Here's a story for my brother.

Most people probably know this already, but since it wasn't in the manga: Matt equals Mail.

Folks said his family were all dead

The planet crumbled but Superman, he forced himself to carry on,

forget Krypton and keep going.

--Superman's Song, Crash Test Dummies

Pyrus had blown the roof off a Zehrs when Mail finally arrived. The suburban shoppers who'd been picking fast-cook discount dinners off the neat little shelves were screaming their crazy heads off. Chaos everywhere. Mothers clutching babies to their chests, a man hiding behind his sweet-faced wife while she shrieked and pointed uselessly at the villain's smoking hands. Canned food rolling across the tiles.

He swooped downwards, blasted Pyrus with a shot from his lazar eyes. It hit him square in the chest—Pyrus went down, body slamming loud against the floor.

He landed beside him. Checked the vital signs. Alive, but out cold. He stood, and the crowd burst into cheers, screeching their love and appreciation for his timely arrival.

Mail nodded obligingly. He forced his lips into a cocky smile.

(Because that was what you did, what you felt when you saved people's lives. It made you damn happy, didn't it?)

And the reporters were on him like flies to a dead cat, swarming him with their microphones and notepads. Questions the same as always.

"How do you feel, sir?"

Good. Fine.

"What alerted you to his presence?"

Secret of the trade, can't have the supervillans knowing my methods, can I? Ha ha!

"Is it harder, now that Near is gone?"

Pause.

A little. Not a lot. I work well on my own.

And he smiled again, pushed his goggles higher on his face and blasted through the open roof, not caring enough to stay and help with repairs, with the imprisonment of Pyrus. He'd disabled the threat. The civilians could deal with cleanup.

He pushed through the window of the Wammy House and crept into the bedroom where Mihael -- Mello, his new sidekick -- was already sleeping. He twitched almost as much in his dreams as he did during the day. He should have been at the takedown, really, but Mail had been too apathetic to wake him.

He wondered what would have happened if he hadn't been good enough on his own. If he'd needed backup. It wouldn't have bothered him much, he decided.

Mail could explode things with his eyes. The civilians loved him. Of course they did -- he saved people, for goddsakes, and he did it in spandex. But Nate was the one who had kept him caring about himself, about living, about his own heartbeat.

He dropped onto his bed. Destroying bad guys was exhausting. He felt like he should have stayed awake late, tossing and turning all night, but he fell asleep as easily as always and dreamed of nothing at all.

He woke to the sensation of shaking. Groggily, he opened his eyes, and saw Mihael standing over him. He was pushing Mail's shoulder desperately. "Come on, come on. We've got to get going. They're already doing calldown! Wake up, Matt, come on…"

"Yeah, yeah." He pushed the covers off. "Get your suit on."

Mihael nodded, curtly, and scurried off to get changed. There was already an outfit clutched in his left hand -- a red-and-black striped all-purpose jumpsuit. It was covered in secret pockets made for fancy little gadgets. Mihael was a smart kid. He'd got here entirely on brains and skill -- couldn't lay claim to a single superpower.

Mail climbed out of bed and shuffled to the dresser. He pressed a button. The clockwork track sprang to life. One supersuit and one empty hook – Mihael's hook – rolled into view. They hadn't got rid of Nate's suit, but it no longer belonged among the regulars. Mail kept it folded inside his pillowslip.

He got changed quickly, efficiently, then joined Mihael. His little blond sidekick was standing beside the door, bouncing impatiently on the balls of his feet.

They walked through the sterile steel hallways, down the ivory corkscrew staircase and into the forum. As usual, the room was filled with excited jabbering: mains and sidekicks conversing loudly. He saw Mihael's muscles tense. His face had adopted an aggressive expression. It was difficult to be powerless among the superheroes.

(a white haired boy, explaining this to him after a mission, telling how the others laughed and sneered even though he was top in his form.)

He put his hand on Mihael's shoulder. The boy looked up in surprise. Seemed as if he was going to shrug it off, but he didn't, he lifted his head a little higher and acted proud.

A pale, black haired man appeared on the stage, followed by his elderly sidekick. The noise stopped immediately. L looked at them, then pressed a button on his watch. A large white screen came down from the ceiling. It displayed a list of tasks and their corresponding main/sidekick teams.

"I trust you know what to do," he said, nodding. "I will once again remind everyone to divide work fairly, and with discretion. Your teamwork will be evaluated. There are no further announcements. Please proceed to your stations."

Mail squinted at the screen, wiggling his eyes a little to sharpen his vision. "We're training newbies today," he said. "Come on, Mello."

(Nate had hated this station.)

The new ones were inexperienced, but they thought they knew everything. Mail figured they wouldn't make it far – you needed to follow orders in this field. Quiet down and observe the ways others operated or you'd make stupid mistakes and that would be the end of you. Maybe if they showed real promise, real talent, they'd end up as backup mains, sent out to deal with minor villains or ordinary criminals.

"I can fly," snapped the littlest one. "What the hell do I need to know falls for?"

Mihael glared at him. "You need to know freakin' falls in case you fall, okay? What if you get shoved off a building with a goddamn civilian on your back, huh? Then what?"

"I'd fly."

"Well, you can't, let's say you can't, then I guess you're pretty much screwed since you don't know any falls, right Matt?"

Mail shrugged. "It's always good to be prepared," he said.

"I can fly. I don't need to be prepared."

(They're out there, they're fighting a supervillian, some crazy guy with a god complex and this thing where he can wave his hand at you and you get a heart attack and die. And Mail's dodging around, shooting up the supports of the building. Nate's getting closer. Mail's providing a distraction and Nate's going to shoot Kira from behind.

And Nate's closer.

So close.

And Kira turns…)

They got the call halfway through the lesson. Mihael sighed and rolled his eyes, but he looked entirely relieved. He shot off instructions to the new ones, telling them quickly and briefly where they were supposed to go, what they were supposed to do until the supervillian was finished with.

It was a ex-scientist, some crazy man who got the idiot idea of souping himself up with brand-new discoveries. He was threatening the city with guns and robotic minions. It took them ten minutes to get where the locators said he was, thirty seconds to find him.

Mail gave Mihael hurried instructions, then set off blasting beams through his goggles.

"You go that way," he yelled. "Give me room!"

"You're going to need freakin' help!"

He snorted and swooped close to the man. Miami or something – he couldn't remember the name. Anyway, it didn't really matter what they called the targets. They were going down regardless.

A bullet whistled past his head. He ducked. Something else rushed past him, something small and dark…

Pain.

Pain in his arm. He looked down to see a hole there, blood pouring out of the wound. His muscles tensed, shuddered, then gave out. He fell.

"MATT!"

(And Kira turns. He sees Nate behind him, a gun in his left hand. He laughs, waves his hand. And just like that Nate's falling, clutching his chest, eyes so wide, so wide, so wide…

and Mail screams. He shoots a blast from his eyes, so powerful that his goggles shatter. Glass splinters away from his face.

Kira makes a noise, a sort of whining sound. And then he's silent. He is probably dead but Mail can't check, it's hard to tell, really.

The sun is very bright. Too bright. Without the tinted glass it is impossible to see. He's got laser vision but ordinary light blinds him completely. He looks where Nate should be, where Nate fell, but there is only sunshine that bleaches everything white.)

"I've got you."

There was a hand gripping his wrist and a sharp pain in his shoulder. He looked up and saw that Mihael was holding him. The sidekick was dangling from a wire contraption. Mail assumed his shoulder had dislocated from the force of the fall and the speed at which he was caught.

"Okay, I'm going to pull you up, alright?" Mihael's voice was anxious.

Mail closed his eyes. He didn't want to watch. He could feel the rough movement, the sensation of going higher and higher even though he wasn't doing anything at all. It hurt all his wounds. There was warm blood spurting from his arm. It occurred to him that if it was doing that, his heart must have been beating.

End.