Company Meeting
There is a moment between thunder and lightning where a hole in the universe opens up.
Skizriel Lehman can’t see these holes, but he can feel them, and under the right circumstances he can be called home through them.
So with a crack and a sizzle, he staggers forward out of a tear in the world between breaths.
-SKIZZ!-
The name isn’t said, not with a human voicebox. It’s a thought, a feeling, a whisper in between places as much as the hole he has just used to jump some five hundred miles between the ruins of Watcher Research Site Omega-B and the barnyard.
-I’m okay,- he promises as he steps off the broad copper disk he’s appeared on, listens to the thunkthunkthunk of the observatory dome sliding back into place. Then, out loud, “Piece of cake.”
“Sure it was,” says the short, stout blonde man waiting for him.
(Well, short compared to Skizz, who towers over them all; he’s a perfectly respectable height everywhere else.)
“It was!” Skizz defends, eyes still shining as he shakes out his left arm. The man looks at it and Skizz winces. “It only broke a little.”
“Skizz.”
“Look other than that it went off fine. Message delivered! Although I think we got the wrong guy.”
“The wrong-? Okay. Let me shut this all down and then we’re seeing Impulse.”
Skizz nods and takes up a seat near the door, watching the blonde man shut off various pieces of equipment. He doesn’t NEED these machines any more than Skizz needs to wear suits, but it’s like speaking out loud when none of them have to- it reminds them of what they are.
Despite everything.
Two other conscious minds brush with theirs, curling around one another. Skizz pushes them firmly away, letting a mantra of ‘I’m fine, it went fine’ echo over and over until they tire of it and depart.
“And- there.” The last laser powers off and the blonde man sighs, hanging up his white coat. The goggles stay on his head. “I wasn’t sure I’d aimed correctly.”
“Zeddlebop you haven’t messed up a lightning summon in years.” Skizz points out. “I don’t see you starting now.”
“Well, no.” Zed says, “but they used site B. I thought for sure they were going to be at site C, and that’s a ten mile difference.”
“Worked out fine. Come on, let’s go have a company meeting.”
Zed snorts, grinning, and follows Skizz down the spiraling staircase into the main body of the building. Waiting for them at the bottom are two more men, one an actual short fellow with his head shaved, the other a taller nondescript brunette built broader than Skizz with a severely pomaded haircut and intense yellowbrown eyes.
“What’s this about the wrong guy?” The brunette asks the moment Skizz’s feet touch the tile of the bottom floor. “Skizz we cannot afford for it to be ‘the wrong guy’.”
“Also that would mean I wastificated like three years of my life on calculations,” the short bald man says. “Tell me I didn’t wastificate. I hate wastificating.”
“Gentlemen can I not have a moment to savor my victory? I got to punch so many things. It was great.”
“Yeah, you did,” Zed says cheekily, “and you nearly blew the timeline overclocking their generators.” “Had to be done, Zeddlebop.”
“And I suppose writing ‘Skizz was here’ in spray paint all over the cafeteria floor was also necessary?” The brunette asks, exasperated.
“No that was just a bonus and you love me for it.”
“Skizz,” the brunette rumbles, and Skizz becomes very serious, very fast.
“It’s not Hawkeye.” He says.
“Are you KIDDING ME-!” The short bald man starts but Skizz holds up a hand. “Hang on, top, don’t blow it yet.”
“Skizz! Three! YEARS!”
“It’s Pesky Bird.”
All three stare at him.
“What?” The brunette asks flatly.
“Dippledop, I swear to you. I swear. He knew IMMEDIATELY what I was doing. I removed a door behind him and he remembered the door was there in the first place. And! more importantly, when I put the door BACK-“
Skizz makes a broad flailing gesture with his hands. “Purple crackles.”
“Purple?” The short bald man asks sharply.
“Swear to god and the barnyard, Tango, purple. The exact same shade, the exact same frequency, I’ve got all the readings here,” he taps the loose Windsor knot on his red tie, “for all of you to do your smart stuff to. You weren’t WRONG, Top, you were just- a half a foot to the left.”
The brunette groans. “The compulsion is on the CARD, Skizz! Did you give it to Pesky Bird or Hawkeye?!”
“Hawkeye, and BEFORE YOU YELL AT ME,” Skizz says, holding his hands up, “those two are attached at the hip! More importantly they’ve just burned a whole bunch of bridges and Hawkeye’s worse than a curious cat. He’ll come, and he’ll bring the Bird.”
“And when they inevitably don’t come alone?” The brunette asks.
“I do what you keep me around for, Impulse,” Skizz says. “Trust me. This will work.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Impulse asks bleakly.
Skizz steps forward, pulling Impulse into a rough hug. The other two join on either side in a strangely intimate four-man embrace, looking not unlike some kind of living Celtic knot.
None of them speak. Instead their thoughts flow into and through and around one another. These thoughts are readable, Zedaph had found that out, on a frequency that one of his many instruments is tuned to.
If that instrument were on, it would sound like a blazing chorus.
It’s Skizz- always Skizz, their warning siren, their anchor to a reality that would let them go at any moment- who says out loud with human words, “It will be okay.”
Because it has to be.
Impulse sighs so hard he deflates, sagging against Skizz as Tango and Zedaph both let go. “I cannot believe I agreed to help Doc with his next project. Think I can beg off on account of portents of Doom and annihilation?”
“And miss another high velocity creeper cannon being fired point blank into the Boatem fortress wall?” Skizz teases. “It’ll be fine, Impulse. World isn’t ending yet. And worst case scenario we’ve stopped it before. We stop it again.”
None of them have to say that it’s getting harder to stop. None of them have to say ‘what happens if this time it gets us’.
That’s the best and worst part about a metaphysical layered multidimensional bond.
There’s no lying to themselves or each other.
“Skizz,” Zedaph says as they head deeper into the facade over their base, “Did you REALLY say ‘Daddy’s home’?”
“Oh my god.” Tango groans as Impulse yelps, “You said WHAT-”
The good natured ribbing (“WHY do you always insist on sounding like an extra from Top Gun?!” “BECAUSE IT IS THE GREATEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME DIPPLEDOP-!”) grows fainter and fainter until finally the observatory is quiet, dark and empty, no evidence of supervillains about at all.
