Morning sun filtered through the tall glass windows of Horizon Futureworks. The city outside buzzed, but inside the prototype lab, it was quiet. Gwen sat cross-legged on a swivel chair, spinning a palm-sized medpod between her fingers while Luffy stood across from her, testing the compact defibrillator function on a dummy torso.
"Voltage spikes are still inconsistent," Gwen noted, tapping on her tablet. "We'll need to reroute the power driver."
Luffy gave the dummy another jolt. The lights flickered faintly.
"Yeah," he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "It needs more bounce. Like... rhythm."
She smiled faintly. "You've been around me too long if you're comparing tech to rhythm."
He shrugged, grinning. "Hey, I've learned worse from you."
For a moment, silence fell between them—comfortable, thoughtful. Gwen stared out the window as her mind drifted. Five years ago, she wouldn't have recognized the people they were now. So much had changed.
And it hadn't been easy.
Flashback – Year One
They were 14 and still figuring things out. Their suits were rudimentary. Their stealth systems had holes. Their confidence was… optimistic at best.
That night, they had been chasing a tip: a runaway teenager reported hiding out in an abandoned subway station.
Luffy landed too hard during his approach, crashing through a roof vent and into a pile of debris.
"I'm okay!" he wheezed from the cloud of dust.
Gwen dropped down next to him, adjusting her early prototype web shooter that jammed more often than it fired. Her voice buzzed with nervous energy.
"We cannot mess this up, Luffy. People already think the vigilante stuff is a myth. If we botch this, we're going to get caught or laughed off the internet."
They moved through the station's dark tunnels, flashlight in one hand, hope in the other.
Eventually, they found the kid—a fifteen-year-old who'd stolen meds for his sick mother. But just as they were about to talk him down, two gang members appeared from deeper in the tunnel. Things escalated fast.
Luffy tried to stretch into a sweep, but overextended, slamming into a pillar. Gwen's web shooter jammed. The fight devolved into messy close-quarters improvisation.
But they adapted.
Gwen used a broken emergency sign to blind one attacker. Luffy ricocheted off a wall into the other. They won—not cleanly, but with heart.
They left the kid with a drop location, anonymously returning the stolen medicine through a shelter.
Later, bruised and exhausted, they lay on a rooftop and Gwen murmured, "We need to be better. Smarter."
Luffy nodded. "Then we train every day until we are."
Present – At Mark's Store
The bell over the door jingled as Luffy stepped into his father's corner shop.
Mark D. Luffy stood behind the counter, arms crossed, staring at a shattered cooler.
"Another hit?" Luffy asked.
"Third time in two weeks," Mark grumbled. "Whoever it is, they wait until midnight, break through the back, and make off with whatever they can carry."
Luffy frowned. "Did you report it?"
"No point. No cameras. No evidence. Just another small shop."
That night, Luffy suited up.
Strawhat watched from the rooftops across the street, barely visible in the flicker of a faulty lamppost.
Around 2 a.m., the culprits returned—three teenagers in dark hoodies, backpacks in hand. Luffy didn't attack immediately. He followed them through the alley, listening as they whispered about "just needing quick cash."
He made his move as they tried to break the back lock.
Two web lines slammed the first pair into the dumpster. The third tried to run, only to find himself staring at a tall, cloaked figure with a dark straw hat gleaming faintly under the moonlight.
"Don't come back," Luffy said, voice low and even. "This shop has guardians."
The teen dropped his bag and ran.
In the morning, Mark found a note taped to the door:
"Your place is safe now. -SH"
He read it twice, smiled slightly, and placed it in the drawer beneath the register.
Park Walk with George
George Stacy walked beside Gwen, sipping from a thermos of black coffee. The trees rustled gently in the breeze. Autumn leaves fell in spirals.
"You've been different lately," he said.
"Different how?"
"Quieter. Sharper. It's not bad. Just… like you're always balancing something in your head."
Gwen shrugged. "Growing up, I guess."
He didn't respond right away.
"I remember when you were eight," George said. "You fell off the monkey bars and got a bloody nose. You got right back up and told me, 'One day I'll fly instead.'"
She laughed softly. "Sounds like me."
He glanced at her. "Whatever you're carrying, Gwen… I hope you're not carrying it alone."
She stopped walking.
"I'm not," she said. And she meant it.
Flashback – Year Two: The Fire Escape
It was one of their first near-death missions.
A warehouse had exploded during a botched weapons deal. Gwen and Luffy had rushed in, but the structural damage was worse than anticipated.
Luffy had pushed her out of the way when a ceiling beam fell. It hit him squarely across the back.
Gwen had screamed his name. For a moment, he didn't move.
But when she pulled the beam away, he coughed and laughed.
"Guess I need to stretch more."
She was shaking too hard to answer.
That night, she wrote her first emotional entry in the Power Journal:
"If I'd lost him… I don't think I'd have come back down off that roof."
Evening Reflections
Back at Field Alpha, Gwen sat cross-legged beneath the whiteboard. Luffy stood nearby, adjusting the solar rigging on a drone panel.
She flipped through pages of her Power Journal—past blueprints, entries, names, locations. Their life, encoded in ink.
"I don't remember who we were before this," she said quietly.
Luffy didn't stop working. "I do. You were loud. I was hungry."
She chuckled.
"But you're right," he added. "We're different now. But still us. Just sharper."
She wrote her new entry:
Power Journal – Year Five, Entry Two
We didn't arrive here clean. We got here scraped and flawed and scared. We got here because we kept running into the fire. Because we didn't let each other fall.
She looked up.
"We're not kids anymore."
Luffy nodded. "But we still fight like them."
They exchanged a quiet smile.