The Greatest Superhero You've Never Heard Of

[Captain Dan Myers]

This thread follows on from In A Mirror, Darkly (http://sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?t=21901)... or will, when it's finished!

Dan's eyes opened, and all he saw was black.

His mind felt leaden, struggling to unwravel the knot of memories that had tangled up inside his head. He saw brief flashes, thought fragmented thoughts, but nothing made sense. He screwed his eyes tight shut, heaving against the mechanisms of his mind to try and force the cogs into turning once more. Blearily, he percieved the lack of anything solid beneath him. Paired with the silence, and the darkness, there was only one conclusion he could draw.

I died.

Though his body felt nothing, his chest still ached: some crushing sorrow had wrapped around his heart, and he fought to understand why.

Flickers of memory danced away inside his mind. He saw her - saw Stephanie - standing before him; and then he saw her gone. He felt the sorrow hit him like a wave again; a sickening feeling rising from what in life would have been his stomach. To call her death tragic was an understatement; it was like calling the sea damp, or describing space as 'a little bit on the cold side'. It was a loss of incomprehensible proportions, and he could not fathom how he would ever live without her.

I died.

The thought echoed through his mind again, a glimmer of hope washing through him. She had died, and yet so had he. Though not even slightly religious - the closest thing he'd ever had to faith was the belief in the sporting prowess of his hockey team, and The War had pretty much destroyed that little shred of optimism - he had somehow found himself in some sort of life-after-death place. And surely, if he was here -

"Hello?"

No answer. No surprise: his voice sounded weak and echoed, swallowed by the void. He tried again, a little louder. "Hello!"

A blinding light pounced at him, scorching into his eyes. Out of pure reflex he tried to recoil away; concrete slammed against his spine and shoulders, hard and cold. A grimace swept across his features as pain blossomed through the body he thought he'd lost.

"Hey!" a voice shouted, it's words gruff and harsh; not at all the dulcet, angelic tones he'd been hoping for. "What are you doing in my warehouse, eh?"

Struggling to move with numbed limbs, he tried to roll to one side; tried to blink his eyes clear; tried to make some sense of the thoughts swimming around his head. He didn't manage to come up with anything constructive before a foot nudged harshly against his skin.

"And what the hell is with that get-up? You some kind of fetish pervert?"

Finally, Dan's throat began to obey instructions. A vague groan tumbled out of his throat, followed by a mutter of half-hearted explanation. "I thought I was dead."

The old man - Dan was pretty sure he was old; he had that raspy, whispy sound to his voice that made old people sound like they were slowly leaking - let out a chuckle that didn't sound even slightly sympathetic. "Hangover, eh?" Definately not sympathetic; another light kick to the shin made that abundantly clear. "Well go feel like shit some place else, son. My warehouse ain't a bloody drunk tank, y'hear?"

With a ridiculous amount of effort, Dan clambered to his feet. If it weren't for his genome abilities quite literally taking some of the weight off his shoulders, he'd most definately have collapsed back to the floor. Luckily, the old man was helpful enough to give him an enthusiastic shove in the direction of the door. Dan half-staggered obligingly.

It wasn't until the door slammed behind him, and the sympathetic dim of night cut his eyes a little slack that he had the opportunity to review his surroundings. Part of him wished he was still light-blinded, because there was no way he could fathom what he saw. Before him in every direction stretched a city; not just the ruins of a city, but an actual, real city, complete with street lights, and skyscrapers, and windows that weren't blown out, and cars that weren't lying smashed and rusted in debris-filled streets. While it was clearly late, there were still people - people, moving freely after curfew! - roaming the streets without a care in the world. No blackouts. No bomb sirens. No acrid smell of burning. And the sky - holy shit, the sky - still inky blue and peppered with stars that he couldn't remember seeing in nearly a decade.

He saw a person in the distance. He ran; snagged their arm. "Where am I?" he asked frantically.

The man - another old man; why were there so many of them around? - looked back at him with a raised eyebrow. "Hell, son. It ain't even eleven and you're already too wasted to know where y'are. What the hell you been drinking?"

"Where am I?" Dan asked, a little more edge and insistance in his voice.

The new old man took a step backwards. "Alright, son. Calm down. You're in Los Santos, alright?"

"Los Santos?" Dan echoed, voice thick with confusion.

"Yeah," the new old man continued. "You know. Los Santos, Los Angeles. California. US of A. Earth. Did you fall off the moon?" He narrowed his eyes, suspicion thick in his voice. "Are you an alien, son?"

Dan winced, letting the expression fall off his face before he fired the old man an incredulous look. "I'm from Kansas," he fired back.

"Well, you ain't in Kansas no more, son," the new old man offered, with a smile that wasn't particularly reassuring. He glanced at his watch again, the conversation having clearly stripped the memory of what time it was from his mind. "Well, I'd better get going. Gotta get home before the wife locks the doors again."

"Yeah, thanks," Dan offered dumbly as the man wandered away, humming a song that he didn't recognise; though honestly, he wasn't entirely sure what he was thanking him for. It was something he'd have to spare some thought for later; right now his entire brain was hung up trying to make sense of what the old man had said. Los Angeles - hell, the whole west coast - had been near enough levelled during the first year of The War. Almost nothing west of the Rockies was still standing; and while maybe a small town or two might have been lurking out there in the rubble, there was no way that a city - no way that Los Angeles of all places - could still be standing.

He felt his legs buckle underneath him, and slumped down onto his knees.

"Where the hell am I, Steph?" he asked, his voice soft and quiet. "And where the hell are you?"

[Colonel M. James Hunter]

Greek mythology spoke of ambrosia: the drink of the gods that granted them their immortality. The stories said that a mortal man named Asclepius once formulated the recipe for himself; Zeus elevated him to godhood to avoid him sharing that secret.

Colonel Hunter decided that Zeus' efforts had been in vain: clearly, Asclepius had invented coffee.

It was his third mug of the day, and it was barely even late enough in the morning for civilised people to have climbed out of bed. Such temporal considerations were largely irrelevant to him however; soldiers learned to survive on the amount of sleep they were issued with, and relied on coffee to compensate for the rest. It was a tough lifestyle to get used to, but with more than two decades under his military-issue belt, Hunter had long since adapted.

"What's the news, boys and girls?" he asked, striding into the control room at Cheyenne Mountain. The facility had once been part of NORAD until it was shut down a few years ago; but while NORAD had moved out, Vanguard had moved in. Now, all the facilities that had been designed to track nuclear missiles over North America were being used to track potentially dangerous weapons of a different kind.

The Colonel wasn't entirely sure how they did it, but his officers all managed - without a word to each other - to reply in sequence without overlapping or interrupting each other. He had his suspicions that they drew straws before he came in.

"Nothing on local news," one of them explained. While some of Vanguard's intelligence-gathering techniques were considerably more high-tech, monitoring local news channels was surprisingly useful. Unlike local law enforcement, news networks were all too happy to splash around the trivial goings on in their areas, and mutant activity often made their list of headlines, especially when they were running low on actual news. Often, it was trivial; but sometimes it amounted to something.

Another officer chimed in, letting him no that they had "Nothing on law enforcement channels either, sir." The problem with law enforcement was that they tended to be pretty secular. In most cases, a message needed to be bounced from one agency to another before Vanguard had the opportunity to intercept it; and while that was great for the larger mutant problems, there were a lot of low-level mutant events that managed to escape Vanguard's notice.

Other officers continued to report in. Some monitored for chatter on mutant discussion groups that might be foreshadowing something bad; others watched the conspiracy theorists, in case their paranoid speculations became close enough to the truth to suggest an information leak. Others checked foreign news, and feeds from intelligence agencies. One guy even monitored the weather; after the incident in Denver, and with all those mutants hurling lightning bolts and mini-tornados around the place, a seemingly random patch of high pressure could have a whole new significance.

Another reason that Hunter suspected some sort of pre-briefing arrangement between his officers was the fact that the last person to speak always had something to tell him; not something important enough to mention first, but potentially something that he might want them to react to. To his surprise, today it seemed to be the young Lieutenant that collaborated with the United States Geological Survey, watching for earthmovers or terrakinetics, or whatever it was that the analysts had taken to calling them.

"It's probably nothing, sir," she explained, "But we picked up a strange geological event in the Los Santos area of Los Angeles last night."

Hunter frowned. "What's so weird about a tremor in California?" he asked; a reasonable enough question.

She shuffled a little in her seat, not entirely comfortable with having put on the spot. "Well sir; only one seismograph picked it up. Because a natural tremor translates across the surface of the magma layer in the mantle, you'd expect to have it picked up in a few more locations as well. I think -" She hesitated, not sure if her personal opinion was a valid thing to be contributing. "- it's a little too localised, sir. It might be worth taking a look."

Hunter offered a reassuring ghost of a smile. "It might indeed, Lieutenant," he replied. "Good catch."

He turned his attention to one of the Sergeants hovering on the edge of the briefing area. "Contact Lieutenant O'Hara. Have him assemble a team and scope out the area. Even if it does turn out to be nothing, we're better off being safe than sorry."

A grim thought entered his mind. Not to mention the fact that the General will hand my ass to me if it does turn out to be something and we missed it.

"Yes, sir," the Sergeant replied with a curt nod, before disappearing to his assigned task.

Hunter turned back to the rest, taking another swig of his coffee before flashing them a tight smile. "As for the rest of us," he said with a sigh, "Lets see what Wednesday has to offer."

[Captain Dan Myers]

Dan had no idea how long he'd been awake, but from the way his eyeballs itched and his mind lagged horribly every time he tried to act or think, he guessed he should probably be estimating in days.

Unfortunately, there was little he could do about it. Apparently here, wherever - or whenever; he hadn't ruled out some kind of strange time travel incident as an explanation - here was, coffee wasn't the kind of meticulously rationed substance that it was back home; unfortunately, he'd gone and left his cash in his other utility belt, and so had been forced to simply loiter around outside the place that the signage called 'Starbucks', breathing in the illicit aroma until someone glared at him for long enough to force him to move on.

At least it was only his peculiar actions earning him awkward stares now, and not his peculiar outfit: while great for getting blasted with mutant powers, and for inspiring the huddled and downtrodden masses who he protected from the overbearing and over-aggressive Mutant Regime, it wasn't all that suited for blending into crowds. Fortunately, shrugging off the back-zipped upper half transformed him from freak in a costume to half-dressed motorcyclist, and now most of the looks he was getting seemed to be appreciative glances from the ladies. He even managed to muster a few cheeky smiles for some of them; not that he particularly felt much like smiling at the moment.

Not only was his lack of funds causing issues with coffee acquisition: it seemed to be an obstacle to just about everything else in Los Angeles. While the majority of things about this version of California seemed to be better than where he had come from, the cost of living most certainly was not. Then again, he supposed that picking for scraps between the rubble of collapsed buildings didn't necessarily count as living in the strictest sense.

It was by sheer fluke that he'd managed to stumble across an abandoned newspaper; it was a few days old, but still new enough to get an approximate read on the date. The paper was dated July 22nd 2009 - more or less exactly what he expected it to be - but that turned out to be one of the least surprising items of information contained therein. Emblazoned across the front page was news of a new research initiative at a company named Treadstone; and at it's centre was a familiar face, though a little chubbier and less grizzled than he remembered.

"Can I help you?" a voice asked, as he loitered inside the lobby of the building that a solid two hours of wandering and asking for directions had led him to.

Dan flashed her a smile. "Yes, I think you can." Jacket hooked casually over his shoulder, he used an elbow to prop himself up against the reception desk. "I'm looking for Doctor Thomas Harriman."

[Tom Harriman]

Tom massaged the corners of his forehead with a hand, in an effort to stave off a headache born of tiredness and cafeine withdrawl. There was a simple remidy that would take care of both; unfortunately, Emma had been offering his private stash of coffee to their volunteers, and had managed to deplete the last of their reserves. He'd considered an emergency mission to Starbucks - or even a daring raid on the break room up in Marketing; their expensive tastes probably meant they were hoarding the good stuff - but had yet to extract himself from beneath the mound of paperwork slowly building up on his desk.

Apparently, his put it off until later plan had backfired; apparently later was now, and procrastination simply wasn't an option.

He sighed, and scrawled his name across the bottom of a release form, before flipping the document closed and jamming it back into the file it had come from. This job had seemed fantastic when he'd simply been telling people what he wanted to buy; no one had warned him that he'd need to file expenses claims, or provide retroactive detailed justifications of what everything would be used for to the people in Accounts. Foolishly, he'd thought that "It's in my lab, hurray!" would be the end of it.

He heard the sound of people talking from beyond the door. He'd taken to closing it for privacy, not necessarily because he he didn't want to be disturbed, but because he didn't want to subject poor Emma to his stray thoughts while he was in a bad mood. Wonderful as it was to have an assistant who could read his mind, ensuring that she had a healthy and happy work environment was a lot harder work than he'd expected.

With a grunt, he dislodged himself from behind the desk, and traisped across the office to the door. When it opened, his tension headache was momentarily forgotten, as his gaze settled on a man who looked like he'd escaped from a George Michael concert.

[Captain Dan Myers]

Dan turned as he heard the door open, and a wave of relief washed over him. The perky little petite girl was pleasant enough, but she seemed to know an uncomfortable amount; and seemed fairly insistant that the kinds of things he was babbling about were completely impossible, and absolutely not true.

He was glad to have an excuse to ignore her completely.

His first non-faked smile in what seemed like days sprang onto his features, and he felt like at least a little of the weight dumped on his shoulders had been lifted. He took a deep breath, and pounced into a verbal tirade, waving his hand accusingly at Tom as he spoke.

"Your name is Thomas James Harriman... you were born in Cornwall, but grew up in Scotland, where you studied Physics before joining the Army and becoming a Paratrooper. You have an elder brother, Jason, who is a total asshole; and a younger sister, Katrina, who is kind of cute but not in a cute enough to risk getting limbs broken kind of way. Your father, Walter, was allegedly a regular old member of the Royal Air Force but in fact spent the Cold War hunting down Soviet mutant spies; your mum died when you were still a kid, and you sometimes feel guilty that you can't quite remember her face. And at school people made fun of you for having the same name as Thomas the Tank Engine; but what really bugged you at the time is that your middle name is James, and he was always your favourite because he was red."

Dan stopped for a moment, allowing himself to breathe again, and carefully watching Tom's reaction. Desperation tugged at his voice and his eyes when he spoke again, a little slower this time. "Yesterday I walked into a bombed out warehouse in the middle of a post-apocalyptic city wasteland. Something exploded and I woke up here. It's the same year, and I'm the same person, but everything else is different."

He trailed off, shoulders slumping. "Please, T.J. Tell me that you know who I am."

[Tom Harriman]

Tom's eyebrows climbed. It certainly hadn't been the first time someone had walked into his lab knowing an uncomfortable amount about him: someone - he suspected his sister, though he didn't have proof - had gone to the trouble of creating a page for him on Wikipedia in the wake of the press conference, and apparently everyone wanted to know a little bit more about the scientist who was supposedly going to suss out their powers and use them to make the world a better place.

But there were things in that ramble that the internet didn't know. Things that Katrina didn't know. Painful as it was to be reminded of the fact that his mother's face sometimes eluded him, it was a truth that a total stranger couldn't possibly have known. Either there was some kind of truth to what this guy was saying - some kind of time travel or parallel something or other that belonged in the realm of science fiction movies - or he was in the presense of an extremely powerful mind reader, and it was only a matter of time before every single bit of useful and usable information was plucked out of his brain.

But then why admit it? he wondered. Despite the urge to frown as he considered it, his eyebrows were quite firmly locked upwards in bemused surprise. Why tell me about it at all? And why make up such a ridiculous story?

His eyes scrutinised the man intently, searching for the tell tale signs of an escaped mental patient. Weirdly, he looked oddly sane, fashion choices not withstanding - tinted yellow glasses, really? - and surprisingly determined to be believed. Tom risked a glance at Emma; all she could do was shake her head, clearly as baffled as he was. Either this guy wasn't lying, or he was good enough at fooling himself - or fooling psychics - that his bluff was working on her as well.

He offered a sympathetic smile. "I don't recognise you, I'm sorry," he apologised, arms folding awkardly across his body for lack of anything else to do. He shrugged, helplessly. "I don't even know your name."

[Captain Dan Myers]

The weight that had lifted from his shoulders dropped back on from a great height, slumping heavily under the extra strain. He grabbed for a chair, and sat in it as heavily and someone with his particular abilities could. This was not going to plan at all.

"It's Dan," he offered weakly. "Daniel Myers."

His brow collapsed into a sorrowful frown, his vision staring off into nothingness as the gravity of his situation truly hit him. It had been a long shot, he supposed, expecting this Tom Harriman to know him. Absolutely nothing else about this world seemed at all like what he knew; why would one man be any different?

And yet somehow, that was worse than all the other things. It wasn't that he and T.J were - had been? Would be? How the hell did grammar work in this situation? - particularly close; good aquaintances, rather than bromantic comrades in arms. Even so, he'd pinned his hopes on some benevolent stroke of good luck, and it hadn't played out for him. Short of sitting down with a phone book and trying to remember the name of everyone he'd ever known, he had no idea where to go from here.

"I just want to go home," he uttered, barely more than a breath.

[Tom Harriman]

Every logical portion of Tom's brain screamed at him to dismiss this man's claims as sheer lunacy. He had almost nothing but a few circumstantial remarks to suggest that this Dan Myers was anything more than a scam artist, or some kind of babbling crazy person. And yet, Tom believed him. For some ridiculous, incomprehensible reason, he actually believed that he was talking to someone from "another place".

He frowned, perching himself on the edge of a work bench, one of his hands reaching up to wrest a closed fist against his lips. There were theories that talked about multiverses; about alternate realities where every possible outcome of every possible decision or random process was played out: infinite diversity in infinite combinations. In one reality he might have rolled over and slapped the snooze button on his alarm that morning, showing up at work fifteen minutes later than he had. In another, the genetics inherited by his parents might have given him different eyes, different abilities, a different gender; or maybe he wouldn't even exist at all.

What means had allowed Dan Myers to pass from his reality to this one, Tom couldn't even begin to fathom. And the question of why this reality brought with it all manner of complicated follow-ups: if there were an infinite number of realities, with near-infinite permutations on every possible outcome, did that mean that a near-infinite number of Dan Myers' from a near-infinite number of realities had travelled to a separate near-infinite number of realities? Had a near-infinite number of those incarnations of Dan Myers appeared in a world that they could not distinguish from their own, or ones even more radically different than their own?

The physics - not to mention the mathmatics that must have been behind it - was mind-shattering to consider, especially without coffee. But if he planned to help this man find his way home - and surely, that was the favour that Dan Myers was attempting to ask for - there was a hell of a lot more he would need to know.

"Start at the beginning," he said. "Tell me everything you can remember about how you got here."

[Lieutenant William O'Hara]

The Sergeant clutching the GPS gizmo had assured him that this was the place. Or at least, had assured him that this was the general vacinity of where the place most likely was; finding the place itself was the task at hand, and it was proving much more difficult than Lieutenant O'Hara had hoped.

He didn't really understand the mathematics of it all, but apparently someone had instructed some computer system or other to plot various lines and circles on a street map. It was something to do with how far away a seismic event of the intensity detected needed to be in order to not trip off the detectors at other stations; apparently the misshapen blob that the computers had spewed out was their most likely area to find anything interesting. Unfortunately, said area encompassed most of a warehouse district, which meant a great deal of looking inside things, as well as outside, behind, on top, and anywhere else things might have been lurking.

O'Hara had already set people to work mapping out the sewer system and other utility tunnels in the area - to him, seismic meant underground, so that seemed as good a place as any to be looking - as well as trying to wrestle CCTV footage from the relevant people. Most of the time, mentioning Vanguard and flashing a military ID was enough to get cooperation, but every now and again people decided to drag their heels and make life more difficult.

Not for the first time, Will wished that he had a mutant ability that could actually be of some help.

Concentrating on the same spot, O'Hara mentally pushed against his eyes, shifting the band of the EM spectrum that they could percieve to a slightly higher set of frequencies. The colours of the world around him changed, his perception redshifting as his brain tried to cope with new input from the ultraviolet range. The world became brighter, the ultraviolet frequencies usually hidden from human eyes coming into view. As his vision changed, new clues became visible - it was like watching a cut scene from CSI. His nose wrinkled a little in disgust; what the hell were people doing around here to cause those kind of splatter patterns?

A shout from one of his team drew his attention; a cry of "Over here, sir!"

O'Hara turned, his vision returning to normal. A few swift paces brought him to the Corporal's side. His eyes narrowed, gaze settling on the arrow half-buried into the brickwork, penetrating far deeper than a conventional bow should have been able to achieve. He exchanged a knowing look with the Corporal. "Vigilantes," he muttered, a note of disgust in his voice.

The Corporal seemed to share his disapproval. "He must have been fighting someone," he pointed out.

A grunt escaped from the Lieutenant. "Yeah," he agreed, a hand raising to the earpiece he wore. "Patch me through to the Colonel," he ordered, the message bouncing back to the comms officer monitoring his frequency. "Its starting to look like that seismic event might have been something after all."

[Captain Dan Myers]

Harriman was gone.

Myers had explained everything, and to his credit the good Doctor had listened to every word without overt judgement. He'd even been willing to accept the basic premise that Dan wasn't a total crazy person. Between the two of them, they'd worked out where their "realities" had apparently diverged; almost eight years ago for Myers, a group of mutant terrorists had attacked New York in a show of force that scared the pants off half the world, and begun The War on Mutancy. Apparently in this world, the emergence of mutants into society's awareness had been a little less explosive.

Now the Doctor had disappeared, apparently making plans and schemes to solve Dan's problems with science. Myers vaguely remembered something to do with phase, but had absolutely no idea what that actually meant - something to do with checking Dan's frequency to see if the two of them were operating on the same wavelength. Dan thought they already were; but apparently something to do with lasers and magnets was going to help.

Dan found himself alone, staring at the television screen that Tom had kindly switched on for him. He saw images of the world flash before his eyes on the twenty-four hour news broadcasts; and while it filled him with hope to see so much of the world still standing, it filled him with sadness to realise that even without an act of mutant terrorism eight years ago, the world was still busily tearing itself apart.

He changed the station, searching for something local in the vain hope that in this opulent and intact version of Los Angeles, there might be some glimmer of optimism that he could cling to.

There wasn't. Instead there was fire.

He watched the footage of emergency services swarming around; of ladders extended, hoses pumping water into the depths of a building that had errupted in noxious black smoke and angry flames. Every second that past twisted the knot in his stomach ever tighter. The fire service was doing it's utmost to fight the fire with the means available to them; but where were the pyrokinetics to quell the blaze? Where were the hydrokinetics, aiming those beams of water to exactly where they needed to be? Where were the mutants with the power to summon a localised downpour, or with the air control or forcefields necessary to choke off the fire's oxygen, or clear out all that smoke?

They're not coming, he realised, the knot sinking through his boots. For all that was wrong in his world, at least the mutants didn't need to hide. They weren't afraid to show their abilities; afraid to admit to what they were; afraid to stand up and help.

Dan's eyes fell on the window. He could see the plume of smoke from here.

There was no thought; no plan; no hesitation. In a moment he was on his feet; in another his discarded jacket was being pulled back on, and tinted lenses were being slid back over his eyes.

This wasn't his world. This wasn't his Los Angeles. But that didn't mean this wasn't his responsibility. Today, LA had found itself a mutant who wasn't afraid.

[Tom Harriman]

"Since you said about the coffee shortage in your universe," Tom announced, eyes and attention focused on keeping the contents of the two steaming mugs in the two steaming mugs, "I thought you might appreciate -"

He stopped, an unexpected breeze dragging his eyes towards the glass doorway that had been flung open, leading out onto the small jut of rooftop that extended out from beneath his lab. Dan Myers was nowhere to be seen.

Panic stirring him into action, he abandoned the two coffees on the nearest available surface, and ran to the balcony, hands gripping the edge of the concrete: the only thing stopping him from plumetting downwards. But as his eyes settled on the sidewalk, he saw no patch of gold and blue; no sign of the eye-catching outfit that Dan Myers had worn.

Confusion crept in, twisting his mindset and adjusting his expression. He felt himself compelled to look upwards - it made no sense, but who knew with mutants, right? - but saw no sign of his 'patient' up there either. His chest tightened.

Where the hell did he go?

[Captain Dan Myers]

Way to go, Myers.

He used his abilities with such practiced ease that it was easy to forget how absurd it was to be doing what he was doing. Subtle manipulations of his powers varied the affect that gravity had on him; a few occasional skips against the ground gave him all the upward momentum he needed to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Of course, it wasn't flying; and that was why Myers silently cursed himself. His abilities could give him all the lift he needed to resist the pull of gravity indefinately: but he relied on outside forces, on momentum and angles, to turn it into any viable sort of travel. The science boys back home had rigged him up with an ion thruster pack: enough to give him the impulse he needed to get to where he needed to go, fast; and to even keep pace with the likes of Meredith Hunter and his armoured Van-Guardians.

Unfortunately, he'd gone and left that thruster pack at home. In another dimension. And he had absolutely no idea how it worked; so the odds of getting another one built were somewhat slim.

He cursed himself again. Way to go, Myers.

Now was not the time to dwell, however. One final bound and a carefully controlled descent brought him into the midsts of the fire crews. He felt the heat instantly, searing towards his face like a miniature sun. Memories flashed in his mind in the wake of that metaphor; but he battled them down, shielding his gaze with his hand.

"What's the situation, Chief?" he shouted, picking out the most important-looking person in the crowd of fire fighters, and heading towards them, catching snippets of instructions and directions as he approached.

The Fire Chief looked at him with a mix of bemusement and annoyance. "Who the hell are you supposed to be?" he growled, unwilling to spare any patience.

"Help," Dan replied simply, his eyes searching the windows for movement.

His audience didn't seem convinced; in hindsight, Dan couldn't say that he blamed him. The Chief was half way through saying "Back away son, and leave this to the professionals" by the time Dan had lept into the fray, entering the building several stories up.

The fire was all around him now, the heat and brightness punching him like hammers. While an apparent fashion statement, at least his tinted lenses cut down a little of the glare; unfortunately they did little to filter out the roar. He strained, searching through the cacophany for the same signs of life that he'd spotted from outside.

No joy. The old fashioned way, then.

A foot slammed hard into the first closed door he found, and idly he wished that he'd borrowed an axe from the crews outside. Affected by his powers from the moment he made contact, the nearly weightless door tore effortlessly from it's hinges; fire surged in after it, carried by the hot air that rushed into the comparative cold of the appartment beyond. Smoke clung to the ceiling, rolling like inverted fog; Dan ignored it, and burst inside.

Three rooms were searched before he found her; a frightened little girl clinging tightly onto her pet cat, curled beneath the window she'd just been banging against, surrendered to the fact that no one outside could hear.

She looked at him through tear-streaked eyes. Dan managed to muster a smile.

"Don't worry, little lady," he assured. "I'm gonna get you out of here."

Eyes searched his surroundings; a quick tug on the window showed that it was sealed, painted shut by a landlord that apparently cared more about resale than safety. With a knife he could maybe unseal it; but right now there wasn't any time. He went for the swiftest option, grabbing hold of a standing lamp from beside the sofa. Aiming the base towards the window, he threw a glance in the little girl's direction. "Might wanna stand back."

She said nothing; just nodded, and shuffled obligingly out of the way.

Glass shattered as Dan smashed his way through the multi-glazed glass, knocking out chunks of frame along with it. A few more controlled blows beat out the razor sharp jagged fragments from the base of the frame; carefully he climbed out first, stepping out onto thin air and staying there, braced against the wall.

He held out his arms towards her. "Don't worry," he said, as reassuring as he could manage. "I won't let you fall."

The little girl shook her head frantically, her gaze shifting between him and the multistory fall below.

His fingers rose to his face, pulling off his glasses. He looked her square in the eyes, every ounce of confidence he posessed shining out of his own. "I won't let you fall."

Gingerly, the girl clambered half-way out of the window; she stopped, thrusting the cat insistantly at Dan. There was no time for him to protest; with a nod of surrender he took hold of the petrified feline, coaxing it up onto his shoulder. The girl stepped out next, grabbing hold of his hand and practically throwing herself at him, arms wrapped around his middle in a vice-grip. Her panic eased ever so slightly within seconds however, as she realised how weightless she'd become as soon as Dan's powers had taken hold.

Slinging a reassuring arm around her, the other one carefully ensuring that the cat didn't try to make it groundwards on its own, he gradually allowed gravity to affect them all ever so slightly; like a leaf on the wind, they drifted effortlessly towards the ground.

The second his boots hit the ground, Dan was swarmed, a pair of paramedics slinging a blanket around her shoulder and ushering her off towards an ambulance. She wriggled free just enough to turn around, and flash Dan a tiny smile of gratitude. He threw one back.

The Fire Chief stared at him, his face clearly unsure which one out of confused, bemused, or embarassed it should be displaying first. Dan tossed him a shrug. "So, Chief: you sure you don't want my help?"

[Tom Harriman]

The Fire Chief wasn't the only one staring in disbelief. A fluke glance at the television set had told him where Dan had disappeared to; and now he was rooted to the spot, his mind occupying the space between shame and awe.

"You help too, you know," Emma offered gently, hovering over his shoulder.

He let out a grunt. "Yeah, I know," he replied, though he didn't sound entirely convinced.

A quote that his father had often recited playing in his mind. "We sleep soundly in our beds, because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm," he said softly, heaving out a sigh from beneath folded arms.

Emma looked at him with a quizical look. "Winston Churchill," Tom explained.

That didn't seem to help; he offered her a faint tug of a smile. "It's something my dad always used to say. I think it was the way he justified what he did; his covert actions helped to keep his children, and everyone else's children, safe. And it's the same for me."

"But this guy?" He shook his head. "He's not a rough man standing ready in the night; he's a good man, standing ready in the day."

His brow furrowed. "I wish I could be more like that."

Emma let out a few notes of laughter. "Says the man who has dedicated his life to making sure that mutants feel accepted for the rest of theirs?" She offered a teasing squeeze of his shoulder. "Pulling little girls out of flaming buildings isn't the only way to be a hero, you know."

"I guess not," Tom conceeded, but he still didn't sound like he was convinced.

A twitched of something new tugged at his expression however. He waved a hand towards the screen. "My costume looks cooler though, right?"

Emma said nothing.

[Daniel Myers]

Seven miles outside of Edwards Air Force base in Rosamond, California, a local news reporter sporting a little too much fake tan - or was that just the colour balance on the television set? - told anyone who was listening about the story of the day.

"Tragedy struck this residential building in San Pedro, Los Angeles this morning, when an apartment fire spread and consumed the entire building. The Los Angeles Fire Department were not the only heroes on the scene however: a mysterious costumed mutant literally leapt into action, saving a young girl trapped inside her home. Fire crews report that without the mutant's assistant, they would never have found her in time."

"After his daring feat of heroics, the mutant had this to say -"

The scene changed, the camera crew showing their slightly sub-standard quality as the view initially zoomed in a little too close on the mutant's face. It was almost as if the news team - and other news teams too, judging from the sound of the clamouring in the background - was prepared to give chase.

Clearly however, this mutant had no intentions of running.

"Who are you?" one of the voices among many uttered, managing to make her voice heard above the rest of the crowd.

The mutant turned to the camera, flashing his Angeleno audience a winning smile. "My name is Dan Myers," he announced proudly, "And yes, I am a mutant."

"What inspired you to help?" Another question that was only just heard over the dozens of others being asked at the same time by reporters frantically thrusting microphones in his direction.

A shrug was offered. "Us mutants are people, just like you. Sure, some of us are bad people; but we aren't all like that. The only difference between me and you is that I have a mutant ability... and just like these fire fighters, who have the responsibility to use their training to save lives, I feel that I have the responsibility to do exactly the same."

"What's your stance on crime, Mr Myers?" One voice asked. "Are you a vigilante?" asked another.

"Crime fighting is for law enforcement. That said, if the Los Angeles Police Department ever needs a hand -" His winning smile gained a bonus wink, aimed straight into the camera. "- all they need to do is call."

There was more shouting; more questions. Some were answered; some weren't. It didn't seem to matter: he'd heard enough.

Staring at the television screen from the sofa in his living room, a tiny noise escaped from Daniel Myers.

"Huh."

[Colonel M. James Hunter]

Cheyenne Mountain had descended into chaos. The poor Sergeant sifting through local news broadcasts from California had nearly shorted out their workstation with the speed at which a recoil spit-take had blasted the coffee out of his mouth.

Fires, tremors, car accidents, natural disasters; all terrible, tragic things to hear about, but the sad truth was that somewhere in the world there was always one going on, and that made them fairly standard fare for the likes of Vanguard's monitoring crew. On rare occasions, you saw the odd mutant helping out; hell, sometimes a mutant just got unlucky and wound up involved. This though was the first time Jim Hunter could remember a mutant sticking around long enough for a photo opportunity and a witness statement.

And the costumed poser had even given them his real name, not some pathetic alias.

"Got a match!" one of the officers from Army Intelligence shouted, grabbing the Colonel's attention from half-way across the Cheyenne ops room. Jim was upon him in seconds, peering at the flat screen display, eyes flickering across the details displayed.

"Captain Daniel Myers, United States Air Force," the officer added needlessly. "Based out of Edwards. Awfully close to Los Angeles to just be a coincidence, sir."

Jim's mouth drew into a line. "Awfully close in appearance, too," he added.

His head offered a nod of commendation. "Good job, Lieutenant. Transmit the address out to our field team, and inform O'Hara that I'd like Captain Myers to be invited in for questioning."

The Lieutenant reflected the gesture, adding a "Yes, sir," before setting to work.

Colonel Hunter straightened, his gaze settling on the news feed that was replaying on the giant multipartite screen that occupied the rooms farthest wall. United States Air Force, the Lieutenant had said. From what Jim had gathered on the screen, he was a fighter pilot too: not much different from a young James Hunter in many ways. It certainly explained the showboating and the apparent Type-A personality. But this Myers guy was already a hero to his country as a day job; why dress up like an escaped mental patient, run around risking your life on the weekend, and then risk destroying your career with a stupid publicity stunt? Surely, the US Air Force trained it's people to be smarter than that nowadays?

[Captain Dan Myers]

Boots landed with a dull thud atop the fourteenth story terrace, his abilities converting a hurtling descent into a gentle impact. The sliding pane of glass was closed but not locked - again - and while the lab itself was dimly lit, the glow from the office beyond suggested that it was not empty. The light outside was darkening however, retreating from day into night: and after the thermal onslaught of his firefighting, even the summer air felt decidedly chilled.

The dim light glanced off his skin as he made his way inside, already discoloured from the intensity of heat and light thrown off by the fire. His suit was singed in places, but for the most part it had survived unscathed: it was built to withstand far worse.

He moved inside with quiet care, though not full stealth: the hesitation of a youth sneaking in after curfew, rather than the deadly silence of an assassin. He had no desire to hide his return; but then again, no particular desire to announce it either. He simply had nowhere else to go: no where else in this backwards city where he could be sure of finding a roof over his head.

The sound of the office door opening revealed that he had not gone unnoticed. Shoulders sagging a little, Dan turned; there was a flicker of mild disappointment as his gaze settled on the he and not the her. Unless things were very different about this particular version of Thomas Harriman, he doubted his charming smile would stand a chance of winning the scientist over.

"So." The word hung awkwardly in the air. Dan tried to dislodge the uncomfortable silence with a shrug. "You said something about coffee?"

[Tom Harriman]

Tom let out a breath of laughter, that mixed with a shake of his head and a sigh.

"Yeah, sure," he muttered, turning back towards the office, and gesturing for Dan to follow. There really wasn't anything else that could be said. Hey, nice job with the fire wasn't enough to dislodge the discomfort that had settled in Tom's stomach: guilt that in one act, Dan had probably done more good and saved more lives than Tom had in his entire vigilante career.

He shuffled wordlessly to the coffee pot, a moment of consideration given to the idea of replacing the lukewarm contents with something fresh. But the nearest sink was too far away; and given that his guest was from an alternate reality where coffee was in short supply, he figured to hell with it: it was wet, and cafinated. Tom had drunk worse.

As he set the pot to reheat and retrieved the requisite - clean, more or less - mugs, he gestured towards an envelope left unsealed on the table. "I set you up with a hotel room," he explained, rifling through the clutter on the work top in search of a spoon. "Nothing fancy, but it's got a balcony: figured you'd want to avoid waltzing in the front door. I'll have some clothes sent over for you in the morning too, so you don't attract quite so much attention."

[Captain Dan Myers]

You shouldn't have done that.

That was what he wanted to say. Some sort of rebuttal. Some sort of refusal. Something to stop the guy who had only just met him from splashing out cash on hotel rooms and clothes. Normal people weren't like that. Normal people didn't do that. Or did they? Was this one of the crazy things about this messed-up planet? Mutants were too scared to help put out a fire, but they'd bend over backwards to help out some random guy in need?

Or maybe a good friend is a good friend, no matter what universe he's from.

He didn't say that, though: he didn't get the chance. As the words tumbled from Tom's mouth, they instantly gave Dan pause. The balcony was a nice gesture and all - he'd probably use it, truth be told - but the way Tom said it, it was like attracting media attention was a bad thing. It was as if doing the right thing - and letting the world see you doing the right thing - was somehow going to make things worse.

His tone took on a defensive edge. "Why the hell do I need to avoid attention?"

[Tom Harriman]

Tom's eyebrows climbed. The defensiveness was surprising; he certainly hadn't meant his statement as an attack. But from Dan's reaction, it seemed like the two weren't operating on entirely the same page.

"In the same way that there's a Tom Harriman in your universe," he explained slowly, "There's probably a Dan Myers on this side, too. You saved lives today, and I can't fault you for that: but if you keep posing for publicity shots and flashing your name about, it's only a matter of time before someone dumps your name in a Google search, starts asking the wrong kind of questions, and people start asking how it's possible for you to be in two places at once."

He grabbed the monitor on his desk and spun it around, the flat screen pointed in Dan's direction. "And what about him? Captain Daniel Myers, United States Air Force. What happens to him when using his name in his universe starts attracting media attention? What happens to him or his family when you start earning backlash from the anti-mutant community."

Tom shook his head. "I know why you did it. And it was the right thing to do: the right thing for that little girl, and all the other people you helped pull out of that fire. But there is a man, his wife, and a little girl... and they're going to be in just as much danger if you don't save them with silence."

[Captain Dan Myers]

It was like he'd been hit in the chest by one of those comic book hammers; his ribs had crumpled, and wrapped tight around his lungs. He'd known somewhere in the back of his mind that somewhere in this universe there was probably a Dan Myers. He half-hoped that he was out there somewhere playing hockey: never dragged away from the sport that he loved by a war that had sprung up out of nowhere that consumed the world. But this?

He peered at the screen, at the photo that Harriman's internet wandering had found. It was the same face, but somehow different; stockier maybe, and the hair was darker. And a pilot - that had always been a childhood dream, but Dan's head had always been too far up in the clouds to get the grades he needed for that kind of work. And when his hockey career had picked up? Well, who needed a proper job when you were a national sports star?

Worse than that was the mention of a family, though. Dan had always been a loner. Sure, there were women - too many women, really - but no one that had stuck around. Not until the war, anyway. Not until he'd met Stephanie.

His breath caught in his throat. Was she -

He swallowed hard. "His wife," he asked, almost terrified of the possible answer. "What's her name?"

[Tom Harriman]

Tom frowned. That wasn't what he'd hoped Dan would take away from it, but he supposed it was a valid question; no harm in answering.

He grabbed the screen and turned it around towards him, scrolling through the information he'd unearthed in search of the knowledge that Dan sought. The internet held a surprising amount of information about everyone scattered about the place; information that not even the most security conscious of individuals could hide. All you needed was a date of birth, and maybe a vague location, and you could find all manner of stuff scattered about the place.

He found the name precisely where he found it. "Laura," he answered, as if he was casually reading off cinema showings. "Laura Matthews. And the daughter is called Meg."

He hesitated, suddenly regretting volunteering the the information so freely. He looked at Dan with a hint of worry in his eyes. "Someone you know?"

[Captain Dan Myers]

A laugh escaped, but it was a hollow sound. It wasn't one born from amusement: more from bitter disappointment. Not Stephanie. Of course not Stephanie. How could the cosmos ever be that fair?

"I've never heard of her in my life," he threw back.

He needed a drink, though he doubted that there was anything legally available in this world that had quite the same kick as the stuff the resistance fighters had brewed down in the caves.

But even that wouldn't help; not until he'd drunk enough to make his brain stop working. There was too much to think about; too many thoughts that he didn't want to entertain; too many memories that he didn't want to flash before his eyes. In his experience, alcohol amplified everything: it made a good time into a great time; it turned annoyance into anger; and it turned regret into outright remorse and misery.

Not a good plan, he mused. But then, sleep didn't seem like a great idea either; not just yet. Dreams could do more damage than alcohol, if they set their minds to it: and Dan didn't trust his subconscious one damn bit.

Besides, there was something he needed to do first.

But then that would involve asking the question: the question that he knew Tom wouldn't want to answer. "Do you have an address?"

[Tom Harriman]

Tom's stomach twisted up into a knot. It was a question he knew would come eventually. It was a question that he knew it was best not to answer truthfully. And yet, despite stumbling across exactly what Dan was asking for hours before, he hadn't managed to muster together a rebuttal that was more than paper thin.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," he pointed out: the best he had.

He searched his brain for options. His mind had entertained every notion: was it even safe? What would happen if the two met? Would it be like Back to the Future? Were they oscillating at different universal frequencies. Would the two touch and explode? Would the universe unravel because there was more matter than their should be?

None of those seemed like they'd fly. He wasn't sure if Dan would even understand.

"It's probably best that you lie low, until we can work out how to get you home," he tried.

[Captain Dan Myers]

"And how long will that take?"

He shook his head, and heaved out a protracted sigh. "I saw the machine that sent me here. Even if you managed to somehow reverse-engineer the science based on what little I've told you, it took Pyre and his people months to put the machine together; and they had a slave army and near unlimited resources."

His shoulders slumped. It wasn't like him to give up, and yet here he was, doing exactly that. Was it surrender though, or merely resignation: the acceptance of a truth that couldn't be overcome, in order to find a new reason to keep fighting?

"I'm not going to walk up and slap the guy or anything," he assured, offering a small smile. "I just need to see him; see his family. I need to get a handle on what's different about this world: and what better place to start, right?"

[Tom Harriman]

Tom mirrored his sigh, and his resignation. It was bad logic - a bad idea - but he couldn't find a way to argue against it.

His fingers tugged out a scrap of paper from the mound on his desk, a few short lines of text scrawled upon it. He didn't know what he'd been thinking: didn't know why he'd even written it down.

"Edwards Air Force Base," he said eventually, voice thick with reluctance as he handed the address to Dan.

"Careful though," he warned. "People are going to be looking for you, and that outfit of yours isn't exactly subtle."

[Captain Dan Myers]

An incredulous, defensive frown flashed across Dan's features.

"What the hell is wrong with my outfit?"

[Lieutenant William O'Hara]

O'Hara felt decidedly uncomfortable standing in the middle of an Air Force base, not wearing a proper uniform. Sure, he looked like a soldier: it wasn't like he was knocking on the door dressed in civvies or anything like that. But this sort of official situation called for a proper uniform; duty blues, or at the very least an actual outfit with US Air Force printed on it. The gear that Vanguard issued was good gear, and perfectly suited for the kind of work that it did, but at times it made him feel like some sort of skeevy mercenary, rather than a legit American soldier.

He'd abandoned his team at the airfield, and had appropriated one of the jeeps from the base car pool in order to get here. It was amazing what a few phone calls and the right set of names dropped to the right people could do: Colonel Hunter had everything in hand by the time he arrived. It was impressive really, when you thought about it; he often wondered how in the hell a career fighter pilot managed to get so damned organised. He'd have to ask one day, maybe.

He frowned a little; he'd rapped his knuckles against the door a few moments ago. He'd checked with base security and Myers was definately on the base, and there was a car parked in the driveway. Yet, no one had made it to the door.

He pounded his fist against the woodwork again. "Captain Myers, sir," he shouted, hoping his voice would carry into the rooms beyond. "This is Lieutenant William O'Hara. It's very urgent that I speak with you, sir."

[Daniel Myers]

"You should have told me."

When Laura Myers got angry, she didn't get loud. Maybe it was a teacher thing. There was probably some new legislation that stopped you from shouting at Elementary school kids or something like that: some weird crazy law that the state of California had embraced. Regardless of the reason, her anger didn't manifest as volume. Instead she turned deathly quiet; she acted like she was deeply hurt and offended by whatever you'd done. Daniel had seen it work miracles with their daughter and the other kids he'd crossed paths with; but being on the recieving end was like taking a shotgun blast to the gut.

"Honey, I told you -" Daniel tried; his voice was starting to sound desperate. "- that guy wasn't me."

She looked at him as if that was the most moronic thing he could ever have said. "I don't care about that. I don't care whatever flyboy stunt you and your pilot buddies pulled out there. I don't care about how you get your kicks." A glare formed in her eyes. "You should have told me that you were a -"

She couldn't say the word. Daniel did it for her. "A mutant?"

She nodded; disgust joined the medley of disapproving emotions dancing behind her eyes. "All these years I've known you. You've lied to me through every single one."

The bottom fell out of Daniel's world. "I didn't think it would matter."

Teacher training finally gave way to baser instincts. "Of course it matters!" Laura fired back, her Kansas accent thick with righteous rage. "Of course it matters," she tried again, a little composure restored. "You're sick, Daniel. And worse... you've passed on this genetic disease of yours to our daughter."

Laura reached out and shoved her hand into his chest, tearing out his heart and everything that was attached to it. Or at least, that's the way it felt. It left Daniel numb, inside and out. He looked into her eyes, and where usually he saw the kind of love and eye-rolling tolerance that had graced her gaze for all these years, instead he saw fear, anger, hate; the dark side trifecta. Everything else - everything he believed was unchangeable - was gone without a trace.

His mouth worked, but no words came out. A hand pounded on the door again. His eyes flicked involuntarily in that direction.

"Go," Laura insisted, bitterness marring her words. "It's probably one of your new adoring fans."

With that she was gone; and the sight of her walking away broke Daniel completely. This is why, his sorrow-filled mind whispered as he watched her leave, half-wondering if her walking out of the room wasn't a metaphor for some larger departure from his life. This is what I was afraid of. This is why I never said.

He managed to make it to the door, though he wasn't entirely sure how. It swung open to reveal someone he didn't recognise; military looking, but unmarked. That probably should have set off alarm bells, but his attention was elsewhere. "Can I help you?" he asked, absently.

[Lieutenant William O'Hara]

"Captain Myers," O'Hara began, launching directly into his tirade before anyone had an opportunity to interrupt him. "I'm Lieutenant O'Hara; I represent an organisation called Vanguard. It is vitally important that I speak to you about your activities in Los Angeles today."

O'Hara fought the urge to frown. Something about the guy didn't seem quite right. It was like he was older, or heavier, or like something had changed; as if the footage he'd committed to memory during the ride out here had been from a different time in the man's life. This guy seemed quiet, reserved, and strangely saddened; one hell of a convincing mild mannered alter ego, that was for sure. But when you'd blabbed your mouth in front of the media, why bother with an act at all? Things weren't adding up.

"It would be a big help if you'd volunteer to come with us, sir."

[Daniel Myers]

"It wasn't me," Daniel grunted, but it lacked a conviction: an excuse that he was tired of uttering again and again.

This man was a soldier though; or at least he looked that way. Maybe he'd listen to reason, unlike Daniel's dearly beloved. "Check base security," he tried, managing to muster a little defiance in his tone. The man had said Lieutenant; and Daniel wasn't about to let himself be falsely accused of poor fashion taste and idiotic heroics by a mere El Tee.

"They'll confirm that I was on site the entire time; not for days. Even my wife hasn't been off-base for about a week, what with it being the school holidays and all."

[Lieutenant William O'Hara]

"I'm sure they will, sir."

O'Hara offered him an apologetic smile, though it was more to be polite than because of any genuine thoughts and emotions. Normally that would be enough to convince a rational human being - that was a strong enough aliby to satisfy law enforcement after all - but the world was a strange place nowadays, and what was once obvious couldn't be taken for granted anymore.

"Unfortunately, I'm afraid that until we can confirm the nature of your mutation, we can't rely on the accuracy of the base's security records." There was a hint of a shrug on his shoulders. "When it comes to dealing with mutants like us, being in two places at once isn't as uncommon an occurance as you'd think."

[Daniel Myers]

Dealing with mutants.

That was hardly a reassuring turn of phrase. The like us hardly softened the blow, either: a Lieutenant at his door could be perfectly ordinary, but an unmarked Lieutenant with mutant powers suddenly opened up a potential new realm of conspiracies and secret agencies that he had spent his life trying to avoid drawing the attention of.

I don't want to be a part of this, his mind whispered. I just want a normal life.

The sound of a door behind him opening caught his attention; inside he grimaced as he heard the footsteps of his wife. Clearly she was spoiling for round two. Or maybe she'd come to throw accusations at the unsuspecting Lieutenant. Daniel tried to save him; to spare him from that onslaught.

"Look, Lieutenant. Now isn't exactly a good time -"

[Lieutenant William O'Hara]

O'Hara's eyes picked up the movement in the room behind the Captain; he kept his movements subtle but still threatening as his hand strayed towards the sidearm holstered at his belt.

There's an easy way to do this, and a hard way. He never spoke the words, but his actions made his meaning very plain. You're coming with me whether you like it or not. Lets not make things messy in front of your family.

The undercurrent of threatened violence was completely absent from his words, however: they retained the same formal and respectful tone the had before, though there was a slight hint of threat in his Texan drawl. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to insist, sir."

[Daniel Myers]

Daniel didn't respond; Laura's scathing voice interrupted before he even got the chance.

"One of your co-conspirators?" she accused, abject disbelief thick in her voice. Assumptions had become facts in her mind, and she was in no way prepared to listen to anything anyone had to say.

"Take him," she insisted, shoving her husband forward. Clearly, she was oblivious to the threat of firearms being made; she just wanted the man - the monster - gone from her home. "Go pull another one of your hero stunts. It's fine; I need him out of the way while I pack anyway."

Pack?

Funny how one word could convey such a terrifying, life-destroying premise. Worlds all but failed Daniel; a few fragments was all he could coax out. "Laura, I -"

He felt it before he even saw it; the vicious sting of a hand across his face. But her worlds, cold as ice and laced with the same venom that flooded her eyes, cut far deeper and hurt much more.

"I never want to see you again."

Daniel didn't realise he was over the threshold. He found out when the door slammed into his shoulder, the locks and latches clunking closed as the woodwork crashed into place.

Shoulders slumped, an utterly defeated man turned to face O'Hara. The breath that escaped him wasn't even a sigh; he couldn't muster the effort for anything that decisive.

"Lead the way, Lieutenant."

[Colonel M. James Hunter]

"Copy that, Lieutenant. Bring him on home."

Jim almost smiled. It didn't feel like an appropriate time to smile - not with a control centre full of people watching him - but the success made him want to regardless. There was relief mixed in there, too: relief at the fact that they'd managed to find and apprehend this Dan Myers character in a matter of hours, and were in the process of bringing him in without incident. He'd read mission reports of Vanguard's previous dealings with mutants from before his time; and frankly he hadn't been fond of their methods.

Things would run a little differently under his watch, he hoped; and it was much easier to be an advocate of change when you had easy successes to refer back to.

"Sir," came a voice from beside him; one of the numerous Sergeants swarming about the place. "Shall I contact General Vasher's Office, and inform them that we've apprehended the target?"

Hunter considered the question carefully. Much as his fighter pilot mentality demanded that he boast about his victory as quickly as possible, years of experience filled him with an air of caution. Life had taught him lessons before about counting unhatched chickens; and while he couldn't think of any way in which the operation could possibly go south at this point, that didn't mean that fate and the universe wouldn't manage to be a little more inspired.

"Not just yet, Sergeant," he replied.

His brow puzzled into a frown. Perhaps he could think of ways that the op could go wrong, after all. Evolution was a trickster, throwing curveballs and planting pitfalls for anyone who was too closed-minded to consider every possible option. Hunter lived in a world where the fact that someone looked, sounded, and acted like the person you thought they were wasn't necessarily confirmation of their identity. This operation had been easy. Had it been too easy?

Walking a few paces to his left, he tapped a Tech Sergeant on the shoulder; instantly they vacated their terminal, and allowed the Colonel to sit. Not quite as swiftly as an experienced operator might have done, Hunter still managed to pull up the footage from the news reels; watched as Dan Myers made his spectacular exit from the scene. His eyes absorbed the information: the timestamp; the shadows. He scooted his chair back, frowning more heavily now as he glanced to the Sergeant.

"Can you show me this location on a map of LA?"

It was a rhetorical question and, pouncing on her keyboard before Hunter even had the time to offer her the chair back, the Tech Sergeant brought up a multicoloured overview of the location of the fire; something that the analysts had already plotted an hour ago at his request. Hunter glanced between the two, dots connecting in his mind. And then he saw it.

"That's the wrong way," he said quietly.

"Sir?" the Sergeant asked, echoing his frown.

He looked at her for a moment, and then back to the screen. "When he leaves, he heads north, towards Downtown. That's completely the wrong direction if he's headed back to Edwards."

The Tech Sergeant seemed confused, but Hunter didn't dwell on that; he was back to his feet, returning to where he'd been standing a few minutes before. His lips narrowed into a grim line as he considered the favour he was about to ask. Perhaps he was still new, but there were certain things - certain abilities - that his sensibilities had trouble taking advantage of. That said, there weren't all that many ways to quickly and accurately verify a person's memories; and Hunter could only think of one person capable of that who was currently on the Vanguard payroll.

"I'll take that call to General Vasher's Office now," he said, "But it's Major Keller I want to talk to."

[Captain Dan Myers]

Dan landed on the roof. He hadn't meant to, but landing at the end of one of the leaps his powers granted was like trying to steer yourself with a parachute onto a target; only without the benefit of the parachute. There was some skill involved, but not nearly as much as Dan liked to pretend: mostly it was falling with style, and it was a mix of luck and flailing that allowed him to avoid too many unfortunate landing places.

What he was able to do was control the force of his impact with the ground. Light as a feather when he landed, Dan didn't make a sound. It was a good thing too he realised, as he peered over the roof's edge: on the driveway below there was movement; hostile movement from the look of it, or at least angry. He watched carefully, and considered his options. Now was the time for subtlety and tact.

Too bad he was no good at either.

He vaulted, hurling himself down from the rooftop to land gracefully on the driveway behind her. He allowed his impact to make a sound this time; not so loud and sudden that it would startle, but enough to be noticed.

"Excuse me, Mrs -" he started, but never got a chance to finish.

Laura whirled, surprise in her eyes for just a moment until she recognised the face they settled upon. That was all the attention he was given; her look turned to scorn, and she turned back to her task, heaving a laiden suitcase into the trunk of her car.

"You didn't bother to change this time," she observed, her tone bitter. The force with which she hurled the suitcase about made it clear that she was imagining that it was something else. "Don't try to stop me," she added.

"Mrs Myers," Dan tried again. "Laura. I am -" He trailed off.

What the hell was he actually planning to say? And what had he stumbled into? What was happening here? Why was- was this his fault? Had he done this?

"I'm not the man you think I am."

A dark note of laughter escaped from Laura. "Well, isn't that obvious?"

"Why are you even back?" She shook her head; the hatchback slammed closed, the whole car shuddering with the fury of the impact. "You and your soldier friends were barely gone long enough to pull off a stunt." She turned on him with accusing eyes. "Or are you just here to flaunt it at me? Some sort of delusion that I'll see you dressed like a fucking superhero, and just swoon into your arms?"

Dan's mind, heart, whole body stalled. He stared blankly, a sinking feeling forming in the pit of his stomach. "What soldiers?"

Eyes rolling in disgust, Laura turned her way again. "Oh, come on. Do you honestly expect me to by the 'I don't know what you're talking about' routine? Credit me with a little intelligence -"

A hand lashed out, gripping her firmly by the upper arm, spinning her around to face him again. "Laura." His voice was firm; it left no room to be ignored or disobeyed. "What soldiers?"

Something shifted in her eyes, some flash of recognition; or rather a lack thereof. Something was different. Something was off. The hair was the wrong shade, and he seemed taller; and while that was easy to change with cosmetics and costume, he seemed slimmer somehow. And his eyes: they were the same, but different. The man staring out of them was a complete mystery to him.

"Who -" She tried, her voice finally failing her. "Who are you?"

"I don't have time to explain." Dan's words were curt and clipped. "What soldiers? Which way did they take him, and how long ago were they here?"

"I don't -" More struggling for words. Her head shook slowly, brow furrowed in abject confusion. "Ten minutes, maybe? I think they were headed to the airfield."

The muscles in Dan's jaw bunched and clenched. "Wherever you're planning to go... will he know to find you there?"

She nodded. "Yes, I'll be at -"

Dan cut her off. "Don't tell me. Just take your daughter and go. I'll find your husband. I'll fix this."

He turned away, his leatherette gloves creaking as his hands clenched into firsts. He hesitated for a moment before he lept into the sky, in order to offer two parting words:

"I'm sorry."

[Daniel Myers]

Daniel sat in stoic silence as the car pool Jeep rolled along the all too familiar route from home to the airfield. There was very little for a dutiful soldier such as himself to do in such a situation: even though he outranked the Lieutenant who had come to collect him, resistance wasn't all that smart an idea when you were dealing with men in uniform with guns. Especially not when you were standing outside the front door of the house your family was in.

Granted, home was ten minutes behind by now, but even then he didn't spend more than half a thought contemplating escape. It wasn't a question of survival necessarily; more a matter of the naive hope that if he explained himself and provided his alibi they'd realise that this was all a giant misunderstanding, and it'd all blow over. They'd just skip over the whole keeping his mutation a secret part, despite the Air Force's policy to "encourage" it's personnel to register voluntarily. They'd ignore the part where pretty much every airman who'd been outed as a mutant had found themselves hanging up their uniform under the premise of don't ask, don't tell. He'd not dwell on the fact that his wife was already packing to leave the house; on how he'd been hiding what he was from her ever since they'd met.

His hand clenched involuntarily around the Jeep door; he heard and felt the groan of the vehicle's suspension beneath him; caught the puzzled frown from the driver as their movement became a little sluggish. He forced his eyes to close; forced his mind to calm; and reigned in the oh so involuntary application of his powers.

A loud thud and a clunk sounded from the hood. The suspension bobbed. Daniel's eyes snapped open; that definitely wasn't him.

His startled eyebrows raised, Daniel peered out through the windshield. A mirror peered back.

[Captain Dan Myers]

"Sorry to be a pain," Dan offered to the Lieutenant at the wheel, an apologetic half-wince gifted as well, "But would you mind pulling over?"

A palm flat on the hood of the Jeep, waves of invisible energy were already coursing into the bodywork, wrapping themselves around the chassis, axles, wheels; subtly smoothing out the warped dents and divots in spacetime that gravity caused, and transforming the vehicle into less of a weighty burden for the pavement to support.

Dan watched the Lieutenant's options zip past behind his eyes like box cars on a freight train; he saw the decision to swerve before the Lieutenant's hands had even moved the steering wheel, and sprung into action in a flash. Hands still firmly in contact with the Jeep, he stepped back onto the road. With a jolt that his knees would no doubt protest later, all the force the Jeep could muster strained against his muscles; but with the Jeep now weighing about the same as an equally sized empty cardboard box, it took a fraction of a second for Dan to heft it from the ground. Wheels span insistently, but with nothing but three inches of air between them and the nearest source of traction, the automobile and it's contents came to an abrupt halt.

It took a second or so for the Lieutenant to dislodge his foot from the gas pedal; a couple more before Dan felt entirely safe putting the Jeep down again. When he did, the Lieutenant gunned the accelerator again; but it had about the same effect on Dan as sneezing at him would have.

One hand and his shins still holding the Jeep steady, his other hand reached for the hood, compelled it to become even lighter; the hinges splintered like glass, and it tore free as if it were made of paper. It clattered to the ground as Dan tossed it casually aside, it's true weight restored the instant it left contact with Dan's fingers.

He jerked his head towards it, staring intently at the Lieutenant. "Are you gonna stop now, or am I going to have to do that to your engine block too?"