Chapter Text
It was pretty cool living in a space station.
For a bunch of orphans, most of them from poor families, living in a space station was beyond any of their wildest dreams.
Simmons knew he should feel grateful to Project Freelancer, to the Director, to the government that provided the funding for the project to take in children who would otherwise have ended up on the streets, or worse--in foster care. He should feel grateful to whatever higher power or freak of genetics made him special enough to be a part of Freelancer.
But mostly he just felt tired and anxious all the time.
Their alarm went off at five in the morning, dragging Simmons out of a deep, exhausted sleep and into the miserable light of day. Or, rather, the fluorescent lighting strips that ran through the ceiling all over the entire damn station the second the day cycle began.
He squinted angrily up at the lights. From the bunk bed below him he heard the loud groan and angry muttering that came from his roommate every single morning.
He rolled off the top bunk and landed lightly on the floor, then pulled Grif’s pillow off his face so he couldn’t block out the light or sound. “Come on butthead, you know the alarm won’t turn off until we’re both up.”
“Noooo,” Grif whined, “I don’t wanna go to training. Just, just kill me now.”
Simmons sighed and pulled his bedsheets up into regulation neatness then grabbed his clothes and ducked across the hall to shower and brush his teeth.
Tucker and Michael were already there, Michael looking bright and cheerful, chattering away through a mouthful of toothpaste, Tucker silently glaring at the mirror like he was about to stab his own reflection with his toothbrush.
“Morning,” Simmons mumbled as he shuffled past them into one of the shower stalls.
“Fuck off and die,” Tucker replied, without any malice behind it.
By the time he was back in their shared room, Grif had finally crawled out of bed and was clipping on his training gear.
Simmons wrinkled his nose. “Skipping the shower again are we..?”
“I’ll have one tomorrow,” Grif lied.
“Ugh.” Simmons started clipping on his own training armour, though his was neatly folded and stashed in his half of the wardrobe, whereas Grif’s had been lying on the floor where he’d dropped it last night.
They went to the mess hall--Tucker and Michael had once again gotten there first--and scarfed down their morning rations. About halfway through their meal Kaikaina made an appearance, staggering into the mess hall looking dishevelled. She argued briefly with the server about whether or not someone her age should be allowed an extra ration of coffee in the mornings, then grabbed her tray and joined the four boys.
“Sleep well?” Tucker asked.
“Fuck you, Tucker. Why’s my room gotta be right next to the fucking engine room? I haven’t slept well since we came aboard.”
“I’m sure they’ll sort out better quarters for you soon,” Simmons offered, “It’s just that everything’s kinda busy right now what with the move and all…”
Kai snorted. Freelancer had relocated its headquarters from an island off the coast of California to the space station over six months ago. “Right, I’m sure getting the only girl cadet a room that didn’t used to be a fucking storage closet is their number one priority.”
At about ten to six the kids reluctantly took their trays back to the servery and the five of them made their way to the training facility together, not without some trepidation. The drill sergeant had promised a special training exercise today, and, knowing the sergeant as they did, it was bound to be something truly dreadful.
They arrived before six, but the sergeant was already standing impatiently in the middle of the room in his bright red Freelancer issue armour. “Early is on time, on time is late, dirtbags!” he shouted at them in his garbage disposal of a voice, just as he did every morning. Simmons had once, in the hopes of avoiding the usual shouting at for being late, gotten up half an hour early and rushed through breakfast to arrive at five twenty and the sergeant had already been there.
Today there was someone else standing beside him, looking as bored and tired as someone can look when they’re wearing a full set of Freelancer armour complete with face-concealing helmet; the kind that the fully-fledged superheroes were issued, once their training was complete.
“Hey guys,” the Freelancer said casually, once the sergeant had finished telling them off.
“David?” Tucker asked.
“David!” Michael shouted, running forwards to pick the Freelancer up in a bear hug, armour and all, as though he weighed nothing.
“That’s Agent Washington to you!” the sergeant shouted.
Simmons caught Tucker rolling his eyes. David was quite a few years older than them, and had graduated from the training program about a year ago to join the ranks of the Freelancers. They had barely seen him since, and only in the mess hall or the rec room, never in his new armour.
Tucker strode forward, irritable again all of a sudden. “Put him down, Michael, you’re gonna crush him!”
“I’m fine,” David said, but his voice sounded a little strained.
Michael finally put him down, patting him heavily on the top of his helmet a few times.
“Line up!” the sergeant shouted, and the kids scurried into two lines, Grif and Simmons on one side and Michael, Tucker, and Kai on the other. The sergeant started stalking up and down in front of them. “We have a special treat for you recruits today! Instead of your usual gruelling training regimen, we’re going to play a fun game!”
Simmons could see his own worried expression mirrored on Tucker and Kai across from him.
“We’re going to play capture the flag!”
The sergeant sounded genuinely enthusiastic, so it couldn’t possibly be as simple as a game of capture the flag. They’d occasionally played that before, pitted against each other in teams, with Simmons and Grif being designated as Red team and the other three as Blue team (the sides were dramatically unfair, but the sergeant insisted that it built character). It was easy enough, though, to play a few rounds and let each other win every now and then until the sergeant decided he’d had enough of watching them run around and made them do push ups.
“It’s all of you… against Agent Washington!”
David’s head snapped around to look at the sergeant a few seconds before he finished speaking. Apparently he hadn’t been informed of this game plan in advance.
All five cadets groaned loudly. Not only had David basically always outshone them in martial arts, marksmanship, athletics, and basically everything else, his power also made him impossible to beat. The cadets could sense a long day of exhausting failure in front of them.
“And just to sweeten the pot,” the sergeant continued, in a slightly less terribly loud shout, “if you win even one round, you’ll a dessert ration with dinner tonight!”
Simmons could feel Grif’s attitude change from dread to determination in an instant.
“Sarge, can I have some drones?” Grif asked without bothering to put his hand up. “It’s not a fair game if we can’t use our powers.”
“ Life isn’t fair! Unfairness is good for your character!”
David put a hand on Sarge’s shoulder. “C’mon Sarge, it’ll just make the game more challenging, right?”
The sergeant sniffed, but nodded. “Alright, you can have two drones.”
“Yesssss!”
While Grif jogged over to the storage lockers to pull out a pair of the small spherical training drones, the others started some stretching exercises in the hopes of minimising how sore their muscles were going to be the next day.
The sergeant handed David a strip of bright red cloth, which he looped loosely through a clip on his belt.
“You all know the rules! Get this flag off Agent Washington here and return to your home base--” the sergeant pointed to a circle he’d spray painted on the floor months ago “--and keep it there for three seconds, and you win! You have ten minutes before the game ends!”
The game was a total disaster, of course.
Tucker and Grif genuinely did make a run for the flag, Grif staying near the base with his eyes closed while the drones he was controlling darted around David’s head, Tucker trying to tear the cloth away from him with one hand while he was distracted. It didn’t work. David knocked both of the drones out of the air then grabbed Tucker’s outreached arm and spun him into Michael, who got confused and picked Tucker up in another bear hug, oblivious to the stream of swearwords Tucker was emitting.
Simmons and Kai attempted their own, vastly superior strategy to get around David’s power; Simmons charged David and let himself get drawn into a contest of strength, both of them trying to push the other back (Simmons felt it was vastly unfair that David’s new armour made him almost as strong as Simmons was normally), meanwhile Kai stood at a safe range and used her telekinesis to lift the flag off David’s belt. She actually managed to get the flag into her hand, because David had been distracted for long enough that his power of precognition had not warned him that the flag would be stolen. He could only see a few seconds into the future, so when he didn’t know something had happened until several seconds later, it was too late for him to stop it.
The tactic would have worked beautifully if David were not also just plain good at fighting.
Once he noticed the flag missing and Kai sprinting for home base, he picked up one of Grif’s fallen drones and hurled it at her, then ran to catch up.
She saw the drone coming, but had to stop and drop the flag to put both hands up and stop it before it hit her.
Then David tackled her, rolled to his feet while scooping the flag back up, and then launched himself into the air just in time to springboard off of Michael’s shoulders as Michael ported in in front of him.
“Where did he go?” Michael wailed, looking around wildly.
“Behind you, numbskull!” Tucker yelled, and Michael whirled around, fists out in a vague attempt at a haymaker, but David was, of course, ready for this, and ducked easily out of the way.
He used Michael’s momentum to throw him over his shoulder, but Simmons noted he was careful not to let him land badly, keeping his head from impacting the floor.
“You need to work on break falling some more,” David told Michael, for the moment ignoring the fact that both Tucker and Simmons were charging at him.
“Sorry David,” Michael mumbled from the floor.
Then David ducked sideways at exactly the right time and punched Simmons hard in the shoulder--his metallic one, not the flesh and bone one, thankfully, though he swore he felt the metal denting--which sent Simmons spinning and crashing into Tucker, who shrieked insults at him as they both tried to clamber back to their feet. It didn’t help that they’d half fallen on Michael, who insisted on trying to help.
David crossed his arms and looked down at them smugly. “You guys are gonna have to try harder than that if you want to-- what the fuck!?” David suddenly spun around and started running at Grif, who was kneeling next to his fallen drones, but David was only half way there when there was a whining mechanical noise and he suddenly fell flat on his face and slid across the floor. The lights in his armour powered down.
The kids approached cautiously. David remained lying face down on the floor and they could hear him yelling threats and cursing at Grif, but his voice was muffled without the helmet’s speaker to project his words.
“I shut his armour down!” Grif crowed, looking more smug than Simmons had ever seen him. But he was also drenched in sweat and shaking from the effort of maintaining his grip on the suit’s systems. “Hurry up and get the fucking flag, assholes! I want my pudding!”
Simmons was the first to react, jumping forwards, tearing the flag out of David’s hand and dashing back to home base.
He was only half way there when he heard the armour powering back up. He bit down a shriek and ran faster, skidding into the spray paint circle of homebase and bracing himself, tucking the flag against his chest with his cybernetic arm and punching his right arm down into the metal floor, leaving large dents where his fingers dug in (he was going to get in so much trouble for that later, and the thought of Sarge yelling at him made his stomach turn over).
David crashed into him at full speed, but Simmons just barely managed to hold onto his makeshift grip as David tried to pry his other arm away from his chest so he could reach the flag.
“Time!” roared the sergeant. “Red team wins!”
“Uh, we all won, Sarge,” Tucker reminded him, “We’re all on the same team.”
The sergeant grumbled something about whiny Blues, then shook his head. “Good job! TIme for round two!”
“Ugh, round two? Seriously?” Grif complained.
“Yep, and this time I’m not wearing my armour,” David grumbled, taking his helmet off and starting to strip off his gauntlets.
“What! No fair!”
“Well, it’ll give the rest of us an advantage,” Simmons said, reasonably, “I’m sure we’ll do fine.”
---
They did not do fine.
After their first win, the kids didn’t manage a single other victory, though not for lack of trying. The sergeant made them keep playing for the entire morning, and even David was getting tired by the time the sergeant announced that they could stop and go get lunch.
David was still pulling his Freelancer armour back on, and the kids clustered around him.
“Come grab lunch with us,” Tucker said.
David grimaced. “I really can’t. I’m sorry. You know I’d love to, but I’m already running late for my own squad’s training session. I’m just gonna have to grab an energy bar on the way there.”
“We never see you anymore,” Michael said, his voice a mix of forlorn and whiny.
“I know. I know. It’s just so… busy. I’ll try and catch up with you at dinner?”
Michael nodded sadly. Tucker looked put out as well, though Simmons was pretty sure he’d rather die than express his feelings.
“Hey,” David said suddenly, “I hear you’re getting a new recruit tomorrow. Maybe you can make a new friend, Michael.”
“Ohh, who are they?” Michael asked.
“What are their powers?” Tucker asked.
“Is it another girl?” Kai asked, a little bit desperately.
“I don’t know much, guys,” David told them. “Just that he’s arriving tomorrow. Apparently his name is Leonard.”
---