I was getting restless. I hated being locked up in Steven's house all the time, specially because absolutely nothing was being done to figure out why the hell I was suddenly alive. Eventually, I went to Steven, and told him that something needed to be done, because I was sick of waiting around doing nothing. Steven seemed a bit surprised at me, but decided to run some tests and stuff on me anyway to see if he could figure out what happened. 

I sat completely still on a metal table while Steven did anything he could think of to figure out what the fuck was up with me. Steven recorded everything that happened, frowning in displeasure often, but not telling me anything that came up, which was kind of pissing me off. 

Steven did eventually tell me what was happening, and why he was getting so upset, but that wasn't until after he tried to take a sample of my blood, only to discover that it was damn near impossible for him to find a vein. So he just stuck his needle into a random part of my arm, and pull the syringe back, only to find that he was getting absolutely nothing out of me. Steven huffed in annoyance, practically slamming the needle onto the table beside me and writing something angrily in his journal. 

"So I've come to the conclusion that you're not alive." Steven told me, clearly aggravated. 

"What?" I asked with a breathy chuckle, not knowing if Steven was joking or not. 

"Look at this. You don't have a heartbeat, you're not breathing, I couldn't get any blood, and I'm pretty sure you're still dead."

"That doesn't make sense."

"Does you being out of the ground make sense?"

"I guess not."

"Let me ask you, have you actually gotten hungry? Or had to use the bathroom at all since suddenly being conscious again?"

"No. I figured my guts were probably full of embalming fluid, so I didn't think much of it. So I'm a zombie now?"

"Apparently." Steven paused and sighed deeply before looking up at me. "You really don't know how you're here?"

"No Steven. I would have told you guys if I did."

A few more tests got run that required me to move around and do a bunch of things. It was determined that I had never ending stamina, that I couldn't feel pain, and that I was pretty much unstoppable. Naturally, Gill was really impressed with this, and he talked excitedly with me about all of the possibilities for the two of us, and eventually deciding that his favorite idea was that we start a superhero team and stop some of the pettier crimes of New York together. 

I hadn't actually thought about getting back into being Shadow-Man. I figured that there was time for that later, if I even wanted to get back into being Shadow-Man, and that it was probably better if I just stayed put for the time being. The whole city knew about me getting my brains blown out, and I was pretty sure that in the event Shadow-Man suddenly resurfaced, it would alarm more than a few people. Then again, I also considered the fact that, when I was still alive, my main concern was never how many people I freaked out by being Shadow-Man. It was simply to help. 

Unfortunately, I didn't ever get the chance to decide whether or not I actually wanted to be Shadow-Man again before something happened that gave me no choice. We were all in various places throughout Steven's house when the ground shook, the windows rattled, and Gill and I both fell to the floor from the force of it. Gill and I were both in the process of getting back up, looking around confusedly, when Steven, Warren, and Jess all came crashing into the room with us.

"What was that?" Warren asked, sounding very concerned, and obviously thinking that Gill and I caused the commotion. 

"We don't know." I responded. 

"Something broke through the sound barrier." Steven explained as he looked at his watch. "Whatever it was should be hitting the ground pretty soon." 

Sure enough, there was another bang and the world shook once again, but less this time. 

"Whatever it was, it was big." Steven said, seeming to be thinking rather hard about what it could have been. My mind immediately went to a meteor, but Steven was a lot smarter than me, and he didn't seem to think that that was even a possibility, so I kept my mouth shut. 

"Should we go looking for it?" Gill asked, seeming to get a little excited at the idea of finding whatever it was that crash landed in the city. 

"I guess we could, and alert the proper authorities as to what we find." Steven said thoughtfully. With that, Steven, Gill, and Jess all left while Warren stayed behind with me. 

***

Steven, Gill, and Jess came back with more people than they had left with, and it was weird. They brought Mike, and two other people who I didn't recognize with them. One of the people I didn't recognize was a boy with puffy white hair, pale skin, pastel clothing, and bright blue eyes. The other person I didn't recognize was a girl with tan skin, yellow eyes, comfortable looking clothing, and pink hair that made her look like a tulip. 

I didn't know the girl and had never seen her before in my life, but something about her felt familiar. As she walked farther into the house, and go closer to me, I felt my chest begin to tingle, right where the leaf was that had appeared on my first night back. I guessed the girl must have felt it too, because she stared at me oddly, looking me up and down as if trying to figure out what I was. 

"You're Tyler Lang." The boy with the white hair told me almost the second he saw me, and I was a little confused as to how he knew me. 

"Yeah. Who are you?" I asked the boy, wondering if I knew him from somewhere and just didn't remember. 

"My name is Ben. I'm a mutant, like Gill, and he just showed up at my house and told me that he needed my help with something. I watched you die." The boy, Ben, explained. 

"We all did. We all saw you get shot, and we all saw you hit the floor. So how are you here?" The girl asked, eyeing me suspiciously and sounding angry. 

"We haven't figured that out yet." I responded defensively, glaring back at the girl to let her know that I wasn't afraid of her. 

"April, you and Ben are here because I need help, not because Ty is here." Gill said, causing the girl, evidently called April, to back down and step away. 

"What's going on?" I asked Gill, and he looked back at Steven, seeming a bit unsure.

"The thing that crash landed, it was an alien, and it's here for me." Gill told me. 

"I'm sorry, but what?" I asked, not entirely believing what Gill had told me. 

"I don't know what it wants with me, or how it knows about me, or anything like that, but I do know that it seemed angry, and that if it's here to hurt someone, than we need to do something about it."

"And what the fuck do you suggest we do?" 

"We put together a team."

"A superhero team? That's your idea? That's the most you idea I've heard in ages." I laughed fondly. Gill chuckled too, which meant that he knew that I supported him and his idea, which was good. Of course Gill would start a superhero team. 

Training to be a superhero took a long time, but there wasn't a whole lot of time available for us to properly train April and Ben. So, after Steven took note of the ideas that April and Ben had for their suits, he began making them, while the rest of us began training. 

Gill and I taught April and Ben how to fight the same way we learned how to fight, which was by fighting them ourselves. Gill was fighting Ben, while April was fighting me, and it was soon revealed that if we were going to fight, we would need to do it outside so that April could not only use her powers, but also so that she could soak up the sun while doing so. 

April would shoot vines at me, and do whatever she could to stop me from getting close enough to her to hit her, but I used any weakness in her attack that I could to get to her. I jumped across the tops of vines as April launched them towards me until I was eventually close enough to kick her in the face. 

"Don't pull punches April. Use your powers to their fullest extent to stop whatever is trying to hurt you. Just, please don't kill Ty again." Gill called out to April, pausing in his fight with Ben give April tips on her fighting. 

Gill and I were both experienced superheroes, and we were both very good at hand-to-hand combat, but Gill was definitely, obviously, better at knowing how to utilize his powers when it came to fighting, so that was something I wasn't able to help April with. 

I looked over at Gill and Ben when they began fighting again, paying close attention to how Ben moved incredibly fast as he through punches and kicks at Gill, seeming to almost hover above the ground. I had no idea what Ben's powers were, but they seemed to have something to do with speed and endurance. 

When we were all eventually too tired and sore to continue fighting, we went back inside for some food and water, and to see how Steven and Jess were doing with the suits. Gill, Ben, and April sat in the kitchen, drinking glasses of water, and eating snacks while I snuck off to Steven's lab. Steven, Warren, Jess, and Mike were all down there, discussing the designs for Ben and April's suits, even while Steven was working on making them. 

"Is Ben going to be able to move efficiently with all of this steel weighing him down?" Steven asked, keeping his eyes focused on his work. 

"I'm sure he will be able to, but he's going to have to learn if he can't." Mike responded, looking over Steven's shoulder. 

"Why does he need to wear a bunch of steel?" I asked, causing Warren, Jess, and Mike to turn around and look at me. 

"Ben is lighter than air, so he has to have something weighing him down at all times or he'll float away. So we figured we could give him steel gloves and boots so that he stays on the ground." Mike explained to me with a smile. 

"That's his mutation?"

"More or less. He also has enhanced stamina and endurance and stuff."

"I noticed that when he was training with Gill." 

"Ty, honey, can you check the news and see if there's anything new about the alien?" Jess asked me calmly, but focusing intently on making what I was pretty sure was April's suit. I simply nodded and went upstairs to ask Gill if I could borrow his phone to check for updates like Jess asked me to. 

I was sitting in the kitchen, going through different news articles on Gill's phone when Mike came into the kitchen from the lab. Gill stared at him, looking a little concerned, and looked as if he expected Mike to just burst into tears at any moment. However, Mike just grabbed a backpack that I assumed he had brought with him from his house, and dug through it until he found a bag of chips, and a bag of gummy worms. 

"If you're hungry, you can just ask for something to eat. Would you like me to make you something?" Gill asked, already heading to the fridge to see what they had for him to make. 

"No that's ok. I'm just a little stressed and wanted some comfort food." Mike explained with a warm smile. 

"I'm sorry about this Mike. I know you probably don't want to be dealing with any of this, but I knew I would need your help and that I can trust you." Gill said, looking very guilty. 

"It's ok Gill. I want to help, and I don't want you to feel bad. I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to be." Mike placed a loving kiss on Gill's cheek, then left to go back down into the lab with his food.