When we are children, adults spin bitter stories of broken friendships and swear to things that they believe in that friendships, even powerful ones, don’t always last. They chuckle sadly at their children when they see them making future plans with their friends and say things like “Don’t get your hopes up.” But children have a great sense of hope and tend to believe strongly that they will break the chain—that their friendships will last their lifetime.

Tobias MacClain did not break the chain, and he had no regrets, disappointments, or woes about it. He had suffered the company of Benjamin Jones for twenty-six years of his twenty-eight, and the company of Poppy Tris only one year less. While the other two remained thick as thieves, Tobias had grown sick of their company. On some days, even resentful of it.

On the morning of February 29th Tobias awoke to another dreadful year of, so he thought, enduring them. He opened his eyes to his gloomy, windowless room and turned the dimmer on to the lowest light to stare disdainfully at the plain white ceiling above and considered how foolishly he had wasted his twenty-seventh year tolerating Benjamin’s arrogance and Poppy’s tactlessness.

He sighed and pulled back the covers to rise. After neatly setting the bed, he tugged an already-buttoned button-up over his undershirt, then slipped into his closet to find a pair of pants and his most comforting fuzzy slippers.

Mornings were his least favorite time of the day. His head spun, reeling with blurry and disorienting images. In his dizziness, he toppled back onto the bed upon his exit from the closet, only one arm of his red robe in place. He closed his eyes, rubbed his temples, slipped the other arm through, and looked up at his door.

What were the chances, he wondered, that Benjamin Jones would break it down again this year? It happened every single birthday, ever since they had moved in together, and it rattled Tobias to no end. He pressed his fingers to his brow and tried to focus.

What were the chances?

As he’d grown older, and tireder, and more dependent on caffeine and schedules, Tobias’s powers to see the possibilities of the near future had grown, too. Futures buzzed and bounced around his skull, speckling his vision until he simply couldn’t bear to try further and most of the little blurry images fizzled out. A few always stayed to plague him, and before his morning coffee, they were nothing but static.

He groaned and shook his head and unlocked the door, just in case Benjamin was going to be predictable once again, then settled at his desk. He pushed on his glasses and opened his computer. While it booted, he contemplated the framed photographs pushed up against the wall and smiled particularly at those including a raven-haired girl, and in the more recent photos, a raven-haired woman. Her hair was always a mess—he loved that about her. So carefree, unafraid of how her appearance could shape perceptions of her.

In his e-mails, as he’d predicted even foggy-brained and without his powers, was a “happy birthday” e-mail from that woman, with a midnight time stamp. Viola Mae Reed, the night owl. He smiled wider and moved to open it, but at thundering crash behind him he jolted from his seat so abruptly that his chair fell to the floor, right on top of his already fallen, broken-down door.

“BENJAMIN JONES,” Tobias howled, clenching his fists. “That door was unlocked, you brute, you buffoon, you—you—!”

It was futile, for Benjamin Jones, as usual, was not listening. He and Poppy Tris couldn’t hear Tobias’s protests over their loud and off-key singing of a terrible rendition of a happy birthday song. Between the two, they carried a large tray with a very delicious-looking cake that was really a stack of cinnamon buns held together by glaze and topped with a number seven candle, and a cup of something steaming. Poppy Tris carried a big square present wrapped in paper patterned with onomatopoeia in comic-style text bubbles.

Tobias scrambled to get out of their way, snatching his laptop and hugging it to his chest before they could put the tray on top of it.

Benjamin Jones grinned at him. “Officially seven years old, Toby!”

Tobias ducked quickly to avoid his companion’s inbound knuckles reaching for his hair. He stood when Benjamin’s swing withdrew and glared.

“Twenty-eight,” he muttered. “Did you have to break down my door again?”

“You love it.” The man winked.

“I don’t.”

Poppy Tris wrapped her arms around Tobias and he stiffened like a plank. He held tightly to his laptop and frowned. She gave him the knuckle-dusting that Benjamin hadn’t managed and he scowled and struggled out of her hold. She grinned a big toothy grin.

“Happy birthday, Tobias.” She picked up the gift that she’d brought and exchanged it with him, taking his laptop. “We made this for you.”

“What is it?” Tobias narrowed his eyes. “Is it a trick?”

Benjamin laughed, head tilting back. “Open it, Toby.”

Tobias carefully peeled the papers from the corner. His eyes flicked cautiously up to his companions, and they grinned stupidly to one another. Benjamin Jones had his uniform, his supersuit, beneath his clothes, Tobias noticed. A blue hexagon lattice covered arms, poking from the sleeves of his t-shirt. He wasn’t wearing his gloves or goggles yet.

“A photo album,” Tobias remarked. He opened the leather cover and looked at the first page, which read: To twenty-eight years of Toby and all the more to come.

In my research, I was able to find this particular photo album. The photos it contained were sentimental to Tobias, including depictions of better times and youth. It included proud photos of when their team actually performed as a team—such as the ceremony celebrating the beginning of their public careers as city defenders, back when Viola Mae Reed remained among them. It included pictures of a younger Tobias holding hands with her. I, myself, was moved when I found the picture of Benjamin Jones raising Tobias over his head, Poppy and Viola Mae cheering in the background, as their team graduated from The Academy for Non-Typicals as one complete picture, rather than the fragments Tobias felt they had become.

He felt a pang in his heart as he flipped through the pages and thumbed through the best of times. Tears welled in his eyes and he pushed up his specs to wipe them away. He closed the book and propped it up on his desk, behind the tray, then pinched the flame on the candle. He pulled it out of the cinnamon bun roll stack and took one of the sweets from the top.

Maybe things aren’t so bad after all, he thought, face scrunching up at the invasive burn of his reddening nose and flushing cheeks.

“Thank you,” he said. He looked at the mug, but was disappointed to find a simple black tea. He never drank tea, but he lifted it anyways, not to be ungrateful. He appreciated the effort, at least. He gave them a smile, but he was tired, and it was as tired as he was.

Benjamin Jones clapped a hand on Tobias’s back and started to lead him towards the door. Tobias clumsily allowed himself to move, distracted by the cinnamon bun half in hand, half in mouth. His elbow stuck out as he tried to keep his tea from sloshing onto the carpet running the hall.

Poppy Tris loped out after them with a pair of buns in her hands, munching with half-lidded eyes.

“We’ve got a big surprise for you, Toby,” Benjamin Jones said.

“It’s totally radical,” Poppy emphasized in her lethargic manner. She spoke with a vocabulary that always seemed a few decades out of date. It was only her hero character; and in times of sincerity that character broke to expose her well-spoken true self.

Anyone that knew Tobias MacClain would know very well that he was not accustomed to surprises and did not appreciate them one bit. Benjamin knew Tobias even better. So much better, in fact, that he knew that a distracted Tobias was a complacent, compliant, and gullible Tobias—a Tobias that could easily be surprised. Or rather, a Tobias with a cinnamon roll was more interested in the cinnamon roll than in whatever it was that Benjamin was up to.

As they reached the balcony doors, Tobias wiped his sticky fingers on his trousers and frowned. “Wait a minute,” he said. He started to turn around, blinking. “Wait a minute.”

Benjamin burst through the doors and pulled Tobias with him.

The smaller man stumbled and fell onto the handrail, spilling a slap of tea over the edge. He squinted at the daylight, disoriented. Hazy visions swam before him, and he pressed his hand to his head. “Benjamin, my powers aren’t as flexible as yours,” he hissed, trying to adjust. He could barely hear himself.

Cheering and hoots and howls and hollers bellowed from below, becoming louder as the internal static receded. Tobias squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head, then opened them again, pushing his glasses right up his nose. He gasped, head pounding. Sounds came to him as if he were underwater; muted, distorted, incomprehensible.

A crowd became clearer and clearer out of the haze. Blurred faces differentiated and gained identities; strangers. Bouncing signs in vibrant colors gradually became legible. He could hear his name being chanted, but it was not the name that he preferred. It was not a name he was comfortable with. It was not a name he had ever endorsed.

Wide-eyed and ashen-faced, he tried to stagger backwards, back inside, back to safety, but Benjamin Jones had a fistful of his robe and held him in place.

Tobias shook his head over and over and gaped up at the tormenting banner overhead, aghast. His gut turned in turmoil as volatile and unyielding as the sea.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PAJAMA BOY!

There he stood, pinned in place on the balcony, shaking from head to toe in the very same fluffy red robe and slippers that had earned the nickname and the humiliation that came with it. Comforting things that Benjamin Jones had turned on him. It had been the same for years. Pajama Boy on the newspaper pages, Pajama Boy during interviews, Pajama Boy on talk shows.

“How could you?” he whispered, fighting the urge to weep.

They were chanting the cruel name from the lawn. Some of the signs in the crowd read along the lines of “We love Mr. Might!”, Benjamin Jones’ alias, while others read “Power to Pajama Boy!” and the rare few peeked shyly upwards with a respectful, “Thank you for another year of service, Chance!”

Tobias bit his lip and clenched his fist. The tears boiled away over his red-hot cheeks as he glared up at Benjamin with his sternest, biting look. Then, he merely shook his head, and was calm. After so many years of enduring the man, Tobias had learned to level.

“And to think,” he said, smiling slightly, “I almost thought that things could be better.”

He raised his mug and pitched what was left of the steaming tea over Benjamin’s broad chest, startling the man into releasing him with a shout of surprise. While the revered hero blew on himself and flailed to bat the heat from his person, Tobias scowled and trudged inside, forcefully readjusting his robe.

Poppy Tris slapped her knees and keeled over with laughter. Her long blonde hair fell over her face, bouncing with each hiccupping gasp for air.

Tobias kicked her foot and snatched her unbitten cinnamon roll on his way past.

“Tobias!” Poppy Tris called after him. She snickered and snorted and keeled over again. “Tobias, come on! They love you as Pajama Boy! They think you’re cute! Don’t be such a stick in the mud, dude.”

Tobias kept walking, dragging his hand down his face. Down the stairs, across the hall, around the bar and the kitchen counter, and straight to the coffee machine. He shoved his emptied tea mug in place and turned it on. His fingers gripped the counter as he waited, listening to the machine’s quiet grinding, and drummed his fingers impatiently. He angrily stuffed his mouth with cinnamon roll, filling his cheeks so fully he could barely chew.

Poppy and Benjamin’s clumsy footsteps cascaded down the stairs and he struggled to swallow.

“Toby!” Benjamin called. “All right, don’t be mad. Come on, I’ll make you another cup of tea, and—”

“I don’t even drink tea!” Tobias cried, throwing up his hands. “We’ve lived in the same house for ten years, Benjamin, and you still don’t know that I don’t drink tea.”

“Really?” Benjamin leaned on the opposite counter. “You seem like a tea man.”

“What does that even mean?” Tobias spat. He pulled his mug out from the machine and stepped back to the fridge. “I have had coffee every single morning since I was nineteen years old. With milk, except for on the days where I am particularly distressed, when I take my coffee,” he reached into the fridge, “with cream.”

He poured cream into his mug, replaced the pitcher in the refrigerator, and stalked off to the table to sit with his drink and the remains of his cinnamon roll and Poppy Tris. She started to speak, but he quieted her with a bark of “don’t” and started to drink. There was not enough coffee in the world to wash away his scowl that morning.

After another few minutes, Benjamin sat next to him with a cup of tea, as unlike Tobias, he was a tea drinker. Unlike Benjamin, Tobias knew that his teammate drank tea every morning, and even knew that he received a new package of assorted and lovingly arranged teas weekly from an “anonymous sender”. Tobias was intuitive enough to know that the anonymous sender was the same every week and had worked out where the packages came from years ago, despite Benjamin’s secrecy about it.

The conversation at the table that morning is not worth mentioning. That morning, whenever the others started something, Tobias stopped it, because he was simply finished with their teasing and their disrespect and their teenager-like antics.

When the clock neared the chime of nine o’clock, Tobias drained his mug and Poppy Tris blew out a stick of incense. Tobias buttoned his shirt the rest of the way and brushed his fingers through his hair.

“Comms will come early today,” he announced, straightening primly in his chair. His eyes flicked upwards as he focused on his visions. “There’s a rescue.”

Benjamin blinked and knocked back the rest of his tea in one big swallow, as he always did before communications were received. He dried his lips. “Someone important?”

“Everyone is important, Benjamin.” Tobias concentrated on the ceiling. The images before his eyes were clear now. So many images, so many chances and possibilities. “You and I are suitable for the mission, but we should accept the replacement for Poppy.”

“Toby, man, what’s wrong with me?” Poppy protested.

“Absolutely nothing, Poppy. It’s just that—”

The screen hanging over the conference table flickered on. It filled blue, with the proud emblem of Benediction’s Higher Defense Headquarters flickering white in its center. The three heroes gazed upon it intently. The national anthem played softly, as it did every morning when their shift was bound to begin.

The Director appeared on screen, dressed in her stiff and decorated uniform, sitting at her control desk.

“Good morning, Defiance.”

“Good morning,” returned the team, each saluting with two fingers.

“We received a Code 26 just moments ago, from Hephaestus Hellfire, owner of the central lagoon volcano. It is due for eruption, but it is volatile. We’ll need Chance to keep an eye on its state while your mission runs.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Tobias nodded dutifully.

“Mr. Might will need to remove rubble from the volcano lair’s entrance, which from our drone intel, we know has collapsed. The governess of East Benediction has been tied up for ransom somewhere within. Get her out safely or the ransom will come from your paychecks. Understood?”

“Understood.”

“Vine Voodoo, your abilities will not be useful in this mission. Your plants will not stand a chance against magma and lava, and it will take a great deal of stamina to attempt to conjure any on such barren land. We have a replacement lined up for you.”

“Thank you, Director,” Benjamin said, too quickly, “but we will be fine. We’re an excellent team and Poppy is an excellent fighter with or without her plants.”

Tobias and Poppy both swiveled to stare at Benjamin.

“Respectfully, Captain,” Tobias began tightly, “I advise that we should take the replacement this time. Volcanoes are not the right place to practice impulsive decisions. Particularly not this volcano.”

Benjamin dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “We don’t need the replacement. Our team will suit up now and meet the plane in ten.” He raised his two fingers. “Thank you, Director.”

Tobias, hand shaking, lifted his two fingers, and Poppy lifted hers, and the screen blinked out. Tobias stared at the table. He clenched his fists and turned to face the team’s captain. “I told you before she even came on that we should take the replacement. What exactly were you thinking?”

“We can do it,” Benjamin said, too cocky. “We’ve won top team in Central Benediction for five years in a row. A little hot lava won’t change that.”

“Tobias can be a drag sometimes, but he’s right,” Poppy winced, leaning her elbows on the table. Tobias rolled his eyes sourly. “This is heavy. Not that we can’t do it, but, uhh—far out, man—it is gonna be gnarly. If there’s even a chance of me killing my plants like that, I won’t conjure any.”

“That’s fine. You’ll have our backs and keep an eye out for ole Hellfire, then, yeah?”

Poppy sighed and cupped her chin. “Right on.”

Tobias shook and shook his head. He pressed his palm to his forehead. “I have nothing but bad feelings about this.”

“You always get butterflies before flying.” Benjamin rose and pulled Tobias’s chair back so that the man fell forward. Tobias flailed and caught himself on the table. “Go on and get changed, bud. We’re going to have another great mission today. You’ll see!”

Tobias swallowed and started towards the stairs. He gripped the back of his neck to suppress the tingling of his nape and flatten the raised hairs. Under his breath, he murmured what hung heavy on his heart, “I don’t think so.”

And he was right.