Fatality | T.U.A

thirty-seven. umbrella intruders

"Birdie, why does your alarm have to sound so annoying?"

Ben rolls his eyes as he and Margo walk through the halls of the academy. She has been splitting off duplicates since the alarm first rang and refuses to show the toll it's taking on her. "Whatever. It's not like it'll be ringing for long," Ben scoffs. "We just gotta do what we do best. Kick ass."

She shakes her head as he breaks away from her, leaving her to set up a secondary defense, just in case. Just like they practiced. From her vantage point, she can barely see the group of intruders, can barely hear what's going on, at least until she sees Ben step into the fray. With a heavy sigh, she too decides to step in, if only to keep her best friend from drawing all the attention.

"Dad, who the hell are these assholes?" Ben asks.

She can see the youngest one—a boy in a school uniform—looking around. She knows that look. As she walks out from the shadows, she says, "Don't even think about it. Who are you?"

The boy meets her gaze, eyes wide with something she can't quite place. "Shit," the entire group of intruders says, all with different expressions.

"Ben," the one in the cowboy hat whispers as a large smile grows on his face. "Margo."

Frowning, she purses her lips, silently shifting her leg back just in case things turn ugly before exchanging a look with Ben. All the while, the largest of the group steps forward asking, "Is that really you?"

"And who are the weirdos on the balcony?" The most damaged one yells out.

Margo surveys them all, but she keeps going back to the youngest. He keeps staring at her, enough so that she shifts her weight again if only to avoid his stare.

"They are the Sparrows," Reginald says. "My children. And Ms. Park."

Margo is tempted to be annoyed, but she knows the deal. She knows the part she must play in all this and the part she can never do. For a moment, she can feel something in the air, something shift as if something moved.

The boy finally tears his gaze away to ask, "I'm sorry. What do you mean your children? That's not possible, old man."

"Of course, it is. I would know, wouldn't I?" As Reginald speaks, the Sparrows do as they have always done: work as a team. Margo steps toward the back of the pack near Jayme as Marcus takes Ben's place.

The man in the cowboy hat asks, "Everyone else can see Ben and Margo, right?"

"Cute hat, Sundance," Ben quips.

"They call themselves the Umbrella Academy, a group of scheming perfidious malcontents who accosted me in the fall of 1963 when I was away on business in Dallas. Be warned, they claim to be my spawn."

One of her duplicates catches the look on the boy's face, his nervous glances at the main room and the group of incredibly intimidating Sparrows. She wills one to step in the boy's way, shaking her head.

"Claim?" The tall woman scoffs. "Look, Five, what the hell is going on?"

"I don't know yet," the boy—Five—says, "but it's concerning."

"Is he telling the truth?" Marcus asks.

"Not the part about us being perfidious," the smaller person says.

The cowboy hat raises a hand. "No, we're amateur-fidious, at best."

"But we are his children. This is our house."

"Yeah, yeah," the largest says. "We, uh, we grew up here."

"Yeah, we grew up here," Alphonso mocks. Margo can hear some of the Sparrows chuckling, but she just rolls her eyes.