Returned to the cluttered coziness of his cubicle, Lilian sat crisscrossed on his computer chair, hunched over his camera as he flipped through the pictures from that morning. His lunch, a bowl of some mushroom-based pasta he'd picked up from a nicer restaurant, was left forgotten on the edge of his desk, barely touched. On the infamous lunch run days he hated so much-- both for the fact that he was always the damn gopher, and because it was obvious that the whole arrangement was only approved to be used as a major tax write-off --Lilian often went out of his way to get the most expensive thing he could for himself without being blatantly obvious in the act. Just his little act of spite against a company that tried so hard to appear good, but was, in actuality, just as corrupt as any other commercial business. Usually, he was happy to eat something that wasn't a Styrofoam cup of imitation noodles or a questionably ‘ripe’ sandwich from a gas station, but...something had been gnawing at his brain ever since the encounter at Chipotle.

That guy.

It was something about that guy.

The twiggy one. With the feathers and the green hair nd the vitiligo.

There was just...something about him.

Something Li was going more and more mad over the more and more he thought about it.

He got to the pictures of Gamma-Burn. The ones where the villain had removed his mask. The ones where the villain had been coughing his lungs out. The ones with the blood.

He stared at the pictures, wondering why they stuck out so much. Sure, they had the villain in a moment of weakness. And sure, they showed an aspect of Gamma-Burn that could be very dangerous if it ever got out. But...why was it bugging him so much?

Lilian continued to flip through that set of the photos he had taken, moving from one to the next and back through in rapid succession like the most gruesome and chaotic flipbook to ever exist.

What is it? he thought as he stared at Gamma-Burn’s blood-dripping chin, Why does this random guy have me so focused on this?

The thoughts continued to eat away at him as he finally gave up on the pictures and moved on with his work. Writing the Cuckoo Cacoa article turned out to be just as torturous as he thought it would be. Maybe even more so with how scattered his thoughts were. Try as he might, he couldn’t get the thoughts of that afternoon or the pictures of Gamma-Burn out of his mind, and it made writing his articles nigh impossible. Eventually, the day came to an end, without Li even realizing it at that, and it took a co-worker popping into his cubicle to tell him it was time to go home.

He packed up his things and shut down his computer, turning off the string lights that littered his space before grabbing his bag and heading out of the mostly abandoned building. It took until he stepped out into the chilly air of the springtime late evening for Lilian to remember his bike had been destroyed that morning and the moment it hit him, he let out a hard, exasperated curse.

“God fucking damnit.”

As if his day hadn’t been crappy enough.

Too tired to deal with walking home and potentially being met with an unsavory sort popping out of an alley, Lilian sat on the barrier wall of a planter box outside the building and pulled out his phone. He usually tried not to use so-called ‘luxury’ services like Ryde and FoodDudes, but in cases like this, he felt it was worth the risk of a surprise overdraft when payments suddenly went through without warning.

It wasn’t long before the crappy Toyota pulled up to the curb, and not much longer after that before Lilian was trudging his way up the hazardous stairs to his apartment. His thoughts were still spiraling like a whirlpool over the events of the day, everything growing tighter and tighter, more and more condensed and compacted and knit together in a way as it was pulled to the center of his focus. He was so lost in thought that he didn’t notice that someone else was coming down the stairs, annoyingly walking to their left of the walkway, rather than the natural right that made more sense, which put them on Lilian’s right, directly in his path. Somehow, the two collided, and Lilian had to frantically paw at the banister to keep himself from falling head first, backward, on the stairs. As he fell against the railing and slumped down to the step with his heart racing and breath spiking, the other person just continued along, muttering that Li should watch where he was going. Li tried to spit back a venomous comment of his own, but the words came out as an incoherent slur of sounds and syllables, nothing that could be considered words.

He sat there a while, leveling his breath and his heart rate before pulling himself back to his feet and continuing the last flight up to his apartment. Once home, he barely too the time to lock the chain behind him and kick his shoes off before shuffling across the room and flopping onto his mattress. He was hungry. Of course, he was hungry, both his breakfast and his lunch had gone to waste, and now he was at home where, haha big surprise, food had not spontaneously appeared while he was at work.

Gods I hate the fucking country, he thought as he slowly rolled over and stared at the wall stained with...what he told himself was just water and dirt... Why the hell did I move here? he asked himself, then went on in his thoughts, That’s right. American dream bullshit, he laughed as he threw off his backpack and shove it off the bed, then rolled onto his back and focused on the ceiling for a moment, staring at that strange water stain that he swore looked like Nicholas Cage in that one meme. It was equally as creepy as it was annoying when he was going through internal battles like this.

Closing his eyes, Lilian took a deep breath and sighed. He thought back to the encounter as Chipotle, painting a picture of the interaction in his mind as he went over all the little details he could remember. He thought about the phone call, and how he had rammed into that big dude. He thought about the twiggy guy butting in where he had no place being. He thought about how up-his-own-ass that guy had been. The fucking preaching that guy did. He thought about the guy’s mouth. His stupid sharp teeth, the blood he spat and wiped on his sleeve like a child with a runny nose. Blood that stuck to his lips so similar to the blood on Gamma-Burn’s lips.

Li stopped.

So...similar…

In a flurry of motion, Li flew up on his bed and reached back down for his backpack, yanking the bag back up onto the bed and frantically working the zippers before plunging his hand inside and pulling out his camera case. He tore open the case and ripped the camera out from inside then impatiently pounded the buttons to turn it on before flipping through to the close-ups of Gamma-Burn without his mask. He stared at the structure of the villain’s mouth, chin, and just his jaw in general, and he thought back to the guy at Chipotle. In his mental image of the asshole from earlier, he placed a black rectangle over the top half of the guy’s face and focused directly on his jaw, his lips, his teeth.

“No..." he murmured out loud, eyes opening to look at the picture again, “No,” he insisted. But even as he tried to deny it, he knew that his memory and attention to detail were rarely wrong. Camera still in hand, Lilan flopped back on the bed and glowered at Nic Cage on the ceiling, “Oh shut up,” he grumbled, then brought the camera up to look at the picture one more time. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind. He had not just run into, but debated, very poorly for that matter, with the one and only supervillain he absolutely idolized. What the hell were the odds of that?

After a few moments, he rolled over again and pushed to sit up, reaching to set the camera on his nightstand before he pulled out his phone again and opened the Amazon app.

Lilian shifted through the disorderly array of clothing strewn about his studio apartment, ripping through drawers and tearing shirts from the hangers on the metal garment rack he’d purchased some time after moving into the place that lacked a closet. It was the big day. Bug Day, one could say. It was the day he was to interview King Stag at precisely two in the afternoon. As long as everything went according to plan and the hero wasn’t pulled away by some villain’s antics, anyway. This was the day. The day Lilian had been hoping for. Not only was it his first official interview with someone who wasn’t a little old grandma who made a pie for her dead husband’s birthday. His first official interview with a front page headliner. More than that, it was the day he got to actually talk with King Stag. Talk. Not just bombard him with requests for pictures and an interview. This was possibly the most momentous event in his life...positively momentous... positively...

So why couldn’t he figure out what the hell to wear? He had already been up since before his alarm. Truth was, he really hadn’t slept, at all. Between preparing his interview questions and making an outline of how he wanted to try and lead the interview, he had also been working on mapping out the area around that damn Chipotle so he could hit it up that weekend with the Geiger counter that had finally arrived the day before. Like hell did Lilian have the money for overnight shipping!

As his room slowly became the aftermath of a flash sale in a clothing boutique, Lilian finally settled on a simple outfit of a crisp, white, collared shirt under an oatmeal-colored sweater with a soft knit and a pair of dark red pants he rarely wore. He futzed with his brown and rose locks in the mirror for a while, styling it one way or another before aggressively tussling it into a fluffy mess and starting over again. Eventually, he settled on the messier look, deciding that the ‘just rolled out of bed’ style complimented his casual attire and helped him to look more natural and less like an obsessed fanboy trying to get laid-- Trying to say something...trying to say something.

Eating a quick breakfast of cereal and a banana he’d picked up from the store a few days earlier, Lilian got his things together and rushed for the door. With his bike out of commission, he had to leave earlier than usual so he could make up for the lost time walking to the subway station. At the door, Lilian looked at his ratty old shoes, nudging them with his sock-clad toe and wondering if they were too...casual for the interview today. Would King Stag even care? Would King Stag even look at his feet? Doubtful, but then again, what if? What if King Stag looked at his feet and saw the ratty old canvas and tattered old laces and decided he didn’t want to do an interview with a hobo-adjacent reporter?

Lilian frowned, then went over to his garment rack and knelt down to pull a shoebox out from under it. He pulled out a pair of never-been-worn Oxfords that his aunt had sent him for Christmas a few years back and pulled out the packing before slipping the shoes on. They felt wrong. They were tight and pinching on the sides, and yet, at the same time, they were somehow too big, feeling like clown shoes on his feet. Lilian debated if it was worth it to wear the uncomfortable, constricting footwear for the day. He wouldn’t be able to free-run with them on, that was for sure, but then again, he wasn’t supposed to be running off around the city today anyway. Snuffing out his thoughts with a heavy breath, he decided to just go with the dress shoes and finally made his way out the door.

Some hours later, he arrived at work, unscathed, and with no need to run into the heat of a battle. Hadn’t needed to do that all week in fact. Things had been quiet since Earth Day, and as he reached the office, Lilian wondered for a moment if Gamma-Burn, that guy had something planned, or if he was suffering something. Wait-- Why was he thinking that? This was Bug Day not...Radiation Day? Didn’t have the same ring. Nonetheless, it wasn’t the day to be focusing on the green-haired asshole he wanted so badly to hate, yet couldn’t bring himself into doing purely for the connection he had made. He was so sure he was right, he was willing to bet anything on it. Not that he would tell anyone what he figured out. He wasn’t one to reveal a super’s secret identity after all, and...besides that, he didn’t even know who that guy was. All he had was a face and a last sighting. Not much to go on. Not as much as he had for King Stag!

The morning dragged on forever, and as lunchtime hit, Lilian hid in the bathroom for an hour to escape being sent out on another lunch run. He knew his boss would do it just to make him late for his interview so the man could assign someone else to the story. No way was Lilian letting that happen. Not after all he’d done for this chance at having the biggest article to be published on the Word of the Willow website. The final hour stretched on and Lilian found himself pacing the office, finding every excuse to be outside his cubicle that was feeling so, so very confining in those final moments. Bathroom, printer, fax machine, break room, even an in-office coffee run, before finally, finally, 2pm hit.

This was it.

This was the time.

King Stag and his public representative would be walking through the office doors at any moment.

Fifteen laps. Lilian had done fifteen laps around the office by the time King Stag's public representative Jenna Falcone entered the scene. And boy did she enter. Just who was the celebrity here? It didn't matter, what did matter was that they were here. Moe specifically, he was here. Li started across the wide open space of the office 'lobby' as it was called, but before he could get to the arrivals, a man walked briskly past him, practically running him over as he shot by.

"Good afternoon, Miss Falcone," Lilian's direct supervisor was hot on the scene, approaching the woman with an overly warm welcome, speaking way too loud and putting way too much force into his words to sound as grand and friendly as he possibly could, "Hal Roberts," he introduced himself, "Article Supervisor and lead writer for Word of the Willow. Thank you so much for meeting with us and agreeing to participate in an interview with our own, Lilian Amie. I assure you, Mr. Amie is one of our finest writers and most dedicated reporters. If anyone can make King Stag shine, it's him."

Lilian was amazed to hear Hal's praise, but not because he bought into any of it. He knew well enough already that his boss was lying through his teeth. To be fair, it wasn't lies by a general standard. Lilian as, in fact, one of the greatest writers and most dedicated reporters the company had. Without letting his head get too big, one could even argue he was the best. But that wasn't the point. Mr. Roberts had never once viewed Lilian in such a way, and often complained that his antics in getting the top coverage on a scene was a liability to the company, even though Li wasn't stupid enough to try and sue the company for an injury he brought on himself. Yet here he was. Hal Roberts. Playing the role of Lilian's hypeman. It was a shock to see, to say the least. He wondered exactly what Hal was trying to get out of this, but decided not to dwell on it too long as he just shook his head and walked over, shoving the man out of his way and interrupting his handshake with Jenna to butt in with a handshake of his own.

"Afternoon," he said shortly, "Lilian Amie, Li if you please. Lead writer in numan affairs. Let's get to a more private place, shall we? I secured the board room for our meeting so we wouldn't be disturbed by anyone else. If you and King Stag will follow me?" he prompted the question and didn't even wait as he spun on his heel and walked off deeper into the office space, past cubicles and down a hall to a long room with large windows and a heavy glass door. A long table took up most of the room, lined with cheap swivel chairs, and a large whiteboard with a pull-down projector screen at one end of the room.

Hal had tagged along with them, seeing to feel entitled to be present during the interview. Lilian stood in the doorway once Jenna and King Stag had entered and blocked the man from entering, looking up at him with a burning scarlet gaze, "She asked for a private meeting," he said pointedly, "Just me. I'll thank you for leaving us to our interview in peace, Mr. Roberts."

Suffice was to say, the man was shocked by Lilian's attitude and looked about to argue, but the moment his upbeat demeanor faltered, he looked at Jenna and the hulking hero they had but one chance at sealing a deal with, and he plastered that smile right back into place, "Of course, Mr. Amie," he said as naturally as he could muster, "My apologies. You all take care. I'll be sure to send Edward this way when he returns with the donuts. Until then, I'll have Jason bring you all a coffee tray."

"Thank you, sir," Lilian smirked, "Make sure he brings us lots of sugar."

With that, Lilian stepped back into the room and closed the door, cutting off the ambient noise of the rest of the office and sealing them into private silence.

Oh boy, Li thought as he took in Jenna's words and behavior, Another one. He sighed softly, keeping it as invisible and silent as possible as he walked over to sit in the seat across from Miss Falcone, to the right of where King Stag stood. He wondered for a moment if the office might have a different kind of chair that would be better suited for the hero, and part of him wished he had thought of that in preparation for the interview. It felt like it was too late now, and that making any effort toward getting King Stag a proper seat would just inicite more judgment from the woman, something that Li wasn't too eager to receive. Lilian was used to people like her, he had two bosses, a coworker, and a landlady who all followed the same code and he knew well by that point that if a problem wasn't immediately taken as a problem there was no need to try and fix it.

As he took up his seat, Lilian set down an arrangement of items he'd been hilding under one arm. A few sheets of printed out papers containing articles on some of King Stag's most significant services to the city, a notebook scribbled with what looked like a myriad of questions written in several different pen colors, and a simple audio recorder which he set in the middle of the table between them all.

Brushing his hair back a few times only to ruffle it up again, Lilian gave a nod in responseto the woman, "Yes," he said, "I understand the terms perfectly clear. I assure you, I'm no gossip columnist. I won't be looking for superficial nonsense like dating status, orientation, or anything else falling into such a taboo and personal realm. I'm here to talk about King Stag, the hero, and nothing more. Now," he reached then and pressed record, "Thank you, King Stag, for meeting with me today. It's truly a pleasure to have you. Before we get straight into things, how goes it for you?" Yes. It was technically a personal question, but if miss bossy had a problem with it, she could choke on the creme in one of those stupid donuts she demanded, as far as Lilian was concerned. Lilian wasn't about to dump an entire interview on a guy if he wasn't having a good day.

There were two things Lilian noticed as the interview started. First was that Jenna Falcone was taking notes, and he wasn't quite sure why, but it made him extremely uncomfortable. His mind raced, wondering just what the hell the overly professional woman could be writing about him, and he was damned glad he had written down all the questions he planned on asking King Stag because anything he knew he wanted to ask was completely shot out of his brain like some kind of cruel ejection pod.

"I'm doing alright, myself, thank you for asking," he replied, just as masked as his guest. That was the second thing he noticed. King Stag, while he wasn't necessarily lying, most certainly was not being open. It was obvious from the hero's demeanor that he was nervous, but Lilian knew better than to poke at that.

He casually picked up the notebook and flipped the top page over to glance at the next before returning to that first page, "So. King Stag. How does this all start? Being a hero. We all know the story of your first appearance. Taking out the local villainess, Lady Radiance, who plagued our city with deadly fires for months on end. But what brought that? What called for King Stag to be?"

It was one of his softer questions, and in that, it was a good start. A question about the hero's start was quite literally a good point to start on. Thematically, and just for cohesion. Lilian wasn't full of himself when he claimed to be one of the best writers in the company. He knew what he was doing. It was why he did what he did to begin with. He just hoped that little miss PR wouldn't butt in and say the question was too personal or anything like that.

It was right about then that a figure passed along the line of windows leading to the door, a tray of coffee, mugs, various kinds of sugar, and a few flavors of creamer held delicately in hand. The guy, presumably Jason, glanced in as he walked by, and did a double take as he caught the sight of the bugs warming toward the table and into King Stag's hand. He stopped dead in his tracks. Stood there a moment, mouthing something that looked like a prayer, then promptly wobbled a bit before going straight down to the ground, tray and all.

Lilian watched the sight of the employee fainting, blinking a few times after the fact, then looked back to King Stag as though nothing had happened. Unlike, well, others, Li was completely unfazed by the sight of the bugs, and even less affected by the knowledge that bugs existed even on the tenth floor of a steel and concrete office building. He did, after all, live in a shitty apartment with black mold behind the fridge and silverfish in the shower-- problems he had reported to the super before escalating it directly to the landlady directly, but had received no response beyond "I'll see to it." --The point was, Li was familiar with the realities of life, and wasn't all that taken aback by King Stag's display. Impressed? Maybe. A little. Thrown off? Not in the slightest.

"King Stag presents a handful of beetles gathered from beneath his chitin as well as the corners of the room while giving this answer; an employee bringing coffee fainted outside the room at the sight of the scene," he noted casually for the recording device before recentering his focus to ask a follow-up question, taking a natural approach by commenting first on the hero's response, "That's fairly noble of you," he said, looking up for only a moment to catch Cricket's gaze, before quickly diverting to the handful of bugs-- as if that was better? --and clearing his throat before he continued, "but you say it was through this apparent...relationship you have with arthropods in general that you were able to be a hero to begin with. That through them, for the first time in your life, you could do something about the quote-unquote evil in the world-- Am I right, then, to assume that, rather than you originally had the power to call upon these entities, they granted you with the powers you have today?" It wasn't a question he'd had on his list. It wasn't a question he had ever thought to ask. Until then. Before that moment, Lilian, like most, assumed that King Stag was simply a Caste-C Metahuman. This though...this changed things, and Li's mind was working faster than he could even keep up anyone. There were a million new questions he just had to ask. Just dump them all out in an endless stream. It was hard stopping at just the one, but if he was going to keep this a proper interview and not devolve into a frantic fanboy, he had to keep his composure. Especially with the PR there.

Li couldn't help but match King Stag's jovial mood as a smile graced his face and he gave a light laugh, "Wow..." he breathed, "That's...actually a lot cooler than just having a command over bugs..." it was the first non-professional thing he'd said, and he regretted it the moment it came out, but, well, it was out, and there wasn't really much he could do to change it.

Refocusing, he glanced back at his notes and looked for the next question he had originally planned, "What uh... What are your biggest challenges as a hero?" he asked, then added as an after thought, "E-Especially an official, League of Conduct hero employed by the DNCC? Is it anything you were able to do as a freelance vigilante that you can't do now with the LoC?" That last bit...definitely wasn't planned. Of course it wasn't planned. It was a direct attack at not just the most famous, officially sanctioned, Heroes League in the entire country, let alone their little county of Washtenaw, but also an attack at the DNCC itself. He...really shouldn't be letting on how he felt about an entire government body, but uh...too late!

"I see..." Lilian said absently, "So...what you're saying is. The DNCC has both opened up your horizons as a hero, as well as closed them to some degree? While you have more informationon the entities you face and work with, your pool has been restricted..." he glanced at Falcone, then shook his head as he redirected his thoughts. He...figured it was better not to sit there and judge the DNCC when a representativefrom their ranks was sitting right there? Yeah...probably not the best idea.

"Sorry," he started, "Let me get back on track here... With uh...with the work you do as a hero, what's something that keeps you going? What drives you to continue through with the hero gig? What'syour core ambition?"