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Actually, come to think of it, Ray had been voted Most Likely To Run Away And Join The Circus. Gene had the faint memory. It didn't seem to matter so much any more.

He did look like himself in these strange clothes, but then again, he didn't. For the first time Gene realized Ray's bright blue eyes were in complete focus. The world was a blur to him without his glasses, a colorful blur in the daytime, but he'd seen and reacted to each of Gene's expressions as quickly as he did when he had his vision about him. For some reason this was one of the more awestriking things about magic. Everything else was impossible to parse: the time travel, the lives, the monsters, everything, it was too much to understand, too much for him to wrap his mind around. All he could parse was a vodka glass floating in the air, and taking Ray's hand and closing his eyes and opening them to be on top of the Municipal Bank Building, and now Ray looking at him unspectacled like he could see him, all of him. This was fire.

Ray half-turned and reached out -- Gene quelled the very odd urge to flinch -- to lay his hand on Gene's shoulder, then turned all the way to put the other one on his other shoulder. There was no reason this should calm him down any. The situation was the insane, surreal, dreamlike-or-nightmarish situation regardless of any gestures Ray chose to make. There was no reason at all. Ugh.

"I need help," Ray said. "I need your help. You're the only one I can trust. I'm building an organization from the ground up and I need a cornerstone."

He closed the distance between them another half-step. Now they were standing parallel to the lip of the building, Ray's mummy-wrapped hands on either of his shoulders. His eyes were a little higher than Gene's. It occurred to Gene absurdly that he was probably wearing tall shoes in his magician getup.

"I can give people powers like mine -- anyone. It's like unlocking a part of your mind that you never used. Not to the same degree, but I can do it. I need your groundedness, your practical thinking. I need your ideas. I need you to shoot down my ideas. I'd like it if you learned healing with your magic, but that's up to you."

Ray's hands rested on his shoulders and he wasn't gripping hard, but Gene was too-conscious of them anyway, conscious of where each of his fingers dimpled the fabric of his shirt.

"I need you to have my back," Ray said. "But I have to know you're with me."

There really was some kind of electricity in the air. It made it difficult to think.

"Are you with me?"

A police helicopter was pursuing someone or something miles away, shining a bright spotlight down into the Destiny City suburbs. They were still thirty stories up, up there with the birds and the helicopters and the mist. Ray let his hands drop from Gene's shoulders and fall down instead to take both of his hands earnestly. He never had been the most mindful of personal space, but then again, when it came to him neither had Gene, and they had known each other a dozen years, and this was all supremely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, in which Ray invited Gene to take over the world with him. (In Which Ray Invited Gene To Take Over The World With Him. It was like some kind of whimsical chapter title. There were some times it was a curse to be genre savvy.)

God, but he was a little dizzy.

"Not a one," said Ray. "Who would I have asked?"

Who indeed? What array of college friends, girlfriends, coworkers, neighbors and long-lost relations could he have gone to instead? Certainly there had to be some, certainly there had to be one or two that numbered higher than Gene Baskov -- certainly one or two that numbered high enough not to be dropped for two years without a word of explanation. But instead he was here, with him. On top of the Bank Building.

Unless, of course, there wasn't. Which was a hope that had died a death sometime in the past two years: not a quiet death, but the fiery, screaming, agonized kind of a failed suicide, the kind that strangled itself to death on a noose after failing to snap its own neck. He didn't dare entertain it again. He definitely hadn't after the bullshit at DC Memorial, but -- he probably shouldn't --

"You're the only one I asked," Ray interrupted his thoughts in dead seriousness, his hands curled over his. "You're the only one I know I can trust and the only one I know can do this. I don't know --"

A long time ago, when they were best friends, they'd been filling out some survey where they had to say the three things they'd take to a 'desert island.' If it was actually a 'desert' island, insisted Ray, one of those things should be water, unless they in fact were talking about a deserted island, which was another thing entirely --

(Don't be That Guy, Ray --)

Yes, yes, said he. Well. One, you -- two, the collected works of William Shakespeare -- three, a mirror for you to make up in the morning, as otherwise you turn into Godzilla and attack Tokyo.

(Ray.)

Even so.

"I don't actually know what I'll do if you say no," Ray finished. "I haven't thought that far."

He smiled, and, on afterthought: "Not that I ever do."

Ray laughed and dropped one of Gene's hands to beep his nose with his thumb before Gene could protest. He'd crinkled around the eyes grinning; he looked like a considerable weight had lifted off his shoulders. Come to think of it, Ray had never been the kind of person to have a considerable weight on his shoulders. And through it all, when there was doubt, he'd ate it up and spit it out: he'd faced it all, and he'd stood tall, and, well.

"I knew I could count on you," he said. "All right, this is going to sound a little weird, but --"

He lay the beeping hand flat on his own chest over his blue-grey shirt, or tunic, or, err, whatever it was he was wearing anyway. "It turns out we all have a kind of a, a kind of a magical lifeforce inside us, which can be used to power -- a whole lot of things, if it's taken out. Like the seeing magic of my crystal ball. Or whatever the hell the Dark Kingdom uses it for, y'know, I don't rightly know, but they kill people en masse to take it out: those are the coma patients. It's called a starseed. I can take it out instead and do something to it, change it, so it powers your magic instead. That there crystal ball was what mine became. But it'll hurt for a moment. I can't change that."

But it'll hurt for a moment brought a great number of hypothetical sensations to mind, none of which were appealing. Ray pressed his hand into his shirt, and then into his chest through his shirt, which was a strange thing to see, as if to prove his ability to do so; he didn't flinch, though, and he pulled his hand out a moment later as if to demonstrate that his chest was unharmed. Like a rabbit out of a hat.

Ray grinned at that. It was hard to tell whether that was relieving or infuriating. "You can keep your clothes on this time, baby, it's chilly up here." That was infuriating -- but, admittedly, in the relieving kind of way. "All right. Answer me these."

He reached forward and re-buttoned the top two buttons of Gene's shirt, a bit fastidiously, then took his hands again in his own. He looked down at them for a couple moments. When he looked up the grin had vanished, replaced by that fixed, dead-serious face he'd had when he'd levitated the glass of vodka. They didn't have the same radioactive glow, which made his gaze a little easier to meet. Whatever the reason, he was broadcasting signals that were very clear: what I am about to say is very serious.

Ray spoke like he was standing at an altar and what he was saying was in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. "Do you pledge me your fidelity?"

It was an odd thing to say -- but then Gene realized that, of course, it was an oath. This was some kind of oath. "I do."

"Do you pledge me your obedience?"

"I do."

"Do you commit yourself, body and mind, to this service?"

"I do."

"Do you place yourself in my hands?"

He colored a little more at that one, for some reason, and it gave him a moment's pause to answer: "I do."

Ray didn't let him go, and didn't let him look away, but his mouth creased in a smile, which in and of itself let some of the tension out of both of them. What he said next wasn't a question. "Then as long as I have your loyalty," he said, "you have my protection. And as long as you embrace us, we embrace you. Welcome to the family, Yevgeniy Baskov."

And he let go of Gene's left hand and plunged his right hand into his chest, and pulled something out, and a shock of cold went through his body and he passed out.

****

It was only a moment. But it was a long, frozen moment, a moment where it felt like his heart was outside his body. He woke up shortly thereafter -- and his heart was beating, and air was in his lungs, but he was cold and tingling and it felt like he'd been dead for a moment, if he had any understanding of what being dead for a moment felt like. He was a hospital doctor, he'd seen people who'd been dead for moments, or dead for longer, he'd seen them come out claiming insane things or brain-damaged or not come out at all.

Gene was none of these things: except, perhaps, claiming insane things, because as he shivered and came out of shock he found himself aware of several things. One, that Ray's arm was braced around his back to keep him upright -- he must've started to fall -- two, that in Ray's other hand was a white crystal that glowed with red light -- where did that come from? -- and three, that the muzzy, bothersome electricity in the air had been thrown into bright relief, and suddenly he knew it for what it was: magic. He was in a cloud of magic throwing off sparks, and right now he was at the center of a thunderstorm of it: like he was next to someone or something who generated it like a power plant.

In a few moments Ray had let him go after putting his hands on his shoulders to make sure he was sure of his balance. He looked concerned, kind of, but that wasn't really at the top of Gene's priority list at the moment. They were still on top of the Bank Building. There was still roof under their feet. It was still chilly and nighttime and there were still neon signs. Nothing else had changed.

Except -- he didn't seem to be wearing what he had before.

He looked at Ray, who had stepped back. Ray raised his eyebrows.

"Turn around," said Ray. "Let's have a look at you."

For a moment Ray was back to smiling at him like he was tempted to beep his nose again. He decided against it, though, which was probably for the best overall, and instead took another step back. He did have his own costume, after all, and Gene remembered that when he'd first transformed he hadn't looked like himself at all, there was a foreignness to him, a dauntingness, that came with the dark clothes and the glow of magic. Now, with Ray assessing him like a piece of property at auction, some of that was back: particularly with magic crackling around him like static. It was a heady feeling, magic, like static electricity, like another sense had been added to the five (well, many more than five -- pressure, texture, pain, hot, cold, balance, proprioception -- countless senses) the human body came with from the factory.

It made him wonder a little: who was the person standing in front of him? Who were they both now? He remembered back at the beginning of their conversation, when Ray had said something about -- kingdoms, about a world that had fallen into ashes, about other lifetimes and other timelines. Maybe this was a new chapter in their lives then, in each of their lives and where the Venn diagram intersected, but what were they now? The protagonists of comic books didn't go around taking over the world. Then again, comic book worlds never actually changed: the Joker never died, Magneto never stayed dead, there was still genocide in Africa and maquiladora workers murdered in Tijuana and kids who lost their hands in machinery in Southeast Asia so kids could buy cheap shoes in California. Comic book protagonists didn't do a hell of a lot.

There was a first time for everything.

Ray rested his chin on his fist. He looked pleased with himself, or with Gene, or with them both. "You look pretty awesome," he decreed.

And that broke a lot of the awkwardness right there, because how did you argue with that, exactly: he looked pretty awesome. That was pretty agreed-upon all around.

"All right, lesson number one." Ray clapped his hands together. "That oversized plumbob over there is your heart walking around outside your body. Not literally. Nothing different's going to show up on an X-Ray. But consider that your mortal soul -- do not drop it, do not break it, do not mess with it, because if you break it you die, end of story. Okay, I'm not going to reiterate that any harder as that would be what we folks call mansplaining. How are you feeling?"

"Nope, see, you've got two modes you can be in. One is normal, Gene Baskov, Bruce Wayne mode. The other is awesome, superpowered --" It seemed to occur to Ray that Gene didn't have a superhero name yet and he put his head on one side. "-- Batman mode. In Batman mode you can use your Cure Light Wounds and your Turn Undead and your Ubercharge and what-have-you, party cleric, I dunno, I always played rogue. But in exchange you've got that plumbob with you all the time -- it's not that easy to break, it takes violent force, but do not take that to mean you can play baseball with the damn thing." This was an unfair thing to say, by anyone's standards, as if there was one person between the two of them likely to play baseball with his own mortal soul his name started with 'R' and ended with 'aymond Gordon.' "When you're back to Bruce Wayne your plumbob is off, in, uh, plumbob-space, and your outfit too, but you can only use your powers a little bit. When you're Batman people can't tell you're actually Bruce Wayne, your identity's protected, you've got all your abracadabra but you've got the plumbob."

It was a lot to process, but then again, it wasn't. The rules of magic had a little bit of rhyme and reason to them. There was no reason they should, but they seemed to -- well, at least that was good for understanding them. Or Ray was telling him an oversimplified white lie, but. Boys would be boys. Girls would be girls. Ray would be Ray. It was a lot to process.

"Not all of that applies to me," said Ray, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand. He wasn't looking well, come to think of it. "But I'm a space alien from the planet Krypton. All right, Spock, shall I beam us back up?"