Chapter Text
Otto woke up in a helicopter over the ocean. Again.
He blinked slowly as his eyes adjusted, his head throbbing as he tried to remember what happened. Outside a small porthole the water far below rushed by at a blazing speed. Another kid sat across from him in what looked like a storage hold. It was all rather familiar really, until Otto realized with a groan that he was the only one of them with handcuffs on his wrists. They’d got him.
He couldn’t help but let out a chuckle.
The other kid frowned. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh nothing,” Otto said. “It’s just the last time I was kidnapped and flown to some undisclosed location, it was done by a professional assassin, not a bunch of kids.”
He tugged on the straps binding him to the side of the jet with his cuffed hands. They didn't budge. It seemed he was, for all intents and purposes, a prisoner. How annoying.
“Is this really necessary?” He held up the cuffs.
“A precaution. You and your friends know how to put up a real fight.” The kid replied, face unreadable.
Otto smiled. While he was glad that his friends, by the looks of it, had gotten away, he really could have used a little help from a master lock picker or a well trained-fighter right about now. But it wasn’t the first time he’d have to manage on his own.
He reached out his senses and connected with the helicopter’s systems and was shocked at what he found. The helicopter, if it could even be called that, had to be at least ten years more advanced than even the latest Shroud models. The specs on the tech were simply off the charts. It didn’t seem possible.
Otto hid his surprise as he took a quick look through the navigation system. He pinpointed their location to somewhere out way in the middle of nowhere– not too far from Hive. Despite the hyper-advanced tech, it would have been easy enough to set a course for home. But he figured that the aircraft full of freaks would not take kindly to a sudden change in flight path, nor would Nero be pleased if six crime fighting teens were spontaneously chauffeured to his secret island, that was, if Otto could even make it that far.
Looked like he’d just have to go along for the ride for now.
“So you gonna at least tell me where we're going?” Otto asked.
“Somewhere safe. For now,” the other kid said quietly, hesitating a moment before adding, “You should be going to jail.”
“Ah right. I forget that people don't like it very much when important things get stolen. But this is the first time I've been kidnapped for it,” Otto replied, cheeky. Despite the fact that this kid was being rather nice about this whole kidnapping thing (minus the handcuffs), Otto had no intention of giving him any reason to think he’d be anything but uncooperative.
The kid scowled. “It’s obvious no normal jail could hold you. But there are prisons for people like us.”
“People like us?” Otto raised an eyebrow.
“People with superpowers.”
Otto started to laugh, but the kid stared at him, straight faced. He wasn’t kidding.
Otto let his face fall into a frown. “You know, I haven't ever really thought about myself in relation to the s-word before.” He waved his hand noncommittally.
“They're more common than you think,” the kid replied.
That certainly was an interesting statement to just be throwing out so casually, but yet, strangely enough, not completely unbelievable. Even before his run-in with this kid and his uniquely talented friends, Otto had seen plenty of stuff that qualified as capital S superpowers, his own abilities included. And after seeing first hand what this kid and his band of misfits could do, well, there really was no doubting it.
“So you're going to throw me in supervillain jail? For one little museum heist? That's hardly fair,” Otto said, mentally kicking himself for getting caught despite his joking tone.
“You should be going to jail. But you're not. The others don’t know you’re here,” the kid said, fidgeting in his seat.
“Oh really?” Otto replied, raising an eyebrow. “To be frank, that sounds like a recipe for disaster.”
“Yeah. It does.” The kid gave him an accusatory stare. “But if I told them I’d caught you, they wouldn’t let me figure out what you were doing in Shanghai stealing an artifact that has way more power than you should really know about.”
Otto looked back at him blankly. He ruled out the chance that this kid belonged to some new villain organization come to seek retribution or to control his powers or some other typical scenario– his persona was all wrong for that, much too goody-good and definitely not intimidating enough. But then who was this supposedly super powered kid? Who did he work for? What did he want from him?
But the biggest question really was why, if this was some kind of justice thing, would this kid keep a him a secret? Was this some kind of next level psychological warfare? Or was this kid really, in some convoluted backhanded way, trying to help him out?
It was too soon to tell.
“What's your name then?” Otto asked. Not a question he would normally pose to his captors, but this kid was anything but normal.
The kid didn’t answer right away.
“Jack,” he said, finally, “Jack Blank.”
Otto smiled a crooked smile, wondering just how deep of a mess he’d gotten himself into this time. “Nice to meet you Jack. You can call me Otto.”