The Wrong Genre

Revelations

Maestro had been pretty much hiding in the back room since Zack had begun hanging around the headquarters.

Not that he had ever been one for hanging around the heroes and chatting, but it was increasingly obvious that he was taking great pains to avoid exiting the back room while there was even the slightest chance that Zack may be in the building.

Which was becoming increasingly more probable, since the blond had found reason to drop by nearly every day for a week now with updates about how his investigation was going. He hadn't turned up anything yet and the daily visits pretty much involved a brief explanation of why there was no information and then turned into nothing more or less than a social visit. The heroes didn't seem to mind all that much. Interdit almost seemed to like him; Kyle was just as nervous as at first, but seemed tentatively hopeful that they could be friends; Flashmob had taken quite a liking to joking with him.

Vertigo hadn't had much interaction with him after that first bout of stalking, to be quite honest. After all she was quite busy between her day job and trying to hunt down Rabastian's hideout. She observed the jovial interactions he had with the others with only a vague interest, mostly pondering the information she'd found about his family and wondering if she should bring it up.

Perhaps when Maestro was in the room as well? It could be rather informative to watch his reaction when he found out she knew that he was connected to the Lladre family.

As she considered this she let her gaze drift from Zack and his baffling group of friends and rove over the other people in the room.

Zakum had been acting strange for a while now. The others insisted that it was because Maestro wasn't there to give orders, but Vertigo had noticed that the clone was sticking rather close to his original counterpart. Which shouldn't have been strange, perhaps, except that Maestro clearly had a bone to pick with the cheerful man, so she doubted he would allow the clone to do such a thing.

"Where's Romulus?" Vertigo finally asked Stravarius, who was sitting at the table next to her, also further from the hullabaloo of the others than she thought usual of him.

Stravarius, who had also been watching the others in the room with what Vertigo could only assume was fondness, turned to look at her with his head cocked.

"Romulus?" He repeated, and then looked back at the group as if to double check that he was not, in fact, there. "I haven't seen him for a few days... which is weird." He muttered that last part almost to himself, bringing his left hand up to his mouth as if he were thinking hard about something. Vertigo raised an eyebrow at the intense look, it wasn't something she was used to seeing on Stravarius' face, but waited a moment to see if he was going to elaborate.

It took almost a minute of casual staring before the blond finally noticed, starting and chuckling, face melting into more of the dopey grin that she had come to expect.

"Sorry, I was just thinking..." again he paused, and again she waited for him to expound. He looked almost a bit surprised for half a moment that she clearly wanted to know what he was thinking about, but went on. "Before, Zakum said that he wasn't allowed in the room with the heroes if Romulus wasn't there." He paused again, glanced over at the group that was chatting with Zakum, and then made a small, helpless hand gesture towards them. "He's not here?"

Before Vertigo could answer—that did seem strange, but was he sure it was all the time? Perhaps there were extenuating circumstances, or maybe it was as the others claimed and Zakum only followed orders when they were explicitly enforced?—another, unexpected voice piped up from the darkened hallway behind them.