Bain took a deep breath. "I want to be a hero because I've always been left out of-"

Stitches cut him off, raising a hand sharply. "I didn't ask for your backstory. I already know that you want to be a hero, and based on-" he indicated Bain vaguely, "-all this, I can guess why you want to be one. What I was asking is a bit more specific." He leaned outside the door, his tired eyes crystallizing as he fixed his gaze on Bain. He shrank back slightly. His instincts were lighting up as badly as if Nahma himself was in front of him. This man was more of a monster than Bain was, and right now? Right now, he was in the mood to kill him.

"Why'm I awake at nine o'clock in the morning?"

All four of Bain's eyes blinked simultaneously. "What?"

Stitches poked him in the chest. "I said nine o'clock in the letter, didn't I? So why did you show up in the morning?"

Bain's mouth dropped open. "Uhhh..." Stitches leaned against the side of the door, sighing hoarsely in annoyance, ticking the reasons off on his fingers. "It's because you didn't think, it's because you didn't consider the options, and it's because you didn't look me up on the hero registry to find out what my habits are, specifically that I always reserve the training room at nine in the evening. I deliberately put that on my page to see if you'd see it."

Bain thought fast. "Well, even if I didn't know what you-"

Stitches cut him off again. "Nope! No excuses. If you messed up, own up to it."

Bain stood up straight, feeling a strange urge to salute. "Yes sir."

Stitches paused, then chuckled. "You don't have to call me sir. I may be your senior, but I'm not your boss or anything. And before you ask, you still have to do whatever I tell you to do."

Bain twitched slightly, clearly wanting to speak. Stitches sighed. "What is it?"

He released his breath in a rush of heavy air, rancid with what he'd been eating for eighteen years, and Stitches' eyes watered. "I don't have access to a computer, so I couldn't-"

The man gagged. "What in Reagan's name did you eat today? I've crawled through sewers that smelled better."

Bain stalled to a stop, recalling his meals. "I didn't eat breakfast, but I usually just eat the rats that end up in the subway."

He paused his dramatic coughing and simply stared at Bain for a moment, jaw hanging open. There was a short silence immediately afterward that made him shrink a bit more, then Stitches exploded. "Rats? Friggin' rats? You want to become a hero with breath that could, in all seriousness, probably kill someone? And what'd ya mean by the subway? Are you talking about Nahma's tunnels?"

It took Bain a moment to sort the questions out, deciding to answer the two most important ones. "I don't have anything to eat except rats and maybe the occasional farm animal, and I'm Nahma's adopted son."

Stitches' eyebrows slowly crept up his forehead, and he whistled lowly. "How the salt did you get adopted by that guy? He scares the crap outta me, and I don't get scared easy."

Bain thought about it for a moment, recalling the story Nahma had told him. "I ate one of his sheddings, so he hit me with one of his main antennae. I survived, so he fed me and decided to keep me."

Stitches slowly put a finger to his chin, processing, before asking another question. "You took a hit from his antennae?" Bain nodded, and Stitches looked him over again, this time appraising his appearance a little more carefully. "That thing put six heroes in the hospital for a week. And not rookies, either. I was one of them."

Bain's brain worked rapidly, thinking back to his conversations with the centipede. As far as he knew, the last time Nahma had battled heroes directly was when he'd 'relocated' before he'd met Bain. He might have fought more heroes since then, but...

"You're one of the heroes that forced Nahma to stay in his tunnels?"

Stitches shivered. "Forced is a bit of an overstatement. It'd be more accurate to that we became a big enough inconvenience that he got irritated and left."

Bain shook his head. "That's not what I meant. Wasn't that almost fifty years ago?"

He nodded, curling one lip. "Yup. I'm a zombie."

Bain stalled his words, grinding to a stop. "Wait, seriously? Aren't zombies, you know..."

He didn't really know how to breach the subject, but Stitches covered for him with a slight smile. "Brainless? Yeah, most of the time, but my powers saved me when I got bit. A really powerful brain does wonders for viruses."

His eyes narrowed. "And you're still a hero? Wouldn't being a virus-infected host lower your Rep? I mean, look at what happened to Toxin."

They both were quiet for a moment, remembering the infamous hero, and then Stitches responded. "Sure it did. My Rep's been rock-bottom for decades."

Bain's head tilted. "Then why are you still a hero?"

For the first time in the conversation, Stitches' eyes slid to the side, avoiding Bain's, and he said quietly, "There are some things that don't change."

Bain felt as though he'd touched a nerve, and he didn't know how to feel about it. "Um. Is there anything you want to do, or do you want to yell at me some more, or..."

Stitches smiled. "Heh. No, now that I'm awake, it's time to see what you've got."

Walking past him towards the elevator, Stitches called back, "Let's go down a few floors. Before we do anything, you need to freshen up a bit."

Bain stopped for a moment, then caught up to the zombie, calling as he did, "Wait for just a second, what do you mean by that?"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A moment later, they were on the seventeenth floor, waiting in front of a small door with the name Hydro on it. Bain was striving to remember the hero's description without much success. He tried to remember most of the heroes, but there were quite a lot of them, and his memory wasn't perfect.

The door opened a moment later to reveal a man wearing a bathrobe and not much else, somehow looking even more tired than Stitches. "What is it?"

Stitches grinned, leaning against the hallway wall. "This newbie needs some cleaning, and I don't think a scrub is going to do the trick."

Hydro sighed deeply, rubbing two fingers on the bridge of his nose. "This is a waste of powers."

Stitches nodded happily. "Sure is. Now do your thing."

Bain looked at the man curiously. "What do you mean by-"

A torrent of water blasted from behind the man and enveloped Bain, compressing and rushing at incredible speeds in a condensed sphere around him, and the monster choked in surprise, a stream of bubbles coming out of his mouth and being swept away in a moment. He could literally feel layers coming off his carapace, and a few seconds later, the water receded.

Stitches whistled. "Dang, you got some good looks hiding underneath all that."

Looking at himself, Bain realized that every inch of him had been scrubbed clean. The grime and dirt built up over his life had been cleaned off in a matter of seconds, and his carapace shone a deep blue over the black, almost shimmering under the yellow hall lights. He had to admit to himself, it did look good, though not having the layers of dust and dirt over it felt... strange.

Poking him, Stitches told him, "Now we've got to do something about your breath. Let's go." Bain was filled with mild trepidation as he asked, "How do we fix that?"

Moments later, they were in a massive room with tables placed around, people milling around, some in costume and most in pajamas. Bain had heard that justice never sleeps, but quite a few recognizable heroes certainly looked sleepy. Along one side of the room was a long counter of trays full of food, a small army of cooks and servers walking rapidly around, shouting at each other in an endless line of orders.

"What is this?"

Stitches rubbed his hands excitedly. "This, my friend, is the cafeteria. Over a hundred masters of the culinary arts working in tandem to serve nothing but the very best food to the very best heroes. And villains, I suppose, but we tend to brush over that."

Bain stared at him. "You're dead. You shouldn't need food."

Stitches shook a finger in his face. "Ah, but needing something and wanting something are two different things entirely. And in this case, there is almost nothing I want more than incredibly good food. Also, your sense of tact is deader than me."

Bain was a little dubious. "I already ate this morning."

Stitches snorted. "You ate rats this morning. That's not a balanced breakfast, so grab something and shut up."

Bain sighed, but grabbed a tray, got in line, and picked up four items at random. A small box of thin, yellow sticks, a piece of meat between two slices of bread, a plastic container of curly, sticky orange noodles, and a brown square. Working his way over to Stitches, who had loaded his tray with what looked like some of everything, Bain sat down and stared at the food. "You're sure this isn't poisonous, right?"

Stitches elbowed him. "Sure I'm sure. Go ahead, it's going to get cold."

Somewhat reluctantly, Bain picked up the item made of meat and bread and shoved the majority of it into his mouth.

Involved with his food, Stitches looked up and noticed Bain, frozen on his seat with half a burger in his top right claws. He was instantly concerned, rising halfway from his position. "Bain? You all good there?" He briefly wondered if the burger had in fact been poisoned, and then the monster slowly keeled over backward, landing on the floor with a bone-rattling crash and gaining the attention of everyone in the cafeteria.

Jumping over the table, Stitches looked him in the eye and saw tears streaming out of all six of them, sizzling on the tile floor as if they were made of acid. "Bain?"

Bain swallowed before he replied, staring into space. "What... what's in that thing?"

Stitches sighed in relief, leaning back onto the small bench. "That, my friend, is called food."