Paternum: A Superhero Story

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 13 - November 6th
Exterior Training Grounds, Continuous
Holly Koval



"Shit," I swore as the announcement came to me through Simone's magical earpiece. I hadn't had a choice there - Sequoia was necessary to get the flag. He had sworn up and down that he could get away from Starling without help, and I had let him try, but the arrival of Canaveral had made it impossible. Still, he hadn't called for Simone - I had had to send her in at the last second, and had lost her for it. Things would get a lot more difficult from here out, without her to move us all around.

It would be tricky for me to get off the building, for one thing.

I decided to figure that out later, and instead did some quick thinking. "Sequoia: turn back," I ordered. "Assist Quinn against Starling. He won't be expecting you to rejoin the battle, and Canaveral won't be able to get back to you two for at least a minute. Take him out before he can. Newton: Sequoia is coming to help you. Maneuver Starling so that the two of you will be flanking him, if you can."

I nervously watched as Sequoia moved back to the pitched battle. As I had asked, Quinn managed to shift their fight such that Sequoia came from behind - not so that Starling would be surprised, as he had omnidirectional sight and his hearing was far too good to sneak up on him anyway, but so that it would be harder to respond to attacks on both fronts.

Fortunately, it seemed to be working. Between blows that he had to dodge or be knocked out at once on one side, and death-of-a-thousand-cuts on the other, Starling wasn't doing terribly well. By the time Canaveral had pinned down his location and started moving back towards the battle, Starling had been taken out.

I breathed out for the first time in what felt like a while. Losing Simone was more of a blow to the Journeymen than losing Starling was to the New Champions - the benefits of having a teleporter couldn't be overstated - but it was still a good feeling to strike back.

"Broadcast: here's an update for you all," I said, moving to the edge of the building and seeing that there was a fire escape. As I began descending, I told the team, "The enemy's flag has been located, but it's iced over so that only Sequoia can break through to it, and Vulcan is guarding it. Out best bet is to either gang up on him - which requires taking out the rest of the Champions first so we don't get flanked - or draw him away - which is risky, to say the least. Headcount-wise, they've lost Starling, but we've lost Journey."

"Not great odds," Hypnos observed. "What can I do?"

"No, not really," I agreed. "Your new trick might end up getting used after all, but first I want to thin the herd a little more, if we can." I took a moment to check on Canaveral's position, then said, "Newton: you couldn't do much against Anima, correct?"

"No, not really. With her aura up she was too fast for me, and then she made a golem and I was outnumbered."

"I understand. You couldn't risk a hit, and fighting on two fronts isn't easy." Hell, we had just used that same trick against Starling. But... it didn't work well against someone who could just ignore one of the sides. "I want you to draw Canaveral away from Anima, then - to your left, right now," I told Quinn. "He should be in your sight in about fifteen seconds."

"Already in the radius of my presence," they confirmed.

"Don't fight him if you can help it, just keep him chasing you." I watched on one of my screens as they nodded, then bounced into action. One paintbrush shot towards Canaveral, attracting his attention, then returned to Quinn as they ran, and Canaveral pursued - away from Anima. Good.

"Sequoia:" I continued, "Anima is two blocks behind you and three to your right. Your left, now," I added as he turned around. "Take her out. I'm coming down the building and will be near you to assist if I can." I wouldn't be able to use a shockwave against Anima herself, but I could easily destroy any golems she animated from the terrain in this artificial city - between that and Sequoia's own durability, her golems should be neutralized. I would have to get closer to do it, though.

"What about me?" Hypnos asked.

I glanced at his position - his invisibility hadn't broken yet, which was a good sign, and I suspected that the Champions had forgotten him entirely. It was easy to overlook the poor guy given his 0-ranked powers, although I had a feeling that that would be changing after his new trick was revealed. "Start moving towards the flag," I decided. "It's... five blocks to your left and one ahead of you. Don't engage yet, but I want you nearby it."

"Understood."



Scene 14 - November 6th
Exterior Training Grounds, Continuous
Abraham Armstrong



I arrived back where Sequoia, Newton, and Starling had been and saw with some annoyance that Starling seemed to have been taken out. It must have been a good minute or so ago, too, for me to have been too far to have heard the announcement. Sequoia and Newton were both gone as well.

"Broadcast: status update," I grumbled. "Starling looks to have been taken out. Sequoia and Newton's locations are unknown."

"Should I join the hunt?" Vulcan asked.

"No, stay with the flag. With Sequoia still out there, we can't leave it unguarded. If we take him out, on the other hand..."

"Understood."

"What about me?" said Anima. "I'll note that I'm running a bit low on energy - I had to burn it pretty quickly to keep up with Newton. Kid's fast."

"Stick with what you're doing," I ordered her. "I'll come to join you so they can't gang up on us like they must have-"

I was interrupted by a light blue bat shooting unerringly at me, unguided by any hand, and I twisted the energy within myself to skid out of the way. It spun in midair and followed, and I dodged again.

This time, it pulled away, returning to the hand of the newest member of the Journeymen. Quinn gave me a cheerful wave, and I bounced after them.

"Anima: Change of plans," I said. "I've found Newton and am in pursuit. Follow as fast as you or a golem can."

"Can't," she grunted. "Sequoia just showed up. I'm going to be bit preoccupied."

"...noted." I didn't want to lose Quinn, so I continued pursuing them at slightly under my top speed, not wanting to catch up until I had deciphered what their plan was.

They didn't seem to be that interested in actually evading me, as when I began to fall behind they would pause, standing or lying on the side of a building and taunting me. If I slowed to much, they sent a dagger at me to spur me on. Definitely interested in the chase, here... but why?

My first thought was that they were having fun. They had bounced back from their father's death remarkably quickly, it seemed, and judging from the joy they had had on that first night of trying their powers, they could well be the type to mug like this. If not, they were doing a remarkably good impression of it - they were doing what I suspected to be a not-very-flattering impersonation of me at this moment.

Or perhaps they hadn't bounced back all that fast after all. Perhaps they were simply throwing themself into heroism, and this game, to keep them from remembering their loss. That might also lead them to spur me into a chase without actually trying to escape - to keep in motion, because of the grief that could catch up if they slowed down, much as I was catching up in the chase.

But far more likely than either of those, I realized, was that Holly had told them to keep me occupied. They were no doubt leading me far from Anima, keeping me from giving her backup against Jack - who in normal circumstances wouldn't be able to take her any more than any other melee fighter could, as a single touch would let her safely drain him into unconsciousness. In this match, however, that draining power wasn't allowed - all our powers were banned from direct use on other players - and he would have a far better chance. By Anima's word, Holly couldn't keep all five of the Journeymen manually connected and also lead - but could he do it with just four? Or even three, cutting off Nic - who still had yet to make an appearance - in favor of providing better leadership to the rest of the team?

As though spurred by this unpleasant thought, my earpiece crackled to life and Anima, her voice strained, said, "Having a bit of trouble with Sequoia. I'm low on energy and I think Loki is nearby - my golems are shattering as fast as I create them."

"Shit," I swore. If Holly was breaking golems - with shockwaves, no doubt - then he had surely cut Nic out, and had probably been directing the battle the entire time. I had let myself be complacent, thinking that the Journeymen were acting without an overarching plan, but that couldn't have been further from the truth.

I skidded to a halt at the edge of the rooftop I was approaching instead of leaping, and with a twist I reversed my momentum. I didn't know if I could get back to Anima in time, but...

I ducked instinctively, and another one of Quinn's daggers flew over my head. My duck turned into a roll and I spun around again to see that they had leapt at me, probably seeing an opening in my sudden flight. I barreled towards them at high speed. This had gone on too long already.

They reversed course midair, jerking backwards as I approached and fell off the side of the building. My heart stopped for a moment before remembering that they could walk on walls with their power - hell, they had been taking brief pauses there for the entire chase! If I took the bait and looked over the edge, they would strike.

Instead, I knelt and put my hand to the roof I stood on. One of my lesser known tricks was that I could send a sort of pulse through objects, and use that to map them out to an extent. It took longer than was useful in combat - at least, it did if I wanted to avoid damaging the object, as a faster, more energetic pulse could do - but it was perfect in a situation like this.

The pulse returned to me, and my suspicion was confirmed. Quinn was lying on the side of the building, both daggers floating in midair virtue of their power and ready to strike any whatever came over the edge. Fortunately their perception power couldn't see through solids, so they wouldn't be certain where I was or what I was doing.

Instead of leaning out, I leapt - massive kinetic force sending me past them before they could react, then twisted with my power to spin myself around to view them and slow me. As their daggers shot towards me, I launched my own heavier bat towards them, and...

"Newton has been taken out by Canaveral and is disqualified," declared Sam.

Two down, now, and Quinn sighed in disappointment as they began making their way out of the artificial city. But, as I had just realized, Holly's ability to contribute increased with each of the Journeymen that were removed.

Holly was far from unstoppable, but... he added a lot of complications to a game like this. Already, their flag was undoubtedly beyond reach. If he decided to go for stealth, then we, having already lost Starling, didn't have a great chance of finding her. Him. Anima, Vulcan, and I all had some way of expanding our senses, whether through my kinetic echolocation or by sensing heat or life, but... Vulcan couldn't hunt until we caught Sequoia, and my trick was strictly short-ranged. And while his chances of taking the rest of us out weren't great, particularly given his historically poor aim with any sort of gun, he did have what was arguably the best weapon in this entire game. So...

"Anima:" I began, intending to ask her to target Holly before he came to the same conclusion I had, but I was interrupted.

"Can't... really... talk..." Anima hissed.

"Fucking..." How had I forgotten that she was outnumbered? I spun on my heel again and raced in her direction.

"Keep talking until I get there," I ordered her. If I couldn't get to her in time, I could at least know exactly when they were tagged.

"What... do you want... a bedtime-story?"

I snorted. "One more chapter, mom?"

"Fine... you little... brat..." she said with a faint chuckle. "Once... upon a time... I was outnumbered... and surrounded..."

"By two people?"

"By two people... who could be anywhere." It sounded like Holly was making full use of his increasing capacity for magic. He must have duplicated himself, or at least Jack, so that Anima didn't know where their attacks were coming from. "And they... got far too close... for comfort... far... too..."

She stopped. "Damn it," I swore, slowing a bit. She had been hit, I was certain, and was therefore no longer allowed to communicate. I was too late.



Scene 15 - November 6th
Exterior Training Grounds, Continuous
Holly Koval



"God," I wheezed, emerging from invisibility to give Sequoia a high five. "Finally." Anima had taken a long time to go down, even with me breaking her golems. She had animated their shards to harry me whenever she caught a glimpse of my location, used the inimitable light of her aura to spot my illusions - which wouldn't reflect its light properly - and held Sequoia off the entire time. After several minutes he had managed to get a lucky blow and coat the woman in green paint, knocking her to the ground as he did so, but only after several blows from her that had, I suspected, nearly taken him out. He was still in the game, but I doubted he could take another hit even from a dagger-sized bat.

Anima pulled out her earpiece. "Finally... is right..." she said, clearly still trying to catch her own breath. "I thought that would never end."

"Well, you didn't exactly make it easy on us," I pointed out, still breathing hard myself.

"Of course not." She held up a hand and sparked a bit of aura, wincing as she did. "I probably shouldn't have gone quite so hard, though. I burned through all the stored power I had, and was starting to use up my own reserves at the end there. Not terribly healthy for me."

"Take some of mine," Sequoia offered, extending a hand to help Anima up at the same time. He, of course, was as fresh as a daisy. In his dryad form, he was tireless, having a nearly endless store of energy - it would take a huge drain for him to feel it.

Anima accepted gratefully, pulling herself to her feet and drawing zoetic energy from him at the same time. "By the way," she asked me, "how were you multitasking like that?"

"What do you mean?" I said, deciding to play dumb a bit. Loki was the god of mischief, after all - even though it wasn't entirely natural for me, I had to be at least a bit of a prankster. Apollon would bug abut it me if I didn't.

"You've been directing the other Journeymen this whole time," she said confidently, "but I know you're not good enough to be keeping five people connected manually and have the mental space to handle tactics as well."

"Not manually, no," I agreed. She had been knocked out of the game, at this point, she couldn't tell Canaveral, so... "but I wasn't doing it manually." I gestured at my ear and made an illusion of an earpiece appear. "I've been working on a spell to replace earpieces for two years - these can't be hacked. I cracked it maybe... six months ago? ...and have even added some improvements!"

Her eyes lit up with interest. "So you were able to do tactics and keep the lines of communication open with the rest of your team!"

"Yup! And Starling couldn't hack into them. You might be able to, now that you know about them," I admitted, "but..."

"But it wouldn't be easy, with how far from zoetic your tricks are, and we didn't even have a chance of knowing about it." Anima chuckled. "Very well done, Loki! I'm proud of you. You'll be sharing them with us from now on, I hope?"

"Of course. They don't offer many advantages if you're not facing a tech villain - not yet, anyway - but if you are..."

"Motael hacks into our comms networks almost every time we fight him," she agreed. "Jokes on him, next time."

"Exactly. Now shoo, I have plotting to do!"

She shooed.

"What's next?" Sequoia asked.

"Broadcast:" I said, making sure that Hypnos could hear us as well. "We've taken down Anima, which means that it's the three of us against Vulcan and Canaveral."

"The two strongest fighters on the New Champions," Hypnos commented grimly.

"Yeah. Which is why we're not going to fight them."

"No?"

"Not exactly." I tapped Sequoia on the shoulder and he faded from visibility. "Hypnos, are you somewhere hidden?"

"Yeah, why?"

"I'm about to cancel your invisibility." I did so with a swipe of one hand. I could keep a lot of spells going at once - they were far easier than manual control - but I would need all the concentration I had for what came next.

"Sequoia, I want you to head over to the flag," I told him, using my map to point it out to him. "Hypnos, I'm going to draw Vulcan out, then I need you to distract him. Use your new trick."

"How are you gonna do that?" Sequoia asked.

Instead of answering, I concentrated on the map, zooming in until I could see the details of Vulcan leaning against the frozen-over flagpole. My powers had excellent range, allowing me to create spells like the map, but manual detail work got harder the farther from me I was working. I had to be very careful here...

I magically spoke into Vulcan's ear - the same one he wore his earpiece in - in as near an imitation of Canaveral's voice as I could. "I've taken out Newton, and Anima and Sequoia took each other out," I lied. "Hypnos and Loki are the only ones left. They've got no chance of getting through your ice, so I want you to come out and help me hunt them down."

"Are you sure?" Vulcan asked - I swiped the soundwaves away before they could enter the earpiece, bringing them to me instead.

"I'm sure," I repeated. "The flag is safe, all we need is to mop up the last stragglers. I think I've got a bead on Loki's real position - although who knows with her - so focus on Hypnos."

"Him," Vulcan corrected, standing up from his leaning position and stretching. "He's Loki right now, he's a him."

I couldn't help but smile, hearing the man correct Canaveral even without me around to hear - as far as he knew, anyway. Canaveral still had trouble keeping my pronouns straight, so I had thrown a mistake in, but I hadn't expect Vulcan to bother protesting. He had never been all that close to me when he was on the Journeymen, after all. "Right, him. Sorry."

"Don't apologize to me..." It sounded like a familiar refrain, too.

"Broadcast:" I said, cutting off the communication with Vulcan and reopening it with my team. "He's heading out now, Hypnos. Try and catch him in a minute or two and lead him as far from the flag as you can."

"I'll do my best," he swore.

"I know you will. Sequoia," I said to the wooden man, "I know stealth doesn't come naturally to you-"

"Hey!" he protested, and I smirked.

"-but try to be as silent as you can. It's on you to win this."

"What about you?" he asked. "You're taking on Canaveral?"

I glanced at the map one more time, eying where Canaveral was - he was pacing thoughtfully, but before long he would come to a new strategy. I had to act and distract him before he contacted Vulcan for real. "Yeah," I confirmed. "I'm taking on Canaveral."

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 16 - November 6th
Exterior Training Grounds, Continuous
Abraham Armstrong



I eventually stopped pacing, after realizing there was no way around it.

Vulcan couldn't leave the flag until Jack was taken out. While it was possible that Anima had knocked him out of the game in the last moments before she herself was disqualified, I couldn't assume that - it was more likely that he was still in the game, as was Holly, as was Nic.

I felt bad even thinking it, but Nic was a nonentity in this activity. His ability to push his senses outside of his body was a useful one, but it had no combat applications, and while it had a better range than Holly's magic, in an area only a few blocks across it was flat-out inferior to what she could do. He had been trying since he joined the Journeymen to replicate what sometimes happened in his dreams - when his senses sometimes drifted forward or backward in time, not just in space - but had never had any waking success. Until and unless he managed to unlock that precognition, he was unlikely to ever pose much of a threat, and could therefore be discounted.

His boyfriend Jack, however, was a threat. In this game, he was the only one of the Journeymen who had a chance of getting the flag, and he was the only one left with a heavy bat to take on Vulcan. Not to mention that he was smarter than his role as a tank might suggest. Hopefully Anima had softened him up for me, but he was a high priority in this game - above even Holly.

Jack was a threat, but Holly was dangerous. He was a good kid - all the Journeymen were - but as a leader, he was cunning and ruthless. His control over light and sound was powerful and versatile, and constantly expanding in both scope and magnitude. I remembered him being able to do little more than brief pops of light and sound when he first approached the Journeymen, and now...

The world vanished.

Everything I could see, gone in an instant and replaced by darkness. Everything I could hear, gone. I could still feel a faint breeze on my skin, I could flex my feet in the thin soles of my boots and feel the rooftop beneath me, but...

Holly had made his move.

I get the picture, Loki, I called out - it, too, vanished into the darkness, and it was disconcerting to hear nothing despite knowing that I was speaking. You're here to distract me from finding Sequoia, aren't you? You know that he's the only way you're going to win this.

"How sure of that are you?" he asked - his voice bursting forth from every direction at once, surrounding me on all sides and giving me no clues to his location. "Perhaps we'll win by taking you out, and Vulcan too. We've already knocked out Anima and Starling, after all."

A phantom of Starling appeared, falling through the air and landing headfirst on a surface that was suddenly there with an unnerving crack and squelch. Anima's body followed a moment later. Then Vulcan stumbled around me, battling with Sequoia and distinctly on the defensive. He collapsed a moment later as a gunshot rang out, revealing Loki standing behind him with a gun in his hand.

I swallowed. You're getting pretty good at the psychological warfare thing, I quietly admitted. What I thought was quietly, at least. It was hard to judge without any auditory feedback. But it won't be that easy. Vulcan and I are each better fighters than you and Sequoia put together. I stepped forward and waved a hand through the illusion of himself Loki had projected, and it curled around my hand like smoke, vanishing in moments.

"Mhm." The world began to appear again, piecemeal - lines of light shaping the outlines of buildings and color filling them in afterwards, sound following in similar piecemeal fashion. The fallen bodies of my team remained - as the edge of the roof I was standing on appeared, Starling's body shifted and fell off the edge, landing on the street level with a thud. "It's not the only thing I'm getting better at."

I narrowed my eyes. Holly wouldn't be showing me the real shape of the world - he wanted me to stay away from wherever Jack was, I was certain. Whatever direction he was presenting as the obvious path - and one of the buildings looked a lot more inviting that the others, its rooftop slightly below the one I stood on rather than well above or below - was surely the wrong way.

But he knew better than to think I would just accept what an illusionist showed me, and mindlessly charge off the edge to my doom. If this was a double-bluff, it could be the right direction after all.

On the other hand... he knew that I knew that he knew better than that. It could be a triple bluff and be wrong again...

That way lay madness, I decided. Instead of trying to figure out how many layers of bluff there were to this, I sent a shockwave through the air. Air wasn't the most precise medium for this trick, but it would give me an idea of how different the landscape Holly was showing me was from reality.

...nothing came back.

"What did you expect that to do?" Holly asked me. "...you do realize that a shockwave traveling through the air is just sound, right?" He laughed. "You can't trust that, now can you?"

I narrowed my eyes. He was right - I wouldn't have been able to trust it anyway, not with the illusionist controlling every sound around me. There was only one way to see through his lies - a leap of faith.

I dashed for the edge of the building, bounding across to the next as I had a thousand times. I came down for a landing, ready to absorb the force of touching down, and...

The rooftop shattered like glass as I struck it, illusion falling away. The real surface was perhaps a foot below it, just enough to throw me off without giving me enough time to absorb the force.

I wasn't all that surprised, honestly. I managed to shrug off most of the force of the landing, although I had to tuck into a roll rather than continue running as I usually did.

It wasn't just the surface of the building that had shattered when I landed - the entire landscape Loki had constructed was collapsing and reforming. Perhaps my leap of faith had been the right tack, and this was the right way to go after all.

My hope was confirmed a moment later when a bright flash of light shone right in my eyes, along with a deafening whine that forced me to cover my ears and shrink away. Blinking spots away and still clutching my head as both faded, I realized that the world Loki presented had spun in circles. I had completely lost my sense of direction in that moment - which meant that I had been going the right way.

Not that the knowledge helped, I had to admit, as I no longer knew which way I had been going. On the other hand, freed of the possibility of chasing Jack, I was free to focus all my attention on Holly.

"You've made a mistake," I called.

"Oh? And what's that?"

"It's clear that I'm not getting away from you. That means that the only way out is through."

"That might be intimidating if you had any idea where I was," Holly pointed out.

"You're close by," I said confidently. "You can't be maintaining a manual illusion this intricate from any great distance. In fact..." I ran to the edge of the building where it faced the street and hopped over.

And slammed into the wall of the next building, which had seemed to be the empty space of the street, then fell to the ground - once again, it wasn't at the height it appeared to be, this time the real surface being too far up, and the impact was later than expected in an incredibly unnerving fashion.

"I don't know why you would trust anything you see and hear right now," Holly said with a chuckle. "You're in the power of the god of lies, remember."

"You're no god," I said, rising back to my feet. "You're a very talented mage, yes, but you're still just a kid. I've got a lot of experience on you."

"I've been doing this nearly as long as you," he pointed out. "Six years, seven... how much of a difference does that last year make, after all?"

"It's not the years, it's what you do with them," I said, and sent a kinetic pulse through the ground.

This one came back to me, as I had hoped. The range wasn't great, not in a solid object, but it told me how the city around me was actually laid out. And, as I had half-suspected, it was closer to what Holly was showing me than he was implying.

He really was getting better - he could maybe have put together an illusion as elaborate as this last year, but last year he wouldn't have had the manipulative chops to pass if off as more than it actually was. With a few well-placed deceptions and regular reminders that everything I saw and heard was in his power, he was trying to get me to doubt my senses - even the kinetic pulse that I would have to rely on. He had been able to blot it out when I sent it through the air, but...

...but he had also been surprised by it, I realized. He had been able to figure out its purpose immediately, which just drove home how clever he was. But if he had been able to fake it, not just block it out, he would have done that instead of claiming the possibility. All that added up to me being able to trust what I got back from my echlocation pulse - if I got anything back at all, at least.

I began making my way through the artificial city, sending occasional pulses to check up on my surroundings and on whether or not Holly was within my range. He seemed to be starting to get desperate as I began to ignore the illusions - his taunting got sloppier, and the illusions more intrusive. He didn't flashbang me again, though - I was guessing one of the agents refereeing had scolded him for it, as it could potentially harm me.

I was approaching a part of the city that I thought I recognized when I suddenly felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise, and dodged forward. There was the sound of a shot, and a splatter of paint appeared on the wall next to me.

"Finally pulling out that gun, huh?" I asked. "Too bad your aim isn't great."

"Maybe I've been practicing."

I had to dodge more shots, herding me along the wall and across the street, and narrowed my eyes suspiciously. "I doubt it," I murmured. He had never shown any interest in guns before, and certainly hadn't logged any time in the Compound's shooting range. It was much more likely that... I ignored the next shot, and it splattered against the wall behind me even though I ought to have been in the line of fire, judging from the others.

"You're as poor a shot as you've ever been," I said with a grin. "And these are no more real than anything else you've shown me." But not without purpose, no more than anything else he'd shown me. I sent another pulse out, putting a trifle more power into it, hoping that...

Yes! He was hiding in an alleyway on the other side of the street from me, not far from where I had been when the paintball shots started. Holly was clever, yes, but real-world experience counted for a lot - and while she had been a Journeyman for years, there was a big difference between what they were allowed to do and what full heroes did.

"Perhaps I'm closer than you think," Holly's voice boomed out once more. "Aim doesn't matter if I can get close enough to press the barrel into your back." Having already primed me to ignore whatever he said, this was no doubt to make me think he was farther away. And if I hadn't already located him, I might have bought it.

I walked back into the street and continued walking down it for a moment as though I didn't think he was nearby, sending another pulse to check on his exact location as I did. Then...

I whirled and twisted, launching myself at Holly bat-first. I slammed into him heavily, knocking him from his feet, and the illusory world dissolved around me one more time - this time revealing reality rather than another layer of deception.

"I win," I teased, standing and offering him a hand up.

Holly took it and pulled himself to his feet, eyes still alight with competitiveness. "Game's not over yet."



Scene 17 - November 6th
Exterior Training Grounds, Continuous
Abraham Armstrong



"Vulcan: what's your status?" I asked as I began heading towards the flag again.

"Still fighting Hypnos," he grunted. "He's doing a lot better than he was last time we sparred, too. I already told you that, didn't I?"

"Why are you fighting Hypnos?" I demanded. "He didn't come up to the flag, did he? And you haven't told me anything, I thought things were uneventful over there!"

"No, I came out to hunt him like you told me to," he told me. "I called you when I found him and you said to pursue!

"I never - Loki. It must have been him."

"Then... shit, is Sequoia still in the game?"

"As far as I know, yes."

"Fuck."

"Fuck indeed." I redoubled my speed towards the flag. I caught a brief glimpse of Vulcan below me as I passed over one street - Hypnos was, as he said, doing remarkably well dodging his blows, almost as if... had he gotten his precog working? I would have to congratulate him, if so. Even so, as I landed on the next roof I heard Agent Delilah announce that Hypnos was out.

I didn't stop or even slow. The flag was unguarded now, and the one player remaining on the Journeymen's side was the one player who could-

"The game is over," boomed Agent John. "The Journeymen have won, by taking the New Champions' flag."



Scene 18 - November 6th
Exterior Training Grounds, Late Afternoon
Quinn Kaufman



"Good job, everyone," Canaveral said, all of us circled up once more now that the match was over. "A lot of congratulations to go around.

"Loki, Anima tells me you created a new spell?"

He nodded proudly, wearing a goofy and distractingly-adorable grin. "A magical version of the normal earpieces! That way Starling couldn't listen in on us and I could lead the team and contribute myself."

"Very well done. You've also gotten much better at misleading people since last year!"

He deflated a little. "Didn't work, though."

"Don't feel bad - I've worked against a fair few illusionists in my day. You've got a ways to go before you can trick me, but you're well on your way." Canaveral offered him a fist bump, which after a moment Loki accepted.

"Next, Hypnos. Are Vulcan and I right to think that you've cracked the case on precognition?"

He nodded, seeming just as proud. "It's like thinking at right angles compared to using my power normally, and I've only got it out to about two seconds right now, but once I figured out the trick it was almost easy. It's given me a new idea on how to approach my regular power, too."

"Well done indeed," Canaveral said again, and they exchanged high fives.

"Newton," he said, turning to me.

"I know," I said, glancing down. "I screwed up."

He nodded. "You screwed up. Can you tell me where?"

"I shouldn't have attacked, I should have kept the chase going," I explained.

"Tell me, why did you turn back to attack?"

"...I guess... you looked like you were about to turn back. It seemed like the best way to get your attention back on me."

He nodded. "It was, and I was. Anima had just called for assistance. If not for you slowing me down by another 30 seconds, I probably would have gotten back in time to help her."

"That wasn't wrong?"

"You have good instincts," Canaveral told me. "You need to develop them a little more, you need to do some physical conditioning - you're in good shape for a civilian, but as a hero you'll need more endurance than you showed today - and you'll need to brush up on your fighting skills. But for what was..." He tilted his head thoughtfully. "Your third time using your powers in combat, I think? Unless you've been going out without telling us..."

I shook my head. "I'm pretty busy with classes. It's amazing I've managed to get enough free time to spend with you all, I would never be able to go out on my own, too."

"Anyway, for your third time in combat, you did great." He clapped me on the shoulder, then added. "You second-guess yourself a lot, Quinn. Have a little more confidence, okay?"

I nodded uncertainly. "So... if fighting you in the first place wasn't the problem, where did I go wrong?"

"You left me in a blind spot," Canaveral explained. "You ducked below the edge, where you couldn't see me, even with your ESP, and that let me surprise you - because I could see you."

"How?"

"I can do a sort of echolocation thing. It's relatively short-ranged, and it works best through solid objects - that's how I knew where you were. It's how I knew the buyers of that drug deal I took you to bust had arrived, too."

"It's also how he saw through my attempts to mislead him," Loki added.

"Having extra senses is one of the most useful things for any hero," Canaveral said, his eyes flicking to Hypnos for a moment. "Anything that can give you information your enemies don't think you have. Let that be the lesson for today - never leave yourself somewhere you can't see the enemy if you can help it."

Loki cleared his throat. "That's not the only thing we get, I hope?"

Canaveral nodded. "Indeed it isn't. Vulcan, would you grab the trophy?"

The huge man, still made of metal, went to a large box and produced a large golden trophy cup, emblazoned with an MLED logo. At its base, it said 'Paintball Champions 2020'. Vulcan hefted the massive trophy as if it weighed nothing at all and passed it to Sequoia, who similarly had no difficulty holding it.

"Winners gather round your trophy," Canaveral said, taking his phone from one of the lockers we had left our stuff in before changing into paintball uniforms and pointing it our way. "Say 'we kicked superhero butt!"

I let out a brief laugh before joining in with my friends as we all chorused "WE KICKED SUPERHERO BUTT!"

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 19 - November 8th
Exterior Townhouse, Late Morning
Quinn Kaufman



A few days after the paintball game, it was time to officially move in to the Compound. While I had been living there since Holly and Simone had brought me there from the hospital, I hadn't actually been back home in that time. My stuff was still there - my books, my clothes, all the little knick-knacks that build up over the course of a life. I had been avoiding going back - I knew myself well enough to be certain that seeing the place empty and lifeless wouldn't be good for me - but the time off that UNV had given me expired tomorrow. I had to venture back there to get my notes for school, at least.

Simone apparently had a lunch date today - her and her girlfriend had been on a break for reasons she didn't want to go into, but were now ready to give it another shot - so she wasn't here to help. Holly was available just as she had promised, though, and she held one hand in mine to help me stay grounded as I climbed out of her car and approached the home I had lived in for 21 years.

I paused at the doorstep of the house, staring up at it. "It feels so empty already," I said. She squeezed me hand, and I squeezed back. "Let's... let's get started, I guess."



Scene 20 - November 8th
Interior Townhouse, Continuous
Quinn Kaufman







I had been doing better over the last week, but I found myself drifting in and out again as Holly helped me pack things into suitcases and cardboard boxes. I would be doing fine one moment, and the next I would remember wearing this shirt while out to dinner with dad, or telling him about what I had learned from this book, or how proud he had been when I drew this piece of artwork, and I wouldn't be able to...



Each time, Holly patiently waited for me to come back to myself, sometimes nudging me gently or tapping me on the shoulder to bring me back. She seemed to have an almost uncanny ability to spot when I was drifting, and would resume speaking in the middle of sentences as though nothing had happened.

"How do you do that?" I asked her after one such occasion where I had spent who-knows-how-long just standing in my closet and staring at the first suit my dad had ever bought me.

"Do what?" She didn't look at me as she spoke, busy taping a box of clothes shut.

"Spot it when I'm... drifting away from myself."

She rested an elbow on the box and propped her head up on that hand, looking up at me where she knelt on the floor next to the box. "It's hard to describe, really. But, well... I'm a pretty observant person, as a rule, and there's a bit of a difference, although I'm not sure quite how to explain."

"You explained magic pretty decently, give it a shot," I said. "You might surprise yourself."

"Alright. You have kind of a... I dunno... I presence to you," Holly told me. "Like, you're very there, at every moment."

"Really?" I said, curiously. "I think I get pretty in my head, sometimes. You think I'm in-the-moment?"

She shrugged. "Maybe it's just around me, I don't know. But when you're... drifting, you said? When that happens, something changes. Maybe it's your eyes - they unfocus a little, I think." Then she chuckled a little. "Plus you drift off in the middle of a thought sometimes. That's pretty clear as well."

I shrugged. "Maybe it is just around you. I mean, I don't want to be wrapped up in my own head when I could be spending time with you, after all."

Was that too far? Did I make her uncomfortable? Was this a bad time? This was definitely a bad time. I shouldn't have said that. My eyes met Holly's, searching for some sign that she approved or disapproved.

Her eyes weren't on mine, oddly. They were a little downcast, and... was that a blush and a small smile? No, it couldn't be, I decided as she looked up. The smile was there, yes, but the blush must have been a trick of the light.

"I like spending time with you too, Quinn," she promised, and leaned forward to affectionately bump her head into my leg where I stood. "I know we haven't known each other all that long, but I honestly feel like you're one of my best friends already." She stood, hefted the box in her arms, and carried it out of my room to join a pile in the hallway.

"I feel the same way," I called, turning back to my closet and reaching for a few flannels. The MLED was going to be providing the ones I would wear as part of my costume, but those would have a kevlar mesh and I didn't expect them to be very comfortable for normal wear. Besides, some of these had sentimental value, like the one that dad had...



Holly put a hand on the small of my back, and I turned to smile up at her. "Where was I?"

"I'm one of your best friends."

"Right." I began folding up the shirt that dad had passed down to me. "I don't want to get too into it, but... I haven't had any close friends since high school, just casual friends. But you're becoming very important to me very quickly. I hope that's not too much to say."

"Of course not," she promised me. "Didn't I just say that you're becoming one of my best friends, too?" She took the old shirt from me, then pointed to a suit bag in the back of the closet. "You should grab that suit. Most events the MLED holds will have you just in costume, or a formal version of it, but there are a few where heroes are supposed to go incognito, and you'll want nice clothes for them," she recommended.

"Like what?"

"There's an art show coming up in January, I think that's the next one if you aren't presenting anything. There's a regional gala thing every summer that heroes can choose to go to either in costume or civvies, too."

"I'll take the suit, then." I grabbed it and passed it to her. "That should lie across the luggage, not get folded up, right?"

"Right." She set it atop the boxes. "Back to the friendship thing... on my end, it's similar, I guess. My parents never sent me to school when I was growing up - I had private tutors until university - so I never really had close friends until now. Some in the Journeymen, but just because you're both heroes doesn't mean that you'll get along, especially since there's a wide age range. I mean, I've been part of it since I was 14, but as recently as last year we counted Blue Phoenix in our ranks."

I thought back. Blue Phoenix... "The guy whose powers came in when he was about to die of old age?" He had made the papers.

"Yup! 83 years old and suddenly his body is made of burning blue energy that can take on any shape he can imagine. He definitely needed the training." Her expression soured a bit. "And the crash course on the modern era, too."

"...he didn't understand you being genderfluid?" I asked sympathetically.

"Not in the slightest. Never respected Molly's pronouns, either."

"What a dick."

She sighed. "It's not that complicated, is it?"

"I mean, I don't think so," I promised her. "Cis people have just never had to think about gender before, so it comes as a complete shock to them. Even 1+1 is tricky when you don't understand the concept of numbers yet."

Holly shook her head violently as though trying to dislodge the thought. Her hair fanned out for a moment before settling back in a perfect spread over her shoulders, as she said, "Lets talk about something more cheerful. Friendship! That's a happier topic, right?" She grinned.

"Right, friendship!" I decided that I had pulled everything out of my closet that needed to come, and stepped out of it to head to the bookshelf instead. "Friendship is..."



I blinked. It had, I figured, probably been a few minutes - I was sitting between two piles of books, one that seemed to be schoolbooks and the other my own personal books that I wanted to bring. I glanced over at Holly, who had just closed the last box of stuff from the closet and was now looking at me with concern. I managed a smile and gave her a thumbs up.

"...you don't have to pretend to be okay, Quinn," she said after a moment. "I know you're not. It's fine."

I sighed. "I'm... not okay," I agreed. "It's just... dad was such a big part of my life. There's so many things that make me think of him, and..." I actually felt myself tearing up this time. That was an improvement of a sort, I supposed.

Holly knelt next to me and put a hand on my shoulder. "Would you like to talk about it?"

I wiped the tears away. "No, I... I need to distract myself, that's all. It's just... really hard, right now."

Holly bit her lip thoughtfully, and I restrained the sudden surge of attraction I felt. I wouldn't be a good partner right now, no matter how wonderful Holly was - I couldn't be nearly what she deserved. Besides, she had turned me down when we had had dinner a few weeks ago. Or I thought she had, anyway - my invitation had been a little roundabout, and so had her refusal.

"I wish I could help," she said after a moment, "but I don't think I can. I mean, I could make everything look super generic so it wouldn't trigger memories, but... you do need to see them, so you can decide what's important and what can stay."

"Everything is important, in some ways," I said. "It's all... it's all him. That's why I can't live here anymore." I closed my eyes, but the sense of my presence still filled the room. I could still feel the mattress that he had helped me pick out with the money from my first summer job and the computer we had struggled through building together and the desk that he had once written poems on before it he had gotten a new one and passed it on to me and-



Scene 21 - November 8th

Interior Townhouse, Continuous

Quinn Kaufman



"...Quinn. Quinn!" Holly said urgently. "You need to breath! You're having a panic attack!"

I took a deep, gasping breath, my body suddenly covered in sweat. "It's too much," I whispered. "I can't, it's all so much, I can't..."

She bit her lip again, seeming to know exactly what I meant. "I can't block out your ESP. Is there something else that I can...

"Something... something that dad and I didn't..." I took another heavy, shuddering breath. "Magic!" I gasp in realization. "I had never known anything about magic, tell me about magic! Teach me something!"

She nodded decisively. "That I can do. Magic... Okay. I'm gonna try and teach you a spell. A really simple one - it's one of the first that I ever learned, back when my parents were first teaching me magic," she told me.

"You learned... from your parents?" I asked.

"Fuck, that... that won't help you to know, that..."

"No... it's fine," I promised. "Your parents... not mine. Still not my dad. Keep going."

"Okay. Okay." She took a deep breath herself, then continued, "I've told you that everyone has their own style of casting magic, right? But there tend to be some similarities. Just about everyone uses some kind of physical motion associated with casting - I have hand gestures, Canaveral and Anima both use touch and physical motion in general. My father uses a flute, my mother uses hand signs just like me."

"Is it like..." I took another deep breath, realizing I hadn't in a while. "A focusing thing? I had to use hand motions when I first got my powers. I don't need to anymore, but it's still easier to use them. More theatrical, too."

"The drama of it might be why some mages do it as well," Holly agreed. "But it's mostly for focusing, yeah. The important thing is that it's something that you can put attention on, something you can focus your entire mind and soul on doing, because if your mind wanders the spell will go wrong. The more you practice the less focus you need, but at first it needs to be something strong.

"And it needs to be something that works for you - everyone has their own style, remember. That's why teaching magic is so difficult - what worked for the teacher may not work for the student, not unless their styles are similar enough." Holly hesitated. "Whatever you come to may not be close enough to mine for my advice to help," she warned me. "You probably won't figure it out immediately, either. For some people it comes to them right away, but others have to try tons of different things before they find a focusing method that works for them. There's a whole semester-long class on it as part of Magical Studies at UNV."

I thought about it. Something that could occupy my entire mind, something that could get easier with practice... art was my first thought, but I discarded it after a moment. I was already pretty good at art, it was easy to autopilot. I needed something I still had to think about... something like...

"What about people with powers?" I asked. "Do powers ever fit into magical foci?"

"Sometimes," she said. "A lot of mages start off with a trick of some sort - some minor magical thing that they can do that they expand into everything else. Canaveral's thing with kinetic energy started as that, I think. The Magnificent Maxwell got his start that way too. Anyway, those tricks could be thought of as a power - especially Canaveral's, he told me once he started with being able to sense kinetic energy and then began messing with it."

"My presence, then," I decided. "My ESP, that is - Dr. Anomnachi suggested a new name for it."

"I like it. How would your presence be a focus, though?"

"I can mess with how I sense things using it. Plug it in to my sight or hearing or whatever, or even narrow the scope to get more detail on a smaller area." I hadn't tried that yet, actually, but it seemed more than possible.

"Okay, that seems... yeah, I think I have a path to you casting from that," Holly decided. "Just don't hate me if it doesn't work, okay?"

"I could never hate you."

There was another one of those moments where I thought she was blushing, but an instant later it was gone. Was she...? No, she wouldn't hide that from me, would she?

"Anyway," she quickly said, "I want you to put a hand out, relaxed and a little open. Yeah, like that. Now just... focus in on the area in your hand. Cut out everything else, as much as you can."

I did my best. My sense of presence began to shrink, the world around me changing from an extension of my own body to something separate from me entirely - a mildly disconcerting feeling, I hadn't realized how used to it I had grown - until it was gone, just the dust in the air in my hand and my regular human senses.

I hadn't realized how dusty the house was until now - my presence didn't usually pick up particles that small. I suppose that without dad or I to...



"It's okay, we can try again," Holly said when I came back to myself. "Do you still want to?"

I nodded. "Yes, I do. It's... it's helping, I think. Making a new memory that has nothing to do with... well."

"Alright. Focus back in on your hand, then."

I did so with a little effort, the world sinking back into normalcy again. "I'm focused," I whispered, worried that I would lose balance in the mental tightrope that focusing my presence like this seemed to require.

"If you have the mental capacity to speak, you're not focused enough," Holly gently scolded me. "Go deeper, if you can. Focus only on your hand and my voice."

I did my best. I shut out the feeling of my clothes on my skin, the slight pressure of sitting on the floor. I closed my eyes and tried to set aside even the light that filtered through my eyelids. I tried to blot out everything there was, and... was doing so, with some success!

"When you have a perfect focus, your mind is like the tip of a arrow."

I could still hear Holly's voice encouraging me, but it wasn't coming through my ears, now.

"The full power of your thoughts and will and soul all brought to bear on a single point."

There were no ears, there was no body to bear them, there was no Quinn to use them.

"An arrow can pierce plate armor, with sufficient force."

All there was was a small patch of space containing 0.01 pounds of air vibrating in patterns corresponding to the voice of my best friend

"When the force of your whole self is arrayed such, how could the universe not break as well?"

and that air was made of 1.19 moles of nitrogen and 0.28 moles of oxygen and and trace amount of argon and carbon dioxide and

"So thrust your mind forward, pierce through all that says reality must be static..."

and Holly's voice was layered over lesser patterns of shockwaves that matched up to the sounds of two people breathing and a radiator humming and a dog barking in the distance and

"...and let there be light."

and there was light.




The sudden burst of light was blindingly bright and completely knocked me off the razor's edge of my focus. Even through my closed eyes, it was incredibly bright - enough that I could feel an instant of warmth on my skin, enough that I was blinking and trying to regain my sight. Holly swore in pain, diving back and rubbing at her own eyes.

"Well, I think we can call that a success," she declared when our sights had returned. "That definitely works for you. Maybe even a bit too well," she joked, offering me a hand up.

"I think I might have gone too deep," I agreed. "I may need to learn restraint."

"Hey, it's an effective flashbang," she pointed out. "Well, the flash part, anyway. All you have to do is practice enough to pull it off without spending fifteen minutes build up to it."

I paused. "Fifteen minutes?"

"Yeah. Lost track of time?"

"Completely," I admitted.

"Pretty common when you're putting together a new spell," she promised me. "But you've clearly got a knack for this. Most people take way longer to find their method of casting."

I shrugged. "I guess. How long does it usually take to get a spell to be quicker and easier?"

She shrugged. "Depends on how complex the spell is, depends how much you practice it, depends how much practice you have in general. I can usually put together a new construct in a day or two if it's something simple, like... I dunno, a baseball... but the more complex it is, the longer it takes. The earpieces took two and a half years to get down to a usable 30 seconds, and I could probably cut the casting time further."

"How long for me?" I clarified.

"For you? No clue, sorry," she said apologetically. "But... probably a while. you're not going to have a ton of time to mess with magic now that you're doing school and heroing. And while you picked it up really quickly, you are a complete novice."

"That's true," I said, deflating.

"It's a pretty simple spell, though... maybe a month, if you find time to practice for fifteen minutes or half an hour every day? Whatever you pick next will probably come faster," she promised.

"Great!" I grinned at her, feeling better. After a moment, I tried to school my face into something more serious. "I really do appreciate... everything," I told her. "I know that... I probably seem like a bit of a shitty friend, putting all this on you so soon after we met-"

"Stop it," Holly told me sternly. "Don't worry about 'putting this on me' or whatever bullcrap. You didn't ask for this to happen. You need support and I'm giving it to you, that's all there is to it." She smiled. "You'd do the same for me, right?"

I smiled back. "Yeah, of course," I promised.

"Then don't beat yourself up about it." She leaned towards me a little then, as though changing her mind about something, pulled back and took my hand in hers instead. "Now let's get this stuff back to the Compound."

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 22 - November 14th

Interior Television Studio, Early Evening

Quinn Kaufman



Exactly one month after I first found my mother's invention. One month after I was granted superpowers. Just 30 days after meeting my first superhero and supervillain in one night. Less than four weeks after visiting the private areas of the MLED's compound and meeting a whole host of other heroes, including my new best friend, Holly. Four weeks since meeting a cold-blooded killer. Less than three weeks since meeting that same killer again with no costumes between us, and learning that my mother had lived far longer than I had ever expected - and that she was still gone forever. Just two weeks since I had committed to becoming a Journeyman - two weeks since...



"Mx. Kaufman," someone said, drawing my attention back into the present, and I glanced up to see Lucas Apollon sitting next to me. "How are you feeling?"

"...nervous, I guess?" I confessed. "I've never been on TV before. I've never had this much attention on me before." I glowered at him. "You said that it was Inspiring heroes who had to go on talk shows, not Approachable."

"In general, yes," he agreed. "But the options for announcing a new hero are either an appearance on a talk show or a press conference in which you would be expected to give a speech. Believe it or not, this is the better of the two options for you."

I shuddered at the thought of having give a speech. "Fine. I guess you're right."

"I usually am about these things." He said with a cheerful smile. "You read the briefing packet, right?"

I wiggled my hand in a sort-of motion. "It was a few days ago as a break from schoolwork, so it's a little fuzzy." School was ramping up in intensity as my finals for the semester began to approach, and between that, the new classes and events I was now part of as a Journeyman, and everything surrounding my father's death, I had almost no free time. It was, I thought, for the best - the less time I had to think about... things... the better. It did, however, mean that things blurred together.

"I can give you a quick refresher," Apollon promised me, and I focused on him as best as I could while he did just that:

Do speak clearly and concisely - don't take too long to answer a question.

Do stay focused on topics selected by the show - don't go on tangents.

Do display your personality - don't overshadow the other guests.

Do...

"Thank you," I told him as he wrapped up his summary a few minutes later. "But..." I swallowed, my throat dry, "do you have any advice to deal with stage fright?"

"Of course," he said kindly.



Scene 23 - November 14th

Interior Television Studio, Evening

Quinn Kaufman



I watched from offstage as the show began - Jacob Ryder, the show's host, greeted his audience in his usual bombastic fashion and gave a rundown of the major topics for the show. His last introduction would be for us - when he introduced me, Loki, and Canaveral, we were to walk onstage and take seats in the chairs and couch currently sitting next to his desk.

"...we'll be conducting a video interview with Secretary of Metahuman Affairs Susan Thornhill - her meteoric rise and new plan to keep the DMO well-funded," the devil-looking man was saying. "But before all that, we have some special guests. Please give a warm welcome to our visitors from New Venice's MLED, the heroes Canaveral, Loki, and the newest member of their team, Newton!"

The audience applauded as we entered and sat. Canaveral took the chair, which left the couch for Loki and I. He sat first, one arm stretching across the back of the couch, dropping that hand down onto my shoulders as I sat next to him. I leaned into his body a little bit without really thinking about it - the contact felt nice.

"Thanks, Jake," Canaveral said to the host. "It's nice to be here again."

Ryder smiled at him. "How long has it been since you were last on my show?" he asked.

"I think the last time was just after I moved to New Venice and was given command of the New Champions, about... what, four years ago now?"

"Sounds about right," he agreed. "And Loki! Always a pleasure."

"Thanks, Jake," Loki said, a smile crinkling his eyes despite the mask covering his mouth. "I like being on too. You always make me feel very welcome."

Ryder gave him a nod before continuing, "Now, you two are here to introduce the newest member of the Journeymen, yes?"

"That's right, Jake. This is our newest member - and a good friend of mine," Loki added, squeezing my shoulder subtly, "Newton."



"Hey!" I said, waving first at Ryder and then the audience. "It's great to be here," I lied.

"Welcome to the Ryder Report, Newton - and to superheroism!" Ryder said with a huge grin, and the audience applauded. After a moment, he made a calming gesture and continued. "How long have you had your powers, if I might ask?"

"A month now," I told him. "I took a while to decide what to do with them, and ended up skating just under the deadline for registration. I'll try to be more punctual next time!" I added, making a weak joke. He laughed and so did the audience, so I suppose I must have been doing alright.

"Only a month, and you're good friends with Loki already - you two look quite cozy there!" he observed. "Did you know each other before your powers manifested?"

Before I could answer, Loki cut in. "I'm afraid that's skating a bit too close to secret identity stuff, Jake," he said apologetically. "We can't answer that."

"Of course, my apologies," Ryder said, sounding just as sorry. "I'm afraid that secret identity protocol sometimes slips my mind, as I've never had any reason to bother learning it for myself." He spread his wings in demonstration of why - the man looked like a classic devil, with red skin, horns, and bat-like wings.

"Quite alright," Loki assured him.

"But still, only one month and you're already diving headfirst into heroism!" Ryder said to me, sounding impressed.

"Well, it's not exactly headfirst - the MLED offers a lot of training and guidance," I point out. "And I won't be a full hero until Loki and I graduate to the New Champions at the end of May."

"Graduating together, huh?"

"My 21st birthday is in May, so I will - after seven years - finally become a full fledged hero," Loki agreed.

"And I'm 21 already, so it'll just be six months of training before I graduate. Doesn't seem quite fair, does it?" I joked, glancing at Loki. He chuckled - his amusement much more restrained than Ryder or the audience.

Canaveral spoke for the first time in a while, noting, "The biggest distinction between experienced trainees like Loki and full heroes, to be honest, is what they're legally allowed to do, as minors. But the truth is, Loki is every bit as capable as I am." I wondered if he wanted to reassure Loki that he was valued, or if he had another goal - he had told me before we came on that he intended to leave the interview mainly to me and Loki, and only speak up if Ryder addressed him directly or if there was something he really needed to bring up.

"I'm going to do my best," I said, this time more out to the audience, "but it'll be a long time before I can match up to these two." If he was trying to make the point that experience mattered, I was happy to help.

"Hey, don't sell yourself short," Loki protested. "You're a fast learner and have a great powerset - you'll be playing with the big boys before long." He squeezed my shoulder again encouragingly, letting me know I was doing well.

"Speaking of powerset, what can you do, Newton?" Ryder asked.

"I have what I've been calling an expanded presence," I began, naming my abilities in public for the first time. "Basically, my sense of presence, my understanding of how and where I exist in the world, extends beyond my actual body. Just about everything in this entire studio is touched by my presence, and I know where and what they are without even needing to look. And..." I raised a hand, and RYDER'S coffee mug rose with it. "...I can move them, as well."

"I see! A sort of telekinesis combined with extrasensory perception!" Ryder observed.

"That's a way of saying it, sure," I said, a little sourly, and the audience laughed. "There is a little bit more to it than that, though - namely, that when I exert my presence, it affects me as well. If I were to try and pull at your desk, for example -"

"Please don't!" Ryder joked.

"Just an example!" I promised. "Your desk is pretty heavy - If I was to pull at it, I would probably get pulled out of my seat instead of moving it. That's why I chose the name Newton - because unlike most telekinetics, I have to obey his laws."

"How did you learn that?"

"I snuck into an abandoned junkyard the night that I realized I had powers, to try them out. It was pretty clear once I started trying to lift heavier objects," I explained.

"Newton, that... that junkyard wasn't abandoned," Canaveral cut in.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I mean the reason I swung by and met you that night was that the guard at the junkyard was freaked out and called us about the unknown metahuman," he told me.

My hands flew to cover my mouth. "You never told me that!" I cried, mortified. "Oh my god, I feel so bad now! God, I need to... I need to find them and apologize, or something!"

"It's fine, it's fine!" Canaveral assured me as the audience laughed. "I swung by and let him know what was up on my way back to the Compound at the end of my shift, and he actually wanted to apologize to you for assuming you were a villain!"

I hid my burning-red face in my hands entirely as the audience laughed even harder. Loki rubbed the small of my back comfortingly, but all I could think of was how this was going to be the first impression I had on people all over the world - easily embarrassed, unobservant - because I had missed the guard - and generally not someone to respect. How could this have gone worse?

"Hey, it's better than what happened the first night I had powers. My priest tried to exorcise me!" Ryder revealed, and the audience laughed even harder. "You laugh, but it wasn't funny as a 13 year old kid! I was just trying to prepare for confirmation, and suddenly Father Theodore comes rushing at me with a cross and a bible, going 'exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus'!"

I took a deep breath as I realized that the audience laughter was no longer at me, but at Ryder - he had seamlessly redirected their attention away from my embarrassment to himself. He really was a good host.

"Moving on to less heretical subjects," Ryder continued as I straightened, "we have a topic that you requested to talk about, Newton?"

"Yes," I said, feeling on firmer ground now that I was speaking about something I was much more confident in. "I understand that I'm far from the first trans superhero - that road was paved for us by Sister Mercy, and even in New Venice..." I glanced at Loki, suddenly realized that I didn't know if he was out to he public. He gave me an encouraging nod. "...Loki is genderfluid," I finished.

"Really?" Ryder asked, seeming surprised. I realized Loki must not have been publicly out until this moment - he seemed pretty unruffled on the outside, but I could feel that his arm was a little tense around my shoulders and my sense of presence told me that he was shaking, just a little.

"Yeah, I'm a girl when I'm out of costume," he said, voice still smooth and confident.

"And a very pretty girl you are, too," I told him, patting his leg in hopes of reassuring my friend. I hadn't meant to out him if he wasn't ready to come out, or just hadn't been expecting it - I had told him that I wanted to talk about being nonbinary in the preshow chat, and he had agreed and said he would support me, but maybe he hadn't been expecting to be cited as one of my inspirations for coming out as a hero?

"Thank you!" he said, seeming a little surprised and very grateful. He squeezed me shoulder a little, then relaxed - I could feel the tension draining out of him. I was glad that I had been able to help - to remind him that I was here for him as he had been for me. "It's not quite as simple as guy in costume and girl out of it," he said to Ryder, "but it's simpler to explain it that way, at least."

"Anyway, I'm far from the first hero not to match their birth gender," I said to Ryder, getting back to the subject. "But I asked our strategic consultant, and apparently I am the first hero to use they/them pronouns."

"Well, the first single hero, at any rate," Canaveral noted. "Multiplex is a bit of a special case."

"Multiplex is a special case," I agreed - the duplicating hero was a hive-mind that included every insect that came too close to their central consciousness. They had once been a woman, but to my knowledge didn't even identify as human at this point. "My point is that I thought it might be good to make myself and how I should be referred to clear to the public, since a lot of people probably aren't familiar with what it means to be nonbinary."

"By all means," Ryder invited me, giving an encouraging smile. "Please, educate us!"

With Loki beside me, I took a deep breath, then began to teach.



Scene 24 - November 14th

Interior Mansion, Late Evening

Dominic Könberg



Mom and Morgan had helped Dad go to bed a little while ago - it hadn't been one of his good days, so he was off earlier than usual - and we were now participating in the family's usual Friday night ritual of watching the Ryder Report. While his show usually only covered the events of the day it was recorded, on Friday nights he included news from the entire week before, so it was the best way - or at least, our preferred way - to get the news.

Tonight he had introduced a new hero who would be joining the Journeymen in New Venice. As soon as the segment was over, Morgan paused the show, then steepled her fingers, clearly thinking deeply.

"They're so cool!" Tristan burst, leaping up from the floor where he had been sitting tonight and jumping into the air. My little brother, only sixteen, had a big goofy grin on his face. "They're my new favorite hero!"

"Oh yeah?" Mom asked, sending a brief, worried glance to Morgan. "Why's that?"

"They're trans, like me!" he said happily. "Well, not exactly like me since I'm not nonbinary, but still!"

"I'm glad you're happy, brat," Percy - my next youngest brother, at eighteen - began, "but isn't there already a trans hero? On the Journeymen, even?"

"Referee is trans," Viv confirmed. My twin sister was the smartest of all of us. Well, of the kids, anyway, I corrected myself. Morgan was brilliant even beyond Viv, even beyond Dad... even beyond how Dad had been, at any rate. "And Loki too, apparently."

"Yeah, well, Referee is my age," Tristan explained. "Newton is an adult! That's the difference! And Loki wasn't out until just now, so, like, whatever - why be ashamed, right?" He pumped his fist. "But Newton was just out with it, right away! So cool!"

Viv gave me an amused glance, which I deciphered easily. Newton was an adult, yes, because they would be graduating from the Journeymen directly after their six-month training period - that meant they were at least 21, or would be by May. And since they were apparently the best friend of Loki, who was only just reaching 21 himself, they were probably much closer to 21. Our age, in other words - and yet, Tristan never treated us like adults. "What do you think, Viv?" I asked.

"I think it'll make things a bit more difficult," she noted, "but they don't have much experience yet, as they themself pointed out. As long as we still do it while Referee is away, they shouldn't be a problem for us."

"I... just meant about Newton in general, not about how they'll impact the plan."

"Ah." She shrugged. "I won't really have an opinion on them until I know more. They were obviously well-coached for this interview - they even had that little probably-rehearsed bit where Canaveral embarrassed them to make them seem more human - and it was a real softball anyway. Once they start going on patrol I might know more. We know what you think, of course," she said to Percy, who crossed his arms.

"Not my fault that heroes are all the same," he said defensively. The revelations that Dad had shared with the family a few years ago had led to Percy forming a thus-far-unshakable conviction that the system of heroes was irreparably corrupt. He was very glad that, under Morgan's direction, we were planning to finally do something about it.

Viv stroked her chin thoughtfully. "I wonder what Devon... you know, Dad's doctor?" she quickly added, as if we didn't know about her crush on them. Well, I suppose the others might not have figured it out, but I was her twin - she couldn't hide anything from me. "I wonder what they think of Newton - first openly nonbinary hero and all."

Percy shrugged. "What do you think, Dom?" he asked, turning to me.

"I want to know what our moms think," I said. I glanced to Morgan and Mom, who had risen while we kids chatted and slipped off to a corner to quietly speak. As I watched, Morgan nodded decisively and received a brief, supportive kiss from Mom.

Until I was sixteen, I had thought that she was just Aunt Morgan - our parents' best friend, who lived in one wing of the family mansion and and emerged on a weekly - sometimes daily - basis to shower us all with affection, and with the literally magical gifts she created. On my sixteenth birthday, though, Mom, Dad, and Morgan had sat me and Viv down to explain that the three of them were a polyamorous triad - each of them loved the other two just the same. They had decided not to mention it to any of their kids until we turned 16 - and apparently Morgan had given birth to me and Viv, not Mom, which in retrospect should have been obvious since we had inherited her naturally white hair - because they weren't sure if we would understand when we were younger. Polyamory had apparently not been very accepted when they were our age.

Fortunately, times had changed, and both Viv and I were fine with it - she had figured it out two years before, in fact - and so were Percy and Tristan when they were told. Hell, Tristan had tried to rope the rest of us into a plot to get the three of them together before he had been told, and had thus been brought in on the family secret a year early.

I still found it hard to think of Morgan as "mom", though, even though she was my birth parent. Jennifer had always taken the motherly role in the family, while Morgan acted more as an aunt, and even six years after learning of the triad I still thought of Jenny as my mom and Morgan as... well, as Morgan.

Morgan turned to face the rest of us, Jenny's arm around her shoulder in support. "Newton's existence is a good sign," she told us. "Their clear similarity to Starling means that they're obviously another Ambrosia Company plant, but that's good news for us. It means that Legion was probably in town to empower them, rather than that Ambrosia knows where we are." She sighed. "It's another pair of eyes and ears to watch out for until we're ready to move, but we already had to stay clear of Starling and Canaveral. One more possible spy won't make that much difference, particularly since we're going to have to move soon."

Viv's eyes narrowed. "Are we moving the schedule up, then?"

Morgan nodded. "We'll have to. I'll slip Copperfield a hint, and we'll keep an eye out for his distraction when he finally figures it out."

My sister bit her lip. "I'm... not sure if I'm ready."

Morgan put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "We have to. For Arthur."

Viv chuckled and waved her hand off. "It's not that, I know it's necessary, it's what we have to do to save Dad. I'm just not sure if I'm ready for combat. I'm still learning magic..."

"You'll do fine," Morgan promised her. "The helmet will help. And with luck you won't have to fight at all."

Percy laughed. "Do you really think we're going to have that much luck?"

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 1 - October 20th
Interior MLED Compound, Early Evening
Niccolo Mellas



Quinn left the room, visibly dejected that they wouldn't be allowed to help fight against Legion. I didn't see why - the woman was stupidly dangerous, and unlike me, they wouldn't be working from a safe distance.

"Vulcan, call Anima and Sequoia in from patrol, if you haven't already," Abe ordered, speaking into a dedicated mic rather than relying on the typical monitoring to communicate with Adam.

"They're on their way," he responded. "Do we have a plan, sir?"

"I'm working on one, Adam. Give me some time."

"You'll need our help," Simone put forward - did she really expect the offer to be accepted? Quinn's offer had been rejected less than five minutes ago. "New Venice isn't exactly a one-horse town - you need us to help you cover it."

"I hate to admit it, but you're right," Emilia agreed, and I blinked in surprise.

"Hey!" Simone protested.

"It's dangerous," Abe said, as though that wasn't obvious.

Emilia shook her head. "Nic works at a distance," she began, gesturing at me, "and Legion doesn't have anything that will hurt him when he's projecting - we need him to help scout the city. Simone can be transport only, that won't be too dangerous either."

"I can work from a distance too," Holly put in. "I know my hand-to-hand skills aren't going to be worth much against Legion, but I bet I can use lasers to cut off parts of her body mass."

"Fine," Abe conceded. "only from a distance. And only because you're all over 18 - Sequoia will have to go home too, once he and Miriam get back."

"Jack can help too!" I protested. "He turns 18 in only a few weeks!" And he enjoyed heroing too much to like being left out of it, no matter how dangerous Legion was.

"He's still under 18 until then. You're just going to have to live with your boyfriend staying a safe distance from the dangerous supervillain."

"Well, when you put it that way..." I had been protesting in favor of his involvement more because I knew he would have wanted me to than because I actually wanted Jack involved, in truth, so I didn't really mind Abe shutting me down.

"Alright," Abe said, a moment after Holly shifting into Loki. "I think I have the beginnings of a plan." It was a pretty simple plan, and it didn't take long for him to lay it out: I would be scouting, as my projected senses were by far the fastest traveler of all of us, sent to check out any reports that Emilia received from console. Vulcan would go with Simone to face down any Legion that I could confirm the location of.

"Nic?" he said, turning to face me. "She was reported about ten minutes south of the Compound."

"Give me a moment," I said, and leaned against the wall so that I wouldn't fall when I began projecting. "I'm going to try to only send my vision so that I can still talk with you guys..." I performed the mental gymnastics that had proved most successful at this kind of separation as I began.

While I had made a lot of progress in controlling my powers since I joined the Journeymen - I could now choose to start and stop projecting, and control where the projection went as well, even if I still projected accidentally half the times that I slept - separating out my senses remained a puzzle. I knew it was possible from dreams in which I had heard voices or music from a distance, without seeing anything, or vice versa, and had even managed to perform the separation myself a few times. But most of the time...

"...no, sorry, I can't hear you," I muttered, a little dejected, as both sight and hearing spun through space to land about ten minutes south of the Compound - as always, it was eerie to speak without hearing it, as the words came from my physical mouth instead of my projected self. At least I had left my sense of touch behind - I could still feel my shoulderblades pressing up against the wall. "But I'll give you updates as I go." I glanced up to a set of street signs, and reported, "Right now I'm at the corner of Lander and Evans and continuing south. No sign of her yet."



Scene 2 - October 20th
Interior MLED Compound, Evening
Niccolo Mellas



When I reached the limit of my projection, still with no sign of Legion, I had snapped back to my body to find that Abe was gone - I later learned that Quinn had called with a sighting of Legion near to the them, and the boss had gone to escort them the rest of the way home. Meanwhile, Jack and Miriam had arrived back at the Compound, and my boyfriend was leaning against the wall next to me, watching me worriedly.

I met his eyes and smiled. "It's okay, honey," I told me. "I'm perfectly fine."

He gave me a gentle kiss, then led me from the wall over to a couch. "I know, Nic, I just worry. Ever since..."

Ever since I had told him that I used to have trouble returning to my body. "That hasn't happened in years, Jack," I reminded him as he sat, then pulled me into his lap. I leaned my forehead against his. "I'm okay."

"Ew, you two are so sappy," Simone joked. "Get a room!"

"You get a room," Jack murmured, and she shrugged and vanished.

"Hey!" Loki snapped. "Don't waste distance in a crisis situation, you brat-" he stormed out of the room, presumably chasing after Simone. Jack and I were left mostly alone - just us and Vulcan.

I sighed. "I feel like shit," I quietly confessed to my boyfriend. "I couldn't find Legion, and I wouldn't be any help even if I did. I feel so useless."

He shook his head. "You're not useless, Nic. Just because you couldn't help in this situation doesn't mean you can't ever help."

"But can I ever help?" I asked him. "I mean, they've got me rated at a 0. That's not even normal human levels of threat."

"Threat rating's not everything," Jack reminded me. "But..." he hummed. "I think I might have an idea. Let's meet up in the grounds when we can find some time for it."

"Okay." I leaned in to kiss him again. And again, and-

"Hey," Vulcan said, and I pulled back in surprise - I had forgotten that he was still there. "Seriously, guys, get a room if you're gonna go that far." He jerked a finger at the hallway that led to the Compound's guest rooms - mostly used by me, when overuse of my powers left me exhausted, or Loki, for undisclosed reasons. Plus the one that was permanently inhabited by Molly, of course.

I flushed bright red, then found myself yawning. "I probably should," I told Jack, sadly. "I'm pretty tired."

"Go sleep, Nic," he said with an accepting smile, which quickly morphed into a grin. "I can tuck you in if you'd like."

"Hey!"



Scene 3 - October 24th
Exterior Training Grounds, Afternoon
Niccolo Mellas



I shivered despite my hoodie as Jack and I walked into the grounds a few days later, after Legion had been caught. It was starting to get cold, but I hadn't gotten around to digging a coat out of my closet yet.

"So what's your idea, honey?" I asked him. My boyfriend hadn't told me yet - something had always interrupted us, or someone was around, and he said he wanted it to be a surprise in the paintball game if it worked.

"I remember you telling me once about when your powers first manifested," Jack began, leading me to a section of the grounds that was lined with training mats for sparring. "Your senses were bounced to other places, sometimes, but sometimes it was also to other times."

"Yeah," I cautiously agreed, "and any amount of precognition would be great, but I've never gotten that to work. Like, never. I've tried, but the closest I've gotten is a jumble of disconnected images and sounds, coming too fast and too different to be able to make anything out. That and a splitting headache."

He nodded. "Right, but I've been thinking... what if you were going about it the wrong way, a bit?"

"How so?"

"An aunt of mine is a seer," he told me, "and-"

"Your aunt Jennifer or your aunt Cassandra?"

"Cassandra," he said.

"Of course."

"Anyway, she told me once that the problem with seeing the future isn't seeing the future, it's understanding the future," he said. "Apparently it comes in, well... a jumble of disconnected images."

"Thank sounds familiar."

"Right, exactly! She says she doesn't see a single thing that will happen, she sees a ton of different things that are possible. She can filter it somewhat by focusing on a particular person or object to see what might happen to it, or try to find a particular outcome and see what can lead to it, but in general, the farther out she looks the less accurate and more painful her visions are."

"Because the universe isn't deterministic, and the farther into the future you look the more possibilities there are." I considered this for a moment. "What are you suggesting, then? My powers don't focus on specific things like that. Locations, I guess, but..."

He shook his head. "Don't worry about focus - worry about time," he said. "Shift just a few moments into the future, and you'll be able to react to what an opponent does before they do it. If you can do that, your rating will instantly jump to a 1, at least. Even a single second into the future is enough to see someone's next move - if you can push out even farther..."

"Focus on combat precognition, not precog in general," I realized, and Jack nodded.

"Exactly." He balled his hands into fists and raised them into a guard. "And I think the best way to do that is to give you reason to need it."



Scene 4 - November 3rd
Exterior Training Grounds, Afternoon
Niccolo Mellas



"Why did you want to train with me?" Holly asked as we stepped into the grounds, both wearing warm jackets. "It's not that I'm not happy to help with whatever it is, it's just that, well... our powers don't really match up all that much, and..."

"And you're worried about Quinn," I finished.

"...yeah. They haven't woken up since the funeral. Or they haven't left their room, at least."

I bowed my head for a moment. "They're going through a hard time, and you're a good friend for supporting them. But you're also a good leader," I reminded her. "And I need your help right now too."

After a moment, she nodded. "You're right, I can't focus on them to the exclusion of all else. What do you need?"

"I need your help with a new trick I'm starting to figure out," I told her, starting to walk over to the sparring area. "It was Jack's idea - a way to get a handle on my precog. I've mentioned that I've had trouble making sense of it, right?"

"Yeah, you said that it was too jumbled to make anything out."

"Well, as it turns out, it's because I was looking too far into the future."

"Oh - because you're seeing too many possibilities? And the farther you look, the more there are, and the harder to sort through?"

I sighed. "And of course you figure it out instantly, huh," I said, shaking my head in disbelief. "Why didn't I ask you for help in the first place?"

She shrugged. "It sounds like you already have that figured out, though - focus on the immediate future and use it for combat precog instead of trying to go too far. If you want to look far away temporally I would suggest looking into the past - you'd be a great detective that way."

"Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Or backwards, I guess. But... well, I actually did manage to figure out how to get the temporal drifting working in general, I had to hold onto my real body less tightly and allow myself to drift, it's just..." I struggled to explain. "Connecting all the near futures that could happen in the next moment - even in the next second - into something that I can use in the present isn't easy. Does that make sense?"

She tilted her head in thought. "Hm. Do you mean that you're having trouble interpreting everything fast enough to figure out what to react to?"

"Yeah, pretty much. Also, seeing and hearing everything one second in the future makes it easy to forget what's actually happening in the present."

"You just need more practice," she told me. "I'm sorry, I don't have any magical solutions - it's just practice."

"I'm pretty sure you do have a magical solution, actually," I insisted. "See, Jack and I were sparring, but the problem is that I'm actually a better fighter than him when he's not transformed - I've spent much more time on martial arts, since I don't have super strength to rely on."

"Ah," Holly said in understanding. "You aren't challenged enough that you have to rely on the precog?"

"Exactly."

"But I'm pretty sure you're a much better fighter than me, too," she pointed out. "If you wanted a better match you should have asked Referee or Starling."

"Yeah, but Molly's out of town again, and who wants to ask Ben for anything?"

"Fair point." She eyed me. "But you don't want sparring, do you? You need to be forced to use the precog, not for it just to be an edge. You need something that you can't dodge without seeing the future."

"Yes."

"You want me to shoot you with lasers."

"I want you to shoot me with lasers."

Holly smiled, shaking her head. "Alright, I can shoot you with lasers," she agreed. "But tell me something first - how many people know you're working on precog?"

"Jack, obviously," I said immediately. "Abe knows that I've tried to get it working in the past, but I haven't mentioned that I'm making another attempt. Adam also knows that I've tried it before, and that Jack had an idea for me to work on, but I don't know if he has any idea what. No one else, I think."

Holly nodded, her smile now closer to a grin. "Excellent. I don't know how much progress we'll make, but... let's keep it quiet for the next week or so, alright? It would make a great ace in the hole in the paintball game, but it would have to be kept quiet."

I grinned, then yelped as a low-powered laser zapped me. "Hey, no fair!"

"Gotta see the future, Nic!" she called. "Get dodging!"

 

[theVoidWatches]

With that, Act 1 of the second arc is complete.

Previously, I've taken this Sufficient Velocity thread on hiatus between acts, only coming back every 2-4 months for a spree of daily updates which catch it up with my site, where I update Paternum weekly. For this next arc, I'd like to do an experiment instead - each chapter will be posted here 1 week after it goes up on my site. You can therefore expect the first chapter of Arc 2's Act 2 to be published here on March 14th, with further chapters coming every week for a few months afterward.

If you enjoy my writing, please consider sponsoring me on Patreon. If you can't afford a recurring donation, you can make an individual donation through Paypal, or purchase one of my books. The more I make from my writing, the more time I can devote to it, which will improve both the quantity and quality of my work.

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 1 - December 9th
Interior MLED Compound, Early Afternoon
Quinn Kaufman



I growled at the flashcard Holly held up to me, which read 'infrapterospinatus muscle". "Is it... fuck..." I groaned, and allowed my head to flop down into my arms. "Why did I take Abnormal Anatomy and Organic Chemistry in the same semester?"

"I assume because it fit your schedule," Holly said. "And you didn't plan to become a superhero and eat up all your free time and then some."

I let out another plaintive moan.

"Do you want to make a guess?"

"Something to do with shoulders," I mumbled into the table. "That's all I've got."

"'A rotator cuff muscle which externally rotates the pterohumerus of a metahuman's wing'," she read from the other side of the card.

"That's the part that's the shoulder," I declared, lifting myself from the table. "I'm counting that as a win."

"I'm going to put it in the 'come back later' pile," Holly informed me.

"That's fair."

She shook her head with an amused smile. "Alright, next up..." She took the next card from the pile and showed it to me.

I stared at the chemical compound illustrated in neat sharpie on the card. "That's a monophosphate," I said. "Uh... adenosine monophosphate."

"Are you sure?"

I hesitated. "...yes?"

She flipped it over. "Well done! Next up is Anatomy again."

"Okay, but I get my reward first. That was the fifth that I got right."

"No more than..." Holly glanced at the clock sitting on the table. "30 seconds, this time."

"Alright."

"And... start."

I narrowed my eyes and focused on the area cupped by my hands, narrowing my sense of presence, and...

patch of space and 1.19 moles of nitrogen and 0.28 moles of oxygen and

...and white light began to fill my palm - slowly, carefully, so it didn't blind us like the first time I had cast this spell.

"Fifteen seconds," Holly said, softly.

"Not good enough," I muttered.

"You're doing really well, Quinn," she promised me. "It's only been a month and you've already got it down to less than 30 seconds!"

"I want to be able to just snap my fingers and make light, like you can," I insisted. "I want it fast enough that it can be useful if I make it as bright as I know I can." I wanted it to be usable as a flashbang, not just a flashlight.

She sighed. "Okay, one more try. But just one!"

space and nitrogen and oxygen and

That time it only took 12 seconds, then Holly stopped me. "Back to studying?" I asked as my presence registered Abe entering the common room, wearing workout clothes.

She nodded, taking the next flash card and raised it to me. "Back to studying."

"Actually," Abe said, coming up behind me and clapping me on the shoulder in a way that would have startled me before I got my powers, "it's time for some sparring practice."

"Come on, Abe," I whined. "I've got finals starting in just five days!"

"You're a smart cookie, you'll do fine," he told me. "Besides, you've been studying that crap for a week already - not to mention the entire semester. Sparring you've only been doing for a month."

I sighed. "Fine. Sorry Holly," I said to her. "Apparently I've got to go."



Scene 2 - December 9th
Interior Gym, Afternoon
Quinn Kaufman



My breath was driven from my body as I fell to the ground, gently pushing at it and rolling to soften the blow in a way that was finally, after weeks of training, starting to become instinctive. Abe reached down to give me a hand up and I grasped it, pulling myself to my feet.

"You're getting better," he complimented me. "It took almost five minutes to knock you on your ass that time."

"It's still pretty discouraging to be beaten so easily," I said, breathing deeply to catch my breath. Abe bent to touch his toes, keeping himself limber, and I did the same.

He shook his head after straightening. "Easily? I think you're forgetting that when we first started it took me barely a minute." He put a comforting hand on your shoulder. "You really do have a natural talent, kid, and you're getting better fast."

"I've always been a quick learner, I guess," I muttered. "I'm still nowhere close to winning against you, though."

He chuckled. "Quinn, I think your perspective is a bit skewed. I'm a professional hero who's fought in real situations on a weekly, if not daily, basis for seven years. I have a lot of experience on you - and I cheat like hell with my power. If you were sparring with a non-powered civilian, you'd do much better - probably even against one who's been doing martial arts for much longer than you."

"Great!" I said, putting on a cheerfully sarcastic tone. "I'll just go challenge Molly, then, that's sure to go well!"

Abe let out a full laugh that time. "Well, let's not get too crazy yet. But remember when we bumped into Over and Under last week?"

We had been on patrol together and had gotten a call about Overshadow and Underlight, a pair of small-time supervillains who controlled darkness and light respectively, attempting to rob a bank. They had gone down relatively easily, as my presence had been able to see through both the decoys that Underlight created and the unnatural darkness that Overshadow relied on, and my talent for dodging had helped me avoid their surprisingly slow-moving lasers. We had taken them both in, but Overshadow had managed to escape by teleporting through a shadow before she had made it to a fully-lit cell. Underlight was now under careful watch in hope of blocking her inevitable break-out attempt, although it was probably impossible to stop her without giving him a way out using his own powers.

"That was just luck that my presence trumped their deception-based strategy," I said.

Abe shook his head. "You also trumped their physical skills pretty easily. The thing is, Quinn, that most villains don't bother to train in anything other than their powers, which makes you a cut above them already. Similarly, most regular criminals don't have powers."

"Yeah yeah, you've told me before," I flapped a hand dismissively. "I realize I'm doing better than random street thugs, but I can't help feeling kind of insecure compared to you and the rest of the pro heroes."

"That's-"

"Yes, I'm aware that it's a dumb anxiety, but I can't help it," I snapped. "There's a reason I'm taking advantage of the MLED's in-house therapist." I glanced up at the clock on the wall and sighed. "Who I need to see in half an hour."

"One more sparring match," Abe offered. "I'll hold off on my powers so you can better see how you've actually progressed."

I calculated how long it would probably take me to be thrown to the floor and then shower clean before getting to my appointment. "...fine," I said after a moment, falling into a combat-ready stance. "Let's just try to make it quick."



Scene 3 - December 9th
Interior Therapist's Office, Late Afternoon
Quinn Kaufman



I had had to cut that last sparring match short to take an extremely abbreviated shower - just barely avoiding being trounced again in doing so - and was still two minutes late when I rushed into the therapist's office, my hair still wet. "Sorry I'm late, Doctor Wagner," I gasped, pushing against a wall to slow myself to a halt, then falling into a waiting chair. "Sparring practice ran a little over."

"Quite alright, Quinn," he absently said, looking up from a clipboard that I assumed held his notes from our last session. "And haven't I told you you can call me Charles?"

"And I've told you, if we bump into each other in the cafeteria, sure," I replied. "In here, you're my therapist. Doctor Wagner."

He shrugged. "Whatever makes you comfortable." The rotund man glanced down at his notes once more. "Would you like to pick up where we left off last week, or do you have something you'd specifically like to talk about?"

I tilted my head, thinking back. "Where did we leave off last week?"

"We were discussing your history of anxiety," he said, "and I was just about to bring up how it had contributed to your low self-worth."

"...I was thinking of asking if you had any suggestions to help manage the anxious thoughts - other than pointing out to myself that they are just unfounded anxieties and trying to ignore them - but that sounds more interesting, lets go with that. You think I have a low self-worth?"

"That's not a bad strategy, actually," Wagner told me, "so I'm glad you're making an effort to do so already. But yes, from what you've said and what I've observed, you don't place a very high value on yourself."

"..what do you mean?" I asked. "I know I have trouble thinking of myself as someone other people will value, but..."

"Yes, stemming from being rejected by your friends in high school after you came out, as we discussed. The thing is, that kind of trauma can have a lasting effect on how you think about yourself from your own perspective, not just what you think about other people."

"That wasn't trauma," I told him. "Everyone deals with rejection sometimes."

"On that level? No, not really," he insisted. "And it would be traumatic even if it was common. Quinn, you lost your whole social circle, people who had been your friends for most of your life. Your only support was your father - it's no wonder you've been feeling like you're falling apart without him."

"...I shouldn't have told you that," I muttered, crossing my arms. It had been the subject of our first session - the overwhelming sense of grief that had overcome me and the grayness that helped me power through it. Wagner had called it an unhealthy coping mechanism, shutting off my emotions so that I could still function, and had given me some strategies to actually work through and lessen the grief other than just avoiding thinking about it - as a result, I was slipping into that state a lot less than I had in those first days, although it still happened on occasion. It was embarrassing to be reminded how stupid I had been about it.

It occurred to me that that was the kind of thing that I might want to talk about with a therapist, and so I said it out loud.

"I'm your therapist, Quinn," Wagner reminded me. "That means you don't have to worry about sounding stupid - and no, you weren't being stupid, even if you think it sounded dumb. You were working through things the only way you knew how to, at the time."

I sighed. "I know, I know, it's just..." I trailed off.

"...you have anxious thoughts about being rejected," he continued for me, "and are afraid of being seen as anything less than perfect."

"...yeah. I know, it's a stupid anxiety..."

"This goes back to what I was saying about your self-worth," Wagner told me. "You fear rejection if you're anything less than perfect, which means you have anxious thoughts about appearing less than perfect, which means that you - knowing that you aren't perfect, as no-one is - feel like you're failing, all the time. And that makes you feel as though the rejection your fear is justified, because you think that you're a failure. The whole thing is a self-reinforcing loop that makes you feel as though you're worth less than other people."

He sighed, then continued, "This is a particularly dangerous thought process for a hero to have. If you don't value your own life, you'll be all too willing to risk it, or to sacrifice it for any purpose."

"...shouldn't a hero be willing to sacrifice themself, though?" I asked. "To risk it for the greater good?"

"Yes, but not too willing. Sacrifice should be the absolute last resort. Risking your life should be something you do only when you must - after all, if you die, you won't be able to help people in the future, not to mention that you will be dead, which no one wants. It should not be, as I fear it will be for you, something you do as the first option."

"...why do you think it's my first option?"

"Perhaps it's just extrapolation guided by my estimation of you," Wagner admitted. "But take a look at what you did with Legion came to town. Without any training at all, you tried to insist on helping, decided that you had to follow her after coincidentally spotting her, engaged in battle despite Canaveral telling you to leave, then spoke to Legion and attempted to pull information from her despite the danger."

"There was a bit of freaking out in the middle there," I pointed out.

"True, but your first instinct each time was to dive further into danger," he said. "I don't mean that you feel you have on value at all - it seems that outside of situations like that, you're willing to view yourself as important. But whenever it's a choice between you and something else - between you and what Legion might have done, between you and the chance you could help Canaveral instead, between you and the possibility of getting some important information from Legion - you always choose against yourself. Hell, even with that costume contest, you chose what people might expect from you over the fact that you didn't really want to do it this year."

I leaned back in the chair, considering. "...you might be right," I admitted after a few minutes. "How do I stop that loop, though? You said it was self-reinforcing..."

"You have to break it by thinking of yourself as someone who has value and worth. My recommendation is positive affirmation. I know it sounds trite," he said, holding up a hand to forestall complaints, "but it really does work. Look in a mirror in the morning or before you go to bed and tell yourself that you're important, and two other good things about yourself - it can be as simple as 'my hair looks good today,' or 'I picked out an outfit I like.' The important thing is that it's something about you, not something that you have to offer to other people or something you did for someone else, but something that you're proud of about yourself or that you did for you."

I nodded. "Okay. I'll give it a try."

"Another thing that can help is doing things for yourself in general, rather than for other people," Wagner continued. "Watch a self-indulgent movie. Buy a new video game or a book. Hell, go on a date! Do something for you, and don't let yourself feel bad about it not being for anyone else."

I immediately thought of Holly, then to 'I'm not good enough for her,' then to 'she'll stop being my friend,' then to ''I don't deserve her friendship anyway.'

"I'm beginning to see what you mean about thought loops," I commented, then relayed that particular train of thought to Wagner - although I didn't tell him that it was Holly I had considered asking out. Some things I wanted to keep private even from my therapist, particularly since he was also her therapist.

He nodded. "It's insidious, but you need to break the loop," he reminded me, then paused. "....actually, strike the dating idea off the table for now," he recommended. "It's probably not a great idea until you've built up a support system that you feel confident in."

"How so?"

"It's easy to get very wrapped up in a relationship, but it's not healthy," he said. "A strong relationship isn't two people who look to each other for everything - they may look to each other first, but they have support systems of friends and family outside each other as well. You, however, have spent more than five years with only one person as your support system. While I've seen you getting better at trusting people and reaching out to them even in only a month, I think you're still at a point where it would be very easy for you to forget everyone other than your partner."

"...and getting all your support from one person isn't healthy," I finished.

"Exactly." He gave me a worried smile. "It's wonderful that you had such a supportive father, but he shouldn't have been alone."

I sighed. "I know you're right," I said, "it's just hard."

"Everything that's worth it is."

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 4 - December 18th
Interior Mansion, Late Evening
Dominic Könberg



"How were your finals?" I asked Viv as she sprawled onto the couch, someone not spilling the coffee she was gripping tightly. I had barely seen my twin over the last week, busy with my own finals.

"A nightmare," she groaned. "The tests themselves wouldn't have been all that bad, except that mother," she inclined her head towards Morgan's wing of the mansion, "didn't let up on the magic training."

I winced. "Ouch. I barely had free time and I didn't have magic tutoring. When did you find time to sleep?"

"I didn't," she muttered darkly, then drained half of the coffee in one long draft. "On the plus side, I learned to do this." She spoke a phrase which my mind completely failed to comprehend or register, and as my hearing returned I saw the coffee refilling itself. Viv sighed happily and took a slower sip of it. "Object manipulation bad as a magical specialty, however difficult it is."

"Why was Morgan being so hard on you?" I asked. "I mean, she knows that we didn't have much time this week..."

"Because my information says Copperfield will be making his move soon," the woman in question said, striding into the room. "He is, apparently, more cautious than I thought - or perhaps less willing to believe any information that he didn't figure out himself -" Morgan made a face, obviously disgusted with someone being so irrationally narcissistic - "but he's been scouting out the Higgins Museum. From what I can see through my scrying, I believe he'll be making the theft tomorrow morning, early."

Percy paused the video game he had been playing while we waited for the rest of the family to arrive and glanced up at her. "A whole month though to get from receiving the information to using it, though? Really?"

She nodded, then shook her head. "Only two weeks, really - I spent a week forging a stealth cloak with the Kovals for Viv to use in our own operation," Morgan nodded to my twin, "but it took nearly a week to make the arrangements for that with them. You know how reclusive they are."

"Mages get like that, I hear," Mom said, entering behind Morgan and propping her head up on the woman's shoulder. She pressed a brief kiss to her cheek, and a smile spread across Morgan's face despite the grim context.

It was true, at least to my knowledge - the Kovals, a couple that Dad had been good friends with back in the day, had become more and more reclusive as their magical research became more and more esoteric. I didn't think I had actually seen either of them in over a decade - I hadn't seen their daughter, either, who had been a good friend of mine and Viv's when we were kids. Morgan, too, would sometimes not emerge from her wing for weeks at a time, but Mom and Dad had always dragged her out before she could get too deep into any particular project and forget about the outside world completely. The Kovals, on the other hand, were both mages - it wasn't surprising that they got wrapped up so completely in their research.

"I'm surprised it only took a week to get through to them," I commented, then turned back to Viv. "You would never get as bad as the Kovals, would you sis?"

"Only if it was a project based around coffee," she joked, then refilled her cup again. "But no, I don't think you'd ever let me get like that."

"Why didn't you just make the cloak yourself?" Percy asked Morgan. "You're a great artificer without them, you don't need their help.

"It would have taken at least three times longer and not been as high quality," she told him. "Enchanting items on your own is slow - the more mages you have the faster it goes, even for me. And the Kovals are the best at any sort of illusions, stealth, or trickery in the world - that's why we asked them to protect our home, after all."

"I guess that makes sense."

Viv yawned. "So Max is going to do his thing tomorrow, right? And we're using that as a distraction?"

"Yeah, can we go over the plan?" I asked.

"We would," Morgan said, "if Tristan were around. Where is he?"

"I think he was calling his girlfriend," Percy said.

"Ooh," Viv and I said in unison. "He's got a girlfriend?" she continued.

"First I've heard of this," I commented.

"And me," Mom agreed. "What's this about a girlfriend?"

Percy shrugged. "Maybe not a girlfriend, but a girl he likes. Some redhead from his school who travels a lot - she's coming back to town tomorrow, a little early, and he's been really excited about it."

Mom shrugged. "Not something to get too excited about, then. Let me know if he actually asks her out so I can embarrass him, though."

"Will do," he said, giving her a thumbs up.

At that moment Tristan zoomed into the room, moving so fast he was nothing more than a green-glowing blur. He skidded to a stop, exiting the magically-fast run, but not fast enough - he nearly collided with the wall, and was only caught by a word from Viv which levitated him into the air by the armor strapped to his legs.

"Tristan," Morgan said to him disapprovingly. "You know you're not supposed to wear your father's armor without cause."

He flipped her off, and she rolled her eyes. "Super-speed is way too useful not to use it," he declared. "Besides, it took almost two decades for the magic to mess with dad, and even then it only came up because... well... and I'm only wearing one piece of the set anyway!"

Viv spoke another one of those incomprehensible words, and our little brother flipped upside down in the air, now dangling nearly out of the greaves. "You know that Alzheimer's runs in families, right Tristan?" she said. "We're all at risk. And the fact that the effects of the armor didn't become apparent until he needed magical healing means that we have no idea how long it took for it to complicate dad's. Mother is right - we don't wear the armor unless we have to."

He sighed. "Fine, I get it. Can you put me down though? I'm getting a headache."

"You deserve it," she said. "Little brat." But the next word she spoke did lowered him gently to the ground, rather than dropping him unceremoniously.

When he landed, Tristan began to unbuckle the magical armor from his legs. As each piece was removed, they stopped emitting the faint green mist that showed they were in use, and went inert instead.

"We let you each hold onto your piece of Art's armor so you could practice, not so you could use it frivolously," Mom told him.

He rolled his eyes. "Viv just gave me the chewing out, I don't need it from you and mother too."

"None of the rest of you have been using your pieces without supervision, right kids?" Mom asked, glancing around the room. We all shook our heads. "See?"

Tristan crossed his arms and pouted.

"Can we please get to the briefing?" I asked.

"Yes, of course," Morgan said.



Scene 5 - December 18th
Interior Mansion, Continuous
Dominic Könberg



Morgan tapped the TV - one of the many enchanted items that she had created for the family - and quietly murmured the phrase that activated it, allowing her to project sounds and images to it directly from her mind. It popped on and began displaying a split screen image of the MLED Compound on one side and the Higgins Museum on the other.

"Tomorrow morning," she began, "Canaveral will be on duty, with Zookeeper on call in the Compound. We know that Starling does not generally take overtime, but Vulcan is known to do so on occasion, and Anima does so regularly - as such, we should assume that Canaveral, Zookeeper, Vulcan, and Anima are all potentially in play." As she spoke each name, their logos appeared on the screen over the MLED Compound. "Also potentially appearing are any of the Journeymen - Loki, Journey, Hypnos, Sequoia, and Newton - with the exception of Referee, who is still out of town and not returning, according to her schedule, for another two days."

"And thank god for that," I muttered, Viv nodding in agreement.

"My scrying has told me that only Hypnos is actually scheduled to work tomorrow," Morgan continued, "but all of the Journeymen regularly spend time at the Compound outside of the time they work, so assume that they're present.

"Fortunately..." A logo for the Magnificent Maxwell appeared on the side of the Higgins museum. "We're going to have an unwitting patsy to draw off the heroes. Max is looking for an instructional book written by Merlin, but what he'll actually find when he searches the museum will be a power-magnifying artifact that should induce him to provide a rather effective distraction."

"What's he going to find?" Viv asked. "All you've said is 'power-magnifying artifact', which could be just about anything."

Morgan hesitated. "I'm... not completely certain," she admitted. "Peregrine always played his cards close to the chest, when it came to powerful artifacts like this. I know that it can make just about anyone into a city-level threat, even Max. It should be enough to draw off the adult heroes."

"Will it be enough to draw in Peregrine?" Percy asked. "If it's one of the things he keeps an eye on..."

"Max picked a good time for it," she said. "Peregrine won't be available until the 23rd at the absolute earliest, probably not until the 24th or 25th. We will be done before the day is out."

"Okay, so Max finds this thing and becomes enough of a threat to draw in the heroes to deal with him," I summed. "While they're busy with him..."

Morgan nodded, and the logos of the adult heroes moved to the Higgins Museum side of the screen. "While they're busy dealing with him, you all sneak Vivian into the Compound." She smiled at Viv, who preened. "She's the one who'll be wearing the Kovals' stealth cloak and will be taking the information from the servers - when and if you're detected, the rest of you need to draw any attention away from her."

"Shouldn't the stealth cloak be enough on it's own?" Percy asked. "The Kovals are the best mages for deception in the world, so..."

"We don't know if Loki would be able to see through it," Morgan said. "His power over light might be able to trump theirs, since he's more specialized. Probably not, but it isn't worth risking, so you'll be ready to distract him if necessary." We nodded. "Once Viv gets the info, you just need to escape and break contact with any pursuers long enough to get back under the Kovals' wards, and then..." She sighed. "Well, I won't know what then until we have the info. But I'll be able to start working out the next step."

"Are you sure I can't convince you to join us?" Mom asked her. "It would be nice to have a full fledged mage along with us. No offense, honey," she said to Viv.

"None taken," Viv responded, flapping an arm dismissively. "I know I'm barely more than an apprentice - just enough to defend myself if I get caught along the way, and even that's a maybe."

"You don't even get a superpower from your piece," Tristan teased.

Viv frowned at him. "Intelligence is a superpower, Tristan. Just because you don't have any yourself-"

"Kids, come on," Mom said soothingly. "We all love each other, right?"

"...yeah," Tristan muttered, and Viv nodded.

"So apologize."

"She didn't apologize for using magic on me earlier," he protested.

"That was to stop you from slamming into the wall," Viv defended herself.

"Viv is right," Mom said sternly. "That was for your own good - this was just cruel sniping from both of you, and I won't have that. Not among family. So apologize, alright?"

"...sorry," they chorused.

"Right."

"Still, it doesn't seem as obviously useful as, say... earthbending," Tristan said, gesturing at me, then at Percy. "Or super-strength. Or..." he grinned. "Super-speed."

I raised my eyebrows at mom, who considered this and then shrugged, apparently deciding that it fell on the right side of teasing.

"It may not seem as useful, but it is," Viv insisted. "It's part of the set for a reason - the increased speed in thinking matches the super-speed, the enhanced focus and enhanced senses in general help guide the earthbending. Not to mention how much of a boost it's been for learning and using magic."

"Kids," Morgan said, drawing our attention back to the TV. "Let's keep going with the briefing, okay? Can we go over the floor plan, maybe?"

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 6 - December 19th
Interior Higgins Museum, Early Morning
Maxwell Copperfield



It was easy enough to slip into the Higgins Museum - while its main doors were opaque and it had no windows on the ground floor, the second level of the old building had windows. I simply stepped into a dimensional pocket and out of it within the museum.

There was no need for stage haze today - my careful expeditions into the museum over the last week to determine its security system told me that there were no laser wires - at least, not in the areas I was going to. Instead, I had to take slow, careful steps - the museum was protected mainly by sound detectors. They were mostly meant to pick up the shattering of glass cases, but if they were sensitive enough... I wasn't sure how sensitive they were. Probably not very, since there would be a night guard around somewhere and another in the security office, and whoever was on duty tonight was unlikely to have a light step. Just in case, however, I had vanished my shoes for the moment, and replaced the thin socks which usually went with my suit with thick woolen ones to further muffle the soft sound of my footsteps.

I had remembered about the security cameras, this time, and had bought a device from Motael which the gadgeteer had assured me would leave me invisible to the cameras and prevent any outgoing alarms, but I hadn't been able to afford the extra for it to work on the noise sensors. I had no idea how it worked, but I trusted him not to backstab me - he was smart enough not to ruin his reputation as the city's best provider of tech to villains. Not over something so apparently small, anyway.

It was ridiculous how long it had taken me to find this damn book, I mused as I began moving towards the Camelot exhibit, which was the current centerpiece of the museum. After the discovery that Merlin's book had fallen into a dimensional pocket bound to one of 14 foundational stones of Camelot, I had spent three months steadily tracking where each of the stones had ended up. I had only found 11 of them when I had figured out the key, just a week or two ago - the storage enchantment that Merlin had laid down, and that his book had fallen afoul of, was on all of Camelot's stones - as a collection, not each stone individually. As such, any of the stones should be able to act as my key into the dimension that contained the manual.

The manual and a number of other magical relics, which I would also be taking. But those were just bonuses.

I had to pause on my way through the dinosaur exhibit, hearing the night guard approach. As I had guessed, he was a heavyset man, although he was younger than I would have thought. He wouldn't be any trouble to slip into a pocket until the end of the night, if I had to, but instead I hid - I wanted this theft to go unnoticed. No one should have any reason to know or care that the stone doubled as magical storage, so I was confident it was possible - all I had to do was continue dodge the security as I had been.

Despite my attempts at stealth, however, the guard seemed to have picked up on something. Even though his rounds shouldn't take him actually through the dinosaur exhibit until closer to sunrise, he had paused to shine his flashlight into the darkness. I huddled behind the podium that held the T. Rex and hoped he would move on his own.

No such luck. "Who's there?" the guard called. How to make him think that he had imagined whatever had drawn his attention...

Well, it had begun storming an hour or two ago. Perhaps I could...

I released a large sheet of aluminum into my arms - not big enough to be seen around the edge of the podium, but still sizable. I shook it once or twice, and the wobbling metal made a sound like thunder - a classic foley trick that I had used in a show a few years ago.

The sound of the thunder, as I had hoped, triggered the alarm system. The guard cursed and spoke. "Hey, shut off that alarm," he said, and I heard him turn and begin to walk away. "No, it was the thunder. Loud as shit, you hear that?"

I leaned around the edge of the podium and saw that the guard was speaking into a walkie talkie, presumably to his partner in the security office. His voice began to fade as he continued his rounds, saying, "You really didn't hear that? I thought I was gonna go deaf for a moment, damn thing nearly..."

The alarms faded and shut off, and I breathed out. I was glad I hadn't had to resort to my next idea - starting a fire behind him. I had finally cracked adding kinetic energy to what I released from my dimensional pockets a month or so ago - at a very basic level, at least. I still couldn't add in much more than the equivalent of a gentle shove. I remembered the lesson I had learned along the way, though - the twisting of my mind that would ignite whatever I pulled out. My extradimensional storage now held a box of matches to be dropped anywhere that might need to catch fire, as well as a few bags of flour in case I needed explosions and a huge stack of flash paper, for more harmless flames. I didn't want to hurt anyone, after all.

But I digress.

I didn't run into any other trouble as I headed towards the Camelot exhibit, thankfully, so the museum remained unburnt. Its centerpiece was the stone itself, which was the only genuine artifact in the exhibit - everything else was a reproduction of something that actually lived in a different museum, or at least in storage.

The stone was pretty large as such things went, according to the placard left by the museum. It had been set up as something like a table - only six inches or so thick, but five feet long and three feet wide. It was sitting atop four supports, just like table legs. Apparently, it and other stones like it had been used to make a flat, sturdy foundation for the castle to be built on.

But its exact history didn't matter to me - what mattered was what lay inside it.

Looking at the slab of rock, I could easily see the magical energies that oozed out of it like sap from a tree. It was a slow but steady emission of a power that was invisible to the naked eye, but stood out to a magician looking for it like a sore thumb. I used that leaking energy as a guide, reaching out a hand and my mind to follow the flow of the power back to the dimension it was leaking from.

It wasn't meant to leak, I could tell, but the extradimensional space was damaged - if it ought to have had a massive vault door, impossible to breach but opening easily to those with the proper key, that door had been bent and broken by the magical battle that had resulted in the book falling into it. The metaphorical vault door was wedged firmly into its frame and wouldn't come out even to someone with a key - it was sealed shut to the point that I couldn't really blame the hero who had accidentally done it for failing to retrieve the lost artifacts.

But I wasn't Murphy Fox, and the seal of the vault was less perfect than it ought to have been, even if it could no longer open properly - the leaking energy was proof of that. I could get in, I was certain of it.

It was something like picking a lock and something like crawling through a tunnel and something like navigating a rope maze, but mostly it wasn't like any of those. Working magic on the world could be understood with a metaphor, perhaps, but there was no metaphor up to the task of explaining what it was like to work magic on another piece of magic. Trying wasn't like trying to explain sight to a blind man - it was like a blind man trying to explain sight.

Despite the incomprehensibility of the task, however, I was making progress.



Scene 7 - December 19th
Interior Higgins Museum, Continuous
Michael Vimes



"Look, Terry," I said to my partner, "that security office is underground and clear on the other side of the building to boot! It's not that weird that you didn't hear the thunder!"

"I'm telling you, it's weird," she insisted. "I have good hearing, I would have heard something if it was really as loud as you said. Besides, it's not storming - just raining. I mean, have you even heard any other thunder?"

"No," I had to admit. "But even so -"

"And it's not like the sensors go off for thunder normally. This shit is high tech, Mike, it can tell the difference between thunder outside and a sound from inside. I'm telling you, something's up."

"You think someone snuck in here to set off the alarms with a fake thunder noise?" I skeptically asked.

"I think someone used a fake thunder noise to cover up a more suspicious sound," she said. "And they did it right in front of you so that you would have me mark it as a false alarm."

I sighed. "Alright, alright. I'll go back and double check the dinosaur exhibit. Lemme just look in on the Camelot thing first - it's right here, I might as well."

"Fine. Just make it quick."

I stepped into the central room of the museum to see the current rotating exhibit - a bunch of shit from the early middle ages, plus a rock that was supposed to be from Camelot. I didn't know the details, just what it was supposed to look like under the light of my flashlight.

It didn't look like it should.

The hunk of rock that was the exhibit's centerpiece was glowing,the upper face of it rippling like water and emitting an eerie light that illuminated the figure of a man in red leaning over it, his hands extended in the air above the freaky thing.

"Hey!" I shouted, grabbing for my walkie talkie to tell Terry. I missed in my surprise - in all the years I had worked as night guard, I had never bumped into anyone stealing on my watch. Or... doing whatever the hell this guy was going. "Hey, step away from the... the thing!"

He glanced up at me and sighed. A click of his fingers and my walkie talkie was in his hand, not on my belt. "I don't suppose," he asked in a remarkably smooth voice, "that I could convince you to forget you saw this?"

"Um..." I stared at him, confused.

"I can give you money," he added, apparently trying to clarify the bribery attempt. "I promise, I'm not stealing anything the museum knows about."

"...what the hell does that mean?"

He gestured to the stone, and its surface wavered. "This stone is a magical container of a sort. It contains a number of artifacts thought lost forever."

"The hell you mean by artifacts?" I demanded.

"Allow me to demonstrate," he said, flashing me a grin. He plunged his arm - not the one holding my walkie talkie - into the surface of the stone like it was a pool of water, and began rooting around within it. The smile on his face quickly faded into a frown. "...the hell?"

"Is it empty, or some shit?" I couldn't help but ask.

"No," the red-suited man said, sounding irritated, "but the book I was expecting to find isn't here. Neither is anything else I thought was in there. All there is, is..."

He pulled, and a gleaming sword came out of the stone.

It was a ornate longsword, a golden crossguard protecting the hand from a long silver blade. It didn't stay that way long, though - the shape of the blade began to morph and shift, shrinking to only two feet long or so and the crossguard changing shape as well, until it was something almost like a long wand.

​

The intruder's eyes flashed as he stared at the sword, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose. A moment later flame began to lick around him, sprouting from nothingness in a ghostly aura that didn't seem to harm him at all, only give him an eerie, backlit aura.

A smile spread across his face, and while he was undeniably handsome, that smile in that light made him ugly. The man had done barely anything, and I was more terrified of him than I had ever been in my life.

I was almost grateful when he flicked the wand towards me, and everything went dark.



Scene 8 - December 19th
Interior MLED Compound, Morning
Emilia Alvarez



I shifted in the large seat, trying to settle into the console chair better, and once again cursed the rule that those manning the console had to be in costume. I understood why, yes - the hero on console was also on call, ready to pass it to an unpowered agent or to a Journeyman if their presence was necessary, but my costume just wasn't comfortable to sit in.

It didn't usually bother me that my costume left me naked beneath the covering coat - it was a simple necessity, given that my shapeshifting power didn't change my clothes with me. I could either wear something that was easy to slip into and out of as I shifted, or I could destroy clothes every time I had to change. The choice was easy - it's not as though I had ever been body-shy - despite the slut-shaming it drew from the conservative segments of the media and, just as bad if not worse, the lustful comments from many men. And some women.

But whenever I had console duty and found myself sitting my bare ass on a leather coat on a leather-covered seat, I went through this same train of thought.

A name caught my eye in one of the scrolling newsfeeds that the console displayed on one of its many screens, '...seems to be local supervillain the Magnificent Maxwell...' and I switched a screen over to the relevant channel. What had Max done this time?

I found myself watching in horror as a pair of all-too-nonchalant newscasters discussed what my ex-boyfriend was doing, and whether or not he could actually match up to his demands. Apparently, he had declared himself to be the new king of New Venice, and as his first act had demanded tribute from all those who wished to continue operating within the city.

Even now, one of the news anchors said, and the channel switched to a video demonstrating, Max appeared to be constructing a castle from which to rule. The Higgins Museum was being reshaped, pieces of it vanishing and reappearing in different places, and just as they claimed it was bearing an increasing resemblance to a castle.

"Oh, Max," I whispered, leaning forward to call Abe in from patrol so he could make a plan, "what in god's name are you thinking?"

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 9 - December 19th
Interior MLED Compound, Late Morning
Emilia Alvarez



It took longer than I'd have liked for Abe to get back to the Compound - he was a fast mover, but Nic had gone out on patrol for the first time today, and he was limited to normal human speed. After fifteen minutes or so, however, my boyfriend arrived with the Journeyman in tow. His usual relaxed smile was gone, replaced by stern frown - I felt much the same.

"Have you been able to get in contact with him?" Abe asked me as soon as he walked into the room.

I rose from the console chair and nodded at it. "Take over for me?" I asked Nic, who nodded and slid into place. Abe and I stepped out, heading towards the staging area that led directly out of the Compound. "I called three times," I told him, "but he didn't pick up."

"He didn't pick up for me, either," Abe said. "Something's up with him."

"This is completely out of character for Max," I agreed. "He's never pulled anything like this before. I mean, I guess the demand for tribute is something he might want, since he called out Arthur Peregrine in particular, but..."

"But he usually stuck to theft," Abe finished. "This is just... megalomaniacal." I nodded. "Did you get in contact with the other Champions?"

"Miriam is on her way, but Adam is busy. And Ben..."

"...never takes overtime, yeah. That..." He let out a sigh, clearly thinking that he was an ass but not saying it. "I think we should call Peregrine, too."

"You think so?"

"Yeah," Abe nodded, "I have a feeling there's some magic bullshit going on here - not only is this kind of thing out of character for Max, it's also well beyond his capabilities - or what I thought were his capabilities, anyway. I just hope that Peregrine answers." He strode to the staging area's video call screen, a large tv and camera combo that hung on the wall, and quickly navigated through a contacts list to call Peregrine.

We waited, both feeling tense, as the screen rang once... twice... three times... then sprang into life.

Arthur Peregrine was a man who could be best described as 'tired'. He always looked as though he hadn't slept the night before, heavy bags under his half-lidded eyes and the general demeanor of an overworked professor. He wore no costume, instead wearing a warm sweater beneath a dark blazer. The only concession to his status as a registered hero, not just a powerful magician, was the pin on one side of the blazer's collar - a golden bird, wings spread, which I identified as a peregrine falcon. He seemed to be answering the call from a phone, as the viewpoint shifted slightly until it stabilized, presumably set down and propped against something.



"Canaveral. Zookeeper. What is it," he said, and it didn't sound like a question.

I had never spoken with the man before - he tended to discourage unnecessary calls - so it startled me a little that he was able to identify me on site, and his directness put me off balance as well. My boyfriend, thankfully, had no such issue.

"A local mage and super criminal, the Magnificent Maxwell, is attempting to assert control over New Venice," he began.

"Really? How odd," Arthur noted.

"We thought so as well. It's out of character for the man, a very different means and apparent motive than he's ever had before. It's also a threat well above the abilities he's shown to date."

"It does indeed seem to be a level of narcissism well beyond the tendencies I spotted in him when we met," Arthur agreed. "And he's certainly not able to threaten an entire city at once - only a few people in world can boast that, and I keep track of all of them."

"Wait, you've met Max?" I cut in.

He nodded. "I interviewed him in hopes of gaining a new apprentice, some... four years ago, I believe. It was shortly after he began studying magic, and he showed a certain amount of promise, but his style of casting wasn't very compatible with mine. Between that and the narcissistic leanings I mentioned, he didn't make it through the interview."

"I didn't know he had interviewed with you," I said. "In fact, from the way he talked about you, I got the impression you didn't take apprentices at all. And... narcissistic leanings?"

Arthur shrugged. "Very rarely, I'm afraid. My style of casting is quite uncommon, and my standards are quite high. It's been 20 years since I had an apprentice, and another 30 before that. And yes, narcissistic leanings, if not full-blown narcissistic personality disorder - the man was very self-centered and seemed to view the world as revolving around himself. But that's beside the point."

"Is it?" Abe asked. "Max is demanding tribute from you in particular. I think he wants knowledge he believes that you're keeping from the world, and him specifically - maybe because of the narcissism you're accusing him of."

"Possible, I suppose. But you seem to know Mr. Copperfield quite well already - why are you calling me?"

"Because this is out of character and beyond his abilities," Abe reminded him, "and I have sources that tell me Max has been looking for a magical artifact. If he's found it, could the artifact be the reason?"

I glanced at him curiously. It had been a while since I had seen Max - not since we had broken up, in fact - so I was curious how Abe had learned what he was after. As far as I knew, they had met only briefly, on Quinn's first night heroing.

"Possibly," Arthur said. "It depends on the artifact. Do you know what it was?"

"It was described to me as an instructional book written by Merlin," Abe told him. "If he found it, could that explain the jump in his power?"

The magician shook his head. "Quite impossible."

"How can you be sure?"

"Three reasons." He lifted three fingers to count them down. "First, the book is a basic primer to a variety of subjects - it doesn't cover them in the depth necessary to, say, threaten a city. Learning basic information about pyromancy, yes - deepening his manipulation of extradimensional spaces to the point that he could affect an entire city, no.

"Second, the book is written in Old English, and not very well written at that. It's almost useless as a primer even if you can decipher the language, which I doubt that Mr. Copperfield could do.

"And thirdly..." Arthur reached off the edge of what the video call showed, and there was a crackle like lightning on his end, along with a flash of light from off screen. He retracted his hand holding a thick, obviously primitive book. "...the book has been in my library for nearly 20 years. There's no possibility that he could stolen it once, let alone returned it without my notice." He set it down.

"Then... what was Max looking for?" I asked. "If your source was mistaken..."

"More likely, he's unaware that I have it. The book had fallen into a pocket dimension in 1999, along with a number of other artifacts from the time, and I didn't publicize it when I recovered them..." His eyes widened. "Fuck," he suddenly whispered.

"What's wrong?" Abe asked.

"If he tracked the book to that pocket dimension, he might have taken what I left behind," Arthur said, not really looking at us. "If he did..." The wizard vanished in another loud crackle and a flash of light, an effect which seemed to cause the video to be overcome by static for a few moments, slowly fading from the inside out.

Abe and I exchanged glances. "If Arthur Peregrine is worried about whatever Max found..." he began.

"...we probably should be too," I finished, and he nodded.

There was another crackle, and when the static faded from the screen, Arthur was visible again - this time, he didn't seem tired at all, and was instead fuming. "It's as I feared," he informed us. "Copperfield has drawn Excalibur back into the world."

"The... the sword in the stone?" I asked.

"Not exactly. They both belonged to King Arthur, but the sword in the stone was broken in battle, and Excalibur a gift from -" he began, then stopped. "Not important, I suppose. The point is that Excalibur is a very powerful artifact - one of the ones I habitually check on every week - and I left it in that pocket dimension for a reason."

"What does it do?" Abe asked. "I think I remember something about it making the wielder invincible, but..."

"Keep in mind," Arthur warned, "that this blade has not been used in more than a millennium - it's been locked in those stones ever since Charlemagne lost it. The information I have may not be reliable."

"Anything you can tell us will be helpful," I assured him.

He sighed. "In principal, Excalibur is not dissimilar to the wide variety of magical items that can only be used by those considered worthy. However, it takes a different stance on this than Mjolnir, which cannot even be lifted except by the worthy, or Corquestor, which will lead the unworthy to ruin. Instead, Excalibur declares that those who touch it without being worthy of kingship should become worthy."

"...and what, exactly, does that mean?" Abe asked. "That's not incredibly clear."

"It acts as a general enhancement to whoever wields it," Arthur explained. "My belief is that it enhances all aspects of a person, including the power of any metahuman abilities and their skill in magic, until whatever quality the blade measures to determine worthiness is fulfilled."

"So Max wouldn't have been worthy, but the sword enhanced him until he was," I summed up. "And in the process, it made him powerful enough to threaten the city."

He nodded. "And most likely enhanced his narcissistic tendencies into full-fledged megalomania, which is why he seems to think it's a good idea to do so."

"Can you come help us, then?" I asked. "If Excalibur is so dangerous..."

He sighed. "I wish I could, but this is the worst possible time for it. I won't be available at all until the 23rd, at the earliest. Possible the 22nd, if things go badly for this week's interviews, but... well, I have confidence that you'll have dealt with the situation by then regardless of my availability."

"What keeps you so busy?" I couldn't help but wonder.

"Today I'm familiarizing myself with every patient in Peregrine Hospital, so that I can heal them as efficiently as possible when I make my weekly visit tomorrow. The Monday following will be spent on those administrative duties that I can't push off to my deputy. Then Tuesday is my weekly search for an apprentice - I have a young man from California in the morning, although I don't have much hope for him, and a more promising young lady from India in the afternoon."

"But if she falls flat and the interview ends quickly, you'll be able to come?"

He nodded. "But as I said, she shows a lot of promise. I hope I'll be able to accept her - it has, as I said, been far too long since I took an apprentice. If this had happened in the last three days..."

"More free those days?"

"I'm not exactly less busy, on Wednesdays and Thursdays, but they're solitary days rather than filled with appointments. I'm more able to shuffle those projects around - Wednesday I check on the status of various magical dangers, including Excalibur, and Thursday is my day for research."

"And Friday?" I asked, curious.

"Friday is my one day off," Arthur told me. "I'll come for situations like this, but I need at least some rest." He sighed. "Honestly, I barely have time for this phone call."

"Sorry to distract you, then," Abe said. "We'll leave you be, and... I suppose we'll send you a message when the situation is over, so you don't have to worry about it during your interviews."

"I'd appreciate it." The call ended with no further preamble. I suppose I understood why the man had been so curt at the beginning, now that I knew how busy he was.

"What have I missed?" Anima asked, entering.

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 10 - December 19th
Interior MLED Compound, Continuous
Abraham Armstrong



"Short version?" I said to Anima, "our ex-boyfriend is being possessed by a magic sword that's making him think he should be a king, and is giving him enough power to let him pull it off."

She nodded. "Sounds about right. It's been what, six months since anything big went down? We're due for something of the sort. Odd that it's Max, though - he's always stuck to small scale stuff, until now."

"He tries to keep his threat level low," I explained, "to avoid a level of response that he couldn't escape from. Looks like the sword has made him forget that - Director Shepard called me on my way back to let me know that he had been ungraded to a mid-level threat." That meant that a hero shouldn't go in against him without backup unless absolutely necessary, as it had been with Legion last month. I was just glad that he hadn't been put all the way at high - that would call in heroes from out-of-town who were considered best able to deal with the situation, if they were available in time. But out-of-towners were unlikely to try and talk Max down, as I hoped Emilia and I could do. "With the sword affecting him, though..."

"I hope he's alright, then," Anima said. "He's... well, maybe a little less with Max, to be honest, but you know I think of all of you like my kids. I don't want anything to happen to him."

"You really are everyone's mom, aren't you?" I asked, trying to summon up a teasing tone despite my worry.

She shrugged. "I've just accepted it, at this point. I'm just waiting for Molly to let me fill out the adoption papers."

"I called Vulcan and Starling too," my girlfriend said to Anima, "but they turned the overtime down. It's just us until their shift starts tonight."

"How urgent is the situation?" Anima asked. "Can we afford to wait that long?"

"He hasn't made any violent moves yet," I said, "but the optics of letting the castle he's turned the Higgins Museum into stand for even a whole day would be a nightmare. We have to move soon."

"Are we calling in the Journeymen, too?"

I shook my head. "No way. Like I said, he's at mid-level now, not low - and his power is probably boosted enough that he could get a high threat level if he's fighting seriously, not that it wasn't close to that already. I'm not bringing any of the kids into that."

"Agreed."

"It's just Max," Nic said over the intercom. "Grab Holly - I think they were hanging out with Simone and Quinn today, so she ought to be able to get here quick - and you can shut him down easy. He needs to see to use his powers, right?"

"No, he doesn't," I corrected him. "It makes it easier, and he can only teleport where he can see, but he can use his powers in general just by knowing something is there. I wouldn't really be against Holly coming, to be honest, but I'm not risking Quinn getting involved."

"Then tell them 'no'."

I laughed. "Last time I told them no, they stumbled onto the villain on the way home. I'm just not going to tell them - that should keep them out of trouble."

"Quinn does tend to get into trouble," Emilia admitted. "Remember how they just happened to be passing by the bar that Essa and Maria were celebrating their anniversary at? Thank god we were all there too, or Maria would have gone full Borda on the unknown superhero passing by - you know how touchy she is about Essa's safety."

"Yeah, that could have been bad," Anima agreed.

"Point is that we're not taking any of the Journeymen. Nic," I said in the vague direction of the room's microphone, "I'd be shocked if other villains in the city had no reaction to this. Keep us updated."

"Sure."

"As for us," I said to Emilia and Anima, "let's get moving."

Emilia shifted into a raven and perched on my shoulder - her costume wasn't practical for winter temperatures, especially since it was snowing lightly, but she had a wide variety of forms that could handle the cold better - a raven was one of the those winter forms that could also speak. She rubbed her beak against my cheek and let out a happy croak, and I rubbed the back of her head.

Anima and I, on the other hand, had to settle for the cold-weather versions of our costumes. Hers replaced the cropped blue jacket she usual wore with a full coat with her heart emblem emblazoned on the labels - mine, on the other hand, was woven of a heavier fabric as well as replacing the long flowing cape I usually wore with a heavy wool cloak in the same brilliant red shade.

After zipping up her coat, she had selected one of the premade golems that Starling had built for her and animated it, white lightning crackling across its hulking form so that it could carry us. While Anima was capable of creating golems from any material and shaping it into any form she wanted, they were limited by the strength of the material - not to mention that it took more out of her to animate heavier objects. Starling regularly built her golems for her to take into battle which were crafted of exotic materials, stronger, tougher, and lighter than the concrete, asphalt, or wood she normally worked with if she had to create a new golem in the city.

The one she had chosen was a great bird - a roc, I think Starling had called it, although I wasn't nearly as knowledgeable about mythology as he was. It was large enough to carry two people on its back at once - plus a raven tagging along for the ride - with only a 25-foot wingspan. That made it perfect for travel in the city.

I clambered into the golem's saddle right behind Anima, and the roc lurched through the staging area's open window. It flapped its wings once, twice, and we were off.



Scene 11 - December 19th
Exterior City, Continuous
Abraham Armstrong



"Abe..." Emilia croaked from my shoulder.

"Yes, dear?"

"I'm worried about Max," she told me. "If Excalibur is affecting his mind... what will happen if we take it away? Might it have some kind of addictive affect?"

"That would make sense, I suppose," I said. "If you're already going to affect a victim's mind, making it addictive prevents them from even wanting to break it. But from what Peregrine said, the parts of it that affect the mind weren't intentional - they're a side effect of its enhancement."

"Well, I'm also thinking about those narcissistic tendencies Arthur mentioned," she admitted. "I didn't notice anything at the time, but in retrospect... Max always had a way of making everything not his fault, didn't he?"

I nodded. "He did, yeah. I didn't notice any major red flags either, but Peregrine probably isn't wrong that he has tendencies."

"And I'm afraid... well, if he's teetering on the edge of narcissism at the best of times, this might tip him the wrong way. The power boost..." She let out a concerned-sounding croak and buried her beak into the crook of my neck.

I gently stroked her feathers. "I see the worry. I hope we can talk him down, but... in the end, I think he's probably going to need some therapy."

"I don't know whether to hope his trial has him declared non compos mentis or not," she admitted. "I don't want Max to go to jail."

"I know. I still care for him too."

Emilia strove to add a touch of amusement to her voice despite the limitations of a raven's voice as she said, "Just 'care for', huh?"

"Okay, okay, I still love him a little. Can you blame me?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I still love him a little too. He was a good boyfriend, when he was actually paying attention."

"When he was paying attention," I agreed, a little sourly. Max's tendency to get so wrapped up in magical research had been the single biggest reason we had broken up with him, much more so than the relatively-harmless crimes he committed. Had committed, until now. "He's great at everything, when he's paying attention."

Emilia rubbed her beak on my cheek in a little bird kiss, and said, "You're pretty great too, Abe."

I couldn't help but smile at that, and turned my head to press a kiss of my own to her beak. "I love you."

"I love you too."

"Done being sappy?" Anima teased from her seat ahead of us. "We should talk about our approach to Max, you know."

"Right, sorry." I straightened up, Emilia shifting her grip on my shoulder slightly as I did. "I want to try talking him down first. If we can just get him to give up the sword, I'm certain that he'll stop on his own."

"A pretty big if," Anima noted.

"It is," I admitted, "but Emilia and I know him pretty well. I think there's a chance."

"And if not? What can we expect from him, combat-wise?"

I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. "Hard to say. Last I heard, he had picked up a kind of line-of-sight teleportation, but otherwise was still just bringing things in and out of pocket dimensions at a limited range. I know he was trying to figure out kinetic manipulation, at least enough to launch stuff as he released it, but I don't think he had figured it out yet.

"On the other hand... his abilities will have been boosted by Excalibur, and it's not clear exactly what form that will take. It might just let him use the abilities he already has at a higher level - pocket more mass and from a longer ranger - or it might leapfrog him to a higher understanding of magic and give him access to new abilities that he's been working on."

"It let him reshape the musuem," Emilia pointed out. "How do we think he's doing that?"

"Could be a power of Excalibur itself," I suggested. "After all, as Peregrine described it, it makes the holder into a king, according to its own requirements. A castle could easily be one of those - maybe it reshapes the world around you into one, and just used the museum as material?"

"Or it could be an expanded magic thing," she said. "If he can pocket parts of objects now, and his storage is large enough, he could just pocket the building piece by piece and put it together differently. That's what it looked like on the news broadcast I saw, anyway."

"So, worst-case scenario," Anima began, "he'll have all his usual powers, at a higher level than usual, and has kinetic manipulation enough to launch objects, and is working with objects much larger than ever before."

"Best to assume that," I said grimly. "The sword is going to be trouble, I can just tell."

"I wish Referee was back," Emilia said wistfully. "She'd completely cancel its effects out. Would get us boosted to match, at the very least."

"Yeah, well... her flight doesn't land until this afternoon, and we can't wait that long," I said. "If we have to, we can retreat and come back later with her."

"If he lets us," Anima said darkly.

"He's never killed before - he's always avoided even seriously injuring people," I protested.

"That's not what I meant. He can pocket living beings, right?"

"Sure, he's done it to doves before," Emilia confirmed. "Apparently time doesn't pass in his pocket dimension, so it doesn't even feel like anything."

"So he could just drop us into his dimension, then," said Anima, "and there's not really anything we could do about it."

I considered this. "That... is possible. Again, it's something he's never done before - he always tries to keep his threat level low, like I said before, and that would certainly raise it. But..."

"...but he doesn't seem to care about that anymore," Emilia finished.

"...we should have waited for Referee and Vulcan," Anima said.

"...maybe."

We fell silent for the next few minutes, until the roc approached the great marble castle that had once been the Higgins Museum.

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 12 - December 19th
Interior MLED Compound, Late Morning
Dominic Könberg



"Why do we have to visit the compound?" Tristan complained as we went through the security line. "It's boring. I've seen it before!"

He was playing the part of the moody teenager perfectly - one of the guards was clearly suppressing a smirk as he performed a perfunctory search of Mom's bag. I, meanwhile, simply stepped through a metal detector, which beeped at me.

"Belt," the guard said.

I pulled it off and tossed it in a bin, then went through again, this time without issue. Tristan took his belt off before going through the detector, which allowed him through without issue.

Our strategy for infiltrating the building had been devised by Viv and Morgan the previous week, and basically boiled down to 'look like random civilians with different identifying marks for as long as possible'. To that end, I was wearing a beard to make me look a little older, and my naturally-white hair had been died mostly - but not entirely - brown, to make me appear to be closer to Mom's age. With Tristan beside us, we looked like a couple and their teenage son arriving a little early for the afternoon's tour - enough to start with lunch while we waited. Viv and Percy had entered a few minutes earlier, similarly disguised as a couple, to prevent us from being identifiable as a group of the right size and composition - Viv's own distinctive hair had been temporarily dyed auburn, while Percy was wearing contacts instead of his usual glasses.

For much the same reason, we were making just a little trouble in the security lines. Viv had insisted that the guards would remember a group going through perfectly more than a group that forgot a handful of random things - Mom's purse held a pocketknife for the same reason, although it looked like the guard had either missed it or not cared as he passed it to her.

Having passed through security without incident, we began making our way to the cafeteria, keeping an eye out for Viv and Percy - they were supposed to be finding a quiet place for us to change into our costumes for the next leg of the infiltration. Shortly before reaching the cafeteria, I spotted Viv leaning out of what looked like a conference room door, gesturing for us to come closer.

"Finally," Tristan muttered as we joined her.

"Cameras down?" I asked, my eyes flicking up to a security camera in the ceiling.

"Should be," she confirmed. "The spell Mother gave me went without a hitch, and there haven't been any alarms, so..."

"Great."

The door closed behind us and I saw that Percy was already changed, wearing a stylized set of plate armor and a red cloak, the hood down to reveal his helmet. His arms were crossed across his chest as he leaned against one wall, blood-red mist drifting around his gauntlets. "What took you so long?" he asked, and though his helmet covered his mouth I could tell that he was smiling. "Feels like I've been waiting for ages."

"You're just eager to tweak the nose of the MLED," Mom said. "It's been ten minutes at most."

"That's still a long time to wait," he complained. "It's not like I can use a phone in here." He waggled his metal-covered fingers.

"Hey, you were the one who wanted the gauntlets," I pointed out. "The rest of us have leather gloves. Speaking of which..."

"Gotcha covered," Viv assured us, then spoke a long sentence that made my teeth vibrate. When she was finished, all our clothes - actually our costumes, physically transmuted into regular clothes by Viv and Morgan's combined efforts the previous night - had been replaced by armor. All of us wore roughly the same thing as Percy, with the only differences being the color of the cloak - picked to match the color of the mist that dad's armor made for each of us - and which piece of armor was a genuine artifact.

Forest-green mist swirled around the greaves of Tristan's armor - it would, thankfully, muffle the clinking of metal on tile whenever he took a step. The thick white mist that poured off of Viv's helmet almost looked like hair - even matching her hair color - except that while she had a spiky pixie cut, the mist curled down to her shoulders before beginning to fade. Mom had a deep blue mist swirling around her breastplate, almost looking like a skirt as it fell to the ground around her legs and faded.

For myself, I wore the cloak of the armor set. It was a purple so dark that it was nearly black, and the mist that poured from it made it appear far longer that it was, pooling around my feet and surrounding me. It was, with all modesty, a pretty impressive sight. But...

"I just wish we could turn the mist off," Viv said, and I nodded in agreement. "It's more conspicuous that I'd like. It'll probably connect us to dad, too."

"We're supposed to be conspicuous," Percy pointed out. "To draw attention away from you. And you've got the stealth cloak, so the mist shouldn't matter."

"I mean, yeah, but you guys should still stay out of sight as long as possible." She pulled her hood up experimentally.

I blinked. "Where'd Viv go?"

"What do you mean?" Mom asked. "Isn't she still.... at home?" She frowned in confusion.

"No, she stepped out to use the... bathroom?" Percy said uncertainly. "...right?"

Viv pulled her hood down. "Well, that seems to work," she said with a definite smirk in her voice. "I'll keep it down until we have to split up, though."

"Right. Now then... we're going down?"

"Yeah, the servers we're looking for are in the third subbasement," Mom agreed.

I planted my feet firmly - in my practice, that had always helped - and my cloak billowed out as I tapped into its magic. The MLED building had an odd construction, as far as buildings went - it was modular, made such that every piece could be taken apart and replaced as necessary. Despite the faux-hardwood, the floor we were standing on was built from metal framing - and metal, as with everything that came from the ground, was within the domain of my armor.

The floor buckled slightly and lifted as I manipulated it, unclipping one of the floor plates and moving it aside. Below it was a plate for the ceiling of the first basement - that, too, I unclipped and gently floated to the ground.

"Good job, bro," Viv said, leaning over the edge of the neat hole to the first subbasement. "We should be able to hop all the way down to the right level!"

"Anyone down there?" Mom asked.

My sister shook her head. "No, I'm not hearing anyone within a hundred feet in that level. If I remember the floor plan right - and I do - this level is mostly barracks and year-to-year storage. Not a ton of call for these rooms in the middle of the day."

"Then down we go!" Mom casually slipped through the hole and landed easily, her knees flexing slightly as she hit the ground. The invulnerability her armor granted her absorbed nearly all the force of her landing, and she didn't even make much sound. "Drop down to me, I'll help catch you," she said up to us.

Viv nodded, then hopped down herself. Percy and Tristan followed, and I brought up the rear. Mom caught each of us gently, the magic of her armor absorbing the force and sound of each landing and producing more blue smoke instead.

"Alright, Viv," Percy said as I replaced the tiles I had pulled out, filling in the hole behind us. "Where to next?"

"One more floor down," she told me.

I focused again, and a tile from the floor below us rose and moved to the side. But rather than the ceiling tile below, it revealed a dense lattice of crystalline material that didn't register to the magic of my cape.

I knelt to knock on it, a gentle chime ringing out as the crystal vibrated. "What is this stuff?" I asked.

Viv frowned at the protective lattice. "It must be some kind of extra layer of protection for the lowest levels - tougher than the usual stuff, but too expensive to use everywhere. Can you deal with it?"

"No," I said, shaking my head. "Whatever it is, it's not considered 'of the earth'." I made air quotes as I quoted the category that the cape was supposed to have dominion over.

"It must be some magical bullshit," Tristan complained, and Mom nodded. "Can you do anything about it, sis?"

"Maybe..." Viv said uncertainly. "Mother hasn't taught me much destructive magic yet, and if this is high-end magic, well..."

"You can do it," I encouraged her.

She took a deep breath, then began muttering under her breath, a faint static beginning to build up in my ears as she did. After a minute or so, the crystal began to vibrate and produce an extended hum, and only a few seconds later Viv stopped and coughed up smoke, clutching at her throat.

"Are you alright?" Mom asked, her voice full of concern.

Viv nodded, waving her off, and hoarsely said, "This stuff seems to shrugs off most magic, and reflects the rest. Nearly burnt out my voicebox."

"Honey-"

"I'm fine," she raspily promised. "Or I will be, rather. I just need a few minutes."

"Okay, so we're not going to be able to go through this," I summed up.

"Hey, let me take a turn," Percy insisted, cracking his fingers. "Maybe brute force will work where magic failed."

"'Brute' is right," Viv commented, then coughed again, a little more smoke coming out.

"Kids," Mom warned as Percy crouched and took hold of the crystal bars. He flexed and heaved and struggled, but it was obvious that he wasn't making any progress.

"...okay, so we're not going to be able to go through this," I said again, replacing the floor tile. "What next? We still have to go one more level down, right?"

"Two," Viv said, frowning. "And there are checkpoints at each of the stairwells down, and no elevators into the secure levels."

"Hm... let's start moving towards the nearest stairwell," Mom decided. "Once we're there, we can think about how to get past it."

We traveled in silence, for the most part. Other than the faint clinking of our armor - fortunately muffled somewhat by the multicolored fog that surrounded us - there was little noise and no conversation until my sister called for us to halt.

"The guards are right around this corner," she whispered. "Any ideas? Remember, we need to be very careful here, because they have-"

There was a sudden expansion of the green mist as Tristan rushed forward at high speed, swinging around the corner and attacking the guards. We heard two swift thumps and then he was back, leaning against the wall and obviously grinning. "All done!" My little brother chirped happily.

Viv gaped at him, open-mouthed, then growled, smoke curling out of her nostrils. "Tristan, you... you! They have heartbeat monitors, you dingus!"

"Ah." He glanced over his shoulder towards where the guards were no doubt slumped, unconscious. "Whoops?"



Scene 13 - December 19th
Interior MLED Compound, Continuous
Dominic Könberg



Viv took a deep breath, and a fresh wave of white smoke rolled off of her helmet as she, presumably, took advantage of the superintelligence it gave. "Okay, you guys start fighting your way out," she said after an instant. "Take at least ten minutes - that should be long enough for me to get a sizable data dump from the secure servers. We already knew that it was unlikely we'd be able to do this completely undetected - our best strategy now is to do it without the purpose being known. Just remember the cover reason you're here."

"Remind me what that was?" Tristan asked.

Percy sighed. "You're too hyper, bro. We're pretending that we came to steal items from secure storage, rather than data, so they'll look in the wrong place. We accidentally set off an alarm, so we're running."

"...there's no alarm though," he said.

"It's silent," Viv told him, pulling her hood up.

"...wait, what's silent?"

"Time to go," Mom declared. "There will be more guards coming..."

"Soon?" I asked, pointing down the hallway to where MLED agents were already appearing.

"Unidentified intruders, you are surrounded!" one of them shouted to us. "Sit down and place your hands on the ground! Do not use any metahuman -"

I cut her off by stomping on the ground, causing the tiles of the floor and walls to curve into a wall that blocked us from the guards.

"What about from the other directions?" Percy asked. "If we're surrounded..."

I leaned around the corner and saw that yes, guards were appearing from the lower level - the two that Tristan had knocked out were being pulled to safety. I had to jerk back as an agent fired a high-tech pistol that shot some kind of electrical charge through the air, close enough that I could smell ozone.

"Yup, definitely surrounded," I said, generating more purple mist as I closed off that path.

"Wait, where's Vivian?" Mom asked, sounding a little panicked. "She's hurt!"

"No, she's..." my mind skittered away from whatever I had been about to say, and I frowned. "Uh, she's not here, so how could she have been hurt?"

"...right." Mom sighed. "I forgot."

"It's that stealth cloak," Percy chuckled. "Works a little too well, it seems like. How could you forget that Viv is... at home with Morgan?"

"No names, Sir Ardent," I reminded him. "Now, we can't just bunker down under these walls -" there was a loud thud and the sound of tearing metal from down the corridor, and I almost absentmindedly reinforced that barrier. "They'll tear them down at some point, after all. They'll call in heroes, if nothing else."

"Who could get past them, though?" Tristan asked. "I mean, if you keep rebuilding the walls..."

"Journey could teleport through. Vulcan could melt through. Anima turning them into a golem might trump my control - she never went up against dad, so who knows how that would turn out. Canaveral could probably tear through them faster than I could rebuild. Loki might be able to-"

"Okay, you've made your point," Mom said. "No need to go overboard. What's your plan?"

I nodded to Tristan. "I'll open up a hole for Sir Alacrity. He zooms out for a few moments and then back to start knocking some of them out so we can make a path. You and Sir Ardent guard the hole to make sure the guards don't get through to me."

Percy nodded. "It's a good plan, Sir Amethyst," he said, probably trying to remind himself to use the codenames we had chosen - I knew that I was. "Dame Adamant's invulnerability can block any shots they make, and I can throw back anyone who gets close."

"Exactly. Let's get to it."

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 14 - December 19th
Interior Crazy Coffee, Late Morning
Quinn Kaufman



"To being done with finals!" we chorused, clinking our mugs together cheerfully. "How'd you do, Holly?" I asked my friend.

She shrugged. "I'm sure I did fine. I didn't struggle with anything, finished my essays a little early. Wowed the magic examiners, as usual. How about you?"

I waggled my hand in a so-so gesture. "I had a little more trouble than usual, probably because I was too busy to study as much as I usually do, but since I usually don't have any trouble... I'm sure I still passed, just maybe in the top ten of the class instead of the top five."

"Way to brag, Quinn," Simone teased.

"Yeah, most people try to downplay their achievements," Holly said.

"Oh really, miss 'wowed the magic examiners as usual,'" I teased right back.

"Yeah, well... I don't get why most people have so much trouble with magic. It's easy."

"Ignore the prodigy," Simone said.

"Dr. Wagner is trying to get me to feel more confident and to accept less than perfection from myself," I said, trying not to sound too defensive. "Part of that is bragging, at least a little bit!"

"...yeah, that sounds like him. How about you, Simone? First college finals?"

Our younger friend sagged a little. "I had a lot of trouble," she admitted. "I don't think I failed any classes or anything, but... well, I might end up switching majors. It's only going to get harder from here, after all."

"Don't jump ship too soon," I warned her. "You might have done better than you thought you did. I thought I flubbed my first finals and almost wanted to drop out until my Dad stopped me..."



Holly nudged me a little almost immediately, and I was able to continue with barely a pause. "And it turned out I had done fine. Wait until you get your grades back before making any decisions."

"On the other hand, don't be afraid to switch if you have to or want to," Holly countered. "You're chemical engineering, right?"

"Just chemistry," she corrected. "And I don't want to switch, I just... feel like I didn't do well."

"Dr. Wagner says that pessimism can be a self-reinforcing loop," I told her. "Be optimistic, at least until you get your results back."

She nodded, seeming a little cheered up. "Thanks, Quinn." Then she brightened further as she looked over my and Holly's shoulders out the window. "Hey look, its snowing again!"

We turned to look, and I found myself grinning at the light dusting that was coming down to join the inches already on the ground. "I love snow," I confessed. "Rain I can take or leave, but snow is great. My dad and I had the best snowball fights when I was younger - sometimes my babysitter would join in too. Good memories."

"Snow's always annoyed me," Holly disagreed. "It's really tough to get the drifting motion right in an illusion. Took me ages to finally get it right. Rain's much easier."

"You did get it eventually though?"

"Well, yes."

"Then don't be such a grouch," Simone said teasingly, standing. "Snowball fights, you said?"

I grinned. "Yeah, come on out!" I stood as well and offered a hand to Holly.

"Noooo," she complained, leaning over her hot tea. "It'll be cold!"

"You have a coat, come on!"

"Fine, fine." She took my hand and let me pull her to her feet, and I tried not to blush as she did. "Powers or no powers?"

Simone hummed thoughtfully as we stepped outside. "Well, I should at least take us to a better place than in the middle of the street. Maybe April Park?"

"That's closed until April," I joked. Holly elbowed me, but I could see her smirking. Or feel it, rather - we were close enough that the sense of my presence traced out an amused smile on her face, even though the illusory construct of her was glaring at me playfully. I had been able to read her a lot better since I realized that my ESP could do that, and when I had told her, she had assured me that she didn't mind.

"April Park sounds good," Holly told Simone.

The teleporter scooped us up, one in each arm, and the world bent around us.



Scene 15 - December 19th
Exterior April Park, Late Morning
Quinn Kaufman



We landed in April Park and took a moment to just absorb the beauty of the drifting snow and the whiteness that blanketed the ground. Or I did, at least - Simone and Holly were taking a few steps away and stretching.

"Do you think we should get some of those guys involved?" Simone asked, pointing at a group of other teenagers who were already engaged in a snowball fight of their own.

Holly tilted her head, pursing her lips, then made a disgusted face and shook her head. "Uh, no. I just listened in on them and they're talking about... well, I'll spare your young ears, but Quinn and I don't want to go near them, anyway."

"Gotcha."

"Oh hey!" I said brightly, trying not to dwell on how common transphobia was. "I got something cool to share before we get started!"

"Yeah?" Simone asked, turning to face me.

"Holly, do you mind giving us some privacy first?"

She brought her hands together and brushed her fingers against and through each other in one of the impossible gestures she used to cast magic, and a transparent red field took shape around us. From outside the field, no one would see anything other than three friends chatting and snow falling - from within it, the red outline would show us where the edge of the bubble of normality was. "Done. What's up?"

"So all the practice with the style of magic Holly found for me has helped me get pretty good at focusing on one particular thing with my powers," I began. "But that got me thinking - one of the things that marks a really powerful telekinetic is how many individual items they can affect, right?"

"Sure," Simone agreed.

"So I've been trying to stretch myself, find my limits in that area too," I explained. "And as it turns out, it's kind of the same limit as I have with distance. The force of my personality-"

"I still think that's a silly name for it," Holly interjected teasingly.

"-can affect a lot at once," I continued, poking her in her ribcage playfully. She squirmed away, still with that same smile under her face. "But the more things I'm messing with, the less focus I can put on any individual object, and thus the less force I can apply to them. But..."

"But...?" Simone asked. Unlike my traitorous best friend, some people knew how to keep a story going.

I grinned. "Well. Snowflakes don't need much force to control, now do they?" I said, and every single flake of drifting snow within the red outline of Holly's field froze in midair.

Simone stared in awe. "That," she said, peering at them where they hung, motionless, "is so cool. Isn't that cool?" she asked Holly.

Holly was staring at me with a look that I couldn't quite decipher - not without the assistance of my actual eyes, at least. "It's very cool," she agreed.

I held up an open palm, and the snow zoomed around me and my friends until it reached a point a few inches above my hand. Only a few seconds later, a perfect snowball fell into my grip, and my smile, always a little crooked, turned positively wicked.

Holly smirked, and pointed a finger gun at the snowball. A lance of fire burst forth and quickly melted it, and cold water splashed over my hands.

I frowned and focused, getting a surge of information about the water before pushing it off of my hands, instantly drying them. "When did you figure out fire?" I asked.

"Just recently," Holly answered. "One of my classes this year was magical thermodynamics, and parts of the final unit helped it click for me." She conjured a ball of flame in her hand, then a few more, juggling them for a moment. "Best part? They don't even have to be dangerous if I don't want them to be!"

"How does that work?" Simone questioned, sticking a hand through one of the fireballs as it fell. As promised, she barely flinched as it scattered across her skin, harming her not at all.

"Heat spreads in a radius and weakens as it does, right?" Holly explained. "And there's a point in that radius at which it's not harmful, but still noticeable. So instead of making a point source of high heat that can spread, I make a sphere of that harmless level of heat, centered on the point I would have wanted. It spreads normally from there, but doesn't harm you if you get too close."

"Neat."

"And you're controlling heat, not just generating it?" Holly nodded in confirmation, and I continued, "Does that mean that you can do ice, too?"

She waggled a hand. "Sort of. I can certainly make cold, but that doesn't mean ice forms unless the humidity is crazy high. Whatever effect Vulcan has which lets him form ice anyway isn't something I can replicate - yet - so it's not ice yet. His job is safe.

"On the other hand," she continued, "this does mean that my illusions can be even more realistic. I'm still working on adding heat to my stock constructs, but I've already got it for the ones I use most often."

"Such as?"

A spray bottle appeared in mid-air, pointing at Journey, who instantly teleported to the other side of me, crouching to hide from Holly behind my significantly-shorter frame. "Save me!" she begged.

"Hmm... I don't know if-" I started. Before I could finish the joke, however, we were interrupted by an unpleasant chirping noise, coming simultaneously from all three of us. We each produced a small pager-esque device that the MLED had given to us - mine, like Holly's, was attached to my keys, while Simone seemed to have clipped it to her phone. All three were chirping in a pattern and flashing several colored LEDs.

"There's an attack at the MLED Compound," Holly told us, interpreting the alarm's pattern faster than Simone or I could. "The red light blinking like that means that all available heroes are called to come assist, the steady blue light means we'll get overtime pay." A white LED was blinking as well, 4 times and then a pause, 4 times and then a pause. "Four hostile metahumans on site," she added. "Odd. None of the gangs in New Venice have four metas."

"...we should probably head over there, shouldn't we?" Simone asked, sounding a little dejected. She had been looking forward to hanging out with me and Holly - I thought that she probably looked up to Holly, as the oldest and most experienced member of the Journeymen. Plus, there had been some drama with her girlfriend - ex-girlfriend now, from what little I had heard - and although she hadn't gone into the details, I knew she wanted to distract herself from it.

Holly had clearly picked up on it as well, as she said, "We're probably not needed. I mean, Zookeeper is on console today, and Canaveral may be on patrol but he can be back pretty quickly, and between the two of them they should be able to deal with just about anything. And... well, Anima is a fast mover if she's flaring a strong enough aura, even though Vulcan and Starling won't show up."

"...wait, why won't they show up?"

"Vulcan had a lunch date planned for today - I suppose he might duck out of it and come, but I wouldn't count on it - and Starling never takes overtime," Simone told me.

"How do you keep track of all this stuff?"

"The point is," Holly said, "that the three of them will probably have it covered. This is a general call for everyone who's able to, not for any of us specifically - we can just say that we weren't available."

"...I don't think you should." I said, looking up. I had noticed something moving through the sky at the edge of my presence, and my suspicion was confirmed when I laid eyes on it - the giant bird golem that Anima used was moving, and away from the Compound.

Holly and Simone followed my eyes, and Holly cursed. "That..." she made a few quick gestures, and her eyes flickered with strange light for a moment before returning to normal. "Yeah, that's carrying Anima, Zookeeper, and the boss."

"Why are they leaving the Compound?" I asked.

"There must be something going on that needs them elsewhere," she said grimly.

"That means that we can be back faster than they can," Simone said. "So we should go."

"Yeah, we should," I agreed.

Holly frowned. "Four hostile metahumans," she reminded me. "That doesn't match the Buff Boys or the Crows - not that the Crows would ever attack the Compound, they're not that stupid. That means that it's a probably a new group, metahumans whose capabilities we don't know - and barring a miracle, we won't have Referee to even the odds. None of the New Champions will be there... are you sure you two are ready for this?" She, of course, was more than ready, and we all knew it.

"I'm ready," I promised her, and Simone nodded in agreement. I took the teleporter's hand, and so did Holly, and a moment later we were gone.

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 16 – December 19th
Exterior "Higgins Museum", Late Morning
Abraham Armstrong





The castle Max had built appeared to have a relatively standard layout, from what I remembered of a special on castles we had watched at some point during the summer – he had probably remembered the same special when building it, in fact. It had a central keep within a wider stone wall, one which would no doubt be quite effective at keeping out mundane police.


The New Champions, however, had no such trouble, and Anima simply landed the roc golem on the outer walls. "Castles don't work too well against flying enemies," she commented. "I mean, walls are a good base for protective enchantments, but Max doesn't seem to have any."


"They certainly fail without archers," I agreed, hopping out of my seat. Anima dismounted as well, and the golem shifted slightly as she retracted the white lightning that had let it move. "Now, if I know Max, he'll be in the main hall. Probably sitting in some kind of throne."


"A real drama queen," Emilia croaked, then flew off my shoulder and down into the courtyard. Halfway down she transformed into a large snow leopard.


I hopped down myself, absorbing the weight of my landing with a slight twist of power, the only sound being the crunch of snow beneath my boots. "Broadcast: I'll catch you," I told Anima through my earpiece. We were using the magical versions that Holly had created – he had made a large stockpile of them over the last month or so, and while their range had turned out to be more limited than that of the electronic ones, they were more secure. Not to mention that Zookeeper could use them even through transformations. "No sense in wasting more of your energy."


She leapt out without hesitation, and I held out my arms to catch her. Another twist negated the kinetic energy of me catching her, and we turned to the face the heavy doors that barred us from the interior of the keep. "How did Max expect the city to deliver tribute?" Anima asked. "I mean… the main portcullis is closed, the main door is closed…"


I sighed. "I was thinking about that on the flight, actually, and… however narcissistic Excalibur has made him, I don't think there's any way that Max would be dumb enough to think that he'd actually get any tribute from the city."


Anima frowned. "Then why…?"


"He's after something else," I said grimly. "He must have known that this would draw a lot of attention to him and all available heroes would come to respond. That must have been his real goal with this stunt – I just can't figure out what he intends to get out of it."


"Do you think it's a distraction?" she asked. "That he's not here at all, he's actually off doing something else entirely?"


I shook my head. "That doesn't feel right. That's certainly one of Max's standard plays, but his usual method is to have one of his actor friends appear in his costume somewhere, like he did when he robbed the Bellini Archives. Something on this scale? What on earth could it be a distraction from?"


Emilia transformed back into a raven and fluttered up to my shoulder to say, "It doesn't have to be a distraction from something else he's trying to do, it could just be a distraction from his actual goal. What if he's intending to capture and ransom us"


"For what?"


"For the magical knowledge Arthur Peregrine keeps," I guessed. "It… makes sense. More than that he genuinely thinks he should be a king, at any rate."


"He could have wanted Arthur to come in person, too," Emilia said. "I mean, he did steal a powerful magical artifact, which would normally bring him running – just our bad luck that he's busy the next few days."


I nodded, then shook my head. "No, wait, this doesn't add up. Originally he was after a book, not the sword…"


"Right…" Anima rubbed her temples. "Still, he's a smart guy, right? Maybe he came up with this plan after getting the sword?"


"…I think I've got it," Emilia said. "He comes looking for the book, and finds Excalibur instead. He realizes that Arthur must have the actual book, and decides to ransom the sword back to him in return for the book, or for similar books. To get Arthur's attention, he needed to do something big and public with Excalibur – thus, this whole stunt."


"I think you're right," I agreed. "Hopefully we can talk him down, with that in mind – the sword may have messed with his head, but if he sees that there's a non-violent way to get what he wants – instead of, say, kidnapping us and using us as leverage in a second attempt to get at Peregrine – I think he'll take it."


"We can give it a shot," Anima said. "But first, the door?"


"Right. Dear, if you wouldn't mind?"


"I'm not sure how a deer will help."


I snorted at Emilia's joke – her beak hung open in an approximation of a goofy grin as she glanced between me and Anima, who just rolled her eyes. She shrugged her wings and flapped off my shoulder.


A quick transformation, and an elephant shoulder-bashed the door, making the castle shake. A second slam, and there was a cracking sound that I assumed was the deadbolt cracking off the heavy wood of the antique doors – a third, and they were open.


"Honey, I'm home!" I called out as we stepped inside.





Scene 17 – December 19th
Interior "Higgins Museum", Continuous
Abraham Armstrong





As I had suspected, Max was in the great hall, sitting in a throne and somehow looking more handsome than ever. He was leaning forward, hands propped up on what looked like a long, ornate wand but could only be Excalibur, and said, "Ah, you've finally…" Then he frowned, and his voice was angry as he asked, "Where's Peregrine?"


I exchanged a quick glance with Anima. As we had guessed. "Peregrine couldn't make it, sorry Max. I hope you're not too disappointed."


He stood and vanished in a swirl of flame, reappearing in another burst of fire a few feet in front of us. "I'm never disappointed to see you and Keeper, Navi," he said, smiling at me and Emilia – suddenly calm again, even pleased. "And you too, Anima," he added.


"Glad I'm an afterthought," she said dryly, leaning against the wall. "Max, what exactly are you thinking? This plan is…"


He rolled his eyes and lifted the wand, resting it across his shoulders. "Obviously I'm not really declaring myself king, that's a ridiculous notion. No one would accept it, no matter how good a ruler I'd be." I… didn't think he was being series, but… "I just needed to attract Arthur Peregrine's attention."


Emilia shifted into a parrot and landed on my shoulder. "To ransom Excalibur for the book you were looking for?" she asked. "Peregrine said it wasn't useful anyway."


"I must say, expected it to look more like a sword," I commented.


"It changes shape to fit its bearer," he casually explained. "And no, I have no intention of giving up this beauty. Excalibur, really?" He twirled it around his fingers. "A great many things became clear to me once I drew it from the stone, but that wasn't one of them. It makes sense, though…"


I narrowed my eyes. "What sort of things became clear, Max?"


He smiled at me – the same loving but slightly-condescending smile he wore whenever he told me about magic. "Nothing you need to worry about – just magical puzzles that had been stumping me for years, now."


"If you weren't going to trade Excalibur to Peregrine," Anima cut in, "why did you want him here?"


"To show him that I'm not as incompetent as he believes," Max said, his voice going hard. Something seemed very off about him, and I couldn't quite put my finger on what. Perhaps it was how fast he was bouncing from one emotion to the next. "He rejected me, did I ever tell you that? I was down on my knees, begging to learn magic from him, and he cast me aside."


"He didn't think you were incompetent, Max," Emilia said, her tone almost pleading – she was seeing the same instability as I was, a mercurial shifting of moods that Max had never shown before, I could tell. "We talked to him, and he said that his style of casting wasn't compatible with yours, and that's why he didn't take you on."


He laughed, amused once more. "Is that what he said? No, he simply didn't see my genius." He leaned Excalibur against his shoulder again. "And you know, perhaps he was even right, then. Certainly I'm far greater now than I was before."


"Max," Anima said, her voice filled with pity and concern, "Excalibur is affecting your mind."


He narrowed his eyes at her. "Is that what he told you?"


"He said that the blade is dangerous," she summarized, "and that, yes, it's probably messing with your head. Please, Max, give us the-"


Max casually flicked the wand, and a massive metal cage suddenly coalesced around Anima, trapping her – I sank into a combat-ready posture, and Anima flapped off my shoulder to become a leopard again. "Don't," he said, his voice low and dangerous, "even ask it."


"Max, please," I begged. "You don't have to do this!"


He turned to face me, and flame began to flicker around him – a fiery aura casting a dangerous light on his features and making me squint to keep looking at him. "What would you do," he demanded, his voice rising and becoming more and more frantic. "Comparing me without this blade to with it… it's like night and day. I was nothing without it – like a regular person! What would you do, if someone proposed to take your powers from you!?!"


My voice caught – he couldn't know, could he? How could he possibly know – there was no way! Max… he had worked with the Ambrosia Company at least once, I knew, had received magical tutelage from them – but he couldn't know that my powers came from the same source, could he? Or that they could be taken away as easily as they had been given to me?


"Max…" Emilia said, and in my brief panic I hadn't even realized that she had taken bird form and perched on my shoulder yet again. "The night may lack the sun, but there's still the moon. There's still the stars. Even if you're less without this sword, you're far from nothing. You were an amazing person without it – you can be again."


Max stared at us, still with a wild, frantic light in his eyes, then down at Excalibur. He… fuck, he seemed to be considering it.


He looked down at the wand in his hand, then back at us. Then at Anima in the cage he had placed her in, then back to the wand, then us…


"…no." He said, finally.


"…no?" I asked.


"No." Then something was flying at my head and I was dodging, unsure of what had gone wrong.





Scene 18 – December 19th
Interior "Higgins Museum", Continuous
Abraham Armstrong





The ax Max had flung, an ancient-looking thing that had probably been on display somewhere in the museum, slammed into the wooden doors behind us as I skidded to a halt and turned to keep an eye on him.


Or rather, on where he had been a moment ago – Emilia had leapt off my shoulder and flown at him in the shape of a tiger, and ended up passing through a ring of fire instead, Max having teleported elsewhere. I pulled pulled my metal chain out of my belt and began twirling it in one hand as a makeshift shield, hefting some ball bearings in the other.


"Don't make us do this, Max!" I called.


"You were never able to beat me before, Navi," he said from behind me, and I spun and launched the ball bearing towards his voice. It simply vanished out of mid-air, then came back at me just as fast – I only barely managed to absorb the kinetic energy in time when it struck my shoulder. "Why would you be able to now?" He flicked Excalibur in a casual motion, and there was a sudden explosion that tossed me backwards.


"Fuck," I quietly grunted as I landed, my ears ringing – Max was definitely using magic he had never been capable of before. The flames, the explosion, being able to launch that ax and my ball bearing… not to mention, I thought with a wince, how many bruises I would have from the blast.


Max approached me, a vicious grin on his face as he looked down at where I lay on the floor – behind him, I saw Emilia stealthily padding towards him, and Anima quietly infusing his iron cage with zoetic energy. "I wonder if Peregrine would show up if I threatened your lives?" he asked, almost idly but with a wicked gleam in his eyes, and swished Excalibur through the air to point at my throat. "I wouldn't really hurt you, of course, but I doubt he would spot that, the old fool."


"Why do you have to prove yourself to him?" I asked, trying to distract Max from the heroines. "You're better than him and you now it – who cares if he knows?"


"Peregrine holds so much knowledge, so much power," he hissed, flashing back into anger. "So much that should belong to the world. To me. And yet, he keeps it all hidden away, not trusting me, anyone, to use it properly. If I show him my power he'll have no choice but to grant me access!"


Emilia reared up behind Max and transformed into a gorilla, quietly reaching towards his head… "And what if he still says no?" I said.


"Then I'll make him give me access," Max growled. "I said 'no choice' and I meant it." Then he smiled, that same easy grin as before, and fire flared up around him again, bright enough that I could barely see, bright enough that Emilia flinched away before she could try and grapple him.


When the flames died down, he was sitting on the throne again. "I'm so sorry, Keeper," he said to Emilia, sounding genuinely regretful, "I'd love to catch up, but I'm afraid I'm talking to Navi right now." He pointed Excalibur at her, then at the iron cage, and she – and a pair of dazed-looking security guards – joined Anima in the cage.


Or rather, in where the cage had been. Anima had wrapped its bars around herself and turned it into a suit of animated armor, brilliant white energy burning around her as she rushed forward with an indescribable sound – a mix of crackling flame and buzzing electricity and heavy, metallic footfalls until she slammed into the surprised Max like a train.


The aura shrunk a moment later as Max vanished her armor, but Anima was undeterred, still flaring up energy and clearly draining it from the struggling magician as I rose to my feet. "The sword!" I called. "Get the sword away from him!"


His efforts redoubled, flame licking around the two of them, but it seemed to have little effect – a moment later, Anima wrested Excalibur from him, and he collapsed.


She turned to face us, the sword changing shape into a long rapier, and the hairs on the back of my neck began to rise. Something wasn't right.

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 19 - December 19th
Interior MLED Compound, Noon
Holly Koval



The world cracked like glass and fell away, revealing the console room back at the Compound, where Mellas and Forester had apparently been spending time together - now, however, Sequoia was transformed into his wooden form, and an MLED agent had just sat in the console chamber. I snapped my fingers while Quinn was reorienting to give Hypnos a mask, since as far as I knew he had never revealed his identity to Quinn. "What's the situation?" I asked.

"Heartbeat monitors said that two guards in the first subbasement went unconscious within about a second of each other," Hypnos reported, "but nothing showed on the security cameras - they even showed the guards still standing. The guards didn't respond to a check in, so agents went to investigate and found four intruders described as 'medieval knights who make colored smoke' by Agent Ramirez. One of them bent the tiles to create walls to protect themselves, leaving a hole through which one of the knights has been attacking. We're trying to knock through their walls with a portable ram, but they have a good strategy - in the meantime, we're evacuating tour groups and other civilians."

"Powers?" I set up my command station, expanding the Compound's subbasement and quickly finding the four attacking metahumans in their bunker. Quinn and Simone, meanwhile, ducked away to grab their costumes and get earpieces.

"The one with purple smoke seems to be the one controlling the walls," the agent - his nametag read 'Murphy' - said. "Green has super-speed, and is the one coming out to attack. Blue and Red are defending the hole in their wall - Blue has taken attacks without flinching, so maybe some level of invulnerability, and Red looks to be superstrong."

I frowned. "Controlling metal, super-speed, super-strength, invulnerability... and colored mist?"

"The possible connection to the Mountain King has been noticed," the agent assured me. "His mist was gold, but it seems like all the same powers."

I zoomed in even farther on the my map, even as I changed my appearance over to Loki's, and saw that they were now fighting their way out of the fortified position that the metal controller had built and making their way up the corridor towards the stairs out. "That looks like the same style of armor, too," I noted. "Obviously I've never met the man in person, but I've studied him..."

"What's our strategy?" Hypnos asked me.

"Divide and conquer," I told him. "If they each have only one of the Mountain King's powers, they'll be more limited. We should be able to take out all of them, if we do it carefully." He nodded.

My phone buzzed in my pocket as Newton and Journey returned, the teleporter simultaneously producing her own to check the message, and I grinned when I glanced down to read it. "We've got a pleasant surprise, Journey," I said to her. "After you drop us off a little closer, you've got another pickup to make."



Scene 20 - December 19th
Interior MLED Compound, Noon
Quinn Kaufman



Journey ferried us all downstairs - first me, Loki, and Hypnos, then Sequoia in a second trip. A moment later, Journey was gone, and we were on our own.

"Alright, here's the plan," Loki quietly told us. "I'm going to use my constructs to split these guys up and have you each take one or two of them on. Newton, you're going against the purple earthbender - our presence will keep him from putting you on the back foot with his battlefield control, and he doesn't look to have enough fine control to flank you by himself like Anima could. Hypnos, you're against green speed - your precognition should let you match him. Sequoia, you're up with the other two - you're strong and tough, but if I'm right that these guys each have only one of the Mountain King's powers, they'll only be strong or tough. Your toughness should negate strength, and your strength should help you get through their toughness. In the meantime, I'll be helping out as needed."

Hypnos frowned. "That sounds like mostly a holding action," he protested. "Those are all decent match-ups, but how will we tip the scales?"

"It is mostly a holding action," Loki admitted. "But we benefit from that, they don't. They need to escape to win - we can win by dragging things out until more heroes show up. Journey will be back in just a few minutes, and if not her then some of the New Champions will be here eventually. Not to mention that there are enough agents here to turn the tide, if we're negating the advantages of their powers."

"Alright," Hypnos said. "Shall we?"

"We shall."

I rushed ahead of the others, my powers letting me move faster than anyone else other than Journey herself. I tried to pace myself though - while I had gotten a lot of experience with my powers over the last two months, the backlash still made drawn-out battles an exercise in pain. I understood that it was our best strategy, of course - I trusted Loki. I would just try to deal with the wanna-be-knights without bruising myself too badly.

When I emerged into the corridor where the running battle was taking place, the ground was rumbling and splitting apart, walls of fire shooting up along the cracks to split the knights - each of them instinctively stepping away from the nearest flames, even the invulnerable one whose breastplate spilled blue mist. A moment later, she made to walk through the wall towards the smallest knight, in green, but I vaulted over her and pushed her back into the center of her area on my way into Purple's.

"Hi there!" I said cheerily as I landed in front of them. "I'll be your designated opponent for today. And may I compliment you on your choice of theme colors? Royal purple, very classy."

They inclined their helmet towards me in acknowledgment. "Thank you. And I appreciate your choice of plaid - I'm bi as well."

I plucked at the kevlar-woven overshirt I had pulled over my costume, woven in shades of blue, pink, and purple. "This one is actually one of the ones I wear in support, not to represent myself. Something about identifying as 'bi' doesn't feel right to me, as a nonbinary person attracted to all genders and the lack thereof," I said, absently anchoring myself to the ground and leaning far to the side to avoid a metal plate that Purple had pulled from the wall and sent spinning at my head from behind, "so I usually just say 'queer'."

I stuck a hand out towards them, taking a quick moment to pay attention to my presence and check up on how the others were doing while Purple stared in confusion. Hypnos had just clotheslined Green, and Sequoia had Blue in a headlock. Just fine. "I"m Newton," I said to Purple. "They/them pronouns. What's your name?"

They paused, then took my hand. "Sir Amethyst. He/him," he said.

"What about the others?" I asked, starting to focus in my other hand. The knife's edge I was placing my mind in was a new one for me, but if I could keep him talking a little longer...

Amethyst hesitated before answering that one. "Sirs Alacrity and Ardent, and Dame Adamant," he told me."

"Alacrity in the green and Ardent in red?"

"Yes." Then he pulled me towards him and grabbed me by the throat, a fresh wave of dark purple mist flowing from his cape as he lifted me into the air.

It came as a surprise - my presence being concentrated in the hand hidden behind my back - and I found myself instinctively scrabbling at his hand, but to no avail.

"Sorry about this, Newton," he said as I struggled to redouble my focus, sounding genuinely contrite, "but you're the most dangerous person here to us."

1.19 moles of nitrogen and 0.28 moles of oxygen and

"Wrong," I gasped. "But not entirely." I thrust towards his helm with my hand and thrust towards it with my magic, directing the flash of light towards him as best as I could.

"FUCK!" Amethyst swore, dropping me. He stumbled backward, clapping one steel-gauntleted hand over the eye-slit of his helmet.

I rubbed at my throat, chancing another check-up on the other Journeymen. Hypnos was continuing to dance rings around Alacrity, who seemed to be dodging around what I could only assume were Loki's illusory constructs, as they didn't show up in my sense of presence, while Sequoia had grown a pair of wooden handcuffs around Adamant's wrists and was sparring with Ardent to keep him away from her. We seemed to be winning.

I felt a shift in the metal tile beneath me and leapt up in the air, pulling at the ceiling and remaining there as the ground below me swelled up in an attempt to grab hold of my legs, winding up crouched on the ceiling. "Fun fact - not the first time someone has tried that on me," I informed him. "It didn't get Legion anywhere either." I decided not to mention that Legion had, in fact, trapped me with her own version of the move, and it had only been Canaveral's intervention that had saved me.

Amethyst hesitated. "Wait... you fought Legion?"

Something seemed odd about his inflection there, but I wasn't sure what. "What did you expect me to do with the dangerous supervillain? Invite her to a tea party?" Again, I didn't mention that I had, in fact, ended up talking to Legion - twice.

"No, I..." He shook his head. "Nevermind."

"No, seriously," I said, standing upright and feeling grateful for the practice I had done walking on walls and ceilings - it was still a little disconcerting to have everything be upside-down to me, but not as much as it was for my opponents to deal with an upside-down foe. "I'm 'the most dangerous one here to you', and you seem surprised that I fought Legion? What are you thinking here?"

"I'm thinking..." He tilted his head down, thoughtfully, then back up. "I'm thinking that we may have made a mistake."

"Yeah, breaking into the MLED Compound," I agreed. "Why did you do that, anyway?"

He shook his head. "Not important - we couldn't get into the storage anyway."

I frowned, not sure I believed him, but shrugged and launched myself at him. I pulled at the villain's knees, causing them to buckle and giving myself a little more velocity, and vaulted over his shoulders, pushing him down in the ground. Canaveral and the director could worry about what to do with the hints Amethyst was dropping.



Scene 21 - December 19th
Interior MLED Compound, Continuous
Holly Koval



I checked again, almost compulsively, on how Newton was doing against 'Sir Amethyst'. I tried not to micromanage my team, but... in a real situation like this, it was hard not to worry, especially about the least experienced member of the team. Especially when that was my best friend.

They were doing fine, though. Other than a brief scare when Amethyst had gotten them by the throat, which they had resolved on their own before I could burn the man's retinas out, they had kept him busy and kept him talking - even gotten some potentially useful intel out of the man, like their names and apparent goal of the secure storage units. I didn't think anything too important was contained in New Venice's units right now - all I could recall being in them was some hypertech recovered from Motael's power armor the last time that the New Champions had clashed with the man, and Starling had already stripped anything useful from it. They could maybe have been hired by Motael to recover the tech, but it had been over a year - surely he would have made an attempt sooner, if he was going to. So my guess is that that had been an attempt to lay a false trail, and I would tell Director Shepard that.

Hypnos was doing pretty well too, I though, glancing at his portion of the battlefield. Sir Alacrity's super-speed seemed to be less than precise, and Hypnos was able to dodge him without much difficulty - although he hadn't managed to land a hit of his own yet, either.

Sequoia, on the other hand, had needed a little help. Some judicious illusions had-

"Loki, right?"

I glanced up at the sound of a cheerful voice laced with poison, and saw the fifth member of the knightly crew, white smoke rising from her helmet. Dame...

I frowned. Something wasn't right.

"That's me," I agreed, performing a tricky spell to both hide myself and the floating screens and models that showed me the surrounding area and replace them, so I could move from my apparent position without her knowing. "And you are?"

"Dame Acumen, at your service," she said, sketching a bow - in the direction of the real me, not where she ought to be seeing my image. "I serve the same function to the Round Table as you do for the Journeymen."

Tactical commander, I noted, dismissing the spell that had apparently not fooled her, and possibly some kind of battlefield control or coordination. How was she seeing through my constructs? What kind of enhanced senses did she have, and could I fool them? "You stand at the back and snipe?" I asked, snapping my fingers and generating a concussive wave in her direction.

She sidestepped it easily, casually, as though she knew it had been coming. Some kind of combat precognitive, like Hypnos? "That's right," Acumen agreed. "I snipe. Not in quite the same way as you, mind you, but not all of us get lucky enough to have a combat-relevant superpower. Or combat-relevant magic, in your case. Those without have to get by with just intelligence." There was a distinct smirk in her voice now. "If only I didn't need it either."

I frowned beneath my mask. "You know, Acumen, veiled insults like that won't make people like you. For that, you'll need to have an actual personality."

"Oh, was that a veiled insult?" Acumen asked. "Funny, I wasn't veiling it at all. Perhaps it just seemed so because you had to think about it-"

I interrupted by sending a lance of fire at her, simultaneously creating lasers on either side so she couldn't simply sidestep a gain.

...but not preventing her from doing a split in place, apparently. The split dropped her low to the ground beneath the flames, her legs spreading underneath the lasers. "Ah, violence," she mused as she bounced back up. "The first and last resort of the weak-minded."

"It is kind of my job, you know. Besides, I've got to stop your yammering somehow - you're not going to shut up on your own."

"Of course not - why would I?" She stepped closer to me, and I raised a hand, generating illusory flames to crackle around it. "Oh, enough of the fire!" she sighed, dramatically. "Honestly, it's the first time you've used it and it's already old."

"Sorry to disappoint," I said, beginning to swing my hand over my head. The flames trailed behind my hand and formed a loop, a blazing lariat of fire that I made to throw at her.

She watched with apparent curiosity, tilting her head to the side, then spoke a word. I thought she spoke a word, at any rate - my magical senses could feel the sound and even a surge of power, but my brain refused to recognize what she had said. The word was clearly a spell, as the flaming lasso I had created instantly froze over and shattered into a cloud of bluish white mist, which slowly sank to the ground.

"I wasn't sure if your spells would count as 'objects' or not to my magic," Acumen confessed, a wide grin clear in her voice. "It seems like they do!"

I sighed. "You think the fire is getting old? Trust me, your whole thing is getting old."

"Then why don't you stop me?"

"Maybe I will."

"Violence doesn't seem to be working, why not-"

I created a remote control and pointed it at her, pressing a button with my thumb, and her voice instantly fell silent.

It seemed to take her a moment to realize that I had literally muted her, but her body language seemed positively offended as she put her hands on her hips, cocking them to one side and shaking her head. Then she raised her hands and began miming something.

I shrugged. "Shouldn't have shown me how you focus your magic. Who's weak-minded, again?"

She made some kind of complex hand gesture.

"Sorry, I don't speak sign. I have no idea what you're saying."

The armored woman held up one gauntleted finger, and I laughed. "That I understand."

Then she pointed over my shoulder, miming laughter. Instead of looking away from her, I chanced a glance at my screens and growled at what I saw.

Sir Ardent and Sequoia were grappling with each other, while Hypnos seemed to have been pinned down and gagged by Dame Adamant, who seemed to have broken away from Sequoia while I had been distracted by Dame Acumen, fearlessly stepping through my walls of fire. Alacrity, meanwhile, was now working with Sir Amethyst against Newton - they were holding their own by using flashes of light to briefly stun their foes, but were clearly struggling, and yet hadn't called for help.

I glared at Acumen, whose distraction had allowed this to happen. "You," I began angrily, but was interrupted by the welcome reappearance of Journey.

The amazonian teleporter appeared not far from the edge of the room, with Referee - already in costume - sitting on one shoulder. "Hey guys!" She said cheerfully. "Sorry I'm late, had to pick up a friend who came back home early!"

Referee hunched over a little, nervous around new people even when they were villains, but gave a slight wave. "Where do you want us, Loki?"



Scene 22 - December 19th
Interior MLED Compound, Continuous
Simone Destrey



"Close to the knight in blue, with a normal aura," Holly instructed me, and I thrust my mind in that direction, my body following a moment later with Molly in tow. We appeared standing next to the blue-clad knight, her gauntleted hand over Nic's mouth as she sat on him.

A moment later, a bright light shone through the face of her helmet, created by the illusionist, and Blue jerked backwards in surprise. "What-" she started to say, but then Molly dove off my shoulder, twisting in midair to hit her with a vicious scissor kick.

Molly's aura imposed fairness on the world around her, but it had a rather strict interpretation of 'fair.' If she was facing off other people in an empty room, with no one outside the aura who could shoot into it, with all combatants on their own side, then it would be perfectly fair. Everyone's strengths and weaknesses would be magnified and reduced until they all had roughly the same specialties - the physically strong would still be strong, the fast would still be fast - but all had the same chance of winning.

That was not, however, how the world actually worked. One of the tactics that we had used to great effect in the paintball game of the previous year had been to have me teleport Molly around the field, bringing people into and out of her aura at Loki's direction. Molly was an excellent martial artist, but I was a mediocre fighter at best, and neither of us were particularly strong, fast, or tough as metahuman went - that meant that the two of us tended to weigh down the strengths of anyone else in the aura, allowing Loki to strike at range against weakened foes. Even if our enemies were boosted by the aura, your capabilities shifting was a startling feeling, and one which Molly was far more used to than anyone else. By fluctuating its radius, she could tap into her opponents strengths when she needed them, and leave them reeling from a sudden change at any moment.

Molly's aura insisted that the world be fair, but she herself didn't fight fair.

I offered Nic a hand up, and he pulled himself to his feet. "You'll get her next time, champ," I teased.

He tilted his head to the side, listening to something. "Loki wants me up against number five - Dame Acumen, in white." He nodded to where Molly had swiftly wrestled Blue back into cuffs. "Besides, Ref's got it handled."

"True."

Holly spoke in my ear again as Molly finished up. "Hug the red knight with as tight of an aura as you can manage," she ordered, and I put a hand on the younger girl's shoulder.

"Ready for a drop?" I asked, and she nodded. I tore through reality to appear just above Red, vanishing back to the floor as Molly came down on him elbow first.

He managed to grab her before she could land her blow, but the redhead wrapped around him like a limpet and held on tight. A moment later, Jack stunned Red with an uppercut, then took custody of him, Molly clambering off as the tree-like man held Red in a full nelson.

"Purple and Green next," Loki directed, "wide aura," and Molly and I were off once more.

We landed a few feet from the purple-cloaked man and were immediately targeted, the one in green zooming towards us at high speed. Molly and I each put out a leg, one on either side, and the speedster went flying into the air.

"Nice," Quinn said, dropping down from the ceiling to land next to us. I offered them a high five, which they returned without looking. "Amethyst here is a pain to deal with," they continued, nodding towards Purple. "He makes good use of his metal bending - I think he's using it to enhance his strength in that armor, too. Likes to talk though."

I flexed. "Strength I've got," I boasted, "It's mobility he should be worrying about."

"Yeah, well-" Quinn leapt into my arms, the ground cracking around their feet to try and nail them in one position. "Again, Amethyst?" They yelled. "That's three times, and it hasn't worked once! Come up with a new trick!"

"...yeah, I think we've got this covered," I said. "Besides, the MLED is sending in another wave of agents in a moment."

"Good," Quinn sighed. "I've been pacing myself, but before long my bruises are gonna have bruises."

I tilted my head to the side a little. "That's right, your power has a backlash to it, right?"

They eyed Amethyst. "Yeah, something like that. Honestly, I don't tend to get bruises these days, but aches and pains? Yeah. Also, six feet that way please."

I teleported us in the direction they pointed and set us down as Amethyst tore up the ceiling tiles above where we had been, shards of metal flying towards him and reforming themselves into a sword and shield. He leveled them at us.

Then everything began to glow.

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 23 - December 19th
Interior MLED Compound, Continuous
Quinn Kaufman



A familiar, indescribable white light began to shine from everything as an unmistakable effect that could only be Anima's aura swiftly spread through the building. It crackled like fire around the edges of the rubble, which leapt into the air and began reforming back into the walls and ceiling that had been torn up by the battle - even the sword and shield Amethyst had just made from himself tearing themselves free of his grasp, white lightning bouncing between their shards as they split apart and joined the repair effort.

All eyes stopped and stared at the phenomenal display of power, but, I thought, for different reasons. The knights seemed to be shocked and frightened, if I was reading their body language right - I and the other Journeymen, however, were shocked and horrified.

Anima kept a large store of zoetic energy, but there was a limit - and this was surely beyond it.

She was going to kill herself.

"Loki!" I called, abandoning the paused battle and rushing over to him. "What's happening? Why would Anima - I mean, she -"

"I know," he said, scanning the screens and models that surrounded him. "She - my god."

"What?"

"It's not just the Compound," Loki said grimly. "It's the whole fucking city."

"How the hell is she doing this?" asked Hypnos, rubbing at his face - the rest of the Journeymen had gathered as well. "This is..."

"I know."

"And why is she doing it?" Referee quietly asked, worried.

"I thought you weren't going to get back for a few hours?" I commented to her, noticing that eyes were forming out of the walls and scanning the area.

She shrugged. "My connecting flight got moved up. I'm just glad Journey had enough distance to pick me up, because this... I mean, mom is..."

"We have to-" Loki began, but was interrupted by a voice coming from the wall behind us.

"Oh, thank god, I found you!"

It was Anima's voice, coming from a remarkably realistic face that one of the wall tiles had warped and shifted into, the eyes fading back into the metal. This... was new. As far as I know, Anima couldn't normally see or speak through her golems, and they tended to be somewhat crude.

"...Anima?" Loki asked. "What's going on?"

"I saw that alert and I was so worried about you all!" she simpered. "I'm glad to see that you're all safe."

"It was nothing," Journey said flippantly. "Literally, nothing - no one was here when we arrived."

"Wait, that..." I frowned. "...no, that's right. It must have been... a drill, I guess?"

We all exchanged confused looks, nodding to each other after a moment. Why else would all six of us have shown up ready for battle?

"Even so," Anima said, "it's a dangerous world out there."

"Yeah, well," Hypnos said, a little bitterly, "we did all volunteer for this, however dangerous it is."

"Anima," Loki said again, "what's happening? Why are you-"

"I can't risk any of you getting hurt," the heroine interrupted. "You understand, don't you? You're like my children - all of you, not just Molly." A pair of large, hulking figures muscled their way free of the walls, still covered in a gleaming white aura - each bore Anima's face as well. "I need you all near me, where I can keep you safe," all three said in unison.

I took a step back from the golems in alarm, a chill running down my spine. "Seems to me like you've got no issues with range right now," I couldn't stop myself from saying.

Anima's golems frowned. "I need you safe."

"Journey," Loki whispered, his eyes wide and frightened, "Get us out of here."

The teleporter scooped Referee up in one arm and wrapped the other around Loki, and a moment later they were gone. The golems began to rush at those of us remaining, but before the cracks in spacetime that were left behind by Journey's passage could even fade, she was back and taking hold of me and Hypnos.



Scene 24 - December 19th
Exterior City, Early Afternoon
Quinn Kaufman



Journey deposited us in a side-street not far from the Compound, right next to Referee and Loki, then vanished. She reappeared an instant later and set Sequoia down beside us.

"Thanks for the evac," the dryad said to her, and she nodded, breathing deeply - I wondered if teleporting so many people so quickly was hard on the young woman.

"Holly, you should make us all invisible," I said, noticing that he was beginning to hyperventilate. "And quick, before..."

She was nodding and brushing her fingers together before I could finish, putting a bubble of normality around the six of us. Only a moment later, eyes were opening and closing on walls all around us, moving like a wave across the city out from the Compound, just as I had feared.

Fortunately, Loki's illusion had gone up in time - the searching eyes passed over us without recognition, and Anima's attention seemed to turn elsewhere. The two of us each let out our own sigh of relief, but Loki still seemed incredibly nervous. I kept an eye on him.

"...hey, Holly?" Hypnos said after a moment.

"...yeah?"

"What the fuck?"

"I'd like to know that too," Journey agreed. "I trust you with my life, Loki, but why are we running away from Anima?"

I tilted my head, confused. "You guys didn't notice?"

"She was way stronger than usually somehow," Referee said, "And... I don't think that was all."

"It wasn't," I said. "She was... off, somehow. She wasn't behaving normally. I know I haven't known her as long as most of you, but... I've never felt threatened by her before now. Back there? I felt in danger."

Loki nodded. "Quinn's right. Anima was acting really weird. I... I think she's being mind controlled or influenced somehow - maybe by whatever is letting her do this," he gestured to the aura that still encompassed the entire city.

"Letting her see and talk through the golems, too," I added. "I don't think she can usually do that."

"She can if she's fueling them directly from her own life force, instead of using built up stores that came from others," Loki told me. "That means that we can be pretty confident this is some kind of massive boost to her personally, not... I don't know... the result of stealing a few thousand peoples' life force. She wouldn't do that. I don't think." Under his illusory form, my presence felt him produce a phone and begin dialing - Loki's shape, however, remained leaning against the wall where he had planted himself after Journey dropped us off.

"Morbid," Journey commented.

"But I don't know what the power-boost could be."

"Could it have something to do with whatever called her, Zookeeper, and Canaveral away this morning?" I asked.

"Seems likely, and it's all we have to go on right now."

"Wait, time out," Sequoia interjected. "Are we contemplating what I think we are?"

"With how Anima is acting, and the scale of the threat, we can't not do something," I pointed out.

"We could call in other MLED heroes," he suggested. "Link up with some agents and get some extra manpower on our side, maybe - we'll need it, against her."

"I'm making that call already," Loki said, the illusion of his form tapping the earpiece that was part of his costume, even as his real body spoke into the phone - that answered my question of who he was calling. "But Omnipresence isn't available right now and neither is Aegis-"

"As usual," Hypnos muttered.

"They're busy people," Sequoia scolded him.

"-which means it'll be a while before anyone can make it here, at least an hour," Loki continued, and I felt him hang up. "And the only team within a wide radius with a decent chance of winning is us anyway."

"...really?"

"Yes, really," he confirmed.

"Why us?" I asked.

"Because I'm here to even the scales," Referee reminded us with a shy smile, although I was pretty sure she was trying to cover up her worry. "When I'm around, no opponent is out of reach."

I grinned at her under my mask and offered a fist bump, which she returned after a moment. "You're right. We've got this." That was the most confident thing I had heard the normally shy girl say, at least around me. We hadn't spent much time together, between the age gap and how often she was out traveling, so I was glad that she was finally warming up to me.

"Before we go, however, we need more intel," Loki said, glancing at the walls with obvious distase as another wave of eyes washed over the city - Anima apparently still searching for her 'children'. "Hypnos, you were on console - what can you tell us?"

He sighed. "The Magnificent Maxwell was stirring up trouble. They called Arthur Peregrine about it, and apparently he's gotten his hands on Excalibur."

"...what, really?" I said.

"The real Excalibur?" asked Loki, sounding surprised.

"Apparently, yeah. Peregrine said that the sword was a generic empowerment thing, and the boost it gives applies to everything, including psychological defects. He thought Max had gone full-blown narcissist from taking it. Maybe Anima grabbed the sword and can't control her helicopter mom?"

We considered this. "It seems as good a theory as any," Loki decided. "Can you check?"

Hypnos leaned against Sequoia, who wrapped one arm around his shoulders to support his boyfriend, and closed his eyes. "One sec... yeah," he confirmed. "I'm looking in on the Higgins Museum now."

"Is that where things went down?" I asked.

"Yup. I see... Zookeeper, Canaveral, and Max are all in what kind of looks like a playpen, being watched over by some golems - would be funny if this situation weren't so shitty. I think Keeper and Navi are planning something, although I can't tell what since I left my hearing with you guys - Max seems to be out cold. And Anima is definitely holding a sword, looks like a rapier. Not what I'd have guessed Excalibur to look like, but whatever."

He paused for a moment, then continued. "We may have a slight problem, though - I just pulled out a little to check for guards outside, and Anima turned the whole damn museum into a giant golem. It's... pretty tall, and looks mobile enough that Journey won't be able to teleport into it. You're still having trouble with teleporting onto or off of moving things, right?"

"Wow," a voice said, and we all turned in surprise to see that five knights were standing just inside the normalcy bubble. "You guys are doing great with the planning!"



Scene 25 - December 19th
Exterior City, Early Afternoon
Dominic Könberg



We halted in our flight a few streets away from the compound, ducking into an alley after the eyes that had sprouted from every surface in the city had faded. Viv whipped off her stealth cloak, massively expanded from a hasty spell she had cast on it to allow us all to gain its benefit, and threw it to the ground - it was smoldering already, and as we watched it began rapidly shriveling. A moment later, it had shrunk to nothingness, releasing a burst of blazing white light as it did. Fortunately, the light went unnoticed by passers by, swallowed up by the greater light of a crackling aura that seemed to have consumed the entire city.

"What the hell is going on?" Percy snapped at Viv. "This is Anima's aura - how is she affecting this much?" He cast a quick suspicious look at the wall, eyeless once more. "Shouldn't spending this much energy kill her?"

"I don't know," Viv admitted, pulling off her helmet and rubbing at her temples. She ran a hand through her hair before taking a deep breath and pulling the helmet back on. "But I have a guess. The thing that Max was after was n artifact that increased his power, right? What if Anima got her hands on it?"

I glanced at the street. "That... would be bad," I said. "I know Morgan said a city-level threat, but... this is beyond what I was expecting."

"We can't let something that powerful stay in the hands of the MLED," Percy said. "Not when the Ambrosia Company has a death grip on the DMO."

"But... can we even face up to power on this level?" Tristan asked, sounding worried. "I mean, we're badass and all, but... I mean, we were trying to steer clear of professional heroes for a reason. None of us anywhere near Dad's level, even together."

We found ourselves all looking to Viv for guidance, even mom. She was, after all, the tactical leader of our group - the one who had whispered advice in our ears and helped us turn the tide against the Journeymen, at least until Journey and Referee had shown up.

Viv sighed. "I don't know what to do, guys. This isn't a situation we expected - when mother and I were planning, we assumed that the MLED would just toss the artifact over to Peregrine, not use it themselves." She patted her hips, then butt, then groaned. "Fuck, no pockets in this armor! I don't have my phone!"

"Where'd you leave it?" Tristan asked.

"It should be on the table next to my bed," she said, "but don't -"

"One sec."

"-go into my - damn it, Alacrity!" Viv swore. She turned to mom as the green mist left in his wake began to fade. "I didn't give him permission to go into my room!"

"I'll scold him when this is over," Mom said, making a calming motion. "Right now I'm afraid we have bigger things to worry about."

"I guess so, but honestly, if he was going to run home he might as well have -"

"Here you go!" Tristan said, skidding to a halt next to my sister and holding her phone out to her. He wobbled for a moment before Percy put out a hand to stabilize him - the kid was still getting used to super-speed.

Viv glared as she plucked the phone from his hand. "Don't go into my room without asking, brat."

"It seemed important!"

"If you were going to rush home and leave a massive pointer right to where we live," she growled, pointing at the trail of mist he had left behind him, "then why didn't you grab a bullhorn too, and shout 'this way to the Round Table's hideout! Right this way, Champions!'"

"Vivian," Mom said sternly.

"It's Dame Acumen," Viv hissed. "We have codenames for a reason!"'

"Dame Acumen," I said, putting a hand on my twin's shoulder. "Calm down. Our home is under protective wards, remember? No one is going to be able to follow Alacrity's trail back."

I could practically feel the tension draining from Vivian's posture, and a moment later she turned away from the rest of the family to lead her head against my chest. Then she started gently knocking her head into the breastplate of my armor. "Stupid, stupid, stupid," she muttered. "Enhanced senses, super-intelligence, and an eidetic memory, and I can still overlook things. I'm an idiot."

"You're not an idiot," I said, hugging her. "You're the smartest of all of us even without that helmet."

"Except for mother."

"Except, maybe, for Morgan. Now, what were you going to do with your phone?"

She dialed a number and stepped away from us to make the call. "Hi mother," I heard her softly say before I turned back to my mom and brothers.

"She feels a lot of pressure being in charge," I quietly confided in them. "She was really hoping that Morgan would come in person."

"Why didn't she, again?" Percy asked mom.

"Morgan isn't as anonymous as the rest of us can hopefully be," Mom explained. "The MLED never learned that the Mountain King was Arthur Könberg, and so they have no reason to look at our family, even though they'll almost certainly notice that we're using his armor. But Morgan knows Arthur Peregrine, and he'll be looking at this whole series of events when he has time. If she isn't seen to be involved, he won't connect it to us."

"Right, right. The whole apprentice thing."

"Yeah."

Viv returned to the group, whispering a few words to her phone that caused it to wrap around her wrist like a bracelet. "Okay, so I talked to mother," she announced. "She didn't expect this either, and she says it's bad news. We have to get the item away from Anima, and do whatever it takes to ensure it. Which means..." She sighed. "We're going to have to work with the Journeymen."

"We'd better get moving, then," I said, sighing just as heavily. "Who even knows where they are now? I doubt they stayed where Anima could see them. And with Loki's powers of stealth..."

"I'm pretty sure my helmet can let me see through those," Viv said dismissively. "And I have a hunch about where they ended up..."

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 26 – December 19th
Exterior City, Afternoon
Dominic Könberg



Loki narrowed his eyes at my sister. "What are you doing here," he said, his voice flat and angry.

"Don't worry," Viv said cheerfully. "We're here to help."

"Really."

"Yes, really!" she assured him. "We see this too," she gestured at the aura that still covered the city, "and we also think it should stop."

"And why is that?" Loki asked. "As far as I can tell it's been nothing but a benefit to you – you escaped in the confusion-" His voice wavered uncertainly for a moment, probably because using the stealth cloak meant that he couldn't actually remember how we had escaped. "-how could we trust that you won't stab us in the back?"

"We don't need to stab anyone in the back," Viv assured him. "If we were going to stab you, we'd do it in the front."

"Unlike you," I heard Percy mutter.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" Newton asked, stepping forward to stand beside the illusionist. "We're heroes, we're not going to stab anyone."

Percy scoffed. "Oh, very likely-"

"Sir Ardent," I said in a calm but warning tone, and he fell silent.

"Thank you, Sir Amethyst," Viv said to me, then turned back to the Journeymen. "I apologize for Sir Ardent here. While we certainly have our issues with the system you've all entered into, the rest of us are willing to set them aside for the moment. And he'll follow our lead – won't you, Ardent?"

He crossed his arms and looked away. "…yeah."

"See?"

"That would be lovely, if I thought I could trust you as far as Sequoia could throw you," Loki said. "But I see no reason to. We'd be much better off without having to worry about betrayal."

"As I said, we're not the type," Viv repeated. "But even if you don't trust my word, trust my rationality. This situation? Completely unworkable for us. Far too many eyes – both the ones Anima keeps creating in search of you all, and the ones from elsewhere that will surely be very interested in the artifact allowing Anima, and Maxwell before her, to pose such a threat. We don't want that attention on this city, and we certainly don't want an artifact like that floating around – even if we do have to work with fake heroes like Newton to accomplish it."

"Hey!" Newton protested. "Just because I'm new-"

"Actually, Dame Acumen," I put in, "I'm not sure Newton is what we thought they were."

She glanced back over her shoulder at me. "What else would they be?"

"…I don't know, but they fought Legion – or said they did, at least."

Viv turned back to Newton. "Did you?"

"Yes! Canaveral made me run for my own safety, but I tried to fight her!"

"…interesting," she said. "You're telling the truth."

"Why would I lie about this?" They threw up their hands in apparent confusion. "Seriously, where did you get whatever idea you have about me?"

"That's confidential," mom said, shutting the conversation down. "Regardless of your connection or lack thereof, the issue right now is Anima having that artifact, right? Can we help you?"

Loki narrowed his eyes, thinking. "…fine," he said after a moment. "But no arguing amongst each other, alright?"

"Wouldn't dream of it," Viv promised.



Scene 27 – December 19th
Exterior City, Continuous
Dominic Könberg



"So what's your plan?" I asked. "We didn't hear anything until Acumen brought us into whatever stealth effect you're using." The enhanced senses and magical abilities Viv's helmet granted her had let her spot the Journeymen despite whatever Loki had done to protect them, and even let her see and hear through it – the rest of us, however, had been out of luck.

"Anima is in the Higgins Museum, which she's turned into a golem," Loki said, "and appears to be keeping Canaveral, Zookeeper, and the Magnificent Maxwell captive. Max appears to be out of commission-"

"I'm guessing that losing Excalibur knocked him out," Newton interjected.

"-which, as Newton said, suggests that simply taking the sword from Anima is likely to do the trick. Unfortunately Journey can't simply grab it and teleport it out of Anima's hand, so we'll have to actually disarm her."

"That won't be easy, given how strong she can get," Sequoia commented. "And the sword seems to be giving her an endless font of zoetic energy to fuel herself with, so we can't wait her out."

"Good thing Referee is here, then," Viv said, nodding to the teenager – who, I noticed, Tristan seemed to be staring at. I nudged him, and he looked away immediately, his body language seeming a little embarrassed.

"My thoughts exactly," Loki agreed. "Referee's aura should spread the empowering effects of Excalibur, and then our numbers will carry the day."

"What if the mind-affecting part of it spreads too?" Newton asked, a distinct note of worry in their voice.

Referee shook her head. "It shouldn't," she quietly volunteered. "If anything, the aura will be more likely to make her more rational… I think." She shrunk away as we all looked at her.

"It is her," I heard Tristan whisper, and I shushed him. I wasn't sure what he was talking about, but it wasn't the time.

"Good to know," Viv said, thoughtfully. "How are we getting there? Is this bubble mobile?"

Loki shook his head. "No, it's not. My plan was for Journey to teleport us again – not right into the museum-golem itself, since she can't take more than one or two people a trip and it's moving anyway, but to a little outside it. Do you have enough distance for all of us?" He said to the teleporter.

"I should, yes. But…" She pointed to me. "You, Purple!"

"…yes?"

"How much do you weigh in that armor?"

I raised an eyebrow, although I knew she wouldn't be able to see it under my helmet. "Around two-sixty-five, I think? Two-seventy-five at most."

"Oh, I thought armor was heavier than that."

"Common misconception. I mean, yes, it's almost forty pounds, but I'm wearing pretty heavy-duty stuff. Everyone else's is lighter."

"Well yeah, they're not built like a brick shit house like you." I shrugged. "Point is," Journey continued, "I can teleport with you guys. My weight limit is up to 350 pounds or so these days, so it shouldn't be a problem. I won't have any distance left over after so many trips, though.

"Don't give details of your powers away," Loki scolded.

"Uh… we already knew that. Journey brags about how much weight she's up to every time she does an interview," Viv pointed out.

"It's the principle of the thing."

"The point is, we can get there easily enough," Newton cut in. "No arguing, right?"

"Newton is right," I agreed. "We have a rough plan – we'll just have to try not to get in each other's way."

"What I'm concerned about," Viv said, "is the possibility that we'll be flanked by golems while trying to deal with Anima. I think that we – the Round Table, that is – should stay back to guard your rear while the Journeymen go in to deal with Anima."

"That's… reasonable," Loki admitted, although it sounded like it pained him to agree with my sister. "Are we ready, then?"

"Ready."

"Yup."

"Sure."

"Yeah."

"Ready."

"Let's go."

Loki extended his arm to Journey. "Alright. Me first, so I can set up another stealth bubble for the rest of you to land in." A moment later, they vanished.



Scene 28 – December 19th
Exterior "Higgins Museum", Afternoon
Quinn Kaufman



Reality warped and reformed around Journey, arriving with the last member of the expanded group – Referee. She slipped out of the bridal carry Journey had carried her in and blanched a little, looking up at the massive golem that Anima had turned the museum into as it gently swayed in the wind.

"Referee," Loki said. "Can your aura reach up to the head?"

She frowned. "I… don't think so. I'm sorry. I can only do about 50 feet at the most."

"I bet if you could get inside that range for a moment, your maximum range would expand," I pointed out.

"None of us can fly her up there, though," Loki noted. "Unless one of you has powers we don't know about," he said to the knights – the Round Table, Acumen had called them.

Acumen waggled her hand. "Sort of. I do object manipulation – I can transmute or telekinetically control one object at a time, anything I can see. But only one, and I can't do it to living beings, so unless she wants to get hoisted by her underwear…"

Sir Amethyst tilted his head. "I might able to help with my terrakinesis. But that's a lot way up, too far for the telekinetic aspects of the power, and while I could build up a column underneath her, I'm not sure it would be stable at that height."

I sighed. "Break off a platform for Referee to stand on, then have Acumen float it," I told them.

Loki narrowed his eyes – I suspected he was uncertain about trusting the baby of our team to supervillains. Underneath the illusion, he turned his head towards me, and I felt his shoulders relax – trusting that I could catch her if she fell, I assumed. "As Newton says," he confirmed.

As the two of them got to work, violet mist swirling around Amethyst's feet and Dame Acumen quietly chanting to make the platform slowly rise, Referee carefully perched atop it, I leaned in to Loki. "Why didn't you just have me lift her?" I whispered. "Referee is well within my weight limit with the suit on, and my presence can reach that far, no trouble."

"I'd rather have them distracted than one of us," he murmured in response. "You'll catch her if she falls, right?"

"I'm offended you even had to ask."

Loki nodded, then whispered, "Newton, I… I don't know if I can do this."

"What – take down Anima? You're doing great."

"Just…" He sighed, and tilted his head until it rested against my temple. "This is kind of bumping into some of my personal issues. The overprotectiveness, the way she's practically laying claim to us, as though we're things for her to play with…" My friend shook his head. "This isn't the time to get into it, I know. Just… I might be a little fragile, when it's all over."

I had to take a moment to let that sink in before I responded, "Of course, Loki. Like I've said, I'll be there to support you if you need me. Anything you need."

Only a moment later, I felt a tingle run down my spine and involuntarily straightened up. Every sense I had sharpened and expanded over the full range of my presence, and that range itself had grown. My ability to handle the input grew too – the faint headache from overstimulation that I had learned to live with every time I went outside was gone, even as I realized that my presence was reaching around corners and through walls.

It was incredible. It was dizzying. It was indescribable.

All around me, everyone was having a similar awakening. Loki's eyes widened, Sequoia grew two inches taller, Hypnos seemed fully awake for the first time. Journey shifted in place and I thought for a moment that the world around her was bending and twisting to follow – even the Round Table seemed affected, the faint colored mists that poured from their armor seeming thicker and more substantial.

"This feels…" Sequoia said, sounding awed.

"I know," Hypnos responded, looking around like he had never truly seen until now.

High above us, I felt Referee backflip off the edge of the platform that Acumen had levitated. "No!" I shouted, reaching for her with my mind, but the force of my presence skidded off of her as though I was trying to grasp greased ice, and she continued to plummet.

She twisted in midair as she fell, and landed in a picture-perfect three-point pose, then glanced up at the rest of us with a grin, completely unharmed. "No need to worry," she promised. "We've got this."




Scene 29 – December 19th
Exterior "Higgins Museum", Continuous
Quinn Kaufman



With our powers vastly increased by Referee's aura, reaching the top of the golem was simple – Sequoia had simply stretched roots into the ground and began growing an immense tree beneath us. We left the confines of the stealth bubble that Loki had created before long, golems beginning to emerge to climb the side of the tree or bursting forth as birds from the museum to come towards us, but the Round Table defended us.

Between Acumen melting the golems with phrases of power, Amethyst using his earthbending to shatter them and direct the pieces at others, and Alacrity dashing around to break them almost before they could form, Dame Adamant and Sir Ardent had seemed unnecessary at first. But they proved their worth when the crackling aura crawled up the tree as Sequoia grew it, and more golems began to emerge right around us. The two knights seemed to be masters of close combat, Adamant striking with a long-handled warhammer while Ardent didn't even bother with a weapon, simply crushing golems with his fists and boots.

When we reached the golem's mouth, they had continued to fight off the golems – even the giant bird that I had seen bringing the Champions to the museum, what felt like hours ago – as Sequoia stepped forward and, with a mighty heave, forced it open, his muscles trembling as he held his position. Hypnos had cast a suspicious glance over his shoulder at the knights, then declared that he would stay back to watch his boyfriend's back – Journey stayed back too, begging off for lack of built-up distance that would help her in combat. Loki nodded, and he, Referee, and I all entered.

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 30 - December 19th
Interior "Higgins Museum", Continuous
Quinn Kaufman



"Children!" Anima said cheerfully as she spotted us. "You're finally here - once I've dealt with those villains outside, you'll be safe! Forever!"

Loki grit his teeth and said nothing, so I decided to reply, hoping to stall her while we sized up the area. "Who do you mean, the Round Table? They're not so bad, really. We're thinking of setting up a weekly poker night with them."

The massive room we had entered, sitting atop the golems immense shoulders, reminded me somewhat of a theater - we had stepped out from a wide entranceway under a broad stairwell, which slopped upward behind us into a second, higher level, which was blocked off by thick bars which felt to my presence like marble, somehow spun and woven into a spiderweb of bars. Behind the bars was what Hypnos had described as being like a playpen - a sand-covered floor beneath scattered chairs and tables and miniature castles. Canaveral, Zookeeper, the Magnificent Maxwell, and two security guards were contained within the playpen, in varying levels of passed out - Max seemed to be peacefully dozing on a bed of sand, while Canaveral and Zookeeper were sitting near him and struggling to stay away - they were propped up on each other's shoulders, and I suspected that Anima was draining energy from them. The only reason their eyes were still open was likely the strengthening effects of Referee's aura.

On the lower level, the one we entered into, sat a large but plain chair. Not quite a throne, but more than a simple seat. And in that chair... was Anima.

​

She didn't look all that different, at first glance. She wore the formfitting, kevlar-lined coat that was part of her cold-weather costume, her hair was as red as ever, and her face was - or had been when we entered - split into her usual warm, motherly smile. But the aura that burned around her was stronger than I had ever seen it, and cast a frighteningly stark white light across the room.

Excalibur, a long rapier with a golden hilt, rested loosely, almost casually, in her hand.

The heroine's smile twisted into a stern frown at my joke. "You shouldn't spend time with villains," she scolded me. "They can't be trusted. You can only trust family."

Loki shivered at that, and almost seemed to shrink. I still wasn't sure what issue Anima was raising, but I decided that he didn't need to to trigger himself. I stepped in front of him and used my presence to pull him backwards a little, trying to to it subtly so as not to draw Anima's attention his way.

"What about Max?" I asked, gesturing to the playpen. "I notice he's up in there along with Canaveral and Zookeeper - a villain alongside your family."

"Max isn't a villain," Anima corrected me. "He's just lost his way a little. His intentions are good, just like Essa's."

"Essa?"

"Hertz, to you. She'll be coming in soon too..." the heroine sighed. "Once her wife tires, at any rate." The slight aura that lined every inch of the floor bulged in between us, rising into the shapes of a multitude of generic golems surrounding two more personalized ones - one that resembled a short, curvy woman sitting in a chair and watching as the other, a tall, slim woman, shattered the generic ones at high speed. "La Borda cannot last forever... I assume." She was trying to outlast La Borda? That didn't sound like a smart bet.

Loki swallowed, took a deep breath, and stepped forward. "Anima" he said, his voice steady despite how nervous I knew he was.

"Loki:" I whispered, trusting to the magic earpieces he had created to keep my words private, "you don't have to do this. I can handle it, you can-"

"Anima," he said again, flashing a grateful expression to me under his illusion, where she couldn't see, but still continuing, "you know that Essa wouldn't want that. You know that Canaveral, and Zookeeper, and Max don't want this. You know that we don't want it. Please - don't do this. There's still time to stop. Please, put down the sword."

Anima tilted her head to the side, seeming to consider it, then shook her head, her grip on Excalibur tightening. "No, Loki, this is the only way to keep you safe - the only way to keep everybody safe. No one has been hurt in the entire city since I took up this sword, and even now I'm healing those who were already injured - how could I give up this responsibility?"

"You're hurting me!" Loki snapped, moving his real body away from his illusory form and creeping forward. "How can you not see what you're doing to me? This is so stifling, so-"

He was cut off by Anima blurring into motion, leaving a trail of blazing white power behind her as she rushed forward and grasped Loki's shoulder- his real shoulder, not that of his illusion. Before I could react, her aura flared and Loki collapsed into near-unconsciousness.

"Of course I see you hurting," Anima said softly, smiling paternalistically down at her. "That's why I have to do this - so I can protect you from the harsh world." With that same, all-too-caring look on her face, she turned towards me and Referee. "And you too - my newest child and my favorite daughter. Will you object as well?"

I swallowed my fear, and readied myself. "I do. You can't make choices for people, Anima, even if you were really our parent. And while I respect you greatly, you're not my mother."

She flew towards me, and I pushed...



Scene 31 - December 19th
Interior "Higgins Museum", Continuous
Quinn Kaufman



I pushed myself into the air while pulling Anima's head and pushing her legs, causing her to topple and overbalance. I reached the high ceiling and pushed again, dodging the hands that began to grow from the surface to grab me.

Meanwhile, Anima somehow completed a full front flip and landed on her feet again. Before she could move properly, however, I pulled, bringing her off the ground to prevent her from getting any leverage and coming at her feet first.

She grabbed a hold of my leg and flared her aura, trying to drain me like she had Loki. The only result, however, was the belt of the PA4 letting out a long, pained-sounding beep, and the bright blue of its eyes, buckles, and the palms of the gloves and flats of the boots faded out.

I lashed out with my mind, grabbing a hold of the air just in front of Anima's face and instantly generating a bright burst of light, causing her to flinch back and release me. Another push and we landed a good 20 feet away from each other.

I tore off the mask of my suit and pointed at the heroine. "You better not have damaged this thing," I told her, "the warranty is way out of date."

"Better your suit be damaged than you be hurt," Anima said with that same, sickly-sweet smile as golems began to rise around me.

I began bouncing off of them in the style that Canaveral had taught me - pushing off each golem to overbalance them, allowing the backlash of pushing my presence to move me in midair rather than actually damage me, and slamming them into each other when I could. The goal was to break the golems - while they were made of solid stone and could take a lot more force than any living person, I could put out a lot more force than usual too, right now. Even the PA4 being broken - something I would have to freak out about later - didn't seem to have slowed me, and it was only a minute or so later than Anima paused the horde.

Of course, she only paused her attack to rush at me herself, once again with her aura flared high. This time, however, she came at me rapier first.

I was surprised, but not enough that I couldn't dodge her - this time I went low instead of high, rolling onto my back and pulling and pushing in just the right way to send Anima over my head.

She landed easily enough, and I asked, "What was that about not wanting to hurt me, Anima? That blade looks pretty sharp to me."

Her eyes were hard and uncompromising even as her voice was sweet when she answered, "I can always heal you later."

"Okay, enough," said Referee, stepping in between us.



Scene 32 - December 19th
Interior "Higgins Museum", Continuous
Quinn Kaufman



"Ah, Molly," Anima said, quite casually. "Are you going to see reason? You know I only want what's best for you, dear."

"I know," Referee quietly answered.

"Good. Then..." the heroine pointed Excalibur up at the playpen. "Go to your room. You'll be safe there."

"No, I... I can't."

"Oh?"

Referee reached up and removed her domino mask, revealing blue eyes reddened by held back tears. "Anima... Miriam. Please. You know this is wrong. We have to be able to make choices for ourselves. You know this." She sounded like she was about to cry - I hadn't realized it was hitting the young girl so hard, had been too focused on Loki to notice. "Please."

Anima seemed to be hesitating. "I... Molly, I've gone too far. I can't stop now."

"You can still stop," Molly insisted. "Loki was right about that, there's always time to stop. It's never too late to start being better, you told me that, remember?"

"I... I do, but..."

"Please, Miriam," the young heroine begged. "Just put down the sword."

"I..."

"Will you do it for me, mom? Please?"

The heroine took a deep breath. "Yes, I'll set it down," she swore, staring at the blade in her hand. "But first, there's something I need to set right."

It was eerily silent as Anima focused and began to change the Higgins Museum back into its original state. The floor moved under us like a snake, marble bars melting back into the walls, sand refusing into limestone tiles.

Within a minute, it was done, and we stood in the familiar lobby of the Higgins Museum.

Anima sighed. "There. Now..." She still hadn't taken her eyes off of Excalibur. "Now..."

"...mom."

"Yes. Right." She released the sword.

Anima instantly swayed, presumably feeling the loss of power, but remained upright even as her aura winked out - Molly and I sagged in much the same way, the sudden loss of Excalibur's power - or the reflection of it that Molly's aura of fairness had provided - almost dropping us unconscious.

"Right, we need to keep anyone from touching that thing," I said, pointing at the blade. "Referee, will you - here, take this." I stripped off my plaid shirt and passed it to her. "Wrap this around the blade and hold it like that. Don't touch the hilt, I don't want to take any chances."

I pulled my discarded mask back to my hand as I walked over to where Loki lay on the ground, and crouched next to him. I could feel him breathing through my presence, but I still laid a hand on his shoulder as gently as I could. "How are you doing?"

The only answer that came was a remarkably cute snore, and I couldn't stop myself from laughing. "Yeah, you'll be fine. Just..." I yawned. "...drained. Same as the rest of us. Hey, Anima," I asked as I carefully lifted the dozing illusionist in a bridal carry, "how much juice do you have left?"

"A surprising amount, actually," she said, sounding more awake than I felt, but confused and uncertain. "I suppose the sword was fueling me right up until the end..."

I nodded towards where Canaveral and Zookeeper had also succumbed to slumber, faint snores coming from where they lay in a pile on Max. "Think you could have some golems carry these lazy asses out of here? Or give them a magical espresso shot, maybe?"



Scene 33 - December 19th
Exterior Higgins Museum, Continuous
Quinn Kaufman



As it turned out, she could - Anima tapped each of the sleepers, as well as me and Referee, and pumped zoetic energy into us. When she was done, we were all drained, but on our feet and walking - although still leaning on each other for support. Canaveral, Zookeeper, and Max were moving in a group, arms around each others' shoulders, while Loki and I paired up - so did Referee and Anima, as well as the two security guards.

As we exited the museum, we met Journey, Hypnos, and Sequoia - all just as tired as us - as well as the Round Table. A group of policemen were there as well, although they seemed wary of the Round Table and were hanging back.

"Everything clear?" Sir Amethyst asked, sounding genuinely concerned at seeing everyone so drained. He and the other knights seemed less affected, for some reason.

"Yeah, about as good as could be hoped," Canaveral tiredly answered. "Who are you guys? New heroes?"

Amethyst brought a hand up to the back of his helm as though to scratch his head. "Well..."

"Sorry about this," Sir Alacrity said, and then everything happened at once.

Acumen spoke a word, and Referee dropped Excalibur with a startled yelp, her hands twitching as though electrically shocked. There was a great plume of green smoke, and Alacrity - and the sword - vanished. Amethyst stomped a foot, and the concrete rose around us, trapping each of the Journeymen, the New Champions, and the Magnificent Maxwell into a tiny, personal cell.

By the time we had been broken out, by Sequoia, Canaveral, and Anima, the Round Table was long gone.

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 34 – December 19th
Interior MLED Compound, Early Evening
Susan Shepard



I sighed heavily, leaning my forehead against the door of the briefing room for a moment. It had been a long day, but the crisis was over and the end was in sight. All I had to get through were these debriefs, then I could hand things over to Henry.

Of course, there would no doubt be more to do the next day, and I couldn't help smiling at the thought. I might complain, but I didn't know what I would do with myself if I wasn't busy.

I straightened up, opened the door, and entered. "Good evening, Mr. Koval," I said, sitting across from Loki.

"Good -" the young man yawned. "Sorry, director. Good evening."

"Still feeling drained?" I asked, and he nodded. "Well, this shouldn't take all that long."

"I know, just… not usually this tired."

"We'll be brief, I promise. So." I opened my laptop, tabbing over to the the word processor I favored so I could take notes. "What was the first sign you had of something happening, today?"

"It was maybe 11:30. I was having coffee with Quinn and Simone, in celebration of us all having finished our college finals. We had left the coffee shop and gone to April Park to have a snowball fight, when our pagers went off, to call all available heroes back to the compound."

"Why did you make the decision to return?"

"We… weren't going to, at first," Loki admitted. "Simone's girlfriend – ex-girlfriend, I guess – cheated on her and dumped her before exams started, so she was stressed out and feeling pretty down, and Quinn and I were trying to cheer her up. I assumed that Canaveral would be back at the Compound quickly, and Anima probably would be too, not to mention that Zookeeper was on console and should be able to handle it. But…"

"But?"

"But we noticed Anima, Canaveral, and Zookeeper flying away from the Compound on the roc that Starling built for Anima," he said. "Simone insisted that we head back, even going in against four unknown metahumans."

"Four?" I asked. I tabbed over to my notes on the event – there had been five recorded members of the so-called 'Round Table.' The prevailing theory was that they had someone stolen or inherited whatever had granted the Mountain King his vast powers – the armor seemed to be the most likely theory, as each of them had produced obviously-magical mist from a different piece, while the Mountain King had produced it from his entire set – had fallen into their hands.

Loki nodded. "That's what the pager said."

"Hm. Continue."

"Simone teleported us back to the console room, where we met Sequoia and Hypnos," he said. "I sent Quinn and Simone to get changed and got a briefing on the situation from Hypnos. I then received a text message from Molly saying that her flight had been moved up, she had just landed, and was I or Simone available to pick her up, so I sent Journey to get her."

"This was the point at which…" I sighed. "Journey teleported through security at the airport without being cleared, resulting in a complaint from the airport board."

"Is that why it took her so long to get back?"

"It was," I confirmed. "Please keep in mind that Journey is impulsive and forgetful. Next time you send her into a secure location, make sure she goes through security. It's faster than being detained even briefly, and results in fewer complaints from other authorities."

Loki shook his head. "I'll have to talk with her about that. I love her like a sister, but she's got to keep that stuff in mind."

"I've already scheduled her to speak to Deputy Director Blackmire about it tomorrow evening," I said, pleased that he wanted to take the responsibility himself. "But regardless. What happened next?"

"I planned to divide and conquer," he said. "Since the villains seemed to be new, I was confident that we could handle them, and it worked – at first."

"But?"

"But then the fifth member of their crew showed up." Loki clenched his fist and, I imagined, was probably gritting his teeth behind his mask. "Dame Acumen."

"So how many of them were there?" I asked, casting my eyes up to his previous statement of four metahumans.

"Still five."

"Hmm. Continue."

"She… was able to see through my constructs, somehow," Loki said, almost sounding as though it was painful to admit, "and was… incredibly annoying. She was focused on me, or seemed to be, and…" He sighed. "And without me coordinating and watching, they somehow put together a plan that turned the tables."

"We may need to put together some training exercises without you leading the Journeymen," I mused, making a note of it, "if you being distracted for a few moments left them falling apart so badly."

"They weren't falling apart, exactly, but… yeah, it was heading in that direction," he admitted. "Fortunately, Journey and Referee got back just in time. I had them bounce around and we started winning again. That's when it happened."

"Anima's aura covered the city."

"Yes. It was… scary," he confessed. "Especially when she manifested a golem and started talking about… locking us up, basically, to 'keep us safe.'" The young man shivered. "Kind of… hit close to home, I guess."

I tilted my head. "How so?"

"Haven't you read about it in the transcripts of my sessions with Dr. Wagner?"

"Those sessions are entirely confidential," I reminded him. "There are no transcripts of them, and I don't look at his notes. Unless you share, or he has reason to believe you're an imminent danger to yourself or others, I have no idea what you discuss with Dr. Wagner – only whether or not you schedule sessions, and attend them after you do. Do you have reason to think he's been sharing your information without your consent?"

He paused for a moment, thinking, before sighing. "No, I guess not," Loki said. "Just… well, just another facet of the same issue, I guess. I'll make sure to talk with him about it."

"Continue, then."

"Do I need to mention my issue?"

"Not if you don't want to," I promised. Policy would have me push, but I considered my heroes' mental health to be as important as their physical. Just like I wouldn't force someone with a broken leg to stand during a debrief, I wasn't going to force Loki to talk about his issues when he wasn't ready to.

"Okay. Okay." The young man took a deep breath before continuing, "Journey evacuated us from the Compound, and I set up a stealth bubble so Anima wouldn't spot us. Hypnos told us that the thing which had called the Champions away was that the Magnificent Maxwell had somehow gotten hold of Excalibur, which apparently magnifies people's powers, and might mess with their heads as well. We figured that Anima had probably taken it from him, and that's why she was… acting strange."

"This is when you called me," I noted.

"Yeah. You know how that went, of course."

"Mhm. Continue."

"Since Omnipresence and Aegis were both busy with… was it really a parallel dimension invading?"

I switched tabs to the latest report on that situation. "The invaders certainly claim to be. As with the supposed incursion in California two months ago, however, it's unclear if it's true or not. The situation is still unclear."

Loki tilted his head, sounded quite interested as he asked, "Are the two incursions linked?"

"Again, unclear. The invaders don't seem to be from the same parallel, if in fact they really are from alternate dimensions. One could be real and the other fake, or both real, or both fake – which is what I personally think. But that's beside the point," I said. "Continue from the phone call."

"Since we had Referee with us, we were the best option to get the sword away from Anima," he said. "We had just gotten some preliminary intel from Hypnos when the Round Table showed up again."

"How did they see through your shield bubble?" I asked.

"The same way Acumen saw through my previous spells, I assume."

"And how did they get out of the Compound?"

Loki opened his mouth, then frowned. "I'm… not sure, actually."

I nodded. "We think Dame Acumen has some sort of stealth capabilities, tentatively ranked Area Buff 2 since she was able to share it with the rest of the Table. That's why the initial report said four, even though there were five of them, and why you all forgot they were there when they escaped."

"That… how did I miss that? I was there, I saw her, and I knew there were only four reported…"

"It seems to have less effect second-hand." I gestured to dismiss that. "But keep going. The Round Table reappeared?"

"Yes. They offered to help us get to Anima and keep golems from flanking us while we confronted her." He sighed. "And… they did a decent job, I suppose. They helped get Referee in range of her, which massively boosted the range of her aura to include all of us."

"And then you went in?"

"Yes. I…" he took a deep breath, fortifying himself, and I made a mental note to check that he attended an appointment with Wagner to talk about whatever issue this had jostled. "I tried to convince her to give Excalibur up peacefully, but she just drained me unconscious. I didn't wake up until it was all over – I don't know that I was properly awake even when the Round Table stole the thing."

"Alright then. That's the events… do you have any observations about how the sword affected Anima's mental state?"

He hesitated. "Can I beg off this question?"

"Mental health?" I asked, raised an eyebrow.

"Yes."

I nodded, and saved my notes. "Alright. That's all I need from you, then. Go get some sleep, Loki."

He yawned again before standing. "Yeah… I'm looking forward to that."



Scene 35 – December 19th
Interior MLED Compound, Evening
Susan Shepard



"…we tried to make an escape once, tried to get the sword away from her, but she just drained our energy," Abe said, sounding every bit as tired as Loki did. "After that it was all we could do to stay awake, even when Molly's aura hit us. I saw the kids come – Loki got drained, Quinn managed to hold her off, then Molly managed to convince her to back down."

I nodded. "Last question. How would you say the blade affected Maxwell and Anima's mental states? Were there similarities?"

"Shouldn't that be a question for Anima?"

"I already debriefed her," I told him. "She doesn't remember her time holding the sword very clearly. All she could say was that holding it felt good in a way which, no longer under its effects, was 'creepy' and 'too easy'."

"Alright. Well…" The hero took a deep breath. "It was definitely affecting them – I could see that Max's emotions were all over the place, and Anima seemed about the same. They were… off-kilter, I guess. But, if I'm being honest… I don't think it introduced any new thoughts."

"What do you mean?"

"Arthur Peregrine said that it was a power-enhancing artifact, right?" He said. "It affects the mind in the same way it affects your power, it enhances you to the point that it considers you worthy of 'kingship'. That doesn't mean giving you new ideas, forcing you to want something you've never considered – but it might mean magnifying thoughts you would never have actually acted on into overriding impulses." Canaveral sighed. "Max wanted to prove his worth to Peregrine, as though he had failed somehow by not getting that apprenticeship. That's just the kind of thing you tell yourself when you fail like that, 'if I could just show him how good I am now, he'd change his mind,' even though you know that's not how it works. And Anima… I'm sure every parent has had the thought that if they could just wrap their children in cotton and keep them from the world, they would be safe. And while she may not literally be a mother to any of the Journeymen, she certainly views the Journeymen as her kids – Molly especially."

I nodded. "That seems like a reasonable explanation of their behaviors. Do you think their exposure will have any lasting effects?"

"No clue," he said with a shrug. "I'm no mage and certainly no psychiatrist. Ask Arthur Peregrine."

"Oh, I will." I saved the file. "Do you think we need to put Anima on temporary leave?"

"Probably for the best. Get her a clean bill of mental health from Peregrine – Wagner, too – before she goes back on duty."

"Agreed." I let out a heavy sigh. "Today was a real mess, Canaveral. Have you see what the media is saying about Anima?"

He shook his head. "I haven't had the time to check yet, but I can only imagine it's bad."

"Whatever you're imagining, it's worse. There's a strong possibility that she'll have to retire because of this."

"That… would be bad," Canaveral said. "She's one of the best healers the MLED has."

"I know. I'm going to be fighting for her, but…" I growled. "I already have an angry message from Chief Director Redding. We might be lucky if we can keep her as an on-staff healer."

Canaveral struggled the hold back a yawn as he asked, "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Argue in her favor when Internal Affairs comes to interview you about the incident," I said. "Other than that… Just go get some sleep."



Scene 36 – December 19th
Interior Mansion, Late Evening
Dominic Könberg



When we had gotten home, taking shelter under the Kovals' wards on the family mansion, Morgan had immediately whisked the sword – Excalibur, the Journeymen had said it was called – away from Tristan, and vanished into her wing. Mom, meanwhile, had swept off to check on dad, and make sure that he had gotten to bed alright on his own.

The rest of us, meanwhile had essentially collapsed in a puddle. After we stripped off our armor, left in the padded underclothing that had come with the stuff, I and my siblings were simply dozing, waiting for our mothers to shoo us to bed or to talk about the events of the day.

When Morgan reappeared, Viv was curled up against my side, Percy was lying with his head in her lap, and Tristan was sound asleep across Percy and my legs. I myself had folded up dad's cape – which had changed color from deep purple to a metallic gray when I doffed it, as always – and was using it as a pillow between my head and the wall.

Morgan smiled a little at the sight, and I tried not to stir too much so as to avoid waking Tristan. Viv yawned and rubbed at her eyes, and Percy propped himself up on an elbow. "Hey Morgan," I whispered.

"Hey kids," she quietly responded, crouching. "First of all, I want to tell you how proud I am of all of you." A sleepy smile spread across my face involuntarily, and Viv blushed a little. Percy just nodded, but I could tell how pleased he was to get such praise as well. "You successfully recovered the data we were hoping to get, you went toe-to-toe with the Journeymen and very nearly won, and you managed to adapt when plans had to change, and keep Excalibur out of the MLED's hands – which means out of Ambrosia's hands."

"What did you do with it, by the way?" Viv asked. "It didn't seem like something to be careless with."

"I have it locked under a number of protective enchantments at the moment," Morgan said. "In a few days I'll begin investigating it for possible use – see if my specialty in artifice and enchantment can let me avoid the mental effects of it, or if they might be worth it for a few moments at a time. For now, however, we'll just keep it locked up."

"Probably for the best," Percy murmured. "The idea of it being misused again…"

"A scary thought," I agreed.

"Right. But that's the first thing – you all did well." Then Morgan sighed. "The second thing, unfortunately, is that even though you did well, today was a bit of a fiasco. The MLED will be on the lookout for any groups matching our description, has definitely connected your powers to Arthur's, and Arthur Peregrine himself will doubtless be in the city by the end of the week. The Ambrosia Company will almost certainly have active agents here soon, both for Arthur's armor and for the sword, if they can get their hands on it. Not to mention that Anima, one of the few heroes in this city that's definitely not connected with Ambrosia – and a long-standing pillar of the entire East Coast for almost 20 years – might be forced into retirement as the result of this." She shook her head sadly. "I wish it hadn't turned out this way."

"What's our next move?" Viv asked.

"Nothing – yet. You and I will need to look through the data you recovered from the MLED's servers, and from there, most likely a lot of scrying to check on hunches and inferences. What we'll be doing next depends greatly on what we find. The deeper Ambrosia's hooks go into the MLED, the more drastic the actions we'll have to take in order to keep Arthur safe from them." She leaned over Tristan's snoozing form to press a kiss to my, Viv, and Percy's foreheads. "For the moment, you should all get some rest. Maybe check in on your father, if Jenny hasn't coaxed him to bed yet – it's been a good day for him mentally, but that just means that he was worried about you all."

"We will," I promised, Viv and Percy echoing me a moment after.

Morgan whispered a few words, and Tristan rose into the air, still sleeping peacefully. "I'll put Tristan in his room. Good night, kids."

"Good night, Morgan."

"Night," Percy said, grunting as he stood.

"G'night mom." Viv yawned, and cuddled back into my side. I decided not to disturb her, and instead just closed my eyes and did my best to follow my sister to sleep.

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 37 – December 22nd
Interior MLED Compound, Afternoon
Quinn Kaufman

A few days after the incident, I stumbled into the common room with a groan of pain, collapsing onto the couch where my head landed neatly in Holly's lap. "I want to die," I declared.

"Don't be so dramatic!" Abe laughed, following behind me and leaning over the back of the couch. "They're just sore because I kicked their ass in training today," he informed Holly.

"You kick my ass in training every day," I shot back. "I'm sore today because you kicked my ass in a new and exciting way, which," I told Holly, "was that he made me fight him while defending a crash test dummy."

"Oh, wow," she said, sounding impressed. She began absently running her fingers through my hair, and I let out a pleased sigh as she played with my curls. "It took me way longer to get to defending others when I was doing my initial combat training."

"Quinn's got a real talent," Abe said.

"Lies. I haven't won once."

"You're not expected to win, you're expected to improve. And that you're doing, and very quickly indeed." He turned to Miriam, who was sitting in the other armchair, her knees curled underneath her and a book on her lap. "Don't you agree, Miriam?"

The healer nodded. "Quinn's been picking up first aid just as fast."

"That's no great achievement," I denied. "I'm a premed student, I should hope that I could learn basic first aid."

"You're a little past basic, you know, and showing no signs of stopping."

"Anyway…" Abe tilted his head towards Anima. "We haven't really gotten a chance to talk. How are you doing?"

She sighed. "Stressed as hell, mostly. Dealing with the bureaucracy and media out for my head is bad enough, but the withdrawal symptoms on top of that…" She shivered. "Thank god that Arthur Peregrine is coming to check on me soon. I don't know how much longer I can deal with this."

I sat up, shifting to lean against Holly instead of lying in her lap so that I could see Miriam better. "I didn't realize you were dealing with withdrawal. What's it like? If you don't mind me asking."

"It's like…" She paused, thinking. "When I was low on energy, before, my body temperature would drop and I would get shivers, as well as being exhausted, and I'd get these urges… to drain whatever I could, to get up to full again. It's one reason I tried not to use too much of my own energy. But now, after having had so much power stored up… even though my tank is full, I'm getting… echoes of that feeling, I guess." She held up a hand, and I realized it was trembling a little. "I hope Peregrine can fix it."

"I'm certain he can," Holly assured her. "It sounds like you recalibrated what full was while using Excalibur, so now you feel almost empty. I bet he can just…" She twiddled her fingers. "…reset that. He's an incredible healer, for the mind as well as the body."

"I wonder if we'll get to meet him?" I mused. "I know there's no way he'll be impressed by my meager magical talent – one spell does not a mage make – but I'd still love to meet the guy."

Canaveral shrugged. "He likes to meet other heroes, usually briefly, but he's a very busy man. It depends on if he has time to spare."

"Have you ever met him?" I asked Holly.

"Twice," she answered. "Once when I was fifteen – he was passing through New Venice because – what was it?"

"When you were fifteen? Five or six years ago… I think that was when Motael made his first foray into magic, and accidentally created Overshadow and Underlight," Miriam said.

"Thank god he he's stuck to tech since then," Abe muttered. "He's enough trouble without breaking the laws of physics."

"Anyway, once then," Holly continued. "He asked me to show him my best spell, which was invisibility at the time, and then gave me some advice on how to improve it. The next time was when I had just turned 18, and he asked me to come interview for an apprenticeship with him."

"Whoa!" I cried, shocked. "That's super cool!"

She nodded. "It was pretty cool, yeah, even if I later found out that he interviews a lot of magic-using heroes for it. I didn't get the gig, so…"

"Why not? Surely he couldn't have missed how brilliant you are."

Holly laughed. "No, he didn't miss it! But our casting styles weren't compatible enough for him to teach me properly, he said. I used hand signs, and he uses…" She tilted her head, trying to remember. "Actually, I'm not sure what he uses."

"Magic just kind of… happens around him," Miriam said. "I've never seen him actually take any action to cause it."

"I've heard him say that his style is very rare," Abe added.

Holly shrugged. "In any case, I haven't met him since, even though he came through New Venice again last year."

"That was when Blue Phoenix manifested," Abe remembered. "His fires were magically interesting for some reason or another."

"He wanted to look at their regenerative properties," Miriam reminded the other hero. "Peregrine hoped to make eternal braziers of them that people could step into to be healed. It didn't work, unfortunately, but…"

"Anyway," Abe said, "circling back to checking in on Miriam. How are you two doing?" he asked me and Holly.

"I'm… managing," Holly said. "I had a chat with Dr. Wagner, and that helped a little bit."

"Whoa, why'd you need to see the shrink?" Abe said, surprised and worried.

She took a deep breath. "It's kind of personal, but…"

"You don't have to share if you don't want to," I reminded her, remembering that she had alluded to this shortly before we confronted Anima. I wrapped a protective arm around her shoulders.

She leaned her head against mine for a moment before saying, "it's alright, Quinn. I talked to Wagner about it, like I said, and he thinks sharing will help me."

"Then don't let me stop you. Just…"

"I know." She took another deep breath before saying, "It's my parents. I don't know if you've noticed how often I end up sleeping here at the compound…"

"More often than anyone else, by a pretty wide margin," Miriam said. "Not counting Molly and Quinn, who both live here. I always assumed you lived too far away…" she seemed a little distressed at what Holly was implying. "I can't believe I missed…"

"It's fine," Holly promised. "I never told anyone, after all."

"Go on," Abe said encouragingly, although there was still a note of worry in his voice.

"My parents are this weird combination of emotionally-absent and neglectful, and overprotective control freaks," Holly explained. "They hide away in their research for months at a time, a year or more sometimes, and never think twice about me or anything else outside their labs. Then they emerge and suddenly everything needs to be perfect and just as they envision it, exactly as they desire, or else…" She shuddered.

"It's never physical," she assured us as we all bristled, imagining what her parents had done to her, "never anything more than words. But, well… it's easier to stay out of their way and hope they don't notice me, sometimes."

Miriam's eyes were watering as she said, "And when I had the sword, I… oh, Holly, I'm so sorry!"

"It's fine, I promise!" she said, trying to reassure the emotional heroine. "You weren't in your right mind. And if anyone is going to be overprotective of me, I'd rather it be someone actually who cares about me as more than a thing. I mean, honestly, you've been more of a parent to me than either of them have, since I-" She was interrupted by Miriam flying across the room to enfold her in a crushing hug. I shifted over a little so as not to intrude.

"We had no idea," Abe said apologetically. "I'm sorry we never realized."

"Like I said, I never told you guys," Holly said, her voice muffled by Miriam's shoulder. "Um. Could you let go, Mom? I can't breathe." The heroine gave one more squeeze before releasing her and retreating back to her armchair. Holly took a theatrically deep breath before continuing, "Honestly, I'm going to be fine. Wagner says I need to confront them, and it might take me a little to work up to that, but that's all a personal problem – let me worry about it. We should be more concerned about Excalibur, honestly."

Miriam sighed. "You're probably right. The thought of what it did to me – of what I could do with it…"

"It's scary to imagine it in the hands of bad guys," Holly agreed. "And we have no idea what they're going to do with it!"

"Hold on," I protested, "the Round Table didn't seem all that bad, as bad guys go. They seemed to be trying to keep casualties low, and they were just as worried about Excalibur being misused as we were."

"And then they stole it," Abe pointed out. "If they were worried about the sword being misused, why not leave it to the MLED? We would have kept it pretty far under lock and key, no one would have been able to get it."

"I got the impression that they're very suspicious of the MLED," I told him. "I couldn't tell why for sure, but… I think maybe they think we collaborate with villains, somehow?"

"Like when we worked with them to get Excalibur?" Holly pointed out, crossing her arms. "They're pretty hypocritical, if that's their problem."

"I don't know," I shrugged, "that's just the impression I got from Amethyst."

"I think," Abe put in, "that they were worried about the thing being out of their control in general, not about the MLED having it. The timing of their attempted infiltration of the Compound was exactly when we left to go after Max – they were obviously using him as a distraction. They only flipped when Excalibur left his control – I bet they pointed him at it somehow, and intended to reclaim it from him."

"How did they know exactly when to strike, then?" I asked. "Do they have a source in the MLED?"

"No reason to jump to that conclusion," Miriam said ruefully. "We left in the roc – it's not exactly subtle transport."

"Point."

"Still, they seemed to be expecting the Journeymen alone, and knew that all available Champions would be busy," she admitted. "Based on what I saw, at least, they had a strategy prepared to counter you guys, although it didn't seem to cover Referee."

"The PR page's site on Referee includes her tournament schedule," Abe pointed out. "Still publicly available information. It implies preexisting familiarity with MLED policies, maybe, but I don't think there's any reason it has to be a spy."

"Familiarity and experience is probably all it is," Holly agreed. "You must have noticed the similarity in powerset to the Mountain King, right?" Abe and Miriam nodded. "He vanished over 20 years ago, sure, but what if he didn't die like some people think? What if he just retired?"

"And… what, these are his kids?" I asked. "Seems a little far-fetched. I mean, why does one of the most successful supervillains of all time just retire, anyway?"

"How old were the Round Table members?" Holly pointed out. "Having kids could easily convince someone to retire, especially since he almost certainly had more money than anyone would ever need."

"There's always been a theory that that's why the Maestri retired, around the same time," said Miriam. "They were a pair of supervillains that worked with the Mountain King a lot," she told me. "Mages who specialized in trickery, illusions and mind control and the like. I fought them a few times and they were definitely a couple – Maestro would call Maestra 'beloved' and she always called him 'dear'."

Holly seemed a little uncomfortable for some reason, shifting a little beneath her illusory form. "Yeah, that… seems pretty plausible. Especially since Dame Adamant – the oldest – seemed to be about the right age to be his wife, I think."

"I suppose it's possible," I admitted. "But if he retired for his family, why would the family then come out 20 years later?"

Abe shrugged. "Maybe there's something they need, or are afraid of, that the Mountain King himself can't go after. What did they seem to be going for, when they broke in?"

"I asked Sir Amethyst that," I said. "His response, and I quote, was, 'not important – we couldn't get into the storage anyway'."

"Hmm. Maybe the secure storage that we keep confiscated relics and technology in?" Miriam speculated. "Thank god they couldn't get in."

"I'm not so sure," Holly said with a sigh. "That could easily have been misdirection – especially since Acumen had the run of the place for who-knows-how-long, under that stealth spell. I mean, they were far from incompetent – why would they mention what they were after?"

"You think that them setting off the alarms was a distraction from Acumen going farther into the Compound for something?" Abe asked.

"We're already suggesting that they were using Max as a distraction," she pointed out. "It fits their modus operandi, if so."

"I suppose."

"What confused me," I remarked, "was that he also said that I was 'the most dangerous one to them' – not the most dangerous Journeyman in general, specifically the most dangerous to them. What about me would have been dangerous for the Round Table in a way that no one else would have been?" I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. "Especially since he seemed to change his mind about me to a degree when I told him that I fought Legion. Or tried to fight her, rather."

Holly tilted her head thoughtfully. "Acumen did the same thing. Like, they assumed you would have worked with Legion, for some reason."

"I don't know what idea they have about me," I said, crossing my arms in annoyance, "but I don't like it."

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 38 – December 23rd
Interior Cell Block, Late Morning
Maxwell Copperfield

I felt empty.

When I had taken up the sword – Excalibur, according to Abe – I had been filled with power, filled with understanding. The world had seemed so simple, magic had seemed so simple. My thoughts had raced, I had built great towers of logic with perfect clarity. Spells far beyond my reach had been simple. It seemed as though I had no limits. And now…

In only a few moments, Anima had claimed it for herself, and those towers of thought had come crashing down. I had collapsed as well, drained of both my energy and my mind, or so it had felt. I could barely remember those heights, now – even the events themselves were dim and hard to recollect, so colored had they been by my lofty thoughts.

I wasn't sure how long it had been, since then. A few days, perhaps, since I had been deposited in the magic-suppressing cells beneath the MLED Compound. No doubt I would eventually be transferred to Steel Island, where I would remain until I escaped. If I escaped.

I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like, to be in prison. I had never been caught before. Unpleasant, no doubt, but they probably couldn't hold me. Steel Island couldn't hold villains as weak as Voltage, Motael, or Ridealong – how could they possibly hold me, even without Excalibur?

"Max."

I was jostled into full awareness by the sound of my name from a familiar voice. My head rose and swiveled and I saw the most beautiful sight I had ever seen – Abraham Armstrong and Emilia Alvarez, the couple that I had loved and lost and regretted losing. I was overcome by an intense feeling of relief – thank god, I thought, because Abe and Emilia were here.

Just as quickly, I was set upon by an equally intense guilt. I had hurt them, I knew it. I had neglected them both until I lost them, obsessed with finding a book that might, it seemed, have been lost forever – had then attacked them, while in possession of a sword that, according to Abe, at least, had been affecting my mind.

And here they were, looking at me with pity and rage and tenderness and love in such quantities that I could hardly bear it. Looking at me like that now, while I was a failure and locked into an appearance that I hated and dressed in rags and…

"Don't-" I said, my voice rough with disuse – I hadn't spoken since the moment Excalibur left my hand. "…don't look at me."

"Max," Emilia said, sitting in the chair on the other side of the glass from me, resting her hands on the table that crossed it. "Why don't you want us to look at you?"

That was a complicated question. I tried to marshal my thoughts to explain that I had done something horrible by even pretending to take over the city – especially since my thoughts had been leaning farther towards truly attempting to do so that than I had let on to Abe and Emilia when they had confronted me. I tried to figure out how to explain that my natural face was disgusting to me, and that wearing the glamour of my true face allowed me to feel comfortable with the world and myself. I tried to think of how to explain that the sight of them was painful to me, and shouldn't my own face be equally painful to them?

All I could say was, "I'm hideous."

She exchanged a look with Abe, one which I, with my mind still staggered by the loss of Excalibur, was unable to decipher. He squeezed her shoulders from where he stood behind her, then said, "Max. Are you feeling okay?"

"…no," I admitted. "I feel like… like a puzzle with half its pieces scattered. And I… I've always felt like that, a little bit, but…" I sighed. "I had a glimpse of the box, just for a moment. I saw where I was going and how to get there. And now even that's gone. Now I'm just broken, and I barely remember what being complete would look like."

Another one of those looks. "Are these withdrawal symptoms, do you think?" Emilia asked. "Miriam is struggling with them as well."

I waved a hand dismissively. "No, that's not it. There's no lingering magic, I would notice that," I said. "It's just the effect of having had power and then lost it. I was so much more, and now…"

"Max, I said it before and I'll say it again," Emilia told me. "You don't need Excalibur to be amazing. You're incredible just as yourself – as you are now."

"And…" Abe added, "we do mean as you are now. You don't need magic or a glamour or a suit or a sword. You, Maxwell Copperfield, can be enough."

I turned away from them, unable to handle their pity and pride and concern any longer. "Nothing will ever be enough, for some people," I muttered. "I have to be more. I can't – I don't -" I buried my face in my hands, unable to express it any better.

"…Max, it seems likely that you're going to be sent to a mental care hospital," Abe said from behind me.

"Not Steel Island?" I asked, speaking up a little to be heard through my hands.

"Not Steel Island," Emilia confirmed. "You're not in your right mind, we can tell, and we'll testify to that. And Arthur Peregrine-" I felt a flash of rage. "-is likely to testify that the sword was affecting you mentally as well. You'll be there until the doctors clear you."

I said nothing. I wasn't sure what they wanted me to say.

"If you go to care," Abe said, begged, "please, Max, please do your best. Put in an effort. For us. If you can recover, if you can get past what this sword did to you, then…" He paused, sounding uncertain. "If you can get better," he finished after a moment, "It will make me – us – very happy."

"…I'll try," I promised. "For you." I turned to face them again and saw that Abe was blinking back tears – Emilia wasn't even trying to prevent them. I blinked, feeling wetness on my face, and realized that I was crying as well. "This… this shouldn't be so hard," I whispered.

"Healing is never easy," Emilia said. "But it's worth it." I nodded.

"One more thing," Abe warned me. "Arthur Peregrine will also be visiting you, after lunch." I tensed. "He's here to clear you of any lingering influence from Excalibur-"

"I told you, I would have noticed that," I hissed, whirling back to face them again. "I don't need help from Arthur Peregrine!"

"Then he'll confirm that," Abe said in a calming voice. "And you need to let him."

I growled. "I don't need to let Peregrine do anything!" I raged. "He's the whole reason for this mess! It's all his fault!"

Another incomprehensible look between them. "Max," Emilia said. "You don't need to forgive him. All you need to do is not fight against his medical expertise."

"…Arthur Peregrine is the antithesis of everything a magician should be," I informed her. "He hoards information and spends his time giving nothing back, doing little but expanding his own powers, never using them on behalf of the world – the man is a mockery of every value I hold dear!"

Another look.

"Stop looking like that!" I shouted.

Abe sighed. "We can't help you, Max, as much as we want to – we don't have the necessary skills." he admitted. "All we can do is ask you to let those who do have those help you. And if you don't, you'll never get better."

"…I don't need help," I hissed. "Least of all from Arthur Peregrine."

One more look, and then they stood to go. "…goodbye, Max," Abe said.

Emilia put a hand to the glass, clearly hoping for me to do the same, but I didn't. A moment later, she bowed her head and left, Abe following behind.

I sank into the chair and rested my head in my arms, struggling not to cry.

Scene 39 – December 23rd
Interior Cell Block, Early Afternoon
Maxwell Copperfield

That afternoon, as I had been warned, he came. Arthur Peregrine. Wearing a smug look and a jacket, with that fucking bird logo as a golden pin, standing outside my cell.

"Mr. Copperfield," he said with a nod. "How are you feeling this afternoon?"

"Peregrine," I spat. "Come to gloat?"

He tilted his head as though he didn't know exactly what I was talking about. "Come again?"

"This all turned out exactly as you planned, didn't it," I hissed. "You completely ruined me. Leaving that sword in there…"

"Mr. Copperfield, I'm afraid that I don't-"

"Don't pretend you don't remember," I growled. "I applied for an apprenticeship with you. You interviewed me, and turned me down."

"Yes, I recall."

"All I wanted was to learn!" I yelled at him. "That's all I wanted! I just wanted that book, all I wanted was to learn magic! That's all I ever wanted! But you – you!"

"Excalibur really did a number on you, didn't it," Peregrine murmured.

"Excalibur hasn't affected me for shit," I denied. "I'm as sane as I've ever been. All it did was open my eyes."

"If this is as sane as you've ever been," Peregrine observed sarcastically, "then I fear what you were like before. No, Mr. Copperfield, I'm afraid that you are in fact still touched by the lingering effects of that blade." He stepped forward, passing through the glass that had separated us as thought it were nothing but a mirage. "If you'll allow me to briefly touch your mind, I can restore your rationality."

I pressed myself back against the wall, trying to stay as far away from him as I could. "Get back," I hissed.

"Mr. Copperfield, I'm trying to help you," he said, the irritation and anger that I was certain always lurked beneath those faux-tired eyes finally beginning to show.

"I don't want help – not from you," I spat.

He sighed. "Very well then. I cannot help you if you are not willing to be helped." The man turned and strode out of my cell again.

I collapsed onto the bed, staring up at the blank ceiling and retreating into my thoughts once more.

Scene 40 – December 23rd
Interior MLED Compound, Continuous
Arthur Peregrine

It was disappointing but not, on the whole, surprising. The lingering effects of the sword magnified Copperfield's preexisting paranoia and narcissism, making him fear some sort of conspiracy on my part to humiliate him and destroy him. I wished I could help, I really did, but the arts of mental healing required cooperation from the afflicted, just as non-magical therapy did.

There were, of course, more unethical magics of the mind, which had no need of consent to function. They could tear apart Copperfield's psyche and rebuild it into a better, more rational person. But those dark magics were far beyond what I was willing to use.

After all, I was a healer at heart. I wanted to help people become the best versions of themselves, not to turn them into different people entirely.

After leaving the cell blocks where Copperfield was contained, I had made my way up to the common room of the New Champions, where Wright was waiting for me. She, I hoped, would be more willing to be helped – the message I had received from Armstrong certainly implied so.

When I arrived, I saw Wright sitting in an armchair, reading a book titled Nemesis. She glanced up at me and slid a bookmark into its pages setting the book aside. The room was otherwise empty.

"Arthur," she said, giving me a faint smile. "Nice to see you again – it's been a few years."

I nodded to her. She was a fellow healer and worthy of respect for that alone, even if she hadn't been a skilled hero as well – and she was. "Miriam. A pleasure as always." I took a seat on the couch beside her chair and added, "and it's nice to actually be welcomed. Mr. Copperfield wasn't nearly so pleased to see me."

"I imagine not, from how he's talked about you," Wright said. "He speaks of you as a miser of knowledge, like a magical hoarder, who never bothers to actually use it. But I've never gotten that impression from you."

I shrugged. "He's not entirely wrong, I suppose. I do tend to keep the most dangerous – and powerful – texts and artifacts locked away from the world at large. And certainly, there is a tendency for mages to grow more reclusive and take less action as they grow more powerful – those who truly focus on the study of magic, that is. Those such as yourself or Mr. Armstrong, who focus on the application, seem somewhat exempt from such. But it may surprise you to know that I am, relatively speaking, an interventionist."

She sighed. "Why is that, anyway?"

"Why is what? The tendency towards reclusion?"

"Yes."

"I believe it is simply a natural consequence of the personality type required to succeed at the deepest reaches of magic," I told her. "A certain level of obsession and tunnel vision, the ability to shut out distractions and focus on your studies. Perhaps those who would not grow as reclusive are simply not able to succeed at the higher levels, either."

"Perhaps." She glanced at one wall – the Journeymen's quarters and common room lay in that direction, if I remembered the standard layout for MLED compounds right. "Do you have the time to meet people? I know that Loki is here at present, and probably our newest member as well -"

"Newton, yes?"

"Yes. I think they'd enjoy meeting you."

I shook my head. "I'm afraid not. I have some free time today – I allocated several hours for both your session and Mr. Copperfield's. As he was unwilling to cooperate, that time is open, thus my ability to chat instead of getting right to the healing – but I hope to use that time to reconnect with an old friend who lives in New Venice. It's been far too long since I spoke with her."

"I see. Well," Wright said, "don't let me keep you. What do I need to do?"

A smile tugged at my lips. "All you need do is close your eyes and relax," I promised my fellow healer, setting a hand on her forehead as she did so and extending my senses into her mind and soul, "and I will do the rest."

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 41 – December 23rd
Interior Mansion, Early Evening
Morgan Könberg

"Hey mom?" I heard Tristan's drift through the halls. "Mom?"

"Yes, dear?" Jenny called back to him from somewhere else in the mansion.

I nodded to myself – Jenny would handle whatever it was – and leaned back over Excalibur. The blade had an immense power and energy, and as a mage, it fascinated me. I couldn't help but wonder if perhaps…

"No, other mom! Mom?" Tristan shouted.

I sighed and, instead of taking hold of the sword for the first time, I lowered a protective plastic case – inscribed and enchanted to block all magical emanations – over it. "One moment!" I called back to him, putting a little bit of magic into my voice so he would hear me.

"There's someone at the door!"

I paused in my redoubling of the protective charms. Who on earth could come to our door? It might, I supposed, be one or both of the Kovals – having dragged them from the depths of their research not too long ago, they might be aware enough over the world to come over for a visit – but I didn't think it was likely. And no one else should even be able to notice that our mansion existed.

Perhaps it was the Kovals' daughter, who might still be keyed into the wards as well. She had been a friend of Dom and Viv's when they were younger, although I didn't think they had spent much if any time with each other in years. But the urge to reconnect with an old friend could come at any time.

With that in mind, I left Excalibur in my lab and went to go see who it was. And, for that matter, why Tristan had called for me specifically –

"Oh," I said, flatly. "It's you."

Arthur Peregrine inclined his head in greeting. "It's me. Hello again, Morgan."

I crossed my arms, leaning against the doorframe, and pointedly didn't invite him in. "Tristan, you can go."

"But mom, that's Arthur Peregrine."

"I know, dear. I'll deal with him."

Tristan glanced between us, confused – while he, like the rest of my family, knew that I had once been Peregrine's apprentice, I didn't talk about that time much. My youngest son especially had no reason to know the details. After a moment, he left.

Peregrine's eyes tracked Tristan as he left for a moment, and I was certain that he was putting his remarkable senses for people's health and wellbeing to use. "I see you haven't forgotten the medical spells we developed together," he said to me. "He's shaping up into a fine young man, it seems."

"I can't fall you for those spells, I suppose – no one else was creating them." I sighed, and turned away, walking towards the nearest sitting room. "I suppose you had better come in."

He followed in silence as I led him to the sitting room, where I found my husband sitting and struggling with a crossword puzzle.

"Morgan!" he said happily, glancing up at me with a sunny smile, and I couldn't help but return it. "I see you have a guest?"

"Yes. Arthur, this is Arthur Peregrine," I said to him. "Peregrine, this is…" I paused briefly, wondering whether or not I should reveal that we were polyamorous. Peregrine wasn't a judgmental man, I could give him that, but the memory of my parents and siblings disowning me when they found out was hard to get past. It only took me an instant to remember, though, that Tristan had called to 'other mom', and that was likely all the clue that Peregrine had needed to figure out our situation, so I continued, "one of my partners, also named Arthur."

"I recall," Peregrine said, shaking Arthur's offered hand. "A pleasure."

"The pleasure is all mine," Arthur told him. "I've heard a great deal about you from Morgan. And other places, of course," he joked. "Not sure we've ever met though."

"Once or twice, I think," Peregrine responded. "Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it to the commitment ceremony."

"We're sorry to have interrupted you," I said, nodding to the now discarded puzzle. "I'll take him to a different room."

"No, no!" Arthur insisted, taking the puzzle and his pencil and rising. "I'll leave. It's quite alright."

"Dear-"

"I'll just go find Jenny!" he assured me – probably for the best. Today had been a good day for him, but any disruption to his normal routine could be an issue, and Jenny would help him stay on track if necessary. A moment later, he was gone.

Peregrine turned his gaze on me, "You know that-"

"Yes, we know that he has Alzheimer's," I snapped, falling into the vacated seat.

"Why didn't you-"

"Call you for help?" I sneered. "Why didn't you come visit at any point in the last, oh, 22 years? 'Couldn't make it to the commitment ceremony,'" I scoffed, "you can teleport anywhere in the world at a moment's notice. You just couldn't be bothered to show up. Besides," I added, "it resists magical healing. I've tried, and so have the doctors at NVG."

"I was quite busy that afternoon, I'll have you know," he protested, "interviewing someone to replace you after you left your apprenticeship."

"Ah yes, your oh-so-rigid schedule," I mocked. "I remember that schedule. Every moment of every day regimented and pre-planned, not a moment for ourselves. And you wonder why I left?"

"You didn't mind so much back then," he reminded me, "and I was far stricter with my own time than I ever was with yours."

I huffed, crossing my arms in irritation. "You were never a hypocrite, no. But what's right for you isn't right for me."

He sighed. "That's true, I suppose."

We sat in silence for a moment before I asked, "Why are you here?"

"I'm sure you noticed the events involving the so-called 'Magnificent Maxwell' and Anima-"

"No, why are you here," I repeated. "In my home."

"…because you invited me in." I narrowed my eyes at the man, and he chuckled. "I'm here because I hoped that we could set our argument aside. Forgive each other for the things we said. There aren't many mages at our level, and… I suppose I'd like to have my friend and colleague back."

"…it's true, there aren't many at our level," I admitted. Even the Kovals weren't really a match for Arthur and I – while they were certainly more expert in the arts of the mind and trickery, they were extraordinarily specialized. In all other aspects of magic, Arthur and I were far more skilled.

"So here is what I propose," Peregrine said. "It's been a little while-"

My brows rose. "22 years, to be precise."

"A little while, as I said. Don't look at me like that, you'd be as ageless as I am if you cared to be," he said, defensively. "We've had time to cool off. We can each explain our side of matters without the big…" he waved his hands, somehow conveying the essence of the tense, highly-charged argument we had had towards the ends of my apprenticeship. "Then, after that, we can lay it to rest."

"Ah, I see," I said in understanding. "You have to have the last word, even 22 years later."

"You can go second, if you prefer," he offered.

"Fine. You start, then."

Peregrine steepled his fingers, and began, "It all goes back to Martin Abelard, I suppose. Metahumans – and more than metahumans, all unusually gifted people – should use their talents to serve society and humanity. I am lucky enough to have remarkable faculty with magic, particularly that which relates to healing – how could I not use my magic to help the world?"

"…that's it?" I asked after he had been silent for a moment.

"That's it."

"Huh. Seems a lot simpler without all the…" I waved my hands.

"Yes," he agreed. "My magic lets me do things others cannot – I should use it to help. And your view?"

"My counterpoint," I said, "is that that only reaches to a point, and that point is as far as a normal man can think to reach. A mage like… like… the Magnificent Maxwell, say, or Anima, their skills are within the reach of society. Beyond that – in the far reaches of theoretical magic, where we reside – I think our involvement does more harm than good."

"How so?"

"How many advances in medical magic have there been in the last century that you weren't involved in?" I asked.

"…very few," he admitted. "I think I see where you're going with this…"

"You're without a doubt the greatest healer in the world, Peregrine," I said, "and you have an excellent claim to the title of greatest mage in general. But even you have only so much time – presuming that the magic of time still escapes you." He nodded. "Few, now, are willing to make their own researches into medical magic without your guidance or assistance. Of those few, very few have succeeded. But were you not available, I would hazard a guess that many who now wait for their chance to work for you would instead forge ahead, and in doing so, make their own discoveries."

"And for yourself?"

"My field has been untouched by my influence," I pointed out, "and look how quickly artificing techniques are advancing. Why, in a few years, researches will likely catch up to where I was at ten years ago."

"But if you shared your research -" he tried.

"If I shared my research, it would leap the community forward," I agreed. "But only to the point that I had reached. And as my dominance over the field became established, I would only stall its advances for as long as I worked – and since, as you pointed out, I could be immortal if I wished to, that might be forever. Instead, I allow them to make their own advances, and eventually – perhaps in twenty years, perhaps fifty, but eventually – the world at large will match and surpass me. And they will have done so," I added, "on their own."

He sighed. "I see your point," Peregrine admitted, "but I fear that I cannot agree with it. I feel that a man who can turn aside another's death and chooses not to has killed as surely as if he had committed the murder himself. I cannot possibly choose not to heal, and if I make an advance that could help in the hands of others, how could I choose not to share it?"

"…I see your point as well," I admitted. "My specialty of magic has, perhaps, less of an ethical imperative to action than yours does."

"Perhaps so."

We sat in silence for a moment, but it was no longer tense and angry. We understood each other, finally.

Scene 42 – December 23rd
Interior Mansion, Continuous
Morgan Könberg

"So…" I finally said.

"So?"

"Will you?"

"Will I what?"

I sighed. "You always have to do this."

"I have no children of my own, allow me some few pleasures of fatherhood with one of the only people I can be so informal with," Peregrine said with a faint smile.

"You could find a partner easily, if you tried."

He shook his head. "I have no time. And yes," he held up a hand to forestall protests, "I know, I could rework my schedule, but I'm not going to. Besides, not only am I a very public figure – with no secret identity – who therefore must always ask about the motivations of anyone who seeks to become closer to me, I am also as close to immortal as anyone outside of Aegis gets."

"Aren't you older than Aegis? And La Borda here in New Venice is probably just as immortal."

"And is in a committed relationship, on top of being much younger than me." He shrugged. "The point is, where would I find a woman who could relate to a man two centuries old?"

"Fair point. So?"

He smiled. "Yes, I will help your husband with his Alzheimer's. I'm certain that its magical resistance will not be able to stop me – particularly if, as I suspect, Mr. Könberg is the patient of a young doctor called Durandel who messaged me some time ago about a man with magic-resistant Alzheimer's."

"Thank you," I said gratefully. "And yes, that would be us."

He held up a hand. "I'm sure that you remember my limits with such genetic diseases, but I feel the need to warn you in any case. I can clear the buildup of proteins that causes Alzheimer's, but I cannot cure the underlying cause of the condition – he will, if he lives long enough, face its specter once more. Neither can I ensure that your children do not inherit its risk. In addition, if any of his memories have been permanently lost at this point, I will not be able to restore them."

"I know," I assured him, "but the help you can give will still be greatly appreciated. And if Arthur receives another 50-to-60 years of good health before the proteins have built up enough to be a risk, well… that will have been a great blessing."

Peregrine nodded. "The other warning I must give is that, should Mr. Könberg wear his helm, it will speed the onset of the disease."

My blood ran cold. "What do you-"

"The helm of his armor, the Mountain King's armor, the helm that you gave to a young woman that I presume was your daughter when they broke into the local MLED Compound last week," he calmly said, as though he wasn't revealing knowledge that could tear my family's peaceful life apart. "The one that enhances the senses and intellect of its wearer. Oh, do sit down," he ordered.

I realized that I had leapt to my feet, magical energy filling my lips and tongue unbidden, ready for me to speak curses into existence and smite the man who might threaten my family. I sat, slowly, but didn't banish the magic that had come to my unconscious call. "You…"

"Don't act surprised that I knew your husband's identity, Morgan," Peregrine said. "I did mention that we had met, and when else would I have bumped into the man? It's not as though I made it to your commitment ceremony."

"Don't joke," I hissed at him. "If you knew – have known – why did you never say anything?"

"He's retired, is he not?"

"Yes," I confirmed. "Since he met me and Jenny. His resolve to stay out of that life only redoubled when we began having children."

"Why, then, would I care who he once was?" Peregrine asked. "I cannot change the past – and if I could, it wouldn't be worth changing the Mountain King. Of all the villains I've faced, he was by far the best of a bad lot."

I couldn't help but chuckle. "Arthur used to say that about himself as well. I think he took pride in being the least bad option – he once said that if the heroes really wanted to remove him from New Venice, they could have, but they were afraid of who would replace him."

"The city hasn't done too badly," he observed.

I shrugged. "With him having just vanished rather than being captured or killed, we think people assumed he was still around, ready to step in if anyone broke his rules. That culture of keeping things safe for civilians, and not all that bad for heroes, either, seems to have stuck around to this day – for the most part, at least." I scowled. "The Buff Boys don't hold to it, and neither do out-of-towners like…" I trailed off, realizing that I didn't know what Peregrine thought of the Ambrosia Company. I was certain that he knew of them, but… his Abelish views lead him to think that they did more good than bad.

"Like Legion?"

"Yes."

"Then what were you thinking," he asked, "sending your family – your children – out into that?"

"What was I thinking? I was thinking that I was making the best of a bad situation," I snapped. "I was thinking that Legion isn't in the city anymore, and that no one would know who we were. I was thinking that we would be safe under our wards, and that you wouldn't waltz right in and pull the rug out from under me! I was thinking that there are people after us, Peregrine, and I don't know how deep their tendrils go, and I can't ask for help because I can't trust anyone!"

By this point I was on my feet again, magic swirling around me in the heat of my anger, and Peregrine was standing as well – his magic arrayed defensively around him, but still ready for combat. He seemed surprised, and began, "Morgan-"

"You don't know what kind of shit we're fighting against," I hissed at the other magician. "You don't know what we're risking. So don't you dare judge me."

"Morgan, please -"

I turned away from him, stalking out of the room. "You should go."

"I… please, let me -"

"Go."

He went.

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 1 – Two Years Ago
Interior MLED Compound, Early Evening
Miriam Wright

It was a fairly normal night. I was, as I often did when otherwise unoccupied, reading a book in the common room of the MLED Compound, making myself available in case any crises called for my assistance, if the other heroes were injured, or simply if any of the Journeymen needed me. I had just finished a chapter of Going Postal when Susan entered the room, followed by a nervous-looking young man with short red hair.

"Deputy Director Shepard," I said to her with a smile, closing the book. "And who's this young man?" The younger redhead flinched as I said that, and I wondered why.

"This young lady," Susan said, emphasizing the word, "is the newest member of the Journeymen. The MLED will also be in loco parentis for her." She caught my eye meaningfully, and I nodded to assure her that I understood the hidden meaning. A clearly transgender young woman that the MLED was taking parental responsibility for? I could read between the lines.

"I'm terribly sorry, young lady," I told the poor girl. "Must have been a trick of the light to make me mistake you like that. What's your name?"

"I, um, I haven't chosen one yet," she whispered. "I guess… just M, for now? That's my first initial."

"Well it's nice to meet you, M," I said, smiling at her. "If you ever need advice about anything, feel free to ask me, okay?"

"…kay."

"I'm going to leave you here with Anima for the moment, if that's all right with you," Susan told M. "There's paperwork related to your case that you don't need to be directly involved with and, I suspect, would rather not be. I'll be back in a few hours with papers for you to sign – until then, just wait here."

"…okay." M sat in one corner of the couch, curling her knees up to her chin and staring at me worriedly.

Susan left, but not before giving me another warning look from behind the couch, where M couldn't see. The woman pretended to be stern, but I knew she cared more for her charges – agents, heroes, and especially the Journeymen – than she let on.

I returned to my book, but more slowly, keeping an eye on M. She was obviously shy – and, more than that, nervous. It seemed as though she was afraid of me, which, if I had parsed her previous home life correctly, I couldn't quite blame her for.

As I read, I tried to think of some way to set her at ease. A few minutes later, I had it, and glanced up with a smile. "M, dear, my hair has been getting kind of long," I told her, pulling a strand of it out straight to show her – it hung down well past my shoulders right now. "I think I want to braid it back – would you like to help me?"

M blinked in surprise and hesitated before quietly answering, "I don't know how. I… don't know a lot of things…"

"That's fine," I promised her. "I'll show you. It's never too late to learn – never too late to start being better."

After a moment, she said, "…I'd like that," with a shy smile.

Scene 2 – One Year Ago
Interior Townhouse, Early Afternoon
Miriam Wright

I fluttered around my apartment, cleaning up as quickly as I could – momentary infusions of vitality bringing things to life just long enough for them to fling themselves to where they should go, tiny statues holding dustclothes and rags to wipe things down afterward. I should have cleaned up long ago, but it wasn't as though I had company all that often – my home wasn't very large, so when my friends gathered we typically went out, or to Essa and Maria's home, not mine. And since I didn't spend much time here anyway, always feeling a little depressed by the place's emptiness… well, the clutter built up.

I wasn't quite done clearing up the dishes when the knock came at my door. "One moment!" I called. A spark of power flowed into the dishes, and they spun into the air, flying into my room and landing on my bed. As I walked to the front door, I bumped the door to my room with my hip to close it. It clicked shut, and I opened the front door.

"Hi Miriam," said M, grinning up at me, and I smiled back. Since the MLED had taken her in – and since going on hormone therapy about a month later – the girl had slowly been perking up, becoming more cheerful and happy, although she was still shy around new people. "Thanks for inviting me over!"

"But of course!" I assured her. "I'm happy to have you here, and very glad to help." I led her over to a table where I had set out makeup supplies. "I'm glad you felt that you could come to me for help."

"I asked Holly and Simone first," M confessed, "but Simone obviously doesn't have any makeup that would fit my complexion, and apparently Holly never wears any – it's all her powers."

"Her magic is useful that way," I agreed. "Did you ask Emilia?"

She shrugged. "She doesn't wear makeup much either and her skin is too much darker than mine. I didn't even bother."

"Well, I'm very happy to be teaching you." We sat at the table, and I took a bottle of foundation. "We'll start with foundation…"

I took it slowly, one by one explaining to M how to use each of the tools in my makeup kit. For today, I had decided that the best way to teach would be to demonstrate putting them on myself, then for me to put them on her, so that she could feel what it was like. Next time, she could try putting it on herself.

M was a good student, paying close attention and asking questions when she needed to. Of course, she had always been a fast learner – she was well on her way to becoming the best martial artist in New Venice's MLED, already beating out me, Holly, Canaveral, and even Nic. She was even well on her way to matching Ben – so it was no surprise that she would pick makeup up quickly as well, now that she finally felt comfortable enough to try it.

Somewhere in the back of my head, I had to wonder if Zacharias Cobalt – the Blue Phoenix, an elderly man whose powers activated and rejuvenated him on his death bed – was the reason that she had been holding back from many aspects of transitioning over the last year. He had signed onto the Journeymen for training a few months after she did, and had recently graduated and been transferred to Boston's team. While he had been here, though… well, Zach was an old man, set in his ways despite his new, amorphous body, and he had repeatedly misgendered both M and Holly no matter how many times he was corrected or disciplined for it. And though I had complained on M's behalf to Susan – who had replaced Henry as the local director of the MLED following the loss of his legs to a robotic army created by Motael – the the policies set out by Chief Director Redding didn't let misgendering alone serve as cause to fire the man, at least not without a complaint from the affected person. She, Henry, and Abe had all watched Zach like hawks, hoping to find another reason to get rid of him, but he had toed the line on everything else. And with M not willing to file an official complaint…

Well, at least he was gone now. And M was beginning to experiment, finally – she had gone shopping with Simone the previous weekend and come back with several dresses, and commented to me on a patrol that she was thinking of adding a skirt to her costume. And now, I thought with an internal smile, she was letting me teach her how to use makeup!

"Alright," I said, putting the finishing touches on her makeup. "All that's left is a setting spray, assuming you want to keep this on. But first…" I turned the mirror I had used to put my own makeup on towards her. "Take a look!"

M smiled widely as she gazed rapturously into the mirror, her eyes flicking from the subtle lipstick to the light blush to the sharp eyeliner. Her eyes began to water after a moment, and she brought a hand up to wipe away a tear before realizing that it would probably ruin her makeup. "Oh… oh-!"

I handed her a tissue. "Here you are, dear."

"Thank you." She carefully dabbed the tear away, then turned that dazzling smile on me. "Thank you, Miriam. This…" She sighed happily. "I look wonderful. I feel wonderful. Thank you."

"It was my pleasure," I told her sincerely. "Any time – although I'm sure you won't need my help to achieve this look before long."

"I might come to you anyway," M said, turning back to the mirror. "You're… really good at this."

"I try." I stood and peered over her shoulder at our reflections in the mirror. I had given us approximately the same look, and with both of our hair in similar bobs, we looked quite similar.

M couldn't seem to stop smiling, but a moment later, still looking at herself, she said, "So I've been thinking more about names."

"And?" I asked. M had tried out a few names – Claire, Emily, Elizabeth – but none had stuck.

"I realized I might be thinking about it wrong," she told me. "I've been trying to find something that had meaning to me, but… most people's names don't have any inherent meaning. They're just names that they were given, and they grew into. Or for nicknames, they're names that they just make people think of. So…" She met my eyes through the mirror, her happy smile turning a little nervous. "What would you name me?"

I blinked in surprise. "Are you asking me to pick your name?"

"To suggest some, at least."

I tilted my head, thinking. "Hmm… Do you want to keep the M as your initial? You didn't with names you've tried so far."

"I think so. I don't want to change my last name – I may hate my parents, but I'm proud of my Irish heritage – and the one thing I liked about my deadname was the alliteration."

"Understandable," I said with a nod. "Alright, M names. Let's see. 'Maureen' or 'Mabel' would both be pretty old-fashioned, and so would Matilda – not for you, since you're a modern, forward-thinking girl," I winked at her. "I think 'Mackenzie' is a cute name… but the obvious nickname for that would be 'Mac', which might be…"

"Edging to masculine with the nickname there, yeah," M agreed.

"'Madeline' is quite pretty, but again, 'Maddy' is pretty close to 'Matt' – and might also be too similar to your last name. How about 'Megan'?"

She considered it. "Megan… Megan Maddigan… maybe," she decided, then chuckled at how many 'M's were being thrown around. "Let's put that on the table and keep going."

"I believe 'Maeve' is an Irish name. Maggie – well, Margaret, but you'd probably be called Maggie. Margaret could also be short for Molly-"

M's eyes lit up. "Ooh, yes! That!"

"Molly?"

She nodded eagerly. "Yes. That's my name!"

"You seemed to settle on that rather quickly," I teased.

"It's like…" M – no, Molly – bit her lip, trying to think of the words. "Like, the names I tried before, they were nice names. But something about them didn't quite fit, you know? But here… it just kind of clicked. Like, yes, that's it, that's what my name is supposed to be. It was the same way when I realized that I was really a girl, like that's why I've felt wrong my whole life. This is why my name never felt right."

I wrapped my arms around the girl's shoulders, hugging her from behind. "Well, I'm very glad to have been the one to find your new name, Molly."

Her grin, already wide, spread further at hearing her name. "I'm glad it was you too, mom." A moment later, she tensed and blushed heavily – enough that I could see it through the makeup. "I mean-!"

"It's okay," I chuckled. "You're not the only Journeyman who calls me that. I don't mind."

"But, but… they call you that as I joke, and I just… I accidentally…"

"I understand, dear," I said, my heart warming even further, and pressed a soft kiss into her hair. "You can call me 'mom' if you want to. I would be very proud to have you as my daughter."

Slowly, Molly relaxed, and reached behind herself to hug me back as best as she could. "I love you, mom," she whispered.

"I love you too, Molly."

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 1 – January 2nd
Exterior City, Evening
Quinn Kaufman



"…and then the bartender says, that's not a bear, that's my husband!"

"…is that the punchline?"

Canaveral sighed. "You kids just don't get my humor anymore," he complained, then ran for the next gap between rooftops. He dove for the edge of the roof, flipping over it and springing forward across Kasdan Boulevard.

I followed, an extended push against the street canceling out gravity and letting me take a nearly-horizontal trajectory. "You're growing old, boss. Soon you won't even know what third-wave meta-thrash punk is," I quipped.

"…please tell me you're joking."

"Oh, hold on a sec." I had caught a flash of something potentially suspicious in my presence as I landed, and wanted to double-check. Mindful not to stick my head – or even just my hand – over the edge of the building, I instead shifted my presence into my sense of hearing.

It was, as usual, a little overwhelming – more so now, as I wasn't wearing the PA4 to help shield me from the backlash of my powers. Instead, I just wore padding underneath a mundane version of my costume that the gift store had had on hand. Still, I was getting better at shrugging off the headaches it tended to induce.

After a moment, I relaxed my mental muscles, allowing my presence to return, and pointed to the alley between the building we were on and the next. "Three muggers and possible rapists down there," I quietly informed Canaveral. "They have a woman against a wall and are gagging her – I assume they spotted us and are trying to keep her silent." Not silent enough, thankfully – her whimpers of distress had been quite clear to my expanded hearing range, as had the four elevated heartbeats.

"Zookeeper, you get that?" Canaveral asked, his voice equally hushed.

"I got it," she confirmed through our earpieces. "Routing police now. ETA 90 seconds."

"We can help her before then. You coming, Newton?"

I hesitated before, feeling guilty, I shook my head. "Not without my actual suit, sorry. I can't safely throw around the kind of forces that will let me fight properly without it."

"No worries." He silently vaulted over the edge of the building. A few thumps, some grateful thanks, and a minute's wait later, he was back on the roof with me, the woman having been handed over to the police officers who were now arresting her attackers and taking her statement. "Let's keep moving."

A few minutes later, we paused briefly on the roof of the Higgins Museum, and Canaveral said, "So… your suit."

"Yeah?"

"Still messed up?"

I nodded. "Yeah, Anima burnt it out pretty good. Whatever power was making it work, it's completely drained."

"It's been two weeks," he observed. "Have you looked into fixing it?"

"I've read through mom's notes, but… it's pretty high-level, and I don't know where to even begin. Anima tried pumping energy back into it, but it just animated."

"Why haven't you talked to Starling about it?" he asked.

I shifted a little uncomfortably. "I… I don't know. I just haven't." That was a lie – I knew exactly why I hadn't asked him. Starling was a dick – and more than just an anti-social asshole, he also refused to use the right pronouns for me – although he couldn't settle on either 'she' or 'he', his inability to consistently gender me was small comfort when he still continued to try.

Canaveral took a breath, seeming to be thinking about something, then said, "I know that you don't get along all that well with Starling, but… can you at least try? You're in the same job, kid, and in a few months you'll be on the same team."

"Assuming I don't get transferred out."

"Right. But even then, sometimes you'll have co-workers that are dicks. You still have to get along with them – especially when they're the artificers or tech wizards who maintain your gear." He gave me a patient smile. "It takes Ben a while to warm up to people – maybe that's all it is? Spend a little time with him, it'll get better. Ask him about fixing up your suit."

It wouldn't get better, but I didn't bother explaining. "I'll do that."

He walked to the edge of the museum's roof before pausing and looking over his shoulder. "Third-wave meta-thrash punk… please tell me you made that up?" I hid a grin under my mask, and didn't answer. "Please?"



Scene 2 – January 7th
Exterior City, Early Afternoon
Quinn Kaufman



I got my opportunity later that week, going on patrol with Starling. He was taciturn as usual as we walked through downtown – not a route which was ever expected to actually run into trouble, but one which was important to make sure that no one forgot that the heroes were keeping an eye on things. Or so Apollon had explained to me.

It was while we were cutting through an alley that I decided to get it over with. "Hey, Starling," I said.

"What is it, boy?"

I suppressed a growl. "You know how my suit is fried right now?" He nodded. "Do you think you could take a look? Maybe fix it?"

"…probably." He eyed me almost suspiciously. "Where did you get it, again?"

"My mom invented it, and left it behind before she was kidnapped. Or whatever happened to her, it's not clear."

"…hrm." He furrowed his brows briefly – maybe focusing on his expanded senses. "…your name is Kaufman, right?"

"…yes?"

"Hrm. I… never mind."

"What?" I asked.

He seemed a little uncomfortable now, which I didn't really care about. I was constantly uncomfortable around him, and according to Canaveral I just had to deal with it – he could do the same. After a momentary pause, he said, "I think I may have met your mother, once."

I blinked in surprise – I hadn't expected that. "Really?"

He looked away from me, but nodded. "Yes. It would have been… I suppose probably not long before she vanished. We spoke about… her project at the time, and it… inspired me in the creation of my own suit."

Something about that didn't quite seem to line up there, although I wasn't sure what – whatever it was, I put it aside. "So you'll probably be able to fix mine, then. Or be able to figure out how to from her notes, at least."

"You have her notes?"

"Yeah, they were in the same case the suit itself was in."

"…yes, I should be able to." He opened his mouth to say something else, then closed it and began walking again. "Leave it in my lab. I'll have it fixed in a week or so."

That had had to have been the strangest interaction I had had with the man yet, I mused as I followed. Had he seemed… almost guilty about something?



Scene 3 – January 15th
Interior High Stakes Bar, Early Evening
Quinn Kaufman



"Hey, Quinn! Over here!"

I oriented on Abe's voice, finally spotting him in the crowded bar, along with Emilia and – I wrinkled my nose – Ben. Still, even if he was here, I had agreed to hang out with Abe and Emilia – had been looking forward to it, even – so I pushed the dull ache of my presence being overstimulated aside and made my way over to them.

"Hey guys," I said, slipping into the booth that they had claimed beside Emilia. "Are Miriam and Adam not coming too? Seems like this might have been more of a job outing than I thought," I added, eying Ben.

Abe shook his head. "It's more of an overlapping social groups thing than a job thing," he promised me. "Two of Miriam's closest friends usually come as well, although neither of them could make it tonight. Adam is always invited, but he tends to be even less social than Ben. And Max…" The hero swallowed.

"I'm just here for the beer," Ben quipped before taking a sip, breaking the momentary tension raised by the mention of Max, who had recently had his trial and been placed in Derleth Asylum until he recovered his sanity.

Emilia gave a weak smile. "So how are you doing, Quinn? Are you excited for your last semester of school?"

"Dreading it, more like," I said with a theatrical shudder. "I've got to write a thesis this semester."

"Do you actually have to?" Ben asked. "You're a biology major, right?"

"I don't have to," I admitted, "but I'm going to."

"Gotcha."

"Hey, could I get a mug of the house draft?" I asked of a flagging waitress. "And a glass of water as well."

"Certainly, sir," she said, and I sighed. "Everything alright for the rest of you?"

"Great, thanks."

"All good here."

"Mhm."

The waitress headed off, and Abe said, "Good choice. This is our favorite bar for a reason – among other things, the house draft is excellent."

"I'm not too picky with alcohol, honestly. If it gets me drunk, that's good enough for me."

"Fair."

"Do you have an idea for your thesis yet?" Emilia asked, getting back to college as a topic. "And what about your other classes?"

"Not yet," I admitted, "but I'm meeting my advisor tomorrow to talk about it. As for the other classes, they don't start until the end of January – I'm just trying to get an early start on the thesis, since I have so little free time."

"What classes are you taking?"

I shifted uncomfortably. "I don't want to be the only topic of conversation," I said. "How is Miriam doing?"

"Well, she's not on forced leave anymore, since Peregrine cleared her and so did Wagner," Abe said. "But her job is still in jeopardy. She's doing a PR thing at the hospital tonight as part of fighting for it – trying to get the public to remember what she's like when she's not being mind-controlled."

"It's not a PR thing," Emilia scolded him. "She's just volunteering to do a rotation as a healer."

"I think it counts as a PR thing given the timing. I mean, Lucas helped her arrange it, right?"

"He got the hospital to agree to it, but…"

"I still can't believe that the public turned on her so quickly," I commented. "I mean, she's been a hero for what, fifteen years?"

"Eighteen," Abe corrected.

"Eighteen years – people have been born and raised with her as a member of the New Champions. Her career as a hero can vote," I said. "And the first time that she gets mind controlled, suddenly her job is in danger?"

"What you don't understand is that the public is fickle," Ben told me. "They only like us as long as we live up to exactly the image they have of us – that's why it's important to take on a persona that you can live up to."

"Is that why you don't do much PR stuff?" I asked. "Less to worry about how the public will react?"

"Part of it. I'm not exactly a social person – but at least I don't lie about who I am."

The waitress returned and handed me the beer. "Here you are, sir."

"Thank you," I said, taking it and sipping. "Mmm. You're not lying, Abe, this is good." Then I eyed Ben, as she walked away. "You, on the other hand… what exactly are you implying?"

"I'm not implying anything. You're pretending to be something other than you are-"

"And what am I, exactly?" I demanded.

"You're a little boy who wants to feel special and-"

"Settle down," Abe ordered, trying to calm us down. "You don't have to have this argument-"

"No, I think we do," I insisted. "You haven't respected my pronouns once since we met, Ben. What the hell is your problem?"

"You didn't seem to care when the waitress called you sir-"

"I did care," I hissed. "It hurts to be misgendered – it hurts every time, no matter how trivial. But coming out to a stranger hurts too, and having this conversation hurts, and so most of the time I just let it pass. Because it's not worth it to educate someone I'm never going to speak to again. Because it's not worth it to risk my life – yes, Ben, my life – by coming out to someone who might react violently! But you," I pointed at him, "are someone I have to work with. I have to see you and fight beside you and follow your instructions, and I'll be damned if I do it any longer with someone who thinks I'm a spoiled brat that just wants to feel special!"

I realized that I was standing, that I had instinctively extended my presence to force the other heroes to remain in their seats while I vented. I slumped back into the booth, crossing my arms and looking away from the asshole. "You can't even decide what you think my 'real gender' is," I mocked as Emilia put a hand on my shoulder, trying to keep me calm.

Ben narrowed his eyes. "I don't have to put up with this. Either she goes or I do."

"Oh, it's back to 'she' now, is it?" I sneered.

"Ben," Abe quietly said. "I think you should go."

The other man's eyes widened as he spun to look at his boss. "What? But I-"

"If Quinn is telling the truth – and they quite clearly are – then you've been misgendering them for months. I know you've been through sensitivity training. I know you know how important it is to gender people properly – I know because you've never screwed up Molly's pronouns," he continued. "If you can't respect Quinn's as well, then you have no place on the New Champions."

"Are you – firing me?" he asked incredulously.

"I don't have the authority to fire you over this unless Quinn files an official complaint. But I can sure as hell get you transferred off of my team."

Ben stood, clenching his fists. A moment later, he turned and walked away.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

Abe blinked. "You're sorry? What on earth do you have to be sorry for?"

"I caused that argument, and you're getting rid of him for me…"

"You didn't cause that argument," he insisted. "You were right, you had to get it out in the air, and… I'm sorry, really, because I shouldn't have tried to smooth it over. And I should never have let it get to the point where that argument had to happen – I should have noticed how he was treating you and put a stop to it, rather than asking you to just get to know him better. That's my job as team leader. So really, I'm sorry – and I'm sorry for the times that I've misgendered you, too."

"It's not your fault," I said. "I never reported it, because I thought it wasn't really a big deal. I don't know that I quite realized how much he had been getting to me. And you're fine, on the pronouns front," I assured him. "When you misgender me, it's a mistake, and you always correct yourself immediately. When he does it, it's malicious. There's a difference – that's another reason I don't usually bother when random people get it wrong."

"I'm sorry too," Emilia said. "I invited you out to join us, and clearly I didn't realize how thorny things were between you and Ben…"

"It's fine," I told her. "Again, I never talked about it – except to Holly, and I made her promise to keep it quiet.

"Still, we should have noticed."

"At least he fixed my suit first… are you really going to transfer him out?" I asked Abe.

He sighed. "I'll try to convince Susan to let him go entirely, but that's unlikely – not because she doesn't support you, but because of the timing. Firing one hero shortly after the whole scandal with Miriam would be a pretty bad look. Between that and the fact that he really is a very effective hero, it's unlikely that he'll be let go. And I doubt he'll let himself be pushed to resign, so… yeah, I'll get him transferred somewhere else. That, at least, is within my power." Abe gave me a smile. "Hopefully, with the Excalibur crisis passed – at least until the Round Table emerges again – and Ben sent to another city, the last four months of your time with us will be better than the first two."

 

[theVoidWatches]

Scene 4 – February 14th
Interior MLED Compound, Late Afternoon
Quinn Kaufman

I liked being a Journeyman. It kept me nice and busy, giving my mind no time to worry about my uncertain future or obsess over the mysteries of my past – between school, training, and patrols, it was rare that I had time to be caught by anxious thoughts.

Console duty, unfortunately, was one of those rare times.

Oh, it was important, to be sure – interfacing with the police and other emergency services, keeping track of the news and alerts, and directing the patrolling heroes to where they could do the most good was vital, and they were tasks that they had no time to do themselves. But while I acknowledged its importance, console duty was slow, for the most part.

Patrols in general were slow, and so, in fact, was heroism – Abe had once remarked to me that the kind of crisis which actually required superheroes, supervillains and similar, usually only happened once or twice a year, at least in New Venice. Most of the time, heroes were just patrolling – maintaining visibility to discourage villains from beginning those crises, and dealing with non-powered crime on the way. But, while it was far from uncommon to come across muggers, thieves, and other such crimes, that very visibility meant that crime, in the area of a hero's patrol, was actually pretty low – criminals tended to scurry away when a hero was around, rather than commit their crimes. Prevention, rather than apprehension, was the strategy, much like the mere presence of a security guard in a mall stops more shoplifting than they could ever personally prevent. As a result, it wasn't rare for patrols to go by entirely without incident.

But patrolling was also a very physical activity – moving across the city rooftops for four hours at a time, power-assisted or no, was quickly getting me into the best shape of my life – and that physicality drove a lot of thought from my mind. I was focused on spotting any crimes that were happening, on moving to the next rooftop, and on maintaining banter with whichever hero I was patrolling with – even Adam was beginning to open up. Starling had never bantered with me, but he had also been transferred out, as Abe had promised, at the beginning of the month.

By contrast, on console there was nothing to do but watch – and while there was a lot to watch, between several scrolling newsfeeds and the occasional remarks from Vulcan and Sequoia, who were currently doing a walkthrough of the docks, I was all-too-good at multitasking. I was entirely capable of manning the console while filled with anxiety – and musing about my ability to do that could only stave it off for so long.

"Heya, Quinn," came a familiar voice from behind me, and I broke out into a grin.

"Holly!" I cried, spinning the seat to look at her. "Please tell me you're here to relieve me of my mind-numbing duty?"

"Sorry," she said, pulling up a spare seat. "You're only half an hour into your shift – you're here until 8."

I sighed. "I know, I know. I just hate console duty."

"I'm aware. Which is why I'm here."

"But not to replace me?"

"No – to keep you company." She smiled at me, and produced a lunchbox. "And to share some snacks."

"You're a life-saver," I told her, taking the box and looking to see what she had brought – chips, apple slices, pretzels… I snagged a bag of sliced apples and popped one into my mouth. "Honestly."

She leaned back in her seat, watching with an indulgent look as I turned back to the console. "So, anything interesting happen so far?"

"Not so far, no. How did your day go?"

"Well, I've been planning out my magical studies thesis…"



Scene 5 – February 17th
Interior Coulton Library, Early Evening
Quinn Kaufman

January had been a nice break from school, but I was well and truly back into the swing of things – especially with the addition of a thesis to write. Thankfully, the classes I had taken for my final semester at UNV were relatively light in comparison to those I had completed the previous semester – I had planned ahead, and left some simple classes for the last semester so that I would be able to put most of my energy into a thesis.

Of course, I mused as I knelt in front of a bookshelf, trying to find the book on the history of magical treatments in medicine that I needed for my History of Magical Science class, that didn't mean I could just breeze through them. I still needed to do the homework and write the essays, even if – as in the case of Professor Marigold's class – they were simple for me at this point.

And today, unfortunately, the book I wanted to use as a source wasn't on the shelf.

I checked one last time, seeing that, yes, I was in the right place according to the Dewey number, and that, no, the book still wasn't there. With a sigh, I sat back on my heels. "Fuck."

I could, I supposed, find a different book for this paper. But the summary had been so perfect for what I wanted to write about, I really didn't want to. So what were my options? It hadn't been available from any other libraries in the city, nor did I think I could I afford to buy it. I could maybe find it online, but I had always found it easier to focus on physical books…

Something shifted in my sense of presence, and I noticed someone approaching behind me. "Hey, is everything okay?"

"Yeah," I said, looking up. "It's all – Devon?"

My father's old doctor blinked at me in surprise, and crouched to join me near the floor. "Quinn! I almost didn't recognize you – your hair's grown a bit, hasn't it?"

I ran my hand through it – it had been over a year since I had gotten a haircut. A few weeks ago, it had finally lost its long war against gravity, and now instead of rising into a jewfro it rolled down to my shoulders. "Yeah, I should get a haircut at some point," I agreed. "Or buy some hairbands, at least."

"Maybe," they said, then paused. "I heard you swear. Is something wrong?"

I showed them the note I had written. "I'm just having trouble finding this book, that's all. I need it for class. Well, want it for class."

"Oh, that's no trouble," Devon declared, rising. "Don't move." As I watched, they dashed down the aisle – quietly, it was a library, after all – and returned a minute later with the book in hand. "Here you go!"

"Devon, you're a literal lifesaver," I said, thanking them profusely. "Forget the doctor thing, this is your good karma for the month." They laughed. "How'd you know where it was?"

"I had taken it down from the shelves for a project I'm doing. Don't worry," they assured me, "I've already made copies of the parts I want to quote. It's all yours."

"Thanks a million," I said again, slipping it into my bag.

"So… still in college, huh?"

"Yeah. Last semester and it was already paid for – no reason not to, right?"

"Right. But…" they leaned in a little and whispered. "You're Newton, right?"

"Gee," I said, flatly, "however did you know?"

"Well, you were having that crisis over a job offer a few months ago, and within a few weeks of that Newton joined the Journeymen, and made it quite public that they're the first superhero to use they/them pronouns. Other than Multiplex."

I rubbed the back of my head awkwardly. "Well… turns out I was wrong about that, actually. There's an independent hero in Toronto who uses they/them, and they're kind of annoyed at me. Since they're not part of the MLED, the PR guy's sweep missed them."

"Oh."

"On the other hand, I've been messaged by a few other nonbinary heroes who said I inspired them to come out publically, so… ups and downs, I guess?" I shrugged. "It's complicated."

Devon chuckled. "Believe me, I know." They stood and turned to go. "I… should probably get back to my project. But… I just want to ask if you're doing all right, with… I mean, it's only been a few months…"

I flinched internally, but realized, after a moment, that the expected twinge of internal pain and grayness in response hadn't come. Instead, there was just a faint sadness, a bit of grief that passed before long. "I'm… doing all right," I assured them, a little surprised to find that I was telling the truth. "It still hurts sometimes, but… I'm getting better."



Scene 6 – March 13th
Exterior Dagobah Beach, Late Morning
Quinn Kaufman

"Come on guys," Holly encouraged us, "let's get a good spot!"

We tromped onto the beach, glancing around – it was the first weekend since the previous summer that it was warm enough to visit the beach, so Holly had put together a group outing for the Journeymen – as well as our partners, for those of us who had them. Of course, Nic – who had finally revealed his identity to me a few weeks ago – was dating Jack, and the only other member of the group who wasn't single right now was Molly – she had been dating a boy named Tristan for the past two months, although this was the first time I would be meeting him.

Unfortunately, it was a nice enough weekend that we weren't the only ones there – it seemed that half of New Venice had had the same idea, and the beach was very crowded.

"Come on, we just need a little space," I begged the world at large, looking around for somewhere to pitch the tent. "Just a little!"

"Oh, hold on! I got something…" Molly's boyfriend said cheerfully, digging through his bag. "One of my moms gave me…" He produced a small statuette and poked at a glowing button on its base. "It's some kind of magic thing that's supposed to stop people from bothering us. Mom is always worried about privacy, you know."

"May I see it?" Holly asked, holding out a hand for the statue as people began to leave our vicinity – from the snippets I heard as they left, they were remembering urgent appointments, deciding to get lunch, or simply moving closer to the water. "I'm a mage myself, and I'm a little curious."

Tristan hesitated briefly before passing it over. "Just, uh, be careful with it. She made it herself."

Holly nodded as she peered at it. Her fingers brushed against each other and a series of glowing runes and sigils began appearing on, and floating in the air near, the statuette.

I stood on my tiptoes and rested my chin on Holly's shoulder, finding myself curious as well, even though I knew I wouldn't be able to understand any of it. From this close, my presence picked out Holly's expression right through her illusion – she was biting her lip with a faint frown, her brows furrowed with concentration. It was adorable, even if I couldn't actually see it, and I had to remind myself yet again that I wasn't ready for a relationship yet.

"This is on a bit on the edge, legally speaking," Holly informed Tristan after a moment as she handed it back to him. She put a hand up to my cheek, and I leaned into her palm instinctively. "It's not quite to the point of flat-out mind-controlling people, but it's definitely sketchy. I hope your mom hasn't done anything that goes any farther than this."

He shook his head. "I don't think so. She mostly does technomagic stuff, she just threw it together for this trip."

"Really? It's pretty advanced mind magic… still," Holly glanced around the beach, "I can't argue with the results. Let's get this tent up so we have somewhere to put our stuff."

We set up the tent and plopped chairs in the shade under it, leaving our bags and towels on chairs, and before long my friends began arguing about what to do.

"It's been years since I've been to the beach," Jack said. "A shame, really, since we do live on the coast. I don't think I've made a sand castle since I was ten – I'd kind of like to make one again. See how much better we could do."

Nic scoffed. "That's kid stuff, babe."

"Well, we are kids. I don't know about you, but I want to make the most of having no responsibilities while it lasts."

"I barely know what to do," Molly admitted, absently playing with her boyfriend's hand. "It's been years for me as well, and even then I never really had a good time. Too dysphoric, and even now I'm not super comfortable…" Indeed, she was wearing a swim shirt over a one-piece suit, while the rest of us had doffed the clothes we had worn on the way here and were just in swimsuits.

"I know how you feel," I told her sympathetically, "but I promise, you look great – no one is going to look twice at you."

"Especially with mom's thing," Tristan said, nodding to the statuette – currently sitting on a chair of its own – and bringing her fingers up to his lips to press an encouraging kiss to them. "Is there anything you feel like you missed out on that you want to try?"

She bit her lip nervously. "I guess… I know little girls sometimes get sand packed over their legs in the shape of fish tails? I kind of want to try that."

"Ooh, I wanna do that too!" Simone cried. "It's been, like, a year since I got to be a mermaid!"

"We can make you both mermaids," Jack promised. "You can even lie in the range of the statue if you want, so that no one will look."

Holly glanced at the statuette, making that same under-the-illusion face of concentration for a few moments as Molly thought, then made a gesture. A transparent bluish bubble appeared around us, extending at least 15 feet away from the tent in all directions. "That's the edge of its effect. If you're within that, no one will pay attention to you, and no one outside of our group will enter it."

With that assurance, Molly nodded. "Then yes, I'd like to be a mermaid."

The younger members of the group began digging up sand to cover Simone and Molly's legs. I, meanwhile, dragged a chair out from under the tent's shade in order to get a little sun – Holly set up another next to mine and produced a book, one which I thought I had seen Miriam reading a few weeks before.

"Convenient that Tristan's mom – one of his moms, did he say? – happens to be an artificer," I commented.

She shrugged. "It's not as unusual as you might think. Magical studies majors are becoming more and more common anyway, and there's a revolution in artificing coming soon, I think. One of my professors says that within five years, magical technology will be competing with the regular stuff in the commercial market – if his mom is one of those researchers, something like that is probably pretty easy. Although," she admitted, "I've only ever looked at artificing theoretically, myself – some of the same principles went into those magical earpieces, but it's not quite the same when the spell is anchored a person rather than an object. Fewer power considerations, entirely different UI. My parents do it more often, I think."

I turned to look at her. "How… are you doing with your parents, by the way? I know you've been talking with Dr. Wagner, but…"

Holly let out a long sigh. "Yeah, it's… healing is slow, you know?" I nodded. "But I'm making progress. I'm planning to actually confront them about it, soon – next weekend, probably."

"…are you going to want any support?" I asked.

She reached over and took my hand, squeezing it tightly. "I appreciate the offer, I really do, and I'll think about it, but… I think it's something I want to do on my own, you know?"

"Yeah, I get that."

"But I'm almost definitely going to want to curl up and watch something light and fluffy afterward, so if you want to join me for that…"

"I'll have The Princess Bride queued up and a pillow all fluffed," I promised.

Holly smiled at me in a way that made my heart flutter. "Forget the pillow. Your shoulder will do fine."