this is mostly headcanon trying to glue pieces of canon together, so hopefully my memory of the episodes is better than i think it is. also, the fic itself is pretty old too, the biggest hint being that i started it when my source of inspiration was a new single...

Feels like I'm wakin' from the dead
And everyone's been waitin' on me
Least now I'll never have to wonder what it's like to sleep a year away
- Paramore, "Now"

Asami is the first to run.

She doesn't think too long on it. One night she just sort of feels like it's the right time, the right place. Her prefecture is close to the center of Osaka, where all the metro tunnels interweave beneath the city. And she just so happens to have enough spare change for the toll with her.

It's chilly too, of course. Her sleeveless windbreaker doesn't do as much work against the late winter air as she'd like. But it was better than nothing. Nothing, of course, that could've helped her with what happened.

Never on that breezy night, did she see them coming.

There were the usual reasons she had, being a teenage girl of regular looks, for being suspicious of anyone who looked at her funny. But that was just it. They never looked at her. She never saw a single one of their faces. One minute she was checking the time, the next she only saw darkness.

For a time, she even wondered if she'd just gone blind.

But no, her sight did return soon enough… it was just what she saw that made her continually think contrary.

They were beings from another world. Like the bad sci-fi animes she could never bring herself to finish. At first she was only certain that they must have done something to her entire brain to be seen like that. But no. These were actual aliens with real spaceships and freaky laboratories. And she was their captive. Just like in all the other bad animes. Great.

Only one thing was for certain: Her eyes were a bright hazel before they took her. At some point during her abduction- she'd never been conscious long enough to even take in her own reflection—the right iris had become a dull teal.

It wasn't enough that they took her thousands of miles away from her home and dropped her into a completely foreign environment. They had to torture her for weeks. They had to take a part of herself away too. But now—now they supposedly wanted her back?

Was it because of the weird glowing that had started in her captivity? What she thought was just another bit of alien technology surrounding her—trying to change her even more—was an effect of their experiments. It woke her up. And when it wouldn't stop glowing magenta, she feared her hand was set on fire like her own body was rejecting this abnormal biology.

Then as her fears rose and her nightmares nearly took over—it stopped. Her fingers clenched and trembled as if nothing had happened, yet it didn't feel over. It certainly didn't feel like a hallucination either. She could still feel it; the fire-like heat, a humming in the tips of her fingers that ran down her entire arm. It was there, dormant for now in her very veins, waiting to be tapped again. And it would happen again and again even after her escape because it was permanent and there was nothing she could do about it.

Asami could just imagine their smugness now (if aliens were indeed capable of being smug with those creepy clicking sounds they had made a lot). Free of their grasp, she still wasn't safe, and there wasn't a thing the Justice League seemed capable of doing about them. They would never be satisfied with anything, would they? As if it wasn't enough that their reach was starting to spread across the entire planet.

And what was worse? People—the free, non-tortured, powerless ones-were letting them.

Technically speaking, Eduardo was the first to leave. Becoming a trans-continental runaway didn't happen overnight, after all. Yet, running from Argentina had been so daunting, so unreal, that he could scarcely believe he had done it until his father was gasping before him in his office in Taos.

When the screamed questioning began, things started sinking in a lot faster. And they had been ever since.

Compared to his international escapade, his second leave should've been a cake walk. Emphasis on should've. But he was careless, maybe even cocky when he left his father. If he had left any earlier or later, the Reach would've just nabbed the next lone teenager from the bus stop and been on their intergalactic way.

But no, he had to get sentimental.

Yes, he'd run from his familia in Argentina just to be with the man he shared both names with. The scientist his abuela never spoke ill of, always praising his achievements in his field, all the great work he was doing in Los Estados Unidos. Such great work, yet so little to show for it here. Why couldn't he use all his 'achievements' to visit more often? Why were his calls always short and rushed between countless experiments?

Abuela never had a straight answer for those questions.

Luckily, she had no problem telling him exactly where in Taos, New Mexico his dad was working. She seemed to enjoy describing the big facility with the huge STAR LABS sign out front. Eduardo liked to think he could've found it without the sign, with how well she did.

Just thinking of how naive he'd been, sauntering into the main building and asking to speak to his father, Dr Eduardo Dorado, Sr; introducing himself as the junior, demanding to see his father immediately. And how upon being escorted to the office with the only name he could pronounce perfectly, his pride was immediately shattered.

"Qué estás haciendo aquí?!" The man all but screamed, clutching his temples. The meek assistant that had escorted Ed couldn't slip away fast enough. There was no language barrier to anger around here.

"I came to see you, to stay with you," he replied as innocently as he could seem. Which, he really was. A boy wanting to be reunited with his father a world away. Was it really that unsettling?

"Where is abuela? Why did she bring you? Why didn't you tell me before?" So many questions at once began to form a nervous pit in the younger Dorado's stomach.

"She's not here," the boy explained, "I came on my own because you agreed to visit and I thought I'd surprise you…"

"Yes, I would visit you. Not the other way around!"

Ed stuffed his hands into his pockets and shrugged. An honest mistake. Even if he had never intended on waiting for that long. Waiting was what kept him busy before he got another call explaining another sudden delay, another throwaway apology...

His father's only response was a huff and long silence, during which he held his forehead in hands. "Well… you certainly know how to be surprising."

That wasn't even the half of it.

Tye's story is the most typical of them all, actually. He had indeed been a runaway, a first-timer, but not completely naive. El Paso's bus depot was familiar to him, not just because of the statue outside that he had studied in school and with his grandpa. But because of the frequent stops he made there. Either leaving to spend some time with his ancestor, or talking with Jaime or his mom as they convinced him to come back, to forget whatever it was Maurice had done this time. To move on. To be better than some runaway.

It was hilariously ironic that Tye was in fact, better than a runaway now.

He almost felt like going back to El Paso one last time, maybe swing past some school friends and check in on his mom and grandpa. But mostly going right up to Maurice's face and daring him to try anything on him. Just to see the look in his eyes when he taunted the teen, threw insults at him and his family and friends, only to be greeted with a fifty-foot tall energy giant. His fist would be as tall as the man, one flick of a finger enough to send him flying blocks away.

But he wouldn't hit him. He wouldn't stoop to Maurice's level. He would just scare the living day lights out of him, convincing him to stay the hell away from his mom and his people. For good.

Tye would literally be the bigger man for the first time, and it would feel great. But he didn't feel great enough to do anything like that just yet.

Calling Jaime was obviously the best move he could have made. It hadn't shown any immediate results, but in the end his best friend's secret affiliation with the Justice League's covert ops team had rescued him. And he owed to his freedom to Jaime, to say the least.

How he could repay his friend, he was still wondering about.

Ed swept it off when he asked, saying he had repaid him when he pulled him out of the concrete during Red Volcano's attack. But he hadn't done that as a service like Jaime had for him. His friend had been in immediate danger and he reacted accordingly.

In fact, it was Jaime's recent reactions that had Tye worried about his repayment. The guy had almost sacrificed them back at Star Labs. But they had gotten away just fine and Jaime destroyed the bad guy-wasn't that how the hero thing worked?

Red Volcano had talked about being 'a good little hero' like it was typical, but more like a taunt. But Jaime didn't flinch, and he got his job done. Tye didn't know anything about being a hero; maybe that was how it worked. He knew it had to involve sacrifice, and he and the rest of the runaways hadn't really been in danger for long.

Eduardo had been pretty ticked off; sure, there weren't many things that didn't set off his temper. He probably would've been mad either way.

Tye just wished he could know for sure. And that he had gotten more time to talk to Jaime before Lex Luthor showed up and wrote off his friend like nothing.

Besides, if they both were going to do the hero thing now, wasn't it best that friends stuck together?

Despite the circumstances, Virgil just wishes he could take it all back.

Dad and Angie didn't deserve this, not in any way like the others claimed their families did.

His dad had even warned him, about a dozen times, about meeting Angie at the station so late at night. But when the man heard her train had been delayed so he couldn't pick her up himself, Virgil had stepped up. Said he'd be more than happy to escort his big sister home as long as she bought him breakfast the next morning. Even with his outrageous appetite, she had reluctantly agreed.

So there he was, jammin' out to the latest beats Rich had downloaded for him, looking like every other kid in downtown Dakota did. Angie had always sneered at him, told him to stop being a wannabe when he wore his hood over his favorite hat and sauntered out of the house like a 'hipster idiot.'

Thanks to the earbuds usually hidden under his dreads, he hardly ever heard her taunts. Only since that night at the train station did he wish and wish he had listened.

Maybe then he would have heard the shady guy walk up behind him. If his hat hadn't been so low he could've seen another peeking out behind the corners. Maybe if he'd just called Rich like he wanted to, not caring that it was way past his curfew, and been talking when the aliens made their move.

Maybe. He could have been spared, and spared his family any grief in correlation.

One thing for sure, he was getting way past sick of all the maybes, but they just kept coming. Yet, it was actually the facts that scared him even more. One? Picking a bench just a little closer to the ticket window and its security camera would have definitely forced the Reach to pick another target.

But then that kid would've spent weeks away from their family. Been semi-conscious in a strange capsule for who knows how long. Tortured by nightmares. Abruptly woken up to hours of increasingly painful shock treatments.

And the odds were not in favor of that kid getting cool electro-static powers like him. Virgil was the lucky one in a million. Specifically, he was one in five known to have developed powers.

One in five that did not end up like the other, weaker, disappearing kids.