Chapter Text
The number of people gathered in the courtyard out front of the brand new science museum made it look like there was some festival in town. Pearl pushed through the crowd in search of the rest of their friends. Gem clung onto her elbow, having given up trying to see over all the heads. It seemed that half of the city had shown up for the museum’s grand opening. Families moved in tight units, kids’ hands in their parents’ firm grip. Groups of young adults took up far too much space as they laughed loudly and took pictures. Security guards stood by the closed doors with their arms crossed, stoically telling impatient people that it was going to be just a few more minutes.
Eventually, Pearl spotted MJ towering over the rest of the crowd. She grabbed Gem’s hand and pulled her until they were able to break into the small free space around MJ, Scar, and Grian.
“There you guys are!” Grian planted his hands on his hips. Pearl noticed that he was wearing a red t-shirt that said Professional Sidekick. “What took you so long?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Gem snapped back, “But there’s a million people here!”
“It’s probably more like a thousand, maybe two.” MJ continued to look around with furrowed eyebrows. “Have either of you seen Joel and Lizzie?”
“They texted that they were here like fifteen minutes ago,” Scar elaborated. He was aptly dressed for the space museum in a Star Wars shirt and had a (somewhat creepy looking) Jar Jar backpack sitting in his lap. “But we haven’t been able to find them and now they’re not responding to texts. My theory is they got trapped in one of the exhibits.”
Both of them shook their heads and Pearl cast a look around for Lizzie’s bright pink hair but found nothing.
“They’ll start letting people into the museum in a few minutes,” Grian checked his phone. “So the crowd will hopefully thin out.”
“What about Impulse and Skizz?” Gem asked. “They said they might come, right?”
“Can’t make it. They didn’t say why but it’s really not our business.” Grian answered.
Gem sighed in disappointment and Pearl had to agree. Skizz had only gotten back into town the day before yesterday after being gone for nearly a month and she missed hanging out with him. But another movie night was just around the corner and she’d get to see him then.
The five of them waited on the courtyard for another ten minutes. A few minutes into the wait, the museum’s doors opened and a wave of excitement washed over the crowd. People started clamoring to get a good spot in the line through the doors. The group moved out of the way with a wordless agreement to wait for Joel and Lizzie.
They arrived as the crowd noticeably started to shrink, both of their faces flushed from hurrying. “Sorry, sorry!” Lizzie said as Grian once again started to make a comment. A cloth bag swung from her arm.
“We were here super early and thought we could run a quick errand but it ended up taking longer than we thought.” Joel ran a hand through his hair and cast a look around the courtyard. “Museum time?”
“Museum time!” Scar agreed and led the charge to the front door.
As they waited in line, Pearl watched Joel lean over to whisper something to Gem that made her shoulders tense.
“Joel–” She hissed back and was shushed.
Pearl didn’t catch the next bit but as he pulled away, she heard him say, “I’m probably overreacting.”
She filed that interaction into the back of her mind as something to wonder about later as they got to the front of the line. They passed through a security check and were finally able to enter the museum proper.
The first room was massive. The floor was an intricate mural of the Earth in beautiful blue and green tiles. The ceiling above was tall and domed, painted a dark blue with a massive chandelier of some constellations glittering with little lights. Three floors of balconies overlooked the space, each somehow already busy with people taking pictures from above. The required gift shop was to the right with signs advertising opening weekend deals and an information desk was tucked beside it with a crowd already packed in front of it.
They followed the flow of traffic through an arched door labeled “Earth” into an exhibit dedicated to the history of astronomy and human knowledge about the stars. One display demonstrated how sailors used the stars to navigate, another discussed several myths about the nature of the universe. Their group was quiet as they moved, with the exception of when Joel pointed out one diagram and announced “I always knew the Earth was flat.”
To which Grian countered, “The world is a cube, Joel. Everyone knows that.”
Pearl brought a hand to her mouth to muffle her laughter as the argument continued in hushed voices. Beside her, Gem sighed and mumbled, “Boys.”
The crowd in here was still nearly shoulder to shoulder. If she wanted to read any of the plaques, she would either have to wait for the space to clear or shoulder her way in. Playing with any of the more interactive exhibits was practically out of the question with how many people crowded in front of them.
For the first hour, the group mostly just shuffled forward with the flow and tried to stay together. The first exhibit that the group agreed was worth waiting for was one of those silly cardboard cutouts where everyone put their faces inside one of the celestial bodies in the solar system. A museum employee was offering to take pictures with people’s phones and hurrying people along the best he could. As they waited in the roped off line, they debated who would take which one. Pearl mostly stayed out of it, clearly having the last name Moon made the decision for her.
Their group was just about to take their turn when an intercom crackled to life, silencing the chatter in the room.
“Ladies and Gentlemen!” The voice that echoed through the tinny speakers was loud and enthusiastic. Pearl’s stomach dropped. “This is Tempest speaking. Please remain where you are. Your friendly local villains would like to remind you that we’re still here and we have something fun for you all today!”
Everyone was frozen. No one dared to break the stillness as if one noise could summon the villains to them. Pearl’s eyes darted to the Magic Mountaineers, who each wore a look of frustration and determination. Grian grabbed MJ’s sleeve and pulled him down to whisper in his ear. He nodded and took a slow step to a service door hidden against the back wall.
“Now, I’m sure some of you listening are prodigies. I’m sure many of you are, in fact.” Tempest continued. “The Magic Mountaineers want you to believe that prodigies should hide their powers unless you’re a part of their cool kids club. They want things to continue as they are so no one will be brave enough to make real change.”
“That’s not true,” Scar muttered in a soft, hurt voice so quietly that Pearl barely caught it.
“So to all the prodigies out there, this is your chance to show off, dude! To make yourselves known and to stand up against the rest of the world! Wraith, if you would…”
All of the lights went out.
A murmur of wordless fear bubbled up from the crowd before there was an electrical hum and the emergency lights kicked on, casting the museum hall into a dim red glow. Around them, people stood frozen. A little kid—that moments before was darting around laughing—tried to run to her parents. But she tripped over the footrests of Scar’s wheelchair and hit the tiled floor hard.
Pearl took an anxious step forward to help but Scar beat her to it, leaning down and offering her a hand up. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, tears starting to slip down her cheeks. Her hand clutched his tightly.
A man hurried to her side and apologized to Scar, who waved it off. “It’s all good.”
Above their heads, something large and glass smashed. Several people flinched at the loud noise and Pearl’s heart leapt into her throat. One of the villains? Another prodigy?
The little girl gripped Scar’s hand, “Are the villains attacking?”
“You know,” Scar spoke softly but it carried in the stillness. Pearl could recognize the HotGuy confidence in his voice. “Wherever the villains are, the heroes will be too.”
“Kraken?” She whispered.
He chuckled, “Are you a Kraken fan?” When she nodded, he said, “Me too. And I know she’s going to be here very soon to keep us safe.”
Her eyes went wide and she finally let her Dad pick her up and hold her close.
Pearl glanced around to see if Gem had heard that particular exchange but she, Lizzie, and Joel were already gone. The door that MJ had opened was just clicking shut, answering the question before she could even ask it.
None of them had their gear or their weapons and the apartment building was at least forty minutes away with traffic. Completely by accident, the villains timed this perfectly.
Grian hopped up onto a bench to address the room. “Everyone should make their way to the emergency exits.”
“We should do what the villains say,” another voice snapped. “Stay where we are.”
Pearl couldn’t see the speaker but Grian clearly did as his eyes narrowed towards them. “They don’t seem to target random c— random people.” He slipped on the word. “But there could be a fire so we need to evacuate.”
“Who are you to even—“ The objector was cut off as the building’s fire alarm blared. Bright flashes accompanied the shrill noises and Pearl winced at the overstimulating combination.
The stillness snapped.
People started to push and shout, desperate to get out of the building. Grian waved an “I told you so” hand at the ceiling but it was lost to the crowd. The museum worker shouted orders to follow the marked exit signs and to keep calm. Someone’s shoulder slammed into Pearl from behind and she staggered a step before Scar’s hands caught hers and steadied her. His eyes were narrowed, darting between people.
With how full the museum was, someone was going to get hurt from the panic alone.
She gave a grateful nod to Scar but he wasn’t looking at her. He called to Grian and pointed to the door MJ had gone through. They were going to try and help in whatever way they could.
For Pearl, this was her chance to see the villains in person. She could learn a lot from this.
She slipped her hands from Scars and let the crowd push her along until she found a doorway to duck into. It was a small theater that still played its movie, a monotone voice explaining the orbit of the moon around the Earth. But it was empty and there were no visible security cameras so she dissolved into her swarm and swept up into the vents.
The moths would be glaringly out of place in here so she was going to have to be careful. They spread out through the vents, pulling Pearl’s awareness thinner with them. She couldn’t experience all of their senses at the same time, nor would she want to. Instead, she started to pick up flashes of sound. Shouting and kids crying. The pounding of footsteps on the cement stairs of some fire escape. The ever-present blaring of the fire alarm.
A small Boom drew her attention and she sent a few moths nearby to check it out. The first to poke its little head out of the vent saw a small crater in the tiled floor beside a young teenage boy sporting a Batman hoodie. In his hand, he clutched a baseball-sized sphere of what looked like raw electrical energy, crackling bright blue.
He reared back to throw it at a model of some Mars rover when a shimmery, chromatic liquid flew through the air and wrapped around the ball mid-flight. The ball dropped to the ground with a solid, metallic clang and a moment later, the bomb exploded inside, doing nothing but sending the ball rolling down the hall.
“What the hell?!” The boy shouted and Pearl saw the second prodigy. A girl, maybe a few years older than him. She had her hands out and more of the strange magic substance floated around them. There was a resemblance to them, likely siblings or cousins.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” She scolded him. “You want to draw the villains here?!”
The boy started to create another explosion. “I’m doing what they said! They would be happy to see me! You want to hide your powers for the rest of your life?”
“What about the Magic Mountaineers, then?” She countered. “You think HotGuy’s not going to kick your ass and then what? You’re not just going to get grounded, you’ll be arrested.”
That made him pause, the energy dissipating in his hands.
One of Pearl’s moths spotted the villains. Her attention shifted rapidly through little eyes until she was able to focus on them.
It was Tempest and Flicker. The latter was crouched on the railing overlooking the main lobby, unconcerned that he was four stories up. The former was leaning beside him, elbows propped up, grinning lazily and looking to all the world like this was a casual Friday at the office. He said something but Pearl couldn’t catch it, the moth was a good thirty feet away.
There was something different about seeing them in person compared to the videos and pictures. Tempest was taller than she’d thought—possibly taller than her. He wore nothing to obscure his face and Pearl tried to commit it to memory to see if she could recognize him later, bright blue eyes likely accentuated by his powers, a scar across his nose where it had likely been broken before, and a strangely open, friendly expression. Flicker’s back was to her so he was harder to read, but she could see the strange way his hair bled into golden fire that at the moment was burning low but steady. His mask was attached at the back of his neck with visible straps over his ears holding it in place.
Who are you? She thought to herself, the moth’s wings beating once. What are you hoping to accomplish, really?
Finally, the fire alarm cut out and the relative quiet was blissful to Pearl’s already overwhelmed mind. Tempest let out a visible sigh of relief. Then Flicker must have made some comment because he reached over and rapped a knuckle on the back of his head, ignoring the fire completely. Flicker responded by trying to fling a small fireball into his face which Tempest easily blew away.
Through her moths, she could still hear the terror that laced throughout the building. Some of the escape doors must have been locked because people slammed their fists against the heavy metal, the bangs reverberating against the walls. From down below in the lobby, the screaming and shouting grew to desperate levels.
All this fear and these villains were laughing and scuffling like children—
Where were the Magic Mountaineers?
Her mind flipped through the moths until she found the few that lingered by Grian and Scar. A spike of sourceless pain and exhaustion raced through her. She was spread too thin. Once this was over, she was going to be down for the count for sure. But that could wait.
It took a frustrating minute to find them but eventually one moth did, wiggling through the narrow space under the door MJ, Gem, and Joel had disappeared through. The two of them seemed to be in the middle of a tense argument.
“Scar, you’re not listening—” Grian had his arms crossed and face tight with familiar frustration.
“G,” Scar tried to interrupt but was talked over.
“—this is not the time or place to be breaking out new, untested powers—”
New powers? If Pearl was capable of gasping in this form, she would have.
“Grian,” Scar snapped.
“—especially ones that will—”
Scar reached up to grab his arm and twisted. Grian made a noise of pain but stopped talking. “I respect your opinion and we are a team, but people could be getting hurt right now and it’s this or nothing. And worse, we’re leaving our team without uniforms, weapons, or comms in this chaos. Are you in or am I doing this without you?”
Pearl had never heard Scar or HotGuy speak like this. Clearly Grian was surprised too, as he didn’t speak for a long second. Then he held out a hand and his shoulders fell. “I’m in.”
Her eyes—the moth’s eyes—snagged on a light. A red, blinking light on a still-active security camera pointed right at them.
Maybe it was too late. Maybe the camera had been recording audio this whole time and someone was listening to this whole conversation. But there was also a chance she could save them from revealing their identities.
The moth’s wings beat rapidly and it dove for the camera. Both of her friends noticed it then, Scar’s hand freezing a centimeter above Grian’s. It landed on the lens, wide wings obscuring it completely.
“What?” Scar breathed out. “Who…”
“Someone who is doing us a massive favor,” Grian took Scar’s hand. “That’s a later problem. And we’ll talk soon,” This was directed at the moth and Pearl found it a little amusing. They certainly would be talking, probably sooner than Grian expected. “Let’s go, HotGuy.”
A burst of white light filled the narrow corridor and when it faded, her friends were gone and the famous heroes were in their place.
Different costumes, though. CuteGuy’s wings were a dark, stormy gray instead of their usual white and the pink accents on his uniform and bow were replaced with yellow. HotGuy kept his signature cyan and orange but he was missing his bow entirely. He also had accented his black bodysuit with a garish tropical button down, open in the front of course, and board shorts with a clashing pattern. His signature glider was accented with ocean patterns that screamed “surfboard”.
That was… unexpected. Pearl didn’t know that was how they activated their powers or that the comicbook-esque costumes were included. And what were these different powers? What were they actually capable of?
CuteGuy examined his wings and suit for a moment then raised a skeptical eyebrow at HotGuy.
“Like it?” He popped the collar of his shirt then rose from his chair, looking back at it. “What are the chances that this is still here when we get back?” “Maybe our moth friend will keep an eye on it,” CuteGuy shot another look up at her. “But I don’t think we have to worry.”
HotGuy moved it out of sight from the camera and stood tall. “Let’s go help some people.”
“And kick some villain ass,” CuteGuy agreed and shouldered open the door back into the museum proper.
Pearl’s attention spread out through her moths again. There was still so much going on, so much noise and movement. A crowd had broken through one of the emergency exit doors and was spilling into the parking lot behind the museum. Kraken stood guard a bit away, dressed her familiar blue captain’s coat over the clothes she’d worn today and her visor and cloth mask obscuring her face. She held a sword made of light—one of Architect’s constructs—and shifted it in her grip like she wasn’t quite happy with the weight of it.
All of the Magic Mountaineers had tricks up their sleeves, apparently. Or Gem had dozens of versions of that coat scattered around the city just for moments like this.
Tempest. Falling. Screaming. Panic panic panic.
The messages started to bombard her senses. A jackhammer of pain that wasn’t really pain made her lose everything for just a moment and when it returned, it felt like half of her swarm was demanding her attention. She caught a flash of something large and glass plummeting through the air. People yelled and shoved each other out of the way. Some of them couldn’t fight the pressure and were thrown to the ground.
Something crashed deafeningly loud and the part of her mind that was still outside with Kraken saw her sword vanish into nothing.