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Chapter Text

Jeremy and I stood with the other theatre kids outside of Mr. Reyes’s classroom. In general, I was cautious about lumping myself in with them, but as the lead sound techie for the musical (and theatre band percussion first chair) - it did seem like I was squarely in the group this spring.

The excitement in the air was palpable as we waited for Mr. Reyes to make his announcement. The spring musical was always more popular than the fall play - and this year Mr. Reyes had promised it would be good. Something written in the last fifteen years - and not written by him. 

“Alright everyone,” Mr. Reyes said, holding a large poster in his arms. “I have an announcement! The spring show will be…” he paused for dramatic effect after hanging the poster on the wall. “... Brooklynite!”

A couple people groaned. Christine gasped.

“I was born to play Astrolass! She’s the coolest superhero ever!” She squealed, making Chloe roll her eyes.

“Well, I think the Legion of Victory is a little full of themselves. A whole musical about them tearing down a wall they built,” Chloe said.

She wasn’t entirely wrong - they were full of themselves, but they didn’t exactly write the musical. They just licensed it when they were asked.

Christine, however, looked shocked.

“The musical is about what led to the Brooklyn city walls falling, not about them falling. Besides the Legion does so much to protect everyone in and around New York, the least they deserve is a musical!”

“Ze Legion of Victory? What’s zat?” Madeline appeared next to me, adopting her horrible french accent as she spoke

Madeline had transferred to Middleborough High during our sophomore year and had told everyone she was from France. However, she and I had been in the same Sunday school classes since age five and we had an internship together.

We both knew she wasn’t french.

But our bosses liked that she had a cover story, so I entertained her delusions in exchange that she didn’t talk to me at school and that she shared a rumour whenever I needed her to. It had worked out for both of us, until recently.

“The Legion of Victory is a group of superheroes. They were the only superheroes in the world for a while, so I’m surprised you didn’t hear about them in France,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes to a glare.

“Nah Michael,” Jake said, jumping into the conversation, “you gotta be sensitive to cultural differences.” 

He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her in for a kiss.

“Anyway, they’re the premier superheroes for New York, the whole United States really. The Legion’s made up of a couple of people, you can kinda divide it into like B-list and A-list though.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“A-list and B-list?”

He ignored me, starting his explanation.

“There’s Kid Comet: he’s super-fast. There’s El Fuego, he sets things on fire. He’s a former line cook, if that adds any context. Captain Clear is invisible duh. Oh, and Blue Nixie, she controls water through a magic whistle or something, she used to be a marine biologist.”

That wasn’t quite right, but nothing so wrong it was worth correcting. Besides, Madeline knew the truth anyway.

“Are those the B-list?” I asked.

“Yuh huh.” He waved me off. “And then there’s Astrolass… and her boyfriend. Astrolass’s parents died in the impact. So she went and founded the Legion to give herself a family.”

“It’s really sad actually,” I said.

“What do zey do?” Madeline brushed me off

“They’re your classic hero package - kinda. Astrolass and her boyfriend Astrolad were closest to the asteroid, so they got the best powers. Flight and superstrength. But something happened and both Astrolass and Astrolad lost their powers. I think they use suits to replicate superpowers but maybe they got them back.”

Yet again, Jake was wrong. Astrolad had never had powers, but he wasn’t wrong about the suit thing.

Madeline feigned confusion. 

“What is zis asteroid?” she asked.

“The Gowanus asteroid. It gave the legion their powers,” Jake said.

“And that is way more than you needed to know to understand the musical,” Chloe said. 

“Not even close! You haven’t told her the full story,” Christine said, talking so fast I could barely pick out each word, “Besides the people Jake mentioned, there’s a couple others that are important to understand the Legion and the musical. 

“Avenging Angelo is like super important! He was a member of the Legion that went rogue and became the villain Venge. He had the power to see the future! Well - I mean - it was limited. He could only use his precognition to see empty parking spots, but still he could see the future!”

I stifled my laughter. 

“He felt like the others thought finding parking spots was a bad power, and when the others didn’t let him have a position of power in the group, he quit and became Venge. He then tried to recreate the Gowanus effect to give him and a group of students superpowers so that they could destroy Brooklyn. Fortunately Trey - that’s Astrolad - stopped him with help from the Legion. Or well - they didn’t stop him but he didn't get any powers and then he went to jail but the students all became superheroes.”

“Now that is all you need to know about the musical,” I said, stepping in before Christine ran through the entire plot or started singing.

“Well shouldn’t she hear about the wall too?” Chloe asked sarcastically, clearly tired with Christine already.

“Everyone knows about zis wall, Chloe,” Madeline snapped back.

She wasn’t really defending Christine - she was just attacking Chloe - but Christine responded well to what Madeline said anyway.

“Right? Anyway, do you want to know more? They’re still active, they’ve done tons since the events that the musical is based around,” Christine said.

“I would - how you say - love to know more!”

“You forgot the word love? Really?” I asked.

“Don’t be mean! It’s her second language Michael, you should have some empathy for that!” Christine elbowed me. “Okay, but what else should you know…” She trailed off.

Jeremy gave her an affectionate smile. They had decided not to date, but he still had feelings for her. He found her distractedness charming.

“Nix maybe?” He offered her.

“Oh, yeah! During the past year or so, there’s been another superhero fighting with the legion. Like Jer said, he goes by Nix, which is the masculine form of Nixie, so everyone thinks he’s just Blue Nixie’s son. He has the same powers as her with water and stuff, so there’s actual evidence. This isn’t just speculation on my part. Although, nothing’s been confirmed by the legion.”

Madeline gave me a look.

She and I could both confirm that Nix was Blue Nixie’s son - but we had the sense to keep our mouths shut on that. Nobody besides the Legion, a handful of Legion employees, and my step-mom knew who Nix was. If it was confirmed that Nix was Blue Nixie’s child, our identities would be narrowed down to maybe a hundred people.

Astrolass, Astrolad, and Captain Clear had abandoned their civilian identities, but the rest of us hadn’t. Basically every hero that had passed through the Legion maintained a normal life. It was only once a hero died that their identity was revealed. 

My mother Blue Nixie and I were no exceptions. She worked as a scientific consultant by day and a superhero at night (and sometimes during the day too.)

Mr. Reyes stepped away from the poster and our conversation immediately dissipated. Jeremy and Christine signed up for the first two audition slots on next Thursday. Everyone else signed up behind them. The fall play never generated that much interest, but the Musical was full of Choir kids who can’t act and Theatre kids who can’t sing. 

“You gonna sign up, Michael?” Rich asked, handing the pen to the person behind him in line. 

“Do I look like I sing?” I gestured to myself.

“You do look a little gay, so yeah, you look like you sing.”

“Har-har - no I do not.”

“You do look gay, Michael, and you used to sing in church choir all the time,” Madeline said, miraculously losing her accent.

“Wouldn’t you know,” I said.

She grabbed Jake and ran towards the student parking lot before I could expose her.

“Anyway. You don’t look like you play instruments, but you do,” Rich said.

“Yes! I do ‘play instruments’ and I have to teach other people who ‘play instruments’ how to play their instruments for the musical.” I made air quotes with my fingers as I spoke. “So I’m going to be too busy to play a part.”

Jeremy hugged Christine and walked over to me and Rich.

“Thank god. Looks like I got to go. Bye,” I said.

Jeremy had been grounded for “doing drugs” during the fall play all winter break, and now that he was finally ungrounded from the SQUIPcident, he was gonna actually spend time with me. Not that we hadn’t hung out in the six weeks after the play, but it was always with either Jeremy’s dad or one or more of the SQUIP squad members.

Christine wasn’t so bad, and Rich and I had started to find common ground - but the rest of them were basically the same people they’d been in september: awful.

For once I wouldn't have to be social to hang out with Jeremy - we were just going to go back to my place and play video games.

But the universe hated me, and it always seemed to have a trick up its sleeve.

Everyone’s phone dinged with an emergency alert.

“Breaking News: super-villain known as Fever Storm attacking Brooklyn Bridge. Legion of Victory nowhere to be found!”

The Legion hadn’t been notified. My phone hadn’t buzzed with an alert, so the police hadn’t asked for our help. Fine with me - but annoying when the news blamed it on us. The Legion worked with local, national, and international law enforcement basically every day. Astrolass had negotiated Fridays as a day off, but we still had to step up against supervillains when they struck.

Lately, the police had been asking for help less and less, taking down weaker supervillains on their own when they could. Usually that only led to more property damage but sometimes it worked out okay.

Weirdly enough, villains like Fever Storm with destructive fire based powers were usually the easiest to take care of for the police. Probably because they were authorized to kill (not that they let that stop them otherwise) and everybody had fire insurance these days. As for civilians, the fire department would solve it.

Still, the Legion would be called in for the investigation if nothing else. 

I turned to Jeremy with an excuse and an apology ready - but he cut me off before I could give it.

“Shit - I can’t hang out today then. My dad is gonna want me home if there’s an attack. Sorry Mikey,” He said.

That was fucking bullshit. 

“It’s cool, I’ll catch you later,” I said as I pulled up my headphones and walked away.

At least now I could help the Legion.

I pulled out my phone and called my mom as I started walking towards my car.

“Hey, should I - “

“Come straight home - Trey is sending us some transportation,” she said, the sound of an engine audible in the background. 

I grinned.

Ten minutes later, Blue Nixie, Kid Comet, Captain Clear and I stood watching the fight unfold. In the short time it had taken to get pre approval, a team of superheroes I'd never met before had shown up. 

The bridge had already been evacuated - so it was just the seven heroes against Fever Storm.

“They’re not very good,” Kid Comet said.

He was right: they sucked. Water would be incredibly beneficial for this situation, but none of them could control it, so they were fighting fire with more fire. 

Literally. The shortest member of the group was facing off with Fever Storm and both were sending fire everywhere. 

Another hero was creating “bubbles” or force fields of some kind to stop the fire from spreading and keeping the others from being burned. A third was sending electricity towards the villain.

The other four weren’t using their powers much and were mostly just in the way. 

They didn’t seem to notice us yet, so we watched and discussed strategy for a few minutes.

“Those forcefield bubbles are strong, she should put one around Fever Storm, choke out the flame,” I said.

“I don’t think so,” My mom responded, “She could accidentally kill him too easily. Besides, I don’t think he is so limited in the range of his pyrogenesis that he couldn’t just create fire outside the bubble.” 

Twenty years of experience evidently made a difference in strategic thinking. 

We continued like that, pointing out potential uses of their powers and deconstructing the tactics they used. Eventually, a blast of fire flared over the ‘sidelined’ heroes, making them jump.

“This is just sad to watch. You should put an end to it,” Kid Comet said.

He was - again - correct. These guys were clearly new superheroes and probably had had zero formal training. 

“Alright, but snap a couple pictures of these guys?” I asked him. 

“I will get it,” Captain Clear said, reminding me he was here.

The four of us were assigned to tracking down potential superheroes. We didn’t have to unmask them, just find a way for the Legion to stay in touch, but tracking down their civilian identities was the easiest way. 

Photos would help with that part.

Blue Nixie and I ran to opposite guard rails. She blew her whistle, directing me to copy her actions. While I could figure out what to do on my own, I was still a probationary member of the Legion - being 17 and all - so I had to be given permission to act. 

Together, we summoned the water from the East River to douse the entire bridge and the young heroes standing on it. At the same time, Kid Comet had grabbed Fever Storm, subdued him, and put him in handcuffs next to a police officer. 

The seven soaking wet superheroes turned to us in confusion. Even though they didn’t seem like they’d be trouble, and even though they were under Legion jurisdiction, the police would still want to arrest them.

“Get out of here,” I said.

The superheroes scrambled to get off the bridge. Kid Comet came rushing back over.

“Any clue who those guys are,” I asked.

“Nope, but I’ll bet Captain got close up pictures of them. But like four of their masks don’t cover most of their face, so with some digging you can find out who they are.”

“‘ I’ can find out their identities? Not ‘ we ’?” 

“Yep, you. Blue Nixie and I have a different project - related to your briefing in November. So it's just you.”

The SQUIP. We’d all agreed I’d been too close to that situation to investigate further. No point in arguing here. 

“Isn’t Captain Clear following them?”

“He will for a little while, but if they’re smart they’ll catch on.”

I nodded. 

Captain Clear was the best infiltrator in the Legion - for obvious reasons. If he wanted to stay hidden, he could. But since the heroes were clearly young, the Legion liked to go easy on them. Partially to see what they could do, and partially so that they knew they were on our radar.

But since he wasn’t actually hunting them down just yet, that part fell to me. This probably wasn’t the first time they used their powers, so I might be able to narrow them down to a town or neighborhood. If I figured out the identities of the heroes with bad masks, I’d be able to find the others.

My phone buzzed shortly after Blue Nixie dropped me off at home. Captain Clear had sent over the photos from the bridge. I sighed, there goes my excuse to relax for a bit. Now I’d have to get started right away.

Hunting amateur superheroes was a depressing way to end a Thursday night, but since Jeremy had bailed, I had nothing else to do.

I took my previous project off the bulletin board in my room and started hanging print outs of the pictures Captain had taken. Sure, I could have laid out all my evidence virtually, but the bulletin board fit my aesthetic more.

After pinning up everything I got from the bridge, I started an automated deep web search for stories about these superheroes. Not just news sites and google, but forums including dark web sites that had been reliable before.

My search turned up about two hundred posts and articles that I had to go through by hand. I was on the seventieth result and about to give up the search for the night when I finally found something worthwhile.

“7 young heroes put an end to string of cash register theft in Middleborough, New Jersey.”

The suits in the cover photo were the same as the ones they wore on the bridge.

I breathed a sigh of relief. The lack of digital footprint so far had made me worried, but now I had a lead.

The attempted robbery was in some preppy boutique on the rich side of town, where Jake, Chloe, and Madeline lived, which is why I hadn’t heard of it. With that in mind, I adjusted some of my parameters and borrowed down my search. 

A few minutes later I’d found more articles and some forum posts that included videos, photos, and even a close up photo of one of the heroes wearing a Middleborough High spirit bracelet. 

It seemed like they’d had a total of about ten fights, all over the past month. They were clumsy but the videos I'd seen suggested they’d steadily improved each time. Each event took place within two miles of the boutique from the first article, with the exception of the bridge incident this afternoon.

On reviewing all the evidence, they were definitely in high school and at least one of them went to my high school. Which meant all I had to do was watch and see who acted suspiciously tomorrow. But first, I had to give them a reason to act suspiciously.

Mads

OMG! Hey Madeline!

I hate you Mike.

What do you want. I’m not in a good mood right now.

Madeline could be annoying and rude, but she was my friend and worked with me at the Legion. She and the other ‘social media’ interns were the only people my age who knew I worked there. Even though they all thought I was just an intern like them, it was important that I had some people I could share that part of my life with.

Plus, she was the only thing that had made Sunday classes bearable back when I still went, so I did care beyond using her to spread gossip.

Mads

whats wrong :(

Jake bailed on our date

Based off his snap map he was with Chloe and Rich

:(

you can do better than him anyway

he can be a total jerk sometimes

Yah, ur right. What did you need?

did you hear about these new superheroes?

they fought Fever Storm on the bridge today

and...

they totally go to our school.

I sent her the link to an article published this afternoon about the bridge and separately sent her the picture of the one hero wearing a spirit band. 

Mads

HOLY FUCK

That’s exciting

It’s on my story

Sometimes you’re useful

im always useful

D:

I still hate you.

I sent her a :P back and decided to call it a night. I wasn’t going to be able to track these guys down until tomorrow anyway.

Chapter Text

I woke up to several texts from Madeline.

Mads

HOLY FUCK MIKEY

3,000 people watched my story

That’s like all of our student body plus half of Wakefield’s

Wakefield was our rival school. Because there was only one mall between the two towns, all Middleborough drama was Wakefield drama and all Wakefield drama was Middleborough drama.

Mads

Jake said I was dramatic for getting excited about it :(

He said I should take down my story

Weirdo. What a jerk.

Uh-huh

Jake was already acting strange and I wasn’t even at school yet. Looking out for whoever was acting suspicious was going to be harder than I thought.

Maybe it wasn’t even that good of an idea. Clearly, people would be suspicious for many reasons. The line between suspicious because they’re a superhero and suspicious because they’re cheating on their girlfriend wouldn’t be as cut and dry when I examined anyone who wasn’t my friend.  

I sighed and finished packing my bag for the day. Jeremy came to pick me up, as an apology for dropping me last second. 

Which, sure, I would have had to do to him if he hadn't done it first, but I didn't like that he was lying about it. 

“Sorry for ditching you yesterday. Since the SQUIP, my dad’s been overprotective,” he said.

“It’s cool Jer, don’t worry about it. I get it,” I lied.

No point stirring shit up if I didn’t know why he was lying. Besides, our friendship was still fragile after the SQUIP.

He smiled and started the drive to school.

Like I’d hoped, superheroes going to our school had everyone buzzing. 

Or almost everyone was buzzing.

The SQUIP Squad didn’t mention it at all. They didn’t even react to other people talking about it. 

We had the biggest piece of gossip in months and they weren’t touching it? Suspicious.

But then again, if Madeline had seen Chloe and Jake together, maybe he was cheating again and the whole group knew. That would explain the awkward tension I'd noticed between Jenna and Jake during homeroom.

Throughout the day, the superhero group’s popularity only grew. By lunch, I doubted the Squad would be able to ignore it for much longer. 

At least, I really hoped they wouldn’t be able to ignore it anymore. 

My work at the legion was classified, even the fact that I worked there wasn't meant to be shared with the wider public. As a result, It wasn’t often that I could talk about something that happened at work with my friends. 

The one time I was supposed to in order to gather more information - they didn’t want to bring it up. 

Fortunately, Madeline was more than ready to fill the drama gap. While we could discuss our 'social media' intern status with each other anyway, it was still good to talk to someone. On the short walk from my classroom to the cafeteria, I got caught up on the student body’s knowledge of the heroes. 

“Oh Em Geeeeee,” She said, emphasizing each letter like they were words rather than part of an abbreviation, “Superheroes are so cool!”

“We work for superheroes!” I hissed. “Hell, we sorta are superheroes. What’s so cool about these guys?”

The ‘social media’ interns at the Legion weren’t actually there to run the social media pages. It’d been my mom’s idea for a cover story for me working at the legion. All of the interns had low level superpowers. We were there for training and finding creative uses of our superpowers. 

Officially, I (Michael the intern not Nix the superhero) could change the temperature, salinity, and alkalinity of water. It’d been a minor aspect of my mother’s superpowers, but through her intern training program, I'd developed it much further than she had.

It was mainly useful for watering plants and cooking pasta, but the training we did with Trey and other Legion members was the main point of the program. We got lots of experience working with the minute details of our powers and learned to think outside the box.

Being an intern was almost as fun as being an actual member of the Legion.  Almost because we still had to run the social media sites, though.

“Ha! Listen to yourself,” Madeline said. “We’re not superheroes. We barely have superpowers - these guys though… just.. AUGH! They’re so good.”

“Psssh - these guys don’t even have names.”

“No! They do!”

I suppressed a grin as Madeline took the bait. What I wanted was to know what other students knew. My research between last night and this morning had turned up almost everything you could think of about these heroes: their names, their area of operation, recordings of their voices, videos of their powers, etc etc. What was harder to gauge online was their reputation, but Madeline had unwittingly done all the work on that front for me.”

“Really? What are they”

“Okay so there is Polyphase, he’s that electricity guy and totally everyone’s favorite. I think it’s cause he’s basically covered head to toe, so he’s more mysterious. We’re not even sure he’s a guy! Then there is Invisigirl, she can turn invisible but also has these really cool forcefields, and Ember, he's the fire guy. There are four others but they aren’t as active.”

They were just as active, but were not nearly as flashy. 

SonicLass could create sonic booms and other very loud noises, Melior was super strong, Reflex could clone herself, and Counterglow could control light. The group could be incredibly powerful, but not until any of them learned how to use their powers. And the Legion of Victory couldn’t help with that until we figured out who they were.

“Oh my god, guys!” Madeline started as we sat down at our table for lunch. “Did you guys hear? It looks like ze Legion of Triumph goes to our school. I wonder who zey are?”

The rest of the Squad ignored her. Only Dustin acknowledged our presence. I gave her a smile. 

“What’s the Legion of Triumph?” Dustin asked.

Madeline rolled her eyes.

“Ze superheroes who saved ze Brooklyn Bridge yesterday. Do you live under a rock? Dumbass,” She said, dropping her accent on the last word. 

I snorted. The only person Madeline hated more than Chloe was Dustin. Dustin had been the first to tell people that she wasn’t French, so she made it her personal mission to put him down whenever she could. In particular, she liked attacking his intelligence.

It’d been a shockingly successful smear campaign. His reputation had gone from Nerdy Stoner to Future Drop Out in no time at all. 

If it went too far, me or one of Jer's friends would step in to stop her, but the guy usually did deserve it.

“Legion of Triumph is a little bold, don’t you think?” I said. “The Legion of Victory had been in action for years before they got their name. ‘The Legion of Triumph’ has only had like two ‘triumphs.’ and the one yesterday was more Blue Nixie, Nix and Kid Comet than those losers.”.

Chloe’s head snapped in my direction. 

“They’re not losers,” She said.

I laughed. Chloe was the last person I'd expected  to get a rise out of. 

“Yes, they are,” Madeline said before I could respond, “their masks don’t even hide their identities. Except, polyphase.”

“I bet you wouldn’t recognize them if you saw them on the street. No one has figured out who they are yet, so clearly the masks work somewhat.” 

Before Madeline or I could respond, Jake and Jeremy arrived sitting next to Madeline and Me respectively.

“I don’t know why everyone is so obsessed with these new superheroes. I wish everyone would just shut about it already,” Jake said.

Rich and Jeremy nodded.

“It’s so annoying,” Rich replied, “there are better things to worry about.”

Rich and Jake had been obsessed with Nix just before winter break. There was no way they’re fascination with superheroes was over just like that.

“Mikey.” Madeline’s voice shook me out of my thoughts. “Watch my stuff, I’ll be back in a minute.”

Jake watched her walk away, his face scrunching into a scowl.

“How long has she been calling you Mikey?” he asked me.

“A while. How long have you been skipping dates with her to hang out with Chloe?” I retorted.

I knew the answer already: a while. Jake was mostly a nice guy but had a habit of flitting between Madeline and Chloe whenever he wanted. He was usually sleeping with both at any given time, but only “dating” one. 

It was a pretty fucked up thing to do. 

“If this is about yesterday, I wasn’t skipping our date to hang out with Chloe. I had something important to do.”

“Oh, I’m sure. It’s not like she saw you, Chloe, and Rich together on her snap map,” I said.

His eyes widened. I couldn’t blame him, I wouldn’t want to be caught lying to my girlfriend either.

“Mikey,” Jer said before I could say more, “it was important, I was there. Just drop it.”

My smile faded. Jake might not be lying to me, but Jer definitely was. It still wasn’t clear why he'd lie, but keeping the peace was wearing on me.

“I thought your dad needed you home?” I called him out.

He and Jake made eye contact, neither one looking at me.

“Guys?”

“Uh oh! Looks like Jakey isn’t the only one lying!” Madeline said, coming back to the table. She started packing up her stuff before turning to me and saying in (broken) French, “ Let’s go eat in the band room. ”

She actually said music room, but I wasn’t sure how to say band room in french either, so there wasn’t much point in correcting her. 

I grabbed my stuff and followed her.

The band room was the best place to eat lunch anyway. The room wasn't quiet per se, but the vibe was chill, plus there were couches in the back. Madeline had eaten in there with me every day while Jeremy had his SQUIP. 

Sure, it was mainly that Jake was dating Christine and therefore the truce established between Madeline and Chloe was meaningless, but it was nice to pretend that she was doing it out of friendship.

All the fellow band and orchestra nerds ate there and blasted show tunes. It was always fun, and never involved drama - besides the theatrical kind. It’d be good to forget about the SQUIP squad for a while.

After lunch, I didn’t see Jeremy on my way to English. He normally walked with me, and it hurt that he decided not to. When he had the SQUIP, I’d gotten used to him ignoring me. I didn’t want to go back to it, but if push came to shove, I would take better than he would. 

English went quickly, we just had to write an essay, then it was time for the first band practice of the spring season. 

The theatre band was in charge of playing the music for the musical every year. So 10 of the school’s best musicians were chosen and learned the music to back up the performers on the stage. Since I was the only member of the theatre band that had previously spent two years in the band, I was in charge.

Our band was actually quite good, and had been the saving grace of many shows.

Since it was the first rehearsal, no one was expected to know the music. Our instructor worked with us to decide on more practice dates, and when we would work with individual actors.

Our instructor then left a full hour before he was supposed to, which was why we needed a student in charge.

I led the group through warmups and we stumbled our way through any of the Brooklynite songs with little to no piano. Since I was the pianist, we’d have to wait until we had a separate conductor to play any songs with a strong piano part.

We were just about to pack up when Madeline waltzed into the band room.

“Mikey, I need a favor!” She called.

“Ooh! Mikey.” One kid mocked her.

I rolled my eyes.

“What do you need, Mads?” I asked, refusing to entertain the asshole.

She gave me a coy smile.

“I need you to be my date to the Basketball game! Jake’s working as the team manager tonight, so he’ll be there. He ditched me to hang out with Chloe again.” She dramatically sighed and frowned before continuing. “So now I have to get him back.”

“You could do that by getting a boyfriend who deeply cares about you instead of dragging the gay band nerd along!”

“He doesn’t know that you’re any of those things! Plus, you saw him at lunch, not only was he jealous but he and Jeremy were being dicks too. Come on, please?” She made puppy dog eyes at me.

I sighed, considering it.

She had been my most stable friendship over the past several months, and we’d been getting closer at work. Plus, the interns were meeting tomorrow - which meant I would never hear the end of it if I didn't go with her tonight. 

Finally, I relented.

“Fine, but you owe me.”

She smiled and pulled me out of the band room.

“I’ll drive you home so you can change! Tonight’s theme is neon-out!” She said, “like white-out or black-out but neon!”

Tonight was going to be a long night. 

By the time we pulled up to the gym parking lot again, I was already tired. 

Part of that was we had to stop at Walmart. We’d needed to get matching hoodies and face paint since neither of us owned much neon. And Madeline needed to get something from the pharmacy - which was probably just condoms but she wouldn’t say and I did not care enough to push.

Regardless of the source of my exhaustion, I doubted I would be able to stay upbeat for another 3 hours.

The JV boys game was just finishing as we walked in, meaning that the Varsity team would be waiting outside to do a dramatic entrance.

Jake’s leg had mostly healed over winter break, but he couldn’t get final sign off from his doctor until Monday. He’d be working as team manager tonight (read: water bottle filler), but if all went well, on Tuesday he’d be playing for the first time this season, and just in time.

Next Friday’s game was against Wakefield.

We sat in the student section, where there were already too many people, and watched the JV team lose. 62-4. The other team should have shown mercy, but our JV team sucked.

Some shitty rap song started blasting from the speakers with the base boosted too high to hear any words. The doors to the gym opened and the Varsity team started their warmups. Jake made his way to the team bench, following shortly after the team.

Weirdly enough though, none of the other members of the SQUIP squad were around. 

But more importantly, it’d mean I’d have to leave with Madeline. So long as she didn’t go home with Jake (like she was clearly planning.)

I’d have to walk home if she did that. 

I opened my phone to check the time when I got a notification from Instagram. Sarah Greenfield - Wakefield's top gossip mogul- had posted.

“Legion of Triumph strikes again,” she’d written on the post to her story, “Six of the seven teammates were spotted stopping another robbery only twenty minutes ago. OMG.”

Next to the message was some animated emoji gasping over and over again. 

I read the article she linked. The robbery was at some CVS Pharmacy near the Walmart Madeline and I had stopped at. I cursed silently at myself, pissed I had missed them so closely. By now the heroes would be long gone.

“God!” Madeline said, reading over my shoulder. “Someone could have figured out who they were! They could be anywhere in Middleborough by now! Hell, they could’ve gotten here by now.” she pouted and turned back to the court, where the teams were now huddled on the side.

She wasn’t wrong. Twenty minutes meant that they’d be just arriving. 

Since they went to our school, there’d be a good chance they would show up for the game. So whoever they are, they would probably walk through the doors any second. 

Someone tapped me on my shoulder, shaking me out of my thoughts and pulling my attention away from the gym doors.

“Mikey! I didn’t know you were coming,” Jeremy said.

“I wasn’t.” I gestured to Madeline. 

He laughed and wrapped his arm around me.

“Well I'm glad you’re here! Rich and I got here like twenty minutes ago. We were waiting for the girls before we headed in,” He said, talking fast and providing more information than I really needed. 

From the corner of my eye I could see him scratching at his wrist, and his hair looked like he'd just been tugging at it. 

Was he nervous?

At least he wasn’t mad at me for lunch. Whether I was mad at him was a different issue - but one I could deal with on my own time. 

I smiled. With Jeremy around, the game would be more bearable.

Besides the screaming student section, the game did end up being a lot of fun. Jeremy had his arm around me most of the night, which was great. Madeline would lean against me whenever Jake looked over, which was not great. But we won 28-24, and the 9 of us went out to celebrate after.

Jake and Madeline ended up “making up” at the restaurant, so Madeline was too occupied to take me home. Since everyone else’s car was full, Jeremy stepped up.

“Sorry I ditched you,” he said when we were about half way home.

“It's fine, I guess. I just wish you didn’t lie to me. I don’t care as long as I know why.”

He sighed.

“I can’t tell you.”

That made me laugh. At least he was honest instead of making more empty and meaningless statements.

“You can tell Rich and Jake though? And Chloe? Fucking Chloe Valentine over me.”

“Yes,” he snapped.

An awkward silence fell between us.

“Oh. Okay.” I eventually replied, trying to keep the hurt from leaking into my voice.

The silence continued until he was almost at my house. 

“You got a text from Rich,” I said, reacting to his phone buzzing.

“What’s it say?” He asked as he pulled into my driveway.

“Uh…” I leaned over to get a better look at the screen. “It says: ‘Did you ask him?’”

Jeremy snatched his phone away from me and unlocked his car’s doors.

“Get out of my car, Mikey.”

I glared at him. He had no reason to be mad at me. 

No right to be! 

Yet he had the audacity to be a jerk. 

He and I were going to need to talk about everything that had happened the past few days before I was okay with things just going on like normal. 

But that wasn’t going to happen tonight.

“Sure. See ya.”

I opened my front door and started making my way upstairs. Jeremy was being such an ass. Ditching me for no good reason, trusting Chloe over me, and just generally acting shady. I wasn’t going to let him treat me like trash again. I’d had enough of that during the SQUIP. He was gonna need to have a reason to be acting shady. 

He needed to have a really good reason. 

In all twelve years of our friendship we’d never lied to each other so often as he had lied to me in the past forty eight hours.

My thoughts kept spiraling, getting more and more pissed off until a call from Astrolass made me pause. 

If I had a good reason for my secrets and lies, then maybe he had a good reason for his.

Chapter Text

It was almost midnight, and I wanted to fall asleep as soon as I laid down, especially after already getting worked up, but Astrolass’ call needed to be answered.

“Nix, we have work to do! The Police want us to investigate the attack on the bridge. Kid Comet’s on his way,” she said before hanging up.

I groaned and changed into my suit. Follow up investigations were pretty common, but they were arguably the worst part of the job. Vigilates like the Legion of Triumph might not get paid, but at least they got to just rest after a victory. 

Not to mention, Kid Comet was the worst form of transportation the Legion provided. Sure, he was fast and discrete, but it was humiliating. I would be an adult in a little over a year and I had to be bridal carried to the battlefield.

They wouldn't even let me sit piggy-back. At the speeds Kid Comet went, it just had to be bridal style.

At least he was a pretty fun guy. In the one or two seconds he took to get somewhere, he’d always make me laugh. Plus, he was Rich’s third cousin or something, so he knew all the Goranski gossip. It pissed Rich off to no end when I asked him about his older brother’s second girlfriend of the month.

Astrolass and the rest of the Legion were just arriving when Kid Comet and I got to the bridge. 

“Alright,” Astrolass started, “let's review what we know now that Nix is here. Captain Clear, you can start.”

“Fever Storm was a nuclear engineer at the Indian Point Energy Center. He was bitten by a radioactive fire and woke up with pyrokinesis,” He said, blowing past his implication of the existence of sentient flame. “His real name was Dylan Chapman. No connection to any other known supervillain that family and friends know about.”

The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t think why. 

“El Fuego and I were able to hunt down the guy's car,” Blue Nixie said, “There was a creepy note to his ex-girlfriend and directions to a building in New Jersey. It looks like a warehouse, but I have no idea what's inside.”

“Great. Nix? You were hunting down the other heroes that were on the bridge. Any leads on them?” Astrolass asked.

“They’re from Middleborough, New Jersey, where ma and I live. Based on a bracelet one of them was wearing, I can say they go to my high school. Beyond that, the only evidence I have to suggest identities is circumstantial.”

“Any chance it’s them inside?”

“Uh… I guess.”

Astrolass nodded and then we began making a plan to infiltrate the warehouse. Odds are, it would just be a personal storage unit, or some old merchandise from a business, but maybe something interesting would come up. Interesting like a missing person or an evil lair, not like an affair or tax fraud. Affairs and tax fraud were surprisingly common among supervillains.

Eventually, we made our way to the warehouse and Captain Clear went in first. There was not much of a chance I’d be needed inside, so I pulled out my phone and checked the news. The very first story was about a Snapchat hack doxing about a dozen influencers in California, which gave me an idea.

Trey had done something to my phone which disabled location services for everything except his special maps app. It pissed me off at first, but it meant it was totally safe for me to be on social media while out on a job. He pointed out that if I responded to messages while I was out in costume, people would be less likely to link me to Nix.

Plus, it meant that I could use social media as Nix to track people down without it being linked back to me as Michael.

What Madeline had said last night about stalking Jake on Snapchat reminded me the feature had existed, that in addition to the news story, I was formulating a plan. With our teenage superheroes being quite reckless thus far, I'm sure they weren't squeaky clean digitally. Plus, I could barely live without my phone for a few hours, a group more inexperienced and less disciplined than me probably couldn't do it for long either. 

I opened snapchat and went directly to the map. It took a second to get my bearings, but then I zoomed into my location. As I’d expected, Jake and Chloe’s bitmojis popped up on the map.

There were just office buildings and other warehouses surrounding this building. A little ways down the road, there was a Costco, but it was closed and that didn’t seem like their kind of Friday night anyway (it was absolutely mine though). 

That meant they'd have to be in the warehouse.

Which might have given me a few answers but mostly left me with more questions.

For example: What the fuck were they doing? Why did this grown man have directions to where a bunch of kids hang out? Why did this have to be done at one am? How did they think they wouldn’t get caught? Did they have any plan if the Legion of Victory crashed their midnight party?

“Ma,” I said, turning to Blue Nixie, “look at this.”

I called Blue Nixie “ma” for a number of reasons. One: as a civilian I called her mom, so it helped keep separation between my civilian identity and Nix. Two: Blue Nixie had spent a while in the south and hated being reminded of it. And three: it made everyone (mainly just El Fuego, and Captain Clear) uncomfortable when I did so.

There was a little bit of a superhero Mama Mia! situation when it came to who my father was. El Fuego was the most likely suspect, but Captain Clear was a candidate as well. Trey had done a paternity test ages ago but I'd been too worried to follow up with it. 

Blue Nixie looked at my phone before turning back to me.

“You think that’s the Legion of Triumph?”

“Maybe.” I nodded.

“Pause,” She said, “those are your friends?”

They hadn’t been there before, but in the fifteen seconds it’d taken to show my mom, five other bitmojis had popped up too.

Including Jeremy's.

“I guess.”

Maybe that’s what the fuck they were doing. I had considered it before, but none of the evidence I had proved it. Although, in hindsight, it certainly didn't disprove it either - and the bracelet actually may have suggested it.

They hadn’t seemed quite stupid enough to leave their locations on while being superheroes, but honestly my friends (Jer and Chris excluded) had never seemed smart enough to be superheroes at all.

But maybe there was a strategy to this. All of them except Christine were chronically online with tons of friends. Maybe turning location off when just training and not fighting an attack would be more suspicious.

But then again, Madeline had seen them yesterday - destroying my theory. 

“Looks like we better be ready to give Captain Clear some back up,” Astrolass said, peering over my shoulder.

The radio buzzed, giving us the signal to move in. 

At first, the inside seemed boring and plain. There were several large wooden crates, random boxes, and some weird retail items like shelves, but nothing of interest.

When I stepped into the middle of the warehouse, I understood why we were here. There was a large clearing between the crates, and the floor was covered in scorch marks. The lights above were broken, some shattered and some clearly just shorted out. 

“Were the vigilantes practicing?” Blue Nixie asked.

“I can only assume,” Captain Clear said from behind me, making me jump. “No one was here when I got here, but the burn marks on the ground were still warm. They must have jumped out a window when they heard me come in.”

That wasn’t likely, considering that we’d seen their bitmojis placing them in the building while Captain Clear was in here. I opened Snapchat again and checked the map. Chloe, Jake, Brooke, and Jenna were now across the street, but Rich, Christine and Jeremy were still inside.

I showed my phone to Blue Nixie and she nodded.

“We know you three are still in here,” she said

No one moved. Snapchat could be misreading their GPS signal, but I doubted it. They were probably hiding behind a crate hoping we’d give up and leave.

I nudged Kid Comet.

“Dude. I’m pretty sure that’s your cousin,” I said quietly.

He sighed, and groaned, before checking his own phone.

“Richard! Stand up, I know you’re fucking in here. I can see your location!”

Still no response. 

“I’m gonna ping your phone using Find My if you don’t stand up, and that’s gonna be real embarrassing for you. So stand up!”

There was a soft “fuck” in front of us and then a force field bubble burst. Christine, Rich, and Jeremy appeared out of thin air. Their masks were off and the three of their faces were red. They stared at the ground, unable to meet our eyes.

“Damn, they really are just teenagers. Good intel, Nix.” Astorlass patted me on the back before turning to my friends. “Are the other four outside? Bring them in.”

After the group of them were assembled in the warehouse in front of the Legion. Astrolass continued.

“Look. We don’t want teenage vigilantes running around trying to fight dangerous super villains. So, it is my responsibility to tell you to stop. Go home and pretend to be normal kids. Believe me, it will make your life easier.”

The seven of them nodded. Christine and Rich still hadn’t looked up at us, and the other five were avoiding it where they could.

After a moment, Jeremy opened his mouth to speak but Astrolass cut him off.

“Still, something tells me you aren’t going to listen. You seven are going to go out there and get yourselves killed fighting a superhuman who is way stronger than you, or knows your weaknesses, or knows your secret identities or something. So it is also my responsibility to make sure that if I know you're gonna fight, that at least you know how to do it.”

Finally, my friends looked up, eyes wide.

“Nix will assess you and your powers. Two weeks, between seven to fourteen meetings. The details are up to Nix’s discretion. We’ll make a plan and draw up contracts from there. No crime fighting until I say.”

That was news to me.

Regardless, I kept my face neutral. The more I emoted, spoke, or moved, the more of my identity I revealed.

“Whe-Where should we meet you?” Jeremy asked.

I thought for a moment.

Even though I knew I could trust them, the Legion would need proof before they’d let my friends inside HQ. The warehouse they used now was off limits - both the Legion and Fever Storm had found them here. 

I’d have to scout for alternate locations that didn’t have security systems, and then I’d have to find a way for them to get there without being spotted. Not to mention, I’d have to get there without being spotted. 

And that's without considering the precautions I’d have to take to protect my identity.

“I’ll contact you,” I said finally.

Astrolass spoke to them a little more before she dismissed them.

“Ma’am,” I said as soon as they were out of earshot, “I’m not sure… I’m not sure what you’re expecting from me, and I don’t want my biases to get in the way of any of their careers.”

“Look, I know I sprung that on you out of nowhere, but this is both important and not a big deal. If I wanted an unbiased analysis of these kids, I would’ve assigned El Fuego or Captain Clear. This isn’t a test for them - not really. We’ll have to train them either way. 

“This is a test for you . To see what you’re looking out for, to see how you write reports, and to see if you can put aside personal matters for the job. Mostly, it’s for the report. Our investors want a deliverable from you. I want you to include your assessment of your friends in your report about the SQUIP. In particular, pay attention to if it seems to affect their behavior or not. You’ll finalize and submit the report to me and Trey next month.”

“So… homework?”

She made a face and then laughed apologetically.

“Yeah, sorry.”

I sighed as she walked, before pulling out my phone to take some photos. More evidence of what my friends could do would help guide my assessments for next week. 

And those were going to need a lot of guidance.

After a few more minutes of analyzing the scene, Blue Nixie dragged me home.

It was almost 4 am and I was ready to fall into bed, but now I had work to do. Sleep could wait. Literally - like most superheroes, my powers granted me a decreased need to rest. Which sucked cause it meant I couldn't use sleep to get out of work. 

A few minutes of searching for locations and I ended up choosing a secluded area in the woods near the school. 

There was a pond there, which would let me put out any fires.

Thinking of Fever Storm, I still couldn’t figure out why his name sounded familiar, or why he’d been chasing the Legion of Triumph. I’d searched for hours before conceding and passing out on my bed.

My step-mom woke me up after what seemed like no time at all.

“You have a ‘church group’ meeting in half an hour! Michael! I told you to set your alarm!” She yelled through my door.

I pulled on some jeans and my hoodie before opening the door.

“Sorry mom.” I kissed her on the cheek and made my way downstairs to finish getting ready before Madeline came to pick me up.

Church group stopped being counted as a “church” group a long time ago. It had started as a genuine group which met after church. Madeline, and I would meet up with some Wakefield kids and go out to breakfast after mass.

Overtime, we stopped going to mass. Once we got jobs at the Legion, we decided to restart it - partially as a cover and partially because for the most part we liked each other. 

Our ‘Church group’ had completely stopped being sitting together at catholic mass or CCD and became meeting up at a Denny’s and causing havoc for the poor waitress.

It was fine though, because one girl, Zoe Murphy, was super rich. She tipped for the entire group at about 35%.

“Hey Zoe,” I said as Madeline and I sat down at the table. “Where’s Alana?”

Alana Beck was a really sweet, but slightly socially anxious girl. She’s had the most obvious crush on Zoe since like 7th grade, but Zoe’s remained oblivious.

“She’ll be here soon, she’s picking up Jared.”

Jared Klienman was Jewish. He just liked free Denny’s. He’d joined our Catholic church group several years ago, back when we still went to church and only sometimes went to eat after.

We’d tried to kick him out once, but the Legion liked that he had a cover story for being seen with us outside of work - so he was forced to stay.

“God, I hate that kid. How are you doing, Zoe?” Madeline asked.

“Just fine.”

Zoe’s brother had died last September. The official story - and the one that Zoe had heard - was that he killed himself and was found in the forest.  

The real story was more complicated. Even as a member of the Legion, I'd been shielded from the truth. Only Trey, Captain Clear, and El Fuego knew the full story. The gist of it was that he’d assisted some villains and the deal they had went bad. But if they weren’t giving me the full truth… then it had to be worse than that.

Connor was a dick, but it clearly still affected Zoe. She only acted like her old self when Alana was around.

“Sup fuckers,” Jared said as he and Alana sat down. “Or should I say ‘bonjour mademoiselle?’”

“Hon Hon Hon, fuck you,” Madeline responded, putting on an over-exagerated french accent.

“May I take your order or do you have any questions about the menu?” Poppy, our usual waitress, asked.

The five of us looked at each other. Poppy was so nice, she wouldn’t mind our shenanigans.

“Actually yes,” I said, opening my menu. “What would you recommend? This is our first time eating here.”

“Pancakes and Hot Chocolates for everyone. Got it.” She didn’t mind, but some days she wouldn’t humor us.

She took our menus away, but came back to our table before heading to the kitchen.

“Sir, this is for you,” she said as she set a kids menu and crayons in front of Jared.

“Jokes on you. I’m using this.”

She patted him on the head and walked away.

We talked about a lot of pointless Wakefeild drama and about how Zoe’s mom said some ladies in our parish haven’t been kneeling for the entire Eucharistic Prayer.

We were usually here so early that there were no other patrons, so there was no concern about someone overhearing. The other interns could speak freely, so it was no surprise when Madeline brought up superheroes.

“I can’t believe the Legion of Triumph goes to our school! This is proof that Middleburough is better than Wakefield!” She said.

That made me snort. Wakefield had better test scores, higher musical assessment scores, and their sports teams usually destroyed ours.

“Seriously? I don’t understand the obsession, they’re more B-grade than we are as interns - and no offense guys - but we suck.” Zoe said.

Madeline rolled her eyes.

“Michael said the same thing. What can we even do? Water plants and take apart pens really fast.”

“Hey! I can do mechanical pencils too,” Jared protested.

He could actually take apart a fair number of mechanical and electronic devices quickly. His power was only 'low level' because he got worn out from it easily.

“You lack imagination, Madeline. We’ve all been getting better training with our mentors, Captain says that Alana and I could be made probationary Legion members in a few months. Sure we can’t do shit without our mentors right now, but the Legion of Triumph - which is a stupid name by the way - also couldn’t do shit without our bosses,” Zoe replied.

"No! They're great. They've stopped tons of villains."

Madeline dramatically gasped, and picked up her phone to scour the internet for proof.

“Damn, Zoe. You really came for the Legion of Triumph. And I agree, it’s a stupid name,” I said.

“You’re a traitor!” Madeline declared, slapping my arm. 

Were Alana and Zoe getting so good they could join the Legion of Victory? They both had powers that were useful for gathering information… but not so useful for fighting. 

Plus, this conversation with Captain Clear probably didn’t take place at 3 AM this morning - so it was before Astrolass had committed the Legion to training the new heroes. Would their training interrupt the intern’s schedule? Would my friends ever get to become probationary or even full members of the Legion of Victory?

Would I?

“Pancakes!” Poppy said as she set down our plates, shaking any thoughts of superheroes from my mind.

Chapter Text

On Monday at school, Jeremy seemed on edge. The whole SQUIP squad was, but especially Jeremy. They were having a hushed conversation at lunch and were so preoccupied that they didn’t even notice me approaching.

“Do you think he’ll try and contact us here?” Chloe asked.

“It just seems unlikely. Why wouldn’t he have done it already?” Christine responded.

“Maybe they’re just fucking with us?” Jeremy said.

I sat down next to him.

“Who’s fucking with y’all?” I asked, making the seven of them jump.

“No one,” Brooke said.

The rest of the group frantically agreed.

It hurt that they didn’t trust me, but when I took a step back, I could understand why. They did it for the same reason I hadn’t told any of them that I was Nix. It was more dangerous for them if I knew their identities and more dangerous for me if people knew I knew. 

Still stung, though. Especially Jeremy.

“I’m sure,” I said, not wanting to push an unimportant issue. “You guys learned the audition song yet?”

Chloe huffed.

“Well I started, but there isn’t a recording of the accompaniment online. I can learn it acapella, but since we’re not singing it that way, it’s pointless to keep practicing.”

Almost certainly not true, but better to be amenable than push the issue.

“I’ll record the accompaniment later if you really need it,” I said.

The conversation quickly moved on from auditions to the musical itself. I jumped into the discussion when relevant, but mostly I just sat there lost in thought.

Sometime soon, tonight even, I’d have to figure out how to get my friends a message, without them figuring out I was Nix. 

That ruled out just talking to them, and the legion wouldn’t like me reaching out over an unencrypted channel like text or email. 

There was also just no time in my schedule. I’d have to fit my training, working, writing my report, ‘church group,’ practicing for the musical, and setting up the tech for the musical on top of assessing their abilities.

The second semester of Junior year was going to be harder than I thought.

After lunch, Jeremy and I had Physics together. We had a lab report due next week that we had to run the experiment for. It was some simple kinematics project, so we essentially had the full period to talk.  

“I’m sorry about Friday. And Thursday, I shouldn’t have lied to you,” Jeremy said.

“It’s cool,” I started, “just… don’t lie to me in the future. If you want to hang out with Jake and Chloe over me, that’s fine. Just be honest.”

He looked taken aback.

“It’s not that I wanted to hang out with them over you. It’s just… never mind.”

“Okay, whatever Jer.” Hurt slipped into my voice. 

I hadn’t realized how upset I was about him lying to me until he kept lying.

Really, I understood his reasons to lie to me, and things were no different today in his mind than they were on Friday. I had no reason to be hurt or angry… but I was.

“Mikey…” He glanced around before pulling me into a quick hug. “I’m sorry. It’s not like that, I promise.”

“Let’s just get back to work,” I said, hiding my blush.

The atmosphere between us had lifted a little, and we actually had fun doing the lab. About a half hour before the bell was going to ring for dismissal, the principal came on the loudspeaker.

“Attention students, faculty, and staff. There is an ongoing supervillain attack nearby. We have been notified by the school board we must go into lockdown mode. Thank you for your cooperation.”

I groaned. Not only would I be stuck probably after school, but I wouldn’t be able to help the legion. 

We all stood to help the teacher lock the doors and cover the windows. It was a stupid procedure really - the guy could be miles away and he almost definitely wasn’t coming in here.

The whole lock down for villains thing was the school board posturing, trying to get more money from the New Jersey Super Powered Defense Fund to renovate schools. 

While the class finished setting up, I checked my phone. The news said that it was an explosion-controlling supervillain lighting up the warehouse district nearby. 

The Legion of Victory could definitely benefit from a water based hero, and my mom wasn’t there yet. I needed to get there, and I needed to do it without arousing suspicion.

It was tempting to give up and crawl under the desk next to Jeremy, but probationary or not, my position in the Legion meant I had to at least try to help. 

“Miss Barker? May I go to the nurse?” I asked, “I don’t feel well.”

“Are you just going to leave and go home?”

I looked her dead in the eye. She valued honesty, and was a pretty chill teacher. Plus, she’d been teaching a long time - I’m sure she knew any trick a high schooler could throw at her.

“Yes.”

She sighed.

“Stay safe. Don’t get caught. Say you’re from Mr. Thompson's class if you do.”

I smiled and said “thank you” as I grabbed my bag and left the room. 

Jeremy seemed a little offended, but I didn’t really care. It felt good in a vindictive sort of way that he was upset. Like now he knew how I felt. 

I pulled my car out of the school parking lot and into a secluded spot in the woods. Hopefully, it would look like I ditched class to smoke weed if anyone saw it. 

In my backseat, I awkwardly changed into my suit and texted Kid Comet.

When we got to the warehouse, my blood ran cold. 

It was the same place my friends had been practicing using their powers on Friday night. Clearly, Fever Storm was not the only villain they’d managed to pick a fight with.

Blue Nixie’s voice pulled me out of my shock.

“Nix! We need help subduing this guy. Most of the water in here has evaporated, I need you to find a way to douse the building. Kid Comet and Astrolass have a plan from there,” she said through the coms.

“Gotcha.”

Looking around the street, I spotted several busted open fire hydrants. While there were a few drops of water around them, they were otherwise dry. I called on my power, but the only water I could sense was the small pool of it inside that Blue Nixie was controlling, and even that was vanishing fast.

“Nix! Where is that water?” El Fuego appeared next to me. 

My power had a much smaller range than my mom’s, if she couldn’t sense anything I wasn’t sure why he thought I could. 

“It’s not here! There’s nothing around!”

“Nothing? That’s not possible. Focus!”

I searched deeper, feeling out for sheltered or small aggregations of water. The pipes in nearby buildings were all dry. Even the general ambient water in the air was vanishingly sparse. 

And then, out of nowhere, a source of water right next to me, and all of a sudden many more around me, in the buildings, in the sewers, on the street. I almost tried to push, to control it when I caught myself.

Living things. Plants, animals and… people.

The sources of water I felt were people, at least some of them anyway. Blue Nixie and I had run into this issue before. In a dire enough situation, our power would sense even the most restricted sources of water.

Not worth the ethics investigation and it almost certainly wouldn’t have worked anyway.

“Sorry, there’s nothing.”

“Did you even try?” He rolled his eyes. “Is there none in the sewer?”

“No, I just said that. I would have sensed it.”

I paused. I had sensed some. Not useful water but water.

“Wait, there is something down there. People probably. Three of them. One of them is moving around a lot - the other two are pretty much still.”

“Are they tied up, like with a rope or with chains?” He asked, starting to walk towards the nearest manhole.

“How would I know? Are ropes made of water?” I rolled my eyes. “But they’re very still, the other one is walking around them - maybe checking on them.” I said.

“Hostages.” El Fuego said as he broke out into a run.

I chased after him.

With a controlled burst of flames, he sent the manhole cover flying into the sky. He jumped straight into the hole, using a small explosion to control his speed at the bottom. 

Sighing, I grabbed at the ladder rungs on the wall and made my way down. 

The sewer wasn’t particularly deep in the ground, but without any water around I would have a hard time slowing down my fall. Even a ten foot drop could break a bone, and while I did heal faster than normal, I wasn't particularly interested in being out of commission for even a day. 

My foot slipped as I reached the last step. I wrapped my arms around the rung and caught myself before I hit the ground but my landing was still a little awkward.

El Fuego huffed out a laugh.

“Let’s just get moving,” I said, “They’re down this way.”

I reached up to my mask and turned the attached headlamp on before forging down the small tunnel. The sewer was small - only a few feet wide - and reeked without the water to trap some of the gasses. 

“That lamp is a little conspicuous. Maybe you should turn it off,” El Fuego whispered dramatically.

I rolled my eyes.

“But then we can’t see.”

“I’ll make a flame.”

“Can’t you smell?”

He scoffed.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“It smells like methane and hydrogen sulfide - which are flammable. You’d kill me and the hostages with your flame.”

“Well that’s just stupid. You know what I -"

"Shh." I cut him off, trying to make out a sound in the distance.

“Don’t you dare shush me kid - I’m not one of your little friends.”

“I hear something. It sounds like dripping.”

“I thought you said there was no water.”

“There isn’t - that’s why I’m trying to hear.”

We continued our slow crawl forward in silence, the distinct sound of dripping getting louder.

“What is it if it’s not water?” El Fuego hissed at me as we got closer.

“I don’t know. Not water. Some non-aqueous liquid.”

“I don’t know what that means - but don't all liquids have to have water? That’s why they’re liquids. So if it is a liquid - which it sounds like because it’s dripping - you should be able to sense and control it.”

“So when we have scientific conversations - do you just turn your brain off and stare at the ceiling?”

“Watch your mouth - just answer my question.”

“Oh sorry - it sounded so stupid I assumed it was rhetorical. Not all liquids have water. Which you would know if you ever listened to Blue Nixie talk.”

“Why would I do that?"

How my mother had ever dated this dude beat the fuck out of me. He was a total asshole and a misogynist, the complete opposite of how my mom had raised me.

Although those two things were almost certainly connected.

I’d grown up knowing my mom was in the legion and having superheroes like Astrolass, Trey, and Kid Comet babysit me. The Legion was basically a family, except for El Fuego who had been pushed to the periphery. Even Captain Clear, who was literally invisible, had a more visible presence than El Fuego.

It almost made you feel bad for him.

“I still think we should light a fire.”

Almost. 

We neared the area where the three people were and I could sense that the tunnel got bigger. I conceded and turned off my headlamp - using the water in the plants and molds on the walls to ‘see’ even in the pitch dark.

El Fuego grabbed the back of my suit - using me to guide his way. As we approached the last corner, I paused.

“What is it?” He hissed - at least reading the room enough to know he should be quiet.

“They moved.”

“The hostages? On their own accord, not forced?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Keep moving.”

I did as I was told, moving slowly around the corner. Before we entered the room he reached up and turned on my headlamp.

“What are you - ah!” He pushed me forward, pressing his foot against the back of my head forcing me to the ground. 

I tried to twist around and break out from under him but his hold held fast.

A rushing noise filled the room and I felt heat all around me, before he fell on top of me, shielding me with his body.

Someone screamed before I heard three loud thumps and felt the ground shake behind me.

“You alright?” El Fuego asked as he slid off and the explosion dissipated. 

“What the fuck!”

“Grow up. I saved your life.”

He helped me to my feet and I looked around the small cavern.

The walls were crumbling and bent out of place. Concrete chunks lay scattered around the small room. The dripping sound was louder, but there was no water in the cavern or in the pipes nearby. I could start to send some in the pipes a ways down, but that didn’t explain what was going on.

Now that I was standing, my headlamp lit up the entire room. There were three people collapsed on the ground around us.

“What happened?”

“It’s Titanio. We’ve fought them before.” 

The name did ring a bell in the back of my memory.  

“The liquid we’re hearing must be melted metal,” He continued. “When we turned that corner I could smell the copper. Legion regulations say we must make line of sight before engaging, and you said everything would explode if I lit a fire, so I had to turn your lamp on.”

At least he listened. I felt a little bad for insinuating he was stupid earlier, but he was being stupid earlier.

“Are they going to be okay?”

“They’re criminals.”

“Um. That’s not an answer.”

“Yeah, they’ll be fine. Probably no burns, minor brain damage at worst. I reviewed the logs from Thursday on the bridge and what you and Blue Nixie said about depriving Fever Storm of oxygen gave me an idea.”

“You could’ve killed me!”

“Nope! I burned the oxygen directly from their lungs. I was pretty surprised that it resulted in an explosion - but I guess you did warn me.”

“Oh my god they’re totally burned - internally at the very least.”

He laughed.

“Nah, like I said, we’ve fought them before. They’re pretty flame resistant. I’m not worried about them.”

I swallowed, ignoring the sinking feeling in my stomach.

“Okay… well i think I can sense some water in the pipes down this way, but I’m not sure why it isn’t flowing.”

“Like I said, they change the way metal works. You can see what they did to the rebar in the walls. They probably bent the pipes together,” He said, gesturing at the pipes to prove his point.

He did not say that earlier, but further argument was not going to help douse the street. 

“Alright, but that doesn’t help us now. We need to get water back to the street.”

He nodded.

“I have an idea, you can change the temperature of water, yeah? So the pipes probably aren’t completely destroyed, just bent shut. So what I’ll do is heat up the pipes until they’re almost melting, and you’ll shoot supercooled high pressure water through them to bend them back into an open position.”

I eyed him suspiciously. Supercooled was a big word for someone who didn’t know that not all liquids were water based. 

“That will just immediately cool the pipes though.”

“Oh. well lead me to where you can sense the water and we’ll think on the way.”

We walked back down the claustrophobic sewer tunnels, heading further and farther away from the battlefield. When I stopped and indicated that this was the spot, El Fuego paused and inspected the pipes.

“Copper like back there, I have an idea. Make it acidic. Like super acidic. Copper doesn’t react with non-oxidising acids, and acids are much worse thermal conductors than neutral water. We’ll do my original plan and make our way back to that cavern. I’m pretty sure there was a fire hydrant right around there above ground.”

His plan was smart.

Too smart.

Much too smart of a plan to have come from the total idiot I was talking to three minutes ago. 

I glared at him, but started working on getting the water to the way he wanted. I concentrated on pulling hydrogen ions to the surface and pushing the more basic parts of the water, the hydroxyl ions, to the center of the liquid phase. 

If I concentrated hard enough I could completely remove the hydroxyl anions and leave only hydronium. We’d done experiments in the lab before to prove it. Where those hydroxyl ions went? We had no clue. It definitely concerned Trey and my mom, who said something about conservation of matter. But so long as I could make the water acidic and for it to stay that way, that was all that mattered to me.

The temperature was more complicated. 

Higher pressure was easiest to create at higher temperature, they were intrinsically linked. In fact, I usually used the temperature of water to raise the pressure. At the molecular level, Temperature is essentially the speed of the molecules, while pressure is essentially the rate that the molecules hit the walls of a container. So, faster molecules meant more collisions, hence higher pressure = higher temperature. 

But maybe, if I slowed the water down while constraining it to the edges of the pipes, I could supercool it while increasing the rate of impacts with the walls. With the addition of the hydronium atoms, the freezing point would already be increased, I’d essentially just have to completely prevent the hydrogen bonds from forming.   

We started walking along the tunnel, slowly bringing the water through the pipes. There were a few leaks here and there but his plan overall worked well enough.

Which made me pissed.

Because it really was a smart plan.

What was his fucking game here?

I decided to just ignore it and forge ahead, no point arguing or getting him more fired up than he already was. 

We entered the cavern again, and he directed my attention up. 

“High enough pressure and the fire hydrant will just break open. Go for it,” He said, stepping back.

Not moving, I just looked at him.

“Go on, you can do it!”

I raised an eyebrow. Encouragement wasn’t his thing, but he’d already been acting weird since we’d gotten down here. Better not to worry about it.

Pulling my hands over my ears, I focused on the water in the pipes. It was already high pressure, but at least now, it was a short distance with the pipes mostly intact. Meaning, I didn’t have to worry about supercooling it.

I could absolutely send it in terms of temperature. 

The water rushed through the pipes, hitting the copper pipes and then the steel of the fire hydrant. I pushed harder, making each collision more energetic, making each water molecule faster. 

“Are you doing anything, kid?” El Fuego asked.

The anger that had been simmering for the past ten minutes flared back up. I wanted to lash out, to put him in danger like he’d done to me. To make him never speak again.

“Fuck you!” I yelled, losing focus on the water for just a second to glare at him.

My chest heaved as we stared at each other. What an asshole.

When I turned back to the pipe I’d been working on, I could feel the water flowing freely.

“Okay but are you doing it?”

“Yes, it’s done.” Aspiration filled my voice as I spoke.

“Great!” He reached his hand out in the direction of one of the sewer tunnels before shooting out another burst of flame. It launched a manhole cover into the sky like he’d done before. “I’ll deal with these guys, you go up there and put out those fires.”

Good fucking riddance.

It was awkward getting on to the ladder, but once I did I climbed to the surface and breathed a deep clean breath. 

“We’ve restored the water,” I said into comms, “I'm coming to help you now.” 

Finally, I got to do the part I cared about, helping people. Trey and Astrolass flew into the warehouse as my mother walked out.

“Alright, kiddo, let’s do this.”

I grinned. She led me through isolating and extinguishing the larger flames. 

“We’ve put out a lot of fire, I’m about to just drench the whole building.”

“Got that,” Kid Comet said.

I let the water gush into the building and saw a blur as Kid Comet came zooming by. Most super villains were super easy to get rid of once the full legion was assembled and Crimson Bomb and his crew were no different. 

Another way they were like other villains: we’d have to do an incredibly boring follow up on them.

As Blue Nixie and I put out the last remaining flames, the firefighters started making their way into the scene. 

“Anything major to report? We need to do structural analysis and some information could be really helpful,” A man wearing a badge with the words ‘Fire Marshal’ on it asked us.

“Kenneth, it’s good to see you!” My mom started, “there’s very severe fire damage on the inside. I’m no engineer, but I suspect all of the major support beams on the inside are damaged in one way or another.”

“Good to know. Anything else?”

“Not that I can think of - Nix?”

I resisted the urge to sigh. Normally, I would just shake my head and stay quiet. It was what had really started the rumour about Blue Nixie being my mom - I hid behind her like a little kid at times. 

However, since El Fuego and I had not been gentle while restoring the water, and he’d chosen to stay behind and arrest the villains, I had to speak for once.

“Yeah - the whole street is fuck-” Blue Nixie shot me a glare, “um - in a bad position. Crimson Bomb was accompanied by Titanio - a group of metal controlling villains. They’re still in the sewer, by the way mom. I think El Fuego went to arrest them. They’d bent all of the pipes underground to hold back the water. We were only able to restore flow to a small area in order to put out the fires. And that caused a fair bit of damage in the process. The water we managed to get through is very acidic as a result.”

We turned to look at the fire hydrant El Fuego and I had opened, still spurting water everywhere.

“So… um.” I said, uselessly.

“So, the whole street is fucked,” Kenneth said, clapping me on the shoulder and walking back to his other fire men.

Blue Nixie turned to me as he left.

“Kiddo - we gotta practice your media skills. Cursing in front of a first responder? And you called me mom.”

Not Blue Nixie - not ma - mom.

The blood drained from my face.

“Shit.”

She chuckled, letting me know I wasn’t in trouble, but that didn’t fix the mistake I'd made. 

Fortunately, Kenneth was pretty chill. He might have even known before now. It'd probably be fine.

Probably.

The legion helicopter arrived shortly after we finished speaking to the fire marshal. Since fewer than half of us could fly or run fast, we needed a better transportation option than being individually bridal carried by Kid Comet.

Since the scenes were usually crowded with police, journalists, witnesses, and sometimes fans - we couldn’t walk away or even drive usually - so it had to be air travel.

“I hope you weren’t planning on testing those kids there,” Astrolass said, landing next to me on the helipad as I got out of the helicopter at legion headquarters. 

She opened the door to the building and gestured for me to follow her inside.

“I’m not that dumb. If Fever Storm could find that place, I knew other villains could,” I said, “I just don’t know why they would, though. It’s not like these guys are particularly interesting… except… they were all involved in November.”

She looked at me.

“You’re kidding?”

I shook my head.

“You’re just telling us now?”

“We all moved past it quickly in November! I just wanted my friend back. So, it wasn’t at the top of my mind on Saturday.”

“You all moved past a quarter of the Junior class at your high school being possessed by robots quickly?”

“Yeah. And now that you say that -  maybe abnormally quickly. You don’t think…” I trailed off, not exactly sure what I was worried about but knowing it could be something very serious.

Fortunately, Astrolass understood.

“I’ll see what I can find out. Do you have any idea how you’re going to assess them? I really am sorry for springing that on you last second, but we need proof that you’re ready to move up to a full Legion member when you turn 18. Maybe sooner, depending on what the legislators and the board say.” 

Astrolass knew me pretty well. There was no way in hell she thought I had anything planned out. But I also knew her pretty well, she babysat me on more than one occasion. If she’d wanted something specific, she would’ve given me specific directions.

“Uh… I almost have a plan. I’m mainly stuck on how I should contact them.”

“You could text them?”

“Trey won't be happy with me using an unencrypted form of communication.”

“Shit, you’re right about that. And he’s right to be unhappy.”

“I know that this is a decision that’s bigger than me,” I said, getting an idea, “but could I just tell them who I am? Yes, that would reveal Blue Nixie’s identity too, but they’re almost definitely going to figure it out.”

She rubbed her chin.

“These guys are your friends?” I nodded. “How did you feel on Saturday morning when we caught them? I’m trying to gauge what your friendship is like..”

“Well, they’ve kind of been dicks lately, so I was somewhat relieved that they had a reason, but also pissed they didn’t tell me and more pissed that they’d gotten themselves into a stupid situation like that in the first place.” 

“Okay, and if they were to show up this week and realise you are Nix, how might they feel?”

“If that happened, they'd probably feel pretty betrayed. Or well, Jeremy would. Jake, Rich, and Christine would think it’s cool.”  

“We obviously have to tell them eventually, but we should wait. Your mom and I have been discussing this. There’s already a protocol for a semi-public identity in place, Kid Comet is in that situation. Which I’m sure you know, as he and Ember are related.

“In the meantime, I’d suggest two things. We’ll give one of them a legion phone. You seem pretty close to Jeremy - is that Polyphase? We could give it to him, or you could choose someone else. Two: You give it to him as you. Not as Nix, as Michael. Explain to him your mother’s internship program. Hell, even name drop Madeline if you think it’ll help.”

“Actually, can she know? Like can I tell her who they are?”

“Sure, tell all the interns. Our plans for the future mean that they’ll find out soon anyway. Recruit them to help you if you need.”

I smiled.

“Will do. Thanks.”

“Of course. Come talk to us, any of us, if you need extra advice. Now let’s have Trey get that set up.”

“Actually, Astrolass,” Kid Comet caught up to us in the hallway, “Nix needs to have a conversation with all of us.”

Blue Nixie trailed behind him, talking to two people dressed in business suits. The Legion lawyers, maybe?

“Oh? Did I do something wrong?’

“Maybe, where were you for half of that fight?” Kid Comet asked.

“At school?”

“No, I know that. The other half.”

“Oh - the sewer.”

“Alone? Why’d you go down there? How’d you subdue Titanio?” Kid Comet’s voice was tight - like he was angry but not at me.

“I didn’t, really. El Fuego did? He’s the reason I was down there, based on what I said about the water he thought there might be hostages.”

“How convenient, you picked the one member of the Legion not here to defend himself,” One of the men walking with my mom said. 

“Well he’s not here because he stayed behind to arrest them. I’m sure he’ll tell you the same thing when he gets here.”

“We can listen to the recording from Nix’s suit while we wait. What’s the concern with all this anyway? Nix has always followed protocol.” Blue Nixie stepped into my defense.

“Yes, let’s do that. You see, the president is concerned with the potential for unauthorized usage of superpowers from our existing superheroes. We just got word that the members of Titanio were severely burned internally. With the recent concern over Nix’s parentage, we want to make sure he wasn’t the one to do it.”

“The president?” I asked.

“Of the United States.” He replied.

Definitely not lawyers. Congressman maybe - or presidential aides. The lawyers - rude or not - were on our side. Policy makers never were.

“Speaking of the parentage concern,” The other man said, “Do we have those paternity testing results back yet?”

Trey popped into the hallway.

“Not just yet. Here, how about I take Nix and Astrolass to get set up on their mission and you guys watch the recording.”

“Good plan, Astrolad,” Blue Nixie said. 

Holding back a snort, I followed Trey and Astrolass to the communication technology lab. 

It was easy to forget that Trey had a superhero name. Just like it was easy to forget Astrolass - or any of the Legion members - had a civilian name. 

Astrolass was Astrid. At least that was the name released to the public. 

If she was undercover as a civilian she’d go by Victoria or Vicky, while Trey would be Clark. 

Kid Comet was actually Jason Goranski, and El Fuego was actually Carlos Gonzalez. Captain Clear just went by Captain these days, since it was easier to just not have a civilian identity.

I wondered if my mom ever thought about it - about not having a secret identity. I must have gotten in the way of that if she had, or maybe my step-mom had.

Trey held the lab door open for me and Astrolass. As soon as the lab door closed behind us I started to speak.

“I didn’t-”

“We know. You obviously don’t have fire powers, no worries, kid.”

“Right, and what you said about the paternity test?”

“A lie. It’s been done for weeks. I didn’t want to share if you didn’t want to. You said you’d follow up when you were ready. Since you haven’t yet, I assumed you weren’t. Am I correct?”

I thought for a second.

Captain Clear was a nice guy. He’d go out of his way to help people, even though people hardly ever could tell it was him. 

However, El Fuego was much more likely to be my father, and he’d always been an enigma to me. Why was he even a superhero? He seemed to hate people, all people, and today hadn’t provided evidence against that conclusion.

If he was my father, I didn’t want to know.

“Yeah, I’m not ready.”

“That’s what I thought. Let’s get a Legion phone set up for you to take to your friends.”

I appreciated how he was always willing to drop it. I’d probably need to know eventually, but I figured he would just tell me then.

“So who are you giving this to?”

“Um, either Jer- I mean Polyphase or Ember.”

Trey laughed, and turned back to his computer.

“Sorry, it’s just weird calling them different names.”

“Especially Polyphase, I’m sure. We met him once, right? He was leaving your house as we showed up.”

That was almost six years ago, now. But that seemed to be Trey’s super power: a powerful if erratic memory.

“Yeah. He’d stayed the night.”

“Is that the one that you and Blue Nixie were talking about a few weeks ago?” Astrolass asked with a knowing smile.

“Oh god. Yes,” I said, a blush growing hot across my face.

“Uh oh,” Trey said, “what’s this now?”

“Well, it sounds like Nix had a bit of a crush. He was asking Blue Nixie about the rules for dating non superheroes.”

I looked at the ground. It wasn’t like I minded Trey knowing - the opposite really. He could provide valuable advice. Just having him find out in front of me was mortifying.

“Well, I’m sure you found out that probationary members have fewer privileges and more restrictions, for safety reasons. So if this boy wasn’t a superhero, you couldn’t . But, they can have romantic relationships with other heroes…”

“Yeah, I guess.” I said.

“Are you thinking of asking him out?” Astrolass asked.

“Probably not - not anytime soon anyway.”

She frowned.

“Why not? He seems nice.”

“Well a couple reasons. Number one: You’ve put me in like a supervisory position over him now, which your little corporate training tells me is a power imbalance and could lead to a lawsuit. Number two: He’s been acting weird lately and I’m not convinced it’s just him hiding being a superhero from me. Number three: he doesn’t know my identity and officially, I don’t know his. Number four: He’s into Invisigirl. ”

“That first one is my bad, and I guess the third one is too. But, you will only be supervising him for five or so weeks - and then we have something special planned. And, our plan will resolve the identity issue too.”

The testing was only supposed to last two weeks…

“I don’t know if I like the sound of that.”

“I think you will. Let’s wait for the others to finish up with our visitors then the group of us can discuss it. As for the second point, if you hand him the phone and let him know you’re in on it, you’ll be able to tell how much of him acting differently is due to his heroics or if it's something more personal.”

“Thanks.” 

“Alright, well I have finished setting up their phone. It has both Polyphase and Ember’s biometrics in here so either can unlock it - regardless of who you give it to. It looks like the rest of the legion is waiting in the hall, let’s go check what they want.”

We left the lab and joined the group waiting in the hall. El Fuego had returned and the rest of the Legion and the men were standing with him.

“I suppose the recording proved you followed protocol - but there's something at the beginning of the fight that concerns us more. When Nix is searching for water, he implies that he can sense Titanio in the sewer?” The man said it like a question, despite not actually asking one.

“Um…” I looked to my mom who nodded twice.

Her signal for me to tell the truth but not the whole truth.

“Well, people - and plants and animals - are made of a lot of water. So I can sense when they’re around if I really concentrate.”

“So you can sense Captain Clear?” the other man asked.

The president - regardless of who was in office - was always worried about Captain Clear. It’d be easy for him to assassinate someone and no one would ever figure it out. They were desperate to figure out some way to track him.

“No - he isn’t made of water.” I lied.

“That is fascinating to hear. But we have a more pressing matter. Nix, if you can sense people, can you control them too?”

“I’ve never tried.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think that way. That seems a bit immoral.”

“Nix,” My mother hissed at me.

“No, it’s alright, Blue Nixie. Your son is quite right, it could be immoral. The committee has had many discussions about how dangerous someone with that power could be.”

Committee probably referred to the special congressional committee for the regulation of superpowers and superpowered individuals. 

Which meant that these guys were congressmen.

“That’s why I’ve never tried.”

“That seems reasonable, but I want you to try now.”

My eyes widened. 

Truth be told, I had tried. Never had much success with it. Last time I’d gotten close trying on some vines. I’d been able to make them move across the room, but I definitely wasn’t going to repeat that now.

“But…”

“I do think this is a bad idea,” the other congressman said.

“It’s alright, kid. Try it on me.”

“I won't allow it,” Astrolass said.

“Let the kid try, Astrid.”

The air in the room shifted. I was clearly not the only one who didn’t like how he called her Astrid.

But with legislators, it was usually best to do what they want and get them out of the way as soon as possible.

“Go for it then kiddo,” Astrolass said.

No small part of me wanted to launch him against the wall, but even if I could do that, it would end badly. It probably wouldn't work anyway, and if it did, at the very least I would be sent to do a bunch of covert political missions like Kid Comet and Captain Clear were. 

At the worst I’d be arrested and imprisoned, and still sent to do that stuff.

No chance in hell I’d allow myself to be a political pawn for a machine I had no hope of fighting. 

I brought two fingers to my temple and held out my other hand. 

Ms. Phoenix, the (former) most prominent telekinetic in the world, used to assume this position to use her powers. The one time she didn’t, she killed everyone in the room including herself. I was fortunately enough to not need to use it - but it did make it look like I was doing something.

Closing my eyes, I reached out with my power, sensing the water in the room.

Here at Legion headquarters, we were surrounded by water. In the pipes, in the coolers, in the river surrounding the island the base was built on. Even if I truly had wanted to push this guy I wouldn’t be able to. There was just too much noise from the other sources of water.

But I would be able to make him regret asking.

“I think I sense something,” I said, focusing on the pipe above his head. 

“Give it everything you’ve got, kid.”

I suppressed a grin and let my power lash out, setting off the sprinkler above his head and dousing him and Blue Nixie in freezing cold water.

“Oh shit, sorry.”

Kid Comet rushed out of the room and came back with two towels.

“You’ve done nothing wrong, Nix. He told you to do it,” the dry congressman said.

“Yes, I suppose this is my fault. Well that is a relief. It’s such a dangerous power, we’d hate for one person to have that much control over another. Especially without it registered with us. With that resolved, we best be on our way.”

“I will show you the way out,” Captain Clear said, earning a barking laugh from the two congressmen.

As they walked away, Trey pulled out a tablet, scanned us and then held up three fingers. 

Three recording devices were planted on us during the course of that conversation.

I sighed.

“Alright, time for mission decontam and then we can meet in the debriefing room. We have much to discuss.”

Mission decontamination amounted to bathing and changing into civilian clothes. I walked towards my room, looking forward to a hot shower and dreading the meeting that would come after.

My room in legion headquarters was really just a bathroom, a bed, some spare clothes and my seven regular suits, plus three copies of each of my four special operations suits. It was utilitarian, but hit every mark I needed it to so I couldn’t complain. 

At the foot of my bed was my backpack - probably my step mother’s doing. I pulled my clothes from school out and dropped my suit in the hamper before taking a quick shower. 

Normally we didn’t do a decontamination following a mission unless the villain we fought warranted it. Toxins, explosive compounds and occasionally really nasty dirt would be the official reasons we’d do it, but it was almost always because we’d gotten bugged.

Usually the bugs were planted by the federal government so it wasn’t too hard to catch. Though sometimes it would be a villain or even a rogue hero we’d teamed up with. Sometimes even a foreign government. 

Either way, we had enough interference makers scattered throughout the compound that even if they weren’t immediately caught and destroyed they wouldn’t pick anything up. 

Feeling relaxed after the shower, I made my way to the debriefing room through the back hallways. If my step-mom had gotten my stuff here - that probably meant school was dismissed and the other interns would be here soon. It was only a matter of time before they found out the truth too - but I wasn't going to be the one to break protocol and reveal it to them.

“Great,” Astrolass said as we all sat down. “We’ve got two main things to talk about. One of which, we will have to kick Nix out for - sorry buddy.”

I shrugged. I’d gotten used to it at this point, probably something to do with November.

“First up. We want to start a new subteam. Blue Nixie, Trey and I have already discussed this, but we want your input too. You’ve all been working with our interns for the past two years, plus, some number of our friends from the bridge are going to want to join us too. 

“This poses an issue. We’ve got a large number of potential heroes and no permanent openings now that Nix is a member. In about ten years, we’ll have several but these kids are going to want to advance before then. Normally, in a training program like this, we’d get the heroes set up with their local team, or create one if there isn’t one close enough to them. However, these kids are all a little too local for that to work without them stepping on our toes. Plus, the growing government distrust of superheroes, which we all saw this afternoon, puts them in a tricky position.

“Enter: the Legion of teenagers. We’re workshopping the name - I’ll take suggestions. But this group will serve to hold the young heroes while we wait for some of us to retire or for some of them to move on - either from being super heroes or physically move to different parts of the world to chase their civilian dreams. 

“This can serve as a sort of JV team for the Legion, we’ll pull a hero up if we really need their powers but otherwise they stay out of big league Legion business. To make it worth their while, we can train them to improve their powers and throw them a few easy missions here and there - say twice a month. We’ll appoint Nix in charge of them for a few missions before promoting you to a full legion member. Then, whoever you say is best, will get to be their team leader. This will benefit you in particular Nix, because then they can become probationary team members sooner - albeit not members of the Legion - and will have clearance to know your identity sooner.”

I sat back, letting the news Astrolass just shared wash over me. It would solve a lot of my tensions from the past few days, letting me keep my friends and my identity safe. 

It was perfect.

Which wasn’t how things usually work out for us.

“I like this plan.”

“Yeah I bet you do,” Kid Comet said, “then you get to date that guy you like.”

“He has a thing for Invisigirl.”

“It didn’t seem like that on Saturday,” Astrolass said.

“We should pull in Madeline - have her read his emotions,” Kid Comet joked.

“Maybe once we have their team set up,” Astrolass said, the twinkle in her eyes letting me know it was all in good fun, “but for now we’ve got other issues to attend to. Nix, go check in with the other interns, tell them what we just talked about - pretend Nix told you - act like it's gossip. Then go handle the Legion of Triumph. We have another thing to turn our attention to.”

I smiled and left the room, taking the box with the Legion phone with me. 

The room the interns worked in was on the fifteenth floor, several stories below the legion meeting rooms, labs, and training centers.

“You’re late, Michael!” Madeline said as I came in.

“Sure, but I was talking to Nix. I’m not gonna get in trouble for that.”

“You’re lying.”

“Stop reading my emotions, you know the Legion hates that. But, fine. I was a part of a conversation between Nix and Blue Nixie.”

“True.” Madeline waved her hand dismissively.

“They say anything interesting?” Alana asked.

“Yeah a few things.”

“False,” Jared said, mocking Madeline.

“No, for real, they did. They have a plan for us to join the Legion!”

“No fucking way,” Zoe said, giving a rare smile.

“Well, kind of.”

“I knew it was too good to be true.” Jared crossed his arms and sat back in his chair.

“Since no one is planning on retiring from the Legion for a few more years, they’re creating a second team. To handle lower stakes missions. The Legion of Triumph is going to be recruited into it too. They’re thinking Nix will supervise until he becomes a full Legion member.”

“So I’m finally going to meet him!” Madeline gasped.

She’d been kept away from Nix so far, so that she couldn’t draw the connection between me and him. My mom was good at controlling her emotions and could interact with Madeline as both Blue Nixie and a civilian. 

I was not so good at it.

“More than that, you’re going to learn his identity.”

“Oh my gosh!”

“Pause,” Jared said, “You said ‘you’re going to,’ not ‘we’re going to.’ Do you already know?”

“Um.”

“He does!” Madeline yelled.

“Okay, maybe I do. But I can’t tell you guys. You’ll find out some time this -”

“He is Nix,” Alana said, “I thought we knew this already.”

Jared and Madeline laughed like it was the funniest thing they’d heard all week. 

“Ignoring that, you’ll find out officially some time this week. What I can tell you is the identities of the Legion of Triumph.”

“Is it anyone we would know? We don’t go to Middleborough,” Alana said, seeming happy enough to play along for now.

“Yes, actually. They’re Madeline and I’s friends.”

“No fucking way, is that where Jake was on Thursday?”

“Yes, but he’s probably still cheating on you.”

“Oh definitely.”

We ran through who was who, listing out my friends exact superhero identities before eventually, Zoe asked:

“Why do you have permission to tell us this?”

“I need to get them a phone. So that Nix can contact them. I don’t know if they’ll believe me so I figured there was a non-zero chance they’d ask Madeline to double check. If she had to know, the rest of you could too.”

“So when are you going to give it to them?”

“Right now, actually. I’m going to the mall. Jer’s SnapMap shows him there.”

“So you’re just skipping out on your duties as an intern?” 

My duties as an intern were feeding some of Blue Nixie’s fish, and posting infographics and advertisements to Nix and Blue Nixie’s official social media accounts.

Which is to say, not very much.

“Yep! Blue Nixie said I could. You can come with me if you want?”

“No, we have training,” Zoe said.

“Boring! You’d rather do training than go to the mall, Madeline?”

“Yes! You just said we’re going to superheroes soon. I barely have any fight training, I need to practice more.”

“Fair enough. I guess I will see you later.”

My car was waiting for me in the garage, in my normal parking spot. My step-mom was the real super-hero, handling grabbing my stuff from the school without being prompted.

I turned on the engine and then pulled out my phone to text Jer.

Jer-Bear

Hey

Are you at the mall rn?

He took a second to respond with a simple:

Jer-Bear

yeah

The drive to the mall was fortunately boring. I could just see the warehouse from the highway, still crawling with police and firefighters.

Hopefully, with my friends no longer practicing there, any extra villains that showed up wouldn’t be able to find them.

Jer let me know that he and Rich were at Sbarro's, so I parked on that side of the mall and made my way in. As I parked my car, my legs started to shake a little. It’d been an intense fight, but not the kind that was usually tiring.

Was I nervous?

For what?

It was Jeremy and Rich, two people I actually liked a fair bit. And they both liked me, at least a little.

Despite knowing it was true deep down, a voice in my head couldn’t help but think: that's why they told you about being superheroes, because they like you.

By the time I could see the two of them sitting in the food court, I felt nauseous. 

I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of it.

Supervillain who could harness explosions? No sweat. My best friend of twelve years? The scariest thing I’d faced in weeks.

“Hey, Michael. How are you?” Rich asked, their previous conversation dying as I walked up.

“Fine, I guess. And y’all?”

Jer made a face, staring at the slice of pizza in front of him.

“Why’d you leave during physics?” he asked, ignoring my question.

“I felt like it,” I said.

“Did you do the calc homework yet?”

“No?” 

Rich looked at Jeremy and laughed.

“Interesting. If you weren’t doing homework, what were you doing?”

I looked at him. He had this smirk on his face that just screamed “I know what you were doing.”

There was no way he actually knew, but I was curious and whatever he said would give me an out.

“Well, what do you think?” I asked sarcastically.

His smirk grew into a shit-eating grin.

“Dustin Kropp left my English class at around the same time you left. His car stayed, but yours left. I don’t want to assume, but based on how you two act at lunch…”

I shook my head.

“You are worse than Chloe, Goranski. That being said, I will neither confirm nor deny that Dustin and I were together,” I said.

Jeremy made a face.

“Gross. I didn’t need to know that.”

What an asshole. He told me everything about his (largely nonexistent) sex life, but the second I imply I have one, he gets upset. Dick move.

“Whatever, what are you doing here? Don’t you have a piano song to record?” Rich broke the awkward silence. 

“Oh yeah, I guess I can do that when I get home. I was just looking for Jer. I got out of work a little early and wanted to see if he was free. I have something I need to talk to him about.”

I smiled sheepishly.

“Well he’s not, we’re busy,” Rich snapped. 

“Oh, okay then. I can talk with you here,” I said, reaching into my bag to pull out the box Trey had given me, with the phone.

“Take a hint - Michael,” Jer cut in.

“Alright, well I leave. But my boss wanted me to give this to you. He mentioned you specifically, which is weird because I don’t know how you would know each other.” I slid the box across the table to him. “He said you’d know what to do with it.”

He opened the box as I stood up.

“A phone?”

“Sorry, I'm too busy ‘taking a hint’ to stop and explain.”

“Don’t be a dick, Michael. Obviously this is different.”

“Is it?” I yelled back, tired of his bullshit from the past several days.

“Just let him go,” Rich said, “This is probably his weird idea of a joke.”

My eyes welled with tears. 

At least I’d delivered the phone.

Chapter Text

When I finally got home, I recorded the accompaniment right away for Chloe. By that point I wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep, but I also had a surge of pettiness that had been growing all weekend.

So, I sent my recording, but I also spent two seconds looking for a version online and dropped it in the group chat as well.  

It wouldn’t exactly teach them not to take me for granted, but it felt good to do.

In school the following morning, Jeremy didn’t even pause to give me an awkward “hello” before walking past me. We usually talked or at the very least greeted each other before class, but he just turned his back towards me, making his way toward Christine. It sent a sharp pang of pain through my body. I hid my hurt and began heading to my homeroom class.

I’d thought Jeremy was being an asshole about the whole superhero shit, but maybe not. Maybe he was genuinely mad at me. We still hadn’t talked about anything that happened since Thursday, and incidents were starting to pile up now.

But maybe he still didn’t realize I knew. The phone had legion training materials on it, but they might not have gone through it yet.

Shaking away the thought, I got ready for the day ahead. I could tell already, it was going to be a long one.

At lunch, the entire table grew quiet as I approached. Madeline was leaning against Jake and her face was bright red from laughing. Dustin looked away when I sat down.

“What’s up?” I asked.

Madeline stopped giggling for a second and turned to me.

“Well Rich mentioned what you and Dustin were doing yesterday, and Dustin confirmed it. I didn’t think you were zat kind of guy, Michael,” she said, breaking back out into giggles.

With her power, she could’ve checked to see if he was lying. She either hadn’t bothered to read him or was playing along in some kind of revenge plot for me leaving early yesterday.

“What, you didn’t think I was gay?” I snorted before continuing. “I absolutely am, don’t get me wrong. But I wouldn’t sleep with Dustin if my life depended on it.”

There was a scoff from next to me as Dustin registered my statement.

“What about somebody else’s life, emo? What if Jeremy’s life depended on it? Would you then?”

It was bizarre for him to press the issue, but that really just solidified my position in my mind.

“Jeremy can handle that himself. No fucking way am I sleeping with you. Like ever, dude,” I responded.

There were very few things I wouldn’t do for Jeremy, but sleeping with Dustin was one of them. I would literally crawl through hell for Jer, but I would get close to Dustin's dick for no one.

“That’s harsh.” Dustin wiped fake tears from his eyes.

The conversation at the table gradually picked up, but I mostly stayed out of it. The air was just too heavy after what had happened at the mall yesterday. And I clearly wasn’t the only one who felt it.

Even though he was sitting next to me, Jeremy didn’t speak to me the entire lunch. 

Sure, I wasn't exactly giving him opportunities to be chatty, but he owed me an apology. Usually, the person being apologized to didn’t have to go out of their way to accept the apology.

His behavior was driving me crazy. I wanted to talk to him, to explain what the legion asked me to explain, but with the way our conversations had been going lately, I didn’t feel like I could.

It was starting to pose a serious issue, not just for my job but for their safety. The longer I waited to start their assessment, the closer they got to going back out without legion assistance and getting themselves killed.

After the final bell, I took a moment in the bathroom. The student parking lot would be crazy for a while, plus I hadn’t had a moment to just think for a while. 

Jer and I had been fine yesterday afternoon during physics, it was why I felt at all comfortable suggesting him to be the point of contact to Trey. but somehow, between me leaving class and showing up at the mall, everything had gone wrong again. 

Was it Rich’s theory about me sleeping with Dustin?

Did the idea of me sleeping with Dustin make Jeremy jealous?

I held back a smile. It was a likely candidate, being the only major thing I could think of that happened on Monday evening. 

For a moment, my heart soared: Jeremy might be jealous.

And then reality came back to me and I remembered their hideout had been blown up by multiple supervillains.

It would explain why both Jeremy and Rich were in a bad mood and why they were at the mall and not out as superheroes. 

So maybe I just needed to approach Jer again, away from Rich and with further separating in time from the incident at the warehouse.

Before I could come up with a plan, two other people entered the bathroom.

“Look, Rich. I’ve got warmups in a half hour, there’s a game tonight if you haven't forgotten. I don’t have time to hear some conspiracy theory bull shit,” Jake said.

“It’s not a conspiracy. Micheal gave Jeremy the phone in front of me. He didn’t say anything - we’d kinda pissed him off - but the phone was full of stuff from the Legion. You saw it! We need to just wait. If they gave us a phone, they have the number for it. We can probably expect a text or something. We should listen to the Legion, not break their trust before they’ve given it to us!” Rich replied.

Jake crossed his arms.

“If people are getting hurt, it’s our responsibility to help. I’m not just going to sit by while the Legion of Victory strings us along.”

“That’s not what’s happening! They’ll contact us soon. Just wait a little while longer. If Michael trusts them, they aren’t messing with us. Don’t be stupid!” Rich’s voice was high and desperate. His lisp, which he worked hard to hide, was slipping through on every word. 

“Of course. Because Michael trusts them, we all have to. Do you think Michael understands this situation? Maybe he’s messing with us! Do you think he knows-”

“Knows what?” I interrupted, stepping out of my stall to wash my hands. 

Neither of them said a word as I walked to the sink. After drying off my hands, I looked at them expectantly. They stayed quiet, eyes wide in shock.

“See you later, I guess,” I said as I walked out.

Once I made it down the hall, I broke down laughing. The look on their faces was not something I was going to forget easily. Plus, they’d given me the perfect solution to my problem.

All I had to do was text.

Rich had confirmed that they had gone through the materials on the phone. While I'd love to sit down and explain what was happening to them, they were being little shits about it.

Besides, the phone explained enough.

I pulled out my Legion phone and sent a quick text.

    Legion of Triumph (stupid name)

meet me at Spatny Pond at 9:30 PM in uniform.

All of us?

Rolling my eyes, I simply responded “yes” before getting started on the next parts of my plan.  

There was plenty of time before I had to meet them, so I could secure some Legion tech to make monitoring the session go a little bit better.

Headquarters was bustling as I walked through the lobby, all sorts of people coming and going. When I was here only as Nix, it was easy to forget that the Legion did a lot besides just saving the world.

There were preparations in progress for HeroCon, a conference for superpowered individuals and policy makers from across the globe to come together and discuss pressing issues. It had turned into a big publicity thing in the past few years, but there were still a few symposia and summits that happened during that week that were hugely impactful every year.

HeroCon was still five months away, at the start of June, but there was a ton of stuff that had to be prepared ahead of time. So, all sorts of event planners and marketing leads were walking around, meeting with different heroes.

Astrolass walked past me with a team deep in discussion about which room to put a particular symposium in, giving me a subtle smile as she passed.

Beyond the big event, the government had outsourced most superpower management to the Legion. There were offices dedicated to new power registration and identity management. If someone with powers wanted to become a hero, Trey and Astrolass had set up a system to help them join a team.

Of course, for all the people without super powers who wanted to be heroes, there were a bunch of charities the legion ran that would let them volunteer to make a difference too. In particular, the Save The World Foundation had been bought by Astrolass about a year before I was born and had become the leading scientific founding organization for super power related research. Astrolass’s grants were what let my mom go back and get her PhD.

I smiled at the organized chaos as I got to the back elevator and scanned my ID card. Due to the number of restricted secrets around the headquarters, it was a necessity to have multiple sets of elevators, some with restricted access. It wouldn’t make sense for any charity worker to be able to come up to the Legion floors.

Getting off on Blue Nixie’s floor, I quickly made my way to her aquariums. She was a Marine Biologist by training, with her PhD research focused on anomalous marine life. As a result, some of her research at the Legion focused on those same creatures, and now we had dozens of tanks full of them.

Shellfish, fish, octopi, aquatic mammals, plants and even a shark, all with the fishy equivalent of super powers. 

And it was my job to feed them.

Mainly just on days like today where she had some mission or work responsibility that kept her too busy to come in.

It wasn’t bad at all really. They could all talk and the smartest ones could hold a conversation. Which we all liked, even if no one else could hear them. They were chatty and loved to gossip.

“Psst - Nix,” a lobster whispered to me as I was feeding brine shrimp to some carnivorous plants, “you’ll never guess who was in here yesterday.”

“Who?”

“Little boy Clinty,” a crab in an adjacent tank answered.

“I have no clue who that is.”

“Ignore him. He’s been acting weird all day. I think he’s on meds for gill rot. It was Todd Clinton, president Clinton’s son,” the lobster said.

The crabs had a computer outside of their tank they could control with their powers. The fact that they recognized Todd Clinton meant they were spending too much time on twitter. I didn’t even know what he looked like.

Though I had a guess based on the context…

“Was he wearing a grey suit?”

“Yes! And he was soaking wet. Sounds like Blue Nixie had already given him a talking to.”

Or I had.

At least that answered who he was.

Todd Clinton was not only President Chelsea Clinton’s oldest son but also a senator for New York state.

I laughed and walked over to the invisible Krill and poured some of their food in, smiling at the small chorus of “thanks you” coming from seemingly empty water.

“Oh boy, did he say what he… hang on. He was wet? Was this after Blue Nixie fed you guys yesterday? Was he with someone?”

If he was soaking wet this would have been after we’d interacted with him - and after Captain Clear said he would escort the guy out.

“This was a short while before we were fed, no one was in here with him,” A jellyfish said.

“Thanks, Jillie. That’s not good news. Did he talk to you guys or just look around?”

“He mainly poked around some of the kids’ tanks, just muttering to himself, occasionally yelling at someone who wasn’t there,” the lobster said.

The kids were what the animals called the fish that didn’t talk much. The kids’ memories weren’t as good and they couldn’t really hold a conversation for more than two minutes. It was a little bit silly, but occasionally it was a helpful differentiation. 

“Was he with Captain Clear?”

“It’s possible, but the Captain wasn’t talking back if he was here.”

“Did y’all speak to Blue Nixie about this?”

“I wasn’t awake when she came in. Woke up with food around me later.”

“Was anyone else awake?”

A round of “No”s came from the tanks. 

“Not a single one of you was awake? None of the kids either?”

“Nope. Not that we could tell.” 

And Blue Nixie didn’t think that was weird?

“Ah shit. I’ve gotta go talk to Astrolass or Trey.”

I did a quick head count of the kids to make sure they were all there before rushing through feeding the rest of the fish as fast as I could without losing any fingers. As soon as I finished, I ran up to Trey's lab. Swiping my card to unlock the door, I froze as I saw several people in business suits in there with Trey - who was in full costume as Astrolad.

“Hey, Michael. What are you doing up here? Everyone, this is Michael, one of the interns from Blue Nixie’s program.”

“Um… Nix said he had something urgent for you.”

“Okay… I am busy here, but I’m sure our shareholders would love to hear from Nix. They want to see some of our new tech demonstrated. Why don’t you send him up and then we can talk.”

New tech was rarely demonstrated for the first time in front of shareholders.  They must be pissed at something else and Trey was trying to distract them. Hopefully, it would just end with a few minutes of discomfort.

“Why didn’t Nix just come up himself? He’s only probationary, there’s nothing he’s doing that is so urgent he can’t drop it and come tell you himself.”

Trey raised his eyebrow at the man speaking.

“Michael, just go get Nix. Now, please.”

“Yes sir.”

“And tell him to change into his demonstration suit - We have something special for him. Blue Nixie’s already signed off - if he’s worried.”

The demonstration suit was a thinner version of my regular suit, designed for wearing in a climate controlled environment like a lab. It let me easily put on other equipment over top and wasn’t as hard to get on or off.

I wasn’t sure if he told me to change to buy time or if he had something really special planned, but I didn’t have the time to waste to ponder.

My room was three floors above Trey’s lab. I had to move quickly to avoid wasting the shareholder’s time.

It wasn’t that I wanted to jump through hoops for these capitalist asshats, but if they weren’t at least somewhat pleased they would shut the whole Legion down.

And the Legion was so much bigger than just the seven heroes on the team.

After changing into my suit, I took extra care to secure my mask. It normally wouldn’t be a big deal if I flashed part of my face, but after I’d barged in there without checking, they’d all seen my face. It would not be a leap for any of them to connect Nix to Michael, the unauthorized intern who had entered the secured lab four minutes prior.

Knocking this time, I entered the lab. The business folks were still in there, but they smiled as I came in. Nothing like the sullen expressions they’d greeted me with a few minutes ago as Michael.

“There you are, Nix! It’s good to see you. You had a wicked save last Thursday.” 

I held back a groan. They wanted me to be more present in Legion marketing, which meant that every time I interacted with them, they just hyped me up. 

It was actually extremely irritating. Mostly because I knew they didn’t mean it. 

“Ah… Thank you. It was all Blue Nixie, really.”

The corporate small talk went on for a few minutes - them complimenting me on different choices I’d made in recent fights as if I wasn’t under explicit direction by Blue Nixie, Astrolass, or El Fuego the entire time.

“It has just been so exciting watching you grow into a full superhero. You’ll have to excuse us for changing the topic so abruptly, but we have a limited timeframe to be at headquarters today and Astrolad here has something for you to try.”

Finally, a demo and then they’d leave. Hopefully nothing would happen to the fish while I was up here.

“Oh, fantastic.”

“So, this was inspired by your fight on Thursday,” Trey said, “It took us ten whole minutes to get there, partially because of pre-approval needed and partially because you and Blue Nixie needed to get suited up and commute. In the meantime, other trouble showed up. To avoid this, I have been working on some new tech.

“As you all know, Astrolass and I support our weakened powers with flying technology after our fight with Venge almost twenty years ago now. This technology allows us to stay airborne for longer than we would without it and helps us conserve energy.”

I smiled under my mask. It was a blatant lie, they had no powers to speak of after their fight with Avenging Angelo. The technology Trey had developed in the years after the fight was insanely powerful, so he didn’t want other people to know that it existed.

“Nix is still in school, so when there is a fight, we have to get him from school to the fight. The rest of us can leave from headquarters and fly, but he can’t. Not to mention, he has to get changed! We can fix this - with nanotechnology!”

He walked over to me and started putting a bracelet on my wrist.

“With this wrist band, Nix now can keep his suit on him at all times. Tap it twice for me?”

I did as I was asked and tiny blue machines flew out of the band, coating my arm before quickly covering the rest of my body.

“Oh wow - does that hurt?” One of the men in suits asked.

“Not at all.”

“So as you can all see, Nix now has on his suit. Of course, in here he had one on already, but in the field it will effortlessly roll on over his street clothes.”

Turning to one of Trey’s computer monitors, I checked myself out in the reflection. It was basically the same as my regular suit, except with extra lines and much shinier.

“But that isn’t all, Nix, if you will stand on the flight platform.”

He guided me over to a platform in the center of the room. Three of the walls were covered with padding while the fourth was clear glass.

“There is a button on your forefinger, you should be able to hit it with your thumb and -.”

I braced myself, squatting slightly, preparing to press the button before Trey reached over and stopped me.

“Not yet, there’s no padding on the ceiling and I don’t want you to get hurt. Let go of the button to stop - we’ll work on the fine motor control later. I have some ideas for that. I’ll give you a signal in a second. Everyone step back for me. Okay…” He paused to let them move, “Go!”

As I expected, I accelerated upwards, but much much faster than I was prepared for. I let go almost immediately but my momentum carried me toward the ceiling. 

My hands shot up to catch me before I slammed into the ceiling, and in the process I sent myself barreling back towards the floor.

An “oof” escaped my throat as I hit the padded ground.

“Like I said, it needs some refinement. But it is in progress! That nano-tech is ready for deployment. The team will be wearing it soon. We only have the colors configured for Nix so far, but once marketing finishes up on their end we will have it ready for everyone.”

I sat up and rubbed my head as Trey addressed the shareholders.

“So that is the end of our lab tour. If you walk into that room across the hall, astrolass will be in there in just a few…” Trey’s voice trailed off as he led the group to the hall conference room.

Lying down as I waited for him to return, I stared at the ceiling. My fall had hurt, like a lot. My whole list of things to do was escaping my mind.

“Great, we’re done. Sorry about that whole thing, Nix. You can tap twice on the bracelet to take the whole thing off if you want. What did you need?”

He helped me to my feet as the nanobots peeling off of my suit.

“Um… hang on - I need to catch my breath.”

After a few minutes of sitting at his lab bench while he worked on the bracelet, it all started coming back to me.

“So I was down there, feeding the fish, and one of them says that Todd Clinton came down to see the tanks yesterday.”

“Well, he was allowed in the building.”

“They also said he was soaking wet, and talking to someone who wasn’t there.”

“Captain Clear?”

“I thought so too, since he said he’d escort them out. But the fish say he didn’t speak if he was there, besides he’s the most trustworthy legion member.”

“So probably not then. And it was just Todd, they said?”

“Yep.”

“Give me two seconds, I’ll pull up the footage.”

We watched as Todd and the other congressman walked to the front doors of the building and left. They seemed to get into their car and get driven away.

“That’s strange. Was it a fish that you trust saying this?”

“Yeah, Jillie said so… and the lobsters.”

“Are those trustworthy? I wouldn’t know, I don't talk to fish. And if he was wet and this was before Blue Nixie fed them, that means it happened sometime right before or during our thirty minute meeting.”

He switched to the footage of the aquarium and began slowly scrubbing through it to see if anyone entered.

I just stared at the screen, watching fish. In particular, I loved to see the shark swim circles in its tank. Weaving in and out of the little plants and decorations in there. My mom had decorated it with a medieval kingdom theme, which the shark adored since he was a bit of a diva.

It swam into the castle through the drawbridge and out through one of the towers, before swimming underneath a fake coral.

Jillie and the other jellyfish floated around their tank a short distance away, occasionally lighting up blue, green, or pink. One of Jillie’s sisters bumped into a decorative piece of drift wood and wrapped herself around it, letting the other jellies drift by her.

The crabs scuttled about on the bottom of their tanks, snipping politely at one another with electricity shooting between claw tips. Occasionally, one climbed around their decorations, activating lights my mother had wired. In a nearby tank. speedster guppies swam around in tight schools, moving faster than the eye could follow. On the other side of the crabs, Lobsters lit underwater fires that were only extinguished when a bubble of air floated over them.

While Trey scrubbed carefully through the footage, I started watching the kids' tanks. Seeing if there was any sign of someone wandering around, poking at the tanks. After about five minutes, I got bored and turned back to the shark.

It disappeared into the castle through the drawbridge again, narrowly squeezing through the windows of one of the towers on its way out. The same tower as it had a few minutes earlier, actually. For a moment, I wondered if the shark had a routine he liked to follow in his swimming. 

“The footage is looped,” I said as soon as I realized how weird the shark’s behavior was. “I just watched the shark do that a minute ago. Watch the jellyfish, Jilliana is going to wrap herself around the drift wood.”

As I predicted, the Jellyfish repeated their behavior.

“Huh… good catch. You said they were all asleep when Blue Nixie came in, so they wouldn’t’ve spoken to her?”

He skipped ahead a good twenty minutes and sure enough, the motion in the tanks was slowed. Only the natural water currents pushing the sleeping fish around.

“So the footage has been altered. That really shouldn’t be possible. It must be a system glitch… or maybe someone from the Legion is involved. You said maybe Captain Clear?”

“Well, probably not. He and Kid Comet are the only ones that could have possibly been in there without the fish seeing. The fish didn’t discount it, but they were pretty unconvinced. Why couldn’t this be a hack?”

“It’s unlikely. Only very specific terminals in the Legion system are properly online, and none that are connected to the security. Not to mention, all of my terminals have a customized ISAAC based RSA encryption. Most Legion computers already use 2048 bit length keys, which is already eight times more secure than the industry standard, but my security system has two to the thirty sixth power bit length keys. You’d need a quantum supercomputer hardwired into the security system at headquarters and that just doesn’t seem likely to me. It’d be much easier to get a spy who has credentials to sign in.”

“And who all has those credentials? Is it only Legion heroes or is there a more likely candidate?”

“No, no. You’re right. It wouldn't be someone in the Legion. We shouldn’t let paranoia get the best of us. It would most likely be a non-powered contractor. Whoever it is… it’s unimportant. Astrolass and I will work something out. Blue Nixie will probably be involved too.”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair.

“In the meantime, I’ll set up an AI to search all cameras from when Todd arrived to when he left. We’ll get his full path through the building and see if there's any discontinuities in it. Then we'll have better proof of tempering than word of fish. Have you eaten?”

“What?”

“Have you eaten today?”

“Um… I had breakfast.” I thought about the extra milk and sugar I’d added to my iced coffee - that counted, right? “Kind of.”

“So you’re hungry right now? What time were you going to meet the new heroes?”

"Like 9:30, there's a basketball game so I didn't want to meet them too early.”

“Working around their schedules is kind - but they will have to make sacrifices eventually. Anyhow, Astrolass should finish up with her meeting in like ten minutes. There’s a new Pho place about five minutes from here, want to try?”

“Sure! Wait… five minutes how?”

The Legion headquarters was located on an island in the Hudson river. It was a drive to get anywhere, and an even longer drive to get anywhere interesting. Crossing the bridge just took so long.

“Ah, you didn’t think the suit I had you demo for the shareholders was my most recent version, did you?”

Ten minutes later, he and Astrolass were guiding me through how to fly.

“Your suit is a little different than how ours work.” I could barely make out Trey’s voice on comms over the wind. “Ours have capes to balance and larger flight disks. Yours obviously only has a half cape when in flight mode and the flight disks are near microscopic. To assist your balance, there are veins on your suit filled with water. If you’re feeling confident, try to use it to accelerate.”

“I will not be accelerating!”

“Come on kiddo, just give it a shot,” Astrolass encouraged.

Reaching out with my mind, I found the water in my suit. I launched myself forward and down, towards the pristine and safe water of the Hudson. Thank god my mom maintained the river, I couldn’t imagine learning to fly over the historic Hudson.

Astrolass and Trey followed behind me, and the three of us flew low along the river surface.

I stuck my hand out, dipping it in the water and leaving a small wake behind me as I flew.

“See, it’s not so bad!” I could hear Astrolass’ grin as she spoke.

“Only because I can catch myself if I fall!”

“You just need more practice. Either way, the nanobots are cool, yeah?” Trey said.

“The nanotech is sick!”

The two of them laughed.

“Come on, we’re almost there. We’re gonna fly above the city for about thirty seconds. We’ll catch you if you fall.” Astrollas flew up as she spoke, and me and Trey trailed after her.

It was nerve wracking, being so high above the concrete and moving so fast, but true to their word, they stayed within six feet of me the whole time we flew through Manhattan. Once I let myself relax a little, it was really cool to be so close to the tops of skyscrapers and to view the people moving down below.

Everyone going about their evenings - with no regards for the superheroes flying above them. Office workers still in their offices, with the lights creating an incandescent mural across the city.  People hustled along the street, carrying bags of groceries or briefcases from their jobs. Folks just living their lives.

Trey guided us over to a building with a small helipad on it to land. Instead of an H in the middle, there was an A with a rocket in the center.

“My old logo,” Astrolass said, “you didn’t think those keys to the city were purely symbolic, did you?”

“Aren’t they?”

“Yeah, technically. But some people like to reward us too. Like the guy who owns this building. He’s had this landing pad up here for twenty years!”

“Cool!”

“Come on, the pho restaurant is just down the block a bit.”

She swiped a card on the lock for the building and the door opened, letting us inside. We walked down a flight of stairs before recalling our suits.

“Yeah, that nanotech is a big improvement,” Astrolass said, smoothing down her hair and pulling out glasses from her pocket. “I don’t have to keep a bag on me for our clothes.”

“Definitely much more secure. I didn’t have to worry about losing my wallet. Are we ready to go?”

I nodded, still feeling a little shaky after the flight.

The elevator trip down was quick and smooth. As we reached the lobby, a guy behind the front desk called out to us.

“Hey, Clark and Vicky. What are you two up to?”

Their undercover names were so silly, it took some real effort on my part not to laugh at them.

“We’re taking our nephew out for dinner. What are you up to Vincent? You’re not usually a receptionist.”

“Ah - my employee got sick, she had to call out. Figured it’s been a while, I could use an easy day. You guys headed to John’s new pho restaurant?”

“Of course.”

“It’s packed - I think they’re doing a deal for students. You don’t have to worry about them going out of business.”

“That’s a relief. I can’t believe that he was worried about that,” Astrolass said as the three of us walked out to the street.

The line outside the building stretched down the block. It really was swamped.

“Are we going to be able to get in?”

“John’s an old friend, we’ll get in.”

We walked right past the front door where the line led and into the lobby of the hotel it was attached to. A staff member led us through a series of back doors before we finally entered the restaurant through the kitchen.

“Vicky! Clark! It’s so good to see you, and you must be Michael. I’m John.”

I nodded shyly.

“Come on, I have a table waiting,” He said before turning to me, “Your aunt and uncle helped me fund the business, and they were here just a few weeks ago before we opened. So they already know how this works. Most people will have to wait in line at the counter to get their food, but since you guys are VIPs, you’ll get table service. If you’re here without them and you want VIP service, order the California roll with shrimp. We don’t serve sushi so our cashiers will know what you mean.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

He walked away while we sat down at the table.

“That was weird…”

“Was it?” Trey asked, “Or do you think there was a deeper meaning?”

“It was weird regardless.”

They laughed.

“Sure, but why do you think we brought you here?”

I looked around, studying the decor and other patrons in the restaurant. The other people were mainly students, like Vincent had suggested. Some were in college, some were probably in high school. A few groups that were older or younger, as well a fair number of parents. 

The walls were covered with different paintings and photographs of Vietnam. Ho Chi Min city, Hanoi, mountains, lakes, and rainforest. One photo had a giant monster attacking a skyscraper, and two figures flying around in. I squinted, trying to make out the plaque underneath it.

Astrolass and Astrolad save Landmark 72 from Red River Kaiju. 

I grinned.

“Oh, I think I know.”

A few of the other paintings I'd just glanced over earlier were the same, with different superheroes that had done a tenure in the legion helping save different towns and cities in Vietnam.

“So, you understand what he means when he says VIP?”

“Kinda.”

“Right, well if you’re ever in need of assistance and the Legion is somehow compromised, you can come here. Or if you just want good soup!”

I grinned.

“After the incident today, I thought now would be a good time for you to learn about the civilian heroes network.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s our network of friends we’ve made across the world. People who can help you out on a mission if something goes wrong, but usually people who don’t have any powers themselves.”

“Now, what was this about an incident today?” Astrolass said.

Trey pulled a device out of his pocket and stuck it to the underside of the table. Probably an interference maker.

“I didn’t want to discuss it further while we were in headquarters, but the Legion is compromised.”

“So it’s a regular Tuesday.” Astrolass joked. “What is it this time?”

“After our discussion with Todd Clinton he took it upon himself to explore the building. Except the cameras don’t show that - they only show looped footage for the time block he could’ve gone in there.”

“So how do we know it was him?”

“We don’t really, but the lobsters say it was.” Trey shrugged.

I appreciated that he put enough faith in me to the degree that he’d present this as what the lobsters said and not what Michael said the lobsters said.

“And we trust the lobsters?” Astrolass asked.

“The Jellyfish too. They could just be wrong but they wouldn’t lie. They did say he was wearing a grey suit and soaking wet, so they already described him better than I could.” I laughed awkwardly 

“Alright, so there’s evidence that someone who was probably Todd Clinton was poking around in the aquarium. We can’t prove it because the footage isn’t there…”

“I have an algorithm scanning camera footage. We’ll see if there’s anything that doesn’t add up. I figure we can talk to Captain Clear tonight and see if anything weird happened while he escorted them out.”

“He’s on a mission. From the president.”

“Convient timing. I’ll message him and see if he can connect over an encrypted channel.”

“Ah he’s deep undercover right now, so he probably won't be able to.”

“That's a shame. If only there was another channel.”

The two of them kept brainstorming, discussing little details I hadn’t even noticed. They only paused to say thank you when John brought out our soup.

“What are your thoughts, Michael?”

“The soup is good.”

It was. He’d given us all shrimp pho in chicken broth. It wasn’t earth shattering or anything, but it was better than any other pho I’d had - outside of Legion missions to Vietnam or Cambodia. 

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I don’t really know what I think. It’s weird that president Clinton called Captain Clear away but he mentioned to me last week he’d be out of town today and tomorrow.”

“That’s good to know. It means this was premeditated, maybe including the president but probably just Todd taking advantage of his insider knowledge. Did the fish give you any more information?”

“They’re fish, what kind of a report are you imagining?”

“Don't give me that. They have a twitter account. They knew who Todd fucking Clinton was.”

“Okay, sure. But they’re bad at communicating and some of the crabs have gil rot or something. They were acting weird.”

“Did Blue Nixie give them medicine?”

“I assume so. They were all asleep when she came in to feed them yesterday.”

“Is that normal?”

“No… Actually, it's pretty concerning.”

“Any chance Todd drugged them?”

“Seems… possible. I will text Blue Nixie to let her know to talk to the lobsters when she gets back.”

We continued to talk while Astrolass slowly steered our conversation away from Legion business and into my personal business.

“So is that boy acting more normal now?” She asked after talking with me about school for a while.

“No. He was actually a jerk when I tried to give him the phone.”

“Oh really.”

“Yeah. His - well I guess our - friend, Rich, tried to kick me out of the conversation and so I was just gonna explain with him there because they’ll both know anyway but then Jer told me to take a hint!”

“You’re not serious? That’s terrible.”

“It is, and I’m worried that I’ll take it out on him because of how angry I am. Like I will not fairly assess him or whatever.”

“You’ve got two weeks to assess them. Focus on the group tonight and try to make amends with him in the meantime. If you can’t figure it out, then it's okay. The shareholders were pleased with your presentation today.”

“Were they? I fell on my ass!”

“Yeah, but you were ready, respectful, and didn’t make a big deal out of being put on the spot. Plus, the technology was brand new, and you improved in our flight over. I’m sure you’ll do even better on the flight back.”

“Oh for fucks sake, I didn’t think about that.”

“I’m sure you’ll do great. Are you about done? You probably need some more time at headquarters to fit in some training and get ready for assessing the new heroes.”

The flight back was rough, but an improvement over our test in front of the shareholders so I couldn’t complain that much.

What I could complain about was that Astrolass said I had to train today. We had to train everyday unless we were using our powers for a different Legion event or responsibility - like a fight or a showcase - or if it was a Friday. I’d hoped that having to work with my friends later meant I was off the hook - but no such luck.

Fortunately, the only Legion member with the free time to train me today was Kid Comet - which meant training wasn’t really training. Instead we watched old Legion fights to practice “analytical thinking.”

It was really just Kid Comet relieving his best saves and the two of us chatting but it was better than having to push my powers to their limits with my mom or test Trey’s new technologies.

Training meant I didn’t have time to rest at home before meeting the other heroes. At 8:45, I had to drive straight from Legion headquarters to the Middleborough mall, where I then walked to the hidden pond in the woods.

The pond was empty when I arrived. I took a moment for myself, just enjoying the quiet. From this point going forward, I was directly lying to my friends. At least for the next two to five weeks. 

It was one thing to pretend to not be Nix while at school. But I’d handed them that phone yesterday and established that Michael and Nix were different people. I had to keep up the charade until they were members of the Legion - in whatever format that took.

If they knew, things would be a lot more dangerous for them. They’d already pissed off at least five villains and they hadn't done anything more than stop a few bank robberies. 

The less they knew at this point, the better.

I tapped twice on my bracelet to activate my supersuit and began pulling out some of the devices I took from Trey. There were drones armed with cameras to allow me to catch any of the heroes' movements from multiple angles. Plus, one camera was a prototype Trey had been working on for tracking Captain Clear, which might let me get a good look at Invisigirl using her powers.

A few other privacy devices were in there too. As I finished setting up, I heard voices approaching and slipped into the darkness to wait.

“Holy crap. I don’t believe it! Chlo, look at this! Rich and Dustin were texting.” Jenna announced.

I could just make out their figure in the dark through the trees, as Jenna held a phone in front of her face.

“Give it back!” Rich said.

Chloe laughed, harsh and cruel.

“Dude, I wouldn’t even have noticed that text if you weren’t so suspicious about it!”

“Chloe. Be quiet. Someone could hear us,” Christine whispered.

“Wait, what does the text say?” Brooke asked.

Rich’s face was bright red. He was staring at the ground, avoiding eye contact with the rest of the group.

“Just that he and Dustin are totally hooking up,” Chloe said, her voice just shy of a shout.

Might’ve been why he was so pissy yesterday night. If he and Dustin had been meeting and he thought I was in the picture… I’d be mad as hell if that happened to me.

“No fucking way! And we thought it was bad enough for Michael to do it!”

I rolled my eyes and decided they’d embarrassed Rich enough.

“Invisigirl is right,” I said, stepping out of the shadows, “you should be quiet, someone could hear you.”

Chloe’s face fell as I glared at her and Jenna.

“Frankly, you two in particular should be embarrassed. If y’all are going to be a team, you need to act like it. Harassing a team mate because he has a better sex life than you is not the way to do that.”

“I have a great sex life,” Chloe replied, indignant.

“Did I ask? No.” I turned to the rest of the group. “Furthermore, y’all should not be having conversations about people you know while you’re in costume. That’s just asking for trouble. Understand?”

“Asking for trouble. Pssh,” Chloe scoffed, “you have no clue who we were talking about and no one listening would either.”

I lowered my voice.

“Dustin Kropp. Right?” When they nodded, I continued. ”You’re fortunate enough that I've set up devices to prevent others from overhearing us tonight. My interns go to your school, that’s my only connection to you, and I know enough to figure this stuff out. Your enemies do as well.”

“We don’t have enemies,” Rich said.

“The Legion has fought five people seeking your base of operations in the past week alone. The past five days, actually. Not to mention, the way my intern tells it, you’re on your way to making plenty of enemies in your personal life.”

“Michael,” Jer said quietly.

“Whose your intern?” Rich asked aggressively, as if he was flipping my point back on me.

“I’m surprised you haven’t guessed. I suppose they’ll tell you when they’re ready, although I believe they’ve already tried.”

I cringed as the words left my mouth. My behavior felt so stiff and formal. Honestly, it all felt unnecessary and even rude, but if it further separated Nix and Michael in their minds, then I could live with unnecessary and rude. 

“Michael,” Jer repeated.

“You’ve said that bud.” Jake patted him on the back. “Can we just get started? I think we all can agree we should be more careful. That’s why we’ve been caught by you guys in the first place.”

“That is a great plan. First, let’s lay some ground rules. One: Don’t talk to me about your personal lives - it risks your identity and I just do not care. Leave me out of it. Two: we are going to start exactly at 9:30 every night. If you don’t show up or text by 9:35, I’ll assume you’re not coming. You should do the same for me. I’ll try and notify you, but sometimes we get called away for emergency missions.

“That’s closely related to three: don’t bring personal items. Especially electronics. They can be tracked - I know for a fact that yours have been in the past. Four: always come in full uniform. We shouldn’t be found out here, we have perimeter drones which gently direct people around our location, among other things, but sometimes things slip through.”

“What are other things?” Brooke asked.

“I can’t tell you. Actually, that brings me to rule five: trust me. When I ask you to do something, just do it. You can ask questions, I encourage it even - but accept it when I say I can’t answer and don’t waste too much of my time.”

Chloe snorted.

“Because your time is so valuable.”

I ignored her interruption.

“Rule six: when I ask you a question, answer honestly. Unless you’re asking about something confidential I’ll do the same. Got it?”

Everyone except Chloe nodded.

“Any questions? No? Great! Ember! You’re up first.”

He stood in the middle of the clearing next to the pond. Trey’s drones circled him, one shining a spotlight and the others recording. I held up a target with a heat sensor in the middle that I'd stolen from El Fuego's practice supplies.

“Hit this.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won't."

He shook his head but sent a blast of fire my way.

It was uncontrolled, a wide stream with blue and purple flames inside. I had water dousing the flames before they left his hands but even with that I still felt the extreme heat against my face.

We could work on that later, for now we only had a short time to get through everyone.

“Great! Melior next.”

I pulled them each up in succession to use their power exactly once. Jake lifted a tree, Jeremy shot down a drone, Chloe duplicated herself, Jenna sent a ripple across the pond, Brooke made a flash of light and Christine created one of her force fields, turning invisible seemingly by accident as she did. 

It wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before, but it was good to have it close up on video.

“Okay, great. That went well.” It wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t great. They all used way too much power, except Jeremy, who’d seemed embarrassed to be here. “So let’s talk fight experience. Who has any experience in combat?”

It took a few minutes for them to figure out what I was counting as combat experience - because the seven or so fights they’d had weren’t it. In the end, Rich had wrestled for a season, and Brooke had taken a personal defence class, but no one else had formal training.

“So we’re going to need to train you. Here, bend your knees and follow my lead. I want to focus on non-powered combat first, and we’ll incorporate your powers in a later meeting.”

“We’re not using our powers? I thought the point of this was to assess our powers?”

“No. The point was to assess you and your powers. I just saw your powers - they’re good enough. Now I’m worried about you. Your behavior is almost certainly not going to make Astrolass happy when she watches these tapes back.”

“You’re recording us?”

“Yes. Get into the position I just showed you.”

Jake sighed.

“Is there a problem?” I tried to keep my voice steady, but annoyance crept through.

“This is stupid,” He said, “we can already fight. We don’t need to be trained by a teacher. I bet we could take anything you threw at us!”

When they were training me, Astrolass and Trey would often describe training other young superheroes. Usually, they were overconfident, and too bold for their own good. The definition of cocky.

That was what got them killed.

The ones that survived quickly learned that they had a lot to learn.

“Okay. Maybe. It’s certainly possible. But, first, I’d like to say: my mentor worked at a hardware store for nearly twenty years. He picked up a few things that were surprisingly relevant. In particular, he said: ’Superheroes are like electricians. That sounds dumb, but it’s true. There are old electricians and there are bold electricians, there are no old bold electricians. The same goes for superheroes.’

“He’s right: it is stupid. But it’s also an important lesson to learn. I watched a superhero named Rainwolf die due to his over confidence.”

I’d taken that lesson to heart, even before I saw it play out in the field. But with so many heroes falling victim to it, I suppose it must be hard to learn on your own.

“With that in mind.” I moved into a defensive stance. “Come at me.”

Jake’s eyes widened.

“Come on. If you think you don’t need this, then prove me wrong. Come at me,” I said.

He took a few steps back and then ran at me. I braced myself. He reached out, trying to hit me. From my stance, I grabbed his extended arm and used it to flip him. 

“Right. Let's get back to learning how to defend ourselves, yeah?” I turned to face the others.

Jake jumped up from his spot on the ground. Crunching leaves underfoot, he ran at me again. Before he could touch me, I grabbed him and pulled him over my shoulder, knocking him back onto the ground.

“Slow down, Wolverine. You won’t be sneaking up on anyone anytime soon. Just get back to work.”

We worked through a few more positions. Everyone was clearly bored, but it went a lot smoother and no one stepped out of line. It was getting close to 10:30 and I was about to dismiss them anyway when my phone rang.

“Oh hey, Ma. What do you need?” I asked as I picked up the call.

Someone gasped. Probably Christine.

“There’s been an incident near, well, it’s in Wakefield. El Fuego and I are on our way there now. I’ll text you the address. Meet us there,” Blue Nixie said before hanging up.

I sighed and turned toward the SQUIP squad.

“I have to go. Practice is over for the day. Practice at home, we’ll meet back here tomorrow.” As I spoke, I began packing up all of the devices I borrowed from Trey.

“Was that Blue Nixie?” Christine asked, practically jumping up and down.

“Yeah, I- I can’t answer that.”

“So yes!”

I laughed, and did my best to hide my smile at the wild grin that spread across her face.

“Are we allowed to practice with our powers?” Jeremy asked.

“Um… good question. I suppose yes, just be careful. Don’t set anything on fire or get caught. Maybe practice extinguishing flames more than summoning them,” I said, directing the last part to Rich.

“Are we meeting tomorrow?”

“Let’s plan on it, now I’ve really got to go.”

Chris smiled at me and the group began making their way back through the woods. I sighed and started walking to the address Blue Nixie had sent. It looked like I’d be out for a while longer.

A good thing about being a superhero was that I could function on less sleep. These long nights of fighting and detective work affected me less than a normal person. 

Sleep was still nice, though. And I did need a little.

“We got an anonymous tip that there’s something happening in this building. Kid Comet and Astrolass are in Canada right now with Captain, so we’ve been called in to do a complete search. Since most of our cases have been off limits for you lately, we thought it would be good for you to do one! Plus, Trey and I realized that you haven’t had many missions with El Fuego, so we thought it might be good team bonding.”

I eyed her suspiciously.

“Team bonding?”

“That’s what he said. Honestly, with the way you two bickered in those sewers yesterday, you should be glad it’s not an official disciplinary action. Do you know how embarrassing it was to listen to that in front of a congressman?”

Next to me, El Fuego sucked air through his teeth.

“Sorry, Blue, I didn’t think anyone would review it.”

I grimaced at the nickname he called my mom.

“Normally, no one would have. We all need to be on high alert in terms of media awareness for the next few weeks. Got it?”

We nodded sheepishly and she started leading us through the building.

The old office corridors creaked as we searched for anything out of the ordinary. The building had been abandoned years ago, and there wasn’t electricity to turn on the lights. Fortunately, the moon was so bright it illuminated the rooms and hallways through the broken windows. We turned off our headlamps to be less conspicuous, only El Fuego keeping a small light in the form of a flame. 

With how cold it was tonight, I couldn’t complain.

Rooms filled with decaying cubicles and broken electronics were all we found. Occasionally, a room would reek with the smell of rot, but we couldn’t find a source for the odor. By the time we were climbing the stairs to the 5th and final level, I was tired and annoyed.

“I think the tip you got was some kind of prank, maybe even a distraction,” I said.

El Fuego sighed.

“I’m getting that too.”

“Stop whining, boys. We still have more rooms to check,” Blue Nixie replied. “If you really want to get this done faster, you two search the left side of the hall, and I will search the right.”

We trooped on, not moving much faster without her. The first two rooms were as desolate as the lower four levels. Crumbled paneling and drywall covered the floor. Ancient computers sat on the desks as undisturbed relics beneath collapsed ceiling tiles.

The dust hung in the air as if suspended. We moved through it slowly, careful to restrict our breathing, not wanting lungfuls of asbestos. Despite the lack of recent rain and the building having no working plumbing, there was so much water in the air I could’ve controlled it if we'd needed it.

It was suffocating. 

At the end of the hallway was a much larger room, a cubical farm like those downstairs. For all the stale, damp air we’d walked through to get there, it was a completely different atmosphere behind the door.

Inside the room was about five degrees cooler than the rest of the already frigid building. Colder than even the January weather waiting for us outside. Much dryer too, the sweat that had steadily built up on the few pockets of my exposed skin evaporated quickly, making me even colder.

The cubicles in this room were well maintained, as if still in current use. Not one ceiling tile was amiss and the walls seemed in much better condition than the rest of the building.

“I think we should get Blue Nixie for this one,” I said to El Fuego.

He sighed, his breath visible.

“Probably. I can… I‘ll just…” He turned and walked out the door, not completing his thought.

Blue Nixie shivered as the two walked back in a few minutes later.

“You weren’t lying, there’s definitely something in here.”

As she spoke, the air currents in the room shifted. A whistling noise came from outside, and papers fluttered to the floor.

“What was that?” I asked, jumping to turn around.

“The wind. There’s a storm coming in later tonight,” Blue Nixie said, “Nothing to be afraid of.”

I blushed. Of course I’d get scared by the wind. In front of El Fuego too…

“Right.”

Walking to the window I glanced around outside. Even though I knew it was the wind, it still felt like there was something else happening. A few leaves rustled along the ground, but nothing else was visible.

I turned toward the sky. We were so deep in the woods that there were no buildings nearby with lights on. The stars were beautiful. Constellations that were normally washed out by the suburban lights shone clear and bright.

The wind blew again, clouds slowly moving to cover the moon, dimming its light.

Blue Nixie reached for her head lamp, but El Fuego stopped her.

“Wait. Do you see that, over there?” He said, “There’s a light in here.”

I turned and followed after him as he made his way through the cubicles.

At the end of the room, a computer sat on a desk, screen unlocked and powered on. There was no electrical connection leading to it, but it also wasn’t a laptop.

“This is weird,” I said.

“Yeah, I don’t trust it,”  El Fuego said, “We should bring it to legion headquarters and call Trey."

Blue Nixie shook her head, grabbing a mouse next to the monitor and clicking on the desktop.

“I don’t think this should go to headquarters. Look at these documents.”

The desktop was covered in files - each named after a person. Trey Swieskowski, Jeremy Heere, Rich Goranski, Jason Goranski, etc. I was there twice, as both Michael Mell and Nix.

“What are these?” I asked.

“I don’t know, let’s open them to check.”

She clicked on the file labeled Michael Mell, and the pdf opened.

The file was mostly empty. There was a single photo of me at the top, a few details about being friends with Jeremy and my job at the Legion, as well as a single line explaining that I had “minor hydrokinesis,” and not much else.

She exited the file and opened the one titled Trey Swieskowski next.

This document was a lot beefier. It started off with his powers as astrolad, before diving into details about Trey’s parents, how he met astrolass, and even his PhD advisor. Comments on his relationship with the other Legion members and employees. His public sightings, political leanings, and a note about his resistance to Brooklynite. 

We checked Jeremy’s and then the other SQUIP squad members.

All of them had their identities at the top, like Trey, and what their powers were. Their relationships to one another, and to me. What their daily routine looked like, what they studied at school, their grades in different classes. Weirdly enough, their files were filled with inconsequential things like preferences, personal goals, and relationships with people outside of the legion. At the bottom of each file was a massive collection of photos of them from every angle, both in and out of costume, followed by pages and pages of an alphanumeric code.

"Is that an STL file format? Like a 3D scan?" I asked.

"It could be..."

Finally, Blue Nixie clicked on Nix.

There was a list of possible candidates, descriptions of my powers, my facial features, and photos of recent sightings. Ominously, there were three photos of me tonight, two at the pond, with some of the SQUIP squad visible in the background, and one where I stood in the dark with no one around.  

Even more concerning, at the bottom of the file was filled with electrophoresis gels and data relating to it. One gel was labeled with Blue Nixie, Nix, Captain Clear and El Fuego, below it, the caption read “El Fuego and Blue Nixie are Nix’s parents.”

“How would they have that information?” El Fuego asked.

I felt faint, sick to my stomach. I gripped the desk to stay upright.

It was only a matter of time before we were forced to address the issue, but I still wasn’t ready yet.

“Trey ran the test on my DNA.”

In the reflection on the monitor, I saw El Fuego and Blue Nixie staring at each other.

“That’s not what you were asking, was it? Did you already know?”

“Someone must have hacked us,” Blue Nixie said.

“That’s not possible, they’d need a quantum computer. Trey brags about that all the time.”

“Are you just ignoring me?”

“No, we’re not hon. But you aren’t something we can deal with right now.”

“I’m not something to be dealt with! Did you know?”

“Maybe they have a quantum computer?” El Fuego suggested.

“That’s not possible,” She replied.

Still feeling like throwing up, I grabbed the mouse out of Blue Nixie’s hand and scrolled back to the photos. They were captured at eye level, and were way too close to be taken by someone hidden - I would’ve seen them.

The webcam on the monitor blinked and I realized that I did see the photographer.

“They have a quantum computer. They have twelve - at least. Probably hundreds. Maybe more. Holy shit - it’s the… It’s the.” It was impossible to catch my breath. The suit felt suffocating against my skin. “It’s the SQUIP. I shouldn’t be here. I-”

El Fuego slapped his hand over my mouth.

“Stop freaking out. We don’t know who can hear.” He turned to Blue Nixie, not moving his hand. “This computer was a trick, we were meant to find it.”

“I think so too. We should call Trey.”

The next fifteen minutes were a blur - all I could do was focus on not passing out. 

Trey arrived quickly and placed the computer in some protective box. He turned to me, saying something that seemed important, but I couldn’t hear over the sound of my beating heart.

The group of us took the helicopter back. 

When we arrived at Legion Headquarters, the air was tense.

There was so much more than merely our DNA in the Legion computer system. With what had happened this afternoon, it was clear that someone had access to our system. It was filled with city destroying shit: the only remaining recipe for Brooklynite, the source of power and only weakness for everyone on the Legion except Trey and Astrolass, was stored in our system, so was information on replicating Trey and Astrolass’ powers. 

A hacker with malicious intent could bring the whole country to its knees. Maybe even all of human civilization.

And I would be willing to bet this hacker wasn’t benevolent.

The night dragged on as Trey started analysing the computer. For a while we all sat there in silence, waiting for others to answer our emergency call. Once Astrolass and Kid Comet came back from their mission, the air of tension broke some.

As people hurried around, freaking out about the security breach, I felt more and more claustrophobic. It wasn’t like I could do anything to help, so I made my way up to Blue Nixie’s roof top greenhouse.

The vines and willows she had me try controlling grew up here when they weren’t being used in the lab. It was warm despite the freezing January night and the soft buzzing of sleepy pollinators made it a soothing place. In the back corner, my mom kept an old bench in the shape of a wave, made by some artisan in Africa she’d saved from a tsunami. If I ever needed a space to calm down, that corner was exactly where I wanted to be.

After a few minutes I heard the door open, but didn’t look up. The only people with access were in the legion.

“If this is really a quantum supercomputer, then there’s no way we’re the only place they’ve hacked. All the confidential stuff is not our problem. The Brooklynite formula is concerning, but if Trey was able to figure it out on his own, so could a supercomputer,” Astrolass said, sitting down next to me on the bench.

“The only truly troubling thing,” she continued, “is that they could figure out your identity. They don’t currently have that information in their system. We want to keep it that way. It would not be the end of the world if they found out, but we’d have to pull you out of school to keep everyone safe if that happened.”

“They already have my friends’ identities.”

“Because your friends all have SQUIPs. Anything your friends know is in those files.”

She looked at me, as if waiting for me to make a connection. 

If she was worried about the hackers finding my identity, and my friends were connected to these hackers directly…

“So, they can never know? I have to keep it from them forever.”

“Not forever. Just until we figure this out.”

“Great.”

“I’m so sorry, kid. I know this kind of ruins what we'd discussed the other day.”

“At this point, I think it’s clear it wouldn’t have worked out.” I sighed, holding back tears, exhausted from the week I’d been having. “He’s just going to be even more pissed off when he finds out.”

Astrolass placed her hand on my shoulder, gently rubbing small circles.

“You don’t know that. Why don’t you go home and get some rest? Superhero or not, you’re still a teenager. You need your rest."