Chapter Text
FIRST MEETING
It began, as most disasters do, with good intentions and poor timing.
A mall evacuation, a ticking bomb, four supers trying to hold the world together, and a state lawsuit waiting to remind them that saving lives costs money
So Gamma Jack found himself in a government conference room that smelled of burnt coffee and paperwork. The fluorescent light overhead hummed like a moral lecture. His costume, navy and yellow, was still scuffed from the blast, the faint green pulse of his skin dimmed to something polite. He sat there radiating boredom and barely leashed energy.
When the door opened, he expected another bureaucrat with a clipboard and no imagination.
Instead, a man in a gray suit stepped in, closing the door softly behind him. Every motion was deliberate, economical, like someone who rehearsed existing.
“Gamma Jack,” he said, voice level, unhurried. “I’m Simon Paladino. I’ll be representing you.”
Jack tilted his head, a grin forming. “Handling me, huh? Bold opening line for a lawyer.”
Simon’s expression didn’t move. “You’re being sued for seventy-eight million dollars in property damage. I wouldn’t call it bold, just necessary.”
Jack laughed under his breath. “And here I thought you people charged by the compliment.”
He sprawled back, watching as the lawyer set down a leather briefcase older than either of them and began arranging papers with surgical precision. His handwriting was neat, his tie unyieldingly straight. Every breath looked like a conscious decision.
Jack found that oddly fascinating—and, annoyingly, attractive.
“So,” Jack said, propping his chin on one gloved hand. “You’re the guy who cleans up after us caped disasters?”
“Someone has to.” Simon didn’t look up. “You have a talent for turning rescues into reconstruction projects.”
Jack grinned wider. “Comes with the gamma territory.”
Simon’s only reply was a soft, almost imperceptible sigh. He began reading from the report—collateral damage, liability, public relations, all the bureaucratic poetry that followed heroism. His voice was calm, precise, but not dull. It carried the cadence of someone used to commanding silence.
Jack listened half-heartedly at first, until something strange happened.
Whenever he pushed a detail slightly off—“we hit the west corridor first,” “the bomb was in the fountain”—Simon corrected him without missing a beat. Too specific. Too sure.
“…that was the maintenance wing beneath the generator hall,” Simon said, flipping a page. “The fountain was already evacuated by then.”
Jack’s brows lifted. “Funny. Don’t remember mentioning that in the report.”
“It’s in the file,” Simon said smoothly.
“The file wasn’t public.”
A beat. Barely a flicker in Simon’s composure, his jaw tightening, the tiniest stutter of breath, before the calm returned.
“Then I must have misread another deposition,” he said. “Apologies.”
Jack sat back, studying him. That voice. That restraint. The razor behind the courtesy.
He’d heard it before, somewhere that didn’t smell like bureaucracy.
“Tell me something, Counselor,” he said lightly. “You do this often? Defend Supers?”
“I specialize in unusual cases.”
Jack smirked. “Unusual’s one word for it.”
For the next hour, they danced around each other through the language of litigation. Simon kept him on a leash of professionalism, cutting through his sarcasm with the precision of a laser. Jack, for once, found himself curious instead of bored.
There was power coiled inside this quiet man, something he was keeping under lock and key. It wasn’t just intelligence. It was recognition.
When the meeting finally ended, Simon stacked his notes with clockwork neatness. Jack rose, stretching, the grin already creeping back.
“Well, Mr. Paladino,” he drawled. “You’re good. Maybe too good.”
“Try not to talk too much at the hearing,” Simon said, slipping the papers into his briefcase. “It’ll make my job easier.”
“Oh, I’ll be an angel.” Jack turned as if idly remembering something. “You’ll be seeing the others too, right? Mr. Incredible, Frozone… Gazerbeam?” He tossed the last name in like bait, just to see what bit.
The name landed like a spark in oxygen.
Simon froze, not the puzzled kind of stillness, but the kind that came from someone who’d just been seen. His breath hitched once before the composure snapped back into place, clean as a drawn blade.
“Excuse me?”
Jack’s grin turned lazy, dangerous. “Nothing. Just saying, that’s quite the roster. Hope you’re getting hazard pay.”
Simon’s eyes met his—crystalline blue, too bright, too knowing—and for an instant, the masks slipped. Recognition flickered between them, quick as lightning and gone just as fast.
Then Simon’s face smoothed to glass.
“Have a good afternoon, Gamma Jack,” Simon said evenly.
Jack took his hand. The handshake was brief, firm, colder than expected.
When the door clicked shut, the room felt suddenly smaller, humming with leftover tension.
Jack stared at the empty doorway, then laughed quietly to himself.
“Well, well,” he murmured. “Gazerbeam, you sneaky bastard.”
He wasn’t sure why it thrilled him so much.
Maybe because the paragon of restraint had been sitting right there, pretending to be ordinary.
Or maybe because, for the first time in years, someone had managed to surprise him.
And Gamma Jack loved a good surprise.