Rain made the city hum—every neon sign a wet tongue of colour, every alley a throat. On the rooftop of a body shop that wore its rust like a badge, Titan crouched by an HVAC unit and listened to the block breathe.
He wasn't in costume. He'd never had one. He had a jacket, black and worn, sleeves shoved to his elbows; concrete dust still clung to his forearms. His hands didn't look like hero hands. They looked like hands that had moved furniture, lifted refrigerators, ripped sheetrock, and then kept going because rent was due.
Isotope blinked into existence a foot to his left, air popping like a knuckle. Compact, hoodie up, eyes hard and tired.
"Warehouse crew says they're in position," Isotope said. "Our guests are downstairs."
Titan nodded. "Let 'em talk."
Isotope snapped two fingers, and the world took a breath and put them somewhere else.
_ _ ♛ _ _
The rooftop two blocks over had a big blue sign that used to say RICO'S TIRES before the C gave up. Three men waited under the sag of a billboard that promised cheap lawyers. One chewed a toothpick like it owed him money; another kept his shoulder to a brick chimney like it would get mad if he left.
The third—Hector, cut-rate lieutenant with a cut-rate suit—smiled too wide when Titan appeared. He gestured like a host at a bad party.
"Titan," Hector said. "You're hard to get ahold of."
"I'm busy," Titan said.
"You and me both." Hector spread his hands over the city like a magician about to reveal a rabbit. "Machine Head's gone, bless his little silicon heart. There's opportunity. I figure you and me—"
Titan held up a finger. He pulled a scuffed tablet from inside his jacket, tapped it, and turned the screen around.
The video was vertical, shaky. A boy twelve years alive and centuries old in the eyes drove a Viltrumite into concrete like it was water. Shockwave. Cars tumbling. Fire.
The sound was off. It didn't need it.
Hector's smile faltered a millimetre. The toothpick guy swore softly.
"You know what this is," Titan said.
Hector tried on a shrug. "Hype. Edits. People love a show."
"Mm." Titan kept the tablet up, froze the frame as Stephen—no cape, no mask—held a collapsing weight long enough for a hundred kids to scramble away. "Look at his hands," Titan said. "Not shaking. Not showing off. Doing math[1]."
He locked eyes with Hector. "You do business sloppy, math[2] like that comes to your door."
Toothpick sneered. "He ain't coming down to the docks over untaxed crates, man."
"You're right," Titan said. "He isn't."
He put the tablet away. Rain ticked on the billboard like a clock. "That's me."
Hector blinked. "You?"
"You keep guns out of school zones, off the buses, out of the laundromats. You keep your people from throwing hands where moms have strollers. You pay what you owe and you stop pretending Machine Head's got a ghost, and in return my city doesn't attract gods with bad tempers. You get to be boring. You get to be rich. You get to wake up."
Hector's smile squeezed into mean. "And if I don't like your terms?"
Isotope didn't move. Titan didn't either. He let the rain fill the space where other men put speeches.
"Then it gets loud," Titan said.
Hector clicked his tongue, thought about old loyalties, new math[3]. He gestured with his chin at the third man, the one who hadn't spoken. "You got muscle?"
"Enough," Titan said.
Hector smirked. "We'll see."
He snapped his fingers at his boys. "Bring them up."
Isotope's eyes slid sideways once at Titan. Titan didn't blink.
The roof access door banged open. Tether Tyrant came first—hood up, chain snaking from his sleeves like something alive and bored. Magmaniac lumbered behind, steam rising off his skin like he'd taken a bath in a volcano and hadn't towelled off.
Tether Tyrant's mask made his voice metallic. "We talkin' job interview or funeral?"
"Stand there and look ugly," Titan said.
Magmaniac snorted. "Done."
Hector's laugh was nervous and too loud. "Okay, okay. You got a couple of mascots."
Titan stepped forward once, closing space by inches, not inches. The billboard's buzz filled the pause.
"You know why I live?" Titan asked.
Hector stayed clever. "Because you're lucky."
"Because I listen," Titan said. He tapped his chest with one finger, slow, like a metronome. "To this. And to blocks like this. To women who can't take their kids past the corner because your boys adopted it."
He leaned, just enough that Hector felt what his feet were standing on. "Strong over weak. I get it. The world's not a church. But there are lines. You cross them, you don't get a second conversation."
Hector swallowed around his toothpick. He hadn't had one. He still swallowed.
"Fine," he said. "No schools. No laundromats. We keep it quiet."
Titan nodded once. "Good start."
Hector's eyes flicked to Tether Tyrant. "And them?"
"They scarebirds," Titan said. "You want gods to fly somewhere else? You put up a scarecrow. You don't shoot at the sky. You let the sky get bored and go home."
Tether Tyrant rolled his shoulder. The chain arced and hissed. "You pay on time, I stand wherever you want."
Magmaniac's grin was all teeth and bad ideas. "If somebody wants loud, I can do loud."
"Not here," Titan said, and his tone filed that grin down to something useable. "Not on this block."
Hector spread his hands again. "You want a retainer?"
"You're already paying," Titan said. "You just didn't know who."
He turned away before Hector could build a new face. "We're done."
Isotope snapped them out.
_ _ ♛ _ _
They blinked into rain again, this time on the loading dock of RIVER EAST STORAGE, a long concrete building that pretended to be asleep. A man in a security jacket tried to look invisible behind a cigarette that had lost the will to burn.
Inside, rows of unit doors made a maze. Titan didn't need a map. He followed the stink of cold oil and hot plastic to Unit 117. A cheap camera above the door had tape over its light like that made it invisible.
"Four inside," Isotope murmured. "Five if you count the guy under the table."
"Count him," Titan said.
Isotope smirked and blinked.
The door rolled up. Light made a rectangle on the floor. A card table sat in the middle with inventory sheets that were not supposed to exist; locked crates along the walls had numbers that were supposed to be erased.
"Evening," Titan said.
Three men reached for guns because that is the disease men get in rooms like this. The fourth froze. The one under the table stayed under the table and regretted choices.
Tether Tyrant's chain went out, fast and sure, and took the guns like they'd decided they were embarrassed. Magmaniac planted his hands on the concrete and grinned wider as a heat haze rippled under his palms; the floor bubbled a little, just enough to smell wrong.
"Don't," Titan said to Magmaniac without looking at him.
Magmaniac's grin shrank. "Just warming up, boss."
Titan ignored the word. He walked to the nearest crate and laid his fingers on the lid like a parent's hand on a fevered forehead. Stone skin crawled over his knuckles and forearms, colour of old sidewalks, texture of a building that had outlived three owners. He flexed once; wood cracked like a bad joke. Inside sat guns wrapped in plastic that had been soft yesterday.
He looked at the men. "This footprint collapses tonight. You got somewhere else to be tomorrow morning. If any of you show up near Garfield-Maple Elementary again, I will pull the concrete up and make you eat it, and you will thank me for choosing concrete."
The man under the table made a sound like a cough and a promise.
"Take the unregistered long guns to the scrap yard," Titan told Isotope. "Melt what can be melted. The rest—call Alvarez's cousin. He's got that art project with welding."
Isotope nodded, mouth twitching. "The garden thing?"
"The garden thing," Titan said.
Tether Tyrant let the chain slack. "So this is what we do? Cleaning crew?"
"This is what we do until the city forgets to put its children in crosshairs," Titan said.
He turned to the men again. "Find work. There's scaffolding three blocks south needs hands. Tell Manny I sent you. He pays cash, two weeks steady. If you touch a trigger in my neighbourhood this side of a hunting permit, I'll know. And then your moms will know before you do."
The men nodded because that was the only shape their necks knew how to make anymore.
"Let's go," Titan said.
They left the unit clean. Doors closed like eyes.
_ _ ♛ _ _
He found her at Spin City Laundromat, last of the strip's lights glowing warm against the rain. Tired blue letters buzzed like flies. Inside, a woman in a green jacket fed a washer the way people feed jukeboxes when they need a song to mean something. A little girl sat on a bench with her legs swinging, counting socks like math worked different if your feet were dry.
The bell on the door gave up halfway through a ring. The woman looked up, and her face did the fear thing and then the relief thing and then the tired thing.
"You're him," she said.
"I'm me," Titan said.
She laughed once at how stupid that was and bit her lip. "They moved into the candy store," she said. "The old one by the bus stop. They sell pills to kids and sticks to men and they look at my daughter like she's a bill they can't wait to collect."
Titan waited. He didn't ask for names. Names make things legal.
"They said if I called cops again they'd take my door," she said, and checked the girl, who was still counting socks like numbers could protect you.
"Okay," Titan said. "What do you want?"
Her mouth trembled like it wanted to make a speech. She didn't. "I want to walk to school and not count corners."
He nodded. "Stay here."
He left by not being in the room.
_ _ ♛ _ _
The candy store's sign still said SWEET SPOT in pink script that didn't fool anyone. Bars had taken the place of the candy canes. Inside, two men in hoodies watched a handheld TV playing the boy's fight on loop, cheering like it was a game, not understanding the math of it at all.
[local thread — @CityWatch]
u/BrickByBrick: that kid demolished half a block. y'all still calling him a hero?
u/southsideMOM: my son came home. i don't care if the sky caught fire.
u/tallpaul: pretty sure the sky did catch fire??
Titan stepped through the door and the room tried to get tough. It didn't succeed.
"You're dizzy," he told the closest man, because the guy didn't know how to stand up right. "Sit down."
The man sat, insulted that he had obeyed gravity. The other went for a drawer. Titan laid his hand on the counter. Stone crawled. The laminate sank like a soft thing remembers being sand. The drawer didn't open.
"We're relocating your business," Titan said.
"This is a free country," the standing man said, even while sitting.
Titan took the little TV remote, clicked the sound off. Stephen's paused face stared back. The standing man swallowed.
"You see him?" Titan said. "He's not coming here. You're not loud enough. But if a kid dies on this block because you flinched wrong—if a cop trips over your temper—if some idiot with a cape decides to prove a point and uses you to draw a line—he might look down. You don't want that."
"Are you threatening us with a child?" the man managed.
Titan's jaw ticked. "I'm threatening you with me."
He pointed to the door with his chin. "You're closed. Leave the keys. Leave the cash. If what I find in that back room has pictures of kids in it, I will put you into the wall and then bring you out and then put you into the wall again somewhere your mother never visits."
Their faces learned new colours. Keys hit the counter.
Isotope blinked in, looked around, wrinkled his nose. "Smells like bad decisions."
"Take the register," Titan said. "Drop half at Sister Marta's pantry. Half goes to the clinic."
"You got it." Isotope's hand closed and the register did not exist anymore. He pointed at the sign. "You want the pink script?"
"Leave it," Titan said. "Maybe we'll sell candy again."
He walked out into rain that had decided to get serious. He let it hit his face and didn't pretend it was cleansing. It was water that fell when it was heavy. That was all.
_ _ ♛ _ _
Back at the laundromat, the woman in the green jacket looked up with her hands still in soapy water.
"It's closed," Titan said. "If anyone comes back, call Manny at the scaffold. Tell him Titan said to bring six men and a bucket truck. He'll pry the sign down and put the bars in a truck and dump them in the river."
Her eyes found the little girl and then found him and then found the washer. She nodded, once, because she'd already used too many words today.
"Thank you," she said.
Titan shrugged. "It's a block."
She surprised him by smiling. "They're all somebody's block."
He returned it, small. The girl hopped off the bench and held up a sock like a flag. "I found the match."
"You're hired," Titan said.
He left.
_ _ ♛ _ _
By midnight, the city had turned from wet to glossy. Titan and Isotope stood on a parking structure six floors up, looking down at the lights like they were stars that had made bad choices.
Tether Tyrant leaned against a pillar, chain lazing in a slow figure eight. Magmaniac sat on a concrete curb with steam mixing into the night air, hands on his knees, breath hissing the way his name suggested. They looked like problems someone else was going to have if they weren't careful. Tonight they were solutions that didn't need to get used.
"You sure about hiring the circus?" Isotope asked, quiet.
"They're not for fighting," Titan said. "They're for being seen."
Tether Tyrant snorted. "Rude."
"Accurate," Titan said.
Isotope nodded at the horizon. "You think the kid ever comes down here?"
Titan didn't answer right away. He took his phone out again and played the clip muted. Stephen caught a falling thing and put it down soft. He was twelve and his face made men choose who they wanted to be.
"He shouldn't have to," Titan said. "If gods throw buildings, my people shouldn't have to duck."
Isotope flicked a look sideways. "Your people?"
Titan tucked the phone away. "You heard me."
Tether Tyrant cracked his neck. "What about… you know. Omni-Man." He said it like a superstition.
Titan's mouth went thin. "If he wants a throne, he can build it somewhere that isn't my street."
Magmaniac chuckled, deep and stupid. "You gonna punch Omni-Man, boss?"
"I'm gonna make sure my block doesn't need to know his name," Titan said.
They let the night be night a minute.
Isotope cleared his throat. "Titan… Manny says the city is talkin' about the boy like—" He wobbled a hand. "Like he's the problem."
"Applause is weather," Titan said. "We plan for climate."
Tether Tyrant frowned. "What's climate?"
"Bills and babies and school buses," Titan said. "Climate's waking up."
Magmaniac scratched his cheek with a fingernail that hissed. "You think the kid's… good?"
Titan thought of the laundromat and the sock and the small laugh Mark had made in some clip he'd watched with the sound accidentally on. He thought of the way Stephen's hands hadn't shaken.
"I think his mom raised him right," Titan said. "And I think the men in suits are going to try to raise him wrong."
Tether Tyrant spun the chain, thoughtful. "So we just… stand here?"
"Tonight," Titan said. "Tomorrow, you're on the scaffolds with Manny at eight. Don't fall. He doesn't pay for stupid."
Magmaniac groaned like he had been asked to do math. "I hate mornings."
"You'll live longer," Titan said.
Isotope watched the rain weaken into mist. "You gonna sleep?"
Titan rolled his shoulders. "Later."
Isotope blinked out. Tether Tyrant followed with a metallic laugh. Magmaniac waddled to the stairs because teleporting made him sick.
Titan stayed. The city looked back, all those windows like eyes pretending not to stare. He set his palms on the cold concrete wall until his skin remembered the texture and made it it his own. Stone crawled up to his elbows and then retreated because it didn't need to be there. Not yet.
He pulled the tablet out one last time, thumbed to a different screen—comments, the endless river that kept proving itself a river.
[@LocalNews9]
BREAKING: New footage surfaces from downtown battle. City Council to hold emergency session Wednesday re: "unregulated super threats."
[top comments]
u/BridgeDad: my kid is alive because of him.
u/TaxedEnough: exile. we can't live like this.
u/SpinCityGreenJacket: i walked my daughter past the corner tonight. thank you whoever you are.
Titan closed it. He didn't keep trophies. He kept receipts. He kept promises.
His phone vibrated. Unknown number. He let it go. It buzzed again. He answered.
"What," he said.
A voice like a smile with knives in it slid through the line. "Opportunity," it said. "We've noticed your… civic spirit."
"Civic spirit doesn't pay well," Titan said.
"We can fix that," the voice said. "Also, we'd love to keep that boy's attention… directed."
Titan watched a bus rumble through the green, wipers tired. He smelled wet steel and a bakery that stayed open late when it rained.
"You want him pointed at someone," Titan said.
"We want him pointed away from the wrong someones," the voice corrected.
Titan smiled without showing teeth. "We agree."
"Excellent," the voice said. "We'll be in—"
Titan hung up.
He stood there a while longer because you don't leave a block alone right after you promise it something. When the rain finally forgot what it had started and became mist, he went down the stairs and into the street and vanished into the crowd like a man with a job.
_ _ ♛ _ _
In the morning, RICO'S TIRES had a new C someone had found in a pile; the candy store had its lights off and a paper on the door that said UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT in a handwriting that knew how to mean it. Two men in hard hats pulled down bars while a boy three doors over pumped air into his bike tires and didn't check the corner three times before crossing.
On the fourth floor of the parking structure, somebody had left a coffee cup on the ledge. Titan picked it up, tossed it, and kept walking.
(A/N: Titan's "street math"
Old math (pre-Stephen): Keep cops paid, keep beefs local, don't spook the neighbourhood → you survive and profit.
New math (post-Stephen footage): If you're loud, you don't just draw cops — you draw gods (Stephen, Omni-Man, GDA, cameras, viral rage).Cost of noise skyrockets. Optimal strategy becomes: be boring, move guns away from schools/buses/laundromats, plant "scarecrows" (Tether Tyrant/Magmaniac) to deter capes rather than fight them, and keep moms with strollers safe so the block doesn't invite cosmic attention.
So when Titan tells Hector "do business sloppy, math like that comes to your door," he means: the expected outcome of sloppy crime is now a super showing up and ending your operation — permanently.
I am doing a play on words, to see who can keep up.)
End of Chapter 42
[1] When Titan says “look at his hands… doing math,” he’s clocking how Stephen handles force: Distributes load, redirects vectors, bleeds energy across multiple contact points (his tactile domain).Puts things down soft instead of smashing them — that’s live problem-solving.
[2] Cost of noise skyrockets. Optimal strategy becomes: be boring, move guns away from schools/buses/laundromats, plant “scarecrows” (Tether Tyrant/Magmaniac) to deter capes rather than fight them, and keep moms with strollers safe so the block doesn’t invite cosmic attention. So when Titan tells Hector “do business sloppy, math like that comes to your door,” he means: the expected outcome of sloppy crime is now a super showing up and ending your operation — permanently.
[3] Titan’s “street math” Old math (pre-Stephen): Keep cops paid, keep beefs local, don’t spook the neighborhood → you survive and profit. New math (post-Stephen footage): If you’re loud, you don’t just draw cops — you draw gods (Stephen, Omni-Man, GDA, cameras, viral rage).