Debts Due 4.M



For all that most of being a villain kind of sucked, the job itself was always thrilling. Who would've ever expected someone to create a full-out supervillain dungeon in the Albany sewer system?



Uber ran ahead through the dark tunnels, dressed in tight blue spandex and scattered bandages, head obscured by a scarf and headwrap, save a bit of hair poking out the top. As the security drones approached, he palmed several thin steel needles; a flick of each wrist sent them flying up and out in a perfect arc. Half a dozen security drones dropped, and Leet stepped forward, swinging his Tinkertech sword in a rising slash. The sword was unornamented, but it pierced through as easily as the needles had, leaving almost impossibly neat lines; a swipe of the shield in his other hand slammed a few into a wall.



(He'd made them all out of part of a great batch of Tinkertech metal that would have been incredibly valuable, if he could still make more of it. He couldn't, so it had become priceless. At least it was easy enough to reuse and reshape, if he made a point of stealing it back after official seizures.)



Leet brought up their map (mundane, repurposed GPS), knocking the dangling tip of his green hat out of his eyes. "Ahead and to the left," he said. He gestured widely with his other arm, even as he tucked the map into a pocket. "Lead the way, Miss."



"I maintain that Sheik is a boy. It's magic, it doesn't have to make sense."



"Let's leave that argument to the chat," Leet replied, gesturing to the orange-on-white drone behind them (stolen Tinkertech from a few heists back); the fishing Lakitu camerabot was none worse the wear for all the fighting so far. It had plenty of flaws, sure, but it was tough.



Uber turned back towards it. "Let's make a vote of it," he said, and despite his hidden lips, you could tell Uber was grinning. "So, chat, tell me this: is that nice, flat, toned chest the result of a magic transformation--"



"--or is the holder of the Triforce of Wisdom just using literally any other technique to look like a dude?"



"Hey, no thumb on the scale," Uber said, pretending to glare at him, before sighing dramatically. "Poll open for fifteen minutes or until the end of the adventure," Uber said, facing forward again. "Onward, sidekick!"



With Uber facing forward, with the camera behind the both of them, no one saw Leet's momentary grimace.



"Looks like we're about to get into the second tier of defenses," Leet said, and even without Uber's abilities, the dulcet tones of his stage persona came out easily enough. He wiggled his fingers around the sword. "You know, dear audience, when you think of Legend of Zelda, it isn't the sword and shield you're thinking of, is it? No, the essence of Zelda is--"



They weren't facing tiny helicopter drones now--they'd moved into full-on mechs, bipedal turrets that made him think of something out of that one PC game series... What was it called? Customizable, did a lot of time dueling... Not Armored Core, that was consoles, not Warmech, that was a FF superboss. Whatever, didn't matter.



Even as the first one emerged, Uber jumped back and Lakitu dipped low. Leet crouched, bringing up the shield, and deployed it; metal unfolded, the shield becoming a rampart, and the first of the rubber bullets began to bounce off of it.



It was sort of depressing that Leet had learned to recognize the difference in sound. Well, on the bright side, at least this villain wasn't trying to kill the comic relief.



Behind the shield, Leet extended his left hand. Shing--!



"--dungeon loot!" Leet said, smile stretching wide. Half a week's worth of recon had gone into this, and he'd been able to reconfigure an old hacking tool into something fancier. Sure, he couldn't create anything twice, but that was just a reason to build durable.



Danadanadanadadanadana--



And to add sweet sound effects to the progress bar, because of course. Next to him, Uber laughed as it played, loud and gleeful.



DA-NA-NA-NA!



And then, as two of the robots continued to advance, the largest center one slowed, stopping its firing... And as Leet clenched his gloved fist and gestured, it began to fire upon the other two.



Leet tilted his head, listening to the feed over his earpiece. He'd done a lot of work with the glove's gesture interface, but he hadn't worked in anything for switching weapons... He'd have liked to spend all the live ammo on the other robots.



He walked over, picking up the turret, and belatedly held it over his head. It was heavier than it looked, but Leet lead a pretty active life.



"Now that we've got the sub-boss here," Leet said, putting it down again, "let's see what else we can collect, shall we? I'm thinking that with the theme of this particular dungeon, we'll need to collect a nice, big army by the time we get to the big man."



---



Leet sighed dramatically, one hand resting against his forehead and wiping around a bit of sweat. (He'd picked up a lot of robots.) "Real life remains disappointing," he said. "Really? No boss at all? What am I supposed to do with all these robots? I mean, it's not like I can take them all home, right?"



"Gotta take at least one," Uber said. "Zelda rules. Rest can be called a dungeon gimmick."



"New camerabot, I guess? We'll see."



Leet ignored the tied-up Tinker villain glaring behind them, even as Uber turned.



Five, and the looks fit... Definitely the local Wards. Their leader was one of the few heroes sensible enough to use armor, mostly because he was a small scale duplicator.



"Nah," Uber said. "Looks like we've got a bait-and-switch this time, Leet... Sort of like early Skyward Sword, thinking about it. Though I don't think any of these are exactly Ghirahim."



"Leader seems kind of pasty," Leet said, a hand on his chin, ignoring the indignation of the central armored Ward. "Might fit."



"Hey!"



"Yeah," one of the other Wards said, crossing her arms. She was in bandages, almost like Uber's Sheik costume, though these ones floated and wavered around her red spandex... Probably the thread property manipulator, and the real tank of the group. "Ghirahim is into the weird shit, you can tell, and dear Leader here is distressingly vanilla."



"Wha--What the hell, man! We're on TV, or at least the internet! Think of our image!"



"I am," bandage lady said primly, even as the bandages all began to rise around her. "I'm pretty sure I'm going for the femme fatale thing when I get a bit older. Got to pract--"



She'd looked back, and all the others were looking at her. For a moment, they'd forgotten they were dealing with villains. Leet's eyes flicked to the side, meeting Uber's, and he nodded very slightly.



And then Uber darted forward, flicking his wrist; needles flew, and she batted all of them down with a reflexive wave of her threads, turning to face him. Her bandages wrapped around the wire he threw out next, shifting to sharp metal to sever it... But, unfortunately for her, that was exactly what he'd wanted.



"Never played Smash, huh?" Uber sighed, disappointed, even as she dropped, limbs flailing jerkily. He pulled back the wire taser, and as the Wards pushed forward, he tossed a few needles, forcing them back again.



Dammit, that was going to be a pain... Wasn't likely they'd be able to return with a metal detector. Uber hadn't been wrong, but it was still painful to see those needles bounce away.



The kid in tree-style armor palmed something in hand, preparing to throw, as Metal tensed, suit shifting around him... Scarf was the slowest to move from tension to combat readiness. But the boy in plain black spandex clicked his tongue, shaking his head, and the attack was aborted. From the sounds of it, the kid was a strategic Thinker, and he had veto power.



Leet snapped his fingers, and the floating drones bobbed forward; a moment later, the walkers advanced.



"Sorry to drop Miss Mummy there," Uber said cheerfully, "but there's only one Sheik in canon, you know. Can't have imitators diluting the gimmick. Now, Metal, Spandex, Wood, and... I guess you're Heart?" The last words were directed towards the single person in relatively normal clothes, her chin obscured by a scarf and her eyes by tinted lenses.



"That's a low blow, Uber," Leet objected. "Heart at least had a cool pet monkey."



"You're mixing your media references," Scarfface said, in the sort of gravelly voice kids did when they were trying to be badass. Leet tried not to laugh at her. "Aren't you the video game guys?"



"And you're convinced you're some sort of ninja, so it's not like you can talk." Uber rolled his eyes, neither of them missing the faint flush in the kid's cheeks. "Really, you need to at least finish your costume before you roll out to fight the supervillains."



"Villains, not super--"



Leet abruptly twisted, facing the camera with open surprise; behind his back, where it couldn't see, he discreetly twitched his left hand, and the camera went limp.



"Right," he said, and the junior heroes tensed. They were probably pretty surprised.



Uber had a radio voice, one he'd trained to make until he could boom and announce like one of those dramatic trailer voices. Leet didn't, and no matter what he did, he always sounded a little nasal. It was the sort of voice people laughed at, and it'd done a lot for the two of them. How can you fight all out against a joke?



It was always funny how people expected villains to be so completely honest about their presentation.



"You all have a Thinker," Leet said, folding his arms, "and he's going to know that something was weird about this no matter what, so I'll just go ahead and be honest with you."



Leet was nasal and whiny. Marcus wasn't.



"No witnesses," Leet said. "No security cameras, and no supervising heroes. Sure, we've got a stream, and some people might start mobilizing once they see you and realize where we are... But right now, kids, it's just you and us here."



"Are you threatening us?" Metal's armor shifted still further, becoming lighter, more skeletal, the individual parts denser.



"Nope, we're giving you an opportunity," Uber said. He'd dropped the theatrics. "I mean, seriously, think: we've been doing this for years."



"We're very good at working with what we've got," Leet said. "Most of our losses are my unpredictable technology, the fact there's only two of us, and the fact we're not willing to kill or maim any of you."



"Except that, we've gotta note," Uber said, "this time around, we're using a small army of robots with rubber bullets and tasers. That's the sort of thing that tends to be accidentally lethal."



"To say nothing of the fact that anything my tech has touched can and probably will explode, eventually," Leet said, shrugging wryly. "I mean, let's be frank, kids. If you throw this fight and let us run away, then you can take in the actually dangerous villain--you think people build a robot army in the sewers for peace?--and we can all leave this with all our limbs intact."



"You're still villains," Wood said. "We all joined the heroes to stop people like you."



"People like us," Uber echoed, incredulous. "Villains who don't kill anyone, who mostly go after other villains, and who don't ever really do property damage? Yeah, we're real dangerous, all right. You all need to aim higher."



"I mean, come on," Leet said. "Do you even know how much we go in and out of jail? They could start putting us in serious lock-up areas, but we keep ending up in places we can escape."



"Because we're harmless," Uber said. "We take out minor villains, and fighting us helps Wards like you get enough experience to fight the kind of people that do want to hurt people."



"And we're okay with that," Leet said. "Hell, we've put a lot of effort into this. Some of you getting seriously hurt, here and now? That's a bad thing for everyone here."



For a moment, the Wards hesitated, looking amongst themselves. Then, as if by unspoken consensus, they all looked at their leader.



"You're right," Metal said. He took a deep breath. "Honestly... Fighting you is probably dangerous, and it won't change anything."



"I'm sensing a 'but' there," Uber said, sighing. The boy nodded.



"But if we don't fight you," he said, "the real reason we won't is that we're scared. And if we let ourselves run from villains now, when it's small and safe and they don't want to kill us..." He shook his head. "Being a hero is hard because you can always run away from it, you know? For at least one of us, this is her first fight. I don't want to be how this all starts for her."



"That's true," Leet said, and he smiled. "Geez. You heroes are a real pain in the ass, you know that?"



He raised his sword and shield, and the young heroes did the same, preparing their own weapons.



"Get the girl I got out in the hallway first," Uber said, and the heroes paused. "Come on, move it, we've got an entire channel's worth of people waiting for the camera."



"Isn't it going to catch someone's attention if they see she's gone all of a sudden?"



"Yeah," Leet said. "But we've done this before, and other people've connected the dots. We're almost as fake as wrestling, but kayfabe is still a thing. Now go on."



Metal nodded, sparing them a slight smile; he and Scarf stepped forward, picking her up, gently carrying her out into the hallway.



So, naturally, the moment the amateur heroes were separated, Leet and Uber attacked.



"SURPRISE!"



"You bastards--!"



"WE'RE STILL VILLAINS, MOTHERFUCKERS!"



And if not for an inopportunely-timed explosion, Leet and Uber would have carried the day.



---



This was the worst part of the job, in a lot of ways.



Leet glanced to the side. Uber was drumming his knuckles and palms against the wall. At the moment, he'd finished a percussive arrangement of the SMB Underground theme and he was moving on to something out of Okami; Leet didn't really sure which one yet, the game had a few shared motifs.



Uber had always been a pile of nervous energy, and for all that he was the one with a hundred-and-eight useless skills for burning time and Leet was a tinker without tools, Uber was always the first one to get stir-crazy.



Time to try and head it off.



"How'd that experiment with the hanging bars a capella go, anyway? I was busy with the Kid Icarus stuff back then, didn't see how it panned out."



"What, the one where I held myself up with my elbows?" Uber kept drumming, but he'd moved to a slower song... That was a good sign. "Being able to drum with my feet too doesn't add as much as I thought, and I get stiff. Got pretty good ratings for the last Dumb Talent Show stream, though." He grinned. "Can't believe you're still better at that play-games-with-your-feet thing, by the way--my power still doesn't seem to know what the fuck. We need to do something like that Mario Kart Grand Prix again."



It was probably just too dumb for his power to care about it, honestly, but Leet smiled anyway. "Please, the socks you made were getting all the praise. I'm still proud of the way you set off that argument about the Zelda timeline. What'd it last, an hour? Our chat is way too easy to troll."



"Yeah, those split timeline socks? My masterpiece." Uber's drumming was slowing further. "Hey, it may be sort of dumb, but the way Nintendo agreed to have their Aleph and Bet branches do the two sides of the Ocarina of Time split was the best thing. Seriously, Sony and Sega need to get on the whole diversifying-across-worlds thing."



"Eh, I sort of see it. Nintendo's the one that wanted to do the wacky things, may as well debut the Wii in the world where the VirtualBoy actually caught some interest. Don't know that either of those two could've done something similar."



Uber nodded, but his drumming was speeding up again. That meant that Leet needed to think of something else.



Leet knew what everyone said about them--he was an online streamer, of course he knew, the internet never had a filter. Uber was a superhuman, someone who could become an expert at anything in a day, and Leet was a loser. Sure, his ability might let him make anything once, but it failed on repeats, and it failed in ways he couldn't predict or stop. Half of their spectacular victories were because of his creations, sure, but ninety percent of their spectacular failures were because something broke and Leet's back-up plans failed.



Everyone knew that, and Leet had to admit he'd done a lot to foster that very image. But they didn't know that it was getting worse.



At the beginning, the backfires had only come from repeated creations. A second gun would fail, but a flamethrower was fine... And then the flaw had become conceptual, gradually widening further and further. A teleporter into a cage was the same as a teleporter into a hole; then a proximity mine was the same as a spike trap; then a superspeed panel would fail because he'd already created speed shoes.



Now Uber was the superhero and Leet was the fuckup. The novelty of the switch-up had worn off fast.



The lights went out. Uber was off the wall in the next moment, placing himself between Leet and the doors of the cell, eyes scanning through the darkness. Uber was good at identifying targets in dim light, yes, but a thousand skills still left you with a human body. This was true darkness.



Time stretched, on and on and on. Eventually, there was the sound of footsteps in the darkness, moving deliberately--directly towards them.



"This was a nice surprise," a voice said: young, female, amusement not quite covering exhaustion. "I thought it might take you two a couple more weeks to get locked up again."



Uber laughed, which was great, because that gave Leet time to say something first.



"If you're going to do the voice-in-the-darkness thing," Leet said, voice full of bravado he didn't feel, "you should be a bit more gravelly, you know? The kid earlier today was actually pretty good at it, not that I'd ever admit that to her face. Right now you just sound like a teenager in need of a nap."



There was a quiet, self-deprecating chuckle. "Not entirely wrong."



The lights turning off was a really bad sign. There was still a faint electrical hum, so they weren't in the middle of some sort of violent attack on the lock-up, but the lights meant that they either had some jackass PRT paladin who wanted to rough up the comic relief, or they had a villain coming to try and make an 'offer.' The age of the voice said villain.



Leet reached forward, tapping out letters on the hand Uber had extended toward him. 'V, D, D, N.' The PRT could handle most villains, especially the ones small-time enough to come after the two of them; they just needed to show up. If they bought time and made noise, they'd probably escape this with a few bruises.



There was a faint scraping sound, a soft impact, and then the lights turned on again. A girl was sitting in front of the cell, sitting on a chair that hadn't been there before, dressed in a dark black-gray suit. If the dark circles under her eyes were any indication, she hadn't gotten much sleep the night before--or several nights before that. All the same, she carried herself with dignity and a sharp alertness, betraying none of the exhaustion he'd have expected.



"Good evening, Leet, Uber," she said; she was resting her arms on her knees, and despite the darkness, her eyes were already on Leet's. "I'm Administrator. You might have heard of me," she said, faint smile hanging there... And then Leet remembered, and he stiffened of his own accord. The moment it sunk in, she nodded and continued speaking. "I'm a Thinker, and my specialty is powers. Honestly, I'd rather do this tomorrow, but you've broken out within a day before and you two've been on a speedrun kick lately. Couldn't take the risk."



"The one whose name came up after that Simurgh attack last week," Leet said, and she nodded.



"The same."



Uber and Leet exchanged looks, before turning back toward her. "I'd have guessed that you had something to do with the Protectorate, after all that."



"I do," she said. "In a matter of speaking." Another soft chuckle. "It's just that no one was supposed to know I exist, not yet. Hazards of pissing off the Simurgh, I suppose."



"And you're here for us," Leet said, unenthusiastically. "Off the record. Boy, this evening is just getting better and better."



Uber shook his head. "What do you want, an autograph?"



"If you do, please go through the online store," Leet said. "This is just weird, even by internet fan standards."



She shook her head. "I'm not focused on getting anything from you two right now," she said. "I just want to talk to you, Leet. I told you, my power is powers, and I've done a great deal of digging... Both into powers, and into you. You need to know something about your shard."



Despite himself, he couldn't help but feel a pulse of hope, before he strangled it with practicality. Even a super-special Thinker wasn't going to fix something as broken as his Tinkering.



"Please, I'm an internet celebrity," Leet said dismissively. "I've heard everyth--"



"Our powers are alive," she said, cutting him off, and he abruptly lost steam. "And yours is trying to kill you."



He opened his mouth, tried to speak, couldn't.



"Our powers aren't gifts," she said, speaking with an unusual intensity; her eyes seemed to catch the dim light, and they never waved from him. "We're just beta testers, given the powers because their creators need data. They're given to people who will use them, who will start fights, who will cause problems. They make us worse, not better." Another ghost of a smile. "Part of why most of us, hero or villain, aren't very nice people."



Uber glanced back, deferring to him, same as always. In the next moment, his eyes narrowed in anger; he whipped his legs, throwing himself to his feet. "Stop," he growled, really growled, in the voice he'd spent an afternoon refining for intimidation. "I don't know what your angle is--"



"Except it didn't work with you, Leet," Administrator said. She didn't sound tired now. "Because you don't do what it wants."



"Cut it out!"



She kept speaking, level, implacable, looking straight ahead.



"You don't take risks, you keep to careful boundaries, you don't stretch your wings." Uber clenched his fists. "Because of Uber. And that's why you're running out of time."



That took Uber's knees out from under him. He glanced back, almost involuntarily, as Leet clenched his teeth.



The worst part was that it didn't feel wrong. It didn't feel new, either.



"Because you can rely on him, you don't take risks. Because you keep to careful boundaries, you keep the two of you in the safe side of parahuman jail. Because if you pushed your limits and made a mistake, then you might die, and then you wouldn't be there to watch over him any longer." Administrator closed her eyes. "It's all very noble, Leet. If our powers wanted us to succeed, then your careful little game of cops-and-robbers would even be clever. Instead, you're trying to apply superhero tropes to a horror film." She opened her eyes again, pinning him in place. "You can't keep doing this, Leet. Keep going like this and you'll live another year or two, maybe a little longer, and then your shard will finally succeed. It'll tear itself out of you and move on to someone else it can destroy... And without you, Uber will fall apart."



Silence dragged on. The girl sighed, her head drooping; now that she wasn't looking at him, the intensity was replaced with exhaustion. She seemed very young and very tired.



"This isn't how this conversation was supposed to go at all," she murmured, just loud enough to catch. "I'd explain your shard's specialty, talk about what you could do, get into inspirational anti-Endbringer stuff. Uber can't do that part, but he'd be a great teacher... And you, Leet, your Innovation shard? You have no idea how powerful it could be. With you, working with Dragon, who can catch the errors... You might just be able to ignore your restrictions entirely, and then who knows what you could do?" She shook her head. "I had all sorts of clever allusions in mind, and you know the only one I can think of right now?" She looked up; without wry humor or calm composure, she just looked tired, almost haunted. "Cid on the fucking deserted island, dying because no one knows you need to catch the fast fish."



Leet opened his mouth to make some dark joke about Celes and cliffs, only to realize exactly where that metaphor was going.



"Because the more you know, the more you look," Administrator said, head dropping again, "and the more you can see it. There's a thousand humans for every shard, a thousand more possibilities in those tiny blind spots created by each Trigger, and we're still losing. Sphere twisted into Mannequin, Dragon crippled by her creator, Panacea's slowly-building breakdown... Our shards are meant to break us. At best, they're neutral. You're the first person I've seen really, truly escape what they want from you, Leet, and that just convinced it to kill you." She pinched the bridge of her nose, frustration becoming a directionless anger. "Scion will go full Lavos on us within five to fifteen years and I'm no Lucca. If he doesn't, we all die anyway, it's just slower. We don't have time for all of this."



"Scion," Uber said, seizing on that, because it was easy. Very Uber. Powers given to destroy them, and he'd gotten a power that kept him endlessly distracted. "He's evil?"



"More of an aimless god made of world-eroding poison, but yeah, basically," she said. "The golden man is just a power. The real Scion is some kind of fucked-up multidimensional being, and he got to keep all the best powers while he gave us crippled monkey's paws. We managed to kill his partner with sheer stupid bloody luck, but that's not going to happen again." She closed her eyes. "Current plan is find Tinkers and make some giant weapon empowered with anti-Entity energy or something, except that he probably has his own version of Path to Victory. Having just one plan means he uses it and we're screwed." She looked up. "But it's something. That jackass is part of why everything's broken, and if I get nothing else accomplished, I at least want to spit in his goddamn eye before we go."



Leet nodded wordlessly. A moment later, her head dropped, eyes returning to the floor.



"Scion..." Uber repeated, the single word loud in the silence. He turned, walking toward the back of the cell even as the girl stared at the floor; he started to pace, and for once, he seemed focused.



Uber... Andrew. The hyperactive inattentative unmotivated fuck-up. His best friend. His first project, and like so many others, it had ended poorly. Leet had triggered to help him and Andrew had triggered for himself, and that was their relationship in so many ways.



He'd spent years telling himself that he watched over Andrew because he was needed, but time had worn away at that pretty illusion. No, he watched over him because Andrew at least cared about things. Andrew had been the one who had gotten him into video games; Andrew was the one who had wanted to use their powers for something; Andrew was the one who had started the streaming site; Andrew came up with their themes. And yet, he looked to Leet every step of the way, asking for approval. The moment Leet said no, he'd give up; he always had.



There wasn't much of a friendship left in it, if he was being honest, just tightly-wound codependency. He'd sometimes wondered if Andrew felt the same way, and he wasn't sure which would be worse: if he agreed and never said so, or if he didn't see any problem.



And yet, he'd still planned to keep doing it until the day he'd died. He'd never really believed that there could be anything better.



From all appearances, the girl in front of him was getting there. And that felt really damn sad, somehow.



"Huh," Leet said. "Guess I was right the first time, when the lights went out." She looked up, and he heard Uber come to a stop behind him. "You really are a villain."



For a moment, anger flashed in her eyes, before she took a deep breath. "I'll ask you to explain what you mean by that," she said, closing her eyes, voice eerily calm. "That's the sort of statement that upsets people."



"We're villains," Uber said, very patiently. "Like we're going to use it as an insult! Come on now."



"A secret conspiracy, this meeting..." Leet waved his hand, even as Administrator opened her eyes again. "This is villain behavior, you know. At the end of the day, a villain is someone who sees what they want, sees what's in the way, and tells the rest of the world to go hang."



Her eyebrows rose. "Funny," she said. "I think most people would call that kind of person a hero."



"Because most of the world is dumb." Uber shook his head.



"Heroes are the ones that compromise," Leet continued. "If a road's blocked, they go around. If some idiot has a bomb and a hostage, they don't fire through the meatshield. They give up a hundred little things for power. Villains don't do that. They find their own little corner of the world, and they'd set the rest of everything on fire to protect their part of it. You said it yourself, right? I'm a villain because I don't take risks."



"And you're halfway there yourself," Uber said. "I mean, you're here. Where are you even going with this part of the plan?"



Friends or not, they knew each other pretty well... Uber had caught on pretty fast. Between the two of them, they could keep her off-balance, keep her from controlling the conversation. They'd done it often enough against combat Thinkers.



"You're not supposed to be here," Leet said, before she could speak. "So you probably don't have the power to get us out of here officially. Say we agree and go with you--how're you going to explain us? Are we just going to be another little secret?"



"Everything about your situation is stupid," Administrator said, voice tight with strained patience. "You've made mistakes, but you've done little real harm. If we just--"



"The problem," Uber said, cutting across, "isn't that you think you can save us, though yeah, that's kind of annoying and condescending. You still haven't asked if we want to be saved. The real thing, though--"



"Question, Administrator," Leet said, cutting across, adding a little more disruption. "Why does it have to be you? Why does it have to be now? Why does it have to be like this? What kind of hero doesn't even give the system a chance?"



For a moment, she just stared at him, and he could almost feel her mentally downrate their intelligence.



"Because you're villains," she said. "The word has a kind of magic to it. Just look at the Birdcage. We condemn our worst criminals to a nearly lawless fortress inside a mountain, forcing them to group together to survive. It locks them into criminality and conflict, which is incidentally another fucking microcosm of the cycle, because of course it is." She shook her head. "There's another goal behind it, because they're meant to be another last-ditch weapon against Scion... But the rest of the world just goes along. We lock our worst in a living hell, without hope of escape or appeal, and that's okay because they're villains. In a world where people get treated like that, do you really expect fairness?"



"Good deflection," Leet said. "But as you said yourself, we've spent years staging a very careful balancing act. We're a joke; no one is afraid of us, and no one is ever going to Birdcage us. Former villains join the Protectorate all the time, so you know you can do this legally. Why aren't you?"



"Because I'm in the middle of a plot to expose my identity. You're famous. If you start acting seriously, if your powers seem to improve, people are going to connect it to me. And that means that any projects you're involved in--"



"So?" Uber shrugged. "Fuck 'em. You've clearly got allies in the high-ups, so it's not like that's going to ruin you--just use plausible deniability until you hit something big and dramatic enough to go public. It's not like you can kill Endbringers if you keep huddling behind the curtain."



"And I need to do something on that scale before I reveal myself," she said. "Do you know how much crap I've taken for my age already? I can't risk--"



Leet snapped his fingers, and she stopped. Andrew had gotten him here; now, he had to finish the job.



"And there we go," Leet said. "'I can't risk.' Those are the words, Administrator, that start you on the road to one of these cells." He leaned forward. "You know how people tell you that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely? Let me tell you, as someone who's never had much power: those people are full of shit."



He stood up, walking to the bars of the cell, looking down at the girl sitting in front of the doors.



"If you've got power, real power, then what do you have to worry about? If your place in the world's secure, if you have everything you need, why do you need to hurt anyone else? Power sets you free." Leet tapped on the cell door. "Fear is what corrupts--because when you're afraid, when you start considering whether ends justify means, you can't risk everything."



She watched wordlessly, eyes narrowed, and he didn't know if a single word was getting through to her. Still, he had to try.



"And that's what really makes a hero," Leet said. "Greed. They'll put everything on the line, they'll go all-in, they'll take chances. They'll risk the deaths of a hundred if it might save a thousand... And when they do that, when it works, they become an inspiration. One person can't save the world--one hundred people can't. But if you stop holding back, if you put it all on the line, then you can inspire ninety-nine others, and then you're one-hundred strong. Every one of those one hundred can inspire one hundred others, and suddenly one hundred becomes ten thousand."



He pounded on the bars, lightning fast, and she couldn't quite stop the twitch.



"I'm not saying to be stupid," Marcus said. "But even knowing as little as I do, I know that there are things you can be doing, Administrator, that you're not--and you're not doing them because you're afraid. I understand that, because I'm a villain. But you're not. You've got a heroic ambition, and it's something a villain can't ever accomplish... So go and actually try."



For a long, long moment, she just stared at him. A moment later, she smiled, just a little.



"Pretty inspiring, for a villain," she said.



She'd caught him flat-footed, and there wasn't much he could think of to say.



"Why do you think we spend so much time playing games and paying tribute to them?" He glanced back--Uber had stood up, too. "In games, it all works out... In games, you can put everything on the line and win." He sighed. "Everyone wants to be a hero when they're young, you know?" Andrew met Leet's eyes. "We just... can't, most of the time."



There was a tightness in Marcus's throat, and he looked down and away.



"That's true," Administrator said. She sighed, and when she spoke, there was something hard to define in her voice--it sounded a lot like the way he felt about Uber. "You two... The games, and this. Exactly the right words, at exactly the right time. This part was always planned, wasn't it? When I see her, I'm not sure if I'll throttle her or give her a hug."



As he turned around, he saw her push herself to her feet.



"Uber and Leet--no, Andrew, Marcus," Administrator said. "I can't promise you two very much. I have enough influence to get you out of here, but not instantly. There may be some pretty harsh restrictions... And with my plans for you, you'll be everywhere, doing everything. Our odds aren't great, and even if everything works, millions of people might die during the final battle alone."



Uber stepped up next to Leet, waiting at the bars.



"Even so," Administrator said, bowing her head, "I'd like to ask for your help. I don't want it all to end like this. Things can change... Things have to change."



He glanced sideways at Uber, who nodded very slightly.



"You're doing it wrong," Leet said, and she blinked, looking up at him. "I mean, come on, consider your audience."



Her head tilted a little... And then she laughed, breaking into a smile. "Go ahead, then," she said. "Show me how it's done."



Leet took a deep breath, thinking, remembering... And then he remembered the perfect scene.



"No! NO WAY! I refuse to believe it!" Leet turned away. "This..." He fell to his knees. "...this can't be the way the world ends..."



For a moment, he lay there, limp, head dangling... And then he stood up, turning to face Uber.



"Uber..." He threw out his arms. "There's only one thing we can do! We must change history! Just like Uber did when he saved me!" He turned to the girl in front of the cell. "Right, Administrator?" He turned back to Uber. "Okay, Uber?!!"



Out of the corner, he saw Administrator staring at him, fighting to keep a serious frown on her face... And then she nodded slowly.



"I... guess so..." Her voice was somber despite the light in her eyes. Uber turned to face her, too. "It was a stroke of luck that we were sent here, through that Gate."



She took a few steps forward. She was grinning now.



"Uber, let's go!"



Uber nodded... And then, tapping his hands on his legs and his toes against the ground, he began to hum. Another useless skill, refined during entirely too much time wasted rotting in prison, and yet hearing that a capella pick up made him feel really alive for the first time in years.



Leet raised a fist to the sky.



"Uber! Administrator! Together, we can do this!"



Leet looked at Administrator, Administrator looked at Leet... And then they began to laugh, collapsing into giggles, even as Uber resolutely continued the song. Leet knew him well enough to be sure that he was in a good mood, too.



He didn't know the path ahead. He didn't know how he'd accomplish it, or how long it'd take, or what would await them afterward... But neither had Crono, Marle, or Lucca.



Uber and Leet would recreate one last video game. It'd be their grandest show ever, an impossible feat, an appropriate swan song to the way they'd spent so much time--and then Marcus would end it.



He'd be damned if he'd die a loser... And he'd be damned if he died before he set things right between him and Andrew.



He was done wasting time.