I hunched over my workbench, soldering one more piece into place.

An alarm sounded behind me, the one for someone passing the perimeter. With a low growl, I rolled my stool over to the screen. Some dork with a hoodie on was approaching the door, his hands in his pockets.

I put my finger on the intercom. "Google maps is wrong, numbnuts. Go back to the fork and take a left."

His eyes moved over, looking for the camera. Looking into the lens, he reached up and pulled off his hood.

My eyes narrowed. I recognized that stupid domino mask. I'd first seen it on that hyperactive little sidekick next to Thunderpunch, and now Lightning Rod (nee Sparky) was a hero in his own right.

For a moment, I debated just leaving him there. But I knew if he wanted in, he'd get in eventually, and I'd rather know where he was (and leave my door in one piece). Irritably, I hit the button to unlock the door and rolled back over to my work.

He was in my workshop in a moment. "William," he started.

"Oh, we're friends now, Jeremy?" I retorted, not looking up.

I'd expected a little reaction, the story of how I'd figured out his identity had been more than a little embarrassing for him. But he didn't. "I'm sorry about what happened," he said.

"You weren't there," I said simply. It wasn't an accusation--he was literally on the other side of the city at the time, helping open a local food bank. It was a big publicity event, a big to-do. Politicians aplenty, with oodles of photographs to prove it.

And exactly why they'd chosen that moment for what they did, knowing he and other heroes would be out of the way and unable to stop them.

"Why are you here?" I asked.

"I came to ask you to not."

I stopped. I set down the soldering iron. I looked up. "To not?" I asked, my voice low.

"I know you're angry-"

Enraged, I grabbed a piece of scrap from the table and hurled it at him. He rocked to one side, easily dodging it, not even taking his hands out of his hoodie pocket. "You have no idea how angry I am!" I roared. "He didn't deserve that!"

"I know," he said gently. "What they did was wrong. I'm not here to defend that at all."

I clenched my fists, knowing it made me look juvenile but unable to stop myself. He was being so calm about this, and that made it worse. "You don't have kids, do you, Jeremy?"

"I don't," he admitted. He looked down, his shoulders slumping. "But I did have a father. And the first time I fought you, I remember laughing about you afterwards. He stopped me. Showed me a clip from when he'd first fought you."

"The Water Tower incident," I said coolly. "I'm familiar."

"He told me about how you took control of the entire city water infrastructure."

"Please. When everyone leaves the login credentials as 'admin/admin', it's not exactly difficult," I scoffed.

"He said you started a flood, and when the Coalition couldn't stop it from nearly flattening a school, you reversed it. You saved a lot of people that day. You didn't have to. You could have made it much worse."

"You have a point to this?" I asked.

"Not really," he admitted. "I mean, I promised I'd come talk to you. They said I should talk you down. Help you see reason. But I mean, if something happened to me, I'd want my father to do something. And I guess..." He shook his head. "Never mind. Forget I was here. I'll see myself out."

I grunted as I turned back to my work.

He walked out the door and paused, one hand on the doorframe. "Oh, and, uh, tell me when you're going out."

"So you can stop me?"

"So I'll have somewhere else to be." There was a brief pause, and then he hit the frame, clearly unsure what to say, and walked out.

I finished the next soldering joint and moved on to the next one. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, so I pushed it aside.

I had work to do.