#court of the weather

[thepandalion]

so I finally have. 2 pages planned. for court of the weather. which has been now renamed (for english specifically) as the council of the weathers. because thats what their intro page calls them

anyways. I need more weathers. like the only actual scenario I wrote is the me-based one about a little humanoid who grows strawberries and wants "gentle rains" to help them grow. however I don't share her pronouns and shes also a witch (for art reasons. she's gonna have a straw witch hat with a strawberry pin in it)

I've been thinking of a beekeeper who wants the loud winds to stop and then they learn hes actually weirdly lucky and the winds are a hurricane that his house and beehives are just in the center of where things are usually just very scary and somehow the thing hasn't. moved. so the house and bees are fine but "this loud wind is scaring my bees!" or whatever

also thinking of an archeologist who keeps dropping things and cant find them in the sandstorm bc has to keep their eyes closed

the stories are all gonna be lighthearted though. like by definition. also gonna have reoccurring characters. like strawberry witchling who is gonna start dating summer drizzle after their first meeting in that passage I wrote. like theres gonna be stories of her bringing in strawberry muffins made with the muffins shes growing, or her sitting in drizzles lap in the background of a random page all cutesy. or her making up random issues just to come to see her girlfriend

[assassin1513]

🤎⭐️🤎Dark Winter Fall🤎⭐️🤎

[andrew-03-minyard]

do you ever think kevin just wants to be a petite gal not towering over his friends and team mates. like he sees neil and andrew are basically eye to eye and is jealous bc he has to fold himself in half to get that same effect

[andreilscat]

Neil is lying on his back, blinking away the sleep and shielding his eyes as the first rays of sun are determined to blind him through the window.

He is deep in thought trying to plan out their day. Usually, he would get up early and go for a run, come home, shower, and make some breakfast. He would then wake up Andrew and they would eat together. It's a simple routine which is exactly why both of them enjoy it so much.

But this morning, all of his regular plans went up in smoke the second he felt the blond boy next to him press closer to his side and curl an arm around his waist. Andrew's body heat grounded him and made it impossible to focus on anything but the way their bodies fit together.

Neil closed his eyes, taking a deep breath in. It was clear, Neil was not getting up anytime soon, and he decided that he didn't mind that at all.

****************************************************

Neil never really paid too much attention to the weather - no matter how extreme the conditions - it was all the same to him. Long ago he saw the rain as just an inconvenience and nothing more. But still, it was nice to look at. Well, there was a time when he enjoyed running in the rain, because the cold drops streaming down his face felt good, they helped him clear his mind whenever he needed it. But, after Andrew caught on to it, it got him a scolding for being so careless, and for practically asking to get sick. So now, instead of running, he often stays in during storms, with Andrew who is determined to show him all the possible ways to feel good without the risk of getting sick.

****************************************************

Andrew, on the other hand, really dislikes the cold. The second the temperature drops, his nose gets all red and runny, and no matter how many layers he puts on, he still trembles like a leaf.

The fact that he always keeps a straight face makes it almost impossible for others to notice, but Neil knows. He pays attention to the slight tremors of his body as he presses closer to Neil whenever they walk side by side or the way he curls his body around Neil's when they sleep.

Andrew always finds a way to get his icy hands on Neil, which Neil loves more than anything.

Knowing that, he always tries to stay close by when the weather is not up to Andrew's standards, just in case he needs him. Neil doesn't mind being used as a human heater or a blanket if it is Andrew who is using him.

****************************************************

Now, as he lies awake, Andrew's body curled around his is making his head spin.

He tried wiggling out of his arms so that he could turn on his side and stare at Andrew's sleeping face, but even though he tried to be quiet and not disturb his sleep, it didn't pass unnoticed. Andrew let his hands drop from where they were wrapped around him.

He turned around slowly, coming face to face with a sleepy boy, with his eyes half open, and his hair messily sticking out in all directions. Neil fought the urge to reach out and run his fingers through it.

Neil noticed a slight frown on his face as he stared at him.

"Cold?" Neil murmured, opening his arms in invitation.

"Not really," Andrew answered, crawling into his arms nevertheless.

Neil was cautious with his movements, never wanting Andrew to feel uncomfortable, especially now that he was half asleep and vulnerable.

His anxieties calmed when Andrew took his arms, guiding them towards his waist, all while shifting so that he was lying fully on top of Neil.

Neil sighed as he tightened his arms around him, just as Andrew burrowed his face in the crook of his neck. He left a small kiss there causing Neil to shiver and close his eyes tightly.

"Well, I guess we'll just stay like this then," Neil whispered, fighting back the smile that was tugging at the corners of his mouth.

No answer came back seeing as the boy in his arms was already drifting off to sleep.

[the-meme-monarch]

combo !!

[pinkrosealice]

A non-exhaustive list of art, pieces of media, franchises, authors, and thinkers that I really need my fellow Cultsim/BoH/Secret Histories fans to get into and discuss with me and between themselves.

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(WARNING A LOT OF THE FOLLOWING RECOMMENDATIONS COME WITH A LIST OF CONTENT WARNINGS AND ARE SOMETIMES CONNECTED TO CONTROVERSIAL ARTISTS AND PUBLIC PERSONS. THIS LIST IS NOT A ENDORSEMENT OF ANY PROBLEMATIC IDEALS OR STATEMENTS MADE BY ANYONE MENTIONED IN THIS LIST AND IT IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED THAT ANYONE WHO LOOKS INTO ANY OF THE MENTIONED WORKS OF ART DO THEIR DUE DILIGENCE AND THOROUGHLY CHECKS FOR DISTURBING / TRIGGERING CONTENT AT THEIR OWN VOLITION)

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Film Recommendations:

1. Dario Argento's Three Mothers trilogy, especially Suspiria & and especially especially the 2019 remake of Suspiria. Very Dancer DLC-coded, very Sisterhood of the Triple Knot and Thunderskin.

2. The Magic Lantern films of Kenneth Anger, who was a practicing Thelmaite* for many years. Lantern Principal is obviously what comes to mind when you hear of the name of the series and the dreams that were mystical experiences that inspired and were expressed in art, in this case films is very much akin to stuff we see in Cultist Simulator.

(* As shown in later parts of this recommendation list I argue that the games of Weather Factory become even more interesting and artistically impactful if you learn more about late 19th and 20th century occultism and movements like Theosophy and Thelma.)

3. Hereditary and Midsommar are obvious recommendations but even more so I would recommend the original 1970s The Wicker Man. Folk Horror in general is a great source of what the arts of The Bosk would look like in real life. They were definitely worshiping The Low Red Sun on Summer Isle.

4. A Dark Song, a 2016 horror film that actually revolves around the performance of a very famous and important real life occult ritual. I think a lot of the visual imagery in that film can give some inspiration for the kind of Rites our player character in Cultist Simulator is performing.

5. The Lair of The White Worm is a movie loosely based on a Bram Stoker story and is also very much a Gods of Stone overthrown by forces associated with humans raised to Divinity and the powers of the Sun and Apollonian principles type of story. Plus the whole Worm/Wyrms thing going on. I also recommend it because it's one of the more light-hearted and comedic entries on this list and I want some variation in tone. Also its psychedelic visuals compliment a lot of the surrealist elements that are tied to things like the Moth Principal.

6. Black Swan isn't explicitly supernatural but it is very Dancer Coded.

7. The Hellraiser movies, but only the first second, fourth, and the reboot. Leviathan, being associated with pain and pleasure and having the name of a mythical sea monster is probably very similar to whatever the hell The Tide was before The Red Grail vored her. The Cenobites are Long with Grail, Knock, & Forge as their Principals.

8. Pan's Labyrinth, for the Woods and the Bounds appreciators. I also think there is something to be said about the fascist subtext that underlines much of the Edge Principle, especially in The Colonel that can be explored and appreciated in this film and its reckonings with the evils of Spanish fascism.

9. To compliment the recommendation for the Magic Lantern films, also check out the short film The Wormwood Star, you can find it easily on YouTube and it's another piece of art heavily influenced by Thelma and stars Marjorie Cameron who I will talk about more later in this list.

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Game Recommendations:

1. Hollow Knight, it might as well be a story set in the era of the Carapace Cross. Sentient bugs, mighty Wyrms and dream gods with the powers of light but not necessarily moral goodness. Even the Void in Hollow Knight, and it's antagonism to The Radiance is very similar to The Nowhere and it's relationship with the established hierarchies in The Mansus.

2. The Silent Hill games, particularly the entries that revolve around The Order; like 1,3, Origins, and Homecoming. Dream worlds, Sun worship, the Dark Feminine and female psychics/mediums with deep associations with blood, birth and menstruation. Valtiel is totally a Name. Even the fog and mist of Silent Hill is giving The Bounds and it's Forge smoke meets Woods darkness type energy.

3. Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines, it's basically playing a Grail Long.

4. The tabletop games Geist: The Sin Eaters and Wraith: The Oblivion line up really well with the Ghoul / Medium DLC. *

(basically most if not all of the World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness tabletop games contain some themes, elements, or bits of World building that should appeal to anyone interested in the games created by Weather Factory)

5. The video games created by Korean studio Project Moon. Lobotomy Corporation has a lot of timers and simulation elements that have many similarities to those found in Cultist Simulator, and as the title implies Liberty of Runia takes place literally in a paranatural library just like Book of Hours even though the game play between the two is very different.

6. Fallen London and it's related media. The reasons why should go without saying. The controversies around AK aside, Echo Bazaar and Secret Histories are blood siblings and I desire more intersection and interaction between the respective fandoms.

7. The Bayonetta games have a surprising amount of real mythological and occult influence in their world building. The Solar Lumens juxtaposed with the Lunar Umbrans definitely has some resonance with Church of The Unconquered Sun and their on again, off again antagonism and allyship with The Sisterhood of The Triple Knot. The Apollonian natured House of the Sun contrasted with the Dionysian Woods & House of the Moo, and the Nowhere being connected to all three but being distinct; is not all together that different from the division of the Bayonetta universe into Inferno, Paradiso, the human world and Purgatorio between all of them.

8. The Shadow Hearts series of JRPGs are a Gothic, urban fantasy, historical fantasy, lovecraftian adventures around late 19th / early 20th century Europe and Asia. It has a lot of comedic elements and its world building and cosmology are not all that similar to the ones in Weather Factory games (barring their shared history as being inspired by Lovecraft). But if you want Lovecraft in video game form without the racism associated with his writings and you found Cultsim/BoH to fill that niche, then I recommend you give these games a try as well.

9. Secret World Legends, a functionally dead MMO but still incredibly fun to play and I think one of the best examples of urban fantasy / soft Lovecraft or post lovecraftian media in existence. Absolutely fantastic & memorable fully voiced NPCs and characters, really intriguing and rich world building and takes on mythology and folklore. Also given that you play as a quasi immortal with a deep association with bees and an ancient techno-organic goddess you're basically a Long.

10. To compliment the Lobotomy Corporation recommendation and the later SCP mention I think it's only natural that I also recommend the urban fantasy games of remedy entertainment like Alan Wake 1 & 2 and Control. Artists channeling / being used by Eldritch Forces in other dimensions and government institutions related to keeping a control on the supernatural are the most obvious similarities to stuff in WF games.

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Visual Artists:

1. Francisco Goya, especially his Black Paintings, his insights into the witchcraft and folkloric traditions of the Basque region and elsewhere in the Iberian peninsula should be very appealing to fans of The Twins and The Thunderskin. Plus all of the Catholic imagery brings to mind The Mother of Ants.

2. Austin Osman Spare, Rosaleen Norton, and Marjorie Cameron. All three of these people were heavily influential occultists and illustrators/painters so their work is definitely a great representative example of the kind of occult art that you are making when you Paint in Cultsim.

3. Salvador Dali is also a relatively obvious, but I think very appropriate all the same recommendation. Surrealism is by and large the big big tonal influence on Secret Histories in my opinion. He also did a tarot deck so that brings in the Lucid Tarot connection

4.Erté, absolutely the kind of art and fashion you would find in Cultist Simulator's 1920's. Art Deco for days but also his works in particular show a more flowy and organic influence that we would more stereotypically associate with the Art Nouveau of decades prior.

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Comic Books:

1. Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing and Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man. DC's Red and Green (plus all the other elemental forces) are a deeply underappreciated and underexplored element of the setting, and I think they have a lot of similarities with the Principles we find in Secret Histories.

2. Related to the above, Alan Moore's Promethea and Grant Morrison's The Invisibles for an exploration of 20th and 21st century occultism. Despite the two authors general distaste for each other, their works are often very complimentary.

3. The Hellboy franchise doesn't have a lot of one-to-one parallels with Cultsim & Co. but they draw from the same artistic influences of gothic fiction, weird fiction, mythology and folklore and the occult. So I feel very strongly that fans of one would and should find the other to be enjoyable. Both fandoms need to be more active on this hell site and though there are a handful of quality hidden gems of fanfiction for both franchises I desperately need more people to be writing & reading fan fiction for both. Plus I do strongly believe that Mike Mignola' s art style would really excel at illustrating characters and settings from Secret Histories. His non Hellboy work is also recommended especially the works that fall under his Outervers setting, like Baltimore and Joe Golem.

4. Although I will admit that I am not up to date on it, and that there has been a considerable amount of discourse around the quality of its storytelling (especially within the past few years) I would recommend the webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court to fellow Cultsim fans. Alchemic imagery, interesting reinterpretations of folklore and a setting and tone that is quintessential British urban fantasy / science fiction, Gunnerkrigg is in my opinion a work that has a lot of appeal for fans of WF's games and stories.

5. Lackadaisy Cats is an awesome Webcomic and animated web series. 1920s/ 30s gangsters and bootleggers in the form of anthropomorphic cats! And absolutely beautiful Art Deco illustrations! What's not to love.........

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Anime & Manga:

1. Any of the anime directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura especially Serial Experiments Lain and Ghost Hound(this one is seriously underrated in my opinion.) Surrealism is the name of the game as I've said earlier.

2. Le Chevalier D'Eon, both it's manga and anime even though the two are very totally different and have divergent takes on a similar premise. Historical fiction that reinterprets 18th century historical events through an occult lens is so very very Secret Histories. Plus both works have interesting explorations of gender and the nature thereof. It helps that as far as we know the French monarchy's Secret Histories equivalent are associated with the Hours, my personal headcanon is that Louis XIV was Lantern Principal aligned, and Louie XVI had Knock as his Principal. Also the manga version of the story has a lot of its magic system based around the Tarot.

3. You can't recommend D'Eon without recommending it's biggest inspiration (apart from Rose of Versailles of course) and that would be Revolutionary Girl Utena. Edge Dyads for days with that one. Utena and Anthy are totally The Twins. And the whole show and it's movie are full of surrealist pseudo occult imagery practically to the bursting.

4. Baccano! , a light novel / anime series that's about a bunch of immortal Mobsters in the 1920s and 30s. I mean that's basically The Exile DLC right there.

5. xxxHolic and Legal Drug / Drug & Drop, by CLAMP. A shop that grants wishes and a pharmacy that handles the paranormal are both the kind of businesses that I could see existing alongside Morland's, Oriflamme's Auction House & The Ecdysis Club. Plus both manga are hella gay and I will push my Weather Factory games are inherently Queer pieces of media agenda till the day I die.

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Theater, Operas, Music and Albums:

1. Jimmy Page's unused soundtrack for Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Raising. Definition of Occult rock and role.

2. Kiki Rockwell, especially her two most recent albums Rituals on the Bank of a Familiar River, and Eldest Daughter of an Eldest Daughter.

3. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring might just be the closest we will ever get in real life to an occult ritual in the form of an entire ballet like we see in Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours. Definitely a skill that could fall under the Wisdoms of Birdsong and The Bosk.

4. On that note, Mozart's Die Zauberflöte is also full of Hermetic Elements, Lunar / Solar antagonism, mystical initiation and ritual deity impersonation. Mozart was a Freemason so the fanfic of him as a Heart Adapt practically writes itself.

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Literally Fiction:

1. The webnovels Pact and Pale by wildbow. A magic system that revolves around incredibly hierarchical relationships between humans and mystical beings, where magic fundamentally requires discarding one's humanity and transforming into some kind of mystical being yourself is very similar to the Adapt to Long pipeline we follow in Cultist Simulator.

2. The Rivers of London series is one that I'm still familiarizing myself with but it's another example of wonderful British urban fantasy (that isn't the wizard books that shall not be named) The fact that the main characters of the series are magic police officers gives it a certain Suppression Bureau appeal.

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Nonfiction- Philosophy and Occult works and Authors:

1. Georges Bataille!!!!!!!! If you only pick one thing from this list to investigate further let it be the philosophical works of this man. His theory of religion as it relates to concepts such as economy, sacrifice, and eroticism you literally completely change how you understand The Hours and The House Without Wall.

2. Aleister Crowley, and any of his students, especially Kenneth Grant. He really is the quintessential modern English occultist, whether or not AK and Lottie intended it, the DNA of his beliefs or those of his Golden Dawn contemporaries, or his students is all over Cultsim and BoH. The Red Grail is like, so blatantly Babalon it's kind of ridiculous.

3. The Book of English Magic by Phillip Carr- Gomm & Richard Heygate, is a good introductory source of information on the history of magical practice and occultism on the British isles.

4. Occult Paris by Tobias Churton is a fascinating insight into some of the mystical practices that were en vogue in Europe just a few decades prior to when Cultist Simulator takes place.

5. Atlas of Cursed Places by Oliver Le Carrer. I could totally see some of the places documented in this book as being locations you could send your Followers to in Cultsim.

6. Please read everything you can that is academically critical about Greek magical Papyri. There are tons of resources for reading translations and analysis of these documents that are some of the most foundational examples of what real historical magical belief and practice actually looked like.

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Web Original Content, Podcasts, YouTube Channels and Tiktok Recommendations:

1. Greedy Peasant over on Instagram and tik tok does fascinating content related to Catholicism, medieval history and art, and other related topics. If you like all of the interesting reinterpretations of Christian religious iconography into sun worship that happens in Book of Hours I highly recommend his content.

2. The last few years have really seen an incredible ecosystem of academic scholarship on religion, mythology, occultism and esoteric philosophy develop on YouTube. Channels like Esoterica, Angela's Symposium, Let's Talk Religion, Religion for Breakfast, Jackson Crawford, The Modern Hermeticist, The Archaeology of Ancient Magic, and others are just overflowing gold mines of accessible and easily digestible but still academically critical and pseudoscience and conspiracy theory free information about mysticism historical occultism and esoteric religion and mythology.

3. There are also a number of great YouTube channels that aren't academically critical but are run by actual practicing witches and occultists and they offer fascinating and interesting insights into these same topics but from a lived more personal perspective which is just as important I think to learn about as the academically critical sources. Great channels include Benbell Wen, Maevius Lynn, Marco Visconti, & Nordic Animism.

4. In terms of fictional internet media, SCP is so broad that there's a lot of stuff that is completely different in appeal from what is enjoyable about Secret Histories, but there's also so much overlap. I need crossover fanfics and fan art more than air!!!!!

5. Lastly this is a fiction podcast so it's a little incongruous with the other nearby recommendations but, I cannot stress enough......... The Mangus Archives and Magnus Protocol!!!!!!!!!!!!! There are a lot of key differences between those two podcasts and Weather Factory games, but there are so many similarities that I have to write an entire three other posts about how similar the settings are and how I want to write a crossover/ fusion fic. I've seen like, one or two pieces of fan art and fanfiction that was related to both series but in my humble opinion it's not nearly enough. I really really really really really need Cultsim fans to talk more about Magnus and I need Magnus listeners to play these games soooooooo badly!!!!!!!!!!

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Well that mostly concludes this piece of propaganda for the time being, will probably make another post with further additions in the not so distant future. Feel free to reblog this with any other pieces of media that you think would also be appealing to fans of Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours.

[sracha]

cowboy rosebird 🫶

[karmiky]

One time Andrew gets stuck in a rainstorm coming back to the dorms. When he gets back, Neil sees him soaking wet and fully clothed, and he is immediately hit with the memory of The Shower Scene tm. Andrew calls him out for being flustered and Neil admits what has him distracted. And if Andrew always refuses to use an umbrella or rain coat or even walk a little quicker when it rains in the future that’s no one’s business.

[codename-adler]

not to toot my own horn, but i really do love and believe in my hc that aaron was the one behind the ‘pipe dream’ expression coming into andrew’s vocabulary

[jestroer]

dont you just love hot weather

[assassin1513]

🖤🍁🤎Dark Fall🤎🍁🖤

[chvoswxtch]

in case you needed good news today halloween is 101 days away

[kazucee]

—"𝓣here is no 'this'. This is nothing"

Re: Andrew to Neil. The king's men (All for the game #3)

[aimeedaisies]

Court Circular | 24th January 2024

St James’s Palace

The Princess Royal, Patron, Grand Military Race Committee, today attended the Grand Military Gold Cup Day at Sandown Park Racecourse, Portsmouth Road, Esher, and was received by His Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Surrey (Mr Michael More-Molyneux).

[lyinginbedmon]

The Spring-Summer Courts are on *reasonably* good terms (most of the time, relative to the other courts at least) so Litha Court fae can get little a power from springtime sunshine. As a treat.

Don't tell the Ostara Court fae though. It drives them batty.

[ravenvsfox]

something electric in the blood

hey woah it's my birthday again! this year I've decided to subject you all to the tfc superhero au that's been in my back pocket for 2 years. feedback would be a very chill birthday gift, but I'm also just happy to be here (not letting this story languish in a textedit file)! ok! rock on etc

________

Neil’s mother could call a monsoon down from a crisp blue sky. Her power was tearful and tormented; she was always wreathed with rainwater, a grey veil obscuring her face.

Neil’s father was righteous electricity. His power was a fork in a wall socket. He went off before he was even born; his lightning struck his mother dead from the inside out. A killer before he even entered the world—a born murderer.

Mary spent the first few months of her pregnancy wishing quietly for a miscarriage, petrified of a fatal lightning strike from the storm brewing inside her. Lucky for her, Nathaniel was never anything like his father. (He takes solace in this many times, when he’s old enough to understand how dangerous his powers can be.)

Long before he was Neil, he could cradle sunbeams in each hand, whistle for hail, and bend fog around his enemies like blindfolds. He could cover his footsteps with peals of thunder as he ran, and wash away crime scenes with downpours. 

When his mother was killed, he struck their car with lightning over and over, and watched the white flames burst the windshield and warp the metal. He set the beach on fire all around him, staggering and tearing his hair, smoking the sand into glass and then cutting his feet to pieces as he ran. 

He kept running for months after that, his powers spilling like loose change out of a hole in his pocket. And he was so determined to survive that he no longer had a say in which parts of the weather he wanted, like—instead of checking specialty books out from the library, he was pulling down entire shelves by accident. 

Now, in the final stages of his weather sickness, he finds himself screened behind fog and ice most of the time, tidal waves dragging anyone who comes close, sunlight pouring in and out of his body like fever. Most urgently, an electrical storm is always very, very close to the surface; lightning is thick in his nose, tickling his throat, writhing half-formed above him in the veins of clouds. He’s afraid it will make a weapon of him, when he’d give anything to be something else.

Read on AO3

_______

The stranger finds him in an abandoned mall, at the tail-end of his breakdown. Neil had filled the first floor up to his waist with rainwater, filtered down through the caved in ceiling��a shattered skylight that he had ripped lightning through like a hacksaw. He'd beckoned clouds down over all of the windows and finally slept, exhausted, in the eye of the storm. 

The man appears out of the blue, drenched, in the foodcourt-turned-swimming pool. Water laps around his belt and bleeds up his shirt. His hair is plastered to his forehead and his expression is unreadable. Neil peers at him steadily across the water. Reflections of the graphic 90s wall decals float innocently between them.

“Neil, I bet.” He wipes his wet hands on his shirt. Through the water, Neil can see his boots grinding against broken glass. “Call me Wymack.”

Neil unfolds his legs, letting his feet dangle from the table he’s perched on. He waits patiently for violence. “How do you know who I am?”

Wymack smiles, half-cocked, maybe a little pissed off to be up to his waist in Neil’s mess. 

“Not every day that a storm eats a shopping mall.”

“I asked how you know who I am,” Neil reiterates, “not if you have eyes.” His voice is raw from misuse. Everything is kind of echoey and green, in this washed-out mall of his.

“Alright smartass. I’ve had you flagged for a while,” Wymack says. “I keep tabs on supers who I think might be a good fit with my Foxes. We’ve known the general shape of you since you flattened that barn in Ohio.”

He narrows his eyes. “There’s no way you could connect me to that.”

Wymack raises an eyebrow. “You’ll notice I said flattened. As in levelled. As in hailstones the size of kittens. In the middle of August. Who else has that kind of power? A functioning dairy farm, Josten. It was a slaughter.”

Neil flinches. “Fine,” he mutters. “I know. Why are we talking about it?”

“A ruined barn, a glass beach, a total whiteout in the middle of a grocery store, this castle in the clouds you’ve hooked up for yourself? Seems like a pattern. Seems like a breakdown, actually. My job is to step in when a super loses their shit, and I think we both know you fit the bill.”

“So what happens now?” Neil asks slowly. He’s struggling to keep his voice even, but he can feel thunder brewing, metabolizing in his gut. “You take me to superpower rehab? Give me dampeners and lock me in a basement? Fuck off.” 

Wymack looks unimpressed. “Talking out of your ass must be another one of your special powers.”

Neil scowls.

“Look,” Wymack starts, wading two steps closer. “I’m offering you an opportunity to be a part of a team of people like you. We all know the heroes and villains model is psychotic, but shit, powers are made to be used. We use ‘em. Find people, fix things. Or break things, if they’re not working right.”

“You’re vigilantes,” Neil says.

“No,” Wymack says, breaking out in a wicked grin. “We’re government mandated. Barely. My team is powerful. It’s in everyone’s best interest to let them hunt criminals so they don’t become them.”

“You left out the part where we’re all already criminals,” an entirely new voice says. It takes a moment for Neil’s eyes to adjust to the fact that it belongs to someone standing directly in front of him, having materialized seemingly out of thin air.

Neil clambers backwards, and a little taser beam of lightning ricochets perilously close to the water they’re all standing in.

This new stranger is so close that he can see the tawny colour of his eyes. He’s short, nearly chest-deep in the water, with a shock of blond hair and a chalky, sullen face. 

“Jesus, Andrew,” Wymack complains. “How long?”

Andrew’s static expression twitches, and he’s a foot to the left without straining a muscle.

“Don’t fucking pause me when I’m talking to you,” Wymack says, nonsensically.

“Were we talking?” Andrew asks. “I forget.” He circles Neil carefully, nearly soundless in the water.

Neil frowns, still in the slippery process of righting himself on the table. His shoes screech against a flaking metal chair.

“Speed?” he demands. It comes to mind immediately, the way Andrew is sort of flitting like a hummingbird, punched out of reality and then clipping back in somewhere else. Neil has always been obsessed with the straightforward usefulness of super speed.

Andrew’s gaze turns shrewd.

“Wrong brother.”

“Excuse me?”

“Settle down. He’s green, Andrew,” Wymack interrupts. “He doesn’t know shit about the Foxes.”

His eyes flicker to Wymack and back. He glitches, and Neil’s neck is wrenched to the side by an open-handed slap to the face. His vision blurs. Lightning strikes the roof.

“Interesting,” Andrew murmurs. 

“Christ,” Wymack exclaims, “what have I told you about antagonizing volatiles?”

“You can manipulate time,” Neil breathes, holding the back of his hand to the pain-flushed apple of his cheek. Andrew snaps his fingers and disappears.

“He can manipulate my patience,” Wymack says, turning a slow, sloshing circle in the water to scan the balcony overlooking the food court. His eyes focus suddenly, and Neil follows his gaze to find Andrew lounging at the top of a long-broken escalator. Wymack sighs. “Quit showing off.“ 

Andrew blips directly behind Wymack, who trips a little bit, slapping his hands uselessly into the water to find purchase.

“Could you turn this to ice?” Andrew asks coolly, stirring the water with his index finger.

Neil shakes his head. “Once it’s out of the atmosphere I can’t really do shit with it. What else can you do with time? Reverse it or—“

“There’s only one button on my remote,” Andrew says simply.

“Not that I’m not enjoying these pleasantries,” Wymack says. “But I’ll take an answer now, Neil.”

“You called me a ‘volatile,’” Neil accuses.

Wymack rolls his eyes. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. Every single one of my Foxes was classified as a volatile when I found them. It’s not an ugly word.”

He thinks of his father splashed through the news attached to that word, of being hunched over a police scanner full of dirty voices hissing volatile spotted, in pursuit of volatile, volatile resisting arrest. It was always about putting down anyone with powers before they could even think about being empowered.

“Depends on who’s using it,” Neil says. He shivers, and it snows a little, a miniature avalanche like something off of a disturbed tree branch. Andrew puts his hand out into the flurry, producing a fistful of slush that he promptly chucks at Wymack. It collides wetly with his chest, sticking there momentarily like a pathetic badge.

Wymack looks skyward. “Give me strength.” He seems to realize that the sky is Neil’s domain when a few more errant snowflakes catch in his hair, and he shakes them off, disconcerted.

“If I come with you,” Neil starts. “Can I stay anonymous?”

“Sure. We’ll get you a mask,” Wymack says, stone-faced. Neil can’t tell if he’s joking or not. He squints. Wymack sighs. “Look kid, I don’t care what you’ve done up until exactly now. You leave here with us, we officially work together. That means I accommodate you. I get you what you need to function. A place to sleep. Doctor visits. Dampeners if you need them.” Neil bristles, but Wymack powers on. “And in return, you work for me. Help us keep things balanced.”

Neil looks at him for a long, searching moment, feeling the snow blowing out of his chest, a sudden spring thaw. His sneakers are soaked, and the thought of a place to sleep where the weather can’t find him is so tempting.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll do it. But how do I know—”

He’s barely spoken when he feels a strange vertigo, a retreating, phantom pressure, and he realizes he’s been transported instantaneously to the back of a car. It’s indescribable, the absence of even a blink between one set of surroundings and the next. He feels like he was in some sort of virtual reality and his headset was ripped off.

“Fuck,” he gasps. 

“You ask too many questions,” Andrew says.

“You moved me here?” he demands. Andrew looks at him blankly, as if this should be obvious. “I can walk,” he grits out. “Don’t waste your powers on me.”

“I was tired of your babbling,” he says. “You already agreed to come with us. The Foxhole needs us more than you need your self-punishing little enclosure.”

Neil glowers out the window, his fingers itchy on the unlocked door handle. A dozen metres away from their spot in the faded tarmac grid of the parking lot, Wymack is wedging open the defunct automatic doors at the mall’s entrance, emerging in an absurd flood of rainwater. 

“If the ‘foxes’ are so capable, shouldn’t they be able to take care of themselves?”

“You would think,” Andrew says wryly.

Wymack wrenches the handle on the driver’s side door, but it just snaps back into place, locked. Andrew twirls the car keys on his middle finger. 

“Enough,” Wymack says, long-suffering. He raps on Andrew’s window until his fingers jangle, and he and Neil realize at the same time that the keys are now dangling from his wrist. (Andrew’s middle finger is still raised.)

Climbing inside the belly of the car, Wymack jabs a button on the console and the headrests whack down and catch Andrew and Neil both on the crowns of their heads.

Andrew makes an affronted noise. “We have a guest,” he says.

“We have a time crunch,” Wymack says. “Not that that’s ever meant anything to you.”

“Renee will take care of it.”

“She shouldn’t have to,” he argues, turning the key in the ignition and pulling out of the parking lot before the tide from the mall can roll out to meet them.

“What does Renee do?” Neil asks.

Wymack meets his eye in the rearview mirror. “She deals with a frankly inhumane amount of bullshit, mostly.”

“I meant—“

“I know what you meant,” he gripes. “I was getting to that part. You’re going to have to learn at least an ounce of patience if you’re going to—“

“She’s a shifter,” Andrew says.

“A shapeshifter,” Neil repeats incredulously. He’s so frantically jealous for a moment that he has to bite down on his tongue.

“She can turn into pretty much anything with a face,” Wymack says.

“You’re joking.”

Wymack rolls his eyes. “I wish I was.” He takes a hand off the wheel to jab a thumb at Andrew. “You think one of him is bad, imagine three of him underfoot.”

They lapse into silence for a moment as Neil considers this. Scrubby spring scenery whips past, Wymack taps an absentminded tattoo on the gearshift, and Andrew sits utterly, perfectly still at Neil’s side.

“What do the rest of the Foxes do?” Neil asks, badly feigning nonchalance. He’s calculating how much of this could be useful to him, the ways he could co-opt supernatural speed, stopped time, or a thousand disguises. The possibilities are staggering.

“They should probably tell you themselves,” Wymack says, slanting another knowing look at him in the mirror. 

Andrew snorts.

Neil narrows his eyes. “What, are they bad?”

Andrew glitches into the passenger seat, and Wymack nearly loses control of the car, clipping the horn with one flailing hand. “Last time he got too comfortable with the secret identity reveals, Kevin made him walk out into traffic.”

Neil absorbs this like a punch to the stomach, thinking of miscalculated lightning and swift punishments, a father with a bolt in each fist.

“Don’t listen to him,” Wymack says, “It’ll rot your brain.”

“I’m telling the truth,” Andrew says simply. He flicks a circle of beads dangling from the rearview, and less than a second later, they’ve disappeared.

“Jesus suffering christ,” Wymack says. “Put those back.”

“What?” Andrew says blankly, and Neil considers that any of these glitches might represent minutes, hours, or days where Andrew has been suspended, alone, in time. 

He wants to ask him how long he can stay outside of time, if he ages in the infinite space between seconds, or if it’s as peaceful as it sounds to be the only moving thing in the universe. Instead he asks, “How do you make someone walk into traffic?” 

Wymack sighs. “Well, if you’re Kevin, you get inside their head and tell them what to do.”

Andrew glances backwards. “Your worst nightmare, I would imagine.”

Neil’s neck is hot with anxiety just thinking about it, but he sets his jaw, defiant. “You don’t know me.”

“No,” he agrees. “But I know what someone who’s afraid of their own powers looks like. And I know how easy it would be for Kevin to set you off like a firecracker.”

Neil wordlessly rolls down his window and calls down a hailstone the size of a baseball.

“No more powers in my car,” Wymack snaps, deftly forcing Neil’s window up so he has to snatch his hand back, dropping the ice out into the street. “Honestly, it’s like I’m running a daycare.”

“You don’t have a power?” Neil asks.

“I have the almighty ability to withstand annoying questions.”

“Excuse me if I’m curious about how a powerless stranger tracked me all the way to nowhere, where my—where no one else thought to look, just to enlist me into his knock-off suicide squad.”

“Well first of all, let’s make one thing absolutely fucking clear,” Wymack says, twisting in his seat, one hand steady at the bottom of the wheel. “Just because someone can’t—or won’t—use any superpowers, it doesn’t mean they’re powerless. If you listen to a word I say to you today, let it be that. Got it?”

They watch each other for so long that Neil starts to feel uneasy. The car should’ve drifted off the road by now. Maybe Andrew’s correcting their course by increments. Maybe Wymack actually has a banal, embarrassing kind of GPS power that keeps wheels to pavement.

“Fine,” Neil says, clipped.

“Good. If you call Abby powerless, I guarantee she’ll give you an earful about nursing school.”

“Who’s—“

Andrew makes an irritated noise, and when Neil looks up at the sound, he’s disoriented again by an instantaneous shift in light. His head snaps to the right, and he finds Wymack dumped unceremoniously beside him in the backseat. Andrew is busily turning the engine off up front, and a sleek, black parking garage is spread out around them, like a high-tech hangar in a sci-fi movie.

“Chrissake,” Wymack says. “Give me the keys.”

“You have them,” Andrew says tonelessly, and then he disappears. Wymack sighs and starts working on disentangling the keys that have just been magicked onto one of his earrings.

“Does he move other people around like that very often?” Neil asks.

“When the mood strikes him,” Wymack says, kicking the door open and swinging a leg out. Outside of the car, he continues, “he used to say that things have different weight, when they’re paused. All that shit like gravity, velocity, friction—they function differently when time isn’t affecting you.”

“He told you that?" Neil asks. Wymack nods. "Huh. Wouldn’t have thought he’d be so forthright.”

“Amazing what sobriety can do to a person.” Wymack holds up a hand before Neil can speak again. “More on that later. We have a facility to tour.” They’re approaching the subtle seam of a door in a broad expanse of wet-looking dark concrete. Neil hadn’t even been able to make out that it was a door until it was close enough to touch.

“Right now?”

“You have something better to do?” 

Neil shrugs. He was kind of hoping to be shown somewhere dry and windowless, but he can play house-tour.

Wymack puts his thumb to an inconspicuous tab jutting out of the near-invisible door-frame, the mechanism beeps and clicks, and the the wall sinks inward. 

“That was the main lot, this is the atrium.” The door folds itself away like a bird’s wing, and Neil follows his host into a dark hexagonal space, black walls and cubbies like something from a locker room, everything lit up at the seams with artificial techno-orange. “We usually meet here before a mission, gear up and ship out.”

Neil rolls his eyes at Wymack’s back. Between the faux-military slang and the wannabe spy movie facility, the benefit of the doubt is already stretched paper-thin.

The hallway ahead is long and uniform, with identical corridors extending in either direction every ten paces. They come across a series of matching but modified outfits behind glass, displays full of black, orange and white leather, bulky looking jackets, masks, caps and gloves, boots and holsters. 

“Gear,” Wymack says, lingering at the farthest case, a petite, broad-shouldered suit with a full mask, strappy vest, and brass knuckles on a hook. Wymack taps the glass. “Each of these cases opens up into a personal changing room. You’ll get a custom suit. Probably something water-proof and—“ he purses his lips against a smile. “Shock-resistant. Hope you like rubber.”

Neil examines a suit with thick, elbow-high gloves and an ornate half-mask. “I don’t really care what I wear.”

“Glad to hear it. Some of my Foxes were not so flexible.” 

“Someone say flexible?” 

Neil looks up just in time to see a shape drop from an air-duct overhead, like paper spit from a printer. When it hits the floor, it’s a person.

“What the hell,” Neil says flatly.

The newcomer grins. He’s tall and wiry, and his hair is gelled up into deliberate-looking peaks. Even with a complete, three-dimensional heft to him he seems stretched out, like a teenager still growing into his legs. He offers Neil a friendly hand. “Matt Boyd. And you’re the new recruit, Neil, right?”

He nods, accepting the handshake. He glances meaningfully upward. “That can’t be more than a half-inch gap.”

Matt laughs, obviously pleased. “They don’t call me Flex for nothin'.” His hand becomes putty in Neil’s grip, and when Neil tries to extract himself, Matt has him in hand-handcuffs.

“You could escape anything,” Neil marvels, half-gawking at the unseemly image of Matt’s taffy-stretched, bisected hands, slithering back and becoming whole.

Matt looks sideways at Wymack, still smiling. “He is fresh. Still has the capacity for surprise. That’s kind of nice, actually.”

Neil’s shoulders hitch upwards, defensive. “It’s been a while since I’ve met new supers.” His mother had kept him in the most oppressively average and un-stimulating hideaways she could. If he ever met supers it was by accident.

“Well that ends today, dude,” Matt says. “We see crazy new shit pretty much all the time.”

“I’m starting to get that.”

“Your thing is weather, right? You got a demo in you?” Matt asks slyly. 

“You don’t have to do that,” Wymack says quickly, but Neil is already feeling his way skyward.

They’re underground, but he can still kind of always sense the atmosphere, whispering in from outside through filtered air or natural light. It’s as simple as finding a loose end and tugging.

He blinks, and suddenly, the hallway is a wind tunnel. It’s just a little air show, but still, the gusts are so intense that Wymack has to take a step back and steady himself against the wall. Matt whoops joyfully, his immovable gelled hair whipping back. He uses his stretch powers to balloon outward like a parachute, and the wind catches his rubber body and drags him twenty feet down the hallway.

Neil rolls his neck, satisfied, and the wind dies out. “If we were above ground, I could give you a real show.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Matt says, jogging breathlessly back towards them. “Man, we’re going to work so well together. You can be the wind beneath my wings.” He quirks a genuine smile at Neil, who relaxes in spite of himself. 

“Don’t you have crime to stop?” Wymack asks drily, and Matt rolls his eyes. 

“I mean, if I can’t stop some trouble, I can always make some.” He swerves unnaturally out of the way, laughing, when Wymack reaches out to cuff him over the head. “See you soon, Neil,” he calls, taking one enormous stride to the very end of the corridor, around the corner, and out of sight.

“Everyone shows off for newcomers,” Wymack says, pushing steadfastly ahead. “Please don’t give them the weather-works every time.”

Neil shrugs. “He asked for it.”

“Yeah, and you’re a real people pleaser, huh?”

The tour trundles on, through the tunnelling halls of a facility that is slowly revealing itself to be as well-appointed as it is well-hidden. They pass through a wide-open common kitchen area with enough dining space for twenty; an enormous training gym outfitted with targets, mats, a reinforced spectator box, and a fully stocked library of weapons and armour. 

There are a couple of available sleeping quarters, spartan, but outfitted with sturdy furniture, clean bedding, and storage like Neil has never even thought to ask for; a lounge with a beaten-looking couch and chairs, a smaller kitchenette, an entertainment system, and a pool table; and a professional-grade medical station, equipped to hold what looks like the entire team at once. 

Neil meets a laser-focused Abby Winfield in the med bay, where she’s tending to a surly Andrew look-alike with a bruise-mottled grimace on his face. Aaron’s gaze darts and slices like a bird unsettled from its perch when Neil enters the room.

Neil asks him if he ran into someone’s fist, but he doesn’t rise to the bait, just casting a haughty look down Neil’s rain-soaked jeans as he hops from the exam table. Abby seems to realize what’s coming a moment before it happens, because she waves a still uncapped tube of ointment in one hand and says, “Aaron, don’t, I’m not—“ but he’s already blazed from the room, head-spinningly fast.

Wymack shrugs an apology for their intrusion, and Abby sighs, offers Neil a surprisingly generous smile, and shoos them from her office—but not before promising a full physical exam for their newest team member.

Neil swallows his instinctive horror to being examined in any capacity, and forces himself to follow Wymack out from the exposing light of the medical hall. From there, they find their way to an imposing set of steel double-doors at the heart of the labyrinth.

“Mission control,” Wymack says, scanning them seamlessly inside. Neil can tell from the quality of his voice that this is the tour’s grand finale.

It’s a massive space, tech-ed out, and the obvious hub for the entire operation. There are sprawling screens full of moving data, a huge table, lit up from within, with stray files and blueprints littering its surface. There are also towering rows of black filing cabinets lined up against the far wall, a computer system too complex for Neil to understand most of its controls, and a couple of inconspicuous doors leading to what must be private offices.

“We do most of our planning here.” Wymack gestures towards the network of screens and keyboards. “Comprehensive database, files on every super in the country, past battle strats,” he nods towards a white-board over by the meeting table. “Individualized training schedules. My office over there.” When Neil follows his sightline he finds a woman standing in the doorway, arms crossed, eyes level and keen. Neil waves awkwardly, and her mouth pulls charmingly to the side like a swept curtain. “And that’s Dan Wilds,” Wymack finishes.

“The most important part of the base, right boss?”

“If you say so,” Wymack says, but he's smiling.

“Nice to finally meet you, Neil Josten. Gotta say, I was pretty impressed by your glass beach.”

He tries not to grimace at the thought of it. “Thanks,” he says. “It was accidental.”

She laughs good-naturedly until he doesn’t join in, and then she raises both eyebrows. “‘It was accidental,’ he says. Like he didn’t change the geography of half the East coast.”

“It’s not modesty,” Wymack says. “He really doesn’t know what kind of trail he’s been leaving.”

“I don’t really like to look—back,” Neil says.

Dan’s eyes glint. There’s something sturdy and well-balanced about her, like a broadsword. “Well. Amen to that.”

“Wait, why did no one tell me he was here already?” someone exclaims, bursting in from the double doors behind them. Dark-haired and animated, the new guy is wearing a hyper-casual graphic crop top and joggers, and when he sees Neil properly, he says, “oh christ, your aura.”

“He means to say, hi, I’m Nicky,” Dan says. 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, hi, I’m Nicky,” Nicky says, waving a distracted hand. “I can’t believe how fucked up you feel.”

“Excuse me?” Neil says, face burning, caught (as he often is) between anger and shame.

“I feel what you feel,” he says, with some relish. “No wonder we’re having inclement weather.”

All of Neil’s gauges go haywire—instant panic. It’s even worse than Kevin’s supposed powers of compulsion. The thought of all his hard-won habits, straight-faced lies, and tooth and nail emotional regulation being undone by a little empathy is too terrible. Like a bad joke. 

Wind whistles in his ears. Dan winces sympathetically as Nicky makes a wounded noise and grabs his own skull, staggering backwards. A wave of energy flows visibly through the air from his body, and Neil feels it impacting his own chest. Suddenly, he feels calm and docile as a lamb. He sits on the floor exactly where he is.

“Hey,” Wymack snaps.

“Nicky, stow the powers, okay. You know most of us vollies aren’t empath-compatible,” Dan says.

“I’m sorry, I—“ Nicky’s eyes screw shut. Immediately Neil is in control of his body again, and he slides sideways, panting. “I wasn’t ready.”

“What did you do to me?” Neil demands. Somewhere above ground, thunder grumbles.

“I’m sorry,” Nicky says again. “It’s an instinct sometimes, I swear I can’t help it.”

“He gave you an emotional sedative,” Wymack says, crossing his arms. “Nicky can manipulate feelings.”

“But I don’t,” Nicky interrupts. “Usually. I didn’t expect it to feel like a war-zone in here all of a sudden.”

Neil stands, and starts to stalk threateningly towards Nicky, but a hand closes in his collar and lifts him clean off the ground.

“Let’s not escalate things,” Dan says, holding him easily aloft. “Nick, will you promise to turn off the charm when Neil’s around?”

Nicky puts his hands up in surrender. “Done and done.” Softer, he says, “It’s actually—nice to meet you Neil.” He smiles sheepishly, and Neil shakes his head in dull disbelief. A total stranger just took the full force of the storm at the centre of Neil’s consciousness, and he’s still smiling at him like he’s not a monster.

Dan sets Neil carefully back on his feet, and he shrugs out of her grip, putting several paces between himself and everyone else.

“I understand powers that happen without your consent,” Neil says slowly. “But if you mess with my emotions again I’m not responsible for what’ll come out of the sky.”

Wymack holds up a staying hand, moving between them. “Alright, alright, enough posturing for one day.”

Nicky looks flushed and upset, but as Neil watches, the air around his body shifts and undulates as a new wave of power is compressed inwards. His expression slackens, hazy. “It’s okay. I don’t intimidate easy.”

Neil blinks at him. “You can turn your powers on yourself?” he asks, putting his own discomfort on ice.

Nicky smiles. He seems to be following Neil’s mood at a distance, matching him beat for beat. Neil’s not sure if it’s a byproduct of his abilities or a true personality trait. “Sure. I can chill myself out if I can’t sleep, get pissed before a fight. I don’t do it very often though, it can get intense. Draining.”

“How do you know if what you’re feeling is real? How does anyone around you?”

Nicky’s smile twitches. Neil suspects he’s stepped on a nerve. “It’s not a memory thing. My power lets people know its been there. It’s why I can’t tell anyone to forgive me, or love me, or anything. They would know better.”

“Eh, I know better,” Dan says, walking close enough to rope Nicky in by the shoulders. “But I do it anyway.”

“Aw shucks,” Nicky says, clearly pleased. 

“And you’re—super strong?” Neil asks, eyeing Dan’s thick upper arms.

‘Something like that. I can nudge gravity where I want it.” She looks slyly at Wymack and he uncrosses his arms, taking a step backwards.

“Don’t do it.”

“Come on, not even for the new guy?”

“Dan,” Wymack warns.

“Alright, fine,” she says, hands up. She looks to Neil. “Just know in your heart that I can lift the boss with one finger.”

“It’s a real crowd-pleaser,” Nicky agrees, perching on one of the many data-projecting desks, capped with swirling, changing screens. “But what about you, Stormy Weather? What’s your story?”

He frowns. “I thought all of you knew everything.”

“We’ve seen the highlights reel,” Nicky says. “We don’t know you, though, not yet.”

Not ever, Neil thinks. He plans to treat this like a workplace that he clocks in and out of. After hours, he’ll stay warm and remote in a fog where no one can find him. It’s safer that way.

“I know him,” Andrew says, and Neil looks over to find him cross-legged at the centre of the conference table. The interior glow makes him look haunted, lit ungenerously from below. Andrew tosses a baseball-sized hailstone into the sleek stretch of floor in front of Neil. Preserved, somehow, from when Neil summoned it in the car. “He’s a storm chaser with an attitude problem.”

“Where the hell did you get that?” Dan asks. Then, pinching the bridge of her nose, “never mind, actually. The less I understand the monster, the better.”

“Excuse my cousin Andrew,” Nicky starts. Andrew looks away, apparently bored. “He thinks it’s funny to scare people shitless.”

“I don’t see him laughing,” Neil says tightly. 

“His sense of humour was dropped on its head as a child,” Nicky replies sadly.

“Okay, I’m calling it,” Wymack interrupts. “I’m sure you’re exhausted, Neil. Whole lotta new faces today. You’ll meet Kevin, Renee, and Allison when they get back from mission.”

“When will that be?” Neil asks. He’s already paranoid that the shifter will appear to him without him knowing it.

Wymack shrugs. “When it’s done. In the meantime, I don’t want any more gratuitous powers in my base. No throwing shit, no lightning bolts, no—“ Andrew blinks across the room, perilously close to Neil’s side, jaw craned up to examine his face. Neil looks down instinctively, and finds Andrew’s eyes boring into his own. “No pausing me, Minyard, I’m dead serious. If I have to repeat instructions for you again it ain’t gonna be pretty.”

“What was that?” Andrew asks, but Neil’s pretty sure he’s fucking with him, because Wymack just sighs.

“Get out of my sight, all of you.” They all start to disperse, Dan back into Wymack’s office, Nicky over to the doors that lead hall-ward, Andrew into thin air. Wymack catches Neil’s eye. “Get some sleep, okay? See Abby for pills if you need ‘em. We’ll get you something dry to wear.”

“Thank you,” Neil says stiffly.

“Don’t thank me yet. Tomorrow we see how you play with others, and that’s never pretty.”

“Is that a threat?” 

Wymack looks tiredly to the largest screen in the room, beyond the place where stats and mission details are spinning in space. “More of a promise, really.”

Neil follows his gaze to the focal point of the screen, where a hundred thousand tiny golden lights are scattered into a world map like beads. Supers, embroidered into the dark fabric of the world, punched into time by some celestial power source or trick of science that they'll never understand. 

All that running, all that wishing to disappear, and he was always just a dot on this map. There was never a reality where he was going to be able to hide forever. Not even in the eye of a hurricane. Not even in an underground bunker. And if he can’t conceal his powers, he might as well control them.

He looks back at Wymack, feeling like a season on the cusp of changing, a monsoon shaking itself dry. “Let’s get started.”