Henry is like that older sibling you have away at college that every once in a while when you come home they’re eating your snacks on the living room couch. Of course, none of them have older siblings but Henry is really giving them the experience.
“Hey guys!” he calls, unsubtly hiding Bose’s leftover nacho ball by sliding it under the couch. “You look…stressed?” he tries. When none of the teens' faces change at all he changes tactics. “How was the mission?” He winces as their faces fall further. “Ok, bad got it.” An uneasy silence falls across the room.
“Do you want me to order us pizza?” Mika shakes her head. “Thanks, Henry, but I don’t think any of us are particularly hungry right now.” Henry frowns in worry and gets up to come near them. “What happened?” Chapa glares at him but Bose grabs her hand before she can say anything and she huffs as she storms away, likely to see if there’s a training dummy she can electrocute, Bose’s own hands are stinging lightly from her static electricity.
“The mission went fine!” Mika announces suddenly and much too cheerfully, “We got the villain and we fought him and he hasn’t even been active in a few years so he was out of practice and we got him and nothing else happened at all!” Miles and Bose look at each other over Mika’s head and wince. Henry blinks, “Yeah, no of course…”
Mika’s smile literally looks painful and she stares at Henry testily, silently pushing him to counter her claims. When he doesn’t she huffs and announces, “I am going to go find Chapa not because anything went wrong, but because I want to spend time with my dear friend, and if you hear screaming I’m sure it’s just the neighbor kids in the street so don’t come looking for me.” Bose and Miles both give a reflexive thumbs up out of fear and nervously Henry does the same.
“So…” Henry starts after she’s gone but doesn’t get the chance to say anything else. “Nope.” Miles teleports away leaving Bose to glare at the spot his teammate abandoned him in. “Uh,” Henry tries again and Bose goes for a low blow. “Well, since I really wanted my nacho ball after our mission, I’m going to go to the nice one and not the close one to get another one. Bye.” Henry gapes at his back.
Henry pauses for a moment before taking out his phone to text the group chat he has with Charlotte and Jasper.
Henry: The kids are being weird
Charlotte: Like possessed weird or normal weird?
Henry honestly should’ve expected that.
Henry: Just normal weird.
Jasper video calls Henry then, and Henry adds Charlotte, after he’s finished explaining his whole ordeal with the kids Charlotte grimaces. “Did you do something to make them mad?” She frowns when Henry shakes his head. “I swear!” He pleads. “Well, they seem pretty uncomfortable with you dude…” Jasper trails off and Henry groans, “I know!” “You’re staying at the Man’s Nest for a few days right?” Charlotte double-checks and moves on when Henry nods, “Give them space today but try again tomorrow. Ask Schwoz and Ray if they know anything in the meantime.” Henry grins, “Thanks Char’”. They keep talking for a bit, giving updates on their retrospective cities before the call comes to a natural end.
Henry heads out to find Ray first, finding him outside doing…something…with a hydrangea bush. “Uh?” He stars and Ray yelps as he drops his hedge clippers. “Ah! I was practicing my topiary,” he complains. “Alright…” Henry says in confusion. “Have you noticed the kids being weird?” Ray laughs, “They’re teenagers. They’re always weird.” But Henry shakes his head, “No, weirder than normal. They’re acting like they’re upset with me.” Ray frowns then, “I don’t know kid I’m sorry.” Henry smiles anyway, “Nah it was a long shot, don’t sweat it.”
He tries Schwoz next. “I don’t know anything about the kids! What kids! I don’t know any kids!” Which proves Schwoz knows more than he’s letting on and also that Chapa likely threatened to electrocute him if he told.
Henry yelps as he walks into his makeshift room at the Man’s Nest to see Bose sitting on his bed eating a nacho ball. “Hey Bose…” He greets, a bit fearfully, trying to remind himself that he has almost a decade's worth of experience over this boy as well as superpowers. “What did you do that we don’t?” Bose asks and leaves Henry stuttering, “Nothing!” He tries to reassure him, but Bose doesn’t relax and instead walks off from his bed, “I’d have a different answer if Chapa asks,” he warns.
Henry texts this update to his friends.
Jasper: UM???
Charlotte: Well, that’s terrifying, sleep with one eye open tonight Hen
Henry, in fact, does not sleep at all.
He’s not surprised when he walks into the kitchen area to see Miles sitting on a counter waiting for him, clearly just woken up. “Why’d you quit being Kid Danger?” he asks and Henry sighs as he starts making his favorite superhero concoction: coffee made with an energy drink. “Okay scratch my first question for a second why are you making a heart attack in a cup?” Miles demands. “I used to get like three hours of sleep and then have math at 7 a.m.” Miles nods and lets this go, before resuming staring at Henry uncannily, waiting for his answer.
There are a lot of answers Henry could give but he goes with the truth, “It’s kind of complicated: Ray fired me and then he didn’t, but I was outgrowing the whole sidekick role anyways. I guess that’s the truth: I outgrew it.” Henry glances up from his cup to check Mile’s reaction but the boy is already gone. Sighing he texts his friends, getting texts of sympathy back from them both.
Henry is terrified of Chapa, which is admittedly a bit embarrassing. He finds her endearing and admires her strong will but that girl could and would barbeque him in a second. She’s leaning against the door of the bathroom. “What’s better about you?” Henry takes a minute to really hope he can make it through this conversation. “Nothing, we’re all better in our own ways, with our own individual strengths.” Chapa glares at him as she walks away and Henry sighs as he lets his head thump against the door, pulling out his phone to text his friends again.
Mika corners him last when he’s in the gym about to do a light workout. For a girl whose entire power is being loud, she can be worryingly quiet. “You’re Ray’s favorite you know?” He can’t stop the snort that leaves his mouth at that and she looks mullish immediately. “Sorry! Sorry, I’m just really not. Can you get the others in here? I think we should talk.” She frowns considerably but walks off to round up the others. It takes a bit and Chapa is glaring something fierce at Mika when they arrive, Mika, in turn, is holding ice to her amr. The boys are noticeably in the middle of the two girls.
Henry lets them all get settled before sitting down. “I know you all know of Drex, but how much do you really know about Drex?” The kids make vague motions with their hands and Henry nods. “He was Captain Man’s first sidekick…the original or whatever. I didn’t know at first. I didn’t even know until Drex tried to kill me.” One of the kids, Bose probably, whimpers.
“I was so mad at Ray, I couldn’t see straight. But it made sense y’know? I always felt like I was being compared to someone, never living up to Ray’s expectations somehow. Learning about Drex really changed me and Ray’s relationship, permanently. I’d throw him in his face during fights and he’d do the same.” Henry pauses for a moment, trying to think about what he wants to say next. “Even now, I feel like I didn’t live up to what Ray expected of me because I could never be Drex.”
Mika bursts in then, astounded, “But! But you’re Henry! We’re always getting compared to you! We can never live up to you and it’s not even just Ray who does it!” “Yeah!” Bose cries in agreement. “We’re never good enough,” Chapa says angrily and Miles nods. “Ray is…flawed,” Henry starts and the others snort before they can help it. “He doesn’t want you to be me even if he says it or acts like it. By the end of it all Ray and I were fighting constantly.” “Really?” Miles asks, shocked. “Yeah, really,” Henry reassures.
“Ray lives in the past, but he does care about you guys, half our phone calls are him telling me stuff you guys did. And not even just the superhero stuff! He tells me when Bose gets an A on a test or Chapa wins a basketball game. He tells me how smart Mika is, and how reliable Miles is. He really cares about you.”
“It’s not just him though,” Mika finally says, still upset. “What happened on your mission guys?” Miles frowns, “We were fighting one of your old villains, he’s laid low since the jailbreak, but I guess he was bored or something.” Bose nods, “It didn’t seem like he had a plan he was just kinda wreaking havoc.” Chapa continues the story, “So we get there and I’m about to fry him, but Mika stopped me. He was holding something metal so if I were to zap him it probably would have killed him.”
“I told Bose to try to lift him up or get the metal thing out of his hand,” Mika explains. Bose nods, looking haunted, “So I picked him up with my telekineses and I was going to shake him, try to get him to drop it, maybe scare him a little but he looked down and he just looked horrified, and then he called me…” Bose trails off and Chapa picks back up, “He called him Kid Danger, it shocked Bose so much he dropped him.”
Miles pulls his knees to his chest, “Bose doesn’t even look like Kid Danger, but he just gave up after that. He got on his knees with his hands on his head and just stayed there until the cops showed up.” Mika laughs humorously, “You weren’t even there and you still did a better job than us.”
Henry pauses as he carefully words his response, he doesn’t want the others to feel as if he’s belittling their response. “It wasn’t…It wasn’t that I’m better or that I was better when I was Kid Danger. He probably felt like he was looking at a ghost. A lot of my normal adversaries quit after my run because they never wanted to kill a kid, never really pieced together me being out there every night could end in my death. More people attended my funeral than I ever would’ve imagined.” The four wince at that.
“You’re kids. And you’re strong kids. You fight well, but when that guy saw you, I don’t think he saw me, even if he said my name, I think he saw your funeral.”
No one says anything after that.