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alliummatmat · 5 months ago

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Part 11 of the Catboy in the Village AU

Part One | Part 10.5

The plan is simple:

Roier has a headache.

In reality, he's curled up under a mountain of blankets on his and Cellbit's bed clutching a pillow to his chest. His eyes are red, but he is not crying (...anymore.)

Cellbit, meanwhile, is concerned.

In reality, Cellbit is pacing a groove in the floor between his bed and his cell's door, hands behind his back clenched so hard that he can smell blood. He hasn't been able to breathe properly since breakfast, and breakfast was five days ago.

Five days. Five days of being locked in a windowless room with his borderline-suicidal husband as the queen sends spy after spy to try and track down his kids. Meals slipped in through a crack in the door, guard changes every few hours. There were even handcuffs involved until Cellbit threatened to strangle the queen with the chain.

The queen has visited every. Single. Day. Twice, even! Once in the morning, once in the evening. She comes with updates- none good- and explanations- none good- and apologies- none good.

She claims that she's trying to protect them. But she's a bad liar; Cellbit knows that this is just punishment. They disobeyed the warden, and now she's finally showing her true colors.

Cellbit hates her.

Five days of no sleeping. No eating. Just worry and pain, because his kids are fucking gone, and he doesn't know where they are, and it's his fault. He told them to run even though there were knights crawling around the entire neighborhood, he turned his back on the queen and let her hit him, he didn't stay with Roier and fight.

Cellbit hates himself.

But it's fine, he has a plan, and the plan is simple:

Roier has a headache.

It's the evening of day five of imprisonment, and the queen is due to arrive for her nightly apology update at any moment.

Coincidentally, the demon is set to appear in a few hours. Cellbit has done the math, and tonight is the night.

Pausing by the door, Cellbit can hear the guards outside shuffling to attention as the queen approaches. The heels of her boots click-click-click against the floor; for a moment, Cellbit could almost swear that it sounds like she's pacing the same way he is. But... nah.

He rushes back to the bed and drops to his knees next to it.

Only Roier's (handsome) face is visible through his depression nest, but that's fine. He's playing his part perfectly, just as he planned days ago when he and Cellbit first started scheming.

"It's time," Cellbit whispers. He slips a hand beneath a blanket and cups Roier's cheek. "She's here."

"Finally," Roier grumbles. "It's fucking hot in here."

"Of course it is. You're here, right?"

Roier, for the first time in just under twenty-four hours, cracks a smile. It's small, but it's beautiful. Cellbit wants to kiss it.

So he does.

The floor is hard, and his back still hurts from breakfast five days ago, but Cellbit would suffer through it all a hundred times over if it meant he could make his husband smile.

Cellbit feels Roier's smile widen as their kiss deepens. A hand finds itself cupping the back of Cellbit's head, a moan is let out as Cellbit playfully bites Roier's bottom lip.

The kiss falls apart as Cellbit almost doubles over laughing. He tips forward until his forehead is resting on the bed and Roier is wiggling his head back and forth in annoyance, fingers tangling in his hair.

"What?" Roier demands, playing dumb.

"Nothing!"

After a moment, Cellbit rolls his head to the side and locks eyes with Roier. He seems himself in them, and he looks so soft. He feels soft.

"Te amo," Cellbit confesses.

Once upon a time, Cellbit would have hated even thinking of himself as soft. But now he sees Roier with the exact same look in his eyes and on his face, and he knows that it's fine. It's more than fine, it's...

"Aww," Roier coos. He twists a lock of Cellbit's hair around his finger and shifts so close that their noses touch. "Eu te amo, gatinho. También."

...real.

(It's not quite right, but it's the sentiment that counts, isn't it?)

Then, just as Cellbit is thoughtlessly going in for another kiss, there's a familiar knock at the door, and he's forced to his feet with a sigh.

Roier catches his hand, moving it from his hair and down as he stands. He intertwines their fingers and squeezes once.

"Remember," he quietly says, "no explosions."

Cellbit squeezes back, once. "No promises."

And then he lets go and walks to the door. Behind him, he can hear Roier adjusting himself in bed and groaning and moaning and swearing. Cellbit himself wipes the sappy grin off his face.

Showtime.

The door opens a crack from the outside as soon as the queen hears Cellbit near it.

"Cellbit," she breathes, almost sounding legitimately upset, "I'm sorry, but there's no new information yet."

Roier moans. He doesn't even sound sexual, impressive.

Cellbit knows that he already looks concerned, because he is concerned. It was bad enough when Roier thought the kids were with Bad, but now that he knows they aren't? It's been... rough. For both of them, but especially for Roier. (He's been dreaming, again, of Bobby. And it's been keeping them both up at night.)

Still, he makes a show of looking exhausted as he leans against the doorframe and braces himself against it with a hand to his forehead.

"Great," he flatly says. "Why bother telling me?"

"Because you deserve to know, and-" the queen cuts herself off as Roier lets out a cry loud enough to shatter glass. "-uh. Is he okay?"

"WAUGH!" Roier wails.

"Headache," Cellbit replies. "He gets them a lot these days. Winter's coming, the pressure messes with his sinuses."

He sighs and lets his eyes slip shut in apparent frustration. "And the stress is just... ah, normally, I make him some medicine back home, but."

He subtly nudges the door open wider with his foot, just enough for the queen to be able to see the absolute mess of things inside the cell, including Roier in 'pain' on the bed.

Cellbit gestures towards the cell with one arm before letting it flop back to his side.

"Oh," the queen quietly says.

Then, marginally louder, she offers, "I can ask Niki to make a potion?"

Cellbit immediately shakes his head. "No, I have to be the one to do it. He won't take it if I don't, and..."

He trails off pointedly, cracking an eye open to glare.

The queen, at least, has the decency to look a bit sheepish.

"And you won't trust a potion that you don't make yourself," she finishes. "Right. That makes sense."

"Yep."

Briefly, the queen exchanges a look with the guards. They both shrug as if saying, "You're the queen."

Roier actually starts crying, then, and the queen's face falls. It's brief, so brief, but Cellbit swears that she actually looks guilty.

(He bites back a smile. Good. She should be!)

The queen looks at Cellbit and nods. "Okay. A guard and I will escort you to the healer's quarters."

Cellbit pretends to let out a relieved breath.

He turns halfway into the cell and quietly calls, "Hear that, guapito? I'll be right back."

Roier just sort of swears at him in his native language and waves an arm at him in dismissal.

As soon as Cellbit is in the hallway, there's a sword very subtly pointed at his back and a queen by his side. Great.

"This way," the queen says, and, well. Yeah. Where else would he be going?

The healer's quarters are, strangely enough, completely empty. Niki is gone.

"Empanada likes to have dinner with her and Mouse," the queen explains even though Cellibt doesn't ask. "I usually join them, but I'll probably be late tonight."

If that's supposed to make Cellbit feel bad, it doesn't.

He rolls up his sleeves to his elbows and takes a look at Niki's wall of ingredients.

Good, he thinks. Everything is here.

"I need goggles," he tells the queen, ignoring the guard's protests as he breaks away from the group to go and dig through a supplies chest.

Cellbit hears the queen whisper something to the guard.

Then, to him, she says, "I can get someone to make you new goggles, you know. Because you're going to be staying here."

As if.

"You're really sure of that, aren't you," Cellbit huffs. He pushes past a couple of glass vials until he finds a large-ish pair of alchemists' goggles at the bottom of the chest.

"Well, yeah," the queen says, audibly shrugging. "You're from here."

"Am I?"

She sighs. "Yes, Cellbit. How many times do I have to-"

He cuts her off: "I'm still waiting for proof."

Cellbit stands and takes his hat off. He tosses it towards the queen, who catches it easily; her eyes narrow as he pulls the goggles on and instinctively lets them rest over his ears.

"Seriously, how much more proof do you need?" she asks. "We literally look the same!"

"Nuh-uh. You're a girl."

He grins cheekily at her.

She lets out a harsh, annoyed sounding breath and goes to sit on the edge of one of the patient beds.

"But, seriously," Cellbit continues, going to the ingredients and starting to pick through them for what he needs, "I read somewhere that every person in the world has seven people that look just like them. You might just be one of my seven."

"Yeah, because we're twins."

"Or because our DNA is the same as six other people on the planet."

A pause, then:

"What the fuck is DNA?"

Cellbit's hand hesitates over a bottle of phoenix down.

He frowns. What is DNA?

"It's... something," he decides, waving the question aside. "I heard about it in prison."

Pac and Mike, for all their faults, are self-described 'scientists'. Cellbit isn't too big on the whole 'science' idea, but Pac is very good at making it sound legitimate. (Besides, this 'DNA' stuff is probably just another word for a magical component that Cellbit has in his workshop back home.)

"Right," the queen sighs. "Prison."

"Yeah," Cellbit agrees. "Prison. Because I was there. In prison."

He pauses in his ingredient-searching to check the cauldron to see if he needs to fill it. No, it's good...

"Princes don't usually go to prison, you know," he tells the queen. "Not a very royal place to be."

She nods. "You're right. Which is why I've been trying to figure out why you were in one in the first place."

"I ate a priest."

The queen laughs.

Cellbit scowls and goes back to the shelves.

He starts picking bottles up and bringing them to the table by the cauldron. He organizes them into recipe order, lets out a breath, cracks his neck, and pulls his new goggles down over his eyes.

The recipes for a healing potion and for an alchemical smokebomb are weirdly similar. The only difference is the inclusion of diluted dragon's breath in smokebombs.

Not looking up from the cauldron, Cellbit tells the queen and the guard, "If you start feeling lightheaded, please get out of the room. Healing potion fumes can be a little overwhelming if you aren't used to them."

The queen rolls her eyes. The guard just nods.

Cellbit doesn't bother with gloves as he uncorks the first bottle.

He has enough scars on his hands. What's wrong with getting one more?

On their way back to the cell, the queen quietly says, "Our mom tried teaching me alchemy once. It... didn't work out."

Cellbit grunts in acknowledgement.

The bottle in his hands is warm and glowing a faint golden color. To the untrained eye, it looks just like a healing potion. But the gold is the wrong shade of gold, it's too orange and not yellow enough.

The queen, of course, does not know this. Because she's stupid, and Cellbit hates her.

"I remember her teaching you, too," she continues. "You actually managed to make something. I mean, it exploded and burned your eyebrows off and almost made you go bald, but at least it didn't start melting the pot."

"See, that's how you should know that I'm not your brother," Cellbit sniffs. "I never blow my potions up."

"I think that I put too much liquid sunlight in..."

Cellbit frowns, laying on the bed next to Roier and holding his smokebomb up into the candlelight.

Roier groans. "Cellbo...!"

"It's fine!" Cellbit quickly assures him. "The explosion won't be that big!"

Roier rolls onto his side so that he's facing Cellbit. He looks... unimpressed. To say the least.

"Gatinho," he says.

"I'm sure it'll be fine. I'll be in front, anyway. You won't even feel it."

"But you will! Pendejo!"

Roier weakly hits Cellbit's chest. But, really, he can't be that mad; he likes Cellbit's explosions more than Cellbit does.

Midnight has almost arrived, and Cellbit and Roier are ready to make their explosive exit.

The demon will start screaming in a matter of minutes. The castle will be in a state of disarray, just like it is every time the demon shows up, and that's when they'll strike.

They're already dressed for travel. Roier has already done his stretches, and Cellbit managed to smuggle a steak knife away from his dinner plate when the guards weren't looking. (He's better with knives than swords.)

The second the castle starts to shake, Cellbit will scream for help, and the guards will come rushing in because he's "the prince'. Roier will throw the bomb as soon as the door is open, and then they'll both disarm-and-slash-or-kill the guards in the smoke. It'll be too loud for anyone to hear the action. They'll leave the guards locked in their own bedroom and escape out the garden exit gate that Cellbit noticed all those days ago.

It isn't the best plan, but it's good enough.

It has to be.

Sighing, Roier takes Cellbit's free hand and holds it between them.

"I'm going to kill Bad Boy Halo," he declares.

Cellbit nods, heart fluttering in his chest. "I'll help you."

"Nah, you can watch." (Roier looks at him slyly out of the corner of his eye.) "I know you like that."

He wiggles his eyebrows.

Cellbit flushes red, but he doesn't argue.

They lay in silence, waiting.

Waiting.

(Cellbit tries not to imagine his children laying cold and dead in an alley somewhere near the shop.

He fails.)

Waiting.

And then the castle starts to rumble and shake, and it's time.

Cellbit looks at Roier.

Roier looks at Cellbit.

The demon starts to wail, and Cellbit and Roier quickly separate from each other and run for the door. They settle on opposite sides of it, ready.

Cellbit waits until the first books start to fall before screaming, "Help! I think something is in the room with us!"

Roier lets out an exaggerated cry and a gurgle. He also makes a very funny face; Cellbit bites his lip to keep himself from laughing.

There's a faint, "Oh, shit!", from the opposite side of the door, and then-

Cellbit frowns as something starts slamming against the door from the outside. Are the guards trying to break it down or something? Where is their key?

He meets Roier's eyes. Roier looks just as wary, if not more so. (He is the more paranoid one of them these days, somehow, after all.)

Cellbit prepares the bottle. He also reaches into his pocket and grabs hold of his stolen steak knife.

The door crashes inwards, and Cellbit throws the bottle to the ground as hard as he can.

Light.

That's all he can see: a blinding white light. All he can feel is heat prickling at his skin. He can smell smoke. He can taste fire.

He can't hear a thing besides the ringing in his ears.

And then, suddenly, the light is gone, and the world is all smoke and chaos.

There's a singular figure in the middle of the smoke: short and recoiling from the explosion.

Cellbit grits his teeth and lunges for the door, leaving the guard to Roier. He'll take care of the one that should still be outside.

Except, he realizes as he stumbles into the hallway, there isn't anyone outside.

The hall is filled with black smoke from ceiling to floor, and the torches on the wall have all been snuffed out by the force of the blast, but, even still, he can tell that it's empty.

The world starts filling in his ears again, slowly. There's the demon. The shaking. The ending of a scream.

And Roier shouting, "Cellbo!"

On instinct, Cellbit turns and runs back into the cell. His eyes are stinging from the smoke and his nose and throat are so irritated that he doesn't know if he can even speak anymore, but he swipes at the lone guard with his knife, anyway.

"Roier!" he croaks.

He dodges as the guard tries to grab his wrist.

Glowing red eyes, four of them, creep up on the guard from behind as they continue trying to restrain Cellbit. That's all Cellbit can see through the smoke, and it's as horrifying and terrifying and just as stunning as it was the first time Cellbit saw him properly so many years ago.

Two arms- and only two arms- suddenly grab the guard from behind and pin their arms to their sides. The guard screams (same scream Cellbit heard the end of earlier, but-) and thrashes and there are footsteps coming from down the hall, and there are a lot of them, and-

"Roier, what the fuck!?" the guard demands, and, wait- "Let me go! We need to get out of here!"

Immediately, Roier lets go and turns the guard around. "No mames, what the fuck? What are you doing here?"

"Rescuing you, dude! Now, come on! Cellbit, you, too!"

Cellbit coughs in response. He's crying, but it's from the smoke. And only from the smoke.

The three of them stagger into the hallway just in time for the smoke to start to clear.

At some point, the demon stopped its tantrum, leaving the castle in silence.

Cellbit wheezes his way into briefly hugging the guard, his guard, his husband's guard.

"Jaiden!" he shouts, backing up and looking over her shoulder cautiously. "We need to hurry, I don't know when the other guards will arrive."

Jaiden, somehow there and in the castle and there, just nods. She's smiling, though, because she's just as crazy as Roier is.

"Come on!" she excitedly says. "I've got a surprise for you waiting outside!"

"Oh, yeah?" Roier asks, waving the smoke away from his face with a wrinkled nose. "If it isn't Richarlyson, I don't want it."

Jaiden laughs.

(If she's here, then Foolish knows, and they'll get to go home, and-)

But then Cellbit sees her: the queen in a sage green nightgown holding a candle in one hand and a goddamn frying pan in the other. And she looks pissed.

"Oh, shit," he swears.

He steps protectively in front of Roier.

Roier steps protectively in front of him.

Jaiden rolls her eyes and steps protectively in front of both of them with her sword drawn.

"Cellbit!" the queen roars. "What the hell?"

Cellbit opens his mouth to insult her, but he's stunned silent by a small little shout from the smoke behind the queen:

"Pai!"

Cellbit can't help it. Even if it is some magical trick, he can't help it.

He drops his knife.

But Richarlyson is still holding his as he runs between the queen's legs and under her nightgown and towards the three of them. And right behind him is a frantic-looking Pepito with his thumb in his mouth and tears streaming down his face.

Roier gasps.

It's on instinct that Cellbit drops to his knees and opens his arms. His children run right into them; Richarlyson's knife stabs a little into his back, but that's fine.

The queen stops short with a... complicated look on her face.

Jaiden, not tearing her eyes off of the queen, says, "I told you I had a surprise!"

Pepito leans up and whispers into Cellbit's ear, words slurred by his thumb, "I think Tía Jaiden ran away from home."

The castle's guards start filing into the hallway now that the demon is done attacking. They immediately surround the group and form a barrier between them and the queen, targeting Jaiden, who only manages to fight off four guards before being overcome.

They lost. They lost before they could even start fighting.

But. But Roier crashes to the ground next to Cellbit and gets an armful of Pepito and Richarlyson, and his stunned smile says a thousand words.

(Failure has never been so bittersweet.)

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alliummatmat · 6 months ago

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Bleeding Heart Part Eight

Part One | Previous Part

Cellbit paces.

His arm is in a sling, and he can still barely move it even a few days after the incident. He has a killer bruise on the back of his head, apparently, and his wrist is still the color of a grape. His spine is equally bruised, and, according to Pac, he should be counting himself lucky that he didn't end up with a concussion.

Hombre Misterioso hasn't contacted him since Man-Bear's death. Cellbit doesn't know if this is a good thing or not.

After getting back to his apartment, Cellbit collapsed onto his couch and let Pac poke and prod him. Bagi hovered nearby wringing her hands, and, somehow, and for some reason, Felps was in the kitchen making hot chocolate. Thankfully, Richarlyson had been dropped off at Bad's before Pac had made the trip across town from the lab.

It's been a few days since then, and Felps still hasn't left. Bagi has come by every night after she gets off work with takeout. Pac, stuck at the lab, has taken on the family's Richarlyson Duties for the forseeable future.

Without the use of one of his arms, Cellbit has basically been sitting and reading and playing Wii Sports with Felps. He can technically still sit at his computer and work, and he wants to! But Felps changed his Adobe password while Cellbit was in the shower one morning, and so Cellbit has officially been forced into bedrest.

Again.

Felps was with him the last time he was this messed up. Felps has been with him since the beginning, basically, so Cellbit isn't too worried about looking too stupid in front of him as he tries to move around his apartment without actually breaking his spine. If anything, it's a blessing having him around because Cellbit basically has unlimited ice to put on his shoulder.

Felps, being Felps, sits on the couch and watches as Cellbit paces. He watches like he's watching a tennis match, head movements and all.

Cellbit's phone is in his hand. His other hand is limp across his chest in its sling, and his shoulder protests with every step he takes. But-

"Dude," Felps says, "just call him."

But that's the problem, isn't it? 'Just call him'.

"But wouldn't it-" Cellbit starts.

"Relax," Felps firmly says. He crosses his arms, and he crosses his legs, and he smiles crookedly with an eyebrow raised.

"You know," he slyly says, "I haven't seen you this nervous to talk to a guy since-"

Cellbit stops pacing long enough to kick Felps' shin.

He points with his good hand, a frown on his face. "Don't."

Felps just raises his hands defensively. "What?"

"Just. Don't. I'll call him."

Cellbit does not, in fact, call him.

He actually takes a seat next to Felps and groans, leaning forward and hiding his face in his arms on his lap; his sling doesn't quite reach that far, but he makes it work.

Felps pats his back, gentle. His hand, cold, is a welcome presence.

"There, there," Felps assures him.

"He probably hates me," Cellbit mutters. "He was probably arrested."

"He wasn't arrested."

"And Bagi probably went to his place to bother him."

"She would've told us if she did."

"And he might actually be, like, dead because of me."

"Ah, maybe, actually."

Cellbit stomps his foot down onto Felps' toes.

Irritated, he sits up and fixes an unapologetic Felps with a glare.

"You aren't helping," he huffs.

Felps shrugs. "Ice?"

Cellbit's shoulder pinches.

He sighs and nods, and Felps pushes himself off the couch with a groan. He stretches, cracks his neck an impossible amount of times, and goes to the kitchen for a fresh plastic baggie of water.

Cellbit looks down at his phone in his lap. No messages from anyone but Richarlyson, who has apparently figured out how to text from his iPad even with the child lock Bad put on it; the messages are all different combinations of emojis that all roughly translate to, 'I miss you.'

Cellbit smiles.

The screen goes dark from inactivity.

Seeing his reflection, Cellbit stops smiling.

He isn't wanting a call from Hombre Misterioso, but he is expecting one. But maybe they're dead. Maybe they ended up succumbing to their injuries after the fight. It would be a shame, but a welcome one.

But they aren't who Cellbit is worried about.

In the kitchen, the sink turns on. Felps hums the Chume Labs jingle. The refrigerator rumbles.

Cellbit unlocks his phone and looks down at the screen. It's still open on the last thing he was looking at before turning his phone off: his contacts list, and one specific contact right in the center of the screen just asking to get opened.

Roier.

From the kitchen, Felps calls, "What's so special about this guy, anyway?"

"What, besides him saving my life?" Cellbit dryly asks.

He sighs, turning his phone back off and slowly, slowly leaning back into the couch.

"He's a client," he elaborates. "And I think I might have ruined his life?"

The sink turns off.

Felps comes out of the kitchen with a bag halfway filled with tap water. Frost is already forming on the outside of the bag, and the water inside is starting to crackle as it cools.

Gracefully, Felps flops onto the couch with all of his strength. He sidles up next to Cellbit, slings his legs over Cellbit's, throws an arm over Cellbit's shoulders. He carefully presses the bag of fresh ice against Cellbit's bad shoulder, the very picture of a caring nurse.

"You think you ruin everything, dude," Felps points out. "That's, like, your thing. Didn't you take a pen off Bagi's desk one time and freak out 'cause you thought you got her fired?"

Cellbit winces. "Well..."

And then he lets out a quiet moan as the bag digs painfully into a bruised nerve; immediately, Felps lightens the pressure, and the pain goes away just as quickly as it arrived.

Thankfully, Felps knows what he's doing, and so the fresh ice in his hand isn't a solid block. It's more like a slushy or a snow cone, so it's not as painful as a regular ice pack would be.

"Sorry, sorry..." Felps mutters.

Louder, he asks, "What did you even do to this guy? Did you fuck up his pictures or something?"

"I wish," Cellbit groans. He dramatically drapes his good arm across his eyes, leaning his head back against Felps' bicep. "I fucking wish that was all I did. But, no, I probably got him killed."

"Yeah, maybe."

Cellbit bucks Felps' legs off of his annoyedly. "You aren't supposed to agree with me!"

"What!" Felps protests. "I won't know unless you tell me! I've got a sixth sense for this kind of stuff. Remember when you were like-" (His voice pitches down slightly.) "-'Holy shit, Felpsinho, I killed that guy. He's super dead.' But-" (His voice goes back to normal.) "-I was like, 'No, man, look at him, he's alive as Hell.' And guess what?"

"What."

"He was!"

"That doesn't count," Cellbit scoffs. "That was Pac. He's probably immortal."

"You'd know," Felps hums.

Raising his arm to reveal one eye, Cellbit gives Felps a dirty look; Felps just grins brilliantly in response, the fucker.

Staring contest:

Felps crosses his eyes.

Cellbit immediately snorts and drops his arm again, closing his eyes and bathing in the comforting darkness.

"Ceeeellbo," Felps whispers, right against Cellbit's ear. "Tell me about the boy."

"Okay, creep," Cellbit huffs, more of a laugh than a sound of true annoyance.

In the blank space behind his eyelids, Cellbit can see the confused expression Man-Bear gave him when he called for Roier. In the back of his mind, he can hear Hombre Misterioso's voice:

'You called for Roier.'

"He's a civilian," Cellbit explains. "No powers as far as I know. He saved me from Hombre Misterioso that one time. I took pictures of his restaurant. I'm pretty sure he has a kid. And..." (He sighs.) "...I sent the Feds right to him. And then I fucking- Bagi is probably suspicious of him now, and I said his name in front of Hombre Misterioso, and-"

He cuts himself off to breathe. He can feel his blood boiling inside of him, and he can feel the ice on his shoulder start to melt.

Luckily: Felps.

He cools the ice back down, and he sticks his legs back over Cellbit like the world's gangliest weighted blanket.

"Bagi isn't a bad guy," Felps calmly says. "She's just a cop. She's probably just gonna start investigating you, so don't worry about that other guy."

If history is anything to go by, yeah, but-

"And!" Felps continues, interrupting Cellbit's internal spiral. "You told us yourself, this Hombre Misterioso guy doesn't actually give a shit about anyone that's not the Federation. Your boy is fine."

It's true, Cellbit did say that. He sent out a group text to everyone still in contact with him from his days with the Order of Villains just after Bagi left on the night of Man-Bear's death, finally admitting to being in contact with Q City's number one villain and dishing out a detailed report of everything he knows about them.

Sighing in defeat, Cellbit drops his arm back to his side and lolls his head until the top of it is resting against Felps' face.

Felps, annoying, plants a big, fake kiss right into Cellbit's hair.

Cellbit grimaces playfully.

"You're gonna give me cooties, man," he grumbles.

"No, I don't have any. I gave them all to Pac so he could give them to his janitor boyfriend."

"The Fed?"

"Yeah, the super bald one that looks like an anime villain."

Cellbit nods sagely. "Good. I hope Cucurucho gets them next. And they die."

"From cooties."

Straight-faced, Cellbit opens his phone and his notes app and writes, 'Cucurucho Cooties'.

As Cellbit types, Felps says, "You know, you have your phone open... you can just call your guy and make sure he's okay."

And, suddenly, they're back where they started almost half an hour ago when this crisis began.

Inexplicably, Cellbit feels the urge to get up and start pacing again.

Instead, he manages to move one inch before Felps is yoinking his phone out of his hand and opening his contacts. He holds it far above Cellbit's head, out of reach for someone with an assload of busted bones.

"Felps, no," Cellbit tiredly asks.

"Felps, yes," Felps happily responds. "What's his name, come on, let's get this over with so we can play Wii."

Cellbit glances fondly at the Wii.

"His name is Roier," he tells Felps, because he's a very weak man.

"But I'm going to be the one calling him," he adds, elbowing Felps in the side until he acquiesces and gives Cellbit his phone back.

Cellbit looks at Roier's contact.

He opens it.

He taps on the 'call' button.

And he waits.

...And he waits.

....And he waits.

And he waits until he's two seconds away from pacing again, but then, suddenly:

"Ah, hello? Cellbit?"

Cellbit goes limp against Felps' side, almost dropping the phone in relief.

"Roier," he croaks out. "How are you?"

Felps pokes his ribs supportively.

"I'm- ow, Leonarda, stop it! Stop it! I'm not letting you- I'm fine, Cellbit! Don't worry! What about you?"

"I'm... fine," Cellbit lies.

Felps pokes his ribs disapprovingly.

"Good, good. I was worried, you know? Your sister came over yesterday and said you were in an accident, so-"

"I'm fine! Ignore her, she's stupid and she's a liar."

A laugh: "Okay. But, listen, I told her to ask you this, but I guess she didn't, so, uh... come by the restaurant? Because you're feeling fine. Just any time, I need to get some feedback on this new soup special I came up with."

"...Sure? I'm not a big soup guy, but I can try?"

"Great! I- fuck, Leo, leave me alone, go play Roblox or something, Jesus-"

There's rustling on the other end of the line, and then: "Text me later, I'm babysitting."

And then someone else on Roier's end shouts, "I'm babysitting you!"

And then the call ends abruptly, leaving Cellbit in silence with Felps shaking his head silently next to him.

"You liar," Felps tuts.

Cellbit reaches for a throw pillow to smother him with:

"I hope you get cooties and die."

82 notes · View notes

alliummatmat · 6 months ago

Text

au where Cellbit ascends to godhood for seemingly no reason and has No Idea what he’s the god of. And so naturally he teams up with Roier, the priest of a mysterious unknown god, to figure out what he’s actually the god of

172 notes · View notes

alliummatmat · 6 months ago

Text

Cellbit’s best friend is on Reddit Dot Com.

They’ve never met.

Cellbit doesn’t know their name, just their user: Ojos_Rojos2004. (Rojo for short.) Rojo doesn’t know his name, just his user: Conhecimento69420. (Nerd for short.)

They’re the only two people on /r/losojosdelaaraña, probably because the book is obscure as hell and the community’s name is too long to be remotely convenient.

But Rojo is Cellbit’s best friend (outside of Felps, of course!), so they talk every day just in the community. Rojo doesn’t want to give out their socials, and neither does Cellbit.

It Works.

None of Cellbit’s IRL friends know about his online friend. Which sucks, but it’s whatever.

Maybe one day they’ll finally meet up in person, but Cellbit doesn’t mind the anonymity.

(Still, it would be nice…)

370 notes · View notes

alliummatmat · 6 months ago

Text

Cellbit’s best friend is on Reddit Dot Com.

They’ve never met.

Cellbit doesn’t know their name, just their user: Ojos_Rojos2004. (Rojo for short.) Rojo doesn’t know his name, just his user: Conhecimento69420. (Nerd for short.)

They’re the only two people on /r/losojosdelaaraña, probably because the book is obscure as hell and the community’s name is too long to be remotely convenient.

But Rojo is Cellbit’s best friend (outside of Felps, of course!), so they talk every day just in the community. Rojo doesn’t want to give out their socials, and neither does Cellbit.

It Works.

None of Cellbit’s IRL friends know about his online friend. Which sucks, but it’s whatever.

Maybe one day they’ll finally meet up in person, but Cellbit doesn’t mind the anonymity.

(Still, it would be nice…)

370 notes · View notes

alliummatmat · 6 months ago

Text

Cellbit’s best friend is on Reddit Dot Com.

They’ve never met.

Cellbit doesn’t know their name, just their user: Ojos_Rojos2004. (Rojo for short.) Rojo doesn’t know his name, just his user: Conhecimento69420. (Nerd for short.)

They’re the only two people on /r/losojosdelaaraña, probably because the book is obscure as hell and the community’s name is too long to be remotely convenient.

But Rojo is Cellbit’s best friend (outside of Felps, of course!), so they talk every day just in the community. Rojo doesn’t want to give out their socials, and neither does Cellbit.

It Works.

None of Cellbit’s IRL friends know about his online friend. Which sucks, but it’s whatever.

Maybe one day they’ll finally meet up in person, but Cellbit doesn’t mind the anonymity.

(Still, it would be nice…)

370 notes · View notes

alliummatmat · 6 months ago

Text

Cellbit’s best friend is on Reddit Dot Com.

They’ve never met.

Cellbit doesn’t know their name, just their user: Ojos_Rojos2004. (Rojo for short.) Rojo doesn’t know his name, just his user: Conhecimento69420. (Nerd for short.)

They’re the only two people on /r/losojosdelaaraña, probably because the book is obscure as hell and the community’s name is too long to be remotely convenient.

But Rojo is Cellbit’s best friend (outside of Felps, of course!), so they talk every day just in the community. Rojo doesn’t want to give out their socials, and neither does Cellbit.

It Works.

None of Cellbit’s IRL friends know about his online friend. Which sucks, but it’s whatever.

Maybe one day they’ll finally meet up in person, but Cellbit doesn’t mind the anonymity.

(Still, it would be nice…)

370 notes · View notes

alliummatmat · 6 months ago

Text

Cellbit’s best friend is on Reddit Dot Com.

They’ve never met.

Cellbit doesn’t know their name, just their user: Ojos_Rojos2004. (Rojo for short.) Rojo doesn’t know his name, just his user: Conhecimento69420. (Nerd for short.)

They’re the only two people on /r/losojosdelaaraña, probably because the book is obscure as hell and the community’s name is too long to be remotely convenient.

But Rojo is Cellbit’s best friend (outside of Felps, of course!), so they talk every day just in the community. Rojo doesn’t want to give out their socials, and neither does Cellbit.

It Works.

None of Cellbit’s IRL friends know about his online friend. Which sucks, but it’s whatever.

Maybe one day they’ll finally meet up in person, but Cellbit doesn’t mind the anonymity.

(Still, it would be nice…)

370 notes · View notes

alliummatmat · 6 months ago

Text

Kiss Me, You Animal! - Chapter Four

Chapter Summary:

Cell might be homeless, but at least he's gay and homeless. That's gotta count for something, right?

NEW CHAPTER NEW CHAPTER

REBLOG REBLOG

COMMENT COMMENT

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alliummatmat · 7 months ago

Text

Bleeding Heart Part Seven

Part One | Previous Part

The car quietly drives down the street, headlights off and radio on silent. The police radio, though, is crackling- occasionally spouting off updates from the dispatch team and from the police station.

Bagi is humming; Cellbit is trying to figure out what song it is.

It's just under an hour until midnight, and Cellbit is trying not to think about the fact that somebody is going to die tonight and that they're going to die because of him.

Abruptly:

"What's wrong?" Bagi asks.

"Um," says Cellbit, "nothing. Fuck you."

He huffs so hard he blows a chunk of hair out of his face, grumbles, crosses his arms, and leans back into his seat. He slumps until his seatbelt is halfway up his stomach. His knee bounces nervously. His fingers twitch and tap against his elbows.

His phone is in his lap. He's turned the sound off, but he'll know if- when the call comes in. He'll just know.

Bagi hums. "Mhm. You're just hanging out with me at work because you want to."

"Exactly."

She nods. "Even though you hate my job and everything I do, and you always tell me that you'd rather die than sit in a police car again, and you called me after a week of ignoring me, and we both got visited by superheroes today."

Cellbit's nose wrinkles. "Not heroes. Mine was just annoying. She broke into my apartment, you know."

"Yeah, mine showed up when I finally got my lunch break. I literally sat down to eat in my car, and BAM!" Bagi slams her palm against the outside of the steering wheel. "Lavagirl is opening the door and sitting in the passenger seat! What the hell?"

"What the hell," Cellbit repeats, emphatic.

Then, he frowns and gives his sister a look. "You ate lunch at three?"

Bagi rolls her eyes. "Fuck off, you probably didn't even eat lunch."

"Hey! I ate!"

"Coffee doesn't count!"

"Okay, mom."

Suddenly, Bagi slams on the brakes.

Cellbit is sent flying forward so hard with an embarrassing yelp. His seatbelt, definitely in the wrong place, cuts into his stomach so hard that it knocks the air out of him. His phone launches off of his lap and onto the floor, landing face-down.

"What the fuck!?" he wheezes, doubling over trying to pull his seatbelt away from him; it doesn't budge, auto-locked from the abrupt stop.

Sweetly, Bagi asks, "Oh, no, did that hurt? Maybe you should try sitting like an actual adult sometime."

"Are you really calling me immature right now?" Cellbit asks, looking up at her in sheer disbelief. "You could've killed me!"

"And you could act your age. You're 26. Act like it."

With that, Bagi smiles, adjusts the rearview mirror, and starts driving again.

26, Cellbit thinks. He's 26.

But, looking at himself in his reflection in the windshield, he feels simultaneously so much older and younger.

Eventually, the seatbelt loosens up again, and Cellbit sits back up straight. He grabs his phone off the floor, checks to see if anything broke, lets out a relieved breath when he sees that it's fine. (And he visibly relaxes when he sees that he didn't miss the call.)

The car turns, left towards the baseball stadium.

Bagi starts humming again; Cellbit still can't figure out what song it is.

It's fifty minutes to midnight, and somebody is going to die.

Cellbit puts his phone down. Props his elbow up on the door's inside handle. Balls his hand into a fist, rests his head against it.

It would be so easy to tell Bagi. He already has a lie ready: Hombre Misterioso has been bothering him since they failed to kill him, and they told him that they're planning on striking tonight because they thought he wouldn't tell. Cellbit hasn't said anything out of fear, because he's a powerless civilian photographer who can't possibly fight back against such a terrifying villain, but now that someone is going to die, he has finally mustered up the strength to tell the authorities.

It would be. So easy.

Bagi is a police detective. Technically, she isn't supposed to be on patrol duty- that's normally relegated to uniform officers. But Cellbit had called her just over two hours ago asking if he could do a ride-along, and so she volunteered to go patrolling.

She has a gun. She has handcuffs. She has a police car. She has mysterious powers that Cellbit refuses to even begin to think about.

The car stops at a light.

Bagi taps her fingers against the steering wheel to the beat of her song. Her mouth is pulled tight- she's stressed, even Cellbit can tell that much.

It would be so fucking easy.

Instead, Cellbit sighs, rolling his head on his fist so he's looking out the window.

"I got Bluebird," he quietly says. "She started talking about my parents."

Bagi takes a moment, but she asks, "Yours, or-"

"Both."

His answer is short, angry. Not angry at her, though, and she seems to know it. After all, this is how he sounds every time someone talks about them. She's learned by now that she isn't the one he's ever upset at; it isn't her fault that their parents were the way they were.

"Oh," Bagi says.

Another moment, then: "Lavagirl did, too. Talk about mine. I told her to get out of my car before I arrested her."

Cellbit snorts. "What for?"

"Arson. She was melting the car seat."

Cellbit can't help it. He smiles and shoots his sister a glance out of the corner of his eye.

"What, are you calling her hot?" he teases.

Bagi responds by leaning over and smacking his shoulder hard.

He yips and presses himself further against the door. "What?"

"Stop trying to distract me!" she snaps. "I'm trying to empathize with you!"

"I would never try and distract you."

"Lie," Bagi immediately says.

Cellbit rolls his eyes.

Bagi's so-called power makes her a superhuman lie detector. But Cellbit isn't convinced that her power isn't actually just being super annoying.

She's more annoying when he argues with her, though, so Cellbit gives up for the moment and explains, "Mine kept trying to tell me that we're going to get killed because of..." (He sucks in a tense breath, lets it out slowly.) "...our parents."

Bagi nods. "Yeah, that's what mine said, too. I told her to fuck off."

"Did you?"

"Literally, yes! I just told you that I was going to arrest her!"

"You'd probably like to see her in handcuffs."

"Cellbit!"

Another slap.

Cellbit laughs, sitting up and giving Bagi a teasing look.

"I've seen the way you watch her on tv," he taunts. "It's gross."

"You're gross," Bagi huffs. But at least she's smiling now. "Fuck you. You aren't much better, you know. I saw the way you looked at that guy in the hospital."

"Hm?" Cellbit innocently asks. "I was on morphine, who was that?"

"Oh, you know."

"I know that I'm pressing charges against Bluebird for forced entry," Cellbit says, expertly diverting the conversation to something much more important. "I closed the door on her, you know. But she forced her way in and wouldn't leave when I asked her to. That's trespassing."

"Make a report in the morning. Even if Cucurucho shuts it down, the news'll hear about it. She's new, who knows how well she'll do if the press starts turning against her?"

Bagi's smile is crooked and the exact same as Cellbit's used to be when he killed. Once upon a time, Cellbit refused to believe that they were related. Now, he can't stop thinking about how similar they are.

Cellbit nods, playing along. "It would sure be a shame if Baghs or Max heard about it."

"Imagine that. If she got on the Daily Quack's bad side, she might be forced to retire by the end of the year."

"Really? It's August. No way she'll be done in four months."

"She might be if Gordinho Gostosinho talks about her."

Bagi laughs. She cackles, even, like the absolute witch she is.

(When Cellbit first decided that they were related after all, he briefly thought about asking her to join him. Not because he knew that their... politics aligned, but because he thought- and he still thinks!- that she's dangerous.)

Cellbit's phone is in his lap.

The police radio calls out a robbery on the opposite side of town.

The car turns towards downtown. Cellbit vaguely recognizes the area from when he took Roier's photos for him.

Cellbit, not quite in the mood for evil laughter, settles for a rude-sounding chuckle.

This is why he wanted to be with Bagi tonight. Not because he wants to rat Hombre Misterioso out, but because he wants a distraction from the murder about to happen. Man-Bear is due to die in less than an hour, and it's all Cellbit's fault. But, if he's with Bagi, he doesn't have to think about that. He can think about other things, like ruining Bluebird's life, or Bagi's absolutely depressing taste in women.

"I need to have this back at the station at one," Bagi says after a full, solid minute and a half of laughter. "Let's get something to eat after. We can have a sleepover."

Cellbit raises an eyebrow. "In your apartment? Absolutely not."

"Fuck you! It's way nicer than yours!"

"Excuse you, mine is perfect. Yours smells like shit, like, literally all the time."

"Those are candles, what the fuck? What is wrong with you? They're lilac."

"They're gross."

"Says the guy whose apartment always smells like burned food. Learn to cook, idiot."

"Oh, come on, I-"

Cellbit cuts himself off with a choked sound as his phone vibrates in his lap.

He looks down at the screen. Unknown number, but he knows the number. He knows it, and it's time.

"What's wrong?" Bagi asks.

When Cellbit doesn't respond, Bagi repeats, "Cellbit, what's wrong?"

Something tickles at the back of Cellbit's brain, itching down his spine and into his throat.

"I need to take this," he chokes out.

With a shaking hand, he accepts the call. He raises his phone to his ear, and he waits.

And then, they speak:

"Seven-fifty Asado Street. Ten minutes. I'll see you there, mi enigmito."

And then they hang up.

Cellbit stares down at his phone.

It'll take Bagi fifteen minutes to cross the city even if she has the siren on and the lights flashing. Even breaking every traffic law known to man, Q City is so big and so maze-like that Asado Street is fifteen minutes away.

Cellbit doesn't need to see a map to know this, he knows Asado Street by heart; his adoptive mother worked in a clinic there. She delivered babies. Cellbit used to go to work with her when he was too sick to go to school. He would lay on a couch in the faculty break room and read. The street sign was right outside the window.

"Cellbit?" Bagi asks, breaking Cellbit out of his thoughts. "Tell me, what happened?"

"It's Roier," Cellbit immediately lies, moreso hearing himself talk than actually talking. "Hombre Misterioso is by him. Asado Street. He thinks they're going to kill him."

It's a lie, but. They're early. Hombre Misterioso is early.

(His throat burns.)

Bagi immediately flips a switch on the console. The car's siren starts blaring, and the world outside lights up red and blue.

She steps on the gas.

Cellbit puts his face in his hands. His fault...

Now, Cellbit doesn't have anything against murder. He just doesn't want there to be any more blood on his hands than there already is; he's retired, he can't be a killer anymore, he can't. What kind of father would he be?

If Man-Bear dies, it isn't Cellbit fault. He won't be the one killing him. But... it will be Cellbit's fault, because he has the ability to end it all. He's had the ability to end it all for two months.

He doesn't care if Hombre Misterioso kills people. He does care that Hombre Misterioso is making him an accomplice. They know that he can't just tell people that the city's most wanted supervillain has him on speed dial. They'd want to know why he didn't report Hombre Misterioso to the police the second the first phone call ended. Why didn't Hombre Misterioso finish killing him in the first place?

Cellbit is caught between a rock and a hard place.

He turns Hombre Misterioso in, and he risks his own secret identity getting revealed. He'll be taken away from his family. His personal connections will be investigated, and nearly all of his friends and family will have their identities revealed. Richarlyson will be taken back by the government. He'll end up back with the Federation. Cellbit will end up back with the Federation, and they won't give him up as easily this time.

But. But Cellbit is done with all of this: villainy, killing. He loves the fact that Hombre Misterioso is a serial killer, but he can't get his hands dirty anymore. He's a father. He can't set a bad example for his son, Richarlson is already too involved with the Order thanks to his other parents and his various uncles and his aunt.

All Cellbit wants is to be normal.

But, of course, he never gets what he wants.

Bagi pulls up to 750 Asado Street just in time for her and Cellbit to watch an enormous black bear go flying out of a sixth-floor window. It crashes down onto the sidewalk, landing on all fours.

And then the bear stands onto its hind legs and shrinks slightly.

In the flashing police car lights, Cellbit can see a teal suit forming around the bear's body. A motorcycle helmet appears over its head and face, and huge, flashing claws pop out of its upper paws.

"Man-Bear," Bagi breathes.

"He's alive," Cellbit gasps.

Well, actually, of course he is. He's Man-Bear, he's borderline unkillable: a genetically-engineered half-man, half-bear hybrid capable of lifting a tank and outpacing a racing car. His claws can shred through solid steel, and his jaw strength is enough to snap a human spine with just one bite.

Man-Bear is one of the Federation's strongest. He's definitely the strongest hero that Hombre Misterioso has targeted so far.

What are they thinking!? Even with the weird super speed and the sword, they're just a person.

Man-Bear roars, throwing his head back and puffing his chest out.

"I need to call backup," Bagi says.

She reaches for the police radio, but Cellbit grabs her wrist with a panicked look.

"Roier," he desperately says, eyes widening pathetically. (Bagi thinks he has a crush, he can use that.) "We have to find him."

Bagi's eyes soften. "I will. But we can't just leave Man-Bear alone."

As if on cue, Man-Bear yells as a familiar figure steps out from the apartment building's shadows.

"Shit!" Bagi hisses.

She shakes Cellbit off and unhooks her gun from off of her belt.

"I'm going for Roier," she tells Cellbit.

She looks at him, dead serious. "Did he say where he was?"

Cellbit, focused on Hombre Misterioso, shakes his head. He tries to look as scared as possible, and he mostly succeeds.

Hombre Misterioso flexes their wrist, twirling their sword in their hand like some sort of demented medieval knight. Their cloak billows behind them; the only hint of the front of their body visible is the police car's lights reflecting red-blue-red-blue from the eye lenses of their gas mask.

Man-Bear lunges towards them.

They dodge expertly, ducking to the side and swinging their sword upwards.

Man-Bear takes the sword cutting into his flesh like it's a paper cut. He sweeps a hind leg out and knocks a leg out from under Hombre Misterioso.

Hombre Misterioso cackles so loud that Cellbit's bones rattle within his body. They tumble to the ground and somersault out of reach of a pounce.

And the fight is on.

"Fuck," Bagi swears.

She unhooks her seatbelt and pulls her hair back into a tight ponytail and clicks her gun's safety off.

Cellbit moves to undo his seatbelt, too, but Bagi grabs his wrist and stops him.

"Stay here," she orders. "Your shitty self defense classes won't help here."

"I can help look," Cellbit tries, even though he knows that Roier isn't here, but he can't let Bagi know that Roier isn't here because he knows that she's better at finding people than Cellbit could ever dream of being, and, and-

And, with a flash, he's handcuffed to his seatbelt.

"If he starts losing, call for backup," Bagi says. "You know how the radio works. And Bluebird is bound to show up soon, she'll help."

"But-"

She smiles tensely. "Don't worry, I'll find your boyfriend. Just... stay safe."

With that, she leaps out of the car. The doors thunk! locked, and Cellbit is stuck. In the car. Watching his sister run stupidly into the closest alley. And watching Hombre Misterioso kill a man.

Cellbit groans in frustration. He then yells in frustration and violently shakes the hand cuffed to his seatbelt. He kicks the dashboard.

What kind of a stupid fucking cop leaves a civilian behind, handcuffed, just feet away from a hero fight? When the villain involved has attacked him before? And (supposedly) hospitalized him?

Is she stupid? Is Bagi stupid? She's related to Cellbit, so she must be.

Wildly, Cellbit yanks the car's glove compartment open just in case there's somehow something in there that can help him get uncuffed. He knows there won't be, but he has to keep Bagi distracted.

Why did he even answer her? When she asked? What was wrong? Why did he answer?

His attention snaps to the fight when Hombre Misterioso lets out a pained, garbled scream.

They're pinned against a telephone pole with several claws stabbed clear through their shoulder and into the wood. Their sword is still somehow loosely held in their hand, but Man-Bear's jaws are inches away from their throat and rapidly closing in.

Wait-

Sucking in a sharp breath, Cellbit lets out as loud a scream as he can:

"Roier! Run!"

(Just in case Bagi can hear him. Just in case.)

He wants a distraction, he wants a distraction, he wants-

"What?" Man-Bear rumbles, head snapping in Cellbit's direction. His helmet glints red with blood in the lights; his muzzle is covered in the stuff.

Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Hombre Misterioso swings their leg upwards. And then they knee Man-Bear right in his junk.

Man-Bear roars, recoiling just enough for Hombre Misterioso to slip off of his claws and dip into the shadows.

Cellbit rattles his hand desperately. He used to be able to get out of cuffs by dislocating his thumb and wrist, but that was years ago. Maybe he could...

Grimacing, he presses his hand into the sharp edges of the cuff until he starts to draw blood. Not too much, but enough for a potential lockpick. This, at least, he can still do.

The fight continues outside. But Cellbit lets them keep at it. He's busy.

Eyebrows furrowing in concentration, Cellbit guides his blood into the cuffs' lock. His tongue pokes slightly out of his mouth; idly, not realizing he's doing it, he licks his lips.

His concentration is suddenly broken as the police car jerks and rocks with the force of an entire human being being thrown against it.

Cellbit accidentally lets out a yell as he's jerked around.

Glass shatters and crumbles inwards into the car's back seat as Hombre Misterioso groans and shifts, trying to push themselves back to their feet.

But then Man-Bear charges. And then Man-Bear plows into Hombre Misterioso, and the car crumples like a can under their combined weight.

Cellbit pulls himself away from the back as much as he can, but he still feels his cuffed arm get pulled completely out of place.

He bites back a scream, but he lets the instinctive tears fall. He can fix this later.

"What the fuck!?" he yells.

"Sorry," Hombre Misterioso chokes, voice faint and voice modulator popping uncertainly. It's going to give out soon. "This guy sucks, right?"

They cough as Man-Bear takes a step back to prepare for what has to be a finishing blow.

They're going to give out soon.

And they're going to take Cellbit and this shitty police car with them.

(Fucking Bagi!!)

This is fucking personal, now.

Grunting, Cellbit readjusts himself in his seat so that his feet are up against the passenger-side window. The seatbelt digs heavily into his skin, he can feel himself bleeding and bruising.

He can hear Man-Bear's heart beating.

Cellbit grits his teeth. And then he kicks with both feet.

The already-cracking glass gives out from under him easily. Fresh air floods into the car, and it's there. It's in the air: blood.

"Ouagh," Hombre Misterioso moans.

Cellbit rapidly sits upright and leans his head out the window. He glares at Man-Bear, who, finally, seems to have realized that there's a civilian in the car he's actively destroying.

There's a gaping hole in the side of Man-Bear's stupid suit, it's right below one of his sponsors' logos. And, on the fabric, Cellbit can see blood. It's seeping, slow thanks to Man-Bear's ridiculous healing factor.

"You," Cellbit glowers.

Hombre Misterioso freezes in place, mid-slide to the ground. Their sword, falling from their hand, is just as stuck in place: mid-air.

"Sorry," says Man-Bear, definitely not apologetic, the bastard. "Let's do this quick, eh? Then we can talk."

Cellbit's eyes narrow.

He reaches his free arm out the window, extending his hand towards Man-Bear like he is asking for help getting out of the car.

Seeing that Hombre Misterioso isn't moving and probably assuming they're dead, Man-Bear takes a step forward to do his duty and save a civilian life.

One step.

That's as far as he gets.

One step.

In one swift, familiar motion, Cellbit closes his hand as if he was holding a rope, and he pulls.

Like scarves coming out of a magician's sleeve, red strands stream out of Man-Bear's side and wrap around his thick neck.

It's over in a flash. Just in that one step.

Not because Cellbit has pulled all the blood out of Man-Bear's body, nor because he's successfully strangled him with his own blood, but because there's a flash of iron from behind Man-Bear's body and a desperate robotic scream.

Man-Bear falls.

Behind him stands Hombre Misterioso, swaying on their feet. One of the lenses of their mask is cracked, their cloak is torn, their entire body is soaked with blood.

"You called for Roier," Hombre Misterioso weakly says. Their voice modulator is almost all static at this point, their words barely discernible.

"You dislocated my fucking arm!" Cellbit shouts.

They shrug. "I knew you'd help me, anyway."

"Self-defense. It was. Self-defense. You guys were going to kill me!"

"I suppose you coming here was self-defense, too?"

Cellbit goes silent.

Hombre Misterioso goes still.

"Cellbit!" Bagi screams.

She sprints towards the car from down the road, at least a full block away.

As soon as she gets within shooting range, she aims her gun right at Hombre Misterioso's still body.

Pathetically, Cellbit whimpers, "My arm... I think it's broken..."

"I told you to call for backup!" she snaps.

"You left me here to die," he moans, eyes fluttering shut. "I almost died."

"Hombre Misterioso, drop your sword and put your hands up."

"Bagi..."

"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law-"

"-Bagi..."

"-You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you. If-"

"-Maninha."

Just like that, Cellbit's door is being pulled open, and the cuff is being unlocked.

He's pulled into a hug; he smirks into the leather of Bagi's jacket.

"They're gone, anyway," Bagi whispers. Her hand raises to cradle the back of his head. "And I'm older, asshole."

"We don't know that."

Cellbit fakes a cough to change the subject. "Did you- did you find him?"

He feels Bagi's head shake. "I'm sorry. But I'm sure he's fine! Hombre Misterioso seemed more interested in Man-Bear."

Cellbit fakes a sniffle. "He's dead. Man-Bear. I watched him die."

"Poor you."

Somehow, she doesn't sound sympathetic.

Cellbit pinches her side. "Fuck you, I'm traumatized!"

"And, you're hurt."

Slowly, Bagi backs out of the hug.

Cellbit's eyes open, and he's immediately met with a flashlight being shone into his eyes.

He yelps and shuts his eyes again.

"It's my arm that's fucked up!" he protests. "Not my head!"

"With that big head of yours? You probably got a double concussion."

"Is that even a thing?"

"Do I look like a doctor?"

Cellbit groans, "Just put my arm back in place and take me home."

"Nuh-uh, hospital."

In a flash, he's sitting up and shaking his head, eyes wide and panicked. "No! No, no hospitals. Bagi-"

She huffs, more than used to this. "-Cellbit! There's blood in the car!"

"It's not mine!" he argues. His heart hurts, it's beating so fast in his chest. "Just take me home and call Pac! He's a doctor!"

"Yeah, no, he has a doctorate. You need a doctor."

"I need a sister who actually cares about me," Cellbit snaps. He tries to stand, fails, sits back down with a wince. "I don't- Bagi, please!"

Bagi bites her lip. She knows why he doesn't like hospitals, but she doesn't understand. She never could. She never will, no matter how hard she tries.

Eventually, she relents. Her head hangs, but she nods.

"Fine," she grumbles.

Cellbit's chest stops squeezing as tightly.

He can't feel his arm.

He smiles weakly, anyway.

Forcing himself to his feet, he stumbles forward into Bagi's arms. With his one good arm, he hugs her, because he can. Because, hey, his arm might actually be broken, and there's a dead man less than ten feet away from them, but he's alive. Somehow, he's alive.

"This is all your fault," he murmurs, right into her ear. "Should've taken me with you."

She hugs him back, of course.

"Fuck you," she warmly replies. "Stay home next time."

He barks out a laugh. She giggles along, not quite understanding why he's laughing.

Stay home, hah. No. No way he's going to be able to do that now. Not now that he helped Hombre Misterioso kill. Not now that Hombre Misterioso is convinced that Cellbit secretly wants to help him.

There's blood on Cellbit's hands. The real question is how much more he can take before he breaks once and for all.

A/N: Let me know what you think in the tags or in my inbox! I want to hear your theories, thoughts, opinions, everything!

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alliummatmat · 7 months ago

Text

A Little (bit of) Love

My piece for @tryzine !!

It starts deceptively simple: Cellbit and Roier are taking a walk together through the Favela at sunset, fresh coffees in their hands from Starbobby. Cellbit can’t stop staring at Roier. Roier can’t stop staring at Cellbit. Bobby is watching from above, probably rolling his eyes at how goofy Roier looks when he’s in love.

There are two creatures walking a step behind Cellbit and Roier that Cellbit is purposefully ignoring.

Roier’s shoe comes untied next to a recently-added flowerbed. Cellbit offers to tie it, Roier laughs and teases Cellbit, Cellbit hands Roier his coffee to hold as he crouches and takes Roier’s shoelaces in his hands.

Just barely visible through the gap between Roier’s legs, Pulgoier looks blankly up at the flowers. They’re taller than it is, but just barely.

?, the disgusting little thing, follows Pulgoier’s gaze. And then, horrifyingly, and entirely of its own accord, it reaches up and snaps a flower off at the base of its stem. It holds the flower out to Pulgoier, head ducked just slightly, almost bashfully; Pulgoier doesn’t smile, because it can’t, because it isn’t real, but it does take the flower.

Frozen in abject horror, Cellbit doesn’t react as Roier annoyedly taps at his head and asks what’s taking so long. Why is he just sitting there, what’s wrong?

And then Roier turns around and sees his Mini-Me holding the flower close to its chest and pressing a plastic kiss to ?’s cheek, and Roier gasps.

“Aww, look!” he coos, fingers tangling in Cellbit’s hair excitedly. “They’re in love!”

And Cellbit feels nothing.

Cellbit’s son is gone. So is a significant part of Cellbit’s heart, and yet he knows that he is still capable of feeling love. He’s alive, after all: he isn’t a religious man, but he likes to think that everything with a heart can feel love. Dogs love their owners. Lions love their mates. Crocodiles love the hunt. Parrots love to show off.

The Mini-Mes? Notably not alive. They aren’t real. They’re plastic and felt and yarn and whatever-the-fuck electronics the Federation shoved into their fake little bodies. Their nerves are made out of copper. Their veins are filled with self-recycling machine oil. Their hearts are combustion engines that run off of the items that their islander counterparts provide them daily.

Cellbit knows this. He’s cut his Mini-Me apart so many times that ? knows not to squirm on the dissection table. Every time he’s sewn ? back together, he’s made ? hold the roll of string so it doesn't roll away. He’s made ? bleed oil to the point that he once caught ? drinking gasoline when Cellbit’s back was turned.

The Mini-Mes don’t feel emotions. They can’t. They aren’t real. They’re creatures, if one could call an inhuman amalgamation of wires and eco-friendly microplastics a creature. It’s more apt to call them robots.

Monsters.

Cellbit knows that the MIni-Mes were created for war. He watched the video at that conference, he knows exactly what the little assholes were made for. Now that they’re stolen, their purpose has probably been shifted by the Federation from fighting to spying.

They can’t feel love. This much, Cellbit knows. They were created for battle, and now they’re just biding their time. Waiting.

The fact that ? seems to be in love with Pulgoier is an outlier that should not be considered. They’re both just mimicking their owners, that’s all. Which begs the question of exactly how adaptive the Mini-Mes are; they can change appearance at the drop of a hat, but behavior? They’ve been robotic up to this point, what changed?

Cellbit asks this to ? as ? sits in its cage staring at the oil-stained wall.

?, of course, doesn’t respond. That’s good, Cellbit doesn’t know what he’d do if the little bastard learned how to talk.

But, at the lack of a response, Cellbit inexplicably feels a sense of… God, is this bravery he’s feeling coming off of ?? Is that it? An attitude?

Cellbit’s eyes narrow, and he leans in closer to the cage with a sneer.

“Whatever you’re doing, I’m onto it,” he growls.

? just adjusts its goggles in response. Its hand briefly dips into the Fear Room’s light, exposing a thin black line drawn around ?’s left hand ring finger. A ring.

Cellbit is so surprised that he doesn’t even feel angry for a good moment.

But then ? looks up at him as if asking, “And what about it?”, and Cellbit finds himself standing and kicking the cage so hard that it falls over, sending ? toppling.

A ring. A goddamn ring.

A goddamn mockery, more like. It’s mocking him. The Federation is mocking him, he knows it. He fucking knows it.

(But… why?)

Pulgoier starts holding ?’s hand. ? keeps picking things off of the side of the road to give to Pulgoier, and Cellbit hates it.

Roier makes a little shoebox bed for them that he puts under his and Cellbit’s own bed. Instead of powering off for the day in a corner of the room, ? and Pulgoier go there at night, and Cellbit hates it.

? and Pulgoier sit across from each other on the floor when their owners have their meals. Sometimes they pretend to eat, usually pretending to feed each other, and Cellbit hates it.

Richarlyson would have killed them by now. Cellbit wishes he was here to do so, but.

But.

But it’s well past midnight, and Cellbit can’t sleep. This isn’t anything too unusual; he learned how to live off minimal sleep back during the War, for better or for worse.

But Roier can’t sleep, which means that he’s somewhere in the castle, which means that Cellbit is somewhere in the castle because there’s no way in Hell he’s letting his depressed and sleep-deprived husband wander around mourning.

Tonight’s ‘somewhere’ is the garden, and Cellbit has Roier in his arms as they sway back and forth to the music playing softly on Roier’s communicator. (The Federation is shitty for so many reasons, but at least it’s providing the island with Spotify Premium free-of-charge.)

The song is unimportant. So are the two little freaks of nature watching from beneath a rosebush. So are the Federation’s hidden cameras, and Bad somewhere downstairs trying to carry Cellbit’s dining table out the door, and the itching bloodlust in the back of Cellbit’s brain.

What is important is Roier, and so Cellbit focuses all his attention on him.

He’s tired, clearly so: his hair is more of a mess than usual, his clothes are rumpled and wrinkled, his shoes are untied, his bandana is lost somewhere in the bedroom, his lips are chapped, and the circles under his eyes are dark enough to rival Cellbit’s.

Cellbit doesn’t think he’s ever seen a more beautiful man in his life.

He says as much, words ghosting across Roier’s pale lips.

Roier smiles weakly, and he murmurs a quiet, “No, you.”

The song changes to something a bit quicker. They both ignore the change in tempo and decide to follow each other’s, instead.

Cellbit’s arms tighten around Roier. He pulls him closer, nose burying itself in the side of Roier’s neck and breathing in his scent and internalizing it, filing it away in the little cabinet in his brain labeled ‘Roier’.

“You stink,” he grumbles.

“Yeah, because you’re all over me,” Roier responds. He lightly pinches Cellbit’s side. “I know what we’re doing when we get back inside.”

Cellbit whines, sagging in Roier’s arms. He loves his husband, but he does not love showering with him; Roier takes so long under the water that it’s running cold by the time it’s Cellbit’s turn, and his shampoo smells so strongly that it makes Cellbit have an asthma attack.

Cellbit doesn’t even have asthma!

What Cellbit does have is an unfortunately-acute sense of hearing. It’s a blessing at times, and it’s a curse.

His eyebrow twitches in annoyance as he hears the absolute faintest of sounds: the crunching of grass beneath clumsy feet, and the overworking of machinery as it tries to figure out how to laugh.

At the same time, Roier gasps, “Mira, mira!”

But Cellbit doesn’t look. Why should he? He’s having a good time. He doesn’t need some… some… some things ruining it.

“Ay,” Roier insists, poking Cellbit between his ribs once. “Gatinho, mira.”

Another poke. “Mira.”

Another poke. “Cellbit.”

(Poke.) “Cellbo.”

Cellbit’s eyes squeeze shut. He presses a kiss to the crook of Roier’s neck to try and appease him, but Roier just pokes him again. With determination.

“Stop ignoring me!” he huffs. “Unless… you hate me? You want a divorce?”

At that, Cellbit’s head snaps up in a panic.

“Não!” he shouts. Why would Roier ever…

Lips twitching into a semblance of a smile, Roier grabs Cellbit’s face with one hand- squeezing his cheeks together and making him feel a bit like a fish- and turns it to the side.

…right. If there’s one thing Roier is, it’s a fucking asshole. (And a handsome one at that.)

Cellbit’s shoulders sag in relief, but said relief quickly melts back into annoyance as he’s forced to look at the Mini-Mes and their… well. It isn’t dancing, that’s for certain.

Pulgoier has taken the lead, just like Roier has. It’s holding ?’s little hands and rocking from side-to-side: left, right. Left, right. Left, right. It doesn’t move from its spot other than a small amount of shuffling as it tries pulling at ?’s hands in an attempt to get it to actually move.

? is still. It’s staring directly into Pulgoier’s beady little eyes, absolutely frozen. If it could blush, Cellbit is sure that it would be doing so.

Cellbit inadvertently copies it, stiffening against Roier’s body and stopping any and all movements. He doesn’t mean to- he wants to keep dancing, to keep ignoring the Mini-Mes and their bastardized attempt at “romance”, but…

“Look,” Roier quietly says, sounding almost awed.

He lets go of Cellbit’s face so he can press his cheek against Cellbit’s.

Cellbit feels Roier’s jaw work against his as he concludes, “It’s us.”

Because… it is. It is, somehow, in such a fundamental way that Cellbit can’t really identify it as anything but Cellbit-And-Roier.

“Oh,” says Cellbit, voice hardly above a whisper.

He watches as Pulgoier tugs on ?’s arms, and as ?’s legs start to shake under it.

Cellbit doesn’t actually remember a lot of his wedding reception; between the explosions and the alcohol, it’s all just a lot of blurry faces and the feeling of Roier-Roier-Roier-Roier-Roier.

What he does remember is being ushered into the center of the dance floor along with Roier and freezing. The world faded from around him, and all he could think about was Roier’s smile as he took Cellbit into his arms; Roier’s warm hands on his body; Roier’s alcohol-laced breath across his face. His body was a stranger.

He remembers thinking, ‘Shit. I don’t know how to dance.’ Because he didn’t, and he still doesn’t, because he never had a chance to learn how. It just never came up in his life, and then, suddenly, he was supposed to dance. At his wedding. In front of the entire island. And everyone he knew.

And he remembers the way Roier’s face softened as he picked up on Cellbit’s anxiety. His hands slid from Cellbit’s back, up to his shoulders, down the lengths of his arms, and to his hands. He tangled their fingers together, took a step back, and winked.

Pulgoier physically can’t wink, but it otherwise does exactly what Roier did all those months ago: it takes a step back, and it just starts spinning.

? can’t shout like Cellbit did back then, but it otherwise does what he did all those months ago: it gets pulled along, forced to spin along with its partner, stumbling over its own feet and flailing about like a doll caught in the wind.

“I can’t fucking believe this,” Cellbit mutters.

“I can,” Roier replies. “He’s your Mini-Me, of course he can’t dance for shit.”

He yelps out a laugh as Cellbit indignantly steps on his foot.

Roier’s right, though; Cellbit can’t dance for shit. And neither can ?, being Cellbit’s shitty little clone.

The night of the wedding, it took Cellbit a good solid minute to get his feet back under him. He felt himself smiling, and, maybe it was the wine in his system, but he found himself tugging Roier in a spin in the opposite direction. He was dizzy as Hell, but it made Roier laugh when he did it, so he just… kept doing it. Eventually, the spin led into a proper attempt at a slow dance that failed so miserably that the two of them gave up and jumped onto the stage for another round of karaoke.

Tonight, ? picks up on things a bit quicker than Cellbit had. It stabilizes, nods to itself, and starts pulling Pulgoier into its own spin. Almost immediately, they’re attempting a proper waltz, and Cellbit…

Cellbit doesn’t get it.

At first, Cellbit wasn’t sure what the end goal of the Mini-Mes was. Then, he realized that they’re little soldiers. Robotic supersoldiers capable of self-multiplication and growth, literal war machines.

But then… why do they look like the islanders? Why does Pulgoier have the same dark circles as Roier? Why does ? have the same scar across its chest that Cellbit does? What’s the point? The Federation doesn’t do anything without a purpose, so why do the Mini-Mes have to look like their owners if they’re meant to grow up and kill them?

Why can they dance?

“What’s the point?” he murmurs. Roier hums in acknowledgement, and Cellbit takes that as a sign to continue: “Of copying us?”

“Because we’re sexy,” Roier responds.

Cellbit rolls his eyes. “True. But, think about it, what purpose does any of…” (He waves his hand in the MIni-Mes’ general direction.) “...this serve?”

“I don’t know, but… look at them.”

Cellbit looks. He doesn’t understand. Something uncomfortable rises in his throat.

? twirls Pulgoier, leading it into a dip. Pulgoier raises its head and presses its painted mouth against ?’s.

Chest clenching, Cellbit tries to tear his eyes away, but he just… can’t. He can’t. Not when they’re right there, not when they’re-

“You think they’re learning from us, right?” Roier asks. “So… maybe they aren’t learning how to kill us. Maybe they’re learning to be us.”

Cellbit gives him a flat look. “Isn’t that just as bad?”

Roier shrugs, still watching the little monsters.

“Maybe,” he replies. “I’m not a scientist. But… isn’t it kinda crazy that we taught robots how to love?”

But robots can’t love. They can’t. But.

Roier’s arms tighten around Cellbit’s body. His smile is just as forced as it has been since the eggs all vanished, but his eyes are surprisingly soft as he watches the Mini-Mes tumble into the grass from the force of their silent, impossible laughter.

“They’re just copying us,” Cellbit weakly says. “It isn’t actually real.”

“Maybe,” Roier hums. One hand travels up to cup the back of Cellbit’s head, gently pulling it against his chest. Cellbit listens to Roier’s heartbeat and wills his own heart to match its pace.

“Or,” he continues, “maybe it is. We found our reasons. Maybe they found theirs.”

They watch the Mini-Mes, and the Mini-Mes don’t notice.

The song changes, and Roier starts leading Cellbit into another dance.

Cellbit’s eyes slip shut, and he lets himself get swept away by Roier’s movements.

(Bagi would call Cellbit a monster, but Cellbit found love in the end. So maybe, just maybe, ? could have done the same.)

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alliummatmat · 8 months ago

Text

Bleeding Heart Part Six

Part One | Previous Part

Almost two months after his first altercation with Hombre Misterioso, Cellbit hears a knock at his door as he's editing the last of Roier's photos.

Yawning, Cellbit leans his chair back and runs a hand through his hair. He cracks his neck and blearily checks the time in the bottom corner of his computer screen: three in the afternoon. He started editing almost nine hours ago. He's been out of coffee for two and a half hours at least.

So he gets up, groans as his spine protests at the sudden weight, winces as his bones all pop in quick succession. Picks up his coffee mug, ignores the knocking at the door, goes to start a fresh pot of coffee.

His mug was painted by Richarlyson at one of those do-your-own-pottery places. It's a bright, ugly yellow with a red heart and the words, 'World's Okayest Dad' painted on it in black.

The knocking continues.

Cellbit checks his hair in his reflection in the microwave. Pulls at one of the bags under his eyes. Sticks his tongue out. Grimaces at how stupid and old and tired he looks. (Bagi is 26, he thinks, so he should be, too. But, wow, he looks older. Much older.)

More knocking.

With one last forlorn look at his bubbling, brewing, beautiful coffee, Cellbit finally goes to answer the door. He's in his pajamas (sweats and one of Felps' old shirts), and he probably looks like a walking corpse, but, like. Whatever, anyone stupid enough to actually come to his apartment knows that he works from home. They should know what to expect when bothering him.

But:

"Hi!" Bluebird cheerfully says as soon as Cellbit's door is open.

Cellbit looks at her. He blinks, rubs his eyes with one hand, and moves to close the door in her face.

But he's stopped by Bluebird sticking her foot in the door and weaseling past him and into the apartment. She apologizes as she does so, but Cellbit knows that she doesn't mean it; she's a hero.

"Nice place," she comments, walking to the couch and plopping herself down like she's right at home.

"Um," awkwardly says Cellbit. "Get out of my house?"

"Who, me?"

Bluebird actually, really, legitimately looks around the room dramatically, head and hair whipping back and forth as she tries to find whoever it is that Cellbit is actually talking to.

Cellbit balls his hands into fists by his sides. Fucking. Heroes.

Bluebird's costume is basic: black undersuit, light blue vest and darker blue pants, white ski goggles. Her hair is halfway tied back in a ponytail. Her weapon of choice, her now-famous scythe, is on her back and digging into Cellbit's couch cushions. The Federation's logo is right on her chest, and all her sponsors' logos run down her sleeves and the legs of her pants.

Cellbit hates her. She isn't even making an attempt to hide her identity- the goggles aren't doing shit. Heroes don't have to hide themselves. Their faces are on cereal boxes. Bluebird is no exception, especially now that her popularity is skyrocketing.

Bluebird, of course, is assigned to find and defeat Hombre Misterioso. The public thinks that her job is to capture them so they can be tried and imprisoned in the Federation's special underwater prison facility. But Cellbit knows that she's going to kill Hombre Misterioso, and it'll be framed as an accident, and she'll get 'suspended' for a month or so as punishment but, really, it'll actually be a vacation reward for a job well done.

"What do you want," Cellbit flatly asks.

Sighing, he nudges the door shut behind him and leans against it, arms crossed.

Bluebird stares at him for a moment.

(Bare arms crossed, scars and all.)

And then she lets out a breath and crosses her legs, fold her hands neatly on top of her knees and tries to smile. Tries, because Cellbit can tell that her heart isn't in it.

"Hey," she hesitantly says, "so I'm supposed to be asking you about Hombre Misterioso and stuff, but, real quick, I just wanna say that I'm really sorry if Cucurucho's been bothering you."

"You're wasting your time," Cellbit tells her. "Get out of here before I call the cops for trespassing."

Bagi would love to arrest a Fed, even if the charge wouldn't stick longer than an hour after arrest.

Bluebird winces. "O-kaaaay, sensing some hostility here. But, listen, we all just want this guy caught, right?"

"Sure. It's a real shame what's happening to all your heroes."

"It is! And you almost ended up like them, but! But you didn't."

"Yeah." Cellbit nods. "Because I'm not one of you. You're talking to the wrong guy."

He smells coffee.

Ignoring Bluebird for the moment, he walks through the main room and past the couch and the hero on it so he can squeeze into the kitchen. His apartment isn't small, but the kitchen table takes up a solid ninety-percent of the kitchen's floorspace. It even dips into the main room, making it real hard to get around at night when the lights are off.

He grabs his mug and the coffee pot and pours himself a fresh cup. He can feel the warmth radiating out from them both, and he shivers involuntarily. (He usually wears a hoodie when he's working, but he spilled coffee on it earlier in the afternoon and hasn't gotten around to getting a fresh one out of the closet.)

Bluebird, of course, follows him. She hovers in the doorway near the end of the table; her scythe is tall enough to almost scrape the top of the doorway.

Cellbit raises his mug to his lips.

"You might not realize this, but you were probably targeted," Bluebird says, actually almost sounding serious. "Your parents might be dead, but you and your sister aren't."

Cellbit jerks so hard in response that he spills his fresh, hot, boiling coffee all down his front. But he can barely feel it through the sudden rush of hatred in his body.

"My parents had nothing to do with the Federation," he snaps. He pulls his wet shirt out in front of him and wrinkles his nose. "Excuse me."

He puts his cup down on the counter and pushes past a surprised Bluebird to go to his room. He actually manages to close this door behind him as he pulls his shirt off and starts searching for a new one.

As he's digging through his shirt drawer, he hears a tap-tap-tap at the window behind his desk.

Dread filling his veins, Cellbit turns around and sees a familiar gas mask poking out over the top of his computer monitor.

Hombre Misterioso waves.

Cellbit, suddenly, feels rather faint.

"No, sorry!" Bluebird calls through the closed door. "That was my bad! I meant your, uh, the parents you and your sister share? Not your actual parents."

Cellbit points aggressively at the window and mouths, 'Get the hell out of here!'

Hombre Misterioso just waves some more. They're absolutely smiling under their mask.

It's the afternoon. They haven't been seen once in the day, only at night. Sometimes in the evening. Rarely at dawn. Not when the sun is out; it's theorized that their powers relate to the darkness like the Demon's.

"I have nothing to do with those people," Cellbit huffs. He turns back around and grabs a random shirt out of the drawer and starts pulling it on. "Cucurucho probably made you read my file, right? So you should know that."

"It... briefly mentions the Webbers, but that's not what's important!" Bluebid protests. "The Federation is really worried about your safety here, dude! My partner, Lavagirl, is currently talking with your sister about this exact same thing."

"You'll have better luck with her. She's actually on your payroll."

"Yeah, so her time with the Junior Heroes actually makes her a bigger target than you, probably, but, listen-"

Somehow, Cellbit's window starts to squeak open behind him.

He whips around and glares at Hombre Misterioso, who freezes in place with their fingers on the glass. Are those... suction cups on their fingertips? What, are they a thief now? A Spider-Man wannabe?

"No!" Cellbit shouts.

Hombre Misterioso flips him off with a palpable roll of the eyes.

Bluebird repeats, "'No'? Aren't you listening to me right now? Hombre Misterioso is trying to kill you!"

Cellbit laughs dryly. "Yeah, no."

He angrily drives his finger downwards: 'Get down.'

Hombre Misterioso shakes their head.

Cellbit rolls his eyes and points at his bedroom door: 'Someone's here!'

Hombre Misterioso shrugs and starts moving his window again.

Cellbit bites back a groan and rushes to slam his window shut, having to reach around his computer to do it. It slams, and then it's immediately being raised again by the goddamn menace on the fire escape outside.

"Are you okay in there?" Bluebird worriedly asks. "You didn't get burned or anything, right?"

"Mmm, yeah, no, I'm burned as shit," Cellbit lies.

He hisses, eyes narrowed, "Fuck off! There is literally a superhero in my living room right now!"

Hombre Misterioso responds by pulling their cape aside and revealing the hilt of their sword.

"No!"

"Do I need to call an ambulance or something?" Bluebird asks.

"No, I'm fine!" Cellbit replies. "I'm putting on some burn cream now!"

"...You keep that stuff in your bedroom?"

"My computer is old as shit and I have to run Photoshop on it. I burn myself daily. Just... get out of here!"

Cellbit, only vaguely panicked, suddenly grabs an exacto knife from his supplies drawer and drags it across his palm.

Hombre Misterioso lets out an alarmed-sounding electronic gasp, but Cellbit just grits his teeth through the pain and forces a string of his blood out of his hand and around the window's latch and then around the leg of the desk. It ties itself off with a neat knot; Cellbit forces his bleeding to stop and starts willing his platelets to kick into action.

"No, wait, I'm a hero!" Bluebird argues. "I'm trained in first aid! Let me help!"

"I'm literally shirtless!" Cellbit, wearing a shirt, shouts. "Get the fuck out of my apartment!"

"Not until I know you're okay! Do you know how much trouble I'll get in if they find out I let a civilian get hurt?"

Oh, Cellbit knows.

The window rattles and strains as the string of blood keeps it shut. (Blood is made of iron, after all.)

With his palm already scabbing, Cellbit storms towards the door and slams it open, blocking his desk and window from view with his body.

Bluebird looks up at him, determined.

Cellbit wants to stab her.

Instead, he says, "Look, I'm not the guy you want to talk to about this. Your partner is already talking to Bagi, but you both have forgotten about the guy who chased Hombre Misterioso away from me that time."

(The window goes silent.)

For whatever reason, Bluebird sucks in a sharp breath before attempting a smile.

"Oh, Roier?" she asks. "We don't need to talk to him."

Cellbit cocks his head. "Really? Because I was unconscious. I can't tell you anything about what Hombre Misterioso was doing. But Roier saw it all."

"And he talked to the police."

"But Hombre Misterioso has to be pissed at him for ruining their kill, right?" Cellbit asks. "Serial killers always end up escalating outside of their pattern, everybody who's studied them knows this. They lose control. The pattern now is Federation workers, but maybe it'll expand to people protecting Federation workers."

Bluebird pales.

Cellbit rolls his eyes. "Come on, have you really not thought of that? Aren't you guys supposed to be, like, crime experts?"

"Hey! I'm new!"

"Yeah, and you're letting a civilian stay in danger because you're too focused on protecting a failed lab experiment," Cellbit scoffs. "Trust me, if this guy knows as much about me as you think they do, then they know that I'm not the guy they want to kill. They're looking for people who like the Federation, not people who hate it."

Bluebird narrows her eyes. "That's a dangerous thing to say to a superhero, you know."

Cellbit shrugs. "Sue me. You read my file, you know that I'm more likely to be a suspect here than a victim."

She nods. "...Yeah, but you don't have powers. And they do."

He smiles bitterly. "Right."

He looks at Bluebird.

Bluebird looks at him.

"Well?" he asks. "It's a couple of hours until the sun sets, and Roier's going to be leaving work soon. In that area of town? It's only a matter of time until Hombre Misterioso catches him."

There's a quiet laugh from the window.

Cellbit quickly covers it up with a cough and a faux-pained wheeze. He grips at his chest, wincing.

Bluebird's eyes widen. "Oh, shit! Right! Your burn!"

He waves her off. "Don't worry about it, I texted my friend. He's a doctor, he's on his way."

"Really?"

"Yeah, Pac from Chume Labs? He probably helped develop your training program."

"Oh, shit, you're friends with him?" she gasps.

"What can I say? Us Brazilians gotta stick together."

"Huh. Fair. Well..."

She looks uncertain, but she nods, acquiescing. "Fine. If he's coming. But, listen, call the hotline if you see Hombre Misterioso around, okay? You might not have the... best history with us, but the Federation is good people."

Cellbit smiles. "Get out of my apartment."

Once she's gone, Cellbit lets out a scream into his hands and turns to go and yell at Hombre Misterioso some. What the fuck!

He storms to the window and drops the string. It falls apart, blood splashing onto the desk and the carpet.

He wrenches the window open and finds himself nose-to-nose with Hombre Misterioso.

Well.

Nose to gas mask.

"What do you want?" Cellbit growls.

"Who was that?" Hombre Misterioso replies.

"Bluebird. You know, the hero literally assigned to kill you?"

Hombre Misterioso's shoulders tense minutely. "Oh."

Cellbit rolls his eyes. "Yeah. Now. What do you want? The sun is out. And I hate you."

"Ouch."

"Don't act surprised. You're literally stalking me."

"I'm not. But I am here for a good reason."

"You are literally at my apartment." Cellbit blinks. He flushes red in both anger and embarrassment. "You saw me shirtless!"

"And it was very nice, but I'm here to tell you that I am going to kill Iron Boy tonight at midnight."

Iron Boy... former Junior Hero, graduated a few years ago into the mainline hero program, no known powers but an affinity for technology. Otherwise known as Tubbo, one of Pac's coworkers at the lab, and one of Cellbit's biggest haters for no good reason.

Tubbo isn't that old. He's a mentor hero for the Junior Heroes. He doesn't do much actual hero-ing outside of escorting the juniors on crime fighting field trips and testing out weapons for the lab.

Cellbit shakes his head. "Not him."

"Yes, him."

"Do someone else. Without him, the lab is understaffed until Mike gets back from his honeymoon, and we don't know when that's going to be. Kill him when Mike's back."

"Ugh, fine," Hombre Misterioso groans. They slump against the windowsill and rest their chin on their arms. "Who should I kill, then?"

"Why are you asking me?" Cellbit asks. "I'm not a villain, in case you haven't noticed. I'm retired."

"Whatever you say, enigmito." They drum their fingers against the inside of Cellbit's wall. "Maybe I should find Sharkboy."

"Fuck Sharkboy," Cellbit immediately declares. "If you can find him, kill his ass. But he's also retired. Nobody from the Order has been able to track him down."

"Maybe I should find one of those French heroes," Hombre Misterioso muses. "What do you think?"

"I think that I should give you Crow Man's phone number so you can ask him about this and not me."

Suddenly, Hombre Misterioso sits up and snaps their fingers.

"I know!" they excitedly say. "Man-Bear!"

Man-Bear... must be one of the newer heroes that Cellbit doesn't know about. Richarlyson might have heard of him, but. Yeah, no, Cellbit isn't going to ask him. He doesn't want to risk a repeat of the aquarium.

"Fine, Man-Bear," Cellbit sighs. He gives Hombre Misterioso a tired look. "Is that all? Can you go now? And never come back? And leave me alone?"

"I mean, you can come with me toni-" Hombre Misterioso starts.

They freeze.

Cellbit watches their still body until they come back to themselves in the middle of a different sentence and in a different pose: gesturing grandly with their hands and audibly smiling.

"-a team!"

"Yeah, no," Cellbit immediately says. "I can get you the Demon, if you want? But he's kind of on a murder break right now..."

(Fatherhood really has mellowed Bad out, hasn't it?)

Hombre Misterioso audibly grimaces. "I fucking hate that guy. Look, I'll call you with the details tonight when it's about to happen. You can show up if you want. If you don't, it's no big deal, you can just come to the next one."

"Please don't do that."

"Don't worry, I still have your number."

"I'm literally going to go change it as soon as you're gone."

"You won't." They tilt their head tauntingly. "You want to keep an eye on me. If you don't, how will you keep me away from your son?"

The hair on the back of Cellbit's neck stands on end.

"You haven't changed your number since I first called you," they say. "You won't do it now."

They laugh, slow and deliberate and absolutely just grating on Cellbit's ears.

"I'll see you tonight," they say.

Cellbit slams the window shut and backs away from it.

Hombre Misterioso wiggles their fingers in a farewell, and then they hop over the edge of the fire escape and drop out of view.

...Maybe. Maybe, Cellbit should call Bagi.

A/N: Let me know what you think in the tags or in my inbox! I want to hear your theories, thoughts, opinions, everything!

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