Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

In Kelly Winslow's senior year of high school, there was an assembly at the beginning of the school year. She couldn't tell you who the school invited as a speaker, or even if they were male or female, but she did remember that the asshole had the gall to tell them that high school would be the best years of their lives. Ten years later Kelly could say that they were right, though probably not how they meant it. It was just that the end of her senior year had imploded so impressively that it caused her life to go downhill ever since then.

So she wasn't entirely happy to see a reminder of that at dinner with her parents. It was a very familiar face: she had a photo of Mark Swan on a dart board for two years, having picked up darts just for that purpose. Well, that and throwing darts at pictures of her ex-girlfriend, Maxine White, which made sense since she cheated on Kelly with him. The fact she stopped after two years wasn't related to forgiveness or moving on, but the fact that she had moved up to throwing knives and replacing the photos got time consuming with how much more damage they took.

"I know it's been five years since you've seen each other, so we'll let you two catch up," Kelly's mother said as she practically dragged her father out of the dining room.

"More like ten," Kelly muttered.

"If it's been ten, it's been five," her mother called back.

Mark looked as if he couldn't believe this shit was happening to him, which was fair because Kelly couldn't believe her mother was pulling this on them either.

"Are they trying to set us up?" Mark asked as he pointed at her retreating parents then at Kelly and then himself.

There was a time when Kelly wouldn't have objected to that. She and Mark had never gone out, but they did drunkenly make out once which led to Kelly throwing up on him. Then spring break that year Maxine, her girlfriend at the time, cheated on her with Mark, leading to, among a great many other things, Kelly changing colleges at the last minute and the derailment of all her career plans when she found out that some majors you really did need the name of a top tier school on your diploma to get anywhere.

"I swear to God that your mom told me she wanted to talk about insurance benefits," Mark said. Kelly found the fact that he looked better than ever to be irritating. He had definitely put on some muscle since high school. If there was any justice he would look like a hollowed out shell of himself.

Kelly couldn't blame him for showing up, because that sounded exactly like something her mom would do. Her mom treated being single in your late twenties something like a terminal illness. It was like a switch had been thrown a couple of years ago. "That's… fine," she ground out.

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence before Mark cleared his throat. "So your mom said that you're going to be the new liaison with the local Justice Squad branch."

"Your point?"

"And you know Maximum Impact works-"

"I'm not getting you her autograph," Kelly said with a glare.

"Crap. You don't know."

"Know what?" she growled.

Mark got out his phone and played with it for a bit. "Okay, this is a picture of Maximum Impact."

Kelly barely glanced at it, the superheroine was recognizable enough. "Yes, and?"

Mark fiddled with his phone again. "And this is us at spring break senior year."

"What's your…." Kelly trailed off as she saw what Mark had been getting at. Maxine was in that picture, right next to a version of Kelly with a more genuine smile than she'd had in the ten years since then. Only Maxine was wearing a one piece swimsuit that had a remarkable similarity with the leotard that Maximum Impact wore as her hero costume. The skank was even striking the same pose.

Just in case, Kelly got out her own phone to really look at the publicity shot. Maxine had always been a bit self conscious about the fact that her right breast was slightly larger than the left one. You couldn't really tell unless you knew about it beforehand and were looking carefully (or were having sex with her), but Kelly was definitely looking carefully. And growling, probably loud enough to scare away small animals.

"Heh. Yeah," Mark said sheepishly.

"That bitch is Maximum Impact? She even put her fucking first name in her hero name?!"

"Well, more like her nick-" Mark wilted under Kelly's glare.

Kelly took a deep breath, counted to ten and exhaled. "Thanks for letting me know. I don't know how I would have reacted if I found out at work." Honestly, it might have involved breaking her fist on the face of someone with invulnerability.

(Sadly, Kelly couldn't complain about how revealing the costume was. As a government liaison her job wasn't actually about delivering directives or anything like that, but instead it was mostly about making sure the government got its money's worth out of the Justice Squad. Functionally, she was more like an auditor than anything else, so she knew how much those costumes cost. The adaptive cloth used to make costumes for people with invulnerability was absurdly expensive, but would share the toughness of the wearer to a large degree, preventing modesty failures even after heavy combat. Yes, even the fucking cleavage window had a point: the cloth needed to be next to the skin to emulate the meta factor, so if you were chesty enough, you needed a cleavage window to eliminate a weak spot that could cause cascade failures in the weave. You'd think they'd wear a jumpsuit or a jacket or something over the leotard, but they tried that back in the nineties. Whenever the super took clothing damage it somehow looked more obscene than just wearing a leotard.

Kelly would, however, judge the hell out of eighteen year old Maxine for wearing a swimsuit with the same cut without the same technical restrictions at the time.)

"For the record, I told her she should have told you."

"Thanks. That-" Kelly blinked. "Wait. You told her? That bitch got her powers in high school!?"

Mark winced and Kelly rapidly considered some things that happened that spring break, like how he had always denied that Maxine had cheated on Kelly with him.

"You were there. She got her powers on spring break. Why didn't you say anything?" She ignored the part where he had said something, just not something anyone believed.

Mark looked up at the ceiling. "Secret identities are kind of a big deal. You know Max's last girlfriend got killed by a villain a couple years ago?"

"Fuck. Really?"

"Your mom said she hasn't dated since."

"Well, she would know." Kelly's mom would deny being the town's biggest gossip, but that was a flat out lie. "I can't believe Max let me believe she cheated on me for the past ten fucking years."

"Tell me about it."

Kelly winced. "Er, sorry? I guess I owe you dinner or something." Probably more than that, but she was on a government salary, and she had needed to get a much better apartment than she would normally pick or otherwise her mother would have forced her to move back home.

Max smirked. "Well, at least you can expense it."

"I can?"

"You're replacing Doug Hunter, right? We're going to be seeing a lot of each other."

Kelly groaned. "You work in metahuman insurance, don't you? Why did you think my mom wanted to talk with you?"

"Yeah, People's Shield, and I have no idea. I just figured it'd be easier to talk about it over dinner than have my mom nag me about it for the next month." Their moms were work friends: the kind that ate lunch together but didn't socialize much outside of work. However, they would absolutely make an exception about that to complain about their kids to each other.

"...That tracks. Oh! I heard something about your mom and cancer…?" Lung cancer, which was ironic considering Mrs. Swan's attitude toward smoking.

Mark waved it off. "Don't worry about it. We got her into an experimental treatment program and it's showing great results. Now the only thing that's changed is that she's using the 'I want grandchildren before I die' line now."

"That's good?"

Blatantly moving the subject back Mark said, "So, yeah, like a quarter of your job in this town is going to be convincing me to let my company take the hit for the damage that Maximum Impact and Goldenrod do in cape fights. Or I should say, trying to convince me."

"Fuck."

Mark laughed. "Good luck, by the way. For obvious reasons I enjoy finding ways to make Maximum Impact take responsibility for her property damage. Oh, and Goldenrod slept with my boss's boss's daughter so I have instructions to screw him over as much as possible too."

Kelly briefly wondered where her hypocrite of a mother hid the booze now. The liquor cabinet was now filled with snacks with healthy sounding buzzwords on their packaging and she highly doubted her parents had given up drinking. "I'm going to hate every second of this job, aren't I?"

"It could be worse; you could be the new PR guy. The job literally killed the last guy."

"My student loans aren't bad enough for me to consider that job." Close, though. "Wait. Literally literally or figuratively literally?"

Mark's smirk grew into a deranged grin. "Autopsy said stress induced heart attack last June. Doug had to cover half his work, and I slipped so much crap past him. It was glorious."

Kelly blinked. She was about to ask why Doug of all people had to cover for a PR guy, since there was a distinct conflict of interest between the two positions, when another thought hit her. "Autopsy? Did they suspect foul play?"

"Automatic autopsies for everyone who works for Justice Squad just in case it's a villain plot. I think there are exceptions for things like decapitations or other very, very obvious causes of death, but I'm not actually sure about that. Doug opted for early retirement after he found out about that."

Kelly pressed her palms to her eyes. She vaguely remembered that now, but somehow she'd gone years without any of her coworkers dying on her so far. "Great. Not only is this job going to kill me, it's also guaranteed to mutilate my body afterwards."

Tori Acker, the HR person for the South Hill Justice Squad branch, looked like the kind of woman who had one of those pictures of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes on her wall with the "Right now I am so far behind I will never die" quote. Rail thin and on the wrong side of middle aged, Tori had incredible bags under her eyes that no amount of makeup could hide, overall suggesting she had decided that caffeine and spite would have to substitute for food and sleep.

Kelly wondered what it said that the local branch of the Justice Squad rated a full time PR person plus two interns and a full time government liaison plus one intern, but only a single part-time HR person who rotated between several branches. If the other two branches she managed were the same size as this one, that meant Tori was dealing with the HR needs of about a hundred and twenty people, which was a bit more than the guideline Kelly had heard of one HR person for one hundred people.

Unfortunately for Tori, Kelly's job had a security requirement that most of the on-boarding paperwork needed actual human supervision while she filled out the forms. (She was willing to bet that requirement was put in sometime in the fifties and it just had never gotten updated.) At least Kelly was a transfer from another branch, because otherwise it would have taken three times as long.

"Taking South Hill was supposed to be temporary," Tori explained after downing an espresso like it was water, very much looking like she wished it was something stronger and she wouldn't be picky whether it was a stimulant, a depressant or even a hallucinogen.

Kelly winced, because if working for the government taught her anything it was, "There's nothing more permanent than a temporary measure."

"You got it, so please tell me you don't have any questions."

"Potential secret identity breach?"

Tori swore under her breath. "Hit me."

"The evidence is on my personal phone." Tori twitched because, as per policy, that was locked in security while Kelly was on site and getting it into the building proper would take at least fifteen minutes. "But to summarize, I went to high school with Maxine White-" Tori relaxed slightly because knowing someone outside of costume wasn't that big of a problem. Just slap an NDA on it, and it's done. Kelly's clearance was high enough for secret identities; she just didn't have need to know. "-and one of our friends from high school has a picture on his Facebook page where Max is wearing a one piece that looks remarkably like her costume leotard."

You could practically see Tori's heart rate shoot back up. "Dammit, I'm going to actually need to see that. If Carl wasn't already dead, I'd strangle him. He's supposed to do image searches for things like that."

"To be fair, Danny has the photo set to friends only… except he's the kind of guy who friends everyone. He actually managed to hit the friend limit."

Tori gave her a flat look. "That's five thousand people."

Kelly nodded. "And at least half live in this area."

"Maybe it won't be that bad."

Twenty minutes later, most of which was filling out forms for security, Tori was considering hiring someone to have a pack of dogs pee on the old PR guy's grave, because according to her rants, Tori sure as hell didn't have the time to do it herself. Kelly wasn't entirely clear on how serious she was about it, but she filed the threat away for a rainy day.

"-can't underestimate the PR benefits of a hometown hero my ass," Tori continued ranted. "She's in the same fucking pose as her publicity stills! Can this get any worse?!"

"She's my ex-girlfriend, and I didn't know until I saw a copy of that photo after the transfer was approved."

"Was it an amicable breakup?" Tori sounded like she knew what the answer would be, but was hoping for a miracle anyways.

"She let me think she cheated on me instead of admitting she got powers."

Tori looked skyward. "Well, technically it isn't a conflict of interest because your job is to look after the government's interests." She gave Kelly a pleading look. "Will I need to break out the hostile work environment forms?"

"I honestly don't know. I haven't seen her in ten years."

"Can you at least give things a month? I might be able to work out a transfer for Maximum Impact by then."

You'd think they'd transfer Kelly out, but despite being onboarded for the position by Justice Squad, Kelly was actually an employee of the government. Still… "Isn't it a big jump to go right to a transfer?"

"If it wasn't for the potential secret identity problem. Oh, shit. There's the Impulse problem. I'm going to need to kick this up."

"Impulse problem?"

Tori made a face. "Maximum Humiliation."

"Oh, right."

Maximum Humiliation was the unofficial name of Maxine's nemesis, which pretty much everyone used instead of his official name of Impulse. Unlike most nemeses, Maximum Humiliation didn't try to kill or (arguably) torture Maxine, but instead he tried to make her look like a complete idiot, usually followed by the him posing and shouting "Maximum Humiliation," hence the name. He was officially a supervillain, but he didn't actually commit crimes other than assault (on Maxine), property damage (from fighting Maxine), being an accessory to other crimes (by fighting Maxine while she's trying to thwart them), vigilantism (capturing other criminals before Maxine could), and, rather famously, jaywalking (used to taunt Maxine by committing a crime in front of her).

The fact that Maxine had a nemesis made things tricky for transferring her, because PR would frown on anything that looked like she was running from him, especially considering that Maximum Humiliation was relatively harmless… at least in behaviour. Maxine might be a bitch, but she was top ten percent in power and Maximum Humiliation earned his name for a reason.

Kelly tapped her bottom lip. "You know, his existence makes a lot more sense now. But at least now I don't need to feel guilty that I think he's hot." You couldn't see his face through his costume, which was basically a seamless piece of spandex that covered his entire body, but you could tell this was a man who didn't skip leg day. (Though she did wonder how the hell he put on the costume.)

Tori stared at her flatly for a good ten seconds. "Yeah, I'll have those hostile work environment forms ready to go."

Thankfully for Tori's blood pressure, Kelly's job actually didn't require her to talk with the superheroes frequently. Most of the time she could get by just meeting with Director Richardson. Even then, Maxine had mostly been MIA the last week, having been kidnapped by PR regarding her costume. Realistically, Kelly wasn't sure what they could do with the technical restrictions they had for costumes for people with invulnerability powers, but she wished them luck, if only because it would keep Kelly and Maxine from running into each other for longer.

Helping things, Kelly had personally been occupied doing the transition work with Doug, which wasn't actually that bad. Doug ran things similarly to her last branch, and Joel, his intern, was staying on for another three months until the end of the semester. They finished early enough that Kelly was even able to start getting her operational readiness hours in, which effectively meant that the government paid for her hobby of throwing knives as long as she did it at the range.

(Superheroes were given non-hero cover jobs at the Justice Squad to explain why they drove there to work every day. So everyone was required to spend some time doing combat training, but the organization was very flexible on how you spent that time. They weren't going to make someone with super strength practice with a gun all day. Kelly had originally gotten a pistol certification, but discovered she'd actually get paid extra for practicing something nonstandard and let that training lapse.)

Doug left at the end of the week without fanfare. Officially, it was because going away parties were an invitation for villains to act up. Justice Squad branches officially only had Christmas parties because even villains tended to take things easy on Christmas. Data suggested that was true, but only because heroes tended to be rougher if you started something on Christmas, either from spite at having their holiday interrupted or assuming that anyone causing trouble was up to something particularly nefarious. Still, government liaisons didn't tend to be popular figures and it was hard to say which was worse: a going away party that was an actual celebration or one where no one showed up.

Of course, just because one of the local headaches was lying low, that didn't mean that the other one had also taken the day off.

"What the actual fuck?" Kelly said as she finished the video of the fight, if you could call it that. She didn't care how unprofessional it was to say that, it was still raising the average professionality of the local area by several percentage points. "I have so many questions, starting with how the hell someone with a regeneration power could cause so much property damage?"

"It was Impulse's fault!" Goldenrod whined.

"For dodging?" Director Richardson scoffed.

Kelly rubbed her temple. "Why were you even attacking him in the first place? He only goes after Maximum Impact."

"He was… jaywalking?"

Kelly stared at him long enough for the idiot to shuffle uncomfortably. "I'm starting to understand why Keith has two interns now."

Richardson nodded in agreement. "I think PR might actually need another person full time."

"Was he at least endangering anyone crossing the street?"

Goldenrod shuffled sheepishly.

Kelly threw her hands in the air. "For fuck's sake, that's only a citation in this state! You can't arrest someone for that!"

Goldenrod flinched, which probably meant that the story about her time at the range had gotten around now. She might have been throwing knives for almost a decade now, but it wasn't as if she actually had a superpower for it, so sometimes one would just slip and go a bit wild. The fact that it hit the groin of her target was a complete accident, but the small detail that it had been her last throw of the day made it look deliberate. She didn't realize how it seemed until she saw some of the strange looks she had gotten when leaving. "It's still a crime," Goldenrod practically whimpered.

"You didn't even confirm it was Impulse beforehand," Director Richardson growled. "It could have been an idiot in cosplay! Impulse at least taunted Maximum Impact before she tried to bring him in for jaywalking."

Turning to Director Richardson, Kelly said formally, "The government is requesting remedial training in engagement protocols, and requiring recertification in the usage of support equipment. I also strongly suggest a course in firearm safety and usage."

"Woah! I don't use guns!"

"If you'd rather, you can just write 'Be sure of your target and what's behind it' a thousand times on the blackboard! I thought the firearm safety course would be less embarrassing, but apparently you don't deserve that consideration!"

Director Richardson cleared his throat. "Miss Winslow."

"I apologize for raising my voice," Kelly said.

The director clearly noticed what she didn't apologize for, but didn't call her on it.

"Yeah, we're not paying for shit," Mark laughed over his Chinese takeout. Kelly would probably have a better chance at convincing him with a proper meal at a sit down restaurant, but confidentiality necessary for the discussion meant the best she could do was order food to eat in a conference room.

Kelly groaned. "Seriously? None of those guys had hero insurance?" Maybe it was her line of work, but Kelly definitely got coverage for hero damage in her renter's insurance.

"Nope," Mark said, obnoxiously popping the P, something he knew irritated her. "Just the usual villain attack riders. If Maximum Humiliation had started things then maybe you could make an argument, but jaywalking doesn't constitute proper provocation. Arson, Murder and Jaywalking is a meme, not an engagement protocol. Get the golden idiot into a class on desescalation."

Kelly sat back in her chair. "I figured. Believe me, Goldenrod is getting retraining until the sun goes out."

"Fair enough." Mark paused for a moment before adding, "By the way, my mom thinks this is a date." He looked at the bland, neutral, corporate grey paint on the walls to emphasize the lack of romance in the situation.

"Great, now so will mine."

"Yours giving you trouble about being single too?"

"You better believe it. Honestly I'm not sure which would be more obnoxious: her response if I said this was a date or if I said it wasn't."

Mark laughed again. "Tell her that you expensed dinner, so for legal reasons you can't say that it's a date."

"That's evil."

"I'll have you know that I'm the second biggest villain in town!"

Kelly arched a brow at him. "So who's number one? Impulse?"

"Eh, he's small potatoes compared to my boss's boss. There's nothing more evil than crimes done legally."

Kelly wagged a finger. "If they're done legally, then they aren't crimes."

"Tell that to a little old lady who just had her claim denied because she didn't get the right kind of sewage backup coverage."

Kelly winced. "Okay, you have a point."

"Don't even get me started on the favor trading I had to do to get my mom's cancer treatments approved. I'd say they're bigger villains but they don't count since they're based out of the capital."

"What about your boss? Wouldn't he be more evil than you?"

"Nah, he'll listen to a sob story." Mark shrugged. "Plus he's a patsy who will take the heat when the heroes finally come after me."

Kelly rolled her eyes. "Yes, because blaming Goldenrod for something that is clearly his fault is evil."

"I'm still impressed by how much damage he did," he said, sounding entirely if reluctantly sincere about that.

Kelly groaned. "Of course if you give a regenerator rocket boots he'll turn himself into a human missile."

"We're called South Hill for a reason." Mark took a sip of his soda. "Heroes without some mobility enhancement have miserable capture rates around here."

"Then give him a bike or something," Kelly snapped.

"Ohhhh. You weren't here for the Justice Bike mess."

Kelly whimpered slightly. "How bad was it?" she asked because she had basic pattern recognition skills.

"Okay, the bikes were all electric because some senator was pushing green energy crap."

"In this town?" It was called South Hill, but it really should have been called something related to baby mountains.

"To be fair, they worked fine most places, just not Hickory Hill Drive. There were videos."

"Oh God. I still can't believe it's legal for a road that steep to be in an industrial park." It was infamous for the number of stupid dares that lead to injury, the biggest one being her freshman year in high school that involved a couple of barrels of maple syrup. Where the football team had gotten actual barrels of maple syrup was still a mystery.

"I'm not saying that there was any collusion involved, but the civil engineer who approved paving it had a cousin who owned a skateboard shop."

Kelly squinted at him. "How old is that road?"

"Ancient, but it was only paved just a little before we were born."

"Huh. I'm not sure if that's any better or worse than my theory that there were blood sacrifices and demons involved."

"Worse: mules."

"That makes sense," Kelly said rather than admit she knew nothing about mules. "So did the bike project get cancelled because they couldn't handle the road?"

"Oh, that didn't help, but the real problem was when Grey Dynamo fought Screaming Lily. Sweet kid, by the way. Very little collateral damage most of the time."

"I can see where your priorities are."

"Yeah, it turned out that the batteries in those bikes could blow up if hit by electrical attacks. Honestly, I don't think it's any harder than getting the gas in the tank of a motorbike to blow up-"

"Ha! There was an idiot in my last job with a pyrokinesis superpower. He actively tried blowing up the gas tank in cars a few times and couldn't do it."

"The trick is to get air to mix with the gas fumes first."

Kelly stared at him for a moment.

"I work in insurance covering metahuman incidents, remember?"

"Uh huh."

"Cape fight reports from the entire state go across my desk, including scientific analysis."

"Uh huh."

"I'm not some sort of pyromaniac who researches how to blow up cars."

"I seem to recall one presentation you did-"

"Anymore," Mark grudgingly admitted.

"Good boy," Kelly said, patting him on the head.

Mark rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Yeah."

"Okay, it's been fun, but I need to repeat this conversation with your counterpart at First Patriot."

"Good luck. Bring donuts. Claude has type two diabetes, so he can't eat them, but he appreciates the smell."

Kelly squinted at him. "I can't tell if you're trying to give me bad advice or not."

Mark just laughed. "We should do this again sometime. Probably when they let Goldenrod or Max Impact back out on patrol."

Kelly shook her head. "Don't remind me."

"I'll keep my appointments open-"

"Mark, I'm legally required to be armed at all times when I'm on the job and I spent a long time using your face as a target when practicing."

"Scary," he said, raising his hands in surrender, though he was smiling as he said it.

Kelly involuntarily smiled back.

Considering only thirty-nine people worked at the South Hill Justice Squad branch, it was close to a miracle that Kelly managed to avoid Maxine for nearly two weeks. So of course when they did meet it was when that idiot crashed through the wall of Kelly's apartment. Sadly, Kelly had watched enough videos of Maxine's cape fights lately to be able to identify the sight instantly.

"Max, you bitch!" Kelly screamed as she dived behind the kitchen counter - her decidedly non-cape combat rated kitchen counter. Idly she noted that her favorite sweats were going to be ruined by the remains of the butter chicken she had been eating, which was an extra pain in the ass because the movers still hadn't delivered most of her stuff and she had been living out of a couple of suitcases.

"Olé!" shouted a male voice from outside. That was rapidly followed by something exploding in the direction from where Maxine had impacted. It was a kind of wet explosion, making Kelly suspect that it was a containment grenade.

"The audience shouts that, not the bullfighter!" Kelly yelled, still under cover.

"Are you saying that Saturday morning cartoon lied to me?" came a booming, campy voice obviously distorted by a voice changer from outside. "Truly my quest for justice has been too narrow in its focus!"

Yup, that was Impulse.

"Were you at least committing a felony before Maximum Impact started a fight in a residential neighborhood?"

"Nay! I was merely crossing the street!"

"More jaywalking?!"

"I have repented from that particular sin and had been using a crosswalk!"

There were muffled screams from where Maxine had landed. Kelly was guessing her mouth was covered by the containment foam, which frankly tasted disgusting, but was designed to be non lethal. Kelly made a note to look up Impulse's file, because some kind of power shenanigans must be at work for the grenade to have actually worked on Maxine. She should have been too strong for that.

"Perhaps the lady interpreted my friendly greeting as an attack? She does seem a bit high strung!"

For once, Kelly didn't blame Max for losing her temper. She'd exchanged a handful of sentences with Impulse and she already felt like punching him in the face. Oh, officially, Kelly was going to throw the book at her, but in her head she'd cut Max some slack.

"For now, farewell! There's a sale on bagels and I don't want to be late!"

Yeah, that was the excuse of someone deliberately trying to get Maxine into trouble.

"And that's Impulse walking into Cohen's Bagels, where they were running a sale," Director Richardson said as he stopped the security camera footage playing.

Kelly sighed. "Unofficially, it looks to me like this is a carefully constructed public relations attack. Impulse deliberately provoked Maximum Impact." Maxine looked surprised that Kelly was giving her the benefit of the doubt here. "However, it only worked because you ignored protocol. Primarily, there isn't a standing warrant for Impulse's arrest, though I don't understand how there isn't."

Maxine shuffled uncomfortably while Director Richardson sighed. The latter paused for a moment, clearly looking at Maxine before saying, "The problem is that despite all the property damage surrounding his fights, there has been only circumstantial evidence linking him to any serious crime that doesn't involve fighting Maximum Impact."

"You're shitting me." Kelly could read between the lines. The director just implied that Max had also broken protocol for most, if not all, of those other fights. Kelly carefully did not look for the nearest fire extinguisher, seeing as it would be unprofessional to murder Max for being an idiot, despite how convenient it was that the building had many sources of carbon dioxide near at hand to use on metahumans that still needed to breathe.

"He's out to get me," Maxine whined. Did she not do any growing up since high school? Granted, Impulse had been playing dirty this entire time. Apparently he had immobilized Max by essentially gluing her to a gas line with that containment grenade. It didn't matter how much super strength you had if moving would make the building you were in blow up along with all the people in it. (Well, it probably wouldn't have, but even Kelly would admit that Max wasn't crazy enough to risk it.)

The director ignored her. "Our first encounter with him was when stopping the Rochester Siblings from engaging in industrial sabotage. We assumed that they were together, but none of the Rochester Siblings admitted to knowing him after they were captured. Everything since then has been in a similar vein."

Kelly frowned. "Has public relations been playing games again? His reputation suggests something a lot worse than that."

"The think tank at ORACLE says that somehow he's illegally profiting off of these encounters."

Kelly barely resisted rolling her eyes at that. ORACLE was filled with people with powers like precognition and super intuition, but most of those came with significant downsides like only being able to communicate via interpretive dance. You could rely on them for predicting a natural disaster like an earthquake or tsunami, but they were very hit or miss for anything below that. Especially since, as far as they could tell, Impulse was a combat precognitive and power interactions could be a pain. (Kelly had looked up his file before the meeting.)

No, saying they were hit or miss wasn't fair. They were also very good at things like interrogations and forensic accounting when you already had the subject in custody or a warrant to go after records, but they weren't much help at getting to that point. Still, she would admit they were good enough to specify a direction for a public relations campaign, and that kind of guidance was necessary after the time the Justice Squad declared a villain to be a mostly harmless joker and it turned out he was literally sacrificing homeless people to demons.

"Though ORACLE also says that this latest incident was a target of opportunity. They suggest he saw Maximum Impact out and about and literally said hi to see what would happen."

Kelly looked Max in the eye. "How do you keep falling for this?"

"He is really just that obnoxious."

"He also has a way of phrasing things ambiguously that can provoke a response," the director added.

Maxine looked down and to the side. "He made it sound like he knew why I was in the area-" She gestured at the screen. "-not that the lady he intended to visit worked behind the bagel counter."

Kelly sighed. "Recertification in engagement protocols and get your ass into anger management or something. I swear you've been easy to provoke ever since you hit puberty."

Maxine froze. "Son of a bitch. Impulse knows who I am under the mask."

"That would explain how he's able to manipulate you so consistently," the director agreed. "Unfortunately, with Miss Winslow's revelations, it's not clear that narrows things down very much."

"Our graduating class had like two hundred people in it," Kelly agreed. "And they're pretty much all Facebook friends with Danny. Add in the people a year or two ahead or behind us? I don't think Impulse is much out of that range, but good luck investigating that angle without breaking your secret identity even more." Most of them, if they even made the connection, probably thought it was just a funny coincidence. Kelly was an exception as she was intimately familiar with Maxine's body, but if people started asking questions that would change.

Max swore.

Kelly glanced at her personal phone as it rang. Strangely, the number looked familiar, but she couldn't quite place it. Curious, she answered the call rather than let it drop to voice mail.

"Hey, Kelly? It's Mark," came a masculine voice.

Kelly stopped walking as she had arrived at her car and leaned against it. "Is this about the apartment damage? Why are you calling my personal phone?"

Mark laughed. "I'm processing your insurance claim."

Kelly flushed in embarrassment. She had managed to forget that Mark worked at her renter's insurance company.

"Good on you for getting hero insurance, by the way."

"Have you seen some of the idiots I work with? Anyway, isn't that a conflict of interest?"

"All things considered, your claim is small change. No one's going to complain. Besides, a certain amount of favor trading is expected with someone with your job. I have to ask about these storage unit and moving cost lines, though."

"Ugh. You know I just moved back from California, right?"

"Kind of hard not to notice."

"Shut up. Anyway, the movers still haven't delivered all my stuff, so I need to put it into storage until the damage is repaired, which they say is going to be another two weeks."

"Yeah, load bearing wall. Well, I'm sorry to say that I can't justify that under your plan."

"Damn."

"That said, you didn't apply for anything to cover for a hotel or something while they're doing repairs."

"I'm staying with the parents," Kelly admitted.

"Ouch." She wouldn't blame him if he was having uncomfortable flashbacks to what her mom pulled at dinner because she damn well was. "Well, anyway, the standard rate on a hotel room for two weeks is about the same as you want for that stuff. You don't have to actually spend it on a hotel room."

"Believe me, I'm tempted."

"How many times has your mom commented on the fact you're still single since you've been back?"

"Don't even start with me, Mark."

She just got laughter as a response.

Glaring at a memory of Mark's face on a dartboard she asked, "Do I need to remind your mom that you're still single too?"

"Believe me, she doesn't forget that," Mark said, though he sounded amused rather than resentful.

"Well, let me treat you to dinner for fixing my insurance claim and maybe both our moms will shut up for a bit."

"Ha! You don't remember my mom, do you? That'd just change what she's complaining about. But how about bagels for brunch instead?"

"Fuck off and die," Kelly said sweetly, while wondering how he knew about the bagels. Then she remembered that Impulse had walked into the damn shop in costume. It was probably on the news.

"Man. I haven't heard that phrase since high school."

"What? That can't be right. There was an acronym and everything."

"And I work in insurance. If anyone would be on the receiving end of that, it'd be me."

"Oh no you don't. I'm not even thirty yet. That's too young-"

"Okay, Boomer."

"Bastard. You're literally my age."

Mark laughed again. "How about Japanese? There's a place near your parents' house that has good yakisoba, and I promise not to mention anything about how our golden years are behind us."

"Fine." Kelly rolled her eyes, but she was smiling.

Kelly groaned as she sat down.

"Mom giving you trouble?" Mark asked, passing her a tablet, this being one of those places where they had electronic ordering. She would deny that it made her feel old. Of course, she would also deny trying (and failing) to look up the conversational frequency of certain vulgar phrases over time.

"Why'd you guess that?"

"I have superpowers. The greatest of them is, of course, the ability to ask for help, but it's followed closely by what I call pattern recognition."

"You'd do better than half the idiots on Justice Squad," Kelly agreed. "I'd swap you for Goldenrod in a flat second."

"I'm pretty sure you'd swap a rabid raccoon for him."

"Maybe not a rabid one…. You're wrong by the way."

"Oh, your mom isn't giving you trouble?"

"Well, she is, but it's the kind I can tune out."

"Mood."

Kelly tried to find something on the menu with fatty fish in it, her go to food for when she didn't get enough sleep. "No, the problem is that my parents have forgotten that they had a child in the house."

Mark took a moment to process that and turned a bit green. "Oh."

"Yeah. Oh."

"It's just a couple of weeks, right?"

Kelly sighed. "That's the other thing: they finished the survey and it looks like it'll be longer."

"Seriously? Two weeks is plenty to fix a load bearing wall and some gas lines."

"I suppose you'd know, but something something foundation blah blah blah."

"How precise," he said dryly.

"Precision is for work. Here the only detail that matters is that it's going to take six months for repairs."

Mark blinked a couple of times. "What the heck happened to that building? That's starting to get to the range where it's cheaper to demolish and rebuild."

Kelly shrugged. "Probably exposed existing damage. The point is I'm going to go crazy if I have to live with my parents for half a year."

"Like work isn't going to do you in first."

"You only think you're joking."

"And mutilate your body afterwards."

She gave him a dirty look. "I managed to forget about that."

She got an unrepentant grin in response.

"Ugh. So I know how I'm still single, but what about you? You've been working out for a reason?"

Mark grimaced. "To work off stress so I don't punch someone at my job. But, yeah, it turns out that going to college in the same town where you have a high school reputation means that reputation carries over."

"Sorry." Kelly might have contributed a bit to that.

"Eh, it's Maxine's fault, and, while I'm not going to have dinner with her any time soon, she's suffered enough to make up for it."

"Really?"

"Well, she still has the reputation of being a cheating slut."

Something about his tone made her look at him carefully. "I'm sure you didn't help that at all."

"Surprisingly not! I had plans, but whenever I got a chance, karma had already stepped in. Turns out that being a hotheaded idiot who doesn't think through her own actions has consequences."

Kelly felt a vein in her forehead throb. "I've read the files."

"I think the funniest problem she had were all the guys hitting on her because they thought she was easy when she's an actual lesbian."

"No she isn't-" Kelly closed her eyes and remembered that Mark was the counterexample. "Right."

"There's also how messed up some lesbians can be about bisexuals."

Kelly groaned. "Tell me about it. I had a gay guy tell me, to my face, that bisexuals weren't real people. Where's the solidarity?"

Mark shook his head. "And then her girlfriend died and I just didn't have the heart." Though that obviously didn't stop him from being a tight fisted bastard when it came to insurance claims. "It didn't help that around then my mom was having her cancer problems and I was too busy to think about Max outside of work. Or date. What about you?"

"Dating takes money and I was an idiot who decided to take student loans to pay for out of state tuition rather than suck it up and go to the same school as my cheating ex. You wouldn't believe how much easier it's been balancing my checkbook since I gave up on dating…. What's that look for?"

"You actually balance your checkbook? I don't think I've even written a check ever since the DMV started taking credit cards and that was the only place for years."

"It's a phrase, asshole."

"We're the same age. Why would you even learn it in the first place?"

"Lectures from my mom about financial responsibility mostly."

"Fair."

"This, sadly, has been the closest I've been to a date in four years."

"Oh! Oh!" Mark practically vibrated in his seat. "Should I be telling you about how captivating I find your eyes? I think I'm also supposed to fake interest in what you do at work, but I already get paid to do that."

Kelly covered her face with both hands. "Why did we ever become friends in the first place?"

"We both hated that ass Stefan," Mark said promptly.

"Huh. I hadn't thought about him in years."

"Fun story, he's actually in People's Shield as an insurance agent. He did college football in… Tennessee? Something like that, but washed out of the program sophomore or junior year and I'm pretty sure he dies inside a little every time he shows up to work."

"Why do we know so many people in insurance adjacent jobs?"

"Where do I work again? Besides, it's just the three of us from high school. I think. And People's Shield is the biggest employer in town."

"Said like a good corporate drone."

Mark touched his chest in mock offense. "I'll have you know I'm a terrible corporate drone." He leaned forward and whispered, "I take post-it notes home from the office."

"I forgot. You're the second worst villain in town."

Mark gave her a pair of thumbs up. "Now, I don't have any room to complain about people who peaked in high school, but Stefan already has a son that he's been doing the whole reliving his youth through, Pee Wee Football and everything."

"Do we know anyone living their best lives?" Even if she hated Stefan's guts back in the day, it was still a bit sad.

"Your parents apparently."

"Shut up," she growled. She did not want to remember that "Hurts so good" was in her mother's vocabulary, especially not in that kind of context.

Mark continued, "Sheila has been having a blast in Hollywood."

Kelly tilted her head at that. "Did she want to be an actress? Wasn't she a chemist?"

"No, she does practical effects for people who think CG is lame." Mark shrugged. "I'm not sure how much longer her job will exist, but for now she's getting paid to blow stuff up for money."

Kelly groaned as she processed the pun. "Having a blast."

"It's not all exothermic reactions. She makes a realistic looking containment grenade imitation, but you should see her face when admits to working on something other than explosions. Though she has a great story where they accidentally released a ton of realistic looking fake money downtown in an explosion."

"That was Sheila?" She had heard about the fallout from that at her old branch.

Mark shrugged. "Her company. And of course, Danny is the guy who knows everyone."

"Right. The 'event coordinator.'" Which was code for a professional party guest.

"That's not actually a euphemism any more. You might run into him at work. He managed the last charity thing for the Justice Squad three months ago. Some kind of concert with bands I never heard of."

"The last time I was at an event he organized, I got drunk, made out with a cute guy and then threw up on him."

Mark batted his eyes at her. "Aww, you think I'm cute."

"I also think you're an idiot," she said with a smile.

Mark raised his index fingers in front of his face. "But you do think of me."

"Your Johnny Depp impersonation is horrible."

This time he seemed at least halfway genuinely offended. "Lies."

"So the prodigal daughter returns."

Kelly jumped a bit at the sound of her mom's voice. Her parents' car hadn't been in the garage, so she had assumed that both of them were out. "Where's dad?"

"He went out to get some bagels." Kelly twitched at that reminder. "There's a sale, you know."

"What? I thought the sale ended already." That was the entire point of Impulse showing up.

Her mom shrugged. "Small business owners are always quick to capitalize on an opportunity."

"I can almost see it." Kelly spread her arms in the air above her head. "Come get the bagels a supervillain wanted."

"Close enough." Her mom got a distinctly smug expression. "So, what were you up to last night? Just one text: 'Don't wait up.'"

"I watched Pirates of the Caribbean with Mark."

"Oh, is that what they're calling it nowadays."

Kelly rolled her eyes. "The movies. All five."

"All five? I'll believe the movies were playing, but I definitely don't think you were watching them."

"Dead Men Tell No Tales wasn't that bad."

"But you knew exactly what I was talking about."

Kelly looked her mother right in the eye. "You complained about Orlando Bloom barely being in the movie for a week straight."

Her mother shrugged. "I know what I like."

"Admittedly, the rum probably helped." They had even made grog for the full pirate experience, though they ended up adding brown sugar because the traditional navy recipe wasn't that good.

Her mom considered that for a second. "I should have thought of that."

"Mom, you saw it in the theater."

Her mother blithely ignored her. "So no chance of grandchildren in nine months?"

Kelly looked skywards. "It wasn't that long ago you would have been horrified that I had drunken sex, not wishing that it happened."

"Is it too much to ask for grandchildren before I die?"

Kelly briefly wondered if her mom had been talking with Mark's mom, which was stupid because she knew they had. "You have grandchildren. Eric and Noah? Sound familiar?"

"Yes, but your brother doesn't want any more children and I'd really like a granddaughter."

Kelly gave her mother a suspicious look. "This isn't so that you can say that keeping all my old clothes worked out, is it?" She had definitely been smug about giving the boys Mike's old clothes.

Her mother looked up and to the side. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said as she swept out of the room.

Well, at least that distracted her from asking what they had been up to after the movies. Though, judging by the hitch in her mother's step as she left the room, Kelly suspected that they had been doing similar things.

Oh God. Were bagels some sort of weird post-coital snack food for her parents?

"Mark, are we dating?"

Mark squinted at her. "You've got more bottles in my bathroom than I do."

"Not that that's hard. You use bar soap and don't even use conditioner." Kelly scoffed, "And you give me problems for living in the past."

"Bar soap is better for the environment," he said piously. "I'm just doing my part. But seriously, where is this coming from?"

"I have to ask for legal reasons."

"What the actual fuck," he said flatly.

"I have pretty strict reporting requirements for personal relationships."

"Is this a conflict of interest thing?"

"Ha! I already told my boss in the SOD that I'm sleeping with you and she just said it couldn't make the numbers worse." Kelly was still amused that Superhuman Oversight Division and suspension of disbelief had the same acronym.

"I do take some pride in my work," Mark preened.

"No, this is for security on the Justice Squad side. I need to know if I should fill in the dating bubble or the friends with benefits bubble."

"Bubble? Is this a fucking scantron form?"

"Ugh. Tell me about it. Too many technopathy and hacking powers out there, so everything gets done on paper." Which sucks, but on the plus side it meant that failed librarians like her were actually quite employable because they had training with archaic information systems.

He looked like he bit into a lemon. "Oh God. Then do the sane thing and fill things out electronically and then print things out. Microfiche is an option for non-electronic storage."

"It's slightly more secure this way." Slightly.

"And this is why I'd never join the Justice Squad except at gunpoint."

Kelly rolled her eyes. "I don't think your superpowers of asking for help or basic pattern recognition would qualify you in the first place."

Mark crossed his arms. "But consider: what would your budget numbers look like if Max or Goldenrod had pattern recognition?"

"Don't even start with me."

He sighed. "Fine, we're dating." He sounded like she was pulling teeth, but at the same time she couldn't blame him. She felt about as happy about the conversation as he did.

"Great. Oh, and mom wants you over for dinner some time. It turns out she really does have some kind of insurance question for you."

"That makes more sense now after Max destroyed your old apartment." He paused for a moment. "Why would the Justice Squad care about the difference between friends with benefits and dating anyway?"

"Because of my security access, relationships are monitored in case I get mind controlled or impersonated or people I know get mind controlled or impersonated."

"...How much do you get paid again?"

"Barely enough to put up with this bullshit. I'm quitting before I have kids, though. There isn't enough money in the world to pay me to put up with the paperwork for that."

Mark twitched at the mention of kids.

"Not a fan of the idea?"

"Let's just say I liked the idea of kids better before my mom started using cancer as part of her emotional blackmail. It's better now, but before her new treatment it was like… if I had kids I'd get rid of the reason for her to keep fighting."

"Eeargh." Kelly didn't want to know what kind of look was on her face.

"On that note, if we're having dinner with your folks, you can be pretty sure my mom will be asking us over sometime soon, too. Our parents talk." He said that last part as if it was the most unnatural thing in the world.

"I'm starting to remember why I moved to the other side of the country in the first place."

"Has anyone else noticed that Impulse hasn't been screaming 'Maximum Humiliation' lately?" Kelly pointed out. She had been back home for about two months now, and really should find a new apartment, but considering how much time she spent at Mark's place it didn't seem that necessary. She did not need the stress of apartment hunting on top of the stress of work; this latest mess very much being a case in point.

The thing was, professional heroes needed to carefully watch what they said and how they acted in public at all times. That meant that either they internalized those lessons and became boring mannikens at all times or like the South Hill heroes, they just took off the figurative mask out of the public eye and became utter assholes.

"Yeah," Screaming Lily agreed. Mark had called her a sweet kid, but that just proved that he didn't actually know her. She was just an expert at the PR game. Well, either that or his standards were twisted after years of handling metahuman insurance claims. Lily's power was non-lethal and only effective on people and very much not the kind of thing Mark had to deal with. "It's sort of like he's just been going through the motions for the last couple of months."

"Sort of like a husband before the divorce?" asked Goldenrod, who was just an asshole and barely bothered to hide it.

Screaming Lily made an ambivalent motion with her hand. "I was thinking more like a parent who had given up on their kid but didn't want to admit it out loud yet."

"Excuse me," Maxine growled before leaving the conference room quickly but, notably not slamming the door, which showed that those anger management classes were actually having an effect.

Director Richardson sighed. "I sent an inquiry about that to ORACLE last week. Analysis suggests that his appearances recently have all been paid promotional advertising."

Everyone stared at the director for a moment. "Are you saying Impact's nemesis has… sold out?" Screaming Lily asked.

Goldenrod stroked his chin. "That makes sense. He's not bringing his A game lately because he's just doing it for the money."

Screaming Lily tilted her head and regarded the picture of the wrecked plumber's van on the screen. "Is that better or worse than my theory that it just isn't fun because Maximum Impact hasn't been a challenge any more?"

"Ooo, tough call," Goldenrod said.

"Enough," the director growled. "I think we're done here."

The kids shuffled out.

Kelly groaned and pressed a palm to her forehead. "Ugh. Don't think of them as kids. They're professional heroes and more to the point, I'm far too young to be thinking things like that."

That got a rare laugh out of Director Richardson, though he left the room without commenting further on it. Yeah, that wasn't a "that was funny" laugh. That was a "welcome to the club" laugh. Dammit, she wasn't even thirty yet.

Gathering herself up, Kelly walked out of the conference room, and practically ran right into Tori.

"Ah, perfect timing," she said as she dragged Kelly right back into the conference room.

"Uh, hello?"

"What's this about you putting down that Mark Swan of all people is an unverified metahuman villain?"

Kelly blinked at that. "You know Mark?"

"Not personally, but Doug had some stories."

Kelly shrugged. "You know the rules. If they've ever claimed to have powers or be a villain, that's what you put on the form. Of course, he claims that being able to ask for help and having basic pattern recognition are superpowers, and that working for an insurance company automatically makes you a villain."

Tori's face twisted slightly. "Well, I can't say that he's wrong…."

"Considering some of his stories from work, neither can I."

"Well, that would explain why ORACLE flagged it."

"Oh God, Mark. You're causing me problems at work without even trying."

Tori laughed. "That would be more believable if you weren't smiling."

"I am?" Kelly felt her face, and sure enough that was something like a grin there.

"You've got it bad."

When Kelly entered Mark's apartment, she stopped to appreciate the sight of her boyfriend standing in nothing but a pair of biking shorts, downing a glass of water. Her boy didn't skip leg day either and had obviously just gotten back from the apartment complex's gym.

"Oh, hi," Mark said when he noticed her.

"You seem oddly nervous. Commit some horrendous act of villany at work today?"

Mark sighed. "Don't even get me started. I had to flag a claim by a Catholic church for potential insurance fraud today. My gut says it was legit, but it had three red flags, so I had to mark it and send it up the chain. I couldn't bury it because of the automated audits."

"Catholic church? Oh! Wasn't that over in Pine County?"

He gave her a funny look. "As much shit as I give Max and Goldenrod about property damage, they don't produce enough to keep me busy full time. Almost, but not quite."

"I knew that. I just didn't think you were handling more than one county." Which was stupid because she remembered him saying something about handling the entire state. "So if you weren't committing unspeakable acts of villany, why were you nervous?"

"I just said I was," he said mulishly, as if he was annoyed that she was questioning his villain credentials. "Anyway, property management sent me an e-mail saying that my lease renewal was coming up, and I was wondering if maybe… you wanted to find a new place together with me."

"It's a bit soon, but I've made worse decisions to avoid spending time with my mother," Kelly admitted.

Mark rolled his eyes. "Well, I feel flattered. Want to put on something mindless and look for apartments online?"

Kelly made a face. "Not really, but let's get it over with. Have anything in mind?"

"Something old that everyone's seen a million times. Looking up apartments online is tedious enough we don't need a real distraction."

"Looney Tunes. Got it."

"Great. Let me take a quick shower and I'll be right back."

Kelly did a quick check to see if he had started dinner, which he had. They probably should eat less frozen pizza, but neither of them actually enjoyed cooking. Before Kelly started quasi-cohabitating with Mark, most of the food in his apartment was frozen pizza and bagels, and she was half convinced that the bagels were part of an aborted plan to mess with her. Granted, her contribution was mostly additional toppings for the frozen pizza, but it was at least slightly healthier.

Once again making a resolution to spend more time in the gym that would probably get ignored, Kelly sat down in front of Mark's smart TV and started doing a search for Bugs Bunny cartoons. Annoyingly, it autocompleted from search history for "bugs bunny matador." At least this time it wasn't Mark messing with her. It was natural curiosity to see if the rabbit ever said "Olé" while fighting a bull-

Kelly frowned as she realized that part of the mess with her apartment never got publicized. For once no one had caught it on film and Kelly certainly didn't tell the press. She thought about the bagels and how Mark consistently referred to himself as a villain with superpowers. Maxine was also sure that Impulse knew her in her civilian identity. Once again Kelly imagined a metahuman naked and once again got a result suspiciously similar to someone she had slept with.

She wasn't sure how long she was just staring into space when Mark walked back into the living room. Wearing a T-shirt and pajama shorts, it was easy to imagine him covered from head to toe in nothing but spandex.

"What the hell, Mark? Were you ever going to tell me you were Impulse? Why would you even become a supervillain!?"

Mark flinched. "For my mom."

Well, points for not denying it at least. "Last I checked the only thing your mom wanted from you was grandchildren."

Mark sighed and sat down on an armchair. "You remember how I said I needed to trade favors to get her into the cancer treatment program? I'm pretty sure I implied that they weren't ethical favors."

"There's unethical and there's outright supervillainy! Why would anyone want you to constantly humiliate Maxine?"

He gave her a flat look. "Seriously?"

Kelly thought about what she just said. "Okay, but I wouldn't spend real money on it. For someone with invincibility, she hurts herself too often to be worth paying for."

"Yeah, Max is incidental to things except for that fact. It's actually mostly insurance fraud. Someone has a piece of expensive equipment that isn't working. Poke Max until she loses her head and wrecks the area and then someone claims that it was working before she wrecked it."

Kelly groaned. "Okay, I can see why you'd pick her for this. But still…."

Mark looked her right in the eye. "Two years ago the doctors said Mom would only have a five percent chance of being alive right now."

"Fuck."

"Tell me about it. The sad thing is that this is the least illegal way I could have gotten mom in that program. Anything else I could find is a minimum three year sentence. If you turned me in I'd probably get probation and be inducted as the newest member of the Justice Squad."

Kelly hated that he was right. Someone capable of taking on Maximum Impact and coming out on top consistently? They'd literally overlook murder to get him on the Justice Squad. Well, maybe not murder, but manslaughter, and Mark hadn't done anything that bad.

"Is there a reason you're still out there committing crimes?"

"Fifty percent chance of relapse within three years. If I turned myself in, well, the Justice Squad's health plan is good, but it's not that good for non-dependent loved ones."

Kelly felt a twinge of something close to guilt at that, because part of her job was keeping expenses like that down. Recruiting and retaining talent was someone else's worry. "Now I'd feel bad if I turned you in."

"I have been telling you I'm a villain for months now," Mark pointed out.

"You lied to me by telling me the truth?"

Mark crossed his arms. "The stuff I pull just doing my day job is a lot worse than anything I've done in costume. I've seen the damage assessments from my cape fights."

Kelly groaned and rubbed her temple. "I don't think you should be doubling down on how evil you are in this conversation. Is there any reason you can think of that I shouldn't turn you in?" Of course, it'd kill her love life, and once it got out that she got her own boyfriend arrested her career would go in all sorts of crazy directions. The people who would approve were very much not the type she wanted approval from.

Oh, and it would generate tons of paperwork, none of it that she could dump on Joel.

Mark obviously didn't hear any of her own thoughts. "Just that it would eliminate my ability to get people into experimental studies."

Kelly flinched at that and stood up. "Look, I need to think about this. I'm going back to my parents' house."

"Following procedure for discovering a supervillain's identity? Extract and report in from a safe place?"

Kelly sighed. That wasn't classified information, but really how much attention Mark paid to stories about the inner workings of the Justice Squad should have been another clue that something was up with him. Well, something other than screwing over Maxine as much as possible. "Yes. Don't flee the state or something."

Mark laughed. "Running would also eliminate my ability to get people into experimental studies without any benefit. If you get me arrested then I don't need to go back to my soul crushing job."

She probably should have noticed how much he hated his job earlier seeing as he never had a positive thing to say about it, unless you counted sticking things to Maxine. Of course, sticking it to Maxine was one of the first things he mentioned about the job so it probably colored her impression.

Kelly left without further word, and on the way back to her parents' house wondered how the hell he was so calm. He couldn't hate his job that much, could he?

Then halfway through the drive it hit her: if he got drafted into the Justice Squad after being a villain for his mother's health, then the organization damn well would make sure to extend health benefits to her to reduce the chances of him going villain again, something they wouldn't have taken seriously if he had just signed up without a villain career.

"Son of a bitch," Kelly muttered. That wasn't really true. Mrs. Swan was a lovely woman, despite getting along with Kelly's mom entirely too well. It was easy to see why Mark would go to extreme lengths for her.

At least now it made sense why she didn't call the Justice Squad on his head right away: the part of her that had thrown darts at his face for two years straight rebelled against the impression that he actually wanted this. (She ignored the possibility that she had positive feelings that could explain it as well.)

Mildly annoyed that she seemed to be playing into Mark's plan, she resolved to call the Justice Squad when she got back to her parents' house. At least if it was his plan, it said good things about the ability to keep their relationship going if she did get him arrested.

Wait. Why would she want that? Was she really so twisted that regularly humiliating Maxine was an attractive quality big enough to outweigh being an actual supervillain?

...

That was a question she was going to answer after the dust settled. (Even if she already suspected what the answer was.)

Her resolve lasted just long enough to get back into the house where she found her mom bent over a kitchen counter in obvious pain. "Mom!"

"It'll pass," her mom replied through gritted teeth, though it was hard to believe her.

Kelly looked around. "Where's dad?"

"Getting bagels," her mom hissed.

"What?"

"I don't like him seeing me like this. So-" Hiss. "-bagels."

Great and now Kelly had found out what was worse than bagels being a post-sex snack. She'd even bet her parents had been playing up the idea they had a vigorous sex life to make Kelly avoid paying attention to them. "How long has this been going on?"

"I got my diagnosis just before you moved back." She said that slowly, but at least it wasn't interrupted.

Still, Kelly could read between the lines. "Mom, I work for the government. I know what a technically correct but misleading statement sounds like."

"The pain started a year and a half ago. I was going to ask Mark-" Hiss. "-about getting me into the program Linda is in, but you two hit it off and then I found out that it was only for lung cancer."

So her mom hadn't forgotten why they had a falling out and she really did want to talk to Mark about insurance. She was probably going to try to leverage any residual guilt about the mess back in high school to motivate Mark.

"I would have mentioned something when you brought Mark to dinner next weekend."

Kelly wasn't entirely sure she believed her.

Her mom could obviously see the doubt in her eyes. "I prepared a packet."

"A packet?!" Because God forbid that her mother actually talk about something bothering her.

"It's next to the aquarium."

Kelly wasn't going to question her mother's sense of organization. At least it gave her something to do. "It looks like I have a phone call to make."

"If Mark can't help with the insurance company, I also accept offerings in the form of granddaughters."

"Oh my God, mother! There's a time and place!"

The fact that her mother didn't cackle in response worried Kelly more than anything else this evening, including finding out her boyfriend was a supervillain…, who she basically told she was going to have arrested and now needed to beg for a favor.

Kelly did pause for a long moment at what her mother called a packet. She had been expecting ten pages, maybe twenty-five. Not whatever this monstrosity was. She suspected that her mother had downplayed just how long she had been dealing with things… or her sense of time was just that warped. It could go either way, really. It was like how when she first moved back her mom thought it had only been five years since she and Mark had talked.

Though thinking about that dinner, she was willing to bet that her mother hadn't actually left to let Kelly and Mark catch up but used that as an excuse to cover up another incident of pain.

Ugh, Kelly bet that she was going to spend the next week obsessively going over everything that's happened since she moved back and recontextualizing it all.

Grabbing the so-called packet, she got back into her car and briefly wondered if this was her mother's way of getting rid of her so she wouldn't see her moment of weakness. Mark might be a supervillain but at least he didn't blatantly manipulate her.

"Seriously, Mark?!" Kelly didn't quite shout that, but it was very close.

Not only had that idiot buzzed her into his apartment building, he didn't even change the code on his door. Then, when she got in she found him casually sitting on his couch, eating pizza and watching Elmer Fudd follow Bugs Bunny into a hollow log.

Mark chewed rapidly and swallowed. "What?"

This was arguably the most stressful day in Kelly's life, the only other contender for that title being the Spring Break incident, and Mark was just lounging around like it was any other day. "If you didn't have superpowers, I'd strangle you right now." Though just a little, because she still needed his help. "Actually, what is your power?"

"I told you. I call it pattern recognition."

Kelly felt something throb in her forehead and she almost grabbed one of her knives.

Recognizing that he was on thin ice, Mark raised his hands. "Patterns in the loom of fate. At least that's how it feels to me. Basically I can look at possible futures and see good or bad patterns based on choices I make. Good for fighting someone straightforward like Max. Bad for seeing the results of a coin flip."

"Before meeting you, I never imagined that I'd want a boyfriend who'd just straight up lie to me." Kelly sighed. "You're a precog? Why aren't you just making money in the stock market or something?"

"Ha! Just looking at a stock ticker gives me a headache. You would not believe the number of precogs fighting over stocks."

Kelly decided to ignore that and pushed the packet at him. "Can you help with this?"

Mark took the packet and swore as he started reading. "Xavier Insurance? Those guys are bastards. No wonder you didn't turn me in."

"You knew I wouldn't?" she said as she sat down.

"About a fifty-fifty either way," Mark said absently as he fished out his phone and started tapping at it.

Kelly's heart sank as she realized those must have been the odds she would walk in on her mother having an episode. As terrible news as it was, it was better than not knowing about it. She wondered if Mike knew, a thought Kelly discarded pretty much immediately based on the lengths her mother had gone to conceal things from Kelly and her brother only saw their parents about three times a year.

"I could have tilted it one way or the other but using my power for relationships just feels creepy." Mark hummed. "There we go. Julian Oriol, coordinator for special projects at Xavier Insurance, which is code for experimental treatments and not illegal supersolider projects." Which was sadly something that actually needed to be said. "Something like a ninety-five percent chance your mother is alive in five years if I talk to him."

"How long does she have if you don't?"

Mark looked off to the side. "You don't want me to answer that question." On the TV Elmer Fudd ran into an anvil, the sound neatly punctuating his statement.

Kelly swallowed and accepted that answer.

Mark looked back at her. "You realize that when I said those guys are bastards, I didn't mean their habit of screwing people over on uncovered procedures? This is going to take a lot of illegal favors from both of us."

She looked him in the eye. "It's my mom," she said simply, knowing that he knew exactly what she meant.

"Welcome to the dark side, we may not have cookies, but we do have pizza."

She started to grab a slice but paused. "I do have one question."

"Shoot."

"How the hell do you put on your costume?"

Mark waggled his eyebrows. "Want to find out?"