"Status report," Victor muttered, stepping from the shadows of concrete bridge supports. "I'm closing in. I located him in a park inside Jersey City--"

Thundering shouts, and not one but three figures tumbled from the bridge above into the dry gulley. Victor slipped back into the shadows, breathing quietly. Who were these two? They dressed like pseudo-heroes, one blue, one mottled green and brown. Where'd they come from?

He shut off the device in his ear, pressing deeper into the alcove. Dust billowed under his exhales and he strained to make out the earthlings' conversation.

All that work, finding the fireball here, he couldn't let it slip away. Not again. He'd spent too much time on this--she expected results.

He inhaled, then stepped from the shadows.

Dante swiveled toward the movement, brown eyes going wide and hands lifting, already aflame.

Victor growled, reaching back into the shadows and pulling from the depths a shield, fizzing violet. Roaring flames soared toward him and he crouched behind the shield, parting the searing fire.

The flames died down. "So I made a bad impression!" Victor called. The two pseudo-heroes gaped back and forth between them.

Dante grunted and hurled another fireball, whizzing harmlessly under the stone bridge. Victor charged forward, a long-bladed sword forming in his other hand.

"You tried to abduct me!" fireballs blasted from Dante's palms.

"You're inhuman," Victor shouted, black shield and sword swinging to deflect the flames. "I told you there was a place for people like us!"

"I am not like you!"

"Yeah, cuz you're a thief!" The pseudo-heroes charged toward Dante.

Victor stepped back, grinning. This situation had taken a turn for the better. Catching his breath, he shook his head at the one in blue, her lengthening limbs marking her some sort of inhuman too. He had no clue what the other one was, though. Part human, part animal...inhuman, or something else?

"Get away!" Dante whirled and knocked aside the half-furred one in mottled green. Victor jumped toward the black jacket of his exposed backside, shield lifted.

But Dante spun, fire blasting in an arc from his hands. Victor ducked, and the flames sliced through a massive tree branch overhead. Victor gaped, lifting his shield, but an oversized pair of fists grabbed him and yanked him back. The tree branch crashed to the dry gulley floor. The fists receded, lowering Victor to solid ground.

"Are you okay?" the one in blue asked, eyes wide.

"Yeah," he flashed a weak grin. "Thanks," he dispelled his weapons, glaring hard through the flickering flames. Dante had vanished.

***

HQ. Lonely apartment in Jersey City. Victor swung the closet door open, kicking pairs of boots and knocked-off hangers out of his way. Of course the second he wasn't paying attention, he portaled inside the closet. Glaring, he marched through the bedroom.

The walls glowed with blue Kree tech, screens scanning the camera feeds in the city, tracking the orbit of their space vessel above the earth. He tossed his communicator to the desk, knocking old food wrappers and paper cups to the floor. He kicked those too.

In the drawer, he kept his file on Dante. Records of how he burned his home in Illinois when the terrigen mist struck and activated his powers. Audio from Victor's communicator of the battle on the far side of New Jersey, when Victor caught news of a mysterious wildfire. That'd occurred a few weeks ago, about a month after Victor set up base here to watch for inhumans, to take them back to the kree ship for Hala's inhuman army.

Victor slumped to the rumpled bed quilts, hands running through his light, cropped hair. He didn't want to pull the file out; he practically had it memorized. Except, of course, he had to add this incident to it.

What did Dante have here on earth, that he was unwilling to come? A life of thievery and running from his own powers? He could save worlds serving Hala. Why, Victor was helping to save earth already. Why didn't Dante want that?

His communicator blinked. He stared at it, the band of sun from the mostly-shut curtains glinting sharply off the dark metal. Sighing, he reached across the desk and tapped the blinking aqua light.

"Hala," he knelt on the thin stretch of carpet.

"Exile. Why have you not returned to the vessel?"

He risked a glance at the wavering blue illusion of Hala the Accuser. Impassive, she stared back at him. "Well," he stammered. "I...I haven't captured the target yet. He..." Victor dug his fingernails into fisted palms. "He got away."

"You let him escape for the second time, Exile? I trusted you with this mission, this role--"

"I know, Hala," he stared into the grooves of the worn carpet. "I've collected several inhumans already, I promise, I'm doing my best--"

"I hardly care for your best, Exile," Hala's war spear flashed before Victor's eyes. "Our army needs to swell its ranks."

The blue glow flashed out. Victor waited until the count of ten, then shuddered and flicked the dim communicator under a heap of unused napkins, beside his laptop. He slumped against the quilts. "I'm trying," he muttered, rubbing his temples. "Dante's just...difficult."

***

"I'm getting real sick of running from you," Dante turned, leaning the bike against the gray building.

"Then stop," the void beneath Victor's feet faded and he lifted his shield. "The people I work for want to give inhumans lives worth living. Come with me, and that can be yours too!"

Dante glared. "My life is gone, because of these powers. I didn't ask for them, and I certainly didn't ask for whatever it is that you're offering me," his hands hardened into fists and began burning, reflected in his dark, tousled hair. "Leave me alone!" he shot a jet of flames.

Victor lifted the shield, blocking Dante's weak stream of fire. "Have it your way," he gritted his teeth, charging forward through the flames.

Dante yelped, ducking Victor's shield only to trip over the bike. Victor skidded, swinging his shield around to deflect a second fire blast.

"What is wrong with you?" Dante hissed, hands fire-red.

"Wrong with me? What's wrong with you?" Victor stepped back, heart racing. He slightly lowered the shield. "You didn't even listen to what I had to say."

Dante stepped backwards, retreating from the alley. The intersection behind him blared with streaming cars. "Because you showed up with a sword and told me I should join you!"

"I told you there's a place in my organization for you. You just have to want it. Come with me, Dante!"

"And that's reason number two!" Dante's hands burst back aflame. "I was just fine until these fire powers ruined my life!"

"Ruined?" Victor shook his head. "How could--"

"Give me back my bike, sucker!" a voice cried out.

Dante spun toward the noise, and a white and blue blur crashed to the main street. A wave of energy sent Victor tumbling across the alley.

"I only took it to get away from that wacko!" a fire roared.

Victor pushed himself from the ground, shadow-shield dispersing from his fingers. He groaned, leaning on the edge of a dumpster. The girl who'd crash-landed tore up a chunk of the street to deflect the wave of flame.

"Where is my bike?" her voice shouted.

"I don't have it!" Dante shouted back, waves of fire pulsing from his hands.

Victor used his own shadow to materialize a weak carapace-like shield. "He's mine," he growled, charging forward and pulling his sword from the shadow of a storefront. "Quit interfering, earthlings!"

An obliterating light erupted from the torn up street, washing over Victor and searing his face. He lifted his shield, and a deafening boom exploded from the ground.

When he woke, vision doubling, a girl in a blue costume blocked out the sky. "Not you again," he muttered, rubbing his face and trying to sit up.

She squinted at him. "What have you got against Dante?"

"I told you, my organization is trying to help people like him. Like us." The ground swooned and Victor leaned back, skull digging into sharp bricks, the sun blinding his eyes. "But he'd rather blow up the street than accept our help."

"I don't think so. He could've blasted you," she tugged him back up to a seat, with those stretchy arms of hers. "Right here. You were unconscious and he stormed over all fire-glowing. I was too far away to stop him, but he just...walked away."

Victor rubbed his head. "He needs our help. Maybe he doesn't realize it, but he clearly does." Concentrating through the pounding in his skull, he opened a portal in the street and disappeared.

***

Mission report: Exile

Target: Dante Pertuz

The traffic cameras recorded a sighting of the target aboard a stolen transportation vehicle in broad daylight. I teleported to his location through the void and ambushed him once he ditched the transportation device in an alleyway. Just as the last encounter, I met outside interference, in the form of an inhuman with superhuman strength and flight, who ripped up a chunk of the street and exposed a gas line (a flammable substance earthlings use to power their structures).

Dante caused a powerful explosion with the flammable gas, rendering me unconscious. When I woke, the target was gone.

However, the other inhumans present at the incident could make excellent candidates for Hala's inhuman army. Updating status of their files now.

End report.

***

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