Chương 44: Lunch Breaks

Ned hadn't realized how hungry he was until the sandwich in front of him disappeared in two bites. The man who had brought it over to him stared at the hero in a mixture of concern and awe.

"I'll… have another one of those," Ned scratched his chin, thankful that the remainder of his mask hid the small blush of embarrassment. He wiped his mouth as the Amberheart staff member retreated away to fetch another serving, leaving Ned alone at the empty bar he'd parked his butt at. A quick tap on the side of his face ensured his mask covered his jaw again, his expression once again completely unreadable.

Feeling secure behind the expressions he controlled, he stealthily glanced over a shoulder at the rest of the room. The sight of this penthouse meeting room was becoming too familiar for his tastes but he wasn't going to refuse free food of this quality while he was in the neighborhood. ¹ A deck saved was a deck he could put towards better gadgets.

Besides, he was here at the Tower on a mission, one he was eager to get back to after this quick lunch break where he spent the whole time avoiding eye contact with any of the other hero teams after finding a corner to hide in. Ah… things hadn't changed that much since high school. After dodging the explosion that Fencer had packed into the dimensional wallet, he'd managed to retrieve the mysterious costume and squirrel it away in a safe spot.

Ned had been hoping the thing would've been in better shape so he could run some tests on it with what he'd managed to gather over the years, but that turned out to be too optimistic on his part. Had he not seen the suit before liberating it from Fencer, he might've worried he hadn't gotten it out of the blast radius of Fencer's little trick quick enough. One of the gauntlets was mostly scrap metal. Assuming all his suspicions were correct, that one was probably the one from the museum.

As for its less damaged twin, he'd barely managed to power that one down in time before he would've been forced to dodge a second explosion when he'd had the brilliant idea to try and see if it worked yesterday evening. He wasn't sure what more secrets it could yield, but despite the glove's obvious instability, it still warranted some discrete poking at by a professional.

Maybe it would reveal a weakness at the core of the design, something that could help Ned get the upper hand when he came face to face with this villain. He still planned to be the one facing this guy down after all. Whatever this guy's deal was, he'd snuck into Ned's city, joined up with Ned's villain, and had brought the League with him. If Ned let anyone else handle this, it was going to end badly. So he needed something to make sure that the tech side of this villain's plans could be taken care of.

He wasn't Orbit after all, and couldn't depend on having a matching powerset to cancel it out. Unfortunately, all of his science-y contacts outside of Amberheart were busy for one reason or another, so he was depending on some small favors that a few lab techs owed him to get this looked at without anyone else noticing. Now that the crime wave was winding down, they should have the time to help out.

Winding down was definitely the wrong term for it and if anyone had dared to tell that to Ned he'd probably have lost his cool over it. Sure, there were a lot less actual visible incidents in Victory at the moment, but that was because the homegrown villains had all been replaced by the League. And they were playing much more subtle games. Civilians had definitely noticed that the absurd number of villain attacks were back to normal Victory levels of super powered chaos.

After all, no one was messing with the weather, local power grid, or blowing up any warehouses at the moment. There hadn't even been any large-scale muggings or bank heists. At worst, things were back to some random fights in the middle of the street. The disruption to normal life was pretty much over for anyone not rocking a mask or cape. The story that didn't tell was that heroes involved in those fights were going to medpods at a much greater rate than they previously were.

Or that some concerning tech was getting set up on rooftops around the city. Or even that the odd smash and grabs that usually hit up jewelry shops or small labs were replaced with silent alarms being tripped around the city but no one being able to prove anyone had been in those locations. The League was holding back with no confirmed kills just yet, but it was clear they were showing their teeth.

Victory was the one city where no one had eyes on any of their council members just yet, but that absence just proved some of them were hiding in the shadows here. The headcount from all the other cities around the solar system was incomplete, leaving twelve out of the almost thirty head honchos unaccounted for, to say nothing about some of their second-in-commands and favored underlings. Oh, and some of the reports suggested that they were definitely teleporting all over the globe.

Stories such as Crimson Dagger being in Orion one day and in Darkwater the next. Ned had heard that Empress Envalla suddenly vanished from Akitsu last night along with every trace of her Shadow Cosmos Generals only for every hero team on the eastern coast of that island to be gathered up to deal with the sudden appearance of Abyssa and her deep sea kaiju buddies.

The small mercy of this whole thing was that League was leaving "normal" cities alone, although Ned suspected that was just the small olive branch they were extending to the governments of the world to ensure that this was "just" a hero problem to deal with. Any place with just a handful of heroes that barely saw a supercrime once a month seemingly escaped their notice. And despite the giant monsters, floating fortresses, and armies of minions, trade and travel all over the world was pretty uninterrupted.

Because of this, civilians were lulled into treating this as a minor inconvenience while heroes all over the world were desperately hanging on, hoping that Mr. Wonder would get back from Junea – which had been slammed by the initial assault and needed heavy hitters that could handle space combat – to help even the odds. Ned couldn't even be upset by that, especially for those around here. Victory felt safe to them, seemingly secluded from the madness of the League's assault.

They didn't realize the danger this brand of villain posed, having spent so long growing numb from villains around here who postured more often than not. He sighed and swept his gaze to and fro around the penthouse, still half full even as the typical lunch hour was drawing to a close. Honestly, it was kind of rare for it to be this full, but Ned chalked that up to heroes wanting to eat in a more safe location with the League around.

Ned would probably have to be more selective pretty soon to dodge any attempted poisonings if he wanted to keep grabbing a bite while in costume. He spotted too many familiar faces out in the crowd, including some members of Aegis and the Wild Warriors. Obviously though, his eyes immediately zeroed in on the New Aurora Champions as they chatted with some woman Ned didn't recognize.

Secret Keeper was hovering nearby, their absence completely unaddressed after a bunch of rumors had circled around the hero community as of late. Ned was doing his best not to be noticed by that team in particular, looking for a good time to slip to the elevators when they looked suitably distracted – just as soon as he got his second helping to deal with his body's intense caloric needs.

So far, no one had picked him out, but he felt oddly exposed out here, especially with the backpack containing the mysterious gauntlet stashed at his feet. Letting his gaze leave the potential source of his next argument, Ned spotted the staff member who'd brought him his food last time leisurely heading his way with a plate and smiled. He was about to stand up to meet the man halfway when his luck ran out.

The woman chatting with Azure and friends noticed him and a grin he could spot from across the room broke out on her face. She waved the other heroes goodbye and made a beeline directly towards him, outpacing the slow-moving man carrying his food. Ned briefly considered leaving before realizing the elevators wouldn't arrive and open fast enough. He accepted his fate as this unknown woman slid up to a seat beside him.

"Hey, Ned!" she greeted him with a warm smile.

"How's the back healing?" His projected eyes mimicked his confused blink at her overly familiar tone, "It's… healed? Um… who are you?" Whoever she was, she wasn't dressed in a typical costume like most of the people here, nor did she sport the more professional attire that marked the Amberheart staff. Instead, the woman who had sidled up to him wore a puffy black jacket over a pastel pink blouse that ended a few inches below her waist.

Her legs were covered by teal leggings that were tucked into shin high boots each of which boasted a keychain of some cutesy mascot character that reminded Ned of those Stellar Guardians that gave magical girls their powers. She wore her brunette hair a short bob with pronounced bangs on the side which framed her pale face. A dash of glitter seemed to be applied on her nose and cheeks which pulled attention to a pair of eyes that boasted golden irises which swam in black sclera.

Those weren't common but it didn't intrinsically mark her as having powers. Heck, having powers didn't mean you were a hero even up here in Amberheart's penthouse. But something about those eyes was familiar to Ned. Before answering, the mystery brunette turned and accepted the plate that had been on its way to him. Ned almost scoffed at the audacity before she passed it his way, "Do you need all eight of your eyes checked? It's me, you doof!" She caught sight of her hand and her mouth formed an O.

"Ah, right," she noted, sounding slightly embarassed. As he took the sandwich off her hands, he watched silently as she pulled back one sleeve of her jacket. The pale skin on her fingers seem to glisten and harden, her joints suddenly becoming more pronounced as the hand seemed to turn into armor. The grey and chalky appearance spread up her forearm as Ned's brain processed that and he gazed up at her eyes, instantly recognizing the kind and yet firm stare.

"Carrie?" he laughed, realizing he'd never seen her without the nurse outfit. Or the chitin, apparently. She smiled and brushed one of her side bangs aside, reminding Ned of the antenna she normally possessed in her hero form.

"Yep! Saw my least favorite patient and figured I'd give him a hard time before heading out," she smirked.

"Maybe give him a lecture so he'll behave the next time he's in a hospital. For once." Ned quickly held up his hands in surrender after depositing the second half of his lunch on the bar, earning a playful eye roll from Carrie as she shook her arm and returned it to a porcelain pale skin-tone, the type that made him wonder if she saw any sun out of costume.

Looking past her, he saw the New Aurora Champions shuffling out towards the elevators and turned around to dig into his food to avoid eye contact, earning a scoff from Carrie.

"Calm down, he's too busy to fight right now," she told him while he was mid-bite.

"He's got about a dozen calls to make after what I told him." Ned arched a brow and his mask gave an appropriate animation to match, but he opted to keep chewing, trying to savor his sandwich this time around. A flicker of frustration that he hadn't fully taken the bait played across her unmasked face and Ned realized that her mask might actually serve a purpose after all. Still, she shrugged and pretended it didn't bother her, "Uncle Andy is in town, so that's a positive ID on one of them at least."

"One of who?" Ned put his food down, turning to face her as he heard the elevator ding.

"The League's bigwigs," she explained.

"He and I fought yesterday and he bit my arm off." She stood up and strode to the opposite side of the still empty bar as Ned struggled to process any of what she'd just said. The spider hero mouthed more than one question in the time it took for her to select a bottle from the back shelf and uncork it.

"I'm sorry, who bit your arm off?!" Ned asked while she poured herself a glass. It was a little early in the day for a drink – not to mention the fact that it felt as though there were rules against just grabbing something from back there – but Ned couldn't even begin to start addressing whatever she was currently doing after hearing that series of sentences.

"Oh, uh, Arex, I guess," she explained, dropping a few cherries into the glass and rounding the bar once more.

"His goons were picking on the Purple Protectors and I put a stop to that. The sad sack apparently wanted an actual fight of his own." Ned blinked slowly, "Your uncle is Arex? Wait, his name is 'Andy'?!" He wasn't really sure what was going on and checked the readout of his vitals in his suit's heads-up display just in case. Carrie wiggled her hand, "Second cousin once removed. He's like twice my age though so he's 'Uncle' to me. And yep, 'Andrew Rex'."

Ned leaned against the bar feeling exhausted all of a sudden and watched as the heroine downed the entire drink, including the fruit, in a single gulp. It was not that small of a glass. She eyed the rest of his sandwich, "You gonna eat that?"

"Yes." Ned protectively slid the plate away, earning a pout.

"Why are you telling me this?" She counted off on her fingers, "You don't gossip. I'm feeling a little vindictive about losing an arm and want to spread some dirt. Oh, and you also don't listen to Azure so I'm not sure when you'd learn that Andy's running around and I don't want you bitten in half because you didn't know. Now if you're not going to share that delicious biomass, could you at least help me flag down someone around here for my own."

He rolled his eyes but helped her out with getting the attention of one of the Amberheart staff while scarfing down his own food. He was fairly sure they weren't officially waiters but in his experience the penthouse staff really liked to help heroes stuff their faces as long as you were respectful.

² Carrie's almost never-ending order for the woman seemed to test that hospitality, especially since Carrie wasn't sporting any recognizable costume, but when Ned added that he'd consider it a personal favor the helper's mood seemed to immediately improve. They look up to us so much, he thought as the woman raced off to go grab what sounded like half a ton of food for the off-duty hero.

"Thanks for the heads up, but I probably would've found out soon enough. I have my ways" he reassured her, and got a suspicious squint of the eyes in return.

"You doing okay?" She shrugged, "Right now, fine, but I know it's gonna get bad soon. Oh? You meant my arm? Yeah, that's fine. Once I fill up here everything should be just peachy." Ned eyed her and his thoughts raced about how her powers must work. Arex was a shapeshifter of insane prowess who seemed to laugh at the idea of conservation of mass.

Given Carrie's relation to him and her own ability to shift between her arthropod appearance and this more human form, he suspected she had something in the same wheelhouse. However that powerset didn't account for her ability to heal others. It would at least explain her odd feats of strength, which answered one of his longstanding questions on how she paired that with heal-hands. What if she was more akin to Life Tyrant and had organic manipulation powers?

A more sinister skill set that she'd been able to use for good unlike that villainess. If so, he didn't blame her for keeping it secret and simply letting others assume her powers were something else. Ned himself had debated concealing the fact that his own powers came from the Web of the Ethercrawler, a magical spirit spider that made its home in the arcane realm, for the sake of optics when he first decided to become a hero himself.

In the end, he'd felt it was appropriate to honor that creature's power by flavoring his superhero identity after an arachnid. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"You can just ask, you know," Carrie rolled her eyes.

"About my powers, I mean."

"Would you give me a straight answer if I did?" Ned countered. She gave him a concerned look, "Yes, I would. You spend so much time around villains that you have a warped idea of every cape." That… caught him off guard. The words kind of rattled around in his head as he struggled to come up with a reply.

"Sorry," Carrie apologized.

"I'm in a bad mood and didn't meant that." Ned waved his hand and was about to brush it off when his powers alerted him of something incoming headed towards his shoulder. He twisted slightly to let it pass by him, letting the motion naturally turn him around in his seat. His body tensed to lash out only to immediately pause as he saw the surprised face of Sun Light a foot from his own. The teenaged heroine barely corrected herself to avoid a fall after over-committing to her previous motion.

Judging from the posture she had mid-fall, Ned guess she'd been trying to clap him on the shoulder, probably intending the gesture to be something friendly. He bit down his irritation at the attempted invasion of his personal space, reminding himself that most of his fellow heroes were a little more touch-happy than he was.

"Ned!" she yelped as she straightened up.

"Glad I caught you before you finished up!" He quickly covered his mouth with the mask and disabled auto animations on the projected eyes. He'd been so focused on dodging the attention of Azure – or worse, Stormdaughter – up here that he'd forgotten to keep an eye out for his latest stalker. Okay, that was mean, but she had tried to chase him down after the Young Guardians finished up their rounds last night, hunting him down while he'd been on a light patrol.

She hadn't taken the hint well when he tried to brush her off then, and he had a feeling it wasn't going to go much better now.

"I wanted to ask more about Terrorantula and a few more of your rogues," she grinned at him.

"Despite my reputation," Ned opted to start this politely, even if his tone was a little icier than usual, "I do actually write some reports for this place. Evelyn's profile has pretty much everything I know in there." Well… lying was sometimes polite. Obviously he left a lot of things out of his "take home sheets" that Evelyn wouldn't want spread around once she finally wised up and put her powers to good use. Bit of hero-nemesis confidentiality.

The younger hero's mouth formed a thin line but to her credit she didn't start throwing a tantrum, "I've already read those, along with everything else in her file. I still have questions. Like, she's a solo act who has only ever led trios before. Why did she start up a team of five?" Yeah, wondering that myself, Ned thought to himself as the miniature flying brick with beams kept rattling on.

"She's usually the type to do jobs for material gain," Sun Light was clearly narrating the corkboard and string she no doubt had set up in her room downstairs.

"The stuff stolen after the fight started shouldn't have been important enough to risk it, so what do you think she's after? Is she building something? Also in the last three years, she's swapped over to only doing team ups with villains she knows. Something about how the last Evil Eight ended. We've got history on her working with Turnaround, Sand Devil, and even Velocity Val, so who is Riftmaker?" Okay, dangerous. Time to swap gears.

"Aren't you supposed to be with the Young Guardians right now?" he asked a little too bluntly and Sun Light glared at him.

"It's lunch," she said through slightly gritted teeth. That reaction told Ned way more than he'd intended to pry for. Sighing, h e leaned back against the bar, " New team troubles?" He spotted an angry glow beginning to smolder in her eyes as the comment hit home. She snuffed out her accidental showcase of power with a blink and twisted her head away with a grumble. Carrie mercifully took over, "It takes time, dear."

Ned was grateful to see that Sun Light also visibly struggled to recognize the healer hero in this form, earning an eye roll from Carrie as she shifted her face for an instant. Sun Light's eyebrows shot up in response but she refrained from actually responding for a few more seconds.

"I just… feel out of place," she admitted.

"They don't want to train like I'm used to and they have their own thing going on during our breaks. And there's so many breaks! This is- Ugh!" Ned and Carrie looked at one another, neither having been part of the Young Guardian program and not really sure what to say.

"... They want us to go after a villain soon," she muttered when neither of them spoke up.

"A local one. It's a PR stunt to show we're still in control. They're not telling the team, but Foil and I know about the League. That's why they had cameras all over my first day. The team has a week to figure out who we need to go after." Well, no surprise which one was her vote. Just one problem. Carrie decided to play the spoilsport before Ned could, "The Young Guardians aren't allowed to go after villain teams. Terrorantula's off limits as long as she's heading up one."" I know!

I was just-" Sun Light looked embarrassed." I wanted to go after someone who- Forget it, I just… Ugh, I don't even know!" She stood up and stomped away, leaving the arthropod themed heroes behind to watch her fume her way towards someone who could at least help her get something to eat." Nursing a grudge while getting used to a whole new team…" Carrie shook her head.

"That can't be good for her."

"She wants to take down Terrorantula," Ned muttered.

"Heck, the team's whole 'project' is to take down a villain in a week. It's not about trying to help them…" Carrie gave him a look, "Rac, it's not just the villains you should be helping." He was rounding on her before his thoughts could catch up to him, but everything stopped the moment he looked into her eyes. Her golden irises pierced him and in that moment, for a single instant, he saw a different heroine when he looked at those eyes. Another woman with golden eyes.

One whom he'd misled when she'd trusted him after she'd come to this city while nursing her own grudge. His words, whatever they were going to be, died in his throat. Carrie shook her head while he remained silent, "I'm not saying you're wrong. I don't like how everyone around here is focused on beating up bad guys either. It goes against my nature too, as much as I think a few knocks on some thick skulls around here could do some good. But I think we should be helping each other. I…"

Carrie brought a finger to her lips as she seemed to realize something herself, "… I think that's what Sun Light was really after but she didn't know how to ask. You were once a teenage hero and she's trying to figure that whole thing out too, but doesn't know how to reach out to anyone right now. Since she's now fought one of your villains, I think she might feel a certain connection to the little spider boy who managed to figure things out somewhere along the way."

Ned glanced down, his eyes avoiding the rucksack he'd brought here even as it weighed on him. Finally he sighed.

"Thanks for that, Carrie. I think… I needed that reminder. But call me 'Ned' already," he told her as he stood up, scooping the bag of villain tech up to his shoulder.

"Spend your next hospital trip behaving and I'll consider it," she grinned.

"Now get out of here. That looks like my food." Sure enough a couple of staff members were carting an impressive number of plates their way. Ned slipped beside them and watched as they all fixated on him. There was a look of admiration in their eyes. He knew that these people freely chose this job, to do something so mundane as run food orders around for heroes on their breaks in an effort to help the city's protectors out. It was their way of helping the city out too.

Taking a deep breath, he saw Sun Light sitting alone on a couch in the back of the room, hunched over the table with her head in her hands. All of this was because Terror had felt the need to lash out for some reason that Ned really wanted to address. Perhaps it was related to another villain, one who had helped ruin the lives of so many other heroes. Perhaps it really was just Ned putting too much faith in Evelyn reforming. He wanted to be wrong there and wanted more than anything to help her.

Heck, in a roundabout way he wanted to somehow help this other villain out too, despite the past few weeks almost certainly being all his fault. But being the hero right now meant helping who he could, how he could.

"Hey," he spoke up.

"So obviously I don't know much about teams, but…"

Wes Warden got off his bus and suppressed a yawn. The afternoon was here, but he'd only been awake for less than an hour. Such was the schedule of a vigilante. A lot of folks in the caped world really hated using that term to describe themselves, but Wes always felt it fit far better than "super hero" to him. Especially since he only had a moderate strength boost and a few uses of some energy powers. Anything more than a couple blasts or longer than four or so minutes of sustained use and he'd be winded.

If he didn't hit his local gym as often as he did, Wes would be useless in a fight. Plus, he'd be damned before he went to that fancy tower in the center of the city. He didn't fault capes that decided to go professional that way. With rent coming up, he knew how damn hard it was to get by without someone else chipping in on your bills if you took the kind of jobs that didn't ask too many questions about why you might show up to work with some bruises.

However, it always felt like the folks he'd met who ended up going that route tended to leave behind the neighborhoods they'd grown up in, and Wes just couldn't abide the thought of abandoning this part of Victory, especially to all the nuisance villains that loved to come out at night. As Streetsweeper, he'd made it his mission for the past few years to make sure that folks didn't need to fear a quick jog through the alleys around here anymore.

Once his second shift job as a janitor let out, he spent the remaining hours he was awake ensuring that bad guys who made the mistake of picking on the weak and helpless got a proper introduction to his reinforced broom, a lesson they wouldn't soon forget since he spent the time between fights using that to actually clean some of those alleys of their grime.

The aftertaste of his trusty weapon impacting a villain's mouth had probably contributed to helping bring down the amount of D Listers who squatted around here. All that being said, Wes wasn't the kind of vigilante that gave that term its more negative connotations.

Sure, he might get a little more enthusiastic with the punishments dealt out if he caught a repeat offender in his neck of the woods, but villains were more likely to simply find a different place to try their luck rather than band together for revenge if he didn't escalate things too far. That had worked out well enough until a couple nights back when some new faces rolled into this part of town.

Wes had taken to wearing a coat over his homemade costume ever since he saw a pack of them picking a rather one-sided fight with Wastrel. What he overheard told him that these newcomers were looking to get settled in before they got to causing trouble, and so his routine had shifted to mapping out the neighborhood and where these new villains were setting up shop.

If need be, he'd drop the locations off on Amberheart's tipline, but professional pride still saw him trying to see if he could cause a little disruption here and there. These newcomers might be a little more prone to grouping up than your average D-list ruffian, but they also had an odd habit of traveling alone and meeting up at locations rather than sticking together in obvious packs between point A and B.

He'd figured out one hideout and was preparing to see if he could tail whoever was hanging out there tonight. But in the meantime, he felt like taking advantage of the hospitality of a friend. He muscled his way into the corner store two blocks down from the bus for his first meal of the day, just after its usual rush had let up.

"Hey, Vinnie," he greeted the over-sized Atlanthean with a nod and a warm smile.

"How's business been?"

"Wes, you damn freeloader," Vin crinkled his nose and flared his gills, but the broad smile on the man's round face told a different story.

"Here for your damn junk food, are you?" The vigilante smiled and made his way over to the back of the store where a bunch of cheap, prepackaged sandwiches in thin paper wrapping sat underneath weak heatlamps. These were objectively awful, but the damn fish man added some imported seaweed that Wes was addicted to. Could learn to add some other spices to these than just salt, but that was a battle he'd given up on. He selected one at random and grabbed a bag of chips on his way to the drink machine.

As he filled up a cup, he called back over his shoulder, "You ever sort that thing out with your insurance?"

"Hmm? Oh yeah! Called the city and it got cleared right up," the shopkeep chuckled.

"That villain was right." Wes turned to face him, "A villain? You mean-""Naw," Vin quickly interrupted him, glancing at his security camera.

"Some guy named Metal Nuisance or something tried robbing me a few weeks back and gave me some decent advice before ArachNed tossed his ass out of here." Wes smiled. Ned was one of those heroes who he looked up to, not just begrudgingly accepted, after going to work for Amberheart. The guy actually still stood up for the little guys around the city. Still, he was stretched thin and wasn't exactly an everyday face around here, which reinforced Wes' decision to keep Streetsweeper a local fixture.

"Although, speaking of… you know. Got something for you, if you're done robbing me blind," the large man leaned over his counter with a conspiratorial smirk. Wes glanced around. There were a few other faces in the shop, but all of them were familiar. All of them knew who he was and no doubt knew about Vin's side-hustles. They were how he could afford to feed the friendlier capes who stopped by here.

Still, with a lot of new unfriendly faces in town, Wes was on edge and wasn't too thrilled to hear the Atlanthean talk about this so openly. He quickly scooted over to the counter, leaving his drink by the station without its lid as he whispered to the big man, "Hey, there's some fresh baddies in town. Might want to be a little quieter." Vin snorted through one nostril, but kept his voice low as well, "Yeah, I know. That's part of what this is about.

Got some info, on the house, on account of someone wanting these losers dealt with. Figured you could clean up a bit." A thick hand slapped on the counter and slid something over to him. Wes palmed it the moment his fingers retreated out of the way, not bothering to look at it before sliding it into his pocket. He passed over the sandwich and chips for the large man to scan.

"I'll get on it tonight," he promised.

"Oh, and the-""And the drink too!" Vin grumbled, finishing his sentence for him.

"I know, I know. Now get out of here so I can attend to some actual customers already." Wes smiled and frantically caught his food as it was tossed his way by a meaty fist that barely fit under the floating glass separating him from the cornerstore owner. He grabbed his drink and slipped out, looking for a secluded bench to have his meal in peace.

He didn't find one, but there was a set of stairs that some local kids would crowd on some days which were currently empty and just far enough away from prying eyes that he felt comfortable retrieving the mystery object from his coat pocket. It was a folded letter with the letters VE scrawled on the back corner. Wes' eyes flashed up to check once more for any onlookers and subtly brought his sandwich wrapper up to further obscure it from sight as he flipped it open.... He might've overpromised to Vin there.

For such a small piece of paper, this was a lot of names and a lot of locations. Still, this was a fantastic start! Wes read the thing five times over to memorize the most important bits before letting a flick of his power slip between his fingers and obliterate the paper, letting the ashes fall into the sandwich wrapper while he scarfed down its former contents. He pushed off the steps and made his way towards his gym, wanting to get some practice in before work started. It was going to be a long night after all.