Chapter Text
A disquieting chill lifted Grian's wings, pushing him higher in the night sky as he circled Hermit City. He exhaled and hovered in the air above a low apartment building, watching the intersection below. Cars stopped and turned and stepped on the gas without any sense of the dread that would soon envelope the intersection of Emerald street and Redstone Avenue.
He pressed a button on his earpiece. “Is everything ready, Smasher?”
“All in place, Firework,” Joel confirmed. “How’s it looking on your end, Canary?”
“Pretty good so far… I’m keeping an eye on Mothership tonight, he’s making me nervous,” Jimmy replied.
Grian narrowed his eyes and swooped just a bit lower in the sky. It was late, so traffic wasn’t terrible. “I don’t see the target yet.”
“Just give it a minute, Firework, it’s almost there.” Jimmy chided.
Joel sighed through his earpiece, “If it could hurry up, that would be lovely. It smells awful down here.”
“You sure you’re out of range, Smasher?” Jimmy asked.
“Yeah, Canary, I’m plenty far away. I’m underneath the pharmacy on the corner of Cherry Lane. I thought you had our locations.”
“I do, but I don’t have them pulled up right now! I only have two laptops, man,” Jimmy whined.
“Wait–shut up, both of you,” Grian snapped. He saw a dark purple, unmarked van pull up to the stoplight at the intersection.
“Eyes on target! Canary, start the countdown,” He commanded, dropping down to the roof of the apartment and crouching behind the concrete rim on the edge.
“On it,” Jimmy replied. He heard Joel walking further down the sewer he was hiding in, his legs sloshing through disgusting, muddy water. Jimmy started counting down from ten and Grian fished the remote out of the pocket of his black body suit. He tugged at the mask covering the lower half of his face to make sure it was secure.
“3… 2… 1!”
Grian brought his wings up in front of him and pressed the button. Just as the light turned green and the purple van started to pull through the intersection, the manhole cover it was driving over top of erupted.
A cacophony of noise and screams and terrible, burning smells enveloped the intersection. Grian swooped down from the building, through the smoke and flames to the van that was toppled over and totaled. A car not too far from it when the manhole exploded had caught fire, and its engine was ignited as Grian approached. He absorbed the heat from the explosion as he landed on the road and leaped over a smashed chunk of concrete and felt a burst of giddy energy flow through him.
The back door of the van had been blown open but the contents inside were mostly intact, packed away in three nondescript black bags that looked like something someone would use to take out the trash.
“Someone’s called the Agency, Firework. Snatch and grab, man!” Jimmy warned through their radio.
“Got it!” Grian flexed his talons beneath him and jumped on top of the three bags. The material was durable but flexible, fireproof, and easy to grip. He beat his wings and ignited his feathers, taking off out of the back of the van again.
“Items are secure, and–heavy!” Grian confirmed over his earpiece.
“Good, great, now get out of there, Firework! Mothership and The Stranger were dispatched and drones are already trailing you.” Canary told him. Grian glanced behind him and saw the small black machines, each stamped with a different news stations logo on their flat top. A small swarm of them struggled to keep up.
Grian grunted and climbed higher in the sky, then swooped down to the left and dove between two buildings, winding through alleyways. Plants on fire escapes and balconies caught fire as he went by and some of the drones smashed against brick and concrete when they rounded a sharp corner. Grian looked behind him to count how many remained, and when he looked in front of him again, he nearly ran into the remaining drones operator. He gasped and shot a burst of heat sharply below him, air rushing up immediately to lift him up out of the alley. He watched below him as one of the three remaining drones crashed into Mothership, nearly pushing him off of his hoverboard.
“Oh, you devil!” The hero winced, patting out the fire on his suit that the drone had caused. “Almost had ya there, did I?”
Grian frowned and continued higher. Mothership's unmarked drones shot after him with the hero not far behind. The drones fired rounds of bullets at Grian and he pulled the bags of stolen goods up in front of them. The material they were made of repelled almost anything.
“Come on, now, that’s cheating!” Mothership called from below. He stayed to the left of Grian, keenly aware of the heat his flaming wings could dispel.
“It is not!” Grian retorted. He swung to the right to avoid smashing into a billboard, then climbed higher in the sky. They flew over apartment buildings and wound their way around skyscrapers, honking cars and emergency response vehicles blaring their alarms beneath them.
“No flashy getup tonight? Is this your idea of being stealthy, blowing up an intersection and lighting yourself on fire?” Mothership tried to gain altitude on Grian, his hoverboard inching slowly higher beside him. Grian set off another burst of heat beneath him and shot upwards another fifteen feet. Mothership quickly drifted to the left again. He tried to keep the flames between his feathers to a minimum to decrease his visibility.
“You can’t tell me a thing about stealth, Mothership. I could’ve seen your suit from the Eiffel tower if I’d been paying attention!” Grian snapped. Mothership wore a black suit that seemed plain at first, but to Grians keen, falcon-like eye, he could see the flecks of rubies and red diamonds sewn into the fabric. The veil covering his face shimmered with the gemdust, too, and it was rather distracting. That addition to Mothership's hero costume had only been added when he established himself firmly as Fireworks rival.
Mothership laughed beside him. His two remaining drones sped up and got in front of Grian. He saw the twitch of Motherships wrist, and he curled his wings in, diving thirty feet towards the sidewalk as a large net was shot out of the drones. He saw an alleyway coming up and took the opportunity to swerve into it, quickly winding his way through tightly crammed apartment buildings once again.
He shot out of the maze of alleys and onto a less crowded street. Pedestrians screamed and started running. The pink blossoms lining the sidewalk told him everything he needed to know, and he took off towards the corner.
“Smasher, open up! I’m nearly on top of you!” He hissed into his earpiece.
“What?! Canary, what happened to live reports?!” Joel scrambled and splashed through the sewers.
“Sorry, sorry! I wasn’t looking at the right screen! Firework incoming, going north up Cherry Lane towards the corner. You shook off Mothership for the time being but he’s not very far at all.”
Grian saw a manhole cover pop up in the middle of the street and he dove down into it. The bags caught on manhole, jamming it shut and jerking themselves out of Grians grip. He splashed into the sewer water head first.
He heard Joel laughing wildly above him as he tugged the bags through the hole and slid the cover back overtop. He groaned, pushing him up out of the filthy sewage, drenched in who knows what.
“I can imagine how that tastes!” He smacked Grian in the back of the head. Grian swatted him away with his wing.
“Ow! You’re still hot, dude!” Joel winced.
“Hey, guys, Mothership is on Cherry Lane and pedestrians are pointing him to your cover. Stranger is on his way over, too.” Jimmy interrupted. Joel cursed and grabbed two of the bags, throwing them over his shoulder. Grian grabbed the third and followed Joel further into the sewers.
They ran for as long as they could, until Jimmy said that they were far enough away and they could relax.
“These things are heavy,” Grian complained. His shoulders ached already from having just one weighing him down. Flying with all three had been no easy task, either, but he’d at least had some adrenaline and extra heat to help him out at that point.
“I can take that one, if you want. Did Mothership get ya at all?” Joel asked. He was dressed in the same black body suit as Grian.
Grian handed his bag over to Joel, who took on all three as if they weighed nothing. “No. The bags are made out of that shielding material, same stuff as Motherships suit, I think. It came in handy.”
“Nice! Maybe we can figure out what it's made of and replicate it. You didn’t see Stranger, did you?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know if I did, would I?”
“You didn’t.” Jimmy interrupted, “He arrived at the scene with Mothership, but Mothership broke off to chase you. He stayed at the intersection and helped survivors. I think he was waiting to see if Smasher was there, too.”
Joel scoffed, “Wish I had been. He’s due to get his face broken again.”
Grian chuckled. “How far are we from the base?”
“About a thirty minute walk, turn left here, I’ve got your trackers pulled up right now.” Jimmy instructed.
Joel and Grian followed Jimmy’s instructions through the sewers. Only once did they have to take a different route when Agency patrols were too close overhead. If Mothership was with them, he’d be able to sense their earpieces so close to the surface.
Eventually, they reached another ladder, and climbed up. The door opened from the other side, and Jimmy reached an arm down to help get the bags through.
“There they are!” Jimmy grinned as Joel pulled Grian out of the sewer, welcoming them back with a hug in the bases mudroom. He quickly recoiled from them both, pinching his nose. “Oh, that is wretched, you weren’t kidding.” Grian smiled and pushed passed them into their living space.
Their ‘base’ was really an employees only section of the trios bakery. The cafe out front was cozy, warm, and home to a number of rehabilitated pigeons, sparrows, and other common city birds Jimmy and Grian domesticated. It was a pretentious cafe that was only open a handful of days out of the week and charged extra for any bird encounters.
Their personal section was bigger than the cafe on the other side of the sound proof wall. An armchair and a sofa sat against one wall facing a coffee table and a TV that was currently tuned into the news channel covering their heist. A punching bag hung from the ceiling not too far from it. The other half of the room had a workstation meant for injured birds, as well as a hole in the ground that allowed them to access the sewers. More often, though, it was used as a garbage pit for fast food containers, amputated wings, or the charred remains of their captives.
Grian cleared off the coffee table, ruining the game of chess that had been sitting stagnant there for weeks. Joel brought the bags over and set them down, depositing himself onto the couch with Jimmy.
“This should be a pretty nice haul,” Jimmy grinned, passing Grian a knife. He grabbed the first bag and slowly drew the blade along the inky surface. That was the trick with this material, you had to go slow.
He took each item out one by one, setting each carefully on the table. Joel whistled.
“I’m gonna be honest, they look a lot less threatening without the flashy colors or logos,” Jimmy commented, picking up a pretty standard looking handgun and looking straight down the barrel. Joel snatched it from him and made sure the safety lock was on.
“You don’t think this is threatening?” Grian held up a triple edged blade. It was shiny and new, the sharp edges spiraling around one another down towards the handle. Jimmy chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Who should we give all this too?” Joel wondered. Multiple hand-held blades and smaller guns sprawled across their coffee table, all made from plain black or grey material. None of the weapons had been branded to fit any one hero over another, but some were still identifiable.
“Do we know any other equine morphites besides Centaur?” Jimmy asked, holding up a horseshoe with spikes coming off the bottom.
“D’you remember our cousin Edward, out in Nebraska?” Grian asked, picking up the other three shoes.
“Edward! Yes, I remember him. What would he do with spiked horseshoes?”
“I think he's gone goth. That's what his Instagram says, at least.” Grian replied. He sifted through a set of small throwing stars.
“Alright, then.” Jimmy shrugged. He collected the rest of the horseshoes and set them aside.
“That just leaves… everything else.” Joel slumped back into the couch and exhaled. “We didn’t really think this through, did we?”
“We thought it through the best we could. We didn’t know what kind of weapons the Agency was transporting, so trying to delegate which of our allies would get what would have been pointless.” Grian had begun sorting the weapons into piles. Knives, guns, and miscellaneous. It was quite the load, and only one bag full. A pit of worry had begun to settle in Grians stomach.
What did the Agency plan to do with such a large shipment of weaponry? He knew it wasn’t something completely out of the ordinary. He himself had broken or melted down several heroes' weapons during battle, and Joel was a formidable opponent if your goal was keeping things in one piece. Sometimes, things needed replacing. But a shipment this large and diverse? There were things here that none of them had ever encountered before.
“I wonder if they’re planning something big,” Grian mused. His wings twitched against his back.
“How d’you mean?” Jimmy frowned, looking up from the set of throwing needles he’d been jabbing Joel with.
“No one we’re close to have mentioned launching an assault, have they?”
Joel rubbed a hand over his stubble, “No. I think most of us have been lying pretty low this past month, actually.”
“Maybe the Agency thinks we’re planning something big, and this is them preparing to retaliate!” Jimmy suggested. His tiny yellow wings flexed outward before folding in again.
Grian shook his head, “No, it can’t be that. These weapons would’ve taken much longer to be made and shipped.”
Joel sighed and stood up. He went over to the medical half of the room and stuck his finger into one of the cages sat against the wall, checking up on a fat little pigeon who had his leg caught in plastic wrap.
“I’ll call T.I.E.S. and see if they’d like any of these things,” Joel said. Grian nodded and started to put all of the smaller weapons bag into their bag as Jimmy cut open the second bag.
It took another decent chunk of the night to get all the different weapons sorted into piles. Grian and Joel selected a few items for themselves. Jimmy, on account of him being their hacker and not a fighter, did not.
By the time Grian had finally gotten home, he was exhausted. Lucky, but exhausted. He hadn’t retained even the smallest injury during one of the most important heists he and his Bad Boys had ever pulled off! At least, he was beginning to consider it as the most important. Hijacking Agency shipments was commonplace crime. Most of the time, the dark purple vans were full of state of the art medical supplies to heal the cities greatest heroes. Villains who lacked access to any healers at all needed some way to take care of themselves.
But weapons? This many weapons? It clung to the back of Grians mind like a leech.
He changed his clothes before leaving the base and put his wedding ring back on. The small disc Jimmy had designed to make his avian appearance invisible to the naked eye was melded into the metal. He still smelled awful, but he’d have plenty of time to shower before Mumbo got home from his business trip tomorrow afternoon. He rubbed his thumb over the diamond on his ring, thinking about his husband.