"Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place."
-Sarah Dessen

Tommy leaps from the edge of the skyscraper. Instead of hurtling downwards as the average person would, a richly red caustic light spreads across his body. The pattern continues to flow across his body as he moves through the air in an upward diagonal. His metal face mask that covers the bottom half of his face filters all the wild, freezing winds that brush painfully against the few patches of visible skin on his body. When he reaches a certain height in the air, he slams his palms together. The caustic light falls back to his hands, and he drops towards the ground like any other person would. As his hands slide away from one another, his right hand clicks a button on the cuff on his left forearm. A small back-pack contraption made from metal on his back springs out, revealing a bright red glider that allows him to ride the winds instead of plummeting to his death. Tommy lands on the cement ground with a slight bounce. He presses the same button on his left cuff, and the glider folds back into the metal contraption on his back. He keeps his arms out around him to guarantee that he doesn't tumble to the ground as he gets his bearings.

Tommy is currently out on important business as Vendetta, an A-class esper contracted to the Hero's Guild. As a guild member, he frequently takes up commissions placed on the guild's bounty board. His present commission is a rather large one that is due to take up a lot of time. He has been investigating the Red Army, an organized group of villains that have been spotted doing illegal activities in every borough of Essempei. Several rich people have put a bounty on the Red Army's head, and Tommy was more or less pressured into accepting the commission by the higher-ups in the guild. He would have completely refused if there wasn't a promising reward in store for him.

Tommy is about to launch back into the air when he hears a distressing noise. He frowns behind his mask, his attention being drawn to a nearby alleyway on instinct. Just a few steps away from the entrance of the alleyway, two men are standing in front of each other. They are standing in the shadows, but neither of them are wearing outfits that blend in well. One of the men is holding a gun towards the other, a glare shimmering across the surface of the gun as the sun above the cityscape is covered in slow-moving clouds. Tommy is pretty sure that his attention was grabbed by the click of the gun. It is one of the few sounds he's trained to pay special heed to. The man without the gun is holding his hands up in submission. Tommy would have thought there were enough heroes patrolling Prime Heights for something as basic as a mugging to never happen, but he knows that the borough is one of the largest ones in landmass. Tommy rolls his eyes at the ineptitude of the other heroes as he approaches the situation.

The man without the gun obviously sees him coming because he's facing the direction of the alley's entrance. He does eye Tommy for a brief second, but he doesn't make the fact that Tommy is approaching apparent to his would-be mugger. Tommy is thankful. While he can handle a straight-on fight with the mugger, he would rather things be simple instead of tiring. He pulls a metal baton from his belt. He twists the metal baton until it expands into a staff. Tommy positions the staff and his arm before he gets involved. He hits the gunner in the back of the knee with his staff and yanks his arm upward so the shot fired from fear flies over the other man's head. The bullet hits the stone wall of the alleyway. Tommy disarms the gunner as he pulls both the man's hands behind his back. Obviously, the man struggles, but Tommy manages to press his fingers against the man's tattooed wrist. The red caustic light spread across the man's body, and he flattened himself against the ground immediately. Tommy easily tied the man's wrists together.

Tommy turned his attention to the cuff on his right forearm. He tapped against the screen until it came to life. It pulsated with a red light before it revealed his home screen to him in white coloring. Tommy tapped away on the device. He sent a somewhat accurate report to the Moderator's Guild. While heroes completed commissions, Moderators dealt with any law-breakers who were not espers or involved with espers. Tommy has jurisdiction to take down anyone who breaks the law due to his ranking in the Hero's Guild, but he can't bring them to be imprisoned in Pandora's Vault- the facility specially designed to house espers, or super-powered individuals.

Tommy lifts back to his feet. He is about to leave the alleyway when he notices the other guy was still standing there. He dropped his arms, and he was looking right at Tommy. He would have thought the man would have bolted when given the opportunity. Tommy looks at him up and down. He understands immediately why someone would have tried to rob this guy. He's wearing an off-white button-up tucked into a pair of black pants and shoes that shine despite being the color of charcoal. While Tommy has never been familiar with brand name products, even his mind knows that he's looking at someone with money. The golden ear cuff with featherlight chains ending in small emeralds certainly broadcasts his wealth to everyone in the general vicinity like a loud siren. If Tommy were a lesser man or perhaps off-duty, he would attempt to swindle the man out of his belongings. Because he is the biggest of men, though, he instead roughly thrusts his hand forward in a way that he hopes isn't as awkward as he feels. "Hello, citizen, uh... shit, I don't remember what I'm supposed to say. Fuck, where are you going? I'll walk you there."

"Will that happen to me?" The man's dark muddy brown eyes flick down to the man lying on the ground. The red caustic light continues to splash across the man's body as if he's at the body of a pool during a sunny afternoon. Tommy nudges the man with his foot, and he's satisfied when the man mutters something about getting his revenge.

"Nope. I have perfect fucking control over my powers," Tommy explains to the pink-haired civilian. Tommy was an esper, and as an esper, he had superhuman gifts. Tommy has met espers with horrible, useless, or downright self-harming powers before. He feels pity for them, of course, but in a faraway sense because Tommy lucked out on some amazing powers. He couldn't completely manipulate gravity, but anything he touched either became weightless or it became twice as heavy. It was referred to as gravity manipulation on all his official paperwork. "Now, where are you heading, mate? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to have the Vendetta as your guide through the city."

"I'm heading to the G-Train," The man states, stepping over the gunner's body to get closer to Tommy. The hero realized belatedly that the man in front of him isn't just a rich man wandering through Prime Heights. He's a hybrid. Tommy doesn't have a problem with that. He frequently visits Empires borough, and that place has more hybrids than humans. But in a place like Prime Height, hybrids would face discrimination. Especially if they're a Piglin hybrid like the man standing in front of Tommy. Hybrids who are mixed with hostile mobs face the most discrimination of all hybrids. It's ironic because they're technically the most dangerous, but who is Tommy to tell the masses that their mass hysteria is pointless?

"Perfect! I know where that is!" Tommy tells the man, beckoning him forward. They walk out of the alleyway side by side. The man looks over his shoulder at the gunner, but Tommy doesn't pay any attention to him. A moderator will arrive before Tommy's power runs out due to the distance. Even if the moderator isn't there, Tommy has an excuse. He has to prioritize the safety of civilians. Although Tommy doesn't normally follow the rules, when they work in his favor, he makes sure that he knows them down to the letter.

Tommy delivers the man to the staircase on one side of the street that leads downward. There is a bright green sign above the staircase that alerts everyone nearby that this is the entrance and exit for the G-Train, an underground train system that connects all five boroughs of Essempei. Tommy gestures to the staircase. He smiles underneath his mask. The man won't be able to see the actual smile, but he'll be able to see the smile wrinkles around Tommy's eyes- beneath his tinted red futuristic glasses. If the man couldn't see it, Tommy wasn't bothered one way or another. He did what he was supposed to do. He told the man as much. "Here we are, king, just as I promised. Go down these steps, swing a right, and the G-Train should be there in... three minutes, I think? Have fun, and don't get mugged again. Bye!"

Tommy waved at the civilian. He waited until the man was halfway down the stairs before he turned away. He thought that some gratitude was in order, but he guessed that people were raising their children right these days. Not like Tommy would know anything about that. Tommy's smile dropped away as the memories came washing into his mind like a tide returning to the shore. He was so familiar with the pain that he felt lonely when it was gone. Well, he felt lonely when it was there, but sometimes consistency- even that of pain- was better than the emptiness.

Tommy takes a few steps away from the stairs before he presses his hand against his chest. Before he completely starts floating, he bends his knees to push off the ground. Without gravity pulling him down, he doesn't have as much friction to slow down his ascension. He will continue in the same direction for a good while before the wind starts to nudge him wherever it's going. In the beginning of his career, Tommy had struggled with controlling his momentum. Years of experience and hard work allowed him to go wherever he wanted. It was flying with a few extra steps, as evidenced by his gliders as his more zig-zag approach to getting somewhere.

Tommy soars over Prime Heights. Gradually, the air begins to get hotter and drier. Tommy is thankful for his mask's ability to adjust to different temperatures and humidities. Once he reaches the highest peak he's willing to go, he presses a hand to his chest and deploys his glider. His body jerks at the sudden motion, but he manages to remain upright as he starts descending. It doesn't take long before gravity reclaims what originally belongs to it. Tommy's body shifts as he lands on the sandy ground of the borough. Tommy huffs. Sandlands really does live up to its name.

"Vendetta?" A voice calls out. Tommy's attention snaps up, quickly identifying the source of the voice. He relaxes when he sees other members of the Hero's Guild. Watcher is an S-ranked esper for the guild. He was wearing a black jacket made from a thick material over a dark red shirt. He wears skin-tight black pants decorated with a pink pattern across the body. His avian wings are pressed against his back, a domino mask covers his face, and he has a crossbow held in his dominant hand. Although the crossbow looks deadly enough on its own, Tommy knows a simple truth that civilians and most villains do not. Watcher's superpower is molecular combustion. Anything he touches becomes charged with enough kinetic energy that it is seconds away from exploding. He usually uses it on the arrows shot from his crossbow. It basically had infinite explosives, and with his wings, he was a force to be reckoned with. Hence, his S-ranking.

"They didn't tell us that you would be here," Another voice mentions. Watcher's partner, Arid, is a B-ranked esper. Arid wears a dark red capelet over his shoulders. When he moves around, it reveals that he isn't wearing a shirt or any form of armor underneath it. He has a pair of black pants to go with it, matching his partner in color scheme, even if Tommy doesn't know why their partners in the first place. Their powers aren't even that compatible. Arid can manipulate sand. It's a cool power, and certainly dangerous in a borough literally called Sandlands, but it doesn't match the sheer destructive power that Watcher has going for him.

"The fuckers up top wanted me to check the bounty out. Tell me what we know, and I'll consider joining," Tommy states with a wave of his hand. Frankly, he didn't know that Arid and Watcher had accepted the bounty. He knew they handled things in Sandlands, but this bounty apparently spanned all over Essempei. Someone like Tommy, who worked in all the boroughs regularly, was much better suited to the job. And to add insult to injury, Tommy didn't understand why the guild thought someone like Watcher needed back up. Arid, perhaps, since he was B-rank, but Watcher was one of the rare S-ranks. He wouldn't need any help, even if it was from an A-rank.

"We believe it's a group of individuals. They're kidnapping hybrids in every borough. All of the kidnappings are strung together because of this image," Watcher explains, stepping towards one of the buildings made from sandstone. Out of all the boroughs, Sandlands was the least populated and least developed. The people kept to their one or two story homes. They kept a wide berth from each other, too. The only reason why this place was considered its own district is because it supplies the other districts with agriculture. Tommy felt pity for the buildings that were damaged because of some villain group simply because the buildings looked shittier for it. Watcher said nothing of that ilk out loud, though. He instead brushed his hand against the wall to wipe away the sand covering the details of the image.

It was a spray-painted picture of a heart cracked down the middle. It must have been done in bright red because it looked faded and worn out from the sun. Tommy has seen the image before in some of the reports, but he was glad to see it up close. As far as he could tell, the spray-painted images were all done by hand individually. They might have the same basic idea, but there were slight nuances in each version that implied it was being freshly done. The person was experienced, of course, but every line couldn't be the same. The spray-painted image was also done on the building that the hybrid had been kidnapped from, so Tommy suspected it was, at least, a two person job. One person did the kidnapping, and the other person handled the showmanship.

"Who was kidnapped this time?" Tommy asked, turning to Watcher and Arid after he assessed the picture on the wall. He didn't miss the way the two heroes looked at each other for a brief moment. Tommy huffs an annoyed breath. "Well, fucking tell me already. What the fuck are you waiting for? Who was kidnapped? Their name, maybe what kind of hybrid they are?"

"The Hero's Guild no longer has jurisdiction over this case. The Moderator's Guild does," Arid piped up after the long, awkward moment passed. Tommy blinked at them, completely misunderstanding.

Watcher swooped in with a better explanation. "Sandlands houses the Nether Portal. Since the Syndicate has taken control over the End portal, the government isn't taking any chances. They assigned this case to the Moderator's Guild immediately. We've had our access to the files withdrawn. We can't do anything."

Tommy feels his breath slow in his chest. Anger- another companion alongside the loneliness and pain- greets him with sharp eyes and a knowing smirk. He hates the Syndicate. He doesn't hate them because they're villains and he's a hero. He hates them on more than a professional level. He hates them for completely personal reasons. He hates them with a fiery passion that will find no end until he dies or he destroys the Syndicate. Everything he does- every bounty he takes, commission he accomplishes, rank he painstakingly achieves- is all in pursuit of his enemies.

"Well, fuck this then. If the hero's don't have jurisdiction, I sure as hell am not wasting my fucking time here," Tommy mutters, venom leaking into his voice. He cannot believe that the people who were supposed to be in charge of him and guide him down the right path would lead him somewhere where he can't do anything. There's not even a trace of the Syndicate in this place. They protect hybrids; they wouldn't kidnap them. This is some other villain group. The only other one Tommy would be involved would be the Hunters, but they also didn't match this MO. They would simply kill whoever stood in their way. Tommy didn't have anything to do with this case. He'd been sent on a fool's errand all for the promise of some information about where the Syndicate's abandoned bases would be. He would have been able to extract information from those abandoned places, but it seems he would never reach the carrot at the end of the stick as long as the Hero's Guildmaster was in charge.

Tommy leaves Sandlands the way he came. Watcher and Arid don't follow after him because they have no reason to. He's not friends with them, he's rarely been allies with them, and they have other business to take care of in Sandlands. It's true about the portals. The reason why Sandlands is so hot and dry despite it being near some moderate locations is because of the Nether portal leaking out environmental changes. The portals would have been destroyed a long time ago if it wasn't for some treaties signed between the Nertherborne and the Enderians with the Overworlders. They exchanged goods and services between each other, creating Nether City and Ender Isle on the other sides of the portals. Tommy has been across both once or twice, but it was always for purely business reasons.

Tommy lands on a building in Prime Heights. The frustration ebbs out of Tommy's body when he realizes that he's being followed. He turns around suddenly, one hand raised to exude his power while the other one reaches for his staff. He stops when he recognizes the person following him. Tommy drops all pretenses for violence, instead smiling underneath his mask.

Enderwalk is a vigilante now, but Tommy knew him before he decided to become a vigilante. The two of them knew each other from the days when Tommy went to the Hunters in order to seek revenge. Enderwalk had already been in the Hunters for a little while. Since they were close in age, they became friends. When bad things happened and they both fled from the Hunters, they remained good friends. Tommy went to the Hero's Guild, and Enderwalk went to the streets. Their relationship was slightly strained when Tommy discovered that Enderwalk started working with the Syndicate, but he couldn't be mad at his friend for long. As long as Enderwalk didn't officially join, Tommy would tolerate his existence because Enderwalk had his back when he was alone.

"Enderwalk! King, how have you been? I've been pog, thank you for asking. Where's Jolt? I don't see that little shit anywhere," Tommy proclaimed, walking up to Enderwalk. He looked around for Enderwalk's vigilante partner, Jolt. Unlike Arid and Watcher, Enderwalk and Jolt were the exact opposites of each other when it came to appearance. Enderwalk was long and lanky, a testament to his Endermen hybrid traits. He wore a half black-half white bodysuit with black pieces of armor highlighted in purple all over his uniform and a purple hooded cloak over his head. Enderwalk's mask was also split down the middle with black and white, and his eyes glowed purple. Jolt, on the other hand, was shorter and wore dark browns covered in blazing gold yellows. He had a nuclear motif running through his design, complemented by the gas mask over his face. Like his name implied, he has the power of electricity. Enderwalk, like everyone of the Enderian races, could teleport short distances, but his unique ability allowed him to place objects into a void that suspended them in space and time.

"Hey, Vendetta. Uh... Jolt... He... isn't here. I'm going to tell you some information he wouldn't approve of me telling you," Enderwalk awkwardly replied, a hand raised up to rub the back of his neck.

"Oh? Do tell. I'm always in the business of pissing Jolt off," Tommy replies, taking a few steps back to lean on the parapat of the building. Enderwalk also walks forward to stand in front of Tommy.

"You know the recent thing about hybrids being kidnapped? Yeah, the villain group responsible call themselves the Red Army. Their inner circle is called the Cult of Erythr. We don't know what they're after. We just know that they are hunting down hybrids seemingly at random, active in every borough, make themselves known by the broken heart symbol, and worship some deity. It has been proposed that they are sacrificing the hybrids to their deity," Enderwalk explains to Tommy. It isn't much information, but it's more than Tommy would have gotten on his own. He isn't part of the case anymore, but he can probably speak with the Guildmaster about getting some sort of alliance with the Moderator's Guild. Tommy is thinking about that when Enderwalk utters something that makes Tommy freeze instantly. "I would like to propose that you align yourself with the Syndicate in order to defeat the Red Army and stop the kidnappings."

"Absolutely fucking not-"

"It would be temporary," Enderwalk rushes in, hands in front of his chest with his palms facing Tommy. He's taken a step back, and it's for the best. Tommy feels seconds away from pummeling Enderwalk into the ground, ignoring their past friendship because obviously, Enderwalk has forgotten all about it. "It would be temporary, I swear. Afterwards, you can go back to completely hating the Syndicate. In fact, view this as an opportunity. You'll be getting firsthand knowledge about how the Syndicate works. You'll discover all their members, maybe a few of their habits. And... Come on, Vendetta, this is for the good of all the boroughs. The Red Army won't stop until someone stops them. You can't do it alone, and the Syndicate could use all the help it can get."

Tommy hesitates, thinking about the missing report files in his guild issued apartment. He can see the faces of those people- not the ones who were kidnapped but their families. All those people just want their loved ones to come home, and even more families are out there right now terrified that they won't ever see the people they care about again. Tommy has been in their shoes many times before. He knows what it's like to wish and pray with all your heart. No one answered his prayers, but maybe he can answer these people's hopes. He's not a hero- not in any meaningful sense- but he is someone who's experienced loss and knows how painful that is. Loneliness and anger might be his only companions, but it doesn't have to be anyone else's.

"If it's on my own terms, I'll fucking consider it. But don't for a second think that I need those assholes to defeat the Red Army. It would just be easier with them," Tommy threatens. He can swing this into his favor. Like Enderwalk said, it would be an opportunity to know his enemies better. Once the Red Army was defeated, the very second it was, he would take his revenge. He would live up to his hero name.

"I'll set up a negotiation right away," Enderwalk complies before he disappears into a flurry of purple sparkles. As the sparkles dissipate, Tommy breathes out a heavy breath. He looks down at the city around him. How big of a threat is the Red Army for him to consider working with the Syndicate?

... For him to consider working with Azrael and Inchling, his family's killers?