AN: Hello, all! I know it's been a very, very long time since I updated, so I apologize for the wait. Life kinda...sucked...for a long while there, and my time for this type of writing was rather limited due to a string of emergencies and unpleasant circumstances. That said, I hope to get back into it at least long enough to finish this fic! Thank you for reading!

The chickens scolded Scarlet as she walked up, their indignant clucks and titters echoing out of the fenced in coop and pen long before she trudged up to its gate. She couldn't blame them. Their feed was three hours late and the water in their shallow trough was low. It wasn't that she'd meant to neglect them, but it had taken hours to harass the local police precinct into even letting her file a police report, let alone actually giving her statement. When a grandmother known for brandishing a shotgun went missing, they were hardly going to be upset about the downward trend in calls to the rooftop farm she called home. Scarlet, on the other hand, was desperately worried. Michelle Benoit was not the kind of woman to vanish without a word. And she was even less likely to be the type of woman to leave nothing behind but a pool of blood by the cabbage beds and a shotgun bent nearly in half by some unnatural force. If anything, Michelle herself was an unnatural force, and Scarlet couldn't bear to think of any other such force overpowering her.

A crash reverberated off the surrounding buildings, startling Scarlet out of her thoughts. More ominous thumps and crashes and grunts echoed nearer and nearer. Scarlet frowned. It wasn't the best neighborhood, but it certainly wasn't the worst. Street fights weren't totally uncommon, when the rowdier drunks spilled out of the bars in the wee hours of the night or street gangs clashed in brief skirmishes. But she'd never heard of any scuffles on the rooftops themselves.

Scarlet squinted at the skyline, straining to pick out the source of the noise against the tangle of billboards, air conditioning units, and other rooftop obstacles until a mass of shadows came into focus. A large figure sprinting across the flat roof of the neighboring apartment block, struggling to stay ahead of a group—a slowly gaining group—of figures behind him. Another few seconds and they had overtaken him. Scarlet grimaced, expecting a massacre that she was too far away from to intervene in, and reached for the phone in her back pocket. At least if she called the authorities now, they might arrive in time for cleanup.

Her hand froze on the screen when the first snarl rang out, then was abruptly cut off by the hollow thud of thrown punches. She looked back up in time to see one body sail over the rim of the building upon which the fight was taking place and another smash into a nearby billboard as if flung by a catapult. The feed bucket tumbled from Scarlet's fingers, crashing to the concrete with a metallic thud. Whatever she was seeing, it wasn't normal. And she couldn't help but wonder if her grandmother had seen something like it, too. She flexed her wrists, loosening them up in case the fight moved her direction. The brawlers were like her, that much was clear if the incredible strength and the strange growls and howls were any indication.

She stalked to the edge of her own rooftop where it butted up against the back of the chicken coop and contemplated the gap between her roof and the next. Even with her powers, she wasn't sure she could make the jump, but she needed to get over there. If these people knew something, she needed to know, too.

Scarlet huffed a frustrated sigh and glanced up again, only to find the battle over. The lone figure was running again, leaving behind a collection of crumpled opponents and a rather battered rooftop to sprint…towards her? Scarlet swallowed as she realized he probably couldn't see her where she was pressed against the side of the coop. Perhaps that was a good thing.

She waited until he was near enough to start building speed and gathering his considerable muscles for the long leap across the chasm, then cried out.

"Hey! You!"

It was a simple enough shout, but the man barreling her direction stumbled as if he'd been shot. He skidded, kicking up dust and gravel as he tried to halt his launch, but it was too late for that. He hurtled over the edge of the building in a less-than-graceful arc before punching headlong through the back wall of Scarlet's chicken coop. She let out a furious growl as she dashed back around to the front amid a cacophony of squawks and clucks and threw open the door to investigate what sort of man had just destroyed part of her livelihood.

Or at least, she thought it was a man. It was hard to tell in the darkness, the streams of silvery moonlight and the intermittent flashes of red and blue neon from the nearby signs barely providing enough light to pick out the shapes of the hens, let alone the details of the shadow sprawled out in the straw. And while the shape was distinctly manlike, it was also…not.

He was half hidden by the debris from the wall he had crashed through, but Scarlet could see enough to make her wonder if confronting him without any weapons beyond her own strength was a good idea. Fingers curved into claws scrabbled for purchase in the dirt and shoulders too broad to be human heaved away the broken timbers as if they were toothpicks. A groan echoed out of the shadows as the man sat up and a flash of moonlight caught on what Scarlet suspected were fangs.

"Don't move." She aimed for menacing, but wasn't sure her tone quite made it there with all the clucking and wing-fluttering for background noise. The man stilled, all the same, before slowly lifting his hands in surrender.

"I'm…sorry about your shed. I didn't mean to hit it."

"It's a chicken coop—" Scarlet wondered if he'd hit his head on the way down. The chickens were hard to miss. Still, that might not be a bad thing, given the advantage it would give her if they came to blows. "—and I'll call it even if you tell me everything you know about Michelle Benoit."

There was a moment of confused silence before the intruder spoke again. "Who?"

"Michelle Benoit," Scarlet repeated with significantly less patience than before. "She disappeared from this roof not long ago and the only evidence left was a bent-up shotgun. Which is awfully coincidental if you and your friends are running around up here having superpowered brawls!"

"They aren't my friends. Not anymore." Scarlet took a step back when the man's voice turned to a growl. It subsided a moment later. "And I don't know anything about Michelle Benoit…but if she disappeared from here, I may know something about where she's gone."

Scarlet's pulse hitched, and she took another hesitant step forward. He might not be the most trustworthy source, but this was the first lead she'd had in days. And he had apologized for demolishing her chicken coop's rear wall. Whatever else he was, at least he was polite.

"What's your name?"

Silence stretched out for a moment before he spoke, slow and cautious and a bit unsteady, as though he was as unfamiliar with the name as she was.

"Ze'ev. Ze'ev Kesley."

"Well, Ze'ev," Scarlet folded her arms across her chest and squared her shoulders. Finally, some progress. With help and luck, finding her grandmere couldn't be too far off. "Tell me everything you know.

Two Years Later:

Scarlet's rooftop was the only spot of green for miles in any direction. Concrete apartments and parking garages and offices sloped away on all sides, like hills rolling away from her little patch of urban meadow. Neat rows of raised garden beds heaped with fertile brown soil lined the southern side of the roof from one end to the other and a pair of sturdy chicken coops with an enclosed run in between filled in the west end. Scarlet's boots crunched in the gravel and the feed in the buckets she carried rattled as she crossed the gap between the stairwell and the chicken coop. The muscles in her biceps ached faintly with every step, the only remaining evidence of her brawl with the robots. The soot from the laser burns had washed away in the shower, the hoodie shredded by the robots' pincers was tucked away with a pile of other such garments for mending, and all she was left with was the nagging soreness that sapped even her super strength after such a fight. After helping the first responders clear the area of stray robot limbs and other assorted wreckage, then walking the five blocks between the scene of the fight and her building, Scarlet wanted nothing more than to curl up Ze'ev's arms and not move for the rest of the evening. But farm chores waited for no one, homicidal robots notwithstanding. The chickens still demanded their feed, and they didn't care if she'd just saved the world or not. Food was food.

Ze'ev emerged shortly, his shaggy hair still damp from the shower and a tray in his hands. Scarlet smiled. She'd made lemonade earlier in the day, before the attack, with hopes of the two of them sharing a rooftop picnic. Her plans had obviously been interrupted when the screams from the street below pierced the relative calm of her rooftop farm, but apparently, Ze'ev was anxious to pick up where they'd left off. He'd brought the pitcher, a pair of glasses, and a plate heavy with the tarts pushed into their hands by the grateful owner of the bakery below.

"I guess that means you're hungry?" Scarlet unlatched the door into the chicken run and stepped inside as Ze'ev made his way to the battered picnic table a few yards away.

"Well, we did miss dinner."

"I don't think tarts count as dinner, "Scarlet said, grinning. She upended the bucket of feed, shaking it out in a carefully measured line to insure that all the hens had a chance at an equal share.

"Appetizer," Ze'ev retorted around a mouthful of tart. The points of his sharper than average canines flashed when he smiled, stained red with cherry filling, and Scarlet laughed. There was always something about seeing him like this. A man built for killing thriving in such a domestic setting, using his clawed hands to haul baked goods and smiling as if she'd hung the moon when all she'd done was feed the chickens. It sparked a warmth inside her that she hadn't felt since her grandmother vanished. She set down her buckets just outside the chicken wire enclosure and crossed to join him at the table.

"How do you feel?" He rumbled when she settled onto the bench next to him, her shoulder bumping against his as she reached for her own tart. Scarlet shrugged. She was all but bulletproof in most circumstances. Apparently, that was a package set with the super strength she'd been born with. There were exceptions, of course, but most of the time, even fights like the one that had gone on that afternoon left her mostly unscathed. But Ze'ev always asked anyway.

"Sore…but nothing a good night's sleep won't fix. You?" Scarlet's eyes swept over Ze'ev's body, taking in the red marks over his knuckles from all the punches he'd thrown and the tell-tale smudges of bruising from the hits he had taken. It wasn't bad. Especially since he healed almost as fast as she did. There were certain advantages to being bioengineered.

"Fine," The word was casual, but his eyes—his sharp, endless green eyes—were troubled. Scarlet arched a brow at him.

"What is it?"

"Those robots…I've seen them before. When I was at the lab, they were stored in the lab across from ours, but we were always told that they weren't needed anymore. Not with us around." He paused, reaching for another tart, but pinching it apart piece by piece instead of wolfing it down as usual. "It's…concerning...that they're using them anyway."

Scarlet frowned, too. It was concerning, but like so many things in Luna City, she didn't know how to fix it and dwelling on the fact that she couldn't just left her angry. Particularly since such things tended to leave Ze'ev in an even more fretful state than they left her. She reached over to lace her fingers through Ze'ev's, ignoring the cherry filling as it smeared between their locked hands.

"We'll keep an eye on them." They always did. There was little else they could do. No matter how many low-priority thugs they scared off their patch of rough and tumble city or how many robots they tore to pieces, it was never quite enough. There were always more in Levana's arsenal, and their efforts never put them any closer to the answers either of them needed: Wolf to the question of his origins or Scarlet to the mystery of her Grandmere's disappearance. After two years of trying and failing, it felt like a hollow pursuit. But even if they were less enthusiastic about the vigilante business than they might have been once, neither of them had ever been quitters.

"We'll need to do more than that if we want to keep our heads," A new voice carried from the direction of the chicken coop. Scarlet's gaze snapped up to find the so-called Captain Luna perched on the roof of said coop. He grinned, hefting the robot head they'd helped him salvage earlier in the day. "Unlike this guy."

"Did you bring that all the way here just to say that?" Ze'ev couldn't seem to decide whether to be unimpressed or amused.

"Get off my chicken coop!" Scarlet settled for exasperated.

"I didn't, actually, but being able to was a nice bonus," The Captain said as he hopped from roof to ground with only minor stumbling and tipped an imaginary hat to the hens who skittered around his boots. "Pardon me, ladies."

"Just here to steal tarts, then?" Scarlet nudged the plate his direction nonetheless, but kept her stare firmly fixed on the robot head. The "Captain" who'd taken to patrolling the streets some months back had definitely tried his best to haul them into his crusade and thus made far too many visits to Scarlet's quiet farm, but they were almost never social calls. She doubted today would be the exception to the trend. Especially with that in tow.

"While I'm always up for thievery, I'm just a delivery boy tonight." He set down the head with a resounding thunk. "Satellite's gone over it with a fine-toothed comb. Thought you might like a crack at it, too. Or, if you're feeling like a battle trophy, you could…I dunno, make a planter out of it or something."

Wolf snorted and reached for another tart. Scarlet rolled her eyes, but reached out to trail her fingertips over the robot's faceplate.

"Did Satellite get anything?" So far, the most they'd seen of the Captain's mysterious partner was the way he winced when she shouted at him over the comms for doing something stupid. In this city, it was hard to trust anything you couldn't see, but Satellite had passed good intel to them via her idiot partner in the past. Scarlet trusted her as much as she did him. Even if that wasn't saying much.

"Not really. She pulled some techy magic to get a look at the network that runs these guys." He rapped a gloved fist against the robot head and scowled. "Led back to that lab outside of town—surprise, surprise—but she can't get past their security measures to learn anything else. Apparently, you have to actually be on-site to access that."

Captain Luna lifted his head to give them a meaningful look, his mouth already opening for what Scarlet knew would be another impassioned speech about moral duty, great responsibility, and whatever other wheedling excuses he could manufacture to try to con them both into joining one of his ill-fated missions to the infamous lab. She held up a warning finger and glowered. Not today.

"If you say what I think you're about to, I will throw you off my roof."

"Well," He paused, tapping a thoughtful finger against his jaw. "I've been working on my landings…"

Scarlet let out a growly sigh. "How many times do we have to talk about this? We won't help you attack the lab directly—"

"It'd be more of an infiltration, not an att—"

"It's too risky! Helping out around the neighborhood is one thing, but if we hit that lab now, without any information about what's waiting for us, there's no telling what we'd be walking into!" Scarlet poured a glass of lemonade and chugged half of it just to keep her hands busy. Without some distraction, they were apt to ball into fists. It wasn't as if they'd never nosed around the lab before. They'd had much more time to poke at its defenses and test its barriers than Captain Luna had, but it had never ended well. And unlike him, they knew better than to keep leaping when a poor landing was guaranteed.

But somehow that never stopped him from asking. He frowned, only slightly deflated by the lost opportunity for a speech he had clearly practiced, and perched his hands on his utility belt in a pose Scarlet suspected was stolen from a comic book cover.

"Fine. Just out of curiosity—" Ze'ev snorted again at that, and Scarlet was tempted to echo the sentiment. The Captain did make questionable choices, sure, but he never seemed to do anything without a purpose in mind. Usually a sneaky one. "—what would it take to convince you to try for the lab with us?"

Scarlet exchanged cautious glances with Ze'ev. They had discussed it, but never seriously. Ze'ev had so few memories of what had taken place in that lab that it seemed more like some distant nightmare than a place accessible in reality. Their few attempts to breech its walls and guardhouses and electric fences had hardly helped dispel that notion.

"A lot more people than just the four of us," Ze'ev said. "And information about what Levana keeps there at the moment. Maybe a map of the facility for tactical purposes."

"So, an army and a spy, then. Should I throw in the moon, too, or is that the full list of near-impossible requests?" Captain Luna grumbled, his pose slipping a bit under the gloom of the conversation.

"Take it or leave it. You find someone crazy enough to give Levana and her lab up, and maybe it'll be worth considering," Scarlet said, draining the last of the lemonade from her glass and slamming it down on the table with a note of finality. "Until then, we don't have a chance. And you don't have a team."

The Captain's lips pressed together in a resigned line. It clearly irked him, but there wasn't much he could say to that. No one was that crazy.