Tiger & Bunny fic: Safekeeping (pt. 1)
Title: Safekeeping
(1/3)
Pairing: Kotetsu/Barnaby
Summary: Some time after Lunatic has been apprehended, a NEXT scientist makes a troubling discovery about the extent of Yuri Petrov's powers. Kotetsu handles it all considerably well. Barnaby really doesn't.
Author's note (on spoilers): This has a speculative plot element I've thought about since ep. 16 that probably will never be canon, but it's compliant with the entire series and contains a few spoilers.
Overall Rating: M?
Barnaby didn't hold on to many things. It was when he was organizing some belongings in his apartment that he came across the ripped sash for the first time in a long while.
He'd almost forgotten he still had it and wasn't sure why he'd kept it all this time. He crossed the room, changing the channel on the screen with his other hand as he approached the waste basket, but then his arm recoiled from the motion like the object was stuck to his hand. In the next second his attention was drawn to some news story on television and he walked back towards his window, barely looking down at his hands as he smoothed the burnt length of cloth into a neat fold and placed it back at the bottom of his drawer filled only sparsely with desk supplies and some other memorabilia related to his parents.
It seemed like a strange coincidence that it was only two days after this little episode that Barnaby got the call from Kotetsu about Dr. Verma. But before that, there was Petrov.
:::
The year was NC 1980, Barnaby had just turned 27, and Kotetsu was down to twelve seconds. Kotetsu still wore his bracelet to be on call, but it was understood that it would probably take an event of the apocalypse for Kotetsu to be called in for HeroTV, where it was widely known that he only had a few gems left in the bank. Antonio had once remarked they would probably be used up on pedestrians that didn't look both ways.
Barnaby saw the other heroes far more often than he saw Kotetsu as of late. If he'd been taken in by anybody as something of an unofficial new partner, it was Keith. Barnaby had never had much trouble tolerating him and they worked well as a small team, but it was to his relief that the producers did little to encourage a more on-the-record partnership.
What displeased him about it was his hunch that the network was still in some way banking on his camaraderie with Wild Tiger even in Kotetsu's absence; it seemed that the same viewership who had only responded to Wild Tiger as half of a partnership were the ones who coddled their images of Barnaby with overdramatic sympathy about the tragic loss of his most important professional relationship. He was increasingly getting asked insultingly nebulous questions in interviews about whether he missed Wild Tiger now that he wasn't often needed, or even more vaguely, how he felt about that. Barnaby would give his shyer smile, innerly roiling and feeling like it was less of a question than a command to get a dog to do a trick and let the crowd coo at the results. He usually gave a calm but dismissive "A lot of things aren't the same."
Recalling one of those interviews from just the day before, Barnaby reminded himself that he was doing this for Kotetsu when he was finally past the complicated security process and sitting at the visiting booth.
Yuri Petrov sat on the other side of the glass, and did not pick up his receiver until Barnaby had clicked his up and pressed it slowly to his ear.
After a moment Petrov said, "I have nothing to say to you, Brooks."
"Why have you been sending visitation requests to Wild Tiger?" Barnaby demanded. "If you have something to say to him, you're able to send letters. He isn't going to come."
Petrov looked back at him blankly for a moment.
"He barely makes it into the city anymore," Barnaby added, stammering a bit. "And he's hardly going to make an extra effort for your wishes."
"It's about a delicate and personal matter." Petrov dusted the statement out slowly, clearly enjoying the sharp curiosity Barnaby wasn't quite hiding. "Who are you to say for certain that he isn't willing to come? Is he not the grateful type? I did save his life once."
"There's a difference between being grateful and thinking he somehow owes you."
"And what propelled you to pay me a visit, if you think you owe me nothing for the same thing?" he said slyly, before taking on a more quiet look. "But you see, I want him to know that in a way I'm the one who owes him."
After a couple seconds of Barnaby blinking in agitation, he said, "What are you talking about?"
"If in fact he refuses to speak with me," Petrov said while checking the length of a fingernail on his free hand, "I want you to give him a message that I am sorry. Will you do that?"
Barnaby gave a snooty look of consideration before barely bothering to give it a shrug. "Probably not."
"And why not?"
Because he had no idea what Petrov was talking about. Because he didn't like the sound of it and probably wouldn't want to think about it later. Because he wasn't planning on telling Kotetsu about this visit unless he had to. Barnaby sat there with an arrogant pout and said none of this.
"...I have never liked you, Barnaby Brooks Jr." Petrov spoke with just a slightly more grinding power, and there was a shiver in the air that was very Lunatic, the rhythm of that voice reminding Barnaby of their more threatening points of history. "Your recklessness and pride gave away your true colors to me very soon after we first met. You claim to be a hero, but you're nothing but a childish vandal with a pretty wardrobe and a pretty car. Your former partner at least had some code to go by, even if it was very different from mine."
"As interesting as it is to learn that you have a favorite, I doubt that you asked my partner here in order to ask for his autograph."
"I already told you the reason why."
"To tell him you're sorry," Barnaby said with a cynical look. But then his bravado snagged a bit. "...Sorry for what exactly?"
"I would have liked the opportunity to explain, but when the time comes, he will know what I'm talking about." Petrov's eyes moved slowly up and then landed on Barnaby's, too fixed and making his skin tingle. "And so will you. And maybe you will understand for once that you don't deserve what you have."
Barnaby left the prison as soon as possible after that; when the security officer returned him his phone, it was ringing, and the vague tightness in his emotions made him irritably answer without checking the name. "What now?"
"It's me. What's wrong with you?" the familiar voice demanded mildly.
"Kotetsu." He sighed. "It's not a good time."
"...Oh," Kotetsu said easily enough, but he could hear the frown.
"No, I was saying you caught me at a bad time." That still meant the wrong thing and he let out a frustrated breath while fumbling his car keys from his pocket. "How are you?"
"I'm good, but I was wondering about that call from Ben. He told me he called you too?"
Barnaby checked his phone with a pout. He'd gotten a call while he was with Petrov. "I missed it."
"Oh. Says he wants us to go meet this...Dr. Verma." He loftily drawled the name. "Some kind of NEXT scientist."
"Chander Verma? The geneticist? I take it you've never heard of him."
"Uh." A crack of something awkwardly half-spoken. "No."
Barnaby felt his lips curling at the edges probably for the first time that day. "Does this mean you'll be coming to pay him a visit?"
"Yeah, tomorrow."
That took him aback a bit. "That soon?"
"Well, uh. Ben says it's not urgent, but he seemed a little anxious, so I thought I'd better."
"What could have been urgent? It's not like he's that kind of doctor."
"I can't imagine what it's about. But hey, I'll see you tomorrow? You're not too busy to do this?"
"I can clear my schedule without any difficulty."
Barnaby did not bother saying how inconvenient the short notice was; in all honesty, he was glad for the surprise of Kotetsu visiting without him having to really blame anybody for the mess of wiping off a day of his schedule.
The next day came with a wet and slightly gloomy morning and Barnaby arriving to a pristine lab building still grouchy from the rain and his early morning interview, which had cemented his growing suspicions that he no longer enjoyed interviews.
When he got to the right floor, his eyesight smacked into Kotetsu's profile hanging right around the corner from the stairwell: He was cringing in some idle scrutiny of a safety sign on the opposite wall, his mouth mumbling noiselessly around one or two words.
Barnaby was distantly aware that this was time to call his attention with a hello, perhaps by offering him one of the two coffees he was holding, but for the quiet wind of a small moment all he could do was look. Then they effectively barged into their greeting when Kotetsu made a sudden decisive movement that involved turning right into Barnaby and jostling one of the coffees into slipping from his hand; Kotetsu balked a startled apology and his attempts to clap onto the cup merely resulted in ruining the drink's designs for a more quiet descent to the floor.
After Kotetsu was stuffing a final paper towel down the nearest trash can, Barnaby courteously handed him whichever coffee was left and insisted he take it. The pursed expression Kotetsu made with the first sip told Barnaby that had been his drink, remembering that Kotetsu could never handle the richer coffees; Barnaby sighed at knowing he would have soldiered through the entire cup for the sake of showing gratitude if he didn't put him out of his misery. He took the drink out of his hands, decided he no longer wanted to bother with the damn coffee, and gruffly dumped the whole cup into the garbage.
He might as well have admitted that he was still reeling from his visit with Petrov; it had sunk something irritating into his thoughts that he couldn't define. It was with Kotetsu's loose frown at him throwing away the cup that Barnaby knew he suspected something was awry, but this was the first chance to say, "It's good to see you," and Kotetsu did so with a genuine grin.
Barnaby nodded his agreement and his arm automatically went for Kotetsu's, then just squeezed him at the elbow for a second before he withdrew. Bizarrely enough, they had a physical rapport of frequently hugging each other well established, but only under the condition that they were in their power suits. Barnaby doubted either of them could explain this, and most of the time it was merely funny, but that day was different. He was starting to believe he and Kotetsu had crossed all the thresholds they could cross, and with the distance now between them, could go no further.
Dr. Verma turned out to be a genial man who didn't give off many airs of eccentric genius. Barnaby quickly understood that unbiased work with NEXT research had made him a friendly contact with several people in the hero business, and he and Ben had been acquainted for over a decade. The atmosphere in the clean but casual meeting room made Barnaby loosen up a little, and for the moment he found it hard to understand the slight knot of dread he'd felt all day.
But then the conversation turned away from conversational; Ben said, "Here's the deal, Kotetsu. I talked to Dr. Verma a long time ago when your powers were first beginning to decline, just to see if any concrete discoveries had been made about that kind of thing ever since the time period when it was happening to Legend..."
Ben looked for a second like he regretted bringing up Legend despite it obviously being relevant. Certain facts about the man's home life had become common knowledge soon after Lunatic had to own up to his real name in the public eye. While some were willing to dismiss the hero's negative traits as the lies of a criminal who knew his way around tugging a jury, Barnaby could only suspect whether Kotetsu believed it or not because he had never once seemed willing to talk about it. His Mr. Legend collections were no longer sitting out on the increasingly rare occasion that Barnaby visited.
At the moment Kotetsu only shared the obligatory isn't-it-a-shame look that went all around the table at the reminder, before Ben went on.
"Anyway, there wasn't much he could tell me then, but he was very interested to get his hands on the information that the decline was possible. Even then I wondered, though, because he told me that out of all the NEXTs he'd met and interviewed and studied, he'd never heard of this happening to any of them before..."
"So?" Kotetsu said with a shrug. "Obviously it's not common, I guess, but since we can think of a couple people..."
"Kotetsu, I know you're too humble to say it, but I'm sure you've been wondering why you seem to be a very rare case...Rock Bison has reported no diminishing of his power in any way and his age is not far from yours. All of the information that Dr. Verma has gathered about other NEXT has failed to give us more than rumors about others who may have lost their power as they aged, and he's been doing specific research on this for a year now."
This all looked to be a conversation Kotetsu really wasn't eager to have, though it only slightly showed in his little pout and shrug. "I actually always assumed..."
"Your daughter." This was the first time Dr. Verma had spoken, and Kotetsu looked endearingly chagrined by the interruption, like a kid who'd accidentally given away the secret of a practiced magic trick. "That was my presumption as well, for a time, that NEXT who have offspring lose their abilities when their child's power emerges. But we've found many records of NEXT who have children with abilities, and none of them have experienced what happened to you. There isn't even a reliable correlation that suggests powers are passed from parents to their children."
Barnaby felt helpless to do anything about how that fact could be making Kotetsu feel vaguely disappointed, but a stunned reaction only appeared on the man's face for a moment until it melted over into a dazed frown. "So...it's just something wrong with me, then?" If there was any regret in his feelings he was hiding them well, which somehow only seemed sadder to Barnaby.
Dr. Verma blinked and assured, "I would not put it that way, Mr. Kaburagi. Anyway, I hate to speak so coyly on this subject, but I want you to understand what made us arrive at the theory that I believe is the best explanation. For if it isn't a natural process, and if it isn't related to the commonality of you and the Petrov family having offspring, it was logical to assume the cause of it was something else that you and Mr. Legend hold in common."
Kotetsu shook his head in frustration. "What could that be?"
For a couple seconds Barnaby was just as lost, but then abruptly he let out a sigh.
Kotetsu looked at him. "What?"
In an almost defeated mutter, not yet entirely sure of the facts but with the vague certainty that rides an ill omen, he said, "Lunatic."
"You're quicker than I was, Mr. Brooks," Dr. Verma commented. "For some time I've been looking into the possibility that one NEXT could have the power to damage someone else's abilities with some kind of specific contact with them, and I was finally able to request some genetic and blood samples from Yuri Petrov. In my studies I long ago discovered a microscopic body-I call them 'electrobodies'-that indicates whether a person possesses special abilities, but comes in many varied forms. When I studied a sample of these particles that had been taken from Yuri Petrov's blood, I found that something emanating from his cells, when placed with samples from other NEXT, would virtually attack the foreign electrobodies."
Kotetsu was leaning forward in awe; next to him Barnaby was very still.
"Nothing about the interaction was fool-proof; it worked more like an infection, where presumably some minor exposure would be less likely to affect somebody in a permanent way, but in the event of a very direct attack on someone not equipped with a power suit for example, it could over time slowly kill all of the electrobodies in a person's system. It's fascinating to me because it works much like infiltrating a foreign body with this new immune system which, for whatever reason, recognizes a person's powers as a dangerous foreign agent. It may seem odd to suggest his actual flame throwing can have the same affect, but some NEXT powers do behave like a sort of radiation poisoning in ways that scientists more capable than me don't even understand; your hundred power may have saved you from being burned, but it seems to me that his abilities can conduct more than fire."
Barnaby felt the eyes on him as he stood up in a slow reel, turning to face the door and setting an elbow against the high-backed chair he'd been sitting in. After a hesitation he heard Kotetsu quietly mumble, "I have to say Petrov seemed capable of a lot of things, but to attack his own father..."
"'Attack' may not be the right word," Ben said. "He was pretty young, and accidents can happen, especially when powers are just emerging. You know that as well as anyone."
It was possible that Barnaby was hardly the only person in the room who recently doubted that the cause of Legend's death had been a typical house fire, but no one was going to bring that up, and either way it would be impossible to tell whether any damage done to Yuri Petrov's father had been intentional or not. And Barnaby had other things on his mind, things that were making his fists clench into throbbing knots.
He heard Kotetsu say, "Bunny?" He turned and looked at the chair for a few seconds before sitting back down, avoiding Kotetsu's eyes as he felt his confusion prickling at him from the side.
"Maybe Lunatic figured out at some point he was able to do this, maybe not, but it's kind of spooky how there's something intellectually fitting about it," Ben was saying. "He thought he was a bringer of justice. When he thought people didn't deserve to live, he was able to kill them. But when he thought a NEXT didn't deserve the status, he simply took away what made them able to be heroes."
"Mr. Brooks," Dr. Verma interjected after a moment. "You may understand now why it was treated with some urgency that you should come in with Mr. Kaburagi. You both had more direct confrontation with Lunatic out of any of your team and given this new information, it's important that you try to remember any incident when you or any of the other heroes were directly harmed by him."
"It was just Kotetsu," Barnaby replied at a quiet rapid fire. "It only ever happened to him."
Kotetsu laughed nervously. "Doc, I have to admit my memory isn't what it used to be, so you'll have to take his word for it. I don't even remember when we ever would have battled him without our suits, so it's hard to remember about anybody else."
Barnaby's height went up in a snap of anger as he swung back out of the chair in frustration. His shin smarted against the tea table and an ashtray was still stuttering against the glass top as Barnaby was halfway out of the room; when he heard Kotetsu standing after and taking the breath to make some exclamation, he spun on him. "Don't. Kotetsu, you stupid old man. Don't stand there and tell me you don't remember how it happened, because I can believe it, but don't."
"What's wrong with you, Bunny? Remember what?"
Barnaby turned on his heel from the mouths hanging open in various expressions and was out the door in a couple stomps. At the stalled elevator down the hall, he seethed in a breath and slammed his hand on the wall, walking off to find the stairs before Kotetsu could try to follow him.
Once home, it wasn't any better. When he finally lay down in bed just to make himself stay still, he was still so angry with himself he could have sobbed.
:::
It had taken him some time to understand why Mr. Legend had always been so important to Kotetsu. Everyone knew Wild Tiger was a fan; Barnaby had known it back when he still had to be on camera to be pressed to have a simple conversation with Kotetsu, and of course then he'd dismissed it as a slightly pathetic form of nostalgia.
There had been a moment much later, one of their first lengthy conversations they got into while they were being shipped from one press junket to the next after defeating Jake Martinez, when they had somehow transitioned from friendly small talk to what was basically a do-over of the type of questions they'd only asked each other on camera before. Barnaby had asked him for the second time why he admired Legend so much, expecting the same answer he'd gotten before but actually wanting to listen this time. What he got was a story that took him a bit off guard, about Kotetsu as a scared little kid being reassured that he was meant for something big with the simple message that he could some day be a protector rather than a threat.
This had enlightened him somewhat, but Barnaby had admittedly still felt that the man's admiration of Mr. Legend smacked of some preoccupation with something, that it was still disproportionate to the value of one encounter. But then one day he found his theory for it on accident, and had a feeling like he wanted to kick himself for ever failing to empathize: Kotetsu answered a question about his father by claiming there was nothing to tell, and the idea fell sadly into place. He had not loved Legend with the fanatical but fickle love everyone else placed in favored heroes; he had held onto a few words that had been said to him by a kind man during a bad time and constructed an entire bible out of it, because it had made him believe there was some kind of want of him the world had that maybe Kotetsu's father never did.
Or so Barnaby assumed, because he had to construct all of that for himself out of one of the very few things it was inadvisable to ask Kotetsu about.
The night they managed out of some miracle to corner and apprehend Lunatic (with the help of some inventions of Saito's which were basically ultra-powered water guns), Agnes had wanted the camera team to catch up before the actual arrest and convinced them to wait it out for a few minutes before reporting their location to the police. This ended up leaving the team some lovely alone time in which the shock of a familiar face under Lunatic's cracked mask was still thawing through an exhausted silence.
Petrov sat there with his hands and arms bound into a small flame-proof device and awaited his fate with dignity. Barnaby could admit he'd respected him in that moment; one could almost believe a man who accepted someone else's definition of justice with quiet grace was far from being a hypocrite. And then, just after Kotetsu was coming out of a brief frowning reverie to give Barnaby a hint of a smile and a proud gentle bump of a fist on his thigh, Petrov started talking, and without any introduction said, "Mr. Legend was my father."
Kotetsu went still, at first seeming more startled by him speaking than by the words. "What?"
Petrov elaborated in a slow drip. "He was a drunk, at least for any part of my youth that I can remember. He was haughty and quick to anger and he beat my mother. When things were worse than that he would also beat me."
It was the most darkly bizarre moment of Barnaby's career. The stunned stilling of the air seemed to last forever; and then Kotetsu's laugh, which was horrible and not like a laugh at all, preceded him saying, "Sure. Great joke there."
"It's not a joke," Petrov corrected him patiently. "I'm not telling you this to be mean-spirited; there is something else I need to tell you."
On the far end, Saito had been sitting with the group of Antonio and Karina and Nathan, who all had stopped to listen, possibly since Petrov had opened his mouth. They were all pretty much gaping at Kotetsu instead of at Petrov, as if afraid of how he would react, but then Kotetsu picked up his hat to incongruously wear it with his undersuit, as if the cologne-commercial motion of angling it just over his head while grinning ruefully at Petrov shielded him somehow. "Whatever you have to say me, I'm not going to believe it anyway."
And Kotetsu had gotten up and walked to the other end of the truck, and once the police arrived Barnaby had left him alone instead of urging him to come out and enjoy the cheering, and generally it was believed that Wild Tiger had nothing to do with the arrest of Lunatic because he went and collapsed into one of the sleep chambers and didn't come out for hours.
Most of the people in the van hadn't believed what Petrov had to say, and Barnaby had looked at the rest and been certain he was the only person who contemplated that Kotetsu actually had. Once Petrov's trial was underway and his identity public, it began to look like it could be the truth. But Barnaby had forgotten about that other thing Petrov wanted to say to Kotetsu, and Kotetsu had made it clear he had no desire to know.
Lunatic's several murderous rampages, while worse, didn't seem to amount to the enraging sin that was revealing to Kotetsu that his beloved role model had been a dangerous man. But the worst of it was the thing that Barnaby couldn't be angry about, what he'd seen that had convinced him that Petrov somehow knew how sacred that was to Kotetsu, because there had been a look between them. He had broken that icy politeness in his features to give that short but brandishing glance that said: Don't you dare call me a liar. He was my hero too.
Legend had meant something crucially cyclical. He had filled the notion that there were real heroes before Kotetsu and there would be them after. Barnaby wanted Kotetsu to realize what that meant about what an anomaly he was, that he had only made himself out of himself and that that form of virtue he'd always sought after had already been there without the pat on the head from some man in a cape. But he knew he would fail to have the words to tell him this, and he wondered what Kotetsu could possibly believe in now.
.. part two..
(1/3)
Pairing: Kotetsu/Barnaby
Summary: Some time after Lunatic has been apprehended, a NEXT scientist makes a troubling discovery about the extent of Yuri Petrov's powers. Kotetsu handles it all considerably well. Barnaby really doesn't.
Author's note (on spoilers): This has a speculative plot element I've thought about since ep. 16 that probably will never be canon, but it's compliant with the entire series and contains a few spoilers.
Overall Rating: M?
Barnaby didn't hold on to many things. It was when he was organizing some belongings in his apartment that he came across the ripped sash for the first time in a long while.
He'd almost forgotten he still had it and wasn't sure why he'd kept it all this time. He crossed the room, changing the channel on the screen with his other hand as he approached the waste basket, but then his arm recoiled from the motion like the object was stuck to his hand. In the next second his attention was drawn to some news story on television and he walked back towards his window, barely looking down at his hands as he smoothed the burnt length of cloth into a neat fold and placed it back at the bottom of his drawer filled only sparsely with desk supplies and some other memorabilia related to his parents.
It seemed like a strange coincidence that it was only two days after this little episode that Barnaby got the call from Kotetsu about Dr. Verma. But before that, there was Petrov.
:::
The year was NC 1980, Barnaby had just turned 27, and Kotetsu was down to twelve seconds. Kotetsu still wore his bracelet to be on call, but it was understood that it would probably take an event of the apocalypse for Kotetsu to be called in for HeroTV, where it was widely known that he only had a few gems left in the bank. Antonio had once remarked they would probably be used up on pedestrians that didn't look both ways.
Barnaby saw the other heroes far more often than he saw Kotetsu as of late. If he'd been taken in by anybody as something of an unofficial new partner, it was Keith. Barnaby had never had much trouble tolerating him and they worked well as a small team, but it was to his relief that the producers did little to encourage a more on-the-record partnership.
What displeased him about it was his hunch that the network was still in some way banking on his camaraderie with Wild Tiger even in Kotetsu's absence; it seemed that the same viewership who had only responded to Wild Tiger as half of a partnership were the ones who coddled their images of Barnaby with overdramatic sympathy about the tragic loss of his most important professional relationship. He was increasingly getting asked insultingly nebulous questions in interviews about whether he missed Wild Tiger now that he wasn't often needed, or even more vaguely, how he felt about that. Barnaby would give his shyer smile, innerly roiling and feeling like it was less of a question than a command to get a dog to do a trick and let the crowd coo at the results. He usually gave a calm but dismissive "A lot of things aren't the same."
Recalling one of those interviews from just the day before, Barnaby reminded himself that he was doing this for Kotetsu when he was finally past the complicated security process and sitting at the visiting booth.
Yuri Petrov sat on the other side of the glass, and did not pick up his receiver until Barnaby had clicked his up and pressed it slowly to his ear.
After a moment Petrov said, "I have nothing to say to you, Brooks."
"Why have you been sending visitation requests to Wild Tiger?" Barnaby demanded. "If you have something to say to him, you're able to send letters. He isn't going to come."
Petrov looked back at him blankly for a moment.
"He barely makes it into the city anymore," Barnaby added, stammering a bit. "And he's hardly going to make an extra effort for your wishes."
"It's about a delicate and personal matter." Petrov dusted the statement out slowly, clearly enjoying the sharp curiosity Barnaby wasn't quite hiding. "Who are you to say for certain that he isn't willing to come? Is he not the grateful type? I did save his life once."
"There's a difference between being grateful and thinking he somehow owes you."
"And what propelled you to pay me a visit, if you think you owe me nothing for the same thing?" he said slyly, before taking on a more quiet look. "But you see, I want him to know that in a way I'm the one who owes him."
After a couple seconds of Barnaby blinking in agitation, he said, "What are you talking about?"
"If in fact he refuses to speak with me," Petrov said while checking the length of a fingernail on his free hand, "I want you to give him a message that I am sorry. Will you do that?"
Barnaby gave a snooty look of consideration before barely bothering to give it a shrug. "Probably not."
"And why not?"
Because he had no idea what Petrov was talking about. Because he didn't like the sound of it and probably wouldn't want to think about it later. Because he wasn't planning on telling Kotetsu about this visit unless he had to. Barnaby sat there with an arrogant pout and said none of this.
"...I have never liked you, Barnaby Brooks Jr." Petrov spoke with just a slightly more grinding power, and there was a shiver in the air that was very Lunatic, the rhythm of that voice reminding Barnaby of their more threatening points of history. "Your recklessness and pride gave away your true colors to me very soon after we first met. You claim to be a hero, but you're nothing but a childish vandal with a pretty wardrobe and a pretty car. Your former partner at least had some code to go by, even if it was very different from mine."
"As interesting as it is to learn that you have a favorite, I doubt that you asked my partner here in order to ask for his autograph."
"I already told you the reason why."
"To tell him you're sorry," Barnaby said with a cynical look. But then his bravado snagged a bit. "...Sorry for what exactly?"
"I would have liked the opportunity to explain, but when the time comes, he will know what I'm talking about." Petrov's eyes moved slowly up and then landed on Barnaby's, too fixed and making his skin tingle. "And so will you. And maybe you will understand for once that you don't deserve what you have."
Barnaby left the prison as soon as possible after that; when the security officer returned him his phone, it was ringing, and the vague tightness in his emotions made him irritably answer without checking the name. "What now?"
"It's me. What's wrong with you?" the familiar voice demanded mildly.
"Kotetsu." He sighed. "It's not a good time."
"...Oh," Kotetsu said easily enough, but he could hear the frown.
"No, I was saying you caught me at a bad time." That still meant the wrong thing and he let out a frustrated breath while fumbling his car keys from his pocket. "How are you?"
"I'm good, but I was wondering about that call from Ben. He told me he called you too?"
Barnaby checked his phone with a pout. He'd gotten a call while he was with Petrov. "I missed it."
"Oh. Says he wants us to go meet this...Dr. Verma." He loftily drawled the name. "Some kind of NEXT scientist."
"Chander Verma? The geneticist? I take it you've never heard of him."
"Uh." A crack of something awkwardly half-spoken. "No."
Barnaby felt his lips curling at the edges probably for the first time that day. "Does this mean you'll be coming to pay him a visit?"
"Yeah, tomorrow."
That took him aback a bit. "That soon?"
"Well, uh. Ben says it's not urgent, but he seemed a little anxious, so I thought I'd better."
"What could have been urgent? It's not like he's that kind of doctor."
"I can't imagine what it's about. But hey, I'll see you tomorrow? You're not too busy to do this?"
"I can clear my schedule without any difficulty."
Barnaby did not bother saying how inconvenient the short notice was; in all honesty, he was glad for the surprise of Kotetsu visiting without him having to really blame anybody for the mess of wiping off a day of his schedule.
The next day came with a wet and slightly gloomy morning and Barnaby arriving to a pristine lab building still grouchy from the rain and his early morning interview, which had cemented his growing suspicions that he no longer enjoyed interviews.
When he got to the right floor, his eyesight smacked into Kotetsu's profile hanging right around the corner from the stairwell: He was cringing in some idle scrutiny of a safety sign on the opposite wall, his mouth mumbling noiselessly around one or two words.
Barnaby was distantly aware that this was time to call his attention with a hello, perhaps by offering him one of the two coffees he was holding, but for the quiet wind of a small moment all he could do was look. Then they effectively barged into their greeting when Kotetsu made a sudden decisive movement that involved turning right into Barnaby and jostling one of the coffees into slipping from his hand; Kotetsu balked a startled apology and his attempts to clap onto the cup merely resulted in ruining the drink's designs for a more quiet descent to the floor.
After Kotetsu was stuffing a final paper towel down the nearest trash can, Barnaby courteously handed him whichever coffee was left and insisted he take it. The pursed expression Kotetsu made with the first sip told Barnaby that had been his drink, remembering that Kotetsu could never handle the richer coffees; Barnaby sighed at knowing he would have soldiered through the entire cup for the sake of showing gratitude if he didn't put him out of his misery. He took the drink out of his hands, decided he no longer wanted to bother with the damn coffee, and gruffly dumped the whole cup into the garbage.
He might as well have admitted that he was still reeling from his visit with Petrov; it had sunk something irritating into his thoughts that he couldn't define. It was with Kotetsu's loose frown at him throwing away the cup that Barnaby knew he suspected something was awry, but this was the first chance to say, "It's good to see you," and Kotetsu did so with a genuine grin.
Barnaby nodded his agreement and his arm automatically went for Kotetsu's, then just squeezed him at the elbow for a second before he withdrew. Bizarrely enough, they had a physical rapport of frequently hugging each other well established, but only under the condition that they were in their power suits. Barnaby doubted either of them could explain this, and most of the time it was merely funny, but that day was different. He was starting to believe he and Kotetsu had crossed all the thresholds they could cross, and with the distance now between them, could go no further.
Dr. Verma turned out to be a genial man who didn't give off many airs of eccentric genius. Barnaby quickly understood that unbiased work with NEXT research had made him a friendly contact with several people in the hero business, and he and Ben had been acquainted for over a decade. The atmosphere in the clean but casual meeting room made Barnaby loosen up a little, and for the moment he found it hard to understand the slight knot of dread he'd felt all day.
But then the conversation turned away from conversational; Ben said, "Here's the deal, Kotetsu. I talked to Dr. Verma a long time ago when your powers were first beginning to decline, just to see if any concrete discoveries had been made about that kind of thing ever since the time period when it was happening to Legend..."
Ben looked for a second like he regretted bringing up Legend despite it obviously being relevant. Certain facts about the man's home life had become common knowledge soon after Lunatic had to own up to his real name in the public eye. While some were willing to dismiss the hero's negative traits as the lies of a criminal who knew his way around tugging a jury, Barnaby could only suspect whether Kotetsu believed it or not because he had never once seemed willing to talk about it. His Mr. Legend collections were no longer sitting out on the increasingly rare occasion that Barnaby visited.
At the moment Kotetsu only shared the obligatory isn't-it-a-shame look that went all around the table at the reminder, before Ben went on.
"Anyway, there wasn't much he could tell me then, but he was very interested to get his hands on the information that the decline was possible. Even then I wondered, though, because he told me that out of all the NEXTs he'd met and interviewed and studied, he'd never heard of this happening to any of them before..."
"So?" Kotetsu said with a shrug. "Obviously it's not common, I guess, but since we can think of a couple people..."
"Kotetsu, I know you're too humble to say it, but I'm sure you've been wondering why you seem to be a very rare case...Rock Bison has reported no diminishing of his power in any way and his age is not far from yours. All of the information that Dr. Verma has gathered about other NEXT has failed to give us more than rumors about others who may have lost their power as they aged, and he's been doing specific research on this for a year now."
This all looked to be a conversation Kotetsu really wasn't eager to have, though it only slightly showed in his little pout and shrug. "I actually always assumed..."
"Your daughter." This was the first time Dr. Verma had spoken, and Kotetsu looked endearingly chagrined by the interruption, like a kid who'd accidentally given away the secret of a practiced magic trick. "That was my presumption as well, for a time, that NEXT who have offspring lose their abilities when their child's power emerges. But we've found many records of NEXT who have children with abilities, and none of them have experienced what happened to you. There isn't even a reliable correlation that suggests powers are passed from parents to their children."
Barnaby felt helpless to do anything about how that fact could be making Kotetsu feel vaguely disappointed, but a stunned reaction only appeared on the man's face for a moment until it melted over into a dazed frown. "So...it's just something wrong with me, then?" If there was any regret in his feelings he was hiding them well, which somehow only seemed sadder to Barnaby.
Dr. Verma blinked and assured, "I would not put it that way, Mr. Kaburagi. Anyway, I hate to speak so coyly on this subject, but I want you to understand what made us arrive at the theory that I believe is the best explanation. For if it isn't a natural process, and if it isn't related to the commonality of you and the Petrov family having offspring, it was logical to assume the cause of it was something else that you and Mr. Legend hold in common."
Kotetsu shook his head in frustration. "What could that be?"
For a couple seconds Barnaby was just as lost, but then abruptly he let out a sigh.
Kotetsu looked at him. "What?"
In an almost defeated mutter, not yet entirely sure of the facts but with the vague certainty that rides an ill omen, he said, "Lunatic."
"You're quicker than I was, Mr. Brooks," Dr. Verma commented. "For some time I've been looking into the possibility that one NEXT could have the power to damage someone else's abilities with some kind of specific contact with them, and I was finally able to request some genetic and blood samples from Yuri Petrov. In my studies I long ago discovered a microscopic body-I call them 'electrobodies'-that indicates whether a person possesses special abilities, but comes in many varied forms. When I studied a sample of these particles that had been taken from Yuri Petrov's blood, I found that something emanating from his cells, when placed with samples from other NEXT, would virtually attack the foreign electrobodies."
Kotetsu was leaning forward in awe; next to him Barnaby was very still.
"Nothing about the interaction was fool-proof; it worked more like an infection, where presumably some minor exposure would be less likely to affect somebody in a permanent way, but in the event of a very direct attack on someone not equipped with a power suit for example, it could over time slowly kill all of the electrobodies in a person's system. It's fascinating to me because it works much like infiltrating a foreign body with this new immune system which, for whatever reason, recognizes a person's powers as a dangerous foreign agent. It may seem odd to suggest his actual flame throwing can have the same affect, but some NEXT powers do behave like a sort of radiation poisoning in ways that scientists more capable than me don't even understand; your hundred power may have saved you from being burned, but it seems to me that his abilities can conduct more than fire."
Barnaby felt the eyes on him as he stood up in a slow reel, turning to face the door and setting an elbow against the high-backed chair he'd been sitting in. After a hesitation he heard Kotetsu quietly mumble, "I have to say Petrov seemed capable of a lot of things, but to attack his own father..."
"'Attack' may not be the right word," Ben said. "He was pretty young, and accidents can happen, especially when powers are just emerging. You know that as well as anyone."
It was possible that Barnaby was hardly the only person in the room who recently doubted that the cause of Legend's death had been a typical house fire, but no one was going to bring that up, and either way it would be impossible to tell whether any damage done to Yuri Petrov's father had been intentional or not. And Barnaby had other things on his mind, things that were making his fists clench into throbbing knots.
He heard Kotetsu say, "Bunny?" He turned and looked at the chair for a few seconds before sitting back down, avoiding Kotetsu's eyes as he felt his confusion prickling at him from the side.
"Maybe Lunatic figured out at some point he was able to do this, maybe not, but it's kind of spooky how there's something intellectually fitting about it," Ben was saying. "He thought he was a bringer of justice. When he thought people didn't deserve to live, he was able to kill them. But when he thought a NEXT didn't deserve the status, he simply took away what made them able to be heroes."
"Mr. Brooks," Dr. Verma interjected after a moment. "You may understand now why it was treated with some urgency that you should come in with Mr. Kaburagi. You both had more direct confrontation with Lunatic out of any of your team and given this new information, it's important that you try to remember any incident when you or any of the other heroes were directly harmed by him."
"It was just Kotetsu," Barnaby replied at a quiet rapid fire. "It only ever happened to him."
Kotetsu laughed nervously. "Doc, I have to admit my memory isn't what it used to be, so you'll have to take his word for it. I don't even remember when we ever would have battled him without our suits, so it's hard to remember about anybody else."
Barnaby's height went up in a snap of anger as he swung back out of the chair in frustration. His shin smarted against the tea table and an ashtray was still stuttering against the glass top as Barnaby was halfway out of the room; when he heard Kotetsu standing after and taking the breath to make some exclamation, he spun on him. "Don't. Kotetsu, you stupid old man. Don't stand there and tell me you don't remember how it happened, because I can believe it, but don't."
"What's wrong with you, Bunny? Remember what?"
Barnaby turned on his heel from the mouths hanging open in various expressions and was out the door in a couple stomps. At the stalled elevator down the hall, he seethed in a breath and slammed his hand on the wall, walking off to find the stairs before Kotetsu could try to follow him.
Once home, it wasn't any better. When he finally lay down in bed just to make himself stay still, he was still so angry with himself he could have sobbed.
:::
It had taken him some time to understand why Mr. Legend had always been so important to Kotetsu. Everyone knew Wild Tiger was a fan; Barnaby had known it back when he still had to be on camera to be pressed to have a simple conversation with Kotetsu, and of course then he'd dismissed it as a slightly pathetic form of nostalgia.
There had been a moment much later, one of their first lengthy conversations they got into while they were being shipped from one press junket to the next after defeating Jake Martinez, when they had somehow transitioned from friendly small talk to what was basically a do-over of the type of questions they'd only asked each other on camera before. Barnaby had asked him for the second time why he admired Legend so much, expecting the same answer he'd gotten before but actually wanting to listen this time. What he got was a story that took him a bit off guard, about Kotetsu as a scared little kid being reassured that he was meant for something big with the simple message that he could some day be a protector rather than a threat.
This had enlightened him somewhat, but Barnaby had admittedly still felt that the man's admiration of Mr. Legend smacked of some preoccupation with something, that it was still disproportionate to the value of one encounter. But then one day he found his theory for it on accident, and had a feeling like he wanted to kick himself for ever failing to empathize: Kotetsu answered a question about his father by claiming there was nothing to tell, and the idea fell sadly into place. He had not loved Legend with the fanatical but fickle love everyone else placed in favored heroes; he had held onto a few words that had been said to him by a kind man during a bad time and constructed an entire bible out of it, because it had made him believe there was some kind of want of him the world had that maybe Kotetsu's father never did.
Or so Barnaby assumed, because he had to construct all of that for himself out of one of the very few things it was inadvisable to ask Kotetsu about.
The night they managed out of some miracle to corner and apprehend Lunatic (with the help of some inventions of Saito's which were basically ultra-powered water guns), Agnes had wanted the camera team to catch up before the actual arrest and convinced them to wait it out for a few minutes before reporting their location to the police. This ended up leaving the team some lovely alone time in which the shock of a familiar face under Lunatic's cracked mask was still thawing through an exhausted silence.
Petrov sat there with his hands and arms bound into a small flame-proof device and awaited his fate with dignity. Barnaby could admit he'd respected him in that moment; one could almost believe a man who accepted someone else's definition of justice with quiet grace was far from being a hypocrite. And then, just after Kotetsu was coming out of a brief frowning reverie to give Barnaby a hint of a smile and a proud gentle bump of a fist on his thigh, Petrov started talking, and without any introduction said, "Mr. Legend was my father."
Kotetsu went still, at first seeming more startled by him speaking than by the words. "What?"
Petrov elaborated in a slow drip. "He was a drunk, at least for any part of my youth that I can remember. He was haughty and quick to anger and he beat my mother. When things were worse than that he would also beat me."
It was the most darkly bizarre moment of Barnaby's career. The stunned stilling of the air seemed to last forever; and then Kotetsu's laugh, which was horrible and not like a laugh at all, preceded him saying, "Sure. Great joke there."
"It's not a joke," Petrov corrected him patiently. "I'm not telling you this to be mean-spirited; there is something else I need to tell you."
On the far end, Saito had been sitting with the group of Antonio and Karina and Nathan, who all had stopped to listen, possibly since Petrov had opened his mouth. They were all pretty much gaping at Kotetsu instead of at Petrov, as if afraid of how he would react, but then Kotetsu picked up his hat to incongruously wear it with his undersuit, as if the cologne-commercial motion of angling it just over his head while grinning ruefully at Petrov shielded him somehow. "Whatever you have to say me, I'm not going to believe it anyway."
And Kotetsu had gotten up and walked to the other end of the truck, and once the police arrived Barnaby had left him alone instead of urging him to come out and enjoy the cheering, and generally it was believed that Wild Tiger had nothing to do with the arrest of Lunatic because he went and collapsed into one of the sleep chambers and didn't come out for hours.
Most of the people in the van hadn't believed what Petrov had to say, and Barnaby had looked at the rest and been certain he was the only person who contemplated that Kotetsu actually had. Once Petrov's trial was underway and his identity public, it began to look like it could be the truth. But Barnaby had forgotten about that other thing Petrov wanted to say to Kotetsu, and Kotetsu had made it clear he had no desire to know.
Lunatic's several murderous rampages, while worse, didn't seem to amount to the enraging sin that was revealing to Kotetsu that his beloved role model had been a dangerous man. But the worst of it was the thing that Barnaby couldn't be angry about, what he'd seen that had convinced him that Petrov somehow knew how sacred that was to Kotetsu, because there had been a look between them. He had broken that icy politeness in his features to give that short but brandishing glance that said: Don't you dare call me a liar. He was my hero too.
Legend had meant something crucially cyclical. He had filled the notion that there were real heroes before Kotetsu and there would be them after. Barnaby wanted Kotetsu to realize what that meant about what an anomaly he was, that he had only made himself out of himself and that that form of virtue he'd always sought after had already been there without the pat on the head from some man in a cape. But he knew he would fail to have the words to tell him this, and he wondered what Kotetsu could possibly believe in now.
.. part two..