AU in which Nie Huaisang and Jin Guangyao work together to take down Jin Guangshan from the beginning. Or: the story in which Nie Huaisang just wants to paint fans and feed birds and he doesn't understand why this is so much to ask.

When one of Hondo's lieutenants unloads three kidnapped clones on him, Xanatos expects nothing but a massive headache and one more problem to deal with. He doesn't expect Kix, Jesse, and Tup to be the key to a power struggle that has been killing him by inches, and he most certainly doesn't expect all the shadows of his own past that Kix stirs up, even when they're supposed to be enemies.

If someone was intending to assemble a team of heroes to help save the day, they rather missed the mark, in Granta's opinion.