocket, and only remembers when his fingers close around air that he had removed it earlier.

“Virgil? Are you okay?”

“Dad.”

“What?” Patton’s voice is soft, but slightly higher pitched than normal and it wavers on the last syllable. “Virgil?”

“Want Dad.”

“Oh.” Patton goes very quiet. “Janus isn’t here Virgil. We’re at the Superhero Initiation Test. Remember?”

“Yes.”

Virgil closes his eyes.

Exhale, Virgil.

He pushes all the air out of his lungs, making the whoosh noise Janus had taught him back when he first joined his household.

Now, inhale for four seconds.

Virgil’s already counting in his head. He stutters slightly in breath at the last second, but Janus’s voice stays soft and Virgil keeps going.

Hold for seven. You’re doing well, Virgil. Keep going.

He has to exhale early, and the moment he does so, Virgil inhales, back to the panicked terrified breathing of earlier.

That’s alright. We’re just going to start again. Exhale.

Virgil lets out the whoosh and tries again. This time, he makes it all the way through the seven seconds of stilled breath, and he exhales in rhythm to the sound of Janus’s firm count to eight inside his head.

He repeats this until his breath evens out and he’s finally able to swallow, stand up straight, and look around.

It’s still dark. Patton’s dome remains up and around both of them. Virgil can’t see his friend, but he can imagine the way Patton is halfway between reaching out for him and staying still, waiting to see if he’s able to calm himself, or if he wants Patton to help.

Patton’s always been very good at reading those lines.

“Virgil? Do you need a break?”

“I— no, shit—”

“Language!”

“Patton, I’m sorry.” Virgil’s voice comes out in a rush. “This is really important to you, and you have a time limit, and I’m just breaking down—”

“No, Virgil!” Patton’s hands hit him in the face gently, probably in an attempt to hug him. “Oops, sorry. Virgil, I’m never going to be upset with you for having an anxiety attack!”

“I should’ve— I dunno, held it together better or—”

“You’re fine!” Patton promised. “Look at me.” There’s a short silence. “I’m just going to assume that you’re looking.”

Virgil snorts. His hands still shake but they're slowing down now. He doesn't have to think about his breathing.

“We’ve got plenty of time. Alright? I’m not upset. We’ll move on when you’re ready.”

“Okay. Yeah.” Virgil nods. “Let’s do it.”

Their hands fumble back into each other’s grasps and Patton lets the dome drop. While the light is gone, it’s not the same as turning off a flashlight; there is no plunge into darkness. It’s more like watching a tree vanish from midair.

Virgil blinks anyway.

“Alright,” Patton says. “We’ll go back to where we think the wall is, and I’ll leave tiny little force fields on the ground as we go. I think if I make them small enough, I can hold them. Okay?”

“Yeah.”

Virgil’s voice is small. They begin to walk, and all Virgil can think about is how useless he’s being. Patton protected him in the first task, he got him down from the ledge when the floor dropped from beneath them, and now, once again, Virgil is letting his friend lead.

Even if he manages to get into the superhero program, at this point he can’t say he really deserves it.

“Okay. Okay. I don’t know what to do.”

“Patton?”

“I’ve hit a wall.” Virgil can easily imagine his friend's grin, especially as a comically loud slap against metal resonates throughout the room. “I’ve just hit it, Virgil. I don’t know what to do.”

Virgil snorts, even as he rolls his eyes. Some of the tightness in his stomach loosened. “Do you actually not know what to do?”

“Oh course not!” Patton's voice is lighter than normal. “But that’s okay! Pick a direction!”

Virgil blinks.

Right? Maybe? But what if right is wrong, and he leads Patton away from the exit. It’s been his friend's dream for so long he can’t just take that away from him.

Left? But left could be wrong too, left could end with a dead end, or numerous turns that keep them lost. He’d already wasted a couple of minutes on his anxiety attack, he can’t really afford to waste more.

But he’s just wasting minutes right now, isn’t he? He’s not responding fast enough, and the 20 minute timer is ticking.

“You pick,” Virgil finally manages.

Patton instantly pulls him to the right and Virgil feels even more useless than before.

Each second feels like 20 minutes in and of itself, and Virgil is shocked how with every turn they take, they still have yet to be eliminated. The two of them bump into other people a couple of times but nobody wants to fight in the dark and it just leads to mumbled apologies and continued walking.

“...can’t be the test.”

Virgil pauses. Patton tries to tug him forward, but Virgil keeps himself still.

“Awww, does ickle Romankins not like the dark?”

“Shut up, Remus.” There’s a bit of shuffling. “This doesn’t practice any sort of skill! It’s just luck!”

“The greatest skill on our side is luck. Appreciate it.” The other one speaking, Remus apparently, adds a voice as he says it, goofily stern and higher than his own. He’s clearly mocking someone's mantra, probably something repeated to him a lot by the almost robotic way he’s able to spit out the words.

“There must be a trick we’re not getting,” Roman mutters. “I’m not going to be kicked out by something like this.”

Blood is rushing in Virgil’s head, but around all the noise, an actual coherent thought manages to make itself clear.

There must be a trick.

“Patton,” Virgil says, “don’t you think there has to be something more than just… wandering? Like this is fu— this is stupid. We’re accomplishing nothing.”

“Virgil,” and Patton clearly misunderstands, because his voice is softer than normal. “We’re going to be fine-”

Something hot burns in his stomach.

“I’m not saying we’re not. I’m saying we need a better plan than wandering aimlessly.”

Instantly Virgil feels bad, but he doesn’t regret saying it. He can’t see Patton’s face, so he’s not sure how his friend is responding, but he can feel the way Patton’s hand twitches in his grasp.

“Alright!” Patton’s voice is just as high and good natured as before. “What do you think we should do?”

And this is where Virgil pauses. Because while he’s certain the answer can’t be to just run around in a circle, he also has no idea what the actual answer is. He’s never been able to look at any sort of puzzle and dissect it. He knows that that puzzle piece doesn’t go there, but he can’t pinpoint where it should be.

“I—” He trips over himself. “I just know that this is wrong.”

There’s a short silence. Again, the hand in Virgil’s twitches.

“I mean, I know that we have to figure out a trick,” Virgil says. He pulls his hand from Patton’s to talk, making sharp sort of motions that he forgets Patton can’t see until several moments later. “If we keep walking, we’re never going to get anything done. We’ll be kicked out.”

“Virgil, I think you might be thinking worst case, which is okay, but—”

He’s not listening.

“It’s not just the worst case!” Virgil’s voice is still quiet, despite the edge coating each word. “I mean, it might be, but I think… there’s some logic behind it, okay? I’m not just— okay, I am just shooting in the dark—

“In the dark!” Patton says gleefully. “Get it? Because we can’t see?”

Virgil shakes himself off. “There must be something more than just walking. Maybe something on the walls, or—”

“Virgil, I touched the walls,” Patton reminds. “They’re just smooth.”

Virgil’s eyes are still shut. He shifts back and forth and very lightly begins to pinch the edge of his fingers. It’s not nearly enough to hurt, but he lets the pressure gently begin to organize his thoughts.

Patton’s done nothing wrong. He just wants to get the maze done and while Virgil might disagree method wise, it doesn’t make Patton the bad guy. He needs to stop feeling like every attack against his argument is an attack against him. It’s far too close to his near anxiety attack for him to be getting heated with someone, but Virgil can’t help it; he knows this is wrong. He knows that they will fail.

His left foot shifts down. He shifts back to the right. To the left. To the right.

Virgil halts abruptly.

He’d been so caught up in trying to stay calm, Virgil hadn’t even considered what had caused his panic. Obviously, the walls were to create a maze, but the floor…

“Does the floor feel different to you?”

“Virgil—”

“Does it feel different to you?” His voice is sharp, and Virgil can keep blaming it on his earlier anxiety attack or he can admit that Patton is just getting on his nerves.

There’s a quiet shuffling and Virgil realizes a second later that Patton is reaching down to touch it.

“I mean slope. It’s on a slope.”

“Um… hold on… you’re right! What do you think that means?” Patton pops his lips. “Should we follow the slope?”

“It’s better than just wandering. I guess.”

“Definitely!” And Patton’s voice is full of such unrelenting optimism that Virgil finds himself nodding with him. “Do you think we should go up it? Should we go down?”

“You won’t get a chance to do either.” The new voice makes Virgil’s jump and on instinct, his quirk raises up, ready to strike. The person sounds almost like they’re laughing.

A second person actually giggles from behind them and then Virgil is able to pinpoint the two of them. It’s the boys that gave him the idea that there must be a trick to it, Roman and Remus. He’d thought they managed to get far enough away that they wouldn’t be nearby, but…

“You sound so spooky, bro! Ooooooo! I’m a ghost!! Come out of the dark to slice your throats and leave you to drown in your own blood!”

Virgil’s hands curl into fists.

“That’s a little far, Remus,” Roman mutters. “But. Might as well pick off some of the competition.”

Virgil has just enough time to raise his arms in protection of his face before a fist slams into both forearms. They bark out in pain, but Virgil grins.

He’s already won.

“What?” It must’ve been Roman who hit him, because his voice is high and stutters as he speaks. “What is… Remus? Are you here?”

“Of course! All the fun is here!”

There’s a splattering next to him and Patton cries out in pain. A glowing blue dome appears off to the side of Virgil but it’s followed by a loud giggle.

“Do you really think that will work against little ole’ me?”

Roman whimpers. “Mother, please—”

Virgil lets his quirk continue to eat at Roman’s brain and moves for the dome. His heart is pounding in his ears and he stops when he gets right up to the light.

“Patton!”

There’s another cry, and the dome drops. Every single light Patton has been using to mark their way drops as well.

“Oh, that’s no fun. Don’t just pass out on me.”

Virgil doesn’t need to think before he’s flinging himself towards the noise. Something on his skin sparks as he hits both Patton and Remus. He doesn’t pause as he unleashes his quirk on the both of them, throwing them into whatever hellhole they hate the most.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry, Patton.” Virgil recognizes his friend's mind instantly; while he’s never used his quirk on him before, there’s something about his power that allows him to become familiar with the minds he’s around often. He can’t explain it but it ensures that Patton is only manipulated for a second before Virgil rips him back into reality.

Roman and Remus are left with Virgil’s quirk slowly massaging their minds.

Instantly, Virgil drops next to Patton. He slowly places his hands down until he hits Patton’s chest. When he pulls back, there’s something wet and sticky coating his hand and everything in Virgil’s mind goes silent.

“Patton, Patton, can you hear me? Can you hear me, Patton?”

His friend moans.

“You’re going to be okay. I’m going to apply pressure and then when this test is over they’ll take you to a hospital—”

“Have to finish.” Patton’s voice is so small Virgil can barely hear him.

“We will, next year, I promise, but right now we need to make sure you’re okay.” He can’t really think; his hands press down on Patton’s stomach, but he can still feel blood oozing out. Virgil’s eyes are hot and heavy and his body shakes but his face is dry and his hands hold still. “What matters is you.”

“N-no. We have to finish.”

“Next year—”

“This year.”

Virgil grimaces just in time for a hand to loop around his neck and rip him to the floor.

“Found you!” Remus sings from above him. “Naughty little visions aren’t going to work on me! But do you know what will work on you?” Something cold presses up against Virgil’s side. “Can you guess? Can you? Can you?!”

Virgil claws at Remus’s hand. Everything around him is so sharp, so annoyingly painful that he almost cares more about his stupid heartbeat than he does about the knife.

There has to be a way out of this. There has to be, not because there always is a way out, but because Virgil needs to save Patton. He can’t afford for there to be anything other than a means of escape.

The hand tightens around Virgil’s throat, but he wouldn’t be able to breathe normally right now even without the added pressure. Remus sits on top of him and leans forward to hold both the knife to Virgil's side and keep his hand around Virgil's throat; the setup is forces Remus to lean down the slanted floor instead of up towards the top of the hill and he uses Virgil's body as a stabilizer.

Virgil drops the vision on him, throws him back into it, and then drops it again. He does it rapidly and Remus makes a sort of sound that sounds a bit like a dog expecting to be kicked.

The knife twitches against his side, digging in just enough to sting, and Virgil throws out an elbow as he rips Remus to and from reality. It smacks into something and Remus grunts.

The knife clatters across the floor, letting out an especially loud bang as it hits the maze wall on the other side. Remus’s body lurches with it and he manages to catch himself by tightening his grip on Virgil’s neck.

“You… goddamn… jock…”

Remus snorts from above him, but the noise sounds almost painful. “That’s your best insult?” Another knife presses up against Virgil’s side. “Here’s mine.”

Fucking knife bitch.

Virgil pivots the right side of his body as hard as he can. Luck is finally on his side; the knife is set up downhill. Virgil doesn't have to think too hard as he shoves his body forward and chucks Remus off of him. Remus goes rolling down the hill, knife clattering with a shriek of metal on metal.

Okay. Okay. Virgil doesn’t have time to gather his thoughts. He gets to his feet shakily and searches in the darkness for Patton's limp body. There’s a hiss in the distance and Remus’s boots make a thump as they hit the ground.

“Sorry Patton,” Virgil whispers. Both arms come around to grab underneath his friend's armpits. Instead of dragging him up the hill and away from Remus, Virgil tugs him downhill.

It’s what saves him.

There’s a gush of wind rushing past him and then a mix between a banging and a scratching noise as the tip of Remus’s knife hits right where Virgil would’ve been had he gone the other direction.

“FUCK!” Remus screams. “Where are you?! I’m going to fucking kill you!”

Virgil wants to respond. Something boiling within him is begging him to respond, but he concentrates on getting Patton to safety instead.

That doesn’t stop him from leaving Remus in whatever his worst nightmare is until they are finally fully out of distance.

Virgil shutters to a stop and is in the processing of placing Patton on the floor when the boy moans.

“Don’t… stop…”

“Patton—”

“Don’t! Please.” There are tears in his friend’s eyes and Virgil doesn’t think it from the pain. “Don’t.”

Virgil closes his eyes. He wants his favorite fiddle cube, but it's back at home on his nightstand, not allowed in the East Bridge University Testing zone. Instead, he gnaws at the fleshy part of the bottom of his mouth, careful not to break skin.

“If you pass out, we’re done.” Virgil keeps his voice firm so Patton won’t be able to tell how much his heartbeat increases with each word he says. “Okay?”

“I… won’t.”

For some reason, the quiet broken words don’t inspire Virgil with much confidence.

Chapter Text

It takes Logan all of three minutes to find the exit.

The maze itself was relatively simple not to get lost in; he simply created a map in his head as he walked, and used what he had encountered to predict the rest of it. The map adjusted itself with every new discovery.

The room he stands in now is a simple metal box, about the size of three public high school classrooms. It’s an exact cube, and seven lights have been implanted into the ceiling. There’s two exits; the one Logan entered—a flimsy white cloth hanging over a seven foot frame—and a heavy metal door on the opposite side of the room.

The first thing Logan does is check the room for any gadgets. There is one on the wall; a sort of box thing he can only guess was where he was originally supposed to enter, had he listened to the Spy and avoided the maze. Besides that, the room is void.

This is just a waiting period.

And so Logan waits.

He’s sitting against the wall, directly in between the two doors. It takes five minutes and 34 seconds before the next person enters.

It’s a girl, with black hair tied into locks and glaring brown eyes. Her hand lights up with fire at the sight of him.

“I’m not going to fight you,” Logan says calmly.

“You sure about that?”

“Yes.”

The fire dies. “Good.”

She drops herself down on the other side of the room, directly across from him.

One.

It takes four more seconds before a group of ten people fall through the entrance.

Eleven.

Twenty-eight.

Forty-three.

He still doesn’t see Roman or Remus. Or Virgil and Patton.

Ninety-five.

One hundred and eleven.

Could this task really be too hard for them? Virgil and Patton are understandable but Logan knows Roman and Remus have been training for this since birth.

He leans forward slightly.

One hundred and fifty-nine.

There’s something warm glowing in his chest: something painfully hot, yet also soothing. It takes Logan a solid thirty seconds to fully place the feeling and once he does, he instantly tries to crush it.

But he still can’t help but to stare at the door, hands curling in and out at his sides, barely breathing on the extraordinary off-chance he misses them.

One hundred seventy-two.

Two hundred.

Two hundred twenty-three.

The constant stream of people entering the room is beginning to die off. It’s still consistently fast, but they’re no longer tripping over themselves.

Roman and Remus still aren’t here.

Two hundred thirty-five.

Virgil’s back pushes against the cloth door and Logan is immediately on his feet. Then he sits back down again.

It’s strange, how quickly he’s decided that he wants Virgil and Patton to get through this. That feeling alone is almost enough to keep Logan from going to them.

But then Virgil drags Patton’s body into view and Logan gets to his feet once more.

Virgil drops Patton onto the ground, shoving quite a few people out of his way as he does so. None of the other kids do anything other than move aside, which gives Logan a clear line of passage to both Virgil and Patton.

“What happened?”

“He… he was stabbed.” Virgil’s voice is near frantic; his hands tremble and now that they’re no longer holding Patton up they’re wringing each knuckle out, pulling and twisting like one might remove a bottlecap. “Remus—”

Logan has to swallow to keep his face emotionless.

“—and Roman, these two boys, they attacked us in the maze. I managed to get us away, but Patton said—”

“Need to finish,” Patton whispers and Logan looks down. “Need to get through it.”

“You have two more tests. There is no way you’re completing them in your condition.” Logan’s voice is curt. “Patton, I am going to check the wound. Do I have your permission to do so?”

“I have to finish the tasks!”

“Patton, I need permission to touch you.”

“I need—”

“Patton.”

The boy whimpers and Logan ignores the small twinge of guilt. He does need to examine the wound and if Patton is simply going to ignore him while he talks, Logan is going to have to make sure he’s heard.

“Yes.”

Virgil kneels next to Logan as he lifts up Patton’s shirt. It’s clearly designed to be some kind of fighting gear, because it clings to his body and it takes Logan at least 20 seconds to lift it up.

It hasn’t hit anything major. The knife is gone. Two-hundred-forty two. It’s still bleeding.

Logan reaches down and removes his left sneaker. It’s two sizes too big for him, mostly because of what was available, but Logan reaches into it and removes a tiny ziplock bag with an empty plastic bottle, and a nearly depleted roll of white bandage.

“What’s that?”

Logan doesn’t look at Virgil, but he knows Virgil is watching him. From the moment Logan had begun to work on Patton, Virgil has marked every movement and his shuttered breath when Logan removed the bag lets Logan know just how little Virgil trusts him.

Smart.

Two-hundred-forty nine.

His bottle of rubbing alcohol has long since been emptied, so Logan doesn’t bother to take it out of the bag. He does however immediately apply to bandages. There’s not enough to wrap around Patton, but it's a sanitary cloth that he can use to apply pressure.

Patton whimpers.

“You’re going to be okay, Patton,” Virgil tells him. His voice is forcibly firm, but it still shakes at the last note. “You’re going to be fine.” He turns to Logan. “You can help him right?”

Two-hundred-fifty two.

Logan closes his eyes.

He’s back in his city, but a different part of it than the area that contained the box about the Spy. It’s still filthy and trash still litters the ground but there’s one entrance that has been cleaned; it's an entrance that always has fresh food placed at the front door that nobody ever takes.

Logan steps around it and into the well sanitized brick Doctor’s Office.

It’s clearly not designed for medical usage, but the community has gathered up enough resources over the years to make it comfortable. Pristine tools lay secure behind glass cabinets, and there are several beds laid out, none white, none containing paper sheets, but all completely clean.

Logan walks past all of that to the bookshelf leaning sideways in the corners and removes the medical books he’s only ever read once.

He opens his eyes.

“It likely hasn’t stabbed anything important. Patton was very lucky. If he gets through this, he should be able to make a full recovery.”

“If?” Virgil’s voice is high. “There must be something we can do!”

“We are doing it. We’re applying pressure. Beyond that, only someone with a healing quirk would be able to make any kind of difference until we can get him to a hospital.”

Two-hundred-fifty four.

Virgil eyes flash. “Right.” He gets to his feet. “Does anyone here have a healing quirk!?”

That’s not going to work.

Even if they did have such a quirk, which is fully possible, there’s no way they’re either going to reveal that quirk to the group or help the competition. The first task was instrumental for a number of different reasons, but one was that it very clearly divided people. Now that everyone has chosen their respective groups—whether that be with or without others—they’re not going to suddenly change them.

Sure enough, nobody responds.

It might be better that way anyway, Logan thinks. A healing quirk would allow Patton to finish the tasks, but the power does tend to leave the body weaker, instead of stronger like the natural process would.

“Alright,” Virgil says, and Logan is struck by his dark tone. “Let’s try this differently. I said, does anyone here have a fucking healing quirk?”

All at once, half of the room screams.

Logan jolts up. His hand is still steady against Patton’s but he glances from Virgil, back to the cowering kids, and then back to Virgil.

Virgil’s head straightens and all of the kids let out long gasping breaths.

“Anyone?” He asked again, darker still.

Nobody responds, Virgil’s head tilts and the entire room seems to flinch.

“I do.” The voice comes from in the middle of the group. A path forms and a boy about 6’5 with muscled limbs and a bit of fat comes out from the crowd. “I can help him.”

Two-hundred-fifty four.

Instantly, Virgil focuses on the man. He drags him up to Patton’s side and Logan shifts slightly so he can sit beside him and get a proper look at everything that’s going on.

The boy kneels next to Logan, utterly dwarfing him. “Move your hand.”

Logan does so immediately. The cloth is sticky enough with Patton’s blood and sweat that it doesn’t move an inch.

When the boy goes to put his hand on Patton’s stomach, Virgil hisses.

“What’re you doing?”

“Healing him,” the boy deadpans. His entire palm presses up against the wound and a warm golden light sinks from the boy's hands and into Patton.

Two-hundred-fifty six.

Patton whimpers slowly dissipate and he lets out a low breath. It doesn’t take any more than a few seconds for Patton to sit up, and stare at the boy in wonder. The wound is still there, but it looks weeks old and Logan doesn’t need to jump into his city to know that it shouldn’t do much to impact Patton's performance.

“That’s amazing!” Blood coats his torso, but Patton wriggles around and the cloth flutters to the ground. “Thank you! Thank you so much! What’s your name?”

The boy just gets to his feet and turns to Virgil. “Don’t use your quirk on me again.”

Virgil’s eyes narrow.

“He won’t! He really doesn’t like to!” Patton’s promise is immediate and he waves to get the healer’s attention. “He was just really worried about me!”

Logan’s gaze flickers between Patton and Virgil. His index finger twitches slightly and he forces himself to hold his hand still.

Virgil isn’t looking at Patton. He holds his body steady, but his fingers are still twisting at his sides. His back isn’t straight, but it's tense, and muscles twinge slightly. The hair on the back of his neck is standing up, and Virgil’s jaw is set forward.

Patton isn’t looking at Virgil either. His expression is soft but he keeps twitching, both reaching towards Virgil and simultaneously pulling away.

The boy glances between Virgil and Patton. “You owe me.”

“I don’t owe you shit,” Virgil snarls. “You helped because I forced you, not out of the goodness of your heart.”

For a moment, the room is quiet.

Two hundred sixty.

Then, the boy’s steps thump away as he turns and stalks back into the crowd.

It doesn’t take long for whispers to start up, and then it’s back to being comfortingly loud. It’s not the same kind of noise that had occurred during the first exam; it’s not cautious greetings and quiet evaluations. By now, most people have identified their acquaintances and speak in their normal voice.

“Patton!” Virgil drops himself to his friends side and Logan feels himself retreat from the scene. He pulls back as Virgil throws his arms around Patton and has to swallow to keep his shoulders from tingling at the mere idea of that touch. “Are you alright? Don’t you ever fuc— don’t you ever do that again, you understand me?!”

“It’s alright, Virgil.” Patton’s hands stroke down Virgil’s back and Logan has to turn away. He glances back towards the door.

Two-hundred sixty two.

There’s only about forty seconds left until the Spy’s twenty minute time limit is over.

Roman and Remus still aren’t here.

“I’m safe. You saved me. And we managed to finish!!” Patton almost sounds like he’s singing. “This is good!”

“You could’ve died!”

“But I didn’t. Because of you!”

“Patton—”

“There’s no need to worry anymore, Virgil! We’re okay! Okay?”

Virgil’s breathing hasn’t calmed down. His body has tightened around Patton’s and Logan can see the way Virgil is continuously reaching down to pull up on his quirk, most likely a protective instinct, and then shoving it back down.

“You’re allowed to still be fearful,” Logan offers. “Your sympathetic nervous system has been working overtime to ensure that you and Patton get here safe. Based on your relatively unharmed status and Patton’s single wound, I would hypothesize that you handled yourself very well in the fight, but that doesn’t mean your body and you aren’t still reacting to it.”

Virgil pulls back from Patton a little. “Yeah,’ he mumbles.

He’s no longer turning his hands over, so Logan turns back to the door.

They only have ten seconds left.

Could Virgil really have stopped them?

Two-hundred sixty four.

Logan leans forward. His heart is pounding in his chest and all he can think is that he might make it onto the next round while Roman and Remus, who have trained their entire life, may not.

But the answer to his question is given three seconds too soon.

Remus comes through the opening first, Roman right behind him. Both of them appear to be unharmed, but Roman visibly pulls back when he notices Virgil, before forcing a cocky grin on his face. The expression is tight, and his body too stiff for it to be anything but fake as he crosses the entrance threshold.

“Your time is up.”

It's the Spy’s voice. Several people look around, trying to figure out where the noise is coming from, but Logan doesn’t bother. He’d checked this room from head to foot for mechanisms and the only one he’d been able to find is one that he had been meant to use and the lights.

Which of course meant that the sound system had been installed into the lights in order to properly hide it.

Roman is snarling something at Remus. He gestures toward Virgil, movements sharp.

Remus says something back and pats Roman on the back. His hand stays there after he’s hit him a few times and Roman’s shoulders drop just a smidge and the frown on his face loosens.

Logan’s eyes burn.

“Anyone in the maze, please remain where you are and a staff member will come and find you. You are welcome to attempt to reapply and try our initiation process again next year. If you continue to find the exit, you will be denied this privilege.”

“Those who have been successful—”

Many, including Virgil and Patton, jump at the new male voice that continues the announcement. Logan tries his best not to wonder why. It feels like it should be obvious, that if the first test was done by Siren, the second done by the Spy, then the third would clearly be conducted by a new person.

“—will continue onto our third task. Each one of you will enter the room one at a time when the light in the distance turns green. When the light is red, you will not enter or you will be disqualified.”

The heavy metal door at the end of the room begins to creep open. The entryway is dark, but far far off in the distance a green light blinks in slow rhythm. Nobody steps through.

Logan gets to his feet. In this sea of people, he’s not tall enough to get any kind of look at the entrance, made worse by the fact that he’s near the beginning of the room after moving to be near Patton and Virgil.

Somebody takes a step for the entrance. They glance behind them as they do so.

What place do I want to be in when I enter the room?

Half of Logan’s brain is already occupied, running through every news channel he’s ever listened to and every list of superheroes he’s ever read, attempting to place the voice. The other half tackles this new question.

There are two-hundred sixty six people in the room. The next task is going to try and cut them down by half.

—voice is too raspy to be Strike—

Middle is the safe choice, but most people are aware middle is the safe choice, which means people are going to fight for that spot, or stubbornly wait, and Logan can’t see that going well for him. Besides, if he was to create a task, he’d factor in that most people would want to be in the middle and he’d try to punish them somehow.

—he sounds a bit like Countdown, but Countdown is much too unruly to ever be a teacher—

Going first would be a viable option had Logan remained where he had originally planned to be, but now he’s too far over, stuck on the other side. He’s not certain he’d ever want to go first anyway; it's much too risky of a play.

He’s Jupiter.

And everything clicks.

Logan wants to go last. He knows Jupiter; he’s an incredibly famous superhero. While he might not have the temperament of the Roman god, he is very famous for his dueling skills. Logan already knows what the test is going to be.

Jupiter is going to fight every single one of the two-hundred sixty six people in this room.

Chapter Text

It’s been seven hours. The room has mostly cleared out; sixty-two people lounge randomly against the wall, across the floor, and for some, on each other. Patton is draped across Virgil's legs, talking quietly about different names of dogs and why the name “Cat” tends to be overlooked.

Virgil seems wholly interested in the topic, so Patton keeps talking, but his gaze is fixated on the door.

Should he go through?

The adrenaline has long since died. Patton has taken multiple hour long naps in the time he’s been here. His head feels stuffy, his body long and not his own.

Everyone who has been waiting appears to be in the same boat. That is, everyone except Logan. This entire time, Logan has somehow managed to remain awake and at rapt attention. Each person that goes through the door, his eyes sweep.

The light, which had been red a moment ago, suddenly goes green.

Logan’s jaw ticks.

“What’re you doing?” Patton finally asks. Virgil jumps a bit at the change in subject, shifting Patton’s head from his knee to the top of his calf. “Why’re you… watching?”

“At first I was simply working out the exact measures of the test,” Logan responds. His gaze doesn’t move from the door, and he sweeps the bulky girl that crosses the threshold. “Currently however, I am looking to see who will be passing on.”

“What?”

“What’s the test?!” Patton shoots up from Virgil’s lap. “You know what it is? Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I do know what it is.” Logan pauses. “Honestly, I didn’t tell you because I had thought you’d be able to figure it out by yourself. I didn’t want my knowledge to seem redundant.”

A large portion of the audience has their eyes cocked towards them at this point, something Logan clearly doesn’t miss. The light in the tunnel turns green, but nobody steps through. They’re all waiting.

Logan sighs. “My apologies. I had thought it was obvious. The test is to duel Jupiter.”

Patton can’t breathe. “What?”

“There’s no chance of winning that.” Virgil’s voice is calmer than Patton expected, but a sort of darkness writhes underneath it. “We might as well go home.”

“I would concur, if the test was designed that you could only pass on if you won. However, I believe the actual test is that you have to last 90 seconds in the ring with him.”

The light is still green.

“You’ve been counting the seconds between it being green and red?” Patton blinks. “Did… did that girl just pass?”

“No.” Logan’s eyes flicker around the room, at all the people either suspiciously not looking at him or very very obviously staring. “That lasted 32 seconds. Accounting for time to get to the ring and for everything to be properly explained, I’d guess she lasted anywhere from two to four seconds before having been hit out of the ring.”

Silence.

The light is still green.

“When are you planning on going through the door?” A girl asked. Her black hair is tied in locks and she sits against the wall in the middle of the room. She hasn’t moved much from that spot the entire time, only getting up to stretch.

“I’d prefer to go last.”

“Why?”

Logan meets her gaze. “That answer is for my own benefit.”

The girl shrugs. “Fair enough.”

A boy slowly gets to his feet. His hands clench at his sides and very slowly, he begins to walk his way towards the door. For the past five hours, nobody has really noticed who’s stepped up, when and why. Now however, everyone watches as he moves, pausing shortly in the doorframe.

“You could be wrong,” the boy finally says.

“I could be,” Logan agrees. “It is entirely possible.”

“Is it probable?” Virgil asks and that seems to be the right question because Logan’s lips twitch. It couldn’t be called a smile in any way, but he’s certainly less stone faced.

“Is it probable I’m wrong? No. I’d say it’s very very likely that I am correct. However.” Logan nods at the boy. “Nothing in this world is certain.”

That does not seem to make the boy feel any better, but he finally ducks through the door.

The light goes red.

Everyone is watching it now. Every lip is moving, counting the seconds. Patton just watches Logan.

The light is green.

“How long was that?”

“I counted 120—”

“120? I only got 100!”

“It’s definitely not 100—”

“Did he pass?” Patton asks Logan.

“The light was red for 103 seconds,” Logan responds and everyone is quiet again, listening. “The rules were likely explained much quicker to him, given he already knew them. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to estimate 20 seconds.”

“So they didn’t pass,” Virgil mutters.

“No.” Logan is staring at the doorway. “With my estimate, they would’ve lasted eighty-three seconds.”

Seven short of what they needed.

“Your estimate could be wrong,” someone points out.

“Yes,” Logan agrees.

The room goes quiet again.

10 more people go through the door. According to Logan, six pass. Four don’t.

Patton's leg is bouncing where he sits and he has to swallow every four seconds. His body is still loose and not connected, but now his head feels sharp. His hands pulsate with each pump of his heart and he can feel his breath getting caught in his lungs before finding its way out.

Virgil gets to his feet.

“Virgil?”

“There’s no point in me staying here. I’m just freaking out.” Virgil shakes his head back and forth. “I’m going to go.”

Patton wants to beg him to stay. He wants to tell him that they can walk through the door together, because he can still feel that knife plunging into his side and he can still the way Virgil’s hands were tight around his shoulders, dragging him towards the entrance.

He knows why he’s alive right now and it's not because of anything he was able to do.

Virgil glanced over at Logan. “Thank you for telling us the next task.”

Logan jumps at the words. He blinks, then seems to settle back into his body and gives a tiny nod.

The light goes green. Virgil leaves his side. The light goes red.

Patton can’t tell if he’s breathing anymore. His lips move slowly with his count and he scratches his hands against the floor.

50 seconds. It’s red.

80 seconds. It’s red.

100 seconds. It’s red.

At 111 seconds, the light goes green.

Patton looks over at Logan.

“He passed,” Logan says calmly and Patton’s entire body sinks into the floor.

More people pass through the door, until there are only around 23 people waiting to go.

Patton finally gets to his feet. Logan doesn’t look at him and while Patton waves as he leaves the boy, he doesn’t say anything.

When Patton steps through the door, he’s not standing in any long dark corridor with a blinking light at the end of it. He’s standing in light.

There’s another dome above his head, made of light plastic that allows the glow of the sun to wash over the ground but doesn’t allow any details of the outside to come out. The ground is made of dust and it flies up around Patton as he takes a step forward, coating his black fighting suit in light brown.

There are two doors on either side of the room. One has a big red X glowing above it. The other has a large green checkmark.

Right in the middle of the dome, in the middle of what appears to be a 30 ft in diameter metal hula hoops, is the superhero Jupiter.

“Hi!” Patton jogs over to him, stepping up into the dome. “My name’s Patton! Am I going to be fighting you now?”

Jupiter grumbles. “Every single goddamn person has known this is a duel. Who figured it out?” He cocks his head to the side. “Who figured it out? And why the fuck did they bloody tell everyone?!”

“It was a boy named Logan! He’s…” Patton searches for a word to describe him. “... very smart!” Patton takes a moment to rethink all of his interactions with Logan and just shakes his head. “I’m not really sure why he told everyone. He just kinda does that.”

Jupiter scoffs. “He could’ve used that information to give himself a leg up. Instead he decided to give everyone a bloody leg up.”

“Well, he only told like sixty of us.”

“Still! Fucking looney!” Jupiter rolls his eyes. “You have to survive in the ring for ninety seconds, or you’re done. If you manage to hit me once during that time, it doesn't matter how long you last, you win. Timer starts now.”

Patton barely has time to flatten his hands before a lightning bolt strikes over his head. Just in time, his glowing light blue dome appears, cracking under the pressure. A second lightning bolt hits the same place. Patton moves. He drops his shield, throwing himself forward. Another three lightning bolts strike. Patton throws up a shield for each one, and each one breaks under the weight of it.

He rolls, managing to get back up to his feet, and flings a sliding shield toward Jupiter’s legs. Jupiter casually throws two lightning bolts; one at the shield, shattering it instantly, and the other at Patton.

Patton hands fly up over his head. The shield instantly shatters, and the lightning bolt strikes him.

He screams. He flattens his hand, and he sends another shield shooting towards Jupiter.

Jupiter grins. “Good.” He breaks the shield easily. “Very good. You’re being very inventive with your powers. That’s impressive. And at your age!” Jupiter whistles. “Well done!”

Another four lightning bolts come in rapid succession. The first two are stopped by Patton’s shields. The third is mostly destroyed, and Patton is just able to leap out of the way.

The fourth hits. Hard.

Patton collapses to the ground, convulsing. He has enough of a mind to fling a shield up around him, just as another bolt strikes. It hits hard and his shield instantly snaps beneath it.

Another bolt goes flying toward him and Patton flings his hands up. The shield flickers.

The bolt hits just as the shield reappears. It’s only able to stop half of the blow, but Patton just happy to have had it stop any.

He flattens his hand again. Five tiny circular shields appear and he shoots them towards Jupiter. His hand remains flat, but he uses it to shove himself onto his feet.

He can’t feel his lungs, but his entire chest is burning. There are tears in his eyes and he hates this, he hates it, but he has to keep going because he needs to become a superhero.

Jupiter easily shoots the little spheres out of the sky and it's then that Patton realizes he hasn’t managed to make the hero take a step.

“Very good!” Jupiter cackles. “Very good indeed!”

Patton wants to let the compliment wash over him. He smiles as if it does, and even manages a chipper “Thank you!” but every part of him is just ready to be done.

Has it been 90 seconds yet? He must be close right?

He runs point blank at Jupiter. Maybe, maybe if he can get a hit in, this will all be over and he can rest before he has to go to the next horrible task.

Jupiter sighs. “Well, it was fun while it lasted.”

A lightning bolt shoots right at Patton’s body, and this time it's clearly designed to shove him out. It’s arched just below him, so when it hits he’ll go flying in the air, unable to use the ground as friction, and it flies towards his chest instead of the typical from the sky bolts Jupiter had used before.

On instinct, Patton throws a shield out in front of him. It glows a light blue. Then it flickers.

The bolt hits him right on.

Patton is screaming. His body lifts from the ground, but he’s still crying out. He can’t breathe, he can’t think, and he’s going to leave the ring.

It’s not instinct. It’s painful, forced movement but Patton raises and flattens his hands and the force field appears directly behind him.

He crashes into it and drops to the ground like a stone just before the shield flickers out of existence.

Something beeps above his head.

“Time's up!” Jupiter smiles. “Very good work, Patton. Very good indeed!” The door with the green check mark above it lights up and opens silently. “Good luck on your next task!”

Patton doesn’t want to move. The ground feels nice, soft, and if he stays here, he won't have to keep working.

But he needs to become a superhero.

So he gets to his feet.

“Thank you!” His voice sounds happy, excited. “That was a lot of fun!”

“For me as well!” Jupiter responds. He winks at him. “If you succeed, I’d be more than happy to spar with you again!”

Patton almost physically pulls back at the suggestion. His stomach is heavy, lined with lead, and he has to swallow three times around a golf ball in his throat before he finally manages;

“Yeah, that sounds great!”

He doesn’t run out of the room. Patton’s happy to say he manages to keep himself at a casual stroll but as Jupiter’s eyes follow him, he can’t help but feel like he’s fleeing.

Chapter Text

“So,” Jupiter says as Logan approaches. “You’re the one who figured out my task.”

“Yes,” Logan responds. His hands clench into fists at his side and he takes a breath. “I am.”

“Why the fuck did you tell everyone?!” Jupiter explodes. His arms cross over his chest. “You just gave away your advantage! That’s a completely—it's just a stupid thing to do!”

Logan says nothing. His eyes skim over Jupiter’s muscles (tense), his chest (rate of breathing is faster than average), the narrowing of his eyes, and the way his hands crackle slightly with energy. Still, Jupiter is sitting back on his heels, bottom of his face loose.

Logan just shakes his head. “I didn’t give up any advantage.”

“Yes you— you could’ve been the only one to know about the test! Instead, the last seventy—”

“Sixty-two actually.”

“You’re a real smartass, huh?”

“It’s understandable you would assume that.” Logan hides a full body shudder as Jupiter cocks his head at him. He makes a show of looking Jupiter up and down. “Since it’s quite obvious your brain has significantly less gray matter.”

“You calling me fucking stupid?”

“Do you need me to spell it out further?” Logan asks. He swallows dryly. “I’d be happy to do so, but I do worry about your ability to comprehend, given your previous demonstration.”

He keeps himself sharp. Curt. Cocky.

He raises his eyebrows as he says it, just to make sure the message sticks.

Jupiter goes quiet. “Spy told me she wanted you to do well.”

Logan shrugged. “I made an impression on her task.”

“You won’t make much of one on mine.” And then there was a lightning bolt surging for him, arching in a way designed to lift him off his feet and kick him out of the ring immediately.

So predictable.

There’s no time to avoid it, but Jupiter isn’t allowed to kill him, so Logan does the next best thing.

He crouches, curling his upper body into a ball so that he’s as small as possible and only the balls of his feet touch the ground. His heels of his feet tap together and both hands come over to cover his ears.

When the bolt hits him, it shudders through his whole body but doesn’t shove him off the ground. He would scream but it'd be quite counterproductive to his plan here, so Logan just takes it and stands back up.

“Pathetic,” Logan says. He’s very proud of the fact that his voice doesn’t wobble at all. “You defeated Puppeteer with that measly quirk?”

A second bolt comes at him and Logan instantly resumes the same position. His cells are on fire and he can feel his body balking at the sensation, but once it's over Logan gets back to his feet and meets Jupiter’s eyes head on.

“You must be able to do better than that.”

“I could kill you right now,” Jupiter told him. “I could light your measly body up and leave you ashes on the fucking floor.”

Logan takes a step forward. Dust comes up around his feet and he tilts his head to the side.

He knows what the movement looks like. It looks like he’s about to use a quirk.

“Do it.”

When the lightning bolt comes, Logan is positive Jupiter is aiming to kill him.

Jupiter is very good. He’s built like a tank with a quirk to match, and at full power, he could easily turn Logan into a forgotten scorch on the ground.

i>But.

The hero has fought two-hundred sixty five battles. They may have been against children, many of them failing quickly, but he’s repeatedly used his quirk for seven hours and 59 minutes. What’s more, Jupiter has been forced to work to control his power in order to keep from permanently harming the kids.

Logan resumes his first position and lets the bolt hit him head on.

It burns. He can’t stop his body from spasming and distantly, he can feel himself entering a familiar soft headspace. Logan has to force himself to attention, making himself count the number of seconds before the bolt finally stops.

In a fluid motion that makes his vision go white, Logan gets up to his feet. Once again, he meets Jupiter’s gaze.

“Weak.”

“What are you?!” Jupiter demands. “You should be dead!”

“Should I?” Logan shakes his head. “Perhaps you’ve lost your touch.”

He wants to lie down. He wants to stop. But at the same time, Logan is enjoying how easy it was to set all the dominoes up. There are just a few more in his chain and Logan can see the exact path the last one will take.

It’s exhilarating.

Another lightning bolt crashes over his head and it takes all of Logan’s power to keep his face blank and body loose. He smoothly gets up to his feet and takes another step towards Jupiter.

That last domino hits the sand and Jupiter yells as he rushes for him.

Jupiter’s forearms hit Logan’s chest and he shoves, pushing Logan from the middle of the ring towards the side. In three seconds, Logan is going to cross that line. He’ll be out.

Logan winds one arm back. He’s not strong; the force of any hit alone would never be enough to actually do any real damage.

However, there are several parts of the human body where skill and strength of the opponent doesn’t come into play. Punching the kidney, for example, will cause a great deal of abdominal pain regardless of how many abs the person has lined up to protect it. There are other areas, like under the armpit which could deaden Jupiter’s arm, the chin, the temple, all of which are perfectly viable options in a fight Logan knows he would never win based on strength alone.

Logan ops for none of these and slams his fist right into the side of Jupiter’s neck, around where the carotid artery is. There, if he does it right, he can hit the vagus nerve.

The moment Logan’s hand strikes Jupiter’s neck, the hero freezes. He doesn’t fall forward, which Logan hadn’t expected to happen but would’ve preferred, but his arms do drop from shoving Logan back and he wobbles from foot to foot, blinking rapidly.

Logan glances behind him. He’s only about a centimeter from the ring.

Slowly, as to not disturb Jupiter, Logan sneaks away from the edge and back to the middle. Jupiter is already turning, electricity crackling around him, eyes glow a bright yellow— but it doesn’t matter, and the hero knows it. Logan has already won.

He’d figured out the rules to the duel almost immediately. It was quite easy to come to the assumption that there would be a time limit on the duels; there was no kid in that room who could hope to defeat Jupiter. So there needed to be a different way of measuring how good someone was.

Time it was.

But time isn't enough. Logan realized that the moment he thought it, back before anyone had entered through the metal door and come to fight Jupiter. Time alone was too akin to the first task. What’s to stop the kids from just trying to dodge his attacks and hiding?

Which is where the second rule had to come in. There had to be a reward for being able to hit Jupiter.

Logan’s breath comes in quick gasps. He’s tense, and his body is prone to duck back into the best position for surviving a lightning strike. Slowly however, the lightning around Jupiter dies and the hero just stares at him.

“You hit me.”

“Yes.”

“You… you hit me.”

“We’ve covered that.”

Jupiter draws a hand over his face. “That rule was just to get you fucking kids to fight!”

“I’m aware.”

There’s a silence as Jupiter looks him up and down. Then he snorts. “Fuck kid, good job. Good plan too. There are a couple of villains locked up because I made them mad. Forced them to make fucking stupid descions.” Jupiter shakes his head. “You have a quirk that keeps you from feeling pain?”

It’s an interesting conclusion to jump to. Not one that Logan would’ve personally decided on, given he didn’t have enough evidence to decide anything, but one that was based enough in reality according to what Jupiter had seen.

“No.” Logan shrugged. “It was simply necessary to act as if your attacks didn’t bother me.”

“You’ve got some good acting skills then,” Jupiter grins. His gaze is slightly more calculating than Logan would like. “Go ahead through the door with the checkmark!”

Logan nods at the hero. Dust fluffs around him as he makes his way over from the center of the ring to the door. He slides through it, not bothering to count the number of people waiting for him on the other side of the door. He’d already done it while waiting for his turn to fight Jupiter.

One hundred and forty-nine.

Including both Virgil and Patton.

And of course…

Logan’s eyes slide over Roman and Remus. His pulse quickens, but he forces himself to look away.

It’s a room identical to the last one. Patton is lounging across the floor, eyes closed. His body is tense and there are lines on his face that weren’t there when Logan had seen him earlier. His lips are pressed in a thin line and while he’s chatting happily to Virgil, the tone is too high, too cheerful.

Virgil on the other hand is loose. He’s shaking slightly, but his eyes are alight and there’s a soft upturn to his lips. None of that had been present when Logan first saw him in the fighting dome; his shoulders had risen slightly after the fight with Roman and Remus, but now they were higher, and when Virgil saw Logan, an actual smile broke over his face.

“Logan!” The moment Virgil realizes how loud he is, a horrified expression crosses his face and he instantly quiets. “You did it!”

It’s almost cute how quickly Virgil corrects himself. Logan can’t help but relax at the sight of him and he’s more than happy to have the excuse to stop himself and walk over to him to take a seat beside him.

“I did. You appear to have also done well.” Logan doesn’t smile, but he nods at him. “I saw that you were successful.”

“What do you mean?” Virgil asks. Then his expression clears. “You were able to count the seconds.”

“Correct.”

The expression on Virgil’s face is an odd one; he’s half-smiling at him, eyes soft. It’s not one Logan is used to and he has to dive through his head to try and come up with a moment somebody else looked at him like that.

He can’t.

Patton smiles at him as well, but it’s a smile Logan recognizes. His eyes stay shattered and the moment Patton turns away, it falls from his face.

When Virgil looks at him though, the broken smile reappears.

“How did your fight against Jupiter go?” Logan asks. The question is posed to them both, but he’s facing Virgil and it’s Virgil who grins with his response.

“I just—my quirk makes it so I can show anyone their worst fear.” Virgil doesn't look at Patton as he says it. “I have to know where they are though. Like, when I was fighting Roman and Remus, I wasn’t able to use my quirk on them until they touched me because it was dark. Once I had a hold of their minds, then I could keep a hold of it. ” He closes himself off, the smile falling from his face.

“That’s an impressive quirk,” Logan says quickly. He scans the way Virgil looks up at him, face tight. “I’d imagine you’d have to face quite a bit of stigma, but it sounds fascinating.” He’s not exaggerating either and several thoughts hit Logan at once.

In order to make someone experience their worst fear, Virgil has to be influencing numerous parts of the brain. The occipital cortex, obviously, in order to ensure that they see the right things, but also the parietal cortex to affect sensation, the temporal cortex to ensure they hear the right things. Perhaps the medulla. Maybe even the amygdala: Virgil had claimed to show people their worst fears. Did he also increase their fear of them?

Which of course begs the question; Could Virgil choose which parts of the brain he wants to influence? Right now Virgil says all he can do is show people their worst fears. However, Virgil very obviously has some kind of diagnosed anxiety disorder, so it’s very possible that he’s simply more accustomed to that kind of feeling and therefore has an easier time putting that onto others. If he worked at it, could he make people experience anything? Could he expand how much of the brain he had control over?

Logan wants to ask. He wants to tell him some of this, because he thinks the beginning part at the very least, might help calm him down and see that Logan is never going to judge for any quirk.

He doesn’t.

“I… There is some stigma around my quirk, but it’s really not that bad.” Virgil’s lips tighten.

Lie.

Virgil’s eyes flicker over to Patton and then back to Logan.

“Anyway,” he coughs, “Jupiter told me to fight, and so I instantly was able to stick him into his worst fear. He froze up for about ten seconds, but the fucker must be used to mind quirks or something, because he was able to move right after that. He still couldn’t see me, so I just had to keep moving.” His eyes are alight again. “It was kinda fun.”

Patton looks up from the ground. “Did he ever manage to hit you?”

“Yeah, of course.” Virgil smiles over at his friend. “But I actually managed to keep going!”

The differences and similarities between the two of them is extraordinary. Virgil’s motions are large and his hands flap by his sides every couple of seconds. As he glances between Logan and Patton, his smile is stretching from literal ear to ear and Logan watches him fail to smother it multiple times.

Patton’s smile also stretches from ear to ear. His motions are small, stiff, and he taps two of his fingers against his thumb rapidly. Every now and then, that movement will stutter to a stop, but then Patton will glance over at Virgil and they’ll pick back up at top speed.

Logan says none of this. In fact, Logan says nothing at all. He wants to continue the conversation; there’s a very strange sort of pull telling him to figure out something to say and ensure that Virgil and Patton will keep talking to him. But he can’t. They’re looking at each other right now, talking to each other, and adding himself to the fray would only serve to annoy them. Besides, he has his doubts as to whether they’re actually interested.

“Cool!” Patton’s voice squeaks as he speaks, his efforts to sound elated and happy fighting a very clear want to shrink away. There’s a very short silence. “What do you think the next test is going to be? Do you think it’ll be as electrifying as the last?” His eyebrows raise.

Virgil snorts and rolls his eyes.

“I doubt it,” Logan responds. “They’ll likely move on to a new tester, as they have for the last couple of tests.”

“What?” Patton asks.

“I doubt they’d use electrification again.”

“No… I mean…” Patton grins. It still doesn’t reach his eyes. “It was a pun, silly!”

Logan blinks. “I don’t understand.”

“It was a joke! A play on words!” Patton waves his fingers in front of his face. “I was being funny!”

Logan blinks at him.

“It was electrifying as in really exciting. But also electrifying as in actual electricity!”

“Oh. I understand. You’re using the double meaning of the word in order to use language in a more interesting way.” Logan nods to himself. “Understood.”

Patton stares at him for a moment and Logan is about to ask if he misunderstood again, when Patton suddenly laughs and pats him on the back. The touch itself is enough to send shivers surging down Logan back and it takes all of his strength not to rip himself away. Luckily, it only lasts for about a second before Patton lifts his hand, still laughing.

“Yeah, you got it buddy!”

His skin is still tingling where Patton touched it and it takes several moments for Logan to properly nod back at him.

Virgil says something to Patton, Patton responds, and Logan uses the moment to allow himself to fade into his head. He’s still present with them; if either of them asked what they had been talking about, Logan would’ve been able to respond. However, he’s only computing it, not listening.

There are four tasks. They’ve completed three of them; the first task being the fight in the dome, the second being both the falling, the triggering of the maze and the maze itself, and the third being the fight against Jupiter.

So far, they’ve tested their ability to hide in crowds, luck and creativity, cleverness, and fighting capabilities. Siren had done the first, followed by the Spy and Jupiter. Those three would likely be the teachers the students would be divided up between. This was very likely to mean that the final test would be run by the director of the Superhero branch.

His superhero name was simply “The Director.” His quirk was rather basic but still rare: Superstrength. This inhuman ability was coupled with his very impressive mind that had quickly pushed him to the top of the school and into the politics of the state.

What would he test?

It would be unlikely to be geared around what had already been tested. Logan assumes anything the Director would want to see would be something new in order to fully eradicate the last of the students.

So what has yet to be tested?

His brain is already answering the question before it has even been asked.

Weaponry, endurance, teamwork, communication, agility, strength, balance—

What would be more important to the director?

For a moment, Logan debates jumping into his city, just to start browsing information on the man himself, but ultimately decides he doesn’t need to.

What’s most important?

Teamwork. Superheroes work in teams of two to six. It’s very likely that the director starts the conversation by telling them to get into groups.

Communication. Superheroes need to know what their teammates are doing when. If they’re in battle with one villain, you can’t be worried about the other one behind their back.

The other ones are a lottery. Or, perhaps more likely, the test is designed around whatever could check off the most boxes of leftover skills.

Logan cocks his head to the side.

Okay.

He knows what the next test is.

Logan’s head glances up and down at the other contestants. Patton and Virgil are good choices, simply because he already has established himself there (and there’s a strange tugging in his chest telling him he wants to team with them) but he doesn’t open his mouth to talk to them.

He quietly scans the other contestants.

Remus and Roman will pair up together, and considering that the trial will likely involve teams of four, they’ll grab whoever Roman deems to be the most applicable to the both of them. That likely means two more boys, likely two aggressively muscled boys, and likely ones Roman has already talked to during the very first task.

Logan shifts his mind to another topic but he’s already figured out who they’re going to pair with before he’s fully turned away from them.

“Hey.”

Logan turns and meets the glaring brown eyes of the girl who had exited the blind maze right after him. He blinks twice, then manages to wipe his face clean of emotion and nods in her direction.

“Salutations.”

“My name is Nikita.”

“I’m Logan.”

Virgil and Patton have stopped talking behind him. He knows they’re listening in, just as he knows that the only reason Patton has not jumped into the conversation to introduce himself is due to Virgil holding him back. It's smart of Virgil, Logan supposes. After all, the reason Nikita approached him was clearly because she believed talking to him would give her some kind of advantage; interrupting whatever shocking nugget of information he had would be simpleminded.

“Did your plan work?” Nikita’s words and tone are very forward, but she stands back from him, shoulder up high and hips rigid.

There’s no particular reason to keep that piece of information hidden. “It did,” Logan responds.

“Do you have any idea what the next task is going to be?”

He pauses for a second.

Would it be more of an advantage to keep what he came up with to himself, or more advantageous to allow others in?

It doesn’t take long for his brain to present him a never-ending list of the pros and cons for both.

“I know the terms of the next task and what some of the likely events will be.”

“What?”

That’s Patton, but Logan doesn’t turn to look at him.

Nikita raises an eyebrow. “How?”

“Process of elimination.” He wants to continue, and go down the list of everything he had managed to deduce and how he had done it, but biting his tongue is something he’s very very practiced at. “The next task is going to be based on teamwork. There will be three parts of the test and it’ll be done in teams of four.”

“What’re the parts?” Virgil asks.

Logan turns his body, ensuring that everyone he’s addressing— Virgil, Patton and Nikita— are fully in front of him. “I’m unsure of the order, but I know it’ll include communication, weaponry and agility. I expect the communication test will separate us and have us work together to complete a type of puzzle. There will be 37 teams, the first 19 of which will pass, meaning 76 students will be in the freshman class to be trained into superheroes.”

“How do you know that?!” Patton is smiling, but his fists close and open at his sides. “I mean, that can’t be possible!”

“Process of—”

“Process of elimination,” Nikita repeats.

She turns something over in her head. She’s smart. Maybe not in the way Logan is, but she was smart enough to deduce that Logan had figured out the third test and therefore likely to have figured out the fourth. Nikita was also bold enough to approach him.

He can almost see the way she’s figuring out the pros and cons of asking to team with him.

Logan also knows exactly what is on which list.

He doesn’t look like much. He’s skinny, malnourished, undermuscled. He has yet to demonstrate any sort of quirk, which is something people tend to flock to, and while he’s made it this far there’s no reason to believe he’ll make it much further.

But he’s also made it this far. He was in the blind maze’s exit far before any else, including Nikita. He somehow managed to get past Jupiter and he’s smart enough to be able to tell everyone the tasks before they happen.

He can see the moment she makes the decision.

“I would be more than happy to team with you.” Logan tells her before she can voice it. “Whether Patton or Virgil would elect to join us, I’m uncertain.”

Nikita blinks, then rolls her eyes. “You’re a bit of a show-off, aren’t you?”

“I— maybe?” Logan frowns. His mind whirls, going through every interaction he’d ever had with another person. “Insufficient data.”

“Patton and I would be happy to join,” Virgil jumps in. Then he blinks. “Or at least, I think we would be, I don’t speak for Patton, I didn’t mean to—”

“Of course I’d be happy to join!” Patton nudges Virgil with his foot. “We’ll be one badass team!”

Logan glances Nikita up and down. She doesn’t look surprised; in actuality, she’s let out a very quiet breath. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why.

Anyone can tell that Virgil is one of the most powerful people in this place.

“Hello finalists!” The Director is loud and it would echo around the square room had it not been filled with people. “Congratulations! You’re made it!”

Nikita glances at him but he simply stands tall, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

“Well, I mean you’ve nearly made it,” The Director says and there’s a chorus of boos and this time Logan does roll his eyes. “I know, I know. Just one little task left!”

“Prick,” Virgil mutters.

Patton shifts. His lips are shining and he glances between the speaker and Virgil a couple of times.

Logan’s not surprised he’s uncomfortable. It’s a consequence of growing up praying to be a hero; he’d begun to idealize all of the different people who had already gone through the training.

Now he’s actually meeting them.

“Everyone please divide into teams of four.”

Instantly, people begin to group up. Logan quietly marks each group, counting who gets with who and what their quirks are. Unsurprisingly, Roman and Remus have teamed up together, and they’ve added two buff looking men to be their partners. The one on the right of Remus, a guy named Ronald, has a shapeshifting quirk. The one beside him, Alexander, can summon anything he’d stored away previously.

They’ll pass.

Actually, Logan can make a pretty good guess at who’s going to pass for most groups here. Before he can fully start to focus on it, his mind has already categorized each of the 37 teams in front of him.

12, of the teams including Roman and Remus’s, will definitely pass.

18 of the teams will decidedly fail.

Which left 7 of the teams, including his own, to be a bit of a toss up.

The walls around them began to rise up. A new metal wall appeared behind it, with 37 doors, each a different shade waiting for each of the teams to go through.

“Does it matter what we pick?” Patton asks. His voice is high.

Still, it’s a smart question. A rather obvious one, but Logan has learned what is rather obvious to him is not always so obvious to everyone else.

“No,” Virgil answers. Logan nods in his direction, mostly because both Nikita and Patton are looking at him to confirm this.

Nikita points at a bright orange one, the door color rather akin to her quirk. “That one then,” she says. Her eyes spark.

Logan allows her to take the lead.