Project ROWDY 25 (Patreon)

Laying on his bed, Mark Grayson stared down at his physics textbook and tried not to think too much about his physics teacher.

Actually, ex-physics teacher.Or actually actually, his late physics teacher. The one who’d gone super-villain last week. The one who’d turned the cool kids into cyborg suicide bombs. The one who suicide bombed himself with a tiny nuke he’d built into his own body.God.

If he and Eve hadn’t gotten there in time, figured out who he was and gotten to his house, then Derek and Todd would have just… exploded.Whenever they were found, they would have probably taken down a small city block together, considering each blast had only been bigger than the last.Mark shook his head so hard his vision blurred, physically trying to dislodge the image. Didn’t help. His brain kept right on replaying the clock counting down, the look on Eve’s faces when she realized what was happening as she stared at the unconscious Derek and Todd in the crazy teacher’s basement, the way Mr. Hiles had smiled—

Okay, no. Not going there.

Mark tossed the textbook onto his desk, where it skidded into his lamp and nearly knocked it over. Even that felt like too much pressure. Like every force he exerted was one breath away from catastrophic. Like everyone around him was as fragile as glass figurines, and he was a walking earthquake.

Thing was, he hadn’t even known Mr. Hiles was that smart. 

That capable. 

That completely out of his mind. The guy taught physics for what, three years? Four? And somehow nobody noticed he was building a lab in his basement where he could turn teenagers into walking bombs?

And not even normal bombs.Like, if you’re gonna be an evil genius (and Mark wasn’t condoning it, obviously), why go through all the trouble of the whole cyborg conversion thing?Like, from what Cecil had said about both Derek and Todd, the conversion was more than just atop their skin. Mr. Hiles had replaced all their muscles and bones too, making every single part of them tougher… which…

Which raised all sorts of weird questions.More than he already had.Like, why not just… crazy glue bombs to people? Was the whole super-science body-horror part really necessary for the plan? How was killing popular or cool kids by turning them into living cyborg-suicide-bombers teaching kids not to be mean or getting revenge for your son that was bullied? Those kids didn’t even bully your son at all and most of the popular kids weren’t even bullies anyway, so why? 

Was there just a Super-Villain Quarterly Magazine that gave out awards for Most Unnecessarily Complicated Scheme of the Month? Was Doc Seismic in the running before?

Mark caught himself and rolled his eyes. Great. Now he was critiquing the efficiency of a psycho-depressive-suicidal supervillain’s methodology.

Actually, that was the part Mark couldn’t stop circling back to. Mr. Hiles had been smart. Smart enough to figure out both his and Eve’s identities. Smart enough to know exactly where to hit them, when they’d be vulnerable. Smart enough to almost win.

Which raised a question Mark really didn’t want to think about: who else knew?

He stared up at the ceiling, counting the familiar cracks. At least Mr. Hiles was gone now. The man had tried to take Mark and Eve with him, but he’d gone ka-blooey after Mark had picked him up and flown him as far away as he could get in thirty seconds, tossing him over Antarctica where he could explode safely.Exactly why and how the man had managed to convert himself into a cy-bomber, Mark had no idea but… he did.So that was… over.

The doorbell rang. Mark blinked, jolting upright. Oh. They’re here.

His mom had been buzzing around all day, cleaning and cooking and making everything perfect for their guests. She’d been wanting to properly meet “those sweet boys who helped bring Nolan home” ever since the Omnipotus incident, and she’d finally gotten Mark to extend the invitation. Which had been awkward enough. Because how exactly do you invite three superpowered twelve-year-old tiny monsters to dinner?

Hey guys, wanna come have meatloaf with the family whose dad you helped rescue from a crater after fighting a giant space god? Cool, wear your good pants.

Mark slid off his bed and headed downstairs, his socks silent against the carpet. His dad was in the kitchen helping his mom with something—he could hear them talking in low voices, the way they did when they didn’t want him to hear. Probably about him. 

Or the boys. 

Or both.

He reached for the doorknob, trying to imagine what his mom would say to three super-powered kids who’d been literal villains in another dimension, who’d—

Wait. His hand froze. Should he act like he didn’t know about the villain part? Cecil had shared that detail in confidence with his dad. As far as Mark knew, nobody else was supposed to know they’d been the bad guys. Should he—?

The doorbell rang again.

Screw it.

Mark turned the handle and opened the door.

And stared down at the five-foot-tall red, blue, and green-eyed figures in front of him, the boys in clothes that matched their eye colors.

Huh. They’re always color-coded, he realized. Weird.

They looked…No, normal wasn’t the word. They looked like kids playing dress-up as normal. Their eyes a little too big, their skin just too smooth, their faces outright identical, apart from eye color and expression. Hell, they even looked air-brushed and touched up, like pulled from a magazine or something. Like they’d studied what regular twelve-year-olds looked like and done their best approximation, but something was off.

The red one — Brick — stood rigid in the middle wearing a neat red button-up shirt tucked into black jeans, the sleeves rolled up halfway, a black wristband on his right arm and a red baseball cap turned backward on his head. His black sneakers had red accents that matched the shirt so perfectly down to the exact shade it couldn’t be anything short of intentional. He held himself like someone expecting inspection, chin up, shoulders back. The stiff posture made even casual clothes look like a uniform.

Boomer had on a blue graphic t-shirt with a lightning bolt design, baggy jeans with visible wear at the knees, and high-top blue sneakers that looked brand new. He kept fidgeting with his sleeves, constantly adjusting his clothes like they were still unfamiliar. And he was smiling.Widely. Almost too widely.

Butch wore an oversized neon-green bomber jacket with a black t-shirt underneath, cargo pants with multiple pockets, and chunky combat boots that looked deliberately scuffed. A green bandana hung out of his back pocket and he stood with his weight shifted forward like he was ready to fight or run. Maybe both.

“We were invited for dinner,” Brick said, almost sounding like he was announcing himself.

“Yeah, come on in,” Mark replied, trying for casual and landing somewhere near awkward. “My mom’s excited to meet you guys.”

“We brought pie!” Boomer burst out, thrusting a store-bought apple pie forward in both hands, the price sticker still on the top of the clear plastic. “Well, we didn’t make it. We bought it. But we brought it!”

“Told you we shoulda just brought beer,” Butch muttered under his breath.

“Butch,” Brick warned, barely moving his lips.

“Uh, uh, thanks,” Mark said, trying to hold back a laugh. “My mom will appreciate it.” He stepped aside to let them in, watching as they entered his home with varying degrees of suspicion and interest.Brick’s eyes moved faster than bullets, so fast Mark’s own senses barely would have caught them if he wasn’t slightly on guard with Trinity in his house. Those red eyes moved quick, darting immediately to exits, windows, and every defensible position they could find. In complete opposition to his red brother, Boomer looked with genuine curiosity at the family photos on the wall, eyes wide as he took everything in. Butch picked up a small ceramic figure from the entry table, examined it, then put it back slightly off-center.Brick looked back over at him, those big red ringed eyes staring directly through him and all the way into his soul. “You really shouldn’t invite people in at night, by the way. The East Coast has a bit of a vampire problem.”Mark blinked, unsure how to take that. “…I.. I… okay.” Inside he was half-confused, half-shocked at that information. Vampires are real? How does he know that? Why don’t I know that?

Mark’s dad emerged from the kitchen, his massive frame filling the doorway. He made everyone else in the room look small, even Mark. Especially the boys.

“Trinity,” Nolan said with a measured nod. “Good to see you boys again.”

“Mr. Grayson,” Brick replied, just as formally, but Mark noticed his posture relax fractionally. Maybe because they’d fought together in Baltimore. Shared near-death experiences were like that—they created a weird kind of trust that wasn’t quite friendship, but definitely wasn’t nothing.“Uh, dad,” Mark spoke up, blinking slightly as his dad’s gaze slowly turned his way. “Are vampires real?”Nolan Grayson raised an eyebrow, as if surprised at the question. “Of course they’re real, son. I once helped some hunters actually clear out a nest in Croatia when you were still in middle school.”

“Boys!” Before he could try to reply or even process that, Mark’s mom appeared, wiping her hands on her apron, as her entire face lit up with a smile. “I’m so glad you could make it! When Mark said you accepted our invitation, I was thrilled.”

She reached out and briefly touched Brick’s shoulder—the one who’d helped bring Nolan home, Mark realized. The one who’d flown into space to fight a planet-killing cosmic entity without hesitation. The one who looked, right now, like he had no idea how to respond to simple human warmth.

“And you brought dessert! How thoughtful.”

Boomer beamed, standing up straighter. “It’s apple! With cinnamon!”

“Perfect,” she said, accepting it with genuine appreciation. “Why don’t you all have a seat in the living room while I finish up dinner? It’ll just be a few more minutes.”

“Can I get you boys anything to drink?” Nolan asked, slipping effortlessly into formal host mode.

“Be—” Butch started to say.

“Water is fine. Thank you,” Brick cut in smoothly, shooting his brother a glare that could’ve and would’ve melted steel.

“We’ve got soda too, if you want,” Mark offered, trying to break the tension.

“Soda! Yes!” Boomer practically vibrated with excitement. “Carbonation is awesome!”

Mark led them to the living room, where they all sat down—the boys taking the couch while Mark and his dad took the armchairs. Nobody said anything for a solid thirty seconds, which felt like three hours.

“So,” Mark tried, “how’s working with Cecil been?”

“A learning experience,” Brick answered.“Learning experience?” Mark couldn’t help the way he answered back, the question slipping out as he parroted the younger superhuman unintentionally.Red eyes flicked his way. “Yes,” the word was enunciated so carefully and slowly, Mark almost reddened, the twelve-year old managing to sound like he was speaking to a five-year old. “A learning experience.”

And… silence again.

“Cecil’s got this cool base under the Pentagon! The GDA’s whole set-up is so sick, you wouldn’t believe it. Like holograms, training bots, and a whole buncha lasers and guns,” Boomer blurted out, apparently unable to bear the quiet. “And we get our own rooms now with real beds and everything!”

“Better than sleeping in a warehouse,” Butch couldn’t help but shake his head as he let out a snort at the same time, his food 

“You guys slept in warehouses?” Mark asked, barely controlling his volume at the thought that kids this young and this strong were homeless. “Why?”

“When necessary. We slept in warehouses when necessary,” Brick said matter-of-factly, his voice sharpening on the last three syllables. “Villains don’t exactly get housing allowances.”

Mark saw his dad’s eyebrow raise slightly, despite already being aware. “Villains?”

Good acting, dad. His dad was the one who told him they were villains, so the fact he was able to pretend so easily was impressive.“Yeah!” Boomer jumped in before Brick could answer, practically bouncing on the couch. “We were super-villains back home! We were made to destroy the Powerpuff Girls!” The little blond boy made explosion noises, his hands mimicking blasts.

“Wait, Powerpuff what now?” Mark asked, completely lost.

“Girl superheroes,” Butch explained with a grin. “Real goody-two-shoes types.”

“Our opposite-gender counterparts,” Brick clarified, shooting his brothers a look that Mark couldn’t quite read. “They were… quite adept at being heroes.”

“You were created to be villains?” Nolan asked, leaning forward slightly in his chair. Mark recognized the pose—it was the one his dad used when he was genuinely interested in something, not just making conversation. That was confusing, though. Acting was one thing, but his dad seemed actually interested in what the Boys had to say about this.

“Created, yes,” Brick replied, the twelve-year old staring past Mark to look his dad right in the eye. “To be anything? That’s debatable.”

“Well, you’re welcome here anytime,” she said with a gentle smile. “All of you.”

Mark watched Brick’s face. For just a moment, something genuine flashed across it—surprise, maybe. Vulnerability. Then it was gone, locked behind careful composure.

“Thank you, Mrs. Grayson,” he said formally.

Mark felt something shift in his chest. He’d been so caught up in the weirdness of having super-powered former villains from another dimension at his dinner table that he hadn’t really thought about what it meant for them. But watching Brick now, he realized the red-eyed boy carried more weight than just superpowers.He carried his brothers. Their safety. Their future. Their everything.

And he was twelve.

Mark was seventeen and still freaking out about his physics teacher going nuts. Brick was actively figuring out how to give them a life in a dimension that wasn’t home.

They returned to the dining room, where his dad was still questioning the other boys.

“—and the GDA provides adequate training facilities?” he was asking.

“We break ’em faster than they can build ’em!” Butch declared proudly.

Brick cleared his throat loudly, and Butch immediately adjusted his tone.

“I mean, they’re… sufficient,” he corrected.

“So how’s superpowers and stuff different in your world and ours?” Mark asked, genuinely curious now. 

“Power distribution, primarily,” Brick answered thoughtfully. “Your world has much fewer powered individuals, but far higher average strength. Our world has thousands of thousands of superhumans, but most are specialized or limited in scope.”

“The concentration versus distribution model,” Nolan nodded, and Mark was surprised to see something like respect in his eyes as he looked at Brick.

“Dinner’s ready!” his mom called from the kitchen, breaking the moment. “Everyone wash up and come to the table!”

Mark exhaled, relieved at the interruption. Butch immediately stood, moving toward the kitchen, only for Brick to put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks with nothing more than a light touch.

Mark led the way to the dining room, watching as the boys followed. Brick positioned his brothers carefully—Boomer on his left, Butch on his right, himself facing the door. Mark noticed his dad noticing this too, giving a slight nod of approval. 

Christ. Mark knew the kids were scary, but even the nicest of them made it hard to forget that they thought like living weapons too.

That thought faded quickly from his mind as the table was loaded down with food—roast chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, corn, rolls, three different kinds of salad. Yeah, Mom had definitely gone all out.

“I hope everyone’s hungry!” she said proudly. “I may have gone a little overboard.”

“This is all for us?” Boomer asked, his eyes wide as saucers.

“Well, us too, but yes,” his mom laughed. “Eat as much as you’d like.”

Mark watched the boys’ reactions. Brick sat with perfect posture, using utensils with mechanical precision. Boomer kept glancing at him, trying to copy his movements but clearly unfamiliar with proper table etiquette. Butch attacked his food like someone might take it away, shoveling it in so fast Mark was mildly impressed he wasn’t choking.

His mom kept the food coming, every plate piled high as the boys continued to dig in. At a certain point as his mom served another helping, Mark was honestly beginning to wonder where she got it all from. He knew she had asked Cecil how much they ate that first day at the hospital, but he didn’t think it was this crazy. No wonder she took this long to get ready.

“No need to rush, Butch,” Mom got up with a bowl in her arms and walked over to the boy shoveling food into his mouth. “Growing boys need their strength,” she said gently, adding more potatoes to the green boy’s plate.

Butch froze mid-bite, eyes wide. Mark didn’t think he’d ever seen the kid so still.

Boomer grinned around his food. “This is the best meal I’ve ever had!”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Brick muttered.

Boomer swallowed, looking sheepish. “Sorry.”

“So you boys mentioned being from another dimension,” Nolan said casually after a few minutes of focused eating. “How exactly did you end up here?”

“Dimensional breach during high-velocity combat,” Brick explained clinically. “We were fighting our counterparts near the upper atmosphere. Something about the resonance between our powers created a temporary rupture. We fell through. Landed in the Atlantic.”

“It was like WHOOSH and then CRACK and then everything went all stretchy and we were like WHOA!” Boomer interrupted, making wild hand gestures with each sound effect. “And then we hit the ocean and it was SPLASH!”

“We get it, Boomer,” Butch groaned.

“About that creation thing? How did that happen exactly?” Dad’s voice was calm as he rounded on them, with another set of questions. That look his dad wore, it was one that Mark had seen more often, and exclusively when they were in costume and dealing with supervillains. Interrogation mode?

Mark pulled a face, only to quickly hide it before anyone could notice. Viltrumite mode? Maybe, but he wasn’t even sure if that could really classify it. His dad was some kind of superpowered alien social worker so maybe that laser-focus was part of the job.

Question was… did the boys see it?

Despite the question, Mark knew for a fact that Brick did. It wasn’t anything based on fact or really anything worth the title of concrete, but he knew it as well as he knew Allen the Alien hit hard. Brick seemed to catch everything, those red eyes of his missing almost nothing. Creepy.

“Our first creator was a mutated chimpanzee scientist named Mojo Jojo,” Brick answered, flat as drywall, each word so precise like he was disarming a bomb.

It was spoken so precisely in fact that Mark didn’t properly process what Brick said until he was already choking on his mouthful of water. Almost snorting it back out, he glanced Brick’s way, almost missing his mom’s sharp look she sent at him.

Unfortunately, that didn’t matter right now. A what?

“He used a chemical compound called Chemical X, along with some… unorthodox ingredients,” Brick continued, as if any of that made sense.

“You’re joking.”

Mark blinked a half-second later as he realized his filter failed him and those three syllables just fell out of his mouth.

“Mark Grayson,” his mom hissed his way.

“Mom, a monkey made them?” Mark blurted, trying not to sound as freaked out as he felt. The sentence slipped out, his filter failing him again at the raw insanity. Bad Mark. He was trying, okay? Trying really hard to be cool at dinner, but c’mon… a monkey?

“Not just any monkey,” Butch cut in, bristling like Mark had insulted his ancestry. Which, I guess… technically… “An evil scientist super-genius monkey.”

Like that wasn’t a hundred times weirder, but sure, we’ll roll with that.

“He made us with snips and snails and puppy dog tails!” Boomer added cheerfully, the blue-eyed nicest one of all the boys said with a smile that was outright beaming.

Snips of what, even?

The table was quiet, completely silent. That worst kind of awkward, heavy, smothering silence. Mark glanced between the boys, trying to find some clue that they were joking, but the boys just sat there like that explanation was totally reasonable as the table went without anyt of them speaking; Mark in his own head, his dad nodding along silently, and his mom visibly trying to fight her curioisity.

After only a few seconds, the curioisty won as his mom looked bewildered but asked anyway. “I’m… I’m sorry, what?” Mom’s voice went low, quiet, almost a whisper, as she did her best — better than him, at least — not to sound like that was the craziest thing she’d ever heard.

Dad, on the other hand, didn’t seem at all surprised. “Ah, yes, of course. These things happen.”

Mark shot his dad a look. “These things happen?”

Nolan Grayson simply nodded, Mark’s mouth still half-open as his dad just gave him a knowing look. “Come on, son. I know he’s not one of my usual idiots, but come on, son… BrainiApe?“

Mark blinked, trying to recall who that as exactly, only to shoot his dad another look of confusion. “Wait, that’s a robot built like a gorilla. That doesn’t count.”

His dad’s look shifted, smile fading slighly as his mustache ruffled a bit. “He was an organic super-powered gorilla until his body was destroyed and he was rebuilt in a robotic body. Mark, have you not been doing the studying? I know Cecil gave you a GDA dossier to read up on.”

He felt his cheeks go red, eyes drifting down as he tried to avoid his dad’s eyes for a second. “Well… uh… you know I’ve been busy with… school and Amber and… uh… stuff…”

Butch snorted. “Some~one’s in trouuuuu~ble…”

His dad’s look slightly sharpened and Mark’s face went even more red. “Someone might be, in fact.” Shaking his head slowly, Dad let out a sigh. “Anyway, super-genius simians aren’t exactly an unseen thing. But continue on how you were created, Brick.”

As all eyes turned back to him, Brick let out a sigh of his own. “It’s complicated. The Chemical X is the primary component. The rest is… symbolic. It’s… more alchemy than it is… science. It’s hard to explain. Anyway, our impure and crude creation compared to the Powerpuffs meant we were weak to affection, literally. So, the Girls kissed us… and we exploded.” He looked like he was weighing every word, trying not to make it sound like a complete fever dream.

Boomer huffed on his plate. “Exploding sucks.”

Mom blinked almost as fast as Mark could fly, nodding quickly like she understood, even as Butch chimed in with his own muttered, “…yeah.”

“After our first death, we were reconstituted by another entity,” Brick said, clearly trying to shift the conversation away from monkey-mad-scientist territory but Mark wasn’t sure how he thought this was any less crazy. “Our second father.”

Mark blinked, ignoring the sudden feeling his brain was trying to fold in on itself as he tried to process everything he just heard. “Wait… your second dad?” He winced as soon as he said that, surprised he had chosen the least important thing to mention.

Butch cut in again, casual as ever. “Yes, you would know him as the Devil.”

Mark opened his mouth and closed it. He turned to look at his mom, the both of them sharing identical wide-eyed expressions. Then his dad who looked as unbothered as ever, still nodding. Then back at the boys.

Dad spoke up first. “Interesting. So, that would make you cambions… of a sort?”

Brick tilted his head. “Of a sort, yes.”

His dad nodded again, looking like this was just another normal day. Dad always did like talking about work more than anything normal and Mark honestly couldn’t blame him for that, but still, this was absolutely insane. Like, literally out of this world, in more ways than his dad already was. “That’s absolutely fascinating, boys. Hate to say it but I have rarely met any of the infernally inclined who I wasn’t fighting against. Have you happened to meet Damien Darkblood yet?”

Brick’s red-eyed gaze narrowed slighly, but not angrily. “We’ve heard of him, yes.”

“W-w-wait, hold up, hold up. The Devil?” Mark finally repeated, because maybe he’d heard that wrong. “Like, actual pitchfork, red guy, horns devil?”

Boomer nodded, eyes wide and earnest. “Yep! Except he also wears thigh-high boots and a tutu.”

Mark felt his brain stutter and crawl to a stop, even his dad actually looking shocked at that one. “The Devil… wears thigh-highs and a tutu. You’re serious.”

Brick looked resigned. “One of them.” Trinity’s leader let out a sigh. “I should have been more specific. That’s on me. I meant to say A Devil. In our dimension, Hell is… Hell is weird. The real Devil went off to LA to open a club or something. Hell is like medieval Europe levels of divided. Our dad is an Archfiend who sat on the throne of Hell once and currently still rules a territory in Hell that correlates to the human region of the Carolinas and Georgia. He goes by HIM. His Infernal Majesty.”

His dad looked at Brick like he was trying to decipher a code. “Interesting family tree.”

Dinner continued, but Mark felt like his brain was running laps. The conversation moved from weird family dynamics to their powers to the GDA, but he wasn’t really tracking. Just catching fragments—Brick explaining power distribution between dimensions, Dad asking about GDA training facilities, Boomer talking too fast about holograms and lasers.

Mark tried to make conversation, asking about their dimension, but it just made his head spin more. Brick gave measured answers about power concentrations and hero-to-civilian ratios, while Boomer veered off into complaints about school lunches and how strawberry milk should be a constitutional right.

The rest of dinner passed in a blur of conversation—questions about their powers, their work with the GDA, their adjustment to this dimension. Before Mark knew it, mom was announcing desset. “Who’s ready for pie? We have the lovely one you brought, plus I made chocolate cake.”

“Cake AND pie?” Boomer gasped, like he hadn’t brought the pie himself. “This is the best day ever!”

“Mark, Brick, can you help me bring everything out?” his mom asked.

Mark followed her to the kitchen, Brick a step behind him. Soon, all the slices were set out and everyone was eating. Mom turned over to Butch with a curious look on her face. “So… Butch… how is it like living in our dimension?”

“People die more here,” Butch said suddenly, his voice low and blunt in between bites of pie.

The table fell silent.

Butch didn’t look bothered by what had just left his mouth, still chewing as he spoke with his mouth full. “In our world, buildings get smashed, people get thrown through walls, but a lot of times they just get back up. Here… things break real easy.”

Mark swallowed hard and tried to look at his dad for some kind of reaction, but the old man just nodded like he’d expected it.

The uncomfortable silence that followed was broken only by Brick’s not-so-smooth change of subject. “The dessert is excellent, Mrs. Grayson.”

“…Uh, yes… th-thank you, Brick.”

After the awkward turn that was dessert, Mark’s mom started gathering plates, but Brick moved first, stacking dishes with practiced efficiency. Boomer copied him, grabbing way too many forks at once, and Butch followed a beat later, slower, like he wasn’t sure if it was the right move.

“Such good manners!” his mom said, genuinely pleased. “Mark, you could take a lesson.”

“Mom!” Mark felt his ears burn.

Brick didn’t react, just kept stacking plates. “Thank you, Mrs. Grayson,” he said, voice low.

Shaking his head with a low chuckle, his dad got up too and began to assist in clearing everything. “Cecil mentioned you’ve made progress on your dimensional research since we last spoke,” Dad said to Brick as they worked.

“Not much more than GDA scientists have,” Brick answered back, like it wasn’t important and that wasn’t impressive for a twelve-year old to know anything more than top-secret government scientists did. “When time permits, I do more, but we have responsibilities of our own.”

“Divided priorities can be difficult to manage,” Mark glanced at his dad as the old man said that, trying to read his face, but he just looked thoughtful.

When the dishes were done, Mark looked outside the living room window, seeing how it was already completely dark, the stars already out and shining bright. He glanced back over at the boys. “Hey, you guys want to see the view from the roof?”

Boomer lit up. “Yes!”

Butch just shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal, but there was something interested in his eyes. “We flying or…”

Mark allowed a grin to cross his face, not as big as Boomer’s but still. “Nah, we’ll go the normal way. Through my window.”

Brick didn’t say anything, but he didn’t object either. Mark could live with that.

“Go ahead, boys,” his mom encouraged. “Just be careful.”

Brick gave a short nod, and the five of them headed upstairs. Mark led them through his bedroom to the window that opened onto the slightly sloped roof. One by one, they climbed out, settling onto the shingles under a sky full of stars, the city lights glowing in the distance.

For a few minutes, nobody spoke. Mark noticed how the boys seemed to relax slightly away from the adults—Butch actually sitting still for once, Boomer swinging his legs and looking up at the stars appearing one by one, Brick’s shoulders losing some of their permanent tension.

“So…” Mark finally broke the silence. “Being heroes now. That’s a big change, huh?”

“Adaptation is necessary for survival,” Brick answered automatically.

“Big Bricky makes it sound all scientific,” Butch let out a loud snort as Brick shot him a dirty red-eyed look, the green-eyed boy picking at his ear with a pinkie. “Good, bad, it’s just punching different people and breaking different shit.”

“I dunno, I like saving people better than scaring them,” Boomer said quietly, a slight smile on his face. “They’re happier and it makes me feel good inside.”

Mark hesitated, then asked the question he’d been wondering about all evening. “Were you guys… really that bad? As villains, I mean.”

There was a moment of silence before Brick answered quietly, “We were designed to be.”Butch held up both hands, ten digits lowering one by one as he began to speak. “Multiple charges of attempted mass murder, assault and battery, mass property damage, theft, terrorism, mutilation, public endangerment, terrorism, torture, and attempted murder,” He paused and looked up at Mark, “that’s different from the attempted mass murder.”

“We crashed a jet into Townsville once!” Boomer said with unmistakable pride, sounding innocent despite what he just said.

“We were effective at what we were made for,” Brick said quietly.

Mark looked up at the stars, trying not to lose his mind at the literal demons he was sitting next to. “I sometimes wonder what I was made for,” he said reflectively, surprised at his own honesty. “My dad talks about legacy and protecting Earth, but…” He trailed off, not sure how to finish the thought.

“But you’re not sure if that’s your purpose or his,” Brick supplied, studying him intently.

Mark looked over at him with wide eyes, shocked at the read but unable to counter it. “Yeah… y-yeah, exactly.” He went silent and the Boys didn’t say anything either, all four of them just staring up at the sky.

“Do you think there’s a world where we’re the good guys and the Powerpuffs are evil?” Boomer asked suddenly.

“Evil Buttercup would be hot,” Butch mused.

“Butch,” Brick warned.

“What? Just saying.”

Mark laughed despite himself. “Multiverse theory. It’s possible.” The night was fully dark now, stars scattered across the sky like spilled salt. In the quiet that followed, Mark found himself asking a question before fully thinking it through.

“So when you say one of your dads is the devil,” he started casually, then realized the implications, “does that mean the Devil is… gay?”

There was a moment of complete silence.

“Yes,” all three boys answered in perfect unison.

“…oh.”