Thanh’s attitude scares me. I can’t afford to lose his patronage over Home Run. Maybe I should change my outfit, like he said.

I’ve never had a mask name. I’ve never had a name that I felt like I owned. But what if I did? What if I built this Home Run person into a hero like Megajoule? What if people whispered my name and waited for the baseball jacket to show up and save them from trouble?

Epione believes the capes are killing the world with the Fear. What if someone else stepped in to save it?

Dreams later, work first.

I follow Thanh’s directions to the edge of East Downtown. It’s a small tangle of warehouses, abandoned garages, townhomes, and apartment complexes nestled just outside of the heart of Houston, and because of that, it’s almost permanently cast in sharp light from the giant screens and neon of the skyline. How the people that live here ever get a wink of sleep, I don’t know.

Thanh’s apartment complex is across the street from two warehouses, one empty and one with a glowing neon sign that reads Harris Construction and Design. The Harris warehouse teems with workers welding and floor managers barking orders, and I wonder again how anyone could get any shuteye out here at all.

A dude and a lady are chatting each other up in an alley between the apartment building and an overgrown lot full of ruins… and as I’m scoping the scene I realize they’re not just chatting, but her fingers are exploring his arm, his lips are kissing the line of her jaw, and they’re both laughing and breathing heavy.

“Jealous?” Megajoule asks. He appears at my side, leering down at the couple. “Or do you think it’s an act?”

I ignore him, though the question does give me pause. I’ve always put those kinds of feelings, relationships, out of mind. But there are days where it’s difficult, where my skin aches for someone’s gentle touch. For someone to know me and love me.

“Yikes, you really are a lost cause.” Megajoule offers nothing besides a grim chuckle. “No wonder you’re such a little creep, always peeping on the neighbors and everyone’s hearts. My, if the world knew my heir was a voyeur…”

“Fuck off, ghost,” I growl.

“Wait- look!” Megajoule points at the alley.

“Weren’t you just making fun of me for that…?” But, like an idiot, I turn to look back at the couple macking on each other anyway. Except that there is no couple. Only the woman, crawling away from a dark green puddle of slime. No man to be seen.

I jump across the street, leaving a hiss of superheated air, and land in the alley. Gravel and grass crunch beneath my feet and for some reason, my heart’s jumped into my throat and my stomach just opened a fresh pit. The woman babbles: “Oh, oh Metis, please…” And for a split second I’m not here, I’m back in the warehouse, knee deep in corpses.

The woman screams, tearing me out of my mind, and pulls her hand back from the slime, which slowly flows toward her and me like molasses. Then, she looks up at me and says, “Oh Metis, please don’t hurt me.”

“Easy, lady. What happened?”

She mumbles and shakes, puts her hands on the back of her head like a bomb’s about to land. “Please, I’ll give you anything. Please don’t eat me.”

Thanh said the tenants were seeing monsters, and at first I took it seriously. Carnality is the number one example anyone can think of, but I’ve tangled with a mask that looked like they were made completely of bones, a guy who had horrible scales growing all over him, and a gal that was half lizard, half goat. All kinds of people whose Affects make them into what you’d call a monster. But there’s no monster here, not on the apartment side of the alley with its dozen or so recessed balconies all wrapped in rusted metal railing, nor the other side, which is a simple brick wall hiding a ruined building that is little more than a skeleton of metal support beams, rafters, and a few doors rusted and grown over by weeds.

No one but me, the lady, and the puddle of goo. Is this goo formerly the guy she was making out with? Did something just do this to him and I missed it? My thermal sense isn’t giving me anything, no heartbeat, no movement.

I ignore the lady for now and check out the slime. When I first saw it, it was an uneven, lumpy mound, but now the viscous liquid has evened out into a dark green pancake. The streetlamp reflects off the slime as a kaleidoscope rainbow, like a prism scattering light in a universe where physics is all kinds of fucked up.

“You’re not that guy I saw, are you?” I poke at the goo with my finger and leave a small dimple. Far too viscous to even leave a smear on my glove. The dimple rebounds, evening out over the course of two seconds.

“Please,” the woman begs no one.

“She sounds high,” Megajoule whispers.

And with him, something else whispers at the edge of my motion sense. More liquid flowing, collecting itself into a human shape, hanging from the building above me. This new body gains weight and structure, fingers and feet.

Slowly, I look up. A man wearing a leather jacket and a green hood dangles from the ledge of one of the apartment balconies, the same dark slime dripping from every inch of his clothes and skin. His face, turned down toward me as he kicks his legs frantically and uselessly to help lift himself up over the railing, is covered by a simple, yellow cloth mask with a black spiral.

“You know public defecation is a crime, right?” I ask, gesturing to the slime.

“Monster,” the woman whispers.

Then I put it together – this guy is the monster the residents have been seeing. The realization makes me bark, “Hey!”

The mask, who I decide to call Mr. Spiral, yelps and tries again to pull himself over the balcony.

And then he falls. His body falls apart in the air, splattering the alley with more of the slime. His different parts slam into the ground right on top of the big puddle, and I happen to be standing right in the splash zone. Some of the slime winds up under my jacket, slicking my neck. It’s warm and greasy.

I wipe the goo from my neck, and this time, it sticks to my glove. I yell: “The fuck is this gross shit, you loser?”

Which is right about when it kicks in.

The building behind me pulses, starts to twist itself over me like an awning. I realize there’s a set of eyes staring at me from behind the glass door leading into a dark apartment – except the apartment ISN’T dark, it’s a brightly lit gate into a scintillating jungle of stars. The thing with the eyes staring at me has long, hairy knuckles, like the kind I imagine Megajoule had when he lived, like the kind I’ll have when I am old.

“Hoooooly fuck,” I whisper, and something whispers back: my kinetic sense. Mr. Spiral is getting away.

My stomach turns, threatening to spill my heat and bile into the alley. I close my eyes and try to ground myself. Even the back of my eyelids aren’t safe – the skin undulates and ripples.

The hands of the air and the hands of my skin are shaking, their palms greased, grimy, passing bacteria between them. Some of the heat trapped inside me starts to escape and pour into the street, and I say, “Hey, stop that.” The heat sings sweetly at me, begs me to let it keep going until it can’t go anymore. But I say, “No! Back where you belong.”

“Holy fuck,” I think, grabbing the squirming wall and trying to stay upright – but I fail. I land – I think I land – sideways. The pain (that I shouldn’t feel, if my power were working properly) feels so far from me, like a neighbor that works the night shift coming home as you’re heading out for the day job. I flex the arm I landed on, ensuring it still works. The side of my belly is unbruised.

“W-what in the world is going… on?” Megajoule swims in the air above me, as stark naked as the day he was born. He’s all hair and skin and long limbs, same knuckles, and his lips dangle and his teeth protrude, and its not Megajoule, it’s a… It’s a…

“Monster,” I hiss, closing my ears.

A fist materializes in my vision and socks my jaw. I fall flat, my power not protecting me. I kick back, trying to control my strength, and I land my shin in the body connected to the fist that hit me. The ribs spring back like cartoonish jelly.

“Hey, you’re pretty strong,” the fist says, in a nasally, tinny voice. “Might’ve expected that from the guy that killed Danger Close.”

I swing wild haymakers. It’s all I can get my body to do. Every blow lands – I’m still impossibly fast – but they all meet that strange goo that absorbs the impact. No matter how much kinetic energy or heat is behind them.

“Too bad you’re useless against me.”

Two hands grab my shoulders and push me over. I can’t stand – I go toppling backward.

“Come on, man, get up, get up!’

The goo has to be causing this. I cling to that lucid thought and crawl – I think I crawl – away from the source. Nobody shoves or punches me again, so that’s good, but I’m pretty sure my hands and knees are sinking into the concrete.

I close my eyes, ground myself. My kinetic sense whispers: “He’s coming. Move.”

I roll, something slaps the ground next to me, but I’m fine, I think.

“The liquid is moving on your skin,” my kinetic sense whispers.

I suck my breath in, a little somatic trick to mimic my power sucking heat in. I focus my attention on the hands of my skin and the hands of the air, where the grime rests on their palms, and I freeze those hands with my power. I steal all their heat, squirrel it away until its inside, safe and sound. I freeze the goo straight off my skin.

And the world straightens itself out.

I’m huddled against the brick wall, not ten feet from the lady, and Mr. Spiral stalks toward me. The goo drips out of his jacket, trails behind him, and each drop thickens as it hits the concrete. He’s actually a built dude, but the strength is just human. That’s not the threat – I apparently can’t touch him without going all trippy.

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“Pandahead’s gonna freak when he hears I bagged him Home Run.”

This freak knows Pandahead!

Mr. Spiral breaks into a victorious dance, spinning and hopping around like he’s got all the time in the world to play with his food. He must think I’m still hallucinating.

So I let him. I keep babbling to myself, whispering, “Monster,” just like the lady next to me.

He skips and steps down the alley until he’s within five feet of me, then reaches out one of his hands – and I realize instead of skin and bone he is just made of goo. I wonder how the hell he developed this power, how he might have slid into being this creature. I also wonder how I can even stop him, since it looks like he absorbed my kinetic strikes.

“What a stupid power to be undone by. Psychoactive slime.” Megajoule hisses in my ear: “Get out of here.”

I’m a millisecond from blasting off into the night, returning to Thanh to tell him what I found out, but I only hesitate because Mr. Spiral here mentioned Pandahead – if he knows something about him, I’ve got to make him squeal.

“I can counter it,” I whisper to Megajoule, to myself. It’s not perfect, but I can freeze it off my skin, and it seems the second I do, the effect wears off. So I could stay and fight… but running is still the safer option.

“Run!” Megajoule hisses. “These people aren’t worth your life!”

Mr. Spiral’s slimy hand is inches from my neck.

“Nah.” I grab Mr. Spiral’s wrist, and spend some of my heat to turn us both into a mid-air spin. I throw him down the alley, hoping he’ll hit the wall and have the wind knocked out of him. Instead, Mr. Spiral bounces off the pavement, ricochets into one of the walls of the apartment complex (visibly pancaking as he hits it) and finally rolls back down the alley toward me. He sprays more slime as he rolls and once again I’m caught in the splash zone.

I freeze the slime, freeing myself of his effect before it can drop me, but suddenly I find that using my power is much more draining. My legs wobble, my arms are sluggish. My mind clouds. I fight to stand, but I don’t think I have a lot of fight left in me.

“Fine, if you want to be that way,” Megajoule says. “Let’s see how you do without my help.”

Before I can process that, Mr. Spiral flings his arms in a wide arc, sending hundreds of chunks of his green slime my way. I try to dodge out of the way using kinetic energy, but it feels like turning the wheel of a car with no power steering. And I realize what Megajoule meant as I get splattered, as I desperately call on my power to drink the heat from the goo before it makes me hallucinate again.

He’s cutting me off from the engrams, the ones I inherited from him.

But… there’s still something there. Something to make my power work, even if it’s much harder. It feels like I’ve lost almost all my strength, but it’ll have to do.

I warp into ass beating range.

“Metis, you’re fast!” Mr. Spiral laughs, even as I clock him in the jaw, knee him in the chest, and toss him to the floor. I pour hundreds of degrees of kinetic energy into him, and still nothing seems to phase him. His malleable body just absorbs all the punishment I can dish out.

I’ve only ever fought someone capable of that once before – Sledge, the flesh shaper who killed so many of my brothers in the lab. They could just shift the damage away, shift it through bones that turned to jelly instead of breaking. Mr. Spiral must be doing the same. But there has to be a weak point, because he becomes firm at some points.

The only question is, can I find it before I gas out with my new limit?

Time to find the answer. I rise to fight him again.

But as I do, another person enters my kinetic sense. This mystery jumps across the gaps between the buildings with ease, spinning and flipping a lot like I do while I use kinetic energy. They careen off the edge of the apartment, switch direction mid-air like they’re swinging on a rope, and yo-yo down at Mr. Spiral. The street light betrays a red jacket and a white mask and skin made of steel before their sneakers make contact with Mr. Spiral’s head and send him sprawling to the ground with a yelp.

“How did she manage to hit him?” I think.

Strands of golden hair curl over a mask styled after a fox, whiskers and all. She brushes her hair back under her mask with a hand that seems to be made of steel. She bends over and offers this same hand to help me stand. “Hi there, hot stuff.”

Her voice has song in it, like there’s a bell and a smile behind every word she says.

With her help, I stand, but almost trip forward. A long metal hand stops me, a hand meant for music, and I can’t help but imagine this woman bent over a piano like in some of the Vanguard music shows, destroying the keys with her steel fingers. And really, bent over is the right mental image. Once I’m right-side up, I find she’s almost eye to eye with me, making her at least six foot. Below her mask I can see a pale neck, not covered in steel, and some of the golden hair she’s swept into the hoodie of her jacket.

Her clothes, the mask, the red jacket and the white undershirt, yoga leggings, and white sneakers, all look fresh. Not just fresh like she visited a laundromat before this, but that she pulled the plastic off them about an hour ago. Like this is the first time she’s ever decided to go out doing hero shit. She doesn’t smell much like a mask, because she smells incredible – like real cherries, a scent I’ve only encountered once in my whole life before this.

“Home Run, I presume?” she asks, and I can just hear the smile in it.

I back off from her. First impressions aside, she’s a mask. Not a thug or a gang banger, but a real honest to goodness mask. We’ve got rules, too. First one is don’t attack someone that might be a friend. If they do, they ain’t your friend, like Mr. Spiral here. “You know my name. What’s yours?”

“Call me Kitsune.” She throws up a peace sign, titters, and adds, “I’m new in town. And who’s this guy?”

“I’ve been calling him Mr. Spiral, because of the mask.”

“Wait, you don’t know him?” I can’t tell what expression she’s making behind the mask, but she’s very evocative with her hands, pointing at him and then me like she’s drawing an imaginary line between us. I can’t place the actual emotion, but her Affect radiates warmth.

Her foot rests on Mr. Spiral’s back, her calves and thighs in the yoga leggings working as she bounces her weight rhythmically, the white undershirt shows off her collarbone and the barest inch of midriff.

Holy shit, she’s fucking hot.

“Oh… come on, Gabe,” Megajoule whispers.

He’s right. I shake my head just a tiny bit, to refocus on the task at hand. On the asshole who’s been terrorizing Thanh and his tenants.

Mr. Spiral clutches his head, apparently hurt from this woman’s blow. Why couldn’t I hurt him, then? Maybe it really was that he was just focused on me and she took advantage of that. And that he happened to have a solid skull at the moment she kicked him.

“He’s got some fight in-” Kitsune starts, but mid-sentence, I feel Mr. Spiral become like jelly again in my kinetic sense – bones dissolving into his flesh.

I warp over to Kitsune, hook my arm around her waist, and blast out of there just as he flops onto his back. He sprays the alley where Kitsune was just standing. But now, she’s in the air, in my arm, whooping as I fly away from danger.

We land at the end of the alley where I set her down, and ask, bewildered, “You do realize you’re in a street fight, right? And you definitely know I’m Home Run, the most wanted mask in Houston?”

Kitsune grabs my arm and pulls herself close to me, until we’re practically nose to nose, and in a demure tone, asks, “Am I supposed to be scared of you?”

My heart leaps up into my throat. “I- uh-”

Before I can string my sentience back together, she shoves me out of the path of a torrent of hallucinogenic slime. Mr. Spiral aims his hands, which burst into a jet of the disgusting green molasses, like a geyser erupting from his body. “You think you motherfuckers can just show up and pinch me? Do you have any idea who I am?”

“Just another revolting guy,” Kitsune says, lifting her arm with her fingers splayed. Thin tendrils of metal shoot from her fingers and wrap around the railing of one of the balconies. These cables shoot her upwards like a slingshot, and she laughs the entire way.

I watch, a little out of my mind and a little in awe of this woman, and I can’t help but chuckle at her. She pirouettes above Mr. Spiral, with metal cords flying from her arms to pull her to safety. And then I realize: she’s giving me an opening!

I dash forward, powered by heat, and while his back is turned to me, I smash knee first into his spine. Solid flesh and bone resists me rather than more of the jelly. Mr. Spiral screams and tumbles, splashing all over me and the innocent lady. The world starts to melt and shift on me again as I roll over his body and down the alley. I freeze the goo away as fast as I can, but with just my engrams, it’s not fast enough. My vision returns in sips.

By the time the gray haze retreats from my eyes, he’s walking again (albeit with a limp) after Kitsune, who swings her way back and forth down the alley, trying to keep his attention. I chase after him. She spins overhead, and I look up, and oh man her ass looks great in those leggings.

“Damn, loser, step off me!” Mr. Spiral shouts, elbowing me in the side of the head while I’m distracted. What must be a liter of the slime splashes into my clothes, and I’m down for the count again.

I can’t even believe myself – ogling her while we’re in a fight. I’m not just getting hit when I shouldn’t be, I look like a total idiot.

Not only that, I’m hitting the wall of another problem: I’m gassing out. Without Megajoule’s engrams, I’m working ten times harder to do the same stuff. The stockpile of heat I’ve built up will barely budge. If I could just let it off, just unleash what I’ve got and go into a flow state, it might solve the problem, but I can’t do that without injuring Mr. Spiral’s victim and Kitsune. So my core tightens even more, tightens until it practically grinds my bones. It takes me way too long, at least ten seconds, to get a hold of myself and be rid of Mr. Spiral’s drug.

“Come on, Home Run! This can’t be all you’ve got!” Kitsune shouts at me from one of the balconies.

Mr. Spiral launches into the air on a dark green fountain. His whole body thins out as he rises, and at the peak of the arc, all that liquid rushes back into his body, turning him solid. Another geyser narrowly misses Kitsune, who leaps off the balcony. She lands at the opposite side of the apartment from me, with Mr. Spiral between us.

At this point, we’re attracting a crowd – some of the tenants have their faces pressed against the windows overlooking the alley, and some are even stupid enough to be standing against the railing, yelling and waving their arms at us to stop.

Mr. Spiral looks up and laughs. “Fine, let’s play dirty!”

“I’m sorry, this isn’t dirty already?” Kitsune stands up straight, hands at her hips, her head tilted to the side.

Metis, the goofiness of it all, it just catches me. I can’t help but laugh.

“See, this guy gets it,” Kitsune says, pointing a finger gun at me.

“Oh, shove it, both of you!” Another geyser erupts from Mr. Spiral’s body, this time faster than Kitsune can respond, and she’s caught in the slime.

“Kitsune!” I shout, ready to leap into the fray, until I see her cables emerge from the slime. Kitsune swings out of the current, seemingly unaffected by his power. She locks onto Mr. Spiral and dives over the jet of slime to tackle him. The shiny metal covers every visible inch of her skin, meaning she must be able to control it. They brawl for a few seconds, Mr. Spiral’s form morphing as Kitsune tries to land a knockout blow on something firm. I watch him, looking for a weakness to exploit.

I see it. His arms erupt into another pair of oily jets, launching Kitsune into the air, and for a fraction of a second, his regular body reforms to provide a stable platform.

Just as I’m about to jump into the battle again, I feel someone’s heart slow down next to me.

The lady who was frenching Mr. Spiral. She’s vomiting, shaking, pale. “Hey, you okay?” I ask, trying to get her to look in my eyes.

She stares past me, utterly catatonic.

Her heartbeat flickers. Fades. Gone.

“Oh, fuck.” I watch this woman die in front of me, helpless to stop it.

Is it because I froze the slime off my skin so fast that it isn’t doing the same to me? Or because I’m heavyweight powered, and she’s probably lightweight at best?

Kitsune lands next to me, absolutely drenched in the green slime. She looks like she’s about to make a joke by tapping me on the arm, but then she sees the woman I’m kneeling over. “Oh, shit, is she-”

I whirl around at Mr. Spiral, fists already full of fire.

Mr. Spiral stares us down and shakes his whole body like a bull, covering the alley in a sickly sheen. “I’ve had just about enough of this!”

“Me too!” I charge him, heat bursting in each bounding step.

Mr. Spiral aims his left hand at me, and it’s like staring down the barrel of a gun at high noon. I blast forward, ready to dodge and finish this at last. One good blow while he’s trying to steady himself.

Before I can close this out, his entire right arm erupts into a tidal wave, aimed at all the people on the balcony.

If I’m right, that how hard Mr. Spiral’s power hits you is based on your Affect weight class… it’ll kill them.

I can’t stop it all. Not unless I freeze the actual wave. I’d burn it up if there weren’t bystanders, but again, that’s just as likely to hurt them. With how my power is by itself, I’m not sure I’d be fast enough either way. And really, either way I’m running the risk of gassing out.

But I just see that woman’s heart, dying out. Everyone here, the same fate. All their hearts stopping as they hallucinate to death.

There’s not a choice.

I change direction midair, expel as much heat as I can to fly into the path of Mr. Spiral’s wave as it rears up at the people in the apartments. I release all the heat I can; steam hisses from my jacket, superheated winds whip across the alley. My body relaxes as I unload several hundred degrees all at once. Not nearly as much as I can do with Megajoule’s power, but it has to be enough.

People gasp as I zip by, getting between them and their fatal drug trips. I reach my hand out as I fly, and my fingers meet the wave. I draw in heat, as much of it as I can as fast as I can, and the oily crest freezes into a gas station slushy. My muscles scream for relief from the growing storm inside me – it’s too much to draw in at once.

And I black out, mid-air.