Steel Badger in : Leotard Loyalties!
Subscriber Reward for Moxas (Oct 2023)
By Limewah
18+

Steel Badger tilted his head to the side as he looked into the distance at his erstwhile missing companions from the stainless steel roof of a grain silo. He could see the besuited figures- one a white fox in a sea-blue leotard, the other a brown hare in a darker blue one emblazoned with orange flames down the front  - standing in the middle of a flattened corn field, stock-still. His silver eye-mask narrowed as he squinted. He kept out of view - as if his silver outfit wouldn’t have attracted their attention.

It was rare that Streak and Race were seen together, and they were never alone like this.
Whenever they were, Streak had a sort of nervous fidget to his posture. Race had a flirtatious little swagger to his resting pose. The fox was one of the few members of the Beacon Protectors that the hare didn’t hit on - and one of the ones who wanted it the most. Race seemed oblivious to Streak’s pining desires… until now, it seemed.

Steel Badger assumed their disappearance, and their re-appearance together, was a portent of that tension finally exploding into some whirlwind love affair.
He would have been happy for both of them. If the circumstances weren’t so uncomfortably suspicious.

He leapt down from the top of the silo he was perched upon, alighting with a loud enough stomp to attract their attention.
“Streak! Race!” 
As he got closer they turned to face them, another detail hit him like a slap in the face. Their costumes looked significantly tighter than he remembered - they hadn’t put on weight, but their outfits were very sheer against their bodies.
Moreover, both of their costumes had the same symbol emblazoned on their chests. A large eye with a slitted pupil stretched across their pecs, with a spear-pointed shaft going down to their solar plexus.
They smiled at him, a strange artificiality to their grins that barely touched their eyes.

“Hello, Ethan!” they said, their voices bright, cheery - and synchronised.

The superpowered badger was not born yesterday. It was easy enough for his surgically-precise mind to put the pieces of the puzzle together. He’d witnessed and foiled so many mass mind-control plots over the years.
He hated them.
Allowing harm to come to his fellow heroes, even if they were no longer themselves, was a deeply frustrating one. Especially if he was the one inflicting said harm to snap them out of it…
“It’s good to see you both,” he said, approaching slowly and carefully. “We’ve been a little worried about you going silent.”
“We’re both perfectly fine,” they said - again, in perfect sync. Neither the brown hare nor the white fox wore masks, but as Steel Badger got closer, he could see that both of them had an opaque, milky sheen.
He resisted the urge to sigh. He hoped violence wouldn’t be necessary.

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