Kensington Avenue. 2:45 AM.
The neighborhood didn't sleep. It just nodded off.
Under the rusted steel tracks of the El train, the shadows stretched long and jagged. The streetlights flickered with a dying orange buzz, illuminating cracked sidewalks littered with needles, trash, and the slumped forms of the zombies—the lost souls swaying in the tranquilizer-heavy gravity of Kensington.
It was the kind of place where even the stray cats walked with a limp and a shank.
And walking right down the middle of the street was Fernando.
He was wearing a cable-knit sweater. Cream-colored. The kind of thing you'd see in a J.Crew catalog, not a war zone.
He had a mop of curly dark hair that bounced with every step, thick round glasses that magnified his eyes into saucers of perpetual optimism. He looked like a librarian who had gotten lost on the way to a poetry slam.
He was humming.
"I am the very model of a modern Major-General…" Fernando sang softly, stepping daintily over a puddle of questionable origin.
A man slumped against a boarded-up storefront groaned, reaching out a trembling hand.
"Spare… change?"
Fernando stopped. He didn't recoil. He didn't speed up. He smiled—a warm, genuine, cinnamon-roll smile that had no business existing in this zip code.
"I don't have any cash, friend!" Fernando chirped. He reached into his messenger bag. "But I have a granola bar! Oatmeal raisin. Good for the heart!"
He placed the bar gently in the man's palm.
"You have a safe night, okay?"
He gave a little wave and kept walking, picking up the tune right where he left off.
He turned the corner toward an industrial block that looked like it had been bombed in the '80s and never rebuilt. At the end of the street stood a massive, hulking factory. The windows were shattered teeth. The brickwork was black with decades of soot.
A chain-link fence topped with razor wire surrounded the perimeter.
Fernando walked up to the heavy steel gate. He didn't look intimidated. He looked like he was visiting his grandmother.
He pressed the buzzer.
BZZZZT.
"Yeah?" A voice crackled over the intercom, gargling gravel.
"It's me!" Fernando leaned into the speaker. "Fernando! I brought donuts!"
Silence.
Then a heavy metallic CLANK. The gate slid open on rusted tracks.
Fernando skipped inside.
The courtyard was a fortress of scrap metal.
Burning barrels provided the only light, casting long shadows against the brick walls. And standing in those shadows were the Vypers.
Agent Weaver had called them vigilantes with baseball bats. Technically true. But it didn't capture the vibe.
They looked like a punk rock band that had decided to start a militia.
Skinny guys in torn denim vests, skull bandanas covering their faces. Girls with half-shaved heads sharpening machetes on engine blocks. They were polishing football pads reinforced with spikes, wrapping baseball bats in barbed wire, loading homemade pipe pistols that looked like they'd blow up in the shooter's hand as often as not.
They were rough. They were angry. They were the city's immune system responding to an infection the doctors refused to treat.
As Fernando walked through the courtyard, the conversation died.
Hard eyes tracked him. A guy with a nose ring and a spiked collar stopped wiping down a sledgehammer to glare.
Fernando didn't notice the tension. Or if he did, he chose to smother it with kindness.
"Hi, guys!" He waved to a terrifying woman sharpening a knife. "Love the new hair, Spikes! Very tough looking!"
Spikes grunted, looking away. She didn't threaten him.
"Hey, Rico!" Fernando pointed to a scrawny kid leaning against a crate. "Did you finish that book I lent you? The one about the hobbits?"
Rico pulled his skull bandana higher, mumbling something that sounded like "Yeah, it was okay," and stared at his boots.
They hated his sweater. They hated his smile. They hated that he walked through their war zone like it was Sesame Street.
But nobody touched him. Nobody mocked him.
As Fernando approached the heavy steel doors of the main factory floor, the guy with the sledgehammer stepped aside and gave him a respectful nod.
They hated the cheer. But in a city full of demons and fake heroes, they respected the brain that kept them alive.
The factory floor told you everything you needed to know about why the Vypers weren't on lunchboxes.
To Fernando's left, a guy was welding a pipe to a baseball bat. He wasn't using a torch. He was using his thumb, which glowed with a faint, sputtering heat that looked exhausting to maintain.
To his right, a girl was sanding down a table with her forearm. Her skin was a patch of rough, gray granite—useful for carpentry, less useful for stopping a bank robbery.
P.I.T. wanted gods. They wanted Titans. They didn't want a guy whose superpower was "sweating grease" or "mildly magnetic hands."
So they came here instead. They stopped muggings. They broke the fingers of drug dealers. They stole from the thieves. They didn't hunt demons—most of them didn't even believe demons were real—they just hunted the people the cops didn't care about.
"Fernando."
A shadow fell over him.
Fernando looked up. Brick stood in front of him, seven feet of muscle wrapped in skin the color of wet cement. His power was simple: unnaturally hard. Not invulnerable, just dense enough to shrug off a baseball bat or a knife. The trade-off was looking like a statue that had learned to walk.
"Oh, hi Brick!" Fernando beamed, clutching his messenger bag. "Did you get a donut? The sprinkles are—"
"Boss wants you." Brick's voice was low. He kept glancing toward the rusted metal stairs leading to the upper gantries.
Fernando's smile flickered. "Right now? I was just going to set up the server for the police scanner patch, and I really think—"
"Now." Brick's voice dropped further. "He's pacing."
Fernando swallowed. "Pacing. Right. Pacing is… good cardio."
He adjusted his glasses. His hands were shaking.
"Lead the way, friend."
The metal stairs clanged under their boots. Fernando tried to fill the silence.
"So, how's the knee? Did that ointment help? I brewed it myself. Aloe and, uh…"
Brick didn't answer. He just marched.
They reached the top level. The old factory control room loomed at the end of the catwalk. The glass windows had been painted over with black spray paint, blocking any view in or out.
Brick stopped at the door. He didn't knock. He just jerked his head. Go in.
"Thanks, Brick," Fernando squeaked.
He pushed the heavy door open.
The room smelled like stale energy drinks, cheap cologne, and sweat.
It had been repurposed into a master bedroom, if the designer was a thirteen-year-old boy with anger issues and too much money. A massive flat-screen TV was mounted on the wall, displaying a violent video game frozen mid-explosion. The floor was buried under weights, dirty laundry, and empty takeout containers.
But the shelves were what caught the eye.
They were lined with trophies. Not gold cups—taken things.
A row of stolen watches. A stack of wallets. A shattered police baton. A P.I.T. helmet cracked down the middle, the eagle logo split in half.
And standing in the center of the room, staring at a wall plastered with news clippings of Ironclad, was Kraz.
He was slouching even while standing. Baggy black cargo pants, heavy boots, a white tank top that showed off arms covered in scars and bad tattoos. A thick gold chain hung around his neck.
His hair was bleached white and messy, shaved on the sides, sticking up like he'd rolled out of bed and straight into a fight.
He didn't turn around when the door opened.
"Yo," Kraz said. His voice was scratchy, raw.
"Hi, Mr. Kraz!" Fernando hugged his bag to his chest."Brick said you wanted to see me? I brought donuts! Glazed!"
Kraz turned around slowly.
He wasn't huge, but he looked hard. His face was locked in a permanent scowl, his eyes dark and restless beneath heavy brows. The kind of face that had taken a lot of punches and given back twice as many.
He raised his right arm.
From the elbow down, it wasn't skin anymore.
His forearm was encased in thick, chitinous armor—dark purple, iridescent, segmented like the shell of a giant beetle. Jagged bone-white spikes protruded from the knuckles and the wrist.
It was biological. It was gross. It was the reason P.I.T. had taken one look at him during their scouting visit eight years ago and stamped his file: REJECTED — INCOMPATIBLE AESTHETIC.
Kraz flexed the bio-husk. The chitin clicked and groaned.
"Fernando," Kraz said, ignoring the donut offer. He walked to his desk—a door laid across two filing cabinets—and picked up a piece of paper.
He crushed it in his armored fist.
"My dad called me."
Fernando went still. "Oh. Did you… answer?"
"No." Kraz spat the word. "Blocked the number. Again."
He threw the crumpled paper at the wall. It bounced off a framed photo of a young Kraz holding a second-place wrestling trophy. The glass was already cracked.
"Old man thinks he can check in? See if I'm 'fixed' yet?"Kraz laughed, dry and bitter. "I ain't broken, Fernando. I'm the strongest thing in this city. They just don't know it yet."
He dropped into a gaming chair that groaned under his weight. The armor on his arm rippled, the purple shell melting back into his skin, leaving the flesh red and raw for a moment before smoothing out.
"The Vypers," Kraz muttered, drumming his fingers on the desk. "We're stagnating. Hitting liquor stores. Jumping dealers. Small time shit."
He looked up at Fernando, eyes narrowing behind the bleached bangs.
"I got a mission for you, Four-Eyes. And you better listen close, because I'm already pissed off."
Fernando adjusted his glasses. "Oh? Is it about the WiFi in the west wing? Because I told Brick, the concrete walls are very thick, and—"
"Shut up about the WiFi." Kraz stood, towering over him."It's about your little school. Quaker University."
"QuakerU? What about it?"
"You're a student there. You're supposed to be my eyes and ears on campus." Kraz stepped closer, the gold chain clinking. "So why am I hearing about freelancers operating on my turf? Why am I hearing about heroes that aren't Vypers running around my city?"
Fernando's throat tightened. "Freelancers? Mr. Kraz, I haven't seen anyone. Just the usual campus security and—"
"Don't lie to me!"
Kraz slammed his hand on the desk, rattling the trophies. He grabbed a tablet from the pile of junk and shoved it into Fernando's chest.
"Look at this. We intercepted a data packet from P.I.T. about an hour ago. Weaver's team. They found this in an alleyway on 15th."
Fernando looked at the screen.
A high-resolution photo. An evidence bag. Inside, a feather—pure white, glowing with a soft, ethereal light that radiated even through the digital image.
"A feather?" Fernando whispered.
"Not a bird." Kraz leaned in until his nose was inches from Fernando's face. "That's power. Raw power. And it ain't Titan. It ain't Ironclad. It's something new."
He swiped the screen. Blurry security footage from a street corner. Two figures. One limping, one helping the other walk.
"My guys did some digging," Kraz said, his voice dropping to a growl. "Tracked these two back toward the dorms. A boy and a girl. They made a mess of North Philly last night. They killed something big."
He turned away, walking to his wall of trophies. He ran a finger over the cracked P.I.T. helmet.
"They're stepping on my neck, Fernando. This city belongs to the Vypers. If there are monsters to kill, we kill them. If there are people to save, we save them. I don't need some college kids playing hero in my backyard."
He turned back.
"Your mission is simple. Go back to school. Use those big glasses. Find them."
"Find them?" Fernando's voice cracked.
"Find them," Kraz confirmed. "And bring them here."
He flexed his right hand. The skin rippled, purple and hard, as the bio-husk armor crawled up his forearm. Spikes extended with a wet shhh-click.
"I need to pass judgment on them."
"Judgment?" Fernando whispered. "Does that mean…"
"It means I make them an offer." Kraz grinned—a shark's grin. "They put on a bandana and join the crew… or I crack them open to see what makes them glow."
He looked at Fernando.
"And if they resist? Or if you fail to bring them in?"
Kraz slammed his armored fist into the metal wall, punching a clean hole through the steel. The sound rang through the factory like a gunshot.
"Then I guess I'll have to come to campus myself." He pulled his fist free, shaking off flakes of rust. "And nobody wants that. Right, Four-Eyes?"
Fernando nodded furiously, clutching his bag. "Right! No! I'll find them! First thing tomorrow!"
"Good." Kraz retracted the armor, flexing his raw fingers."Now get out of my face."
Fernando turned for the door, moving fast.
"And Four-Eyes."
Fernando stopped, hand on the handle.
"Leave the donuts."