Gulp.
Theo visibly gulped. The sound was embarrassingly loud in the quiet office.
"Yeah," he admitted, "I kind of got the feeling I needed to keep my distance after she tried to feel me up in the locker room."
"Please do," Michael implored, pushing his fingers against the bridge of his nose as if warding off a migraine.
"But you have to understand, I'm also curious," Theo pressed, leaning forward. "Eyes that crazy don't just happen."
Michael began to sweat again, a fresh bead tracing a path down his temple. Theo's eyes narrowed, catching the tell.
"Wait a minute…" Theo's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "Are you two sleepi—"
"ONCE! Okay? It was once!" Michael confessed, the words bursting out of him as if under immense pressure. He slumped in his chair, the fight gone out of him.
"It was a gala, there was champagne, she wasn't wearing the veil… After we did it, she looked me dead in the eye, said I was 'delicious,' and started this… this whole campaign. I don't know what I did, but she scares me." He visibly shuddered, a full-body tremor of pure, unadulterated regret.
Theo let out a small, choked laugh, quickly suppressing it into a cough.
"Okay, okay. I won't ask anymore. Your tragic backstory is safe with me."
Michael shook his head as if physically dispersing the negative thoughts, straightening his robes and composing himself with a visible effort. The professional mask slid back into place, albeit a little crooked.
"Ahem… Right! Let's start formally." He slid a thick, intimidating stack of documents across the desk. "Here are the operational guidelines. You need to learn a significant amount of legal precedent and protocol governing hero conduct. That shouldn't be a problem, given your… extensive field experience."
Theo glanced at the top page, his eyes scanning dense legalese about liability and permissible force.
"The most critical part for you," Michael continued, "will be mastering our request triage system—how we categorize and prioritize calls from citizens."
Theo just nodded, already mentally categorizing the stack as 'weekend reading.'
"A senior dispatcher will be shadowing you for your first week," Michael explained. "And during that time, your team will only be authorized to take requests ranked Level 2 or below."
Theo raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Level 2? Those are menial tasks. Retrieving cats from trees, helping little old ladies cross the street. Things any civilian could do."
"I know," Michael said with a weary shrug. "But that's the system. It's a probationary period for the Phoenix Program, and it's the single biggest reason for its high dropout rate. These are individuals accustomed to grand schemes and city-wide panic. The boredom, the lack of prestige, the low income… it grinds them down. They'd often rather go back to prison than fetch someone's groceries."
"And that," Michael said, his tone grave, "will be your biggest challenge for the first week. Not the villains on the street, but the ones in your headset. Keeping them together, keeping them motivated, and most importantly, keeping them in check."
Theo fell silent, thinking. The dossiers flashed in his mind. These weren't petty thugs; they were artists of chaos. Seraphim alone was almost a rank 7. Asking her to help a citizen find their lost dog wasn't just boring; it was an insult.
"For today, we'll keep it simple," Michael said, clapping his hands together and standing up, the movement a little too forced to be truly cheerful. "You'll meet the team, and the senior dispatcher will show you the ropes. We start slow."
Theo raised an eyebrow again.
Meet them.
He could already feel the tension headache forming. This wasn't just going to be interesting; it was going to be a trial by fire of a very different, and perhaps more dangerous, kind.
Theo inhaled deeply, the air tasting of impending chaos.
"Fine. Let's go meet them. It's time."
"Great! They're already waiting in the conference room," Michael said, leading the way. "...if it's still standing, that is." He said it like a joke, but the weary look in his eyes told Theo he'd already budgeted for property damage.
Theo followed Michael down a hallway, the muffled sounds of an argument growing louder with each step. They stopped in front of a frosted glass door, behind which the voices were anything but harmonious.
"What did you say, you obese relic?" a woman's voice snarled, sharp and metallic.
"I'll say it again! All you foreign freaks should just pack up and leave!" a man's voice boomed back, dripping with contempt.
"Ouuuuuh, someone's getting brave! Go get him, big guy!" a third, gleeful voice chimed in.
Theo just raised an eyebrow. Michael let out a sigh so heavy it seemed to carry the weight of the entire SDN. He didn't hesitate, pushing the door open with a firm shove.
The scene that greeted them was a snapshot of barely contained anarchy. The conversation died instantly, replaced by a dozen pairs of eyes—some human, some not—snapping toward the entrance, their glares hostile and unwelcoming.
In the center of the room, a overweight samurai, his hand clenched on the hilt of his half-drawn katana, was squared off against a towering, muscular woman with vast, feathered wings that brushed the ceiling. They were frozen mid-confrontation, a breath away from violence.
Worse, the others weren't trying to stop it. Two of them—a man in a pristine white tuxedo and a woman in a skintight blue outfit—were actively cheering them on.
"If you start fighting now," Michael said, his voice dangerously soft. A palpable energy began to radiate from him, a holy pressure that made the air itself feel thick and heavy. "I will beat you down and drag each of you to a super-max cell myself, and I won't be particularly gentle about it."
Theo felt the sheer, undiluted seriousness in the threat. He'd seen Michael's power before; this was not an empty promise. The man was a genuine Rank 10 hero for a reason.
"Tch." The samurai, Saturobi, scoffed but reluctantly sheathed his blade with a sharp click.
He retreated to lean against the wall, his expression one of sullen defiance. The winged woman, Seraphim, folded her impressive wings with a rustle and dropped into a chair, her arms crossed over her chest. The room fell into a tense, simmering silence under the weight of Michael's aura.
Now that the immediate crisis was averted, Theo took the opportunity to study his new team, one by one.
Saturobi: He looked the part of a samurai, but the effect was ruined by his considerable gut and a generally slovenly posture. Theo decided he looked less like a legendary warrior and more like a chūnibyō cosplayer who had really let himself go.
Seraphim: She was impossibly imposing. At 220 cm, she was pure, sculpted muscle. Her "armor" was more of a strategic collection of polished steel plates that did very little to conceal her powerful physique, a clear and intimidating choice.
Carver: He looked exactly as Theo remembered from their last encounter: a man in an immaculate white tuxedo, a stark contrast to the sadistic pleasure he took in watching red bloom across its pristine surface.
Tremmor: A surprise. He wasn't humanoid but a being of living, shifting stone, his form rough-hewn and craggy, with glowing fissures for eyes.
DreamOn: She looked like a pop star turned hero, her outfit a riot of neon colors that matched her vibrant pink hair. The fact that she was calmly smoking a long, elegant pipe in the middle of the tension added a layer of surreal absurdity.
Error: She looked the most normal, her outfit a familiar, aerodynamic bodysuit that strongly reminded him of the hero from a game….Tracer. The normalcy was, in this crowd, itself suspicious.
Volt: Theo had already decided he would never call him 'Sovegrin.' The man was a walking stereotype of a mad scientist, with coils and tubes snaking over a lab coat, tiny arcs of electricity constantly dancing across his fingertips and crackling from the apparatus on his back.
This was his team. A collection of egos, pathologies, and raw power that looked about as stable as a nitroglycerin cocktail.
As Theo was sizing them up, the feeling was entirely mutual. Seven pairs of eyes—some curious, some contemptuous, all critical—were raking over him from head to toe, their gazes inevitably snagging on the black cane he leaned on. The silence was thick with unspoken judgments.
"Good! Now that everyone has… calmed down," Michael said, the oppressive holy pressure vanishing as if it had never been, replaced by his trademark brilliant smile. "Let's start with the formalities."
He gestured to Theo with a flourish. "Let me introduce your one and only, your lead Dispatcher—THEO! From this moment forth, he will be your guide, your strategist, and your voice in the field for the Phoenix Program." Michael began clapping, the sound stark and lonely in the unresponsive room.
Everyone looked from Michael's beaming face back to Theo's stoic one. Not a single hand joined the applause.
"So, this is the new guy?" DreamOn asked, her voice a smooth, smoky purr. She exhaled a perfect ring that drifted toward Theo, her neon-bright eyes lingering on his cane. "Doesn't look like much."
"Didn't you say he was a great hero?" Carver rasped, stroking his thin, meticulously groomed mustache. A cruel smile played on his lips. "I don't recall any legend involving a walking stick. Heh heh heh." The laugh was like dry leaves scraping against stone.
"Tch. A disgrace. I refuse to take orders from a cripple," Saturobi declared, not even looking at Theo, his voice dripping with contempt.
"Now, now," Seraphim rumbled, her voice a low tremor. "Clearly, he was in a great battle that left him horribly disfigured! The cane is a badge of honor! Perhaps he was a great hero… long, long ago." She said it with a mocking sort of pity that was somehow worse than open hostility.
"Well, at least his face is intact. That's something," Error commented with a clinical detachment, as if assessing a piece of meat.
"Grrrr…" Tremmor just growled, the sound of grinding rock, his glowing fissure-eyes narrowing to slits.
"T-t-that is t-true, my m-mountain friend," stammered Volt, tiny sparks flying from his lips with each stutter. Theo wondered if the speech impediment was a natural quirk or a side effect of constantly conducting electricity.
"Now, now, everyone, calm down," Michael interjected, his smile never wavering, though a hard edge entered his voice. "I told you, his identity is classified. But I assure you, there is no one better suited to wrangle a team of… unique individuals like yourselves than Theo."
He let the pause hang, his gaze settling on Saturobi. "You don't want to violate your parole and go back to a concrete box, now do you? The food here is much better."
"Tch." Saturobi just turned to glare out the window, his posture the very picture of petulant rebellion. Theo swore the man was actively trying to emulate a brooding anime antagonist, right down to the dramatic hair and the misplaced sense of honor. He just inhaled deeply.
„Now," Michael announced with a theatrical sweep of his arm, "I will let the main character introduce himself." He stepped gracefully to the side, leaving Theo alone at the head of the table.
A heavy silence fell, broken only by the soft tap of Theo's cane on the polished floor as he moved forward. He had instinctively tried to minimize the limp, to walk with a semblance of his old, powerful stride, but the sharp, familiar twinge in his leg quickly corrected him. It was a futile effort. Hiding it was like trying to hide the sun; the attempt itself only drew more attention to the absence of its light. So, he gave up. He let the cane bear his weight fully.
"As you already heard from Michael, my name is Theo—"
"Isn't that a nickname?" Error interrupted, a smirk playing on her lips as she twirled a stylus in her fingers.
"Just Theo," he shot back, his voice a low whip-crack that silenced her smirk. He didn't raise his voice, but the intensity in his gaze made her look away first.
He continued, his tone flat and uncompromising, sweeping it across the room. "I don't know you, and you don't know me. We don't need to be friends. The only thing I am asking is that you do the job you are appointed to, and you do not fuck it up. That way, we can all, at the end of the day, go home." His eyes, cold and analytical, locked onto each of them in turn. "And not back to jail."
He let the word "jail" hang in the air, a stark reminder of the alternative to this probation. If they were going to act like petulant children, he would be the unyielding warden.
"Remember," he said, leaning forward slightly, his weight on the cane making the gesture feel more like a predator bracing itself. "The one who writes the mission reports… is me. I am the one who decides if a maneuver was 'necessary force' or 'wanton destruction.' I am the one who determines if a civilian was 'saved' or 'traumatized.'"
His scrutinizing gaze traveled from DreamOn's suddenly less-smug face, to Carver's now-stilled hand on his mustache, to Saturobi's stubbornly averted eyes.
Some of them, like Volt, visibly shrank back under the weight of that responsibility. Others, like Seraphim, met his glare with a challenging one of their own, but the mockery was gone, replaced by a wary reassessment.
"You were given this opportunity to play heroes," he said, deliberately emphasizing the word play to strip it of any dignity. "It was handed to you. And just that easily," he snapped his fingers, the sound sharp in the quiet room, "I can take it away. I will personally write the report that drops you into a hole so deep, so dark, you will never see the sky again."
He ended with a face of granite, his expression offering no quarter. The air in the room had shifted. The casual disdain had been replaced by a tense, calculating silence. Even Michael, who had been leaning against the wall with his usual smile, looked genuinely surprised, his eyebrows raised as he regarded Theo with a new, appreciative curiosity.
"Ooooukay!" Michael chirped, clapping his hands together to shatter the lingering tension. "Now that the... spirited introductions are over, you can all head to the ready room and await your first dispatch! Go on, shoo! Showtime awaits!"
The team slowly stood, a wave of sullen and contemplative energy. They filed past Theo, a few refusing to meet his gaze, staring fixedly at the floor. Others, like Seraphim and Carver, shot him measured, calculating looks—the kind previously reserved for a dangerous opponent, not a commander. A low current of muttered complaints and speculations trailed in their wake until the door clicked shut, leaving the two men in a sudden, profound silence.
"Wow," Michael breathed, turning to Theo with wide eyes. "That was... brutally effective. I felt the need to check my own parole status for a second."
"Well, somehow I felt I needed to be," Theo said, finally exhaling a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. The stern mask slipped, revealing the weary man beneath. "They weren't going to respect a request. They only understand leverage."
"I'm not going to interfere," Michael assured him, leaning back against the table. "And for now, that kind of shock and awe might be exactly what's needed to stop them from setting the building on fire. But trust me when I say this: that 'ruthless commander' act is a short-term solution. Sooner or later, you'll need to change tactics."
Theo looked at him, his head tilted in genuine confusion. "For these... former villains? Fear and consequences are the only language they speak."
"Villains, no more," Michael corrected, waggling a finger. "A team, even a dysfunctional one, needs synergy. What you just built was a dictatorship. It's stable, but brittle. Fear can make them obey, but it will never make them trust you to call the right play when their lives are on the line."
Theo absorbed this, a frown creasing his brow. Michael then leaned in with a conspiratorial whisper, a grin spreading on his face.
"And just between us, since when do you have the authority to personally consign people to a deep, dark hole? I'm pretty sure that's still my department."
A slow, cunning smile finally broke through Theo's stern expression. He gave a nonchalant shrug. "They don't need to know that."