"You know, I never thought I'd say this?" Noah leaned back in his seat, legs stretched all the way out as he stretched his arms out above his head, the light from his dinky little laptop reflecting off his glasses. "But thank God for Amtrak. So much more legroom than coach."

"And sooo much more comfortable than a TGV, I'll give you that much!" Cross added in from where he lay, spread out on the cabin's top bunk. "The French don't do beds. Viva America!"

"Speaking of?" Noah spun the laptop around, then gingerly handed it to Cross. "While you were doing your best Sleeping Beauty impression, I got us a bit more info. Did you know the train has free satellite internet?"

"First, I've been our boots on the ground since we got here, so no accusations of laziness if you please," Cross requested—ironically—without any real heat as he sat up and turned to give Noah his full attention. "Second… what do we got on the General? Is he good… or Ripper?"

Noah passed the laptop up to Cross's so he could see it. "Take a look. He's got a Wikipedia page, a personal page on the DoD website, a PHO thread…" He shrugged. "Multiple Wikipedia pages, if you include an extra page for every major event he was involved in that deserved its own page. You know, like how Watergate and Deep Throat got their own pages. And probably multiple PHO threads for those, too."

"Bagrat, don't fail us now," the Steam-man murmured beneath his breath as he flipped the computer open and started scrolling through the pages his friend had left open. "Alright, Wilson's early career is normal enough… or as normal as you can get when you serve two tours in Vietnam, anyways. Seriously, who the hell would go back to—holy shit, he caught a grenade mid-flight and threw it back?"

"And that's when they pinned the medal of valor on him and kept him from going back for number three," Noah nodded sagely. "Didn't want to risk losing him. And then there's the big one: so apparently Desert Storm still happened here, yeah?" Cross grimaced and nodded, so he continued. "Well apparently they didn't count on another war so soon, so they couldn't stop Wilson from re-upping again. Once there, he took a laser targeting system and painted a target for artillery support on Capes. Not one, not two, but three capes. All while dodging Blaster projectiles, Tinkertech weaponry, and Shaker assaults." Noah turned to Cross. "And all he got was a small scar along his chin from a piece of shrapnel flying psat him. Honestly, the more I hear? The less I believe it."

"Let's just be grateful that humans are badasses with or without a worm in the head, means we don't need to recruit exclusively among the trauma-addled…" Cross mused offhandedly, tilting his head as he came upon another article. "Huh, looks like he also spent some time with UN Peacekeeping forces in West Africa, right around the time Moord Nag really got nasty." Cross clicked through a few sites on the laptop and scrolled through the articles, skimming and looking at pictures commemorating the event. "Well damn, he rescued an entire village of child soldiers from some Master/Trump cape warlord? That's—" He froze mid-sentence, before picking up the laptop and slowly turning it towards Noah. "Is… is that what I think it is?"

Noah craned his neck to take a peek at the screen, and this time it was his turn to freeze. Literally, because a small layer of ice sprung forth from the back of his neck. "U-uh, yeah." Noah stared Cross in the eye. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is. Let me see…" Noah scrolled through, looking for a few specific words. "Yup! That's exactly what you think it is."

"He got it. Off a warlord. A Master. While he was still breathing," Cross ground out weakly. He finally nodded his head to the side with a heavy sigh. "Well, it's official: President Wilson or not, this guy can still kick our ass."

"Mmhm," the Frost-man nodded solemnly as he sat back down. "And that last one was before he became an officer; in fact, I'm pretty sure it's the reason they made him one. Thing is though, getting stuck riding a desk didn't do much, it seems. Go to oh-two, October, right before the midterms."

Cross obliged, clicking back over to the general history tab before making a strangled noise. It sounded something like water trying to squeeze through a pipe clogged by a whoopie cushion. "That's how he lost his eye!? I mean, I remember he lost it to a Teacher's Pet, but a katana!? Seriously!?"

"Japanese ambassador let him keep them, too. Probably an apology for almost letting the VP get killed at their embassy by a member of the ambassador's personal detail." Noah shrugged. "Apparently the sheer outrage at seeing a gaijin wielding a genuine Masamune was enough to send the Pet's Thinker power into a 404 error. After that, well… let's just say they needed to get creative with signing their confession."

"Toes?" Cross asked.

"Teeth. Credit to Teacher where it's due, he's got a damn addictive drug if nothing else." The Frost-man scoffed. "And probably a good dental plan, too."

"Hell of a moment of glory…" his thermal counterpart frowned as he picked out a new tab. "Except… that it was his last one…"

"Yeah." Noah's hand found his chin, and he rested his head on his open palm. "Turns out, the moneybags in charge of the PRT don't like it when someone rightfully criticizes them for not doing their job. Wilson got a promotion three-star, yes, but he's done pretty much nothing for five years."

"Or rather, hasn't been allowed to do anything else, because if this last interview is anything to go by?" A wry smirk played across Cross's face as he tapped his knuckle on the computer's screen. "He would not have gone gently into that good night. Oh look, they even recorded it."

"How did I not notice the audio file?" Noah asked, more to himself than to Cross, who simply pressed the 'play' button on the browser.

"For over two hundred years," the reproduced voice of General Slade Wilson, so very recognizable to both Devil Fruit users began, "this country has relied on its armed forces. It has relied on them to defend its borders, as in the War of 1812 and the Second World War. It has relied on those brave, honorable men and women to defend our allies, to fight alongside them, as we did on the sixth of June, 1944. And it has relied on them to protect the world from new, unforeseeable threats, such as the parahuman warlord Abu el-Hol's sudden usurpation and conquest of the entire Arabian Peninsula.

"And yet it is only in the new millenium that, for the first time in our nation's history, we cannot maintain our armed forces. Do not mistake me; not will not, but cannot, because the funds needed to protect our nation are best used elsewhere. No more National Guard; we have parahumans instead. No need to maintain the air force; we have flying parahumans who can perform those duties. And the Army Corps of Engineers? A single Thinker. That's what they replaced an entire squadron of brilliant men and women with, the ones responsible for our nation's foundation, its infrastructure. One parahuman.

Make no mistake. I love my country, and for the last thirty years, I have been proud to serve the United States as a member of her military. And I hold no hatred for parahumans either, far from it. Roger Carlson, Maria Smith, Jackson Weaver. All good soldiers, all parahumans who fought alongside me, and who died bravely in the line of duty. I acknowledge that parahumans were integral to Desert Storm, and I would fight alongside them once again, without hesitation. But there is a limit, and we have long since passed it. This increasing reliance on parahumans, on individual persons with unexplainable abilities, people that we now know to have a tendency to be unstable and unreliable? We cannot suffer it any longer, explicitly because our nation has already suffered for it.

Where was the 'might of the Protectorate' when the Slaughterhouse began its bloody rampage across our nation? Not there; never there. When did the parahumans who were responsible for liberating Ellisburg flee, leaving entire squadrons of unpowered soldiers, good soldiers to die? Why is it that throughout the entirety of the second World War, not a single one of Hitler's men managed to set foot on US soil, but we now have veritable infestations of genuine Nazis, spreading from sea to shining sea, and yet the PRT and our government continue to do nothing about it?

"I do not know exactly what it is I am seeing in our country. But what I do know is that it cannot, must not continue."

For a straight minute, the pair sat staring at the computer in contemplative silence, until Noah unfroze first, leaning back in his seat with a heavy sigh. "This guy was a patriot and a war hero…"

"Whose career was guillotined by the PRT, Protectorate, and Parahumans in general. And we're two Ability-users throwing ourselves on his mercy," Cross summarized in a dead tone of voice. "How the hell are we supposed to walk out of this with our heads attached, exactly?"

Noah rolled his eyes. "I don't know, genuflect and beg?... it means to—"

"I know what it means you pretentious jackass." Cross hissed, shooting a paradoxically frigid glare at his compatriot.

"Alright, alright…" the Frost-man raised his hands in surrender. "So anyways, kneeling and begging… but for now, we actually need to get close enough to beg in the first case. In which case, may I suggest we get some help from a third party in putting a foot in the door?"

Cross looked Noah in the eye. Noah looked Cross in the eye. The two of them shared a nod, and matching evil grins spread across their faces as Cross handed Noah the laptop, while Noah himself cracked his knuckles and laid his fingers on the keyboard.

"Dear New York Times Editorial Staff," Cross narrated for Noah to type as he tented his fingers. "I recently contacted the Toybox, the independent Tinker storefront, in search of something better than simply pepper spray for self-defense use. Almost from the outset, this supposedly legitimate merchant group tried trick after trick to swindle, con, and steal—"

"You have five seconds to give me a good reason not to brick your computer."

Both of them managed to restrain the flinch as Cranial's voice piped through the laptop's dinky speakers, the tin quality of her synthesized voice removing almost all of its intimidating properties.

"We need a hand getting in contact with a very hard-to-reach person," Noah blurted swiftly. After five seconds passed and their computer failed to detonate, he continued. "Of course, if you choose not to, we can always talk with someone else instead. Someone who'd want all sorts of details about illicit activity from the one hundred percent above-board, perfectly legal and tax-paying Toybox…"

The laptop's screen flickered before a new window appeared, this time with coordinates, a map, and a location.

Outside of the Pentagon City mall, just before midday.

"Didn't even ask who we were talking about," Cross mused, more for his own benefit than anything else. "Least she had the decency to not call him to Arlington…"

"Yes, because she'd really call him and us to the CIA's backyard." Noah shook his head, huffing slightly as he looked at the time. "We've got about another hour before we pull into the station. Try to get some rest, yeah?"

"Yeah, yeah," Cross waved him off, laying back down on the top bunk.

And with that, the pair lapsed into silence, the peace of the cabin broken only by the hiss of steam slipping through Cross's teeth, Noah's fingers clicking across the keyboard, and the rattle of the rails that drew them closer and closer to their meeting.

"So we get into the station." Cross looked to Noah. "You lived here for a bit. What then?"

"We go downstairs to the metro once we get to Union Station, then transfer from the red line to the yellow and take that south," Noah explained, memorizing the location and shutting the laptop. "We'll either have to worry about accommodations later or just grab the first thing we find; it's not exactly prime tourist season, so we shouldn't have too much trouble on that end."

"That's all well and good, but what about our shit?" Cross asked, hefting a duffel bag. "I'd rather not be lugging this around in case we need to run away from Deathstroke the fucking Terminator!"

"There should be lockers or something we can put them in, if memory serves." Noah ran a hand through his hair, sighing as the train traveled along, pulling closer and closer to the nation's capital. "Oh hey, I think that's where my friend's apartment should be over there."

"Not helping!"

[==V==]

Days tended to be fairly… uneventful for the General, of late. A relic of a bygone era? He would vociferously argue otherwise, but alas, there was little more he could do. What was that term? Ah yes.

Resignation.

He scoffed. They'd have his resignation once he went in the ground. But until that day came… he fixed his lone eye at the computer screen, frowning as he noticed something out of place. Normally he could go an entire day without any more than the usual, generic low-priority housekeeping emails sent out to everybody. It had been more than six months since he'd received a high-priority mailing not sent as part of a blast.

And yet, there it was. An encrypted message, requiring his personal codes to open. Codes he hadn't used since… he couldn't remember.

He read the contents, memorized them, committing the words to memory. Exactly five minutes later, just long enough for an average person to have read and reread three times, the message deleted itself.

Well then.

He pushed himself back from his desk and left his office, taking the coat he hung by the door, not even offering a word to the vapid 'secretary' they installed as his minder. It was close enough to midday that nobody would notice his absence. And it wasn't like he was important enough to warrant a personal detail, anyway.

Not anymore.

One metro stop. One and a half blocks east. One block south. And just inside of Metropolitan Park, directly opposite the rear of the post office, he saw them. Two young men, one tall, gangly, and practically shaking with anticipation. The other shorter, more average of build, the only sign of distress the tension in his neck and jaw.

He completed two complete circuits of the area, scouting for any possible traps, and finding none. They were genuine, then. He wasn't sure whether to consider them foolish, naive, or optimistic. Perhaps all three. He couldn't keep delaying this.

General Wilson sat at the table, and without missing a step, slid his Beretta M9 out of its holster and held it at the ready beneath the table, ready to flip between the two men before him in a fraction of a second.

"You have one minute to give me a damn good reason to not ruin everyone's day."

The soft click of the safety flicking off rang like thunder.

"Go."

[==V==]

For the first five seconds of their time-limit, Cross and Noah exchanged panicked looks and, almost as one, dismissed the notion of wasting any further time by asking how the old man had ID'd them so quickly. On the sixth, Cross nodded sharply at Noah and gave him the reigns.

"So what was the plan if the VP had been killed?" Noah led off. "Would have needed a second Pet to get the President, and all in that one month before midterms."

"Pet Stranger in the Service," the General responded, not missing a beat. "Killed him myself."

"Espionage, treason, attempted assassination of the Commander in Chief. Open and shut, he would've been sent to the needle." Noah canted his head to the side slightly. "Or did the PRT try to order he be brought in alive?"

The clank of the gun jerking beneath the table caused the Ability-users to flinch. "They did bring him in alive. Watchdog sent the Triumvirate to his front door before the Secret Service could mobilize. He was in court and before a judge before anyone could say a word."

"Tch," Cross bit out a tense scoff. "The one time I would have approved the shooter on the knoll wearing a suit…"

"What I wouldn't give for a turret in the cage." The gun jerked beneath the table again, making Cross flinch and Noah grit his teeth further. "You're joking about putting a well-deserved hole in Teacher, so you're not Pets we missed. That earns you five minutes. And you're also the first powered folk to willingly seek me out. That's five more. So now you get to tell me exactly what it is that you want."

Noah opened his mouth to answer, but the tap of the gun had him snapping his jaw shut. "Not you, smooth talker. Him." General Wilson nodded towards Cross. "He wants you to do the talking, so instead he gets to tell me what you want.."

Cross grimaced at the renewed attention, but he didn't back down either. He took a few seconds to think, to get his bearings… and then he took a risk by leaning forwards, placing his arms on the table as he angled himself towards the general, staring him dead in the eye.

"The world," Cross started intently, his voice low and grim. "Is fucked."

For a moment, the table was silent as the hyperbole sunk in, along with the fact that as far as Cross and Noah were concerned… it was anything but exaggeration.

"You actually believe what you're saying." It wasn't a question from the General. It was a statement.

"If you look—"

"Not you," General Wilson interrupted Noah, before fixing his lone eye back onto Cross. "You were saying."

"Just look at the state of things in the US of A alone," Cross forged on. "We have the Nine trucking back and forth from coast to coast with impunity, warlords holding court in every major city, the west coast is under the rule of a shadow cabal, there's a cult of demon-worshipping psychopaths out in the boonies, and throughout it all, we have government and law enforcement flailing to hold it all together in spite of the fact that they have zero legitimacy left to their name, and are fighting each other for every nickel and dime that can be tossed their way. And that's just the United States."

Cross leaned back in his seat and shook his head with a sad sigh. "The world ended in the May of 1982. We're just living in a very slow, very polite post-apocalypse, that is gradually but surely inching its way to becoming just as blatant and obvious as Mad Max. And nobody. Is doing. Anything."

"Don't forget the Nazis," Noah piped up. He flinched slightly when Wilson and Cross glared at him, but held up his hands in surrender. "I'm Jewish. The fact that the Third Reich is getting a second wind is a bit… concerning to me."

Wilson stared at Noah for a bit more before looking back to Cross. "The world is in a bad state and you're pissed. I understand that. But you still haven't answered this concerns me."

"Other than the world going down the shitter being something that concerns all human beings?" Cross asked snidely.

Wilson, however, didn't even twitch. "I'm an old man with one foot in the grave, and like you said, this apocalypse is slow-moving. Chances are I won't even be there to see the end. It's none of my business."

"Bullshit," Cross promptly shot back, staring at the general with cold determination. "That's cowardice, and you're no coward. We read up on you, General Wilson: you don't run from danger, you run towards it. You fight till the end, until the mission is done and the enemy is dead… or you are." Cross leaned forwards again, staring the General straight in the eye. "And that's exactly why we chose you and why we're here."

"So you want to save the world," WIlson said softly, emotion finally entering his tone for the first time. A sense of age-old nostalgia. "You, what, want the world to know you saved it. Is that it? Guts and glory?"

"None of that matters, does it?" Noah asked, folding his hands on the table in front of him and completely ignoring Wilson putting the gun on him again. "We stand before you, asking for your help. Asking you to help us make a change. Live or die, it doesn't matter; but I will not let myself just sit here and let status quo condemn us, you, and everyone else on the planet to a slow death." He looked General Wilson in the eye. "Sir. You said it was none of your business. Would that change with soldiers at your command, however few, willing to do whatever it took, and damn the consequences?

"If you think this is some kind of game—"

"Even if it is!" Cross interrupted, slamming his hands on the table and standing up. "What else are we going to do, huh? Wear spandex, pose for action figures, and then just sit with our thumbs up our asses the moment it actually matters? Because I don't know about you, but I know I'd rather do something meaningful with the time we have left." He offered a rueful grin, as if to countermand the ferocity he'd just put forth. "And if I have to go out, I want to know that I fought like hell every step of the goddamn way. Do we think this is a game? In a way… yes we do. Because this is us going all-in. Putting everything we have on the line. Because this?" Cross gestured at himself and Noah. "Us? It's all we have to give."

Cross dropped back into his seat and leaned back with a shrug and a wistful sigh. "Not like we're doing much with it anyways…"

Wilson stared at the Steam-man for a moment. Whatever was going on behind that eye, his face betrayed none of it. Silence reigned for a moment, and once that moment passed, the soft sound of General Wilson sliding his gun back into his holster and buttoning it shut rang through the park.

"Damn kids," he murmured. "Alright. I'm listening. Tell me what you want from me." Cross opened his mouth to speak. "And if you give me another soliloquy the gun comes back out."

Cross shrugged, seemingly unconcerned with the death threat. "Hey, what do you want from me? I was an English Major."

Wilson turned his eye to Noah, who raised an eyebrow.

"Political Science. Was a 1L before, well." Noah waved his hand dismissively. "I gather you were informed of us from a mutual contact. Did that missive include anything, or are we starting from square one with regards to our plan of action?"

Wilson's eye narrowed. "The reason I came here was that I was under the impression that I'd be meeting a contact from Toybox. I've been trying to contact them for years; thought that if I could promise a reliable supply of Tinkertech weaponry, Congress would glance away from their so-called 'peacekeepers'. Never heard back from them until today."

The second that processed, Cross scowled irritably and dug his phone out of his pocket so he could shoot said expression at the camera. "You're a real cocktease of a skank, you know that?"

The raspberry that sounded from the phone's speaker confirmed that the person on the other knew that very well indeed.

"And so the question remains. Square one, gentlemen," the General said.

So they told him. They told General Wilson exactly what they wanted to do… and he reacted exactly as everyone expected. Which is to say, with complete disbelief and incredulity.

"I will say this much." Wilson glared, and the two squirmed beneath his gaze. "If you wanted to commit suicide, there are far simpler ways."

"It's our only option," Cross said, butting in. "The PRT and Protectorate, ineffective though they might be, have the people behind them. If we go up against them as we are, then we'll just be crushed like you were. We need to play their game… or rather, we need to beat them at it. Place ourselves above every other hero in America, even the Triumvirate themselves, in one fell swoop. The only way to do that is to do what's never been done. We need to succeed… where the three strongest parahumans in the nation, if not the world, have failed, or not even tried."

"Which is where I come in," Wilson said plainly.

"We have the will and we have the abilities," Cross continued, "but what we need are the skills. Just because we're aware that we could die and we're willing to do so if need be does not mean we want to bite it. Best way to prevent that is to be able to fight like the best of the best. And this might just be the patriot in me speaking, but for our purposes, we're betting on the best still being the United States Special Forces."

"That said, it's not like we can walk into our local recruitment office and enlist," Noah said, taking his turn. "Not if we want to be able to make use of our… natural advantages, shall we say, and not get punted into the ranks of our common enemy."

"Boot camp," Wilson scoffed. "You want boot camp. Have either of you ever even fired a gun in your lives?"

"Hunting rifle," Noah replied. "Twenty-two. Shot a rabbit." He smirked. "Tasted good."

"Best I've ever held is a paintball gun, and not even I'm stupid enough to think that counts," Cross deadpanned, before quickly redonning his smirk. "But then, that is what the place is for in the first place, ain't it? To learn?"

"A school is for learning," Wilson replied calmly. "What you're asking for is to be broken down and reforged. If you think this is just some simple training camp, then we're done here."

Cross's smirk dropped clean off his face. "In case you hadn't noticed, the 'best' part of either of us is our abilities. If you want us to get the best out of us, then 'reforging' is exactly right."

"Can we stop beating around the bush here?" Noah looked General Wilson in the eye, brows furrowed. "We have powers, the will to use them, and here we are practically throwing ourselves at your feet. Now we know you've had issues with parahumans before, but that never stopped you from trying to benefit from them, all without being beholden to them. And so here we are, reversing that relationship."

"We have the will and desire to change the world, but you're the man who can make it happen," Cross nodded firmly in agreement. "The bottom line is that you make us into soldiers, then we'll be your soldiers. For the first time since the golden bastard wrecked the world… you will be the one in command."

"Much as I am loathe to listen to admit that my old pastor had any wisdom whatosever, the Bible explicitly warns of trusting those who come offering power," Wilson replied, his tone almost sardonic. Which, honestly, was the lightest it had been the entire meeting.

"Think about it this way," Noah said. "We already made that bargain. For you, it would just be by proxy. And really." He spread his hands, a languorous smirk on his face. "What do you have to lose, here? I'd wager… nothing, really."

"Getting in the PRT's way is not good for one's military career," Cross singsang with a smile—THWACK!—before grimacing as someone's foot rammed into his shin. "Shutting up now."

"Good," Noah said. "Now, where were we?"

"Trying to impress upon you young gentlemen what kind of hell you're asking me to drop you into." General Wilson squared his shoulders, tilting his chin back just a tad, and yet even that slight movement was enough to give the impression that he was genuinely looking down on them. "If you choose to do this, you will hurt. You will bleed. You will struggle, through blood, sweat, and tears, cursing your very existence every second of the way. You will experience the very depths of human misery." He gave the two a long, hard look, allowing the words to sink in. From the way Cross began to fidget, and from the dull grinding of Noah's teeth, it was easy to tell that his words had an effect. "Even knowing this, do you still wish to follow through with this."

For close to a straight minute, the pair fell dead silent in their seats, and shared a meaningful look.

Then, Noah grit his teeth and straightened in his chair. "The second we got caught up in this ridiculous game of Cops and Robbers that's taken over the world, we were doomed to go through all of that and more anyways."

Cross let out a sharp "Tsk" as he scratched the back of his head. "At least this way, it's on our terms and we get something out of it. And hell, who knows: we survive, maybe we can manage to bring playtime to an end."

"... I see." A small smirk played across General Wilson's face. "There are some strings I can pull. Again, gentlemen, I warn you now, it will hurt. But in six months—"

"Three," Cross broke in. "We need to be done in half that." He grimaced as General Wilson quirked the brow over his remaining eye, as if to prompt him to continue. "We know, it'll be pure hell. But even if the world's circling the drain at a snail's pace, we're twenty years behind in trying to save it. I'd rather get through this and suffer more, rather than take double the amount of time and have someone else do it in my place."

The General stared at the Steam-man incredulously for a second before looking to his counterpart. "And you second this?"

"Yes." And that was all he said in reply.

"In that case, gentlemen." General Wilson stood from the table, holding himself in a firm, authoritative stance. "You will report back at this location tomorrow, at thirteen hundred hours. Enjoy your last twenty-four hours as free men, because starting tomorrow, your sorry hides will be property of the United States Government." The General snapped into a sharp salute.

"Ooh-Rah, sir!" Cross brought an arm up into a salute, while Noah's came up in a somewhat hesitant, even half-hearted approximation.

"Saying that would be considered an insult where you're heading," Wilson informed the two flatly. "And your salutes are atrocious… But don't worry."

Then, for the first time in their entire conversation, Wilson's expression changed. And looking at his smirk, the two men knew true fear.

"You'll learn."

[==V==]

"Stand to attention. Now."

Noah snapped to a ramrod straight pose, back straight, chin up, shoulders back, arm clasped behind him, and knees locked. Cross looked over to him and copied immediately, shifting to set his legs shoulder width apart. Between the two of them, it's possible they got it mostly right, if somebody was being generous.

"Gentlemen. Welcome to hell."

Unfortunately, somebody was most certainly not in a generous mood.

"Now I've seen quite a few sorry sad sacks of shit walk into and out of my office over the years, but Lord oh mighty are you two the most hopeless, the most pathetic, the most ridiculous pair I've seen in almost a decade."

Behind his desk, First Sergeant Leroy Murphy did not raise his voice. He did not yell. He did not scream. He did feel the need to get up in the pair's faces and yell loud enough that he left drops of spittle on their eyelids when they flinched. First Sergeant Leroy Murphy sat behind his desk and spoke calmly, General Wilson standing beside and behind him.

"Now that said, I'm not entirely unhappy. For one, neither of you is a fat fuck that I need to send back to the city for liposuction." Noah cracked a smirk at that one. "You think I wouldn't!? I've done it before, and I'll do it again. And second, at least neither of you is some know-it-all gun nut that thinks they know more than us. And believe you me, I've seen that bullshit too. So unless one of you is about to start telling me why a commie Ay-Kay is better than the good old M16, we are off to a good start.

"Now I am going to tell you two, I know just about jack shit of what makes you two so damn special that Willy here wanted me and my men, and only me and my men, in charge of you. So you're going to tell me what makes you more worth my time than the two dozen already half trained Delta hopefuls out training right this instant. And keep it quick and concise, gentlemen."

The two of them shared a look. And this time, Cross took the lead on it.

"We have powers," Cross explained. "Complementary ones. I flash boil, he flash freezes, we have apparently bottomless internal reservoirs of water we can fill for later use by drinking, and physics only applies when convenient."

"Well then let's see how that works then!" First Sergeant Murphy opened up a drawer on his desk, grabbed a pair of apples, and tossed them at the pair. Cross caught his with one hand, while Noah reached to grab it with both. "Now show me what you can do, and make it quick!"

Cross sunk a fingernail into the apple's skin, and brought the other hand up to keep it from flying onto the 1SG's desk. The smallest exertion of will, and the fluids in the apple flash-boiled, blowing the apple to hot, steamy bits as the fruit's skin failed to contain the rapid expansion of vaporized apple juice. A small piece still managed to land on Murphy's hand, and a test with his finger showed it was definitely as hot as the steam wafting from it implied, though the superheated pulped fruit absolutely failed to bother Cross in the slightest.

Moments later, Noah's nail carved a crescent moon into the apple. An instant later it grew with a sharp crack, the liquid growing as it froze. With a negligent tilting of his hand, the frozen chunks of apple fell to the floor and shattered, condensation misting off of the fruit chunks' surface.

Murphy snorted as he shoved a chunk of pulp off his desk and into a trash bin with a pencil. "And you think these 'powers', as you so generously define them, will actually faze anyone? Don't make me laugh, gentlemen, that's a parlor trick at best."

"Hey, that's on us to develop, not you." Cross grunted as he… well, crossed his arms in challenge.

"And you didn't exactly offer the best demonstration material," Noah added. "There's no such thing as powers that aren't dangerous. Just people that aren't."

"Now putting us through the kind of hell needed to become those people, that's why we came to you." Cross started to smirk, but hastily dropped it in favor of remaining dead serious when Noah elbowed him. "We don't want to be superheroes, sir. Superheroes don't solve problems, they're damage control. Soldiers solve problems. And we need to be soldiers."

"Hell, General." Murphy looked to Wilson with a smirk. "Looks like Christmas may just have come early this year. You know, I always wanted to try my hand at making super-soldiers, but good luck prying any para's loose from the Prissy Team's hands."

"Prissy?" Noah asked, unable to help himself.

"I am remembering that for the rest of my life…" Cross sighed blissfully, a look of pure rapture on his face.

"Son." First Sergeant Murphy gave Noah The Look™. "I challenge you to look at a grown-ass man wearing nothing but skin-tight spandex and calling himself some make-believe fantasy name, and tell me he isn't a pretty little princess at heart!" He nodded at the General. "I'll give them a shot. Now gentlemen, follow me to the barracks. For the next three months, they will be your home and your castle, and I expect you to treat it as such. Then to the quartermaster, and then?"

Murphy smiled.

"Welcome to hell."

[==V==]

Cross and Noah had only been given the bare minimum of time at the small barracks set aside for the two before Murphy was upon them, uniforms and combat boots for the two of them in hand. Five minutes to change and then he was back, correcting their stance, posture, angle of salute, angle of their toes…

"Seems inconsequential, doesn't it?" Murphy asked, almost rhetorically. "It offers structure! Regularity! Uniformity! The building blocks of camaraderie! Now, these will be your uniform. This will be your home, your castle. Spend the rest of this day getting used to it, making it home. Because starting tomorrow, you will both be following Murphy's Law: what Murphy says, is the law!"

"Ya know, that still counts in the traditional sense: this is everything that could go wrong happening at once," Cross chuckled to himself, not even trying to be subtle about it.

The First Sergeant shot a sidelong glare at the Steam-man. "Oh, we are going to have some fun grinding the wiseass out of you."

Cross snorted derisively. "Good luck, four straight years of college couldn't manage it, so I wouldn't go counting those chickens."

A very toothy grin came over the duo's commanding officer. "Congratulations. I officially can't wait for tomorrow to begin."

"And when does tomorrow begin, to be specific?" Noah cut in with no small amount of wariness, shooting a glare at an unapologetic Cross in the process.

"0700 hours, so sleep lightly," the military man informed them firmly. "Once you get up, we'll be putting you through your paces so we can evaluate where you currently stand and see just how much work is ahead of us. Be prepared to sweat, bleed and ache from parts of your bodies you weren't even aware you had. Though, of course…" Murphy's expression became far grimmer as he stepped aside and indicated the door with a nod. "If either of you two have any second thoughts, you can always take the easy way out. I'm assuming you noticed the bell in the middle of the courtyard on our way here?"

Almost immediately, the Ability-users expressions sobered up into expressions of total resolve, and they both pinned the Sergeant with a determined stare.

"Yeah, we saw it," Noah confirmed with a sub-zero tone of voice.

"And if you want to hear it, you'd best go and ring that bell yourself," Cross fumed, snorting out a trail of steam. "Because no matter what you do to us, we are not quitting."

The First Sergeant gave the both of them a searching once before turning towards the door, shaking his head. "We'll see about that, boys. We'll see." And with those parting words, he departed, leaving the pair to their devices.

"…So! You know, I was expecting bunk beds,"" Noah broke the silence after a straight minute, looking around their new 'castle' curiously.

It was a rather small room, just a touch bigger than a standard college dorm room really. Two cots pressed up against the walls, footlockers at their feet for the pair's personal belongings. A small drawer beneath that held their new uniforms, as well as the casual clothes they'd been wearing when they arrived, and their own personal effects.

Noah hummed thoughtfully. "Housing us away from the rank and file… probably set this up lock, stock, and barrel for us. Maybe even in the last day."

"What'd you expect?" Cross asked, laying down on his cot, arms over his head. "We aren't the rank and file. We have powers. We were already different from the get go. Plus, one wrong word slips out and the Prissies," the laughter in Cross's voice was almost childish. "Would descend on this place like locusts."

"True." Noah sighed, and sat down on his own cot. "Not sure what the hardest workout you've ever done was, but I'm fairly sure that what we're about to go through is—"

"You know they're going to try and turn us on one another, right?" Cross interrupted Noah. He sat up from his own cot, staring at his brother in arms. "You know what I mean.'If you don't do this in the next five minutes, you both suffer' kind of crap. And it's going to be worse because it's not going to be a whole platoon on one person, it's us against each other." He stood up and walked over to Noah. "We can't let that shit get to us, you got it? This is already going to suck, but if we let them turn us against each other, it's going to be even worse, make it feel like a personal attack, you know?"

"Yeah, I do," Noah said, standing up to look Cross in the eyes. "And… I'll try. I can't promise it won't work, you know I have a temper and—"

"And that doesn't mean shit!" Cross exclaimed, flinging his arms out wide. "It's us versus them. Even when they're trying to motivate us to work against each other. It has to be us versus them. Which, let's be honest, isn't any different then how it's been our entire time on this rock. So basically? Status quo."

The two of them shared a look. And finally, Noah cracked a wry grin.

"Damn, why couldn't I be the one who's good at motivational speeches?" He joked.

"Cause life took that too when it stole any chance of you ever looking this gooood?" Cross sneered, gesturing down at himself.

"Oh, shut up!"

"In argument speak, that means I win!"

"Only in your dreams," Noah retorted, laying back down and putting his arm over his face. "And on that note, it's time to get some shuteye. Maybe try falling asleep before me."

"Oh I plan to," Cross sneered, folding his arms behind his head. "Your snoring is loud enough to wake the dead…"

"Lemme help you with that."

THWACK!

"OW!...but good trajectory with that boot."

"I try."

[==V==]

Cold concrete greeted the two the next morning. It greeted their heads as they bounced and lolled and recoiled from the pain. It greeted their joints as what should have been at least moderately comfortable cots were suddenly solid, unyielding stone.

"Guh—WHAT THE HELL, ASSHOLES!?" Cross was the first of the two on his feet, clad in naught but the undershirt and camo pants he'd forgotten to take off the night before. "Whatever happened to using a bugle, or a bucket of cold—oh wait that second one wouldn't really do much would it. But still, WHAT ABOUT THE BUGLE!?"

"Are you always this loud in the morning?"

The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, echoing off the walls of the warehouse the two now found themselves in. Gouts of steam leapt off of Cross as he and Noah went back to back, the latter trying to figure out how his glasses had gotten on his face while scanning the other end of the warehouse.

"Admirable instinct. But not good enough."

Something fell from directly above the two and landed simultaneous blows at their backs, knocking them away across the rough concrete. Cross and Noah recovered as quickly as they could, turned to the figure with them in the warehouse—and froze.

Matte black armor seemed to drink in what little light existed in the dim warehouse, the shadows in the man's stance hiding myriad weapons that the pair only hoped were unloaded. A pair of larger weapons, possibly swords, possibly something else, sat crossed on his back. In one hand, he held a pair of throwing knives between two knuckles. In the other, a combat knife as long as either of the two's forearms.

And staring down at them from within the half-orange-half-black mask looming over them was a single, narrowed, malice-filled eye.

"You get three months. We will repeat this exercise once every week of those three months." He walked towards the pair, steps feeling far louder than they should have been due to the cramped quarters. "If you are not up to my expectations by then, we will try again over six months. And if you still fail to rise to the level required?... well."

General Slade Wilson tossed the knives in a casual motion, and Noah and Cross suddenly found two leaf-shaped blades of metal sitting at their feet.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that." He gestured at the knives, which the two hurried to pick up.

"Now then."

The second the blades were in the pair's hands, he started tapping his own in his palm as he walked forwards.

"Shall we?"