#hero tango

[greenekangaroo]

07

"It's the same wavelength."

"Bullshit," Hypno says automatically, eyes wide. "Really?"

"Really." Tango pushes up his glasses and stares down at his tektech, who blinks big lamplike eyes back at him. "Go on, generate something."

Hypno shrugs and holds up his hand, summoning up the purple energy that forms his projections into the reliable bone gauntlet.

To his horror, and Tango's delight, the tektech turns towards the energy source, makes its 'homing in on papa' noise, and hops off its little stool to make its way over to the pale-faced villain.

On the sidelines of the makeshift gym, enjoying his sports drink and surrounded by pieces of tektechs, Wels laughs. "It thinks you're its mama!"

"THIS is why it followed me back?!" Hypno asks, aghast, as the tektech in front of him waits patiently for instruction. "It thought I was you?!"

"Seems like it!" Tango can't keep from chuckling as he jogs over. "The tektechs have a sensificating system based on the frequency of my metasignal. Yours must be similar enough that it feels like me!"

"But this has NEVER happened before! Ever!"

"I mean how often have we brawled?" Tango points out, scooping up his little creation. "I battle your boyfriend more often."

"And even then," Wels says, "I'm only ever making swords. I don't have the same range as you."

"What does range have to do with it?" Hypno demands.

"Signal strength, maybe?" Tango says. "The more you can do with your energy, the broader your field, so to speak. Didn't they teach you any of this?"

Hypno shrugs and lets his gauntlet dissolve to nothing. "Enough to get me into trouble. Sometimes even enough to get me out!"

"Hypno is a jump first ask questions later kinda guy," Wels says.

Tango snorts. "So you're Scar and Grian on the other side."

"Hey," Wels says, affronted, and Hypno laughs. "I don't shoot people in the back."

"That was one time," Tango says as he puts his tektech down with the other three that survived the battle with Wels and begins gathering up the scrap.

Wels stoops to help him and Hypno comes over as well, manifesting a purple broom and dustpan to sweep up the smallest bits as he says, "He's a vicious little birdy."

"He can be. I'd argue Scar can be, too."

"What about Singularity?" Hypno asks suddenly. "He always seems cool as a cucumber."

"Impulse?" Tango looks thoughtful. "..Impulse can be anxious. A bit controlling. I mean, look at what he can do. Sometimes we'll be in the middle of something and he looks at me and I know I screwed up somewhere and we're doing this over again, and I don't know how many times I've screwed it up before. That can be exhausting."

"I just bet," Wels says. "All we have to worry about is whether Doc decides to be petty about something that causes trouble for all of us, although that's tapered off in the past few years."

"Thank whatever for that," Tango mutters. "Hang on I got a sharps bag for these bigger bits." He produces the bag and they begin loading the parts.

"Does this bother you?" Wels asks. "I mean, putting all the bits in a bag like this. They're- well not alive, but."

"They aren't really alive," Tango says, "but they're close enough. I try to think of this as, like, them upgrading, or I'd lose my mind." He smiles and it's not a happy one. "I've been spoken to about humanizing my machines too much."

Hypno snorts. "I just had one assume I was you. Maybe they aren't sentient the way people are, but they sure seem alive."

"Yeah, but they also have to be expendable," Tango says. "If it's a choice between making a Tektech disarm a bomb and get explodificated or sending in a real person, I'm sending the tektech."

"Fine line to walk," Wels acknowledges as he gets the last of the bigger pieces into the sharps bag. Tango nods, looking drooped- even his little metal shards are slumped. "Its how the Teknician does his job," he says, "but I don't like it."

"It's never going to be the same, is it?" Wels asks suddenly, and the other two look at him. "I mean, look at this." He gestures at the gym. "We just spent two hours training together. We're talking shop. This.."

He looks down at his hands and then back up at Hypno and Tango. "Regardless of how this plays out," he says, "we've just made everything so complicated."

"Yeah," Tango agrees, "but it was always complicated. We just ignored it."

"Stupid decision, really." Hypno says.

"Well, yes," Tango agrees, "but that saying about trees, you know. Best time to plant?"

"Twenty years ago, or now." Wels says. "You're right." He rolls his neck. "Okay. I'm gonna go get us some water. Hypno, you should ask Tango about adoption papers, since you're the new mom."

"Absolutely I'll have junior registered for kindergarten by tomorrow afternoon."

"I'll be sure to give him a little purple chassis," Tango says, and the three men laugh. It's a warm, somewhat diquieting sound, but it echoes up the hallways of the warren of tunnels beneath the Angel Heart.

In a certain corridor making sure things are in order, Gordon House hears that laughter, and as he walks fearlessly through the dark he cannot help but smile.

[kalisforgot]

a lil AU tango to start off the new year 🔥⭐️

more designs n info coming soon......

[ottersgamers]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

I finally posted it!! Please go give it some love, I am so excited to work on the next chapters!

[greenekangaroo]

Parlay

Of all the places that Singularity figured he might meet the Goat for a face to face that DIDN'T involve him constantly looping time just to stop a doomsday bomb, the old Ironworks...weren't it.

"I mean it's sort of on brand," Teknician mutters beside him.

"Yeah for a dollar store knockoff," Singularity mutters back. Still, this was the time and the place, as stipulated by Mumbo K. Jumbo, fixer extraordinaire and inventor of more chemically unstable things than one could unwisely shake a stick at.

They have been waiting in the moldy old office block for a minute past their set meeting time when he simply appears, a horned man with a mechanical eye and arm, skin cast in a grayish green pallor. For the first time ever, he isn't in his labcoat and light body armor.

That should put Singularity at ease.

It doesn't.

"Gentlemen." He says, his metal eye telescoping and whirring as it glows gently red, reading the ambient temperatures of the room, the makeup of the walls, god only knew what else.

"Goat," Singularity says firmly as Teknician stares, mutters something to himself.

"I understand you wanted to talk."

"Yes." Singularity says. "The Life Games."

"Ah. You mean your beloved director's little death circus. A most convenient recruitment tool. For those who live."

Singularity drags in a breath. "They can't happen."

"And why not?" the Goat asks, spreading his hands. "Are you not heroes? Is that not a noble cause, worth the threat of death in any manner of unpleasant ways?"

"You know and we know that it's not recruits they want," Teknician snaps. "They want bodies. People to throw at you and your little club until they find your cracks."

"I am not so egotistical as to believe the Watcher Council has me or my 'club' as its primary concern," the Goat says. "And why should we be? You've a man who rewinds time. You, Teknician, could easily take this building around us apart. Stratos. Undertow, Whisper and his cohort. No they don't need anyone."

"The why doesn't matter." Singularity says.

"Doesn't it?" The Goat asks. "You are not an incurious man, Singularity. You surely have thought about it. Tell me. Why do you think they have bleached their dirty laundry? Do you think it merely to stop me and mine?"

Singularity is quiet for a long, long time.

"Imp?" Teknician asks quietly.

"They want more." He says hoarsely. "Having heroes isn't enough. They want control. They want a personal army and a reason. You're just a pawn."

"As are you," the Goat notes. "You do not strike me as the kind of man who appreciates being a pawn, Singularity."

"I don't." Singularity says flatly.

"Well, then. Perhaps we can work something out."

"Like what?" Teknician asks suspiciously. He's right to be suspicious. His meta abilities and the Goat's are very similar, almost the same. It would hardly be the first time the two came head to head if this isn't a trap- but Mumbo does not set up traps. People who have tried to compel him to do so disappear quickly and quietly.

"There is no stopping the first Game," the Goat says bluntly. "The recruitment numbers for contestants are already approaching a thousand."

"How do you know that?" Singularity asks.

"I have friends, Singularity, who find such things out for me. Do you?"

Singularity opens his mouth, closes it. Can they trust Whisper with this? Cute Guy would say no. So would Undertow.

"You could interrupt it," Singularity says. "Expose it. Bring all the Conflagration down in broad daylight with everything you know. It'll be broadcast all over the country there's no way people won't see."

"Oh? And then be summarily murdered in broad daylight as my colleagues and I are overwhelmed by every ham-headed idiot who heard an offer too good to be true and believed it? Sheer numbers would defeat even the Mountain and Symmetria, in time."

The Goat shakes his head. "You ask me to risk my friends- my King- on the off chance that she won't have a thousand killswitches."

"That won't happen." Singularity says.

"You cannot promise-"

"Not if I loop it."

Teknician squeaks. The Goat is quiet.

"I can't give you more than a day," Singularity says. "but I can give you that day a hundred times. A thousand. As many as it takes to get it right. I'll be there anyway. As long as the person I focus on is aware, she'll never feel it. They still haven't found a way to stop me."

The Goat murmurs something to himself that sounds a lot like 'he was right,' before he says, "You make an offer that is too good to refuse, but I must refuse it- for now."

"For n- we don't have TIME for you to be mysterious and villainy!" Teknician explodes, metal fragments practically dancing the charleston around his head.

"Time is precisely what we are being offered," The Goat points out. "I must speak with my colleagues. We are not a monolith, Teknician. Despite what some might claim, I do not simply snap my fingers and am immediately obeyed."

A pause.

"Well. Outside of certain parameters with the right safewords and after the bedroom has been properly set up-"

"Okay no thank you," Teknician says. The Goat shrugs.

"I can give you two weeks," Singularity says. "It'll take that long for the candidate list to be shaved down."

the Goat inclines his head. "I will be in touch with Mr. Jumbo," he says. then he tilts his head. "Is that a blue diamond in your ear, Singularity?"

the hero blinks, reaches up to touch the stud. He's in civilian clothes, so is Teknician; he'd forgotten about it.

Should have gotten rid of it years ago, when he found out it was bought with stolen money.

Yet here it is. Same as him.

"Why do you ask?"

"No particular reason," the Goat says. "You will have your answer, gentlemen. Two weeks."

There's a noise on the far side of the office, past the old milky glass. Both heroes instinctively look that way.

When they look back, the Goat is gone. There's nothing there but dusty desks falling into woodrot and tottering office chairs that list sideways.

"...he can't teleport, right?" Singularity asks Teknician.

"Not as far as I know. Frickin' weird."

"What's weird? This is all weird." And terrible and stomach wrenching and his job because he is a hero and this is what heroes have to do.

Teknician shrugs. "That." He points at the office chair nearest to them. "I coulda sworn that chair was there earlier. Only then he showed up and it was gone. Now it's back."

"What you think he swapped places with a chair?" Singularity asks.

The question hangs in the dusty air for long seconds as the two men stare at one another.

"Gem's bag of concrete." Teknician whispers.

"The filing cabinet," Singularity says.

"Symmetra's sword and the fucking wooden STICK in the Hall of Guardians-!"

"That entire cargo container of lightning rods."

"The gold in the armored truck on Sunset Impulse what the FUCK?!" Teknician's metal shards have become spikes he can grab and tug in lieu of doing serious damage to his hair. "Tell me they didn't, Impulse, tell me they didn't fucking take our friend and make a Mountain out of him-!"

The very idea- Skizz cold on a slab, brain being kept alive with the barest of electric pulses, his DNA being spliced and cut and put into something more biddable, more press-worthy-

No. No, no, NO-

---

Of all the places that Singularity figured he might meet the Goat for a face to face that DIDN'T involve him constantly looping time just to stop a doomsday bomb, the old Ironworks…weren't it.

Only they were.

Singularity breathes slowly out and this time he looks at the spot where the Goat will appear.

There is the chair, just as Teknician noted.

Then there is no chair.

There is only the Goat.

The conversation is fresh and Singularity goes through it again without issue. This time, when the Goat disappears, he doesn't let Teknician think about it too long.

"We have two weeks."

"We aren't gonna talk about how he just poofificated out of nowhere?"

"Tango, it's the Goat," Singularity says. "For all we know he's had a teleportation machine set up in here for weeks. Come on. We need to corner Grian and get some real answers."

And Singularity will need to spend a little quality time down in the archives. Voidwalker might listen to reason.

If he doesn't, well.

It's not like Singularity spent his first month after being officially made a hero looping until he could get into every off limits space in HQ.

A ghostly laughter follows over his shoulder as he and Teknician leave the old Ironworks.

Old habits die hard, huh, Dippledop?

Singularity gently turns the blue diamond stud in his ear.

Yeah.

Yeah, they did.

---

A/N: :D

[greenekangaroo]

This Is How You Start The Time War

It had started so simply.

Grian and Scar both had been- tetchy. Since the introduction of the Life games. Sure no one was thrilled- join a tournament as PR? Who had time? Yet Hotguy and Cuteguy both had been acting off for days.

Impulse had given up getting answers after Scar actually snapped at him- Scar doesn't snap. Scar is always polite and amused and just so irritatingly cool-headed, if he's not freaking out. Grian? Forget it, with his wings he's run from every interaction. Hell he'd crawled out the top of the elevator when the Alchemist had asked him if he was looking forward to the selection process. So Impulse had given up.

Tango's boyfriend Jimmy and Gem, on the other hand, had not. Which is how Undertow, at an official unofficial meeting with both Teknician and Singularity, informed them that these Life Games were just a PR rehab of real, actual competitions that the Watcher Council had been holding every other year for longer than anyone wants to think about. That Grian and Scar were, in fact, both winners of one of those competitions- the only two to ever 'win' together.

Apparently before their outstanding performance it had been last man standing as a rule.

"There's a clause in their contracts about talking about it," Gem had said, eyes dull and hard. "but Grian found a way around it. He brought in tangrams and spelled it all out. They specified all forms of written communication but kid's toys don't count, you know?"

Impulse Esvey would be lying if he ever said he didn't suspect the Watcher Council of underhanded dealings. It's a barely-regulated body, only ostensibly funded by the government that had birthed it and overseen by toothless watchdogs.

He'd simply decided- as many other heroes had- that having their support was worth the price of whatever it was they had going on. Money laundering, Tango had always figured on those nights they both drank too much and theorized. Maybe some strong-arming for the mob? Or, oh, maybe there WAS no mob and it was all the Watcher Council!

But they'd saved the world. They'd saved the city. They'd done that multiple times! It had to be worth it.

It had to be.

At least, that's what Impulse told himself until he was invited to dinner at Tango's- not his suite in the Watcher Council main headquarters but the brownstone where he and Jimmy cohabitate, when they can. Impulse thinks mostly to himself that it's a damn good thing Tango had picked someone who was as much of a workaholic as him, because between the Teknician's never-ending projects at Watcher HQ and Jimmy's managing of his precious diner, they see one another maybe once a week if that.

It doesn't occur to Impulse to wonder why he has been invited to interrupt this sacred shared time between his friends until dinner is done and Tango brings him into the Office. Tango built the Office himself, gutting a room in the brownstone and creating a space that can't be bugged or tapped- a fortress of solitude and privacy.

Which is where he puts down a copy of the files that had been stolen- goddamn filing cabinet and all!- from the auxiliary office months ago.

"You want page sixty seven." Tango says.

Impulse doesn't want to read page sixty seven.

He does anyway.

Skizriel Lehman

Meta Ability: Swapshop.

Description: The ability to switch two items within a sphere of influence. Currently, Lehman uses this ability to pick pockets and do card tricks. Stress-potential high.

Results: Eliminated.'

And suddenly, Impulse Esvey- Loop Hero Singularity- realizes something he'd known deep down for years but had pushed away as easily as he'd dodged reporters asking him about operations, his love life, whether or not he'll ever change his costume.

This was not worth it.

It would never be worth it.

"It, uh, it says they'd put up fliers," Tango says. He sounds far away. "Fool people into coming for job interviews or, or community service. Targeted guys with records, poor people, you know."

Tango sniffs. "He'd- he'd have jumped on it, you know? He only ever wanted to help. That's. Fuck that's the thing, isn't it? He only ever wanted to help, Impulse."

Impulse is doing his breathing exercises, the ones meant to keep him from looping unnecessarily. He looks at Tango, sees his friend's ever-present metal shards and bits twisting around one another.

"Tango?" He sounds calm. Too calm.

"I know," Tango says. "I'm with you."

"Tango-"

"They KILLED SKIZZ, Impulse!" Tango says and the metal all becomes sharp and points out from his head like some kind of twisted halo. "They tricked our friend and they killed him and they probably dumped his body in a pit somewhere! They hurt Grian! They hurt Scar! They ruined SO MANY LIVES we can't do this, man. We can't. So tell me what you need me to do."

Impulse looks down at the paper again.

Skizriel Lehman

Meta Ability: Swapshop.

Description: The ability to switch two items within a sphere of influence. Currently, Lehman uses this ability to pick pockets and do card tricks. Stress-potential high.

He finds that his eyes can't quite focus on the final line.

Results: Eliminated.

That would be the tears.

"What do you think we'd have to give Mumbo," he asks, "to get a meeting with the Goat?"

Tango, to his credit, doesn't ask Impulse if he's lost his mind. He only says, "I will find out."