The Fantastic Five-0
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY EVERYONE!
You know what's All American for this patriotic holiday? Superheroes. And Hawaii. And Task Forces.
This story was originally posted for the Alternate Universe Challenge at h50_flashfic . The challenge is now (finally) closed, so I can post this here:
Title: The Fantastic Five-0
Rating: PG
Characters Involved: Danny, Steve, Kono, Chin, Jenna, Grace
Word Count: 6,673
Summary: Everyone else gets superpowers, but Danny has to save the world anyway.
Notes: Thank you, thank you, thank you asondeiru and lady_mars for their patience and help in making this a lot better than it was.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
---
It hadn’t been a good morning for Danny Williams.
He’d woken up late with a headache, he’d missed his morning phone call with his daughter, and he’d stubbed his toe on the damn pull-out. Then he opened his door to find a grinning Steve McGarrett, which never, ever meant anything good.
“No. Nuh-uh. Not before I’ve had coffee. I don’t want to know what crazy job you’ve found for us until-“
Steve cut him off. “You feeling different this morning?” Steve looked ready to explode, like it was Christmas and he knew there was a grenade launcher wrapped with a bow just for him underneath the pineapple-topped tree.
Danny rubbed at his eyes; he really needed coffee. “Different, no. Annoyed, yes, but also now curious. What has got you all keyed up, huh?”
That’s when Steve floated above Danny’s doormat.
---
Steve wasn’t the only one who had developed powers overnight. Chin was already flying around the office when Steve and Danny walked in. Kono was making cyclones in the water cooler.
“Try something,” Steve insisted.
“I can’t do anything, Steven,” Danny answered through gritted teeth. “We established this in the car.”
“Howzit?” Kono asked, turning to them. “What can you do?”
Steve’s grin got bigger, if that was even possible. “I lifted my truck this morning one-handed.”
“I tripped over my couch,” Danny snipped back.
“You tripped? Ouch.” Kono grimaced in sympathy. It was short-lived, quickly lost to her excitement. “Did you throw it?”
“No. I did not throw it.”
“Danny doesn’t have any powers or anything,” Steve said before adding, “We don’t think.”
Chin’s entire chair, with him in it, floated over to rest beside Kono. “It took me a while to figure out what I could do. Maybe you just need some time, brah.”
Steve gave Danny an ‘I Told You So’ look. Danny returned it with a glare.
“If you three are done playing Superman and Wonder Woman and… whoever floats in a chair, I’m going to go get started with the mountain of paperwork we did not do yesterday because we were all distracted by that stupid glowing rock.” Danny stormed into his office, slamming the door for emphasis.
---
It was impossible to get work done with Steve throwing things around, Chin ‘catching’ them in mid-air and guiding them back to their rightful places, and Kono turning the office into her personal Slip-N-Slide.
Danny’s phone rang, and he picked it up with a short, “Detective Williams.”
“Danny?” Jenna Kaye asked. “Is Steve in today? He isn’t answering his phone.”
“Well, he wouldn’t,” Danny grumbled. “He’s too busy causing major property damage in his own frickin’ office.”
“He’s… what? Why is he wrecking the office?” Jenna sounded genuinely concerned.
Danny sighed. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, trust me.”
“Try me, Danny.”
“Ok, but I warned you.” Danny took a deep breath before announcing, “They have superpowers.”
Danny thought he heard something hit the ground over the phone. “Wait, they what?” Jenna asked.
“They have superpowers. As in they can fly around the office, and Chin can throw stuff around with just the power of his mind, and Kono is now a water woman, and Steve is as strong and fast as ten or maybe a hundred SEALS.”
The long pause from Jenna wasn’t a surprise - he had just told her that his team was now full of superhuman freaks. That kind of news needed processing. No, the surprise came from her answer. “You guys found it?”
“Found it? Found what?”
“Charon’s Stone. Marble-sized, glows green? You found it? I thought you guys might eventually, I figured that you’d-“
“Woah! Hold up, go back, fill in some blanks. Charon’s Stone? You mean that stupid glowing rock we found yesterday? That everybody except me, the smart one, touched-“
“You didn’t touch it?”
“No, I didn’t touch it. You don’t pick up stuff that glows. It gives you cancer,” Danny huffed defensively.
“But you found it?” Jenna sounded hopeful.
“Yes, we found it. Now, why does it glow, and why does it give super powers, and why the hell do you know anything about what’s going on?”
Her answer was a rushed “I’ll be right there,” followed by the line going dead.
---
“So, you’re not from the CIA, even though all your files say that you are.” Steve’s dark expression made Danny feel surprisingly better; it was familiar and not directed at him. It was the first normal thing that he’d seen all day.
Jenna anxiously wrung her hands together. No one was unaffected by a glare from Steve McGarrett. “The government provides us with documentation in one of their federal agencies as a cover. So no, I’m not an analyst with the CIA. I work with the National Agency of Metahuman Affairs.”
“Metahuman Affairs?” Kono asked, brow furrowed. “What’s a metahuman?”
“Well, you, now. Humans with special abilities. The DC comic book universe borrowed the term-“
“What about Wo Fat?” Steve spat, arms crossing menacingly. “Your fiancé? Was that all part of your cover too?”
Jenna shook her head furiously. “No. My fiancé, Wo Fat… all of that is true. He did work for the CIA, he was killed in a trap set by Wo Fat. NAMA was worried about Wo Fat discovering information about the Council of Villainous Metahumans, so I was sent in to monitor the situation. Thankfully Wo Fat doesn’t know about them, and hopefully he never will. He’s dangerous enough on his own.” Jenna brought her eyes to meet Steve’s, flinching but not looking away from his furious stare.
“What about Charon’s Stone, that one you mentioned to Danny over the phone?” Chin interjected. Danny appreciated the redirection.
Jenna cleared her throat and turned to Chin. “Charon’s Stone is suspected to be from the outer regions of our solar system, and it provides metahuman abilities to whoever touches it. It was recently stolen from NAMA Research, and the Intelligence Department tracked the stone to Hawaii. I got the information after I got here and was told to keep an eye out for it.”
“Lucky for you, we found it yesterday. These three goofs picked it up and played with it,” Danny provided.
“I was hoping you would find it,” Jenna answered. “Where’d you put it?”
Steve’s anger disappeared suddenly, replaced with something close to guilt. He turned to Kono and Chin, who stared back at him before the three of them looked back to Jenna.
Jenna frowned slightly when they didn’t answer. “You don’t have it?”
“We didn’t exactly know it was going to give anybody superpowers,” Kono said defensively. “It’s still at the warehouse where we found it.”
Jenna shot out the door as soon as the sentence was out of Kono’s mouth. After a beat, Steve followed her, with Kono and Chin right behind him.
Danny rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. “What did I do to deserve this?” he asked the empty room before heading outside to follow his flying team. At least he got to drive his own car, although he found himself hating the silence.
---
Charon’s Stone was nowhere to be found, no matter what Steve threw around with his freakish strength. And, of course, three people flying through the air hadn’t escaped the notice of just about everyone on the island. The news had recognized them as part of the Five-0 team, which meant that Danny spent the rest of the day fielding phone calls from the governor, the media, the police, and everyone else Danny had ever met during his time in Hawaii. Steve and Jenna had gone to look for other places the stone could have disappeared to, and the Wonder Cousins decided to go talk to their family about their newfound abilities.
Surprisingly, everyone seemed ready to just accept that three out of four people on the Five-0 team now had superhuman powers. The governor was excited to see how this lowered the crime rate for the islands. The talking heads on the TV were throwing around superhero names (all of which Danny thought were awful - Five-0 Strike Force, really?). Danny couldn’t help but feel like he’d been downgraded to Five-0’s secretary as he hung up the phone just for it to ring with someone else who wanted to know what was going on.
Danny hung up the phone and rubbed tiredly at his eyes after explaining everything for the hundredth time. The headache he’d been fighting since the morning throbbed through his temples, and his neck felt stiff and sore.
“I have coffee,” Steve remarked, suddenly in the middle of Danny’s office.
Danny nearly fell out of his seat. “What the - ok, some rules.”
The corners of Steve’s mouth quirked up into the beginnings of a smirk as he set the coffee cup on Danny’s desk. “Rules?”
“Yes, rules. Just because you now have even more freakish power does not mean you get to ignore the rules. Rule number 1: do not sneak up on me and pop in and out of places like that. It’s rude.”
“I brought you coffee, how is that rude?”
“The coffee is not the point, Steve. You announce your presence like a human being. Like you’re normal. Or at least as close to normal as you can get. Rule number 2-“
“There’s more than one?” Steve plopped himself into a chair in Danny’s office, sprawling his legs and making himself comfortable.
“Yes, rules. Plural. Rule number 2-“
Kono peeked her head in, back from breaking the news about her powers to her family. “Hey, we’re going out for drinks. Are you two coming or what?”
“Yeah, we’re coming,” Steve answered, then gave Danny a gentle punch to the shoulder that sent him reeling back into his desk. “Come on, a beer might make you feel better.”
It didn’t. It turned out that his team could now drink him under the table with their new metahuman constitutions.
---
The one and only good thing that Danny could find about his team’s new powers was that putting Wo Fat away became a whole lot easier, if anticlimactic in the end.
In fact, all of their cases seemed to go the same way. By the time Danny actually drove out to the places (because he refused to ride on Steve’s back, even if Steve offered, because isn’t that the ultimate bitch seat right there?), Steve, Kono, and Chin had everything just about wrapped up. The epic fights and chases were no more when Steve could move just as fast as the speed of light, or when Kono just about drowned them, or Chin just moved something in their way or dropped something on top of them. Hell, some of the criminals just started giving up - what was the point in fighting against a Five-0 force that might as well have been running around in leotards?
Danno still got to book ‘em. He also still got to do Steve’s paperwork (at least Chin and Kono still did their own).
Steve and Jenna started having private meetings in Steve’s office at least once a day. When Danny asked, Steve shut down, eyes guarded as he simply grunted that it was classified. Kono didn’t know what they were talking about either, and Chin said he didn’t but Danny suspected he had more of a clue than he let on. “Don’t worry about it,” Chin told Danny. “We’re all working together here, right? Don’t be paranoid.”
Danny wasn’t being paranoid. He was getting fed up.
---
Days stretched into weeks of Superhero Five-0. Danny figured it might make a good Saturday morning cartoon, if somebody wanted to buy the license.
“Probably won’t take long for that offer to come in too,” he said to Steve as he kicked the box the two of them were sorting through. Different companies hoping to make a quick buck kept sending them merchandise samples to look through. Mugs, shirts, magnets, mousepads, keychains, all kinds of junk plastered with three faces.
“We can add you with your Camaro here,” Steve suggested, pointing to a corner of the t-shirt he was holding up before frowning at it. “Without a costume, though.”
“Yeah, I’m really losing out. You guys look so good in those spandex outfits,” Danny snatched the t-shirt to look closer. “Well, ok, Kono actually looks good, but you and Chin just look stupid.”
Steve smirked at him. “You’re just jealous of the spandex. I can order you a jumpsuit if you want.”
“You are not going to order me anything.” Danny threw the Chin Ho Kelly action figure back in the box. “If I get a package from you I swear to God, Steve-“
“Steve?” Jenna peeked her head out of his office. “Do you have a minute?”
“Yes,” Steve answered, his whole body snapping to attention before he turned back to Danny. “You good to clean this up?”
“What am I, the maid?” Danny sputtered, but Steve still left him alone with a box that had forgotten he was actually a part of Five-0 too. Danny kicked it across the room, making Kono jump and scream in her own office as it bounced off her door.
He still cleaned it up.
---
Ultimately, it was an afternoon with Grace that turned out to be what finally caused Danny to snap.
After another day of sorting “inventory,” as Steve was calling it, Danny was ready for some down time with his daughter. A day where he didn’t have to think about flying partners who were honestly invincible, or slipping on a puddle Kono left in the lobby, or fuming about Chin’s version of feng shui. This was his weekend with his little girl, and he was going to enjoy it.
Danny listened as Grace told him about her week - how she did on her math test, the drama of the playground (which seemed to be a girl thing because he didn’t remember it being like that when he was out there), and, of course, superheroes. The whole freaking island seemed to be enamored with them lately, so he couldn’t expect elementary students not to be swept up in it.
“Do you think they can come to the beach with us?”
No! his brain screamed. Out loud, Danny answered, “I don’t know, monkey. It’s their day off too, so I don’t know if they’d-“
“But Kono might be at the beach anyway,” Grace interjected. “The magazines always have pictures of Kono at the beach. And maybe Uncle Chin will be there, and you can call Uncle Steve-“
Mentally groaning, Danny handed his phone to Grace so she could call. “Ok, baby, ok. Call them up.”
The day ended up being a disaster.
Not a disaster for Grace. She loved the attention, and part of Danny (a small part) was thrilled to see her so happy. Kono took Grace out onto the water and calmed it so she could go further out into the waves. Chin made patterns in the air using sea shells and different things that Grace found on the beach so that she could ‘ooooo’ and ‘aaaaah.’
And Steve. Steve attracted the biggest crowd without even trying. He posed for pictures. He signed autographs. He answered questions, all the while looking baffled by all the attention. The worst part about everything was the fact that he was genuinely confused. If he had been faking it… well, Danny still would have dragged him across the beach, fuming, but he would have felt better about it.
Steve followed Danny willingly, not even trying to pull back, and gave Danny a grin when they were away from the crowd. “If you wanted your own autograph, Danno-“
“Leave.”
Steve blinked at him. “What?”
“What, you don’t speak English now? Leave. Go home. Get away from me and my daughter. Is that clear enough for you?” Danny could feel his hands balling up into fists in frustration. He didn’t really care.
Steve’s expression softened as he realized he’d ruined Danny’s time with his daughter. “Danny, I didn’t ask-“
“I know you didn’t ask! Stupid moon rock gave you stupid frickin’ powers and now you’re like a walking freak show at the circus-“
“I’m not a freak, Danny.” Steve’s face darkened.
“You’ve always been a freak, now you’re just a freak who can throw a car,” Danny huffed. “I know you didn’t ask, Steven, you never ask you just… do. But I am. I am asking you to give me some peace. I need to not be around Superhero Steve and his Superhero pals. This is my weekend with Grace, and right now it’s all about you. It’s ALL you. Go. Home. Leave me alone and go get a cat out of a tree or something. I don’t care, just get away from me right now.”
Steve took a step toward Danny. For one horrible moment, Danny thought Steve was going to deck him. In the end, he just replied with a clipped, “Fine,” and took off into the sky.
“When you argue with somebody, YOU WALK AWAY! YOU DON’T FLY, YOU IDIOT!” Danny screamed after him, but Steve was already too far to hear it. Unless he had supersonic hearing all of a sudden, which Danny wouldn’t doubt.
---
Danny took that Monday off. He texted Chin (which took longer than it probably should have, but he wasn’t about to call any of them), turned his phone off, and spent the day in his apartment. He watched TV, then watched movies when the news only talked about the new monument something-or-whatever they were dedicating to Five-0. He hadn’t even known about it.
He considered taking the day on Tuesday too, but figured he’d been cowardly enough. It was time to man up. After dragging himself out of bed and taking a shower, he turned his phone back on. There were 15 missed calls from Jenna Kaye. The hell? He dialed her number.
“Danny? Thank God - why didn’t you return my calls?”
“I took a day, ok? I am allowed to take a day once in a while. What’s going on, why not just call Steve with whatever it is?”
“Because Steve’s gone. So are Kono and Chin.”
Danny froze. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
---
“I left early yesterday to meet with the NAMA director. When I came back this morning this note was left on the computer table.” Jenna was frantic, arms swinging wildly as she spoke. Danny had to dodge an elbow as he leaned over to read the note:
They’re mine.
Donovan the Destroyer
“Donovan the Destroyer? Really? Who the hell is Donovan?”
“I have no idea,” Jenna replied. “I’ve never heard of him before, but if he managed to overpower Steve, Chin, and Kono he has to be a villainous metahuman-“
“Ok, stop,” Danny cut her off. “Stop. We are not going to call him that. I am not going to call him that. Let’s just call him the bad guy, ok?”
Jenna blinked. “Ok. Donovan’s the bad guy.”
Danny gave her a small, encouraging smile. “See? Wasn’t too hard.” He turned his attention back to the note. “Why don’t you just call your NAMA guys, have them swoop in and take this Donovan guy down? Can’t be hard for them, can it?”
Jenna bit her lip and played with the corner of the note. “Uh…”
“Uh? Now’s not the time for ‘uh,’ Kaye. What?”
“My meeting with the director yesterday was… my termination notice.” Jenna looked at a spot on the wall, avoiding Danny’s eyes. “Steve wasn’t exactly cooperative with the NAMA’s vision of what he should be doing or who he should report to. It was supposed to be my job to get him to comply, but I couldn’t. He wanted to continue working here in Hawaii and refused to have his team split up, even though you don’t even classify as metahuman. Since I couldn’t convince him otherwise, I was fired. NAMA doesn’t even know what happened to them.”
Danny felt something clench in his chest. Chin was right; he was being paranoid about those damn meetings. “So we’re on our own.”
“Yes. We’re on our own.”
“Well, lucky for you this isn’t a comic book.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I am a detective, and since we’re not in a comic book, I know what the hell I’m doing. No need for Superman to swoop in and save the day. We can do this.”
---
The forensics team did a sweep of the office. They didn’t really find much besides the note, which they took to analyze. Nothing else had been touched, broken, or tampered with.
The security system had been bypassed entirely. Danny watched the security footage for the umpteenth time. In it, a tall, thin man with wild black hair entered the Five-0 office, sauntering as if he owned the place. Steve instantly went on full alert, but he fell to the floor after taking just one menacing step toward the man. Chin then ran out of his office only to collapse himself. Watching Kono was the worst, since she took a nose dive from the air as she rushed to stop whoever Tall, Scrawny, and Evil was. The whole scene made Danny sick, especially since he hadn’t been there to help just because he’d been too pissy to even show up. Yet he continued to watch it repeatedly, swallowing the guilt as he tried to find another clue he might have missed.
“Got it!” Jenna called from Steve’s office after hanging up the phone, shaking Danny out of his thoughts. “His face was in the system - Donovan McLaurey. He was arrested a while back for a string of thefts in California.”
“Then what’s he doing in Hawaii?” asked Danny. “His parole wouldn’t let him go this far, that’s for sure.”
“Not sure. But nothing in his history suggests he’s a metahuman.”
“Steve, Chin, and Kono weren’t either, before…” Danny stopped and looked up at Jenna. “You think he found it?”
Jenna sighed. “Well, if I wasn’t already fired, I would be now. If he found Charon’s Stone, who knows what abilities he has.”
“Well, on the video they just fell over before they could put up a fight.” Danny rewound the video and replayed their falls for Jenna to watch. “What do you think would cause that to happen?”
“Could be any number of things,” Jenna replied. “Telepathy is the most likely, though. The three of them just seem to shut down against their will.”
“Telepathy? Like mind control?”
“Kind of, yeah.”
Danny ran his hands through his hair, frustrated. “How the hell do we fight against mind control? Between the both of us we have zero superfreak abilities-“
“Metahuman,” Jenna corrected.
“Whatever. How are we supposed to do anything if he can do that,” Danny stabbed his finger on the screen at the frozen image of the fallen Five-0 members, “to us.”
“Hang on.” Jenna disappeared back into Steve’s office and came back out with what looked like two white swimming caps with ‘NAMA’ in bright blue letters. “These might help.”
“If we’re going in the shower, sure,” Danny quipped dryly, turning the cap over in his hands. Inspecting it carefully, he noticed the ultra-thin, gray panels on the inside of it.
“They’re not shower caps. These are NAMA Neural Defense caps. They’re meant to block telepathic frequencies from your own thoughts.”
“Shower caps that block telepaths?” Danny asked, more than a little skeptical. “Really?”
“Yeah. NAMA had Research develop them after the 1974 Telepathic Infiltration-“
“Kaye?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t care. Although I’m sure it’s a fascinating story.” Danny looked down at the cap. “These will really work?”
“They’ll really work. Promise.”
“Then we just need to find where Donovan has them.” He looked back up at Jenna. “Telepaths can be shot, right?”
Jenna nodded.
“Good. Let’s go find him.”
---
Danny cashed in whatever favors he could and promised new favors when he ran out of outstanding IOUs. Catherine ran detail on satellite surveillance, Kamekona made calls, and Toast hacked NAMA to see if they knew anything about this Donovan (while wearing a Telepath-Blocking Cap at Jenna’s insistence; Danny just went with it).
Danny managed to track down Donovan’s girlfriend, and he and Jenna went to question her. Having Jenna in the car with him instead of Steve was odd, but Danny found that it was at least better than riding in the car alone.
It seemed that the girlfriend, Shari, lived in an apartment only slightly rattier than Danny’s. Shari was a small, mousey thing, her peroxide-blond hair pulled into a ratty mess on top of her head. Her wide, dark eyes darted around, trying to find a hole to hide in. Danny figured she was probably on something, most likely meth.
“Haven’t seen Don in days. Like, days,” was her answer to where Donovan was, before squinting at Danny. “Why the cap?”
Danny pulled self-consciously at it, feeling his ears burn a little. “Don’t worry about it. Don, did he seem different to you the last time you saw him?”
Shari’s eyes widened. “He was. He knew things, things only that rock could’ve told him. I told him that rock was evil, but he didn’t listen to me, nooooo.”
Jenna perked up at that. “Where’s the rock now?” she asked.
“Dunno,” Shari answered. “He has it maybe. Hasn’t been here in days. Like, days.”
Danny sighed. “Yeah, yeah you said that. Is it ok if we take a look around?”
“Don’t look in the bathroom drawer, but yeah.” Shari pulled at the frayed bottoms of her cut off shorts. “Yeah, look around.”
“Right.” Danny peeked in the bathroom drawer anyway, but now wasn’t the time to worry about a drug arrest.
Besides, experience told him that he should start in the bedroom. Hidden in the nightstand was a thick manila folder filled with everything that had been printed in the paper about Five-0. Some of the articles Danny hadn’t even seen, but obviously Donovan had made it a point to keep track of them. Stuffed in with the news articles were a listing of buildings, a few flimsy sketches of something that kind of looked like a Batman Halloween costume, and other scraps of paper with random notes.
Danny smirked to himself. It wasn’t often you got lucky enough for the crazy to keep a file chronicling his master plan. Supervillains sure were stupid.
---
“You’re sure they’re in there?” Jenna asked, holding on for dear life as Danny did his best to follow the Steve McGarrett School of Driving through the busy city streets.
“Yes, for the tenth time,” Danny answered as he blasted the horn at somebody going too slowly around a turn. “From what’s in the file, and with what Catherine and Kamekona found, this has to be the place. Abandoned warehouses are clichéd, but there’s a reason for it: they’re big, they’re empty, and nobody goes poking around in them.”
“Then what’s your plan when we get there?
“We try to spot where our guys are, and then we go in hot. SWAT is going to back us up.”
Jenna’s eyebrows went up a bit. “And if he takes over the minds of one of the SWAT team? What then?”
Danny made a sharp turn, jerking them both left as the car screeched right. “Then we don’t let that happen.”
It was scary how much he was starting to sound like Steve.
---
The warehouse itself wasn’t all that big, although certainly big enough to hide three members of Five-0 and one Donovan the Destroyer. The dust-caked windows made it hard to see much from far away, so SWAT followed Danny as he moved in to look inside.
Steve, Chin, and Kono were sprawled on the floor, still comatose under Donovan’s power. Scanning the room, Danny saw a shadow in the corner that looked like somebody with a colander on his head and big bulky gloves on his hands. That had to be the Destroyer right there. Danny motioned to the SWAT leader, who motioned to his men, and everyone positioned themselves to go in.
Danny and Jenna climbed the fire escape to come in from the second floor, which would give them a better vantage point. Jenna had insisted she had experience, but Danny could see her hands tremble just a little as she gripped the steel of the railing. Hopefully she could hold her own, but Danny made a note to keep an eye out for her, just in case. The both of them waited until they heard the door crash open below before moving inside.
The entire warehouse erupted into gunfire and chaos. It turned out a couple of Donovan’s thug buddies were with him in the warehouse, two of whom were waiting for Kaye and Danny upstairs. Danny threw one out the window onto the fire escape, knocking him out cold. Jenna shot at the other one, winging him once. As he moved in closer, she hit him in the head a couple times with the butt of her gun. Not the most graceful take down, but effective. Danny gave her shoulder a squeeze before the two of them moved downstairs.
SWAT had effectively taken out the other goons, but Danny stopped short when he realized that they were all pointing their guns at each other. Jenna gasped, then turned toward where Donovan stood next to the Five-0 team.
Danny turned, gun ready. He had to bite his lip when he saw Donovan the Destroyer in the light. The helmet and gloves he’d noticed in the shadows were nothing compared to the ridiculous green cape flowing in the nonexistent breeze. A black mask hid a large portion of his face. Hanging around his neck was the glowing Charon’s Stone, protected in a glass vial. Danny couldn’t help the snort that escaped, and Jenna turned to look at him as if he were crazy.
“Who dares mock The Destroyer?” Donovan asked, voice deep and booming. It was the most ridiculous thing Danny had ever heard, and would have been a lot funnier if he hadn’t heard the cocking of guns behind him.
“If we’re going to talk about this, you need to drop the voice,” Danny answered, raising his gun. “I don’t want to have to shoot you, but I will.”
Donovan’s eyes narrowed as he focused on Danny, then they widened with confusion. “What? Why are you not lowering your gun?” The Destroyer’s face then twisted in something close to disgust. “And what is that you are wearing on your head?”
“I could ask you the same thing buddy,” Danny called. This guy was going to mock the cap when he was wearing a colander? “Why take them, anyway?” Danny nodded to his team.
“They were going to be in the way of my master plan.”
“To do what, take over the world? Original.” Danny rolled his eyes. “Let them go already. SWAT, too. Last warning before I shoot you.”
“Psh. By the time you shoot me, they will have all fired upon one another.”
“Do you really want to do that? An entire SWAT team dead, all on you.”
“I will not be caught.” Donovan started to hover above the floor, slowly rising. “I am now a superior-“
The sound of a single gunshot rang out loudly next to Danny’s ear, causing him to jump. Donovan crashed to the ground with a sickening thud. Turning his head, Danny stared at Jenna as she slowly lowered her gun. “The hell?”
“You never let a villainous metahuman monologue,” she answered simply. “It’s the most common mistake of rookies.”
The SWAT team lowered their guns, murmuring their confusion over what had just happened. Danny ran over to his teammates, who were now starting to come around.
“Danny?” Steve asked, trying to make sense of his surroundings.
“The one and only.” Danny helped Steve sit up before doing the same for Chin, who in turn helped Kono. “Everyone ok?”
“Yeah, I think we’re - what are you wearing on your head?” Steve choked down a laugh.
Danny rolled his eyes, but a grin spread across his face. “I come in and save the day, and you’re making fun of what kept the telepath from getting into my head? See if I do this for you again.”
Kono’s head whipped around at that. “Where is he? The guy who stormed the office.”
“You mean Donovan the Destroyer, Telepath Extraordinaire? Kaye’s got him. We took care of it,” Danny answered, nodding his head to where Jenna was removing Charon’s Stone from around the fallen Destroyer’s neck.
Chin frowned a bit. “He found the stone, so he has abilities too?”
“Yeah, and he was going to use his powers to take over the world, one island at a time. Or something like that. He caught you three because you were a threat to his master plan.”
Steve stood up, stretching his arms and rolling his neck before turning back to Danny. “Too bad for him he didn’t get the whole team, right?” He hesitated a bit before adding, “Look, Danny, you’re still an important part of Five-0-“
“Clearly, since I had to save your metahuman asses,” Danny replied quickly. “But… I get it. Thank you.”
“I didn’t mean to ruin your weekend with Grace.”
“I know, I know. What, you want to hug it out?” Danny smirked and held out his arms.
None of them noticed the SWAT team member stiffen behind them, and it was already too late when they heard the shot go off. Flaring heat tore through Danny, the bullet catching him in the ribs through the vulnerable part of the vest where he’d lifted his arms. Danny heard people shouting, felt Steve catch him as he crumbled, and then things just sort of went blank.
---
One minute, Danny felt like he was floating in a warm sea of light. The next, his eyes were flying open to blinding fluorescents paired with an incessant beeping and an annoying burning in his left arm.
Everyone crowded in the room started talking all at once: some giving vitals, some barking orders, some cheering, and above all of it he heard someone repeating his name over and over. When he finally turned toward it, he was unsurprised to find Steve, grinning crazily at him. Danny could have sworn his eyes looked a little wet.
“How are you feeling, Danny?” the person Danny assumed was the doctor asked. He almost snapped back that he felt like he’d been hit by a truck of two-by-fours, but he realized that he felt completely fine other than the stinging in his arm. Pushing himself up, he reached for where he knew the bullet tore into him, but the hole was closed underneath his bandages. Danny couldn’t even feel scar tissue.
The doctor chuckled, although Danny could hardly call this little miracle funny. “I’d wager there’s no wound there now. Your body took the compound well.”
“What compound? What the hell are you talking about? Where am I?” Danny croaked, realizing just how dry his throat felt. How long had he been out?
“You’re at the NAMA Medical Facility in LA,” Steve answered.
Danny stared at him. “LA? California? Are there no hospitals in Hawaii now?”
“None as good as ours,” the doctor answered gently. “Let me start at the beginning. Donovan used his telepathic powers to have one of the SWAT team members shoot you. We flew you out here at great haste when your condition made a turn for the worse. Our jets tend to go faster than your commercial ones do.”
“I called in the few favors I had left,” Jenna added, appearing on the other side of Danny’s bed and squeezing his hand. He squeezed back.
“You were administered a treatment containing powder from the crushed Charon’s Stone,” the doctor continued. “It seems to have worked as well as we had hoped.”
“You hoped?” Danny sputtered. “You gambled with giving me a crushed up moon rock to see if it helped me recover from a gunshot wound?”
“Not gambled,” Steve said. “Jenna knew it had healing abilities, but putting your hand on it didn’t do anything. The doctors here figured you had to be conscious to use it properly, but if they crushed it to make an injectable form it would work and it’d heal you.”
“And you bought that crap? How does that even make sense?”
“You’re ok,” Steve’s voice was thick, his face so earnest it was almost pitiful. “That’s good enough for me.”
Danny nodded. “Yeah, good enough for me too.” Just like that, Steve went back to his maniacal smiling. It suited him better.
---
Once the doctors had finished their poking and prodding and checking and stabbing, they cleared the room to make way for the rest of the team to come in. Jenna ducked out too, even when both Steve and Danny insisted she stay, stammering something about clearing out her locker and desk. Danny could see the gears turning in Steve’s head as Kono and Chin came in. Kono carried a huge bouquet of flowers, and Chin brought him a pineapple. Danny chucked it back at him good-naturedly, causing Chin to duck.
“What, no deflecting it with the mind?” Danny asked with a chuckle, which he quickly cut off when he realized no one was laughing with him. “What?”
“When the doctors destroyed Charon’s Stone, we lost our abilities,” Kono said simply, as if she was sharing the morning surf report.
“Hold on. So, no more flying? No more super human strength or water works or any of it?” Danny asked incredulously.
“No, it’s all gone, brah,” Chin chimed in.
“You gave it all up, just like that?”
“You’re a lot more important,” Steve insisted. “It was give everything up or lose a part of this family. I wasn’t going to let that happen. Chin and Kono agreed.”
“Even if we didn’t, we would have had to live with it,” Kono added. “The boss was on the war path to save you.”
Danny, for once, was struck speechless as he looked between their faces. No resentment, no bitterness, no anger, just utter relief and pure happiness that Danny was alive and well.
“Thank you,” was all he could manage to say.
---
After that things went back to normal, or at least as normal as Five-0 ever truly was. Sometimes Kono looked wistfully out at the ocean, and every once in a while Danny could have sworn that Chin was staring at something intensely just to see if he could move it an inch. Otherwise, they fell quickly back into their routine of terrorizing the criminals of Hawaii. Since Jenna Kaye really didn’t have anywhere to go after being fired from NAMA, Steve invited her to be a part of Five-0. Danny seconded the motion, and Jenna had stuttered a thank you before giving everyone in the room a hug.
The Fantastic Five-0, as the papers had ultimately dubbed them, fell out of favor with the media when they could no longer fly around and save the day with superhuman tactics. Steve seemed actually relieved by this turn of events, telling Danny he never really wanted to be a superhero anyway. Danny made some quip about Steve looking terrible in tights, but he got what Steve was trying to say and appreciated it.
Sometimes Danny checked his wound in the mirror in the bathroom, still not believing that it had healed up so easily and cleanly. As much as he had hated that stupid rock, it had saved his life. He had been shot and was living a life with no side effects.
At least not from the gun shot.
Danny started awake a few weeks later and felt the pull-out crash to the ground from a few feet up. Looking around his apartment, he watched as everything else fell, thud-thud-thud, back into place from where it had all been floating as Danny slept.
“Dammit.”
You know what's All American for this patriotic holiday? Superheroes. And Hawaii. And Task Forces.
This story was originally posted for the Alternate Universe Challenge at h50_flashfic . The challenge is now (finally) closed, so I can post this here:
Title: The Fantastic Five-0
Rating: PG
Characters Involved: Danny, Steve, Kono, Chin, Jenna, Grace
Word Count: 6,673
Summary: Everyone else gets superpowers, but Danny has to save the world anyway.
Notes: Thank you, thank you, thank you asondeiru and lady_mars for their patience and help in making this a lot better than it was.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
---
It hadn’t been a good morning for Danny Williams.
He’d woken up late with a headache, he’d missed his morning phone call with his daughter, and he’d stubbed his toe on the damn pull-out. Then he opened his door to find a grinning Steve McGarrett, which never, ever meant anything good.
“No. Nuh-uh. Not before I’ve had coffee. I don’t want to know what crazy job you’ve found for us until-“
Steve cut him off. “You feeling different this morning?” Steve looked ready to explode, like it was Christmas and he knew there was a grenade launcher wrapped with a bow just for him underneath the pineapple-topped tree.
Danny rubbed at his eyes; he really needed coffee. “Different, no. Annoyed, yes, but also now curious. What has got you all keyed up, huh?”
That’s when Steve floated above Danny’s doormat.
---
Steve wasn’t the only one who had developed powers overnight. Chin was already flying around the office when Steve and Danny walked in. Kono was making cyclones in the water cooler.
“Try something,” Steve insisted.
“I can’t do anything, Steven,” Danny answered through gritted teeth. “We established this in the car.”
“Howzit?” Kono asked, turning to them. “What can you do?”
Steve’s grin got bigger, if that was even possible. “I lifted my truck this morning one-handed.”
“I tripped over my couch,” Danny snipped back.
“You tripped? Ouch.” Kono grimaced in sympathy. It was short-lived, quickly lost to her excitement. “Did you throw it?”
“No. I did not throw it.”
“Danny doesn’t have any powers or anything,” Steve said before adding, “We don’t think.”
Chin’s entire chair, with him in it, floated over to rest beside Kono. “It took me a while to figure out what I could do. Maybe you just need some time, brah.”
Steve gave Danny an ‘I Told You So’ look. Danny returned it with a glare.
“If you three are done playing Superman and Wonder Woman and… whoever floats in a chair, I’m going to go get started with the mountain of paperwork we did not do yesterday because we were all distracted by that stupid glowing rock.” Danny stormed into his office, slamming the door for emphasis.
---
It was impossible to get work done with Steve throwing things around, Chin ‘catching’ them in mid-air and guiding them back to their rightful places, and Kono turning the office into her personal Slip-N-Slide.
Danny’s phone rang, and he picked it up with a short, “Detective Williams.”
“Danny?” Jenna Kaye asked. “Is Steve in today? He isn’t answering his phone.”
“Well, he wouldn’t,” Danny grumbled. “He’s too busy causing major property damage in his own frickin’ office.”
“He’s… what? Why is he wrecking the office?” Jenna sounded genuinely concerned.
Danny sighed. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, trust me.”
“Try me, Danny.”
“Ok, but I warned you.” Danny took a deep breath before announcing, “They have superpowers.”
Danny thought he heard something hit the ground over the phone. “Wait, they what?” Jenna asked.
“They have superpowers. As in they can fly around the office, and Chin can throw stuff around with just the power of his mind, and Kono is now a water woman, and Steve is as strong and fast as ten or maybe a hundred SEALS.”
The long pause from Jenna wasn’t a surprise - he had just told her that his team was now full of superhuman freaks. That kind of news needed processing. No, the surprise came from her answer. “You guys found it?”
“Found it? Found what?”
“Charon’s Stone. Marble-sized, glows green? You found it? I thought you guys might eventually, I figured that you’d-“
“Woah! Hold up, go back, fill in some blanks. Charon’s Stone? You mean that stupid glowing rock we found yesterday? That everybody except me, the smart one, touched-“
“You didn’t touch it?”
“No, I didn’t touch it. You don’t pick up stuff that glows. It gives you cancer,” Danny huffed defensively.
“But you found it?” Jenna sounded hopeful.
“Yes, we found it. Now, why does it glow, and why does it give super powers, and why the hell do you know anything about what’s going on?”
Her answer was a rushed “I’ll be right there,” followed by the line going dead.
---
“So, you’re not from the CIA, even though all your files say that you are.” Steve’s dark expression made Danny feel surprisingly better; it was familiar and not directed at him. It was the first normal thing that he’d seen all day.
Jenna anxiously wrung her hands together. No one was unaffected by a glare from Steve McGarrett. “The government provides us with documentation in one of their federal agencies as a cover. So no, I’m not an analyst with the CIA. I work with the National Agency of Metahuman Affairs.”
“Metahuman Affairs?” Kono asked, brow furrowed. “What’s a metahuman?”
“Well, you, now. Humans with special abilities. The DC comic book universe borrowed the term-“
“What about Wo Fat?” Steve spat, arms crossing menacingly. “Your fiancé? Was that all part of your cover too?”
Jenna shook her head furiously. “No. My fiancé, Wo Fat… all of that is true. He did work for the CIA, he was killed in a trap set by Wo Fat. NAMA was worried about Wo Fat discovering information about the Council of Villainous Metahumans, so I was sent in to monitor the situation. Thankfully Wo Fat doesn’t know about them, and hopefully he never will. He’s dangerous enough on his own.” Jenna brought her eyes to meet Steve’s, flinching but not looking away from his furious stare.
“What about Charon’s Stone, that one you mentioned to Danny over the phone?” Chin interjected. Danny appreciated the redirection.
Jenna cleared her throat and turned to Chin. “Charon’s Stone is suspected to be from the outer regions of our solar system, and it provides metahuman abilities to whoever touches it. It was recently stolen from NAMA Research, and the Intelligence Department tracked the stone to Hawaii. I got the information after I got here and was told to keep an eye out for it.”
“Lucky for you, we found it yesterday. These three goofs picked it up and played with it,” Danny provided.
“I was hoping you would find it,” Jenna answered. “Where’d you put it?”
Steve’s anger disappeared suddenly, replaced with something close to guilt. He turned to Kono and Chin, who stared back at him before the three of them looked back to Jenna.
Jenna frowned slightly when they didn’t answer. “You don’t have it?”
“We didn’t exactly know it was going to give anybody superpowers,” Kono said defensively. “It’s still at the warehouse where we found it.”
Jenna shot out the door as soon as the sentence was out of Kono’s mouth. After a beat, Steve followed her, with Kono and Chin right behind him.
Danny rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. “What did I do to deserve this?” he asked the empty room before heading outside to follow his flying team. At least he got to drive his own car, although he found himself hating the silence.
---
Charon’s Stone was nowhere to be found, no matter what Steve threw around with his freakish strength. And, of course, three people flying through the air hadn’t escaped the notice of just about everyone on the island. The news had recognized them as part of the Five-0 team, which meant that Danny spent the rest of the day fielding phone calls from the governor, the media, the police, and everyone else Danny had ever met during his time in Hawaii. Steve and Jenna had gone to look for other places the stone could have disappeared to, and the Wonder Cousins decided to go talk to their family about their newfound abilities.
Surprisingly, everyone seemed ready to just accept that three out of four people on the Five-0 team now had superhuman powers. The governor was excited to see how this lowered the crime rate for the islands. The talking heads on the TV were throwing around superhero names (all of which Danny thought were awful - Five-0 Strike Force, really?). Danny couldn’t help but feel like he’d been downgraded to Five-0’s secretary as he hung up the phone just for it to ring with someone else who wanted to know what was going on.
Danny hung up the phone and rubbed tiredly at his eyes after explaining everything for the hundredth time. The headache he’d been fighting since the morning throbbed through his temples, and his neck felt stiff and sore.
“I have coffee,” Steve remarked, suddenly in the middle of Danny’s office.
Danny nearly fell out of his seat. “What the - ok, some rules.”
The corners of Steve’s mouth quirked up into the beginnings of a smirk as he set the coffee cup on Danny’s desk. “Rules?”
“Yes, rules. Just because you now have even more freakish power does not mean you get to ignore the rules. Rule number 1: do not sneak up on me and pop in and out of places like that. It’s rude.”
“I brought you coffee, how is that rude?”
“The coffee is not the point, Steve. You announce your presence like a human being. Like you’re normal. Or at least as close to normal as you can get. Rule number 2-“
“There’s more than one?” Steve plopped himself into a chair in Danny’s office, sprawling his legs and making himself comfortable.
“Yes, rules. Plural. Rule number 2-“
Kono peeked her head in, back from breaking the news about her powers to her family. “Hey, we’re going out for drinks. Are you two coming or what?”
“Yeah, we’re coming,” Steve answered, then gave Danny a gentle punch to the shoulder that sent him reeling back into his desk. “Come on, a beer might make you feel better.”
It didn’t. It turned out that his team could now drink him under the table with their new metahuman constitutions.
---
The one and only good thing that Danny could find about his team’s new powers was that putting Wo Fat away became a whole lot easier, if anticlimactic in the end.
In fact, all of their cases seemed to go the same way. By the time Danny actually drove out to the places (because he refused to ride on Steve’s back, even if Steve offered, because isn’t that the ultimate bitch seat right there?), Steve, Kono, and Chin had everything just about wrapped up. The epic fights and chases were no more when Steve could move just as fast as the speed of light, or when Kono just about drowned them, or Chin just moved something in their way or dropped something on top of them. Hell, some of the criminals just started giving up - what was the point in fighting against a Five-0 force that might as well have been running around in leotards?
Danno still got to book ‘em. He also still got to do Steve’s paperwork (at least Chin and Kono still did their own).
Steve and Jenna started having private meetings in Steve’s office at least once a day. When Danny asked, Steve shut down, eyes guarded as he simply grunted that it was classified. Kono didn’t know what they were talking about either, and Chin said he didn’t but Danny suspected he had more of a clue than he let on. “Don’t worry about it,” Chin told Danny. “We’re all working together here, right? Don’t be paranoid.”
Danny wasn’t being paranoid. He was getting fed up.
---
Days stretched into weeks of Superhero Five-0. Danny figured it might make a good Saturday morning cartoon, if somebody wanted to buy the license.
“Probably won’t take long for that offer to come in too,” he said to Steve as he kicked the box the two of them were sorting through. Different companies hoping to make a quick buck kept sending them merchandise samples to look through. Mugs, shirts, magnets, mousepads, keychains, all kinds of junk plastered with three faces.
“We can add you with your Camaro here,” Steve suggested, pointing to a corner of the t-shirt he was holding up before frowning at it. “Without a costume, though.”
“Yeah, I’m really losing out. You guys look so good in those spandex outfits,” Danny snatched the t-shirt to look closer. “Well, ok, Kono actually looks good, but you and Chin just look stupid.”
Steve smirked at him. “You’re just jealous of the spandex. I can order you a jumpsuit if you want.”
“You are not going to order me anything.” Danny threw the Chin Ho Kelly action figure back in the box. “If I get a package from you I swear to God, Steve-“
“Steve?” Jenna peeked her head out of his office. “Do you have a minute?”
“Yes,” Steve answered, his whole body snapping to attention before he turned back to Danny. “You good to clean this up?”
“What am I, the maid?” Danny sputtered, but Steve still left him alone with a box that had forgotten he was actually a part of Five-0 too. Danny kicked it across the room, making Kono jump and scream in her own office as it bounced off her door.
He still cleaned it up.
---
Ultimately, it was an afternoon with Grace that turned out to be what finally caused Danny to snap.
After another day of sorting “inventory,” as Steve was calling it, Danny was ready for some down time with his daughter. A day where he didn’t have to think about flying partners who were honestly invincible, or slipping on a puddle Kono left in the lobby, or fuming about Chin’s version of feng shui. This was his weekend with his little girl, and he was going to enjoy it.
Danny listened as Grace told him about her week - how she did on her math test, the drama of the playground (which seemed to be a girl thing because he didn’t remember it being like that when he was out there), and, of course, superheroes. The whole freaking island seemed to be enamored with them lately, so he couldn’t expect elementary students not to be swept up in it.
“Do you think they can come to the beach with us?”
No! his brain screamed. Out loud, Danny answered, “I don’t know, monkey. It’s their day off too, so I don’t know if they’d-“
“But Kono might be at the beach anyway,” Grace interjected. “The magazines always have pictures of Kono at the beach. And maybe Uncle Chin will be there, and you can call Uncle Steve-“
Mentally groaning, Danny handed his phone to Grace so she could call. “Ok, baby, ok. Call them up.”
The day ended up being a disaster.
Not a disaster for Grace. She loved the attention, and part of Danny (a small part) was thrilled to see her so happy. Kono took Grace out onto the water and calmed it so she could go further out into the waves. Chin made patterns in the air using sea shells and different things that Grace found on the beach so that she could ‘ooooo’ and ‘aaaaah.’
And Steve. Steve attracted the biggest crowd without even trying. He posed for pictures. He signed autographs. He answered questions, all the while looking baffled by all the attention. The worst part about everything was the fact that he was genuinely confused. If he had been faking it… well, Danny still would have dragged him across the beach, fuming, but he would have felt better about it.
Steve followed Danny willingly, not even trying to pull back, and gave Danny a grin when they were away from the crowd. “If you wanted your own autograph, Danno-“
“Leave.”
Steve blinked at him. “What?”
“What, you don’t speak English now? Leave. Go home. Get away from me and my daughter. Is that clear enough for you?” Danny could feel his hands balling up into fists in frustration. He didn’t really care.
Steve’s expression softened as he realized he’d ruined Danny’s time with his daughter. “Danny, I didn’t ask-“
“I know you didn’t ask! Stupid moon rock gave you stupid frickin’ powers and now you’re like a walking freak show at the circus-“
“I’m not a freak, Danny.” Steve’s face darkened.
“You’ve always been a freak, now you’re just a freak who can throw a car,” Danny huffed. “I know you didn’t ask, Steven, you never ask you just… do. But I am. I am asking you to give me some peace. I need to not be around Superhero Steve and his Superhero pals. This is my weekend with Grace, and right now it’s all about you. It’s ALL you. Go. Home. Leave me alone and go get a cat out of a tree or something. I don’t care, just get away from me right now.”
Steve took a step toward Danny. For one horrible moment, Danny thought Steve was going to deck him. In the end, he just replied with a clipped, “Fine,” and took off into the sky.
“When you argue with somebody, YOU WALK AWAY! YOU DON’T FLY, YOU IDIOT!” Danny screamed after him, but Steve was already too far to hear it. Unless he had supersonic hearing all of a sudden, which Danny wouldn’t doubt.
---
Danny took that Monday off. He texted Chin (which took longer than it probably should have, but he wasn’t about to call any of them), turned his phone off, and spent the day in his apartment. He watched TV, then watched movies when the news only talked about the new monument something-or-whatever they were dedicating to Five-0. He hadn’t even known about it.
He considered taking the day on Tuesday too, but figured he’d been cowardly enough. It was time to man up. After dragging himself out of bed and taking a shower, he turned his phone back on. There were 15 missed calls from Jenna Kaye. The hell? He dialed her number.
“Danny? Thank God - why didn’t you return my calls?”
“I took a day, ok? I am allowed to take a day once in a while. What’s going on, why not just call Steve with whatever it is?”
“Because Steve’s gone. So are Kono and Chin.”
Danny froze. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
---
“I left early yesterday to meet with the NAMA director. When I came back this morning this note was left on the computer table.” Jenna was frantic, arms swinging wildly as she spoke. Danny had to dodge an elbow as he leaned over to read the note:
They’re mine.
Donovan the Destroyer
“Donovan the Destroyer? Really? Who the hell is Donovan?”
“I have no idea,” Jenna replied. “I’ve never heard of him before, but if he managed to overpower Steve, Chin, and Kono he has to be a villainous metahuman-“
“Ok, stop,” Danny cut her off. “Stop. We are not going to call him that. I am not going to call him that. Let’s just call him the bad guy, ok?”
Jenna blinked. “Ok. Donovan’s the bad guy.”
Danny gave her a small, encouraging smile. “See? Wasn’t too hard.” He turned his attention back to the note. “Why don’t you just call your NAMA guys, have them swoop in and take this Donovan guy down? Can’t be hard for them, can it?”
Jenna bit her lip and played with the corner of the note. “Uh…”
“Uh? Now’s not the time for ‘uh,’ Kaye. What?”
“My meeting with the director yesterday was… my termination notice.” Jenna looked at a spot on the wall, avoiding Danny’s eyes. “Steve wasn’t exactly cooperative with the NAMA’s vision of what he should be doing or who he should report to. It was supposed to be my job to get him to comply, but I couldn’t. He wanted to continue working here in Hawaii and refused to have his team split up, even though you don’t even classify as metahuman. Since I couldn’t convince him otherwise, I was fired. NAMA doesn’t even know what happened to them.”
Danny felt something clench in his chest. Chin was right; he was being paranoid about those damn meetings. “So we’re on our own.”
“Yes. We’re on our own.”
“Well, lucky for you this isn’t a comic book.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I am a detective, and since we’re not in a comic book, I know what the hell I’m doing. No need for Superman to swoop in and save the day. We can do this.”
---
The forensics team did a sweep of the office. They didn’t really find much besides the note, which they took to analyze. Nothing else had been touched, broken, or tampered with.
The security system had been bypassed entirely. Danny watched the security footage for the umpteenth time. In it, a tall, thin man with wild black hair entered the Five-0 office, sauntering as if he owned the place. Steve instantly went on full alert, but he fell to the floor after taking just one menacing step toward the man. Chin then ran out of his office only to collapse himself. Watching Kono was the worst, since she took a nose dive from the air as she rushed to stop whoever Tall, Scrawny, and Evil was. The whole scene made Danny sick, especially since he hadn’t been there to help just because he’d been too pissy to even show up. Yet he continued to watch it repeatedly, swallowing the guilt as he tried to find another clue he might have missed.
“Got it!” Jenna called from Steve’s office after hanging up the phone, shaking Danny out of his thoughts. “His face was in the system - Donovan McLaurey. He was arrested a while back for a string of thefts in California.”
“Then what’s he doing in Hawaii?” asked Danny. “His parole wouldn’t let him go this far, that’s for sure.”
“Not sure. But nothing in his history suggests he’s a metahuman.”
“Steve, Chin, and Kono weren’t either, before…” Danny stopped and looked up at Jenna. “You think he found it?”
Jenna sighed. “Well, if I wasn’t already fired, I would be now. If he found Charon’s Stone, who knows what abilities he has.”
“Well, on the video they just fell over before they could put up a fight.” Danny rewound the video and replayed their falls for Jenna to watch. “What do you think would cause that to happen?”
“Could be any number of things,” Jenna replied. “Telepathy is the most likely, though. The three of them just seem to shut down against their will.”
“Telepathy? Like mind control?”
“Kind of, yeah.”
Danny ran his hands through his hair, frustrated. “How the hell do we fight against mind control? Between the both of us we have zero superfreak abilities-“
“Metahuman,” Jenna corrected.
“Whatever. How are we supposed to do anything if he can do that,” Danny stabbed his finger on the screen at the frozen image of the fallen Five-0 members, “to us.”
“Hang on.” Jenna disappeared back into Steve’s office and came back out with what looked like two white swimming caps with ‘NAMA’ in bright blue letters. “These might help.”
“If we’re going in the shower, sure,” Danny quipped dryly, turning the cap over in his hands. Inspecting it carefully, he noticed the ultra-thin, gray panels on the inside of it.
“They’re not shower caps. These are NAMA Neural Defense caps. They’re meant to block telepathic frequencies from your own thoughts.”
“Shower caps that block telepaths?” Danny asked, more than a little skeptical. “Really?”
“Yeah. NAMA had Research develop them after the 1974 Telepathic Infiltration-“
“Kaye?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t care. Although I’m sure it’s a fascinating story.” Danny looked down at the cap. “These will really work?”
“They’ll really work. Promise.”
“Then we just need to find where Donovan has them.” He looked back up at Jenna. “Telepaths can be shot, right?”
Jenna nodded.
“Good. Let’s go find him.”
---
Danny cashed in whatever favors he could and promised new favors when he ran out of outstanding IOUs. Catherine ran detail on satellite surveillance, Kamekona made calls, and Toast hacked NAMA to see if they knew anything about this Donovan (while wearing a Telepath-Blocking Cap at Jenna’s insistence; Danny just went with it).
Danny managed to track down Donovan’s girlfriend, and he and Jenna went to question her. Having Jenna in the car with him instead of Steve was odd, but Danny found that it was at least better than riding in the car alone.
It seemed that the girlfriend, Shari, lived in an apartment only slightly rattier than Danny’s. Shari was a small, mousey thing, her peroxide-blond hair pulled into a ratty mess on top of her head. Her wide, dark eyes darted around, trying to find a hole to hide in. Danny figured she was probably on something, most likely meth.
“Haven’t seen Don in days. Like, days,” was her answer to where Donovan was, before squinting at Danny. “Why the cap?”
Danny pulled self-consciously at it, feeling his ears burn a little. “Don’t worry about it. Don, did he seem different to you the last time you saw him?”
Shari’s eyes widened. “He was. He knew things, things only that rock could’ve told him. I told him that rock was evil, but he didn’t listen to me, nooooo.”
Jenna perked up at that. “Where’s the rock now?” she asked.
“Dunno,” Shari answered. “He has it maybe. Hasn’t been here in days. Like, days.”
Danny sighed. “Yeah, yeah you said that. Is it ok if we take a look around?”
“Don’t look in the bathroom drawer, but yeah.” Shari pulled at the frayed bottoms of her cut off shorts. “Yeah, look around.”
“Right.” Danny peeked in the bathroom drawer anyway, but now wasn’t the time to worry about a drug arrest.
Besides, experience told him that he should start in the bedroom. Hidden in the nightstand was a thick manila folder filled with everything that had been printed in the paper about Five-0. Some of the articles Danny hadn’t even seen, but obviously Donovan had made it a point to keep track of them. Stuffed in with the news articles were a listing of buildings, a few flimsy sketches of something that kind of looked like a Batman Halloween costume, and other scraps of paper with random notes.
Danny smirked to himself. It wasn’t often you got lucky enough for the crazy to keep a file chronicling his master plan. Supervillains sure were stupid.
---
“You’re sure they’re in there?” Jenna asked, holding on for dear life as Danny did his best to follow the Steve McGarrett School of Driving through the busy city streets.
“Yes, for the tenth time,” Danny answered as he blasted the horn at somebody going too slowly around a turn. “From what’s in the file, and with what Catherine and Kamekona found, this has to be the place. Abandoned warehouses are clichéd, but there’s a reason for it: they’re big, they’re empty, and nobody goes poking around in them.”
“Then what’s your plan when we get there?
“We try to spot where our guys are, and then we go in hot. SWAT is going to back us up.”
Jenna’s eyebrows went up a bit. “And if he takes over the minds of one of the SWAT team? What then?”
Danny made a sharp turn, jerking them both left as the car screeched right. “Then we don’t let that happen.”
It was scary how much he was starting to sound like Steve.
---
The warehouse itself wasn’t all that big, although certainly big enough to hide three members of Five-0 and one Donovan the Destroyer. The dust-caked windows made it hard to see much from far away, so SWAT followed Danny as he moved in to look inside.
Steve, Chin, and Kono were sprawled on the floor, still comatose under Donovan’s power. Scanning the room, Danny saw a shadow in the corner that looked like somebody with a colander on his head and big bulky gloves on his hands. That had to be the Destroyer right there. Danny motioned to the SWAT leader, who motioned to his men, and everyone positioned themselves to go in.
Danny and Jenna climbed the fire escape to come in from the second floor, which would give them a better vantage point. Jenna had insisted she had experience, but Danny could see her hands tremble just a little as she gripped the steel of the railing. Hopefully she could hold her own, but Danny made a note to keep an eye out for her, just in case. The both of them waited until they heard the door crash open below before moving inside.
The entire warehouse erupted into gunfire and chaos. It turned out a couple of Donovan’s thug buddies were with him in the warehouse, two of whom were waiting for Kaye and Danny upstairs. Danny threw one out the window onto the fire escape, knocking him out cold. Jenna shot at the other one, winging him once. As he moved in closer, she hit him in the head a couple times with the butt of her gun. Not the most graceful take down, but effective. Danny gave her shoulder a squeeze before the two of them moved downstairs.
SWAT had effectively taken out the other goons, but Danny stopped short when he realized that they were all pointing their guns at each other. Jenna gasped, then turned toward where Donovan stood next to the Five-0 team.
Danny turned, gun ready. He had to bite his lip when he saw Donovan the Destroyer in the light. The helmet and gloves he’d noticed in the shadows were nothing compared to the ridiculous green cape flowing in the nonexistent breeze. A black mask hid a large portion of his face. Hanging around his neck was the glowing Charon’s Stone, protected in a glass vial. Danny couldn’t help the snort that escaped, and Jenna turned to look at him as if he were crazy.
“Who dares mock The Destroyer?” Donovan asked, voice deep and booming. It was the most ridiculous thing Danny had ever heard, and would have been a lot funnier if he hadn’t heard the cocking of guns behind him.
“If we’re going to talk about this, you need to drop the voice,” Danny answered, raising his gun. “I don’t want to have to shoot you, but I will.”
Donovan’s eyes narrowed as he focused on Danny, then they widened with confusion. “What? Why are you not lowering your gun?” The Destroyer’s face then twisted in something close to disgust. “And what is that you are wearing on your head?”
“I could ask you the same thing buddy,” Danny called. This guy was going to mock the cap when he was wearing a colander? “Why take them, anyway?” Danny nodded to his team.
“They were going to be in the way of my master plan.”
“To do what, take over the world? Original.” Danny rolled his eyes. “Let them go already. SWAT, too. Last warning before I shoot you.”
“Psh. By the time you shoot me, they will have all fired upon one another.”
“Do you really want to do that? An entire SWAT team dead, all on you.”
“I will not be caught.” Donovan started to hover above the floor, slowly rising. “I am now a superior-“
The sound of a single gunshot rang out loudly next to Danny’s ear, causing him to jump. Donovan crashed to the ground with a sickening thud. Turning his head, Danny stared at Jenna as she slowly lowered her gun. “The hell?”
“You never let a villainous metahuman monologue,” she answered simply. “It’s the most common mistake of rookies.”
The SWAT team lowered their guns, murmuring their confusion over what had just happened. Danny ran over to his teammates, who were now starting to come around.
“Danny?” Steve asked, trying to make sense of his surroundings.
“The one and only.” Danny helped Steve sit up before doing the same for Chin, who in turn helped Kono. “Everyone ok?”
“Yeah, I think we’re - what are you wearing on your head?” Steve choked down a laugh.
Danny rolled his eyes, but a grin spread across his face. “I come in and save the day, and you’re making fun of what kept the telepath from getting into my head? See if I do this for you again.”
Kono’s head whipped around at that. “Where is he? The guy who stormed the office.”
“You mean Donovan the Destroyer, Telepath Extraordinaire? Kaye’s got him. We took care of it,” Danny answered, nodding his head to where Jenna was removing Charon’s Stone from around the fallen Destroyer’s neck.
Chin frowned a bit. “He found the stone, so he has abilities too?”
“Yeah, and he was going to use his powers to take over the world, one island at a time. Or something like that. He caught you three because you were a threat to his master plan.”
Steve stood up, stretching his arms and rolling his neck before turning back to Danny. “Too bad for him he didn’t get the whole team, right?” He hesitated a bit before adding, “Look, Danny, you’re still an important part of Five-0-“
“Clearly, since I had to save your metahuman asses,” Danny replied quickly. “But… I get it. Thank you.”
“I didn’t mean to ruin your weekend with Grace.”
“I know, I know. What, you want to hug it out?” Danny smirked and held out his arms.
None of them noticed the SWAT team member stiffen behind them, and it was already too late when they heard the shot go off. Flaring heat tore through Danny, the bullet catching him in the ribs through the vulnerable part of the vest where he’d lifted his arms. Danny heard people shouting, felt Steve catch him as he crumbled, and then things just sort of went blank.
---
One minute, Danny felt like he was floating in a warm sea of light. The next, his eyes were flying open to blinding fluorescents paired with an incessant beeping and an annoying burning in his left arm.
Everyone crowded in the room started talking all at once: some giving vitals, some barking orders, some cheering, and above all of it he heard someone repeating his name over and over. When he finally turned toward it, he was unsurprised to find Steve, grinning crazily at him. Danny could have sworn his eyes looked a little wet.
“How are you feeling, Danny?” the person Danny assumed was the doctor asked. He almost snapped back that he felt like he’d been hit by a truck of two-by-fours, but he realized that he felt completely fine other than the stinging in his arm. Pushing himself up, he reached for where he knew the bullet tore into him, but the hole was closed underneath his bandages. Danny couldn’t even feel scar tissue.
The doctor chuckled, although Danny could hardly call this little miracle funny. “I’d wager there’s no wound there now. Your body took the compound well.”
“What compound? What the hell are you talking about? Where am I?” Danny croaked, realizing just how dry his throat felt. How long had he been out?
“You’re at the NAMA Medical Facility in LA,” Steve answered.
Danny stared at him. “LA? California? Are there no hospitals in Hawaii now?”
“None as good as ours,” the doctor answered gently. “Let me start at the beginning. Donovan used his telepathic powers to have one of the SWAT team members shoot you. We flew you out here at great haste when your condition made a turn for the worse. Our jets tend to go faster than your commercial ones do.”
“I called in the few favors I had left,” Jenna added, appearing on the other side of Danny’s bed and squeezing his hand. He squeezed back.
“You were administered a treatment containing powder from the crushed Charon’s Stone,” the doctor continued. “It seems to have worked as well as we had hoped.”
“You hoped?” Danny sputtered. “You gambled with giving me a crushed up moon rock to see if it helped me recover from a gunshot wound?”
“Not gambled,” Steve said. “Jenna knew it had healing abilities, but putting your hand on it didn’t do anything. The doctors here figured you had to be conscious to use it properly, but if they crushed it to make an injectable form it would work and it’d heal you.”
“And you bought that crap? How does that even make sense?”
“You’re ok,” Steve’s voice was thick, his face so earnest it was almost pitiful. “That’s good enough for me.”
Danny nodded. “Yeah, good enough for me too.” Just like that, Steve went back to his maniacal smiling. It suited him better.
---
Once the doctors had finished their poking and prodding and checking and stabbing, they cleared the room to make way for the rest of the team to come in. Jenna ducked out too, even when both Steve and Danny insisted she stay, stammering something about clearing out her locker and desk. Danny could see the gears turning in Steve’s head as Kono and Chin came in. Kono carried a huge bouquet of flowers, and Chin brought him a pineapple. Danny chucked it back at him good-naturedly, causing Chin to duck.
“What, no deflecting it with the mind?” Danny asked with a chuckle, which he quickly cut off when he realized no one was laughing with him. “What?”
“When the doctors destroyed Charon’s Stone, we lost our abilities,” Kono said simply, as if she was sharing the morning surf report.
“Hold on. So, no more flying? No more super human strength or water works or any of it?” Danny asked incredulously.
“No, it’s all gone, brah,” Chin chimed in.
“You gave it all up, just like that?”
“You’re a lot more important,” Steve insisted. “It was give everything up or lose a part of this family. I wasn’t going to let that happen. Chin and Kono agreed.”
“Even if we didn’t, we would have had to live with it,” Kono added. “The boss was on the war path to save you.”
Danny, for once, was struck speechless as he looked between their faces. No resentment, no bitterness, no anger, just utter relief and pure happiness that Danny was alive and well.
“Thank you,” was all he could manage to say.
---
After that things went back to normal, or at least as normal as Five-0 ever truly was. Sometimes Kono looked wistfully out at the ocean, and every once in a while Danny could have sworn that Chin was staring at something intensely just to see if he could move it an inch. Otherwise, they fell quickly back into their routine of terrorizing the criminals of Hawaii. Since Jenna Kaye really didn’t have anywhere to go after being fired from NAMA, Steve invited her to be a part of Five-0. Danny seconded the motion, and Jenna had stuttered a thank you before giving everyone in the room a hug.
The Fantastic Five-0, as the papers had ultimately dubbed them, fell out of favor with the media when they could no longer fly around and save the day with superhuman tactics. Steve seemed actually relieved by this turn of events, telling Danny he never really wanted to be a superhero anyway. Danny made some quip about Steve looking terrible in tights, but he got what Steve was trying to say and appreciated it.
Sometimes Danny checked his wound in the mirror in the bathroom, still not believing that it had healed up so easily and cleanly. As much as he had hated that stupid rock, it had saved his life. He had been shot and was living a life with no side effects.
At least not from the gun shot.
Danny started awake a few weeks later and felt the pull-out crash to the ground from a few feet up. Looking around his apartment, he watched as everything else fell, thud-thud-thud, back into place from where it had all been floating as Danny slept.
“Dammit.”