Hiding in an alley between two ruined warehouses, Bedevil removes the Kitsune mask. She holds it in her hands, turns it over.

Home Run. The somehow demigod.

Except not somehow. She knows exactly how. Thanks to her power, she could see the inferno stored within his heart, the extreme agitation of atoms in his body. She watched the storm of heat and energy shift inside him as he fought, watched him trade it out in pieces as he flew like a bullet, watched him take his tax as a fist swung into him or a fire kissed his skin. She’d had him chase her so she could observe his mobility in action - he couldn’t fly, but he could shoot himself at things very fast.

She obviously couldn’t have Dotty run an Affect scan on him, so she didn’t have his Affect signature yet, but she knew he had an absorbing and charging power, just as she had suspected. Her comparison to Megajoule stood. But unlike Megajoule, it seemed Home Run was only a merchant of heat and momentum. Not full spectrum energy manipulation. Just the parts that burn and move and vibrate.

By her best estimation, he’s much weaker than she thought, barely able to stop that other mask. Although that doesn’t… exactly vibe with how he took down Danger Close. Perhaps those were extraordinary circumstances, not unlike adrenal strength. Engramic studies were half art, half science, and there were things they couldn’t account for yet.

And he’d been attracted to her. She’d sensed it, that particular type of instant attention from a boy who’s never touched a girl and suddenly has one talking to him.

“Good grief, who ever heard of a turbo-virgin cloak?” she whispers to herself. She’d played it like a fiddle by flirting with him without an ounce of shame, and watched as he gave her everything she was after. Or at least most of it.

But there’d been something she liked in him, too. With him, she’d felt an immediate ease. A flutter in her own heart. Fighting with him recalled the old days, the glory days, the sun shining on a silver cape, Julian’s smile. Joy, joy, joy.

Maybe she’s just been looking for someone who inspires her. Home Run does; his crusade against Pandahead doesn’t sound like the business of a simple mask or even a megalomaniac cloak. It sounds like something a cape would want to do.

Bedevil sighs, rubs her neck where the mask chafed her. Fighting with just a piece of steel was a pain in the ass. All that precise manipulation made her head thob and now she’s sure she has a migraine. She conjures up a bottle and some whiskey, takes a swig, and groans as it warms her throat. “Why’d this get complicated?”

She has to meet with her mother, but what can she bring besides vague suspicions, Home Run’s word, and what she felt when he spoke?

Bedevil knows how the Affect works, almost as well as Oracle does. And what Bedevil knows is that Home Run doesn’t simply lack the air of deception, the trait of a practiced liar like herself, but that he pollutes the air with his honesty. He was so genuine when he spoke it made Bedevil cringe.

Bedevil steps out of the alleyway, into the sea of dark and light that is Houston’s witching hour. Red blinking lights pierce the purple, starry sky in pulses, the sign of drones hiding in the night. She finds an abandoned, ruined warehouse with a set of offices in the back. She conjures up windows and a proper door, makes the space seem like it must have in the old days. This late at night, it should be as private as locking herself in her bedroom.

Bedevil pulls Dotty from her pocket. The little drone unfurls from it’s tiny ball (the one she tricked Home Run into thinking was her tool for swinging around) like a rose, silently becoming Dotty in a few seconds. The familiar sapphire hue of Dotty’s gaze sweeps over the field before the light lands on Bedevil’s face.

“Mom,” Bedevil says. “We need to talk.”

The field, the sky, the buildings, all of Houston dissolves into vapor. It leaves only the void, like Bedevil is floating at the end of the universe, and there are no stars or moon anymore, nothing but darkness aside from the single point of sapphire light from Dotty.

From the void there comes a great sigh, and Bedevil’s sneakers suddenly crunch on sand. The darkness retreats from this landing point like the tide and becomes an inky sea, ebbing and flowing in a sharp line against the beach. The stars return, although they are wholly unfamiliar to Bedevil, assembled in the sky with the hand of an amateur architect. They are in a pure Affective shard of space, an unreality woven from her Mother’s power and perhaps even Bedevil’s own ideas about the perfect nighttime beach.

But really, if it were the perfect nighttime beach, there’d be a full moon.

Just as Bedevil thinks it, a huge, pale blue moon rises over the horizon, brightening the beach with cold, silver light. It illuminates the surface of the ocean with dancing white lines. And it illuminates her mother, standing next to her.

Oracle appears taller than any human Bedevil has met, even Krater. Her entire being is rarefied, transparent matter, from her skin to her eyes to her floaty black dress that flits around unbound by gravity. She has stolen some of the starlight from the sky for her hair and woven it into a braid that rests on her shoulders like a snake.

“Favored daughter mine,” Oracle says, her words washing over Bedevil’s mind like warm water. “Haven’t you read that you shall not test god?”

“Check out the ego on this gal.”

Oracle groans and waves a hand, obliterating a chunk of the phantom ocean with a thought. “Sometimes, you are impossible, Ruby.” She purses her lips as she studies Bedevil’s memories. “So you… had him? And you simply let him go?”

“Oh, not without tracking him,” Bedevil says, motioning for Dotty to show Home Run’s path through the city. The barest, tiniest sliver of Templar tech, a tracker inserted into his body without his notice while he was unconscious from freezing the wave of sludge. “We’ll know where he’s going, who he associates with. Give it a few days and we’ll know everywhere he usually hangs out.”

“You want to study him.” Oracle pats Bedevil’s neck, tussles a bit of her hair. Her fingers feel so cold, so barely there Bedevil would call them gaseous. But they complete the act of tussling as well as any real fingers. “And we know more about this conspiracy between Danger Close and Pandahead, as well. You’ve done excellent to find all this out so quickly. I can always trust you to ferret out the truth I can’t find beneath their masks.”

“I live to serve, mom,” Bedevil says. The restriction of Oracle’s power – she can’t see into their thoughts if she can’t see their face.

“The war with Doppelganger takes a heavy toll,” her mother muses. “My attention must

However, as she does, a fun little combo of thoughts cross Bedevil’s mind, smashing into each other like a high speed train collision. Doppelganger makes clones… and Home Run reminds her so much of Megajoule and even has a similar power, although he’s not older than twenty by her guess… She says, “About Doppelganger’s cloning…”

Reading that same thought explosion in Bedevil’s mind, Oracle says, “No. Home Run is not a clone of Megajoule. I don’t want to harm you with the details but he did not consent before his death. Additionally, when he died there was no recoverable genetic samples. And by then, Terrence Lilac had become Doppelganger.”

Bedevil nods, accepting her mother’s explanation. Similarities in powers and mannerisms popped up all the time, such was the Affect. Typically, it was just some copycat inspired by the original power. That could be exactly the case with Home Run. He seemed old enough to have been a young teen when Megajoule died. The right age for idolization and incorporation of personality concepts. Perhaps he even dyed his hair the same color.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“You have always missed him so fiercely. I understand wanting to see him in others.” Oracle caresses Bedevil’s cheek, then places a long hand on her shoulder. Her fingers wrap all the way around Bedevil’s arm, and she gently guides Bedevil into her embrace.

It isn’t warm, hugging Oracle. Her mother can’t conjure body heat, the gentle beat of a heart. It’s more like bundling curtains in your arms. Bedevil gets the touch of fabric, the impression of weight - betrayed by cold, empty air between.

“One other thing, before you go. You have some strange feelings for the mask, I suspect caused by your association of him with Megajoule. You must be pathically disentangled from him, immediately.” Oracle cups Bedevil’s face with her barely there fingers and tilts Bedevil’s chin up to meet her shifting eyes. They are dark, enigmatic pools of void, just a fake projection, and not even a very good one at that. But Bedevil holds that gaze, knowing that Oracle knows all of her displeasures, her thoughts, her emotions, because it is better for her to be laid bare and examined than it is to live in the dark the way she did after Megajoule died. “Your near instant affection for this Home Run must be remedied to avoid giving him any more power than he’s already gained. We can’t have you donating your engrams to him.”

“Yes, mother,” Bedevil says.

The dream ocean pulls back, the sand dissolves, and her mother her disappears back into the void. The stars wheel and Bedevil falls like a feather caught in the wind until her feet find the solid ground of the field in Houston.

The next steps are very clear. Bedevil sighs, runs a hand through her hair, and marches off to take the first one.

#

The coward Mr. Spiral, as Home Run had called him, never left her sights - or at least the Vanguard’s sights. Bedevil follows a requisitioned drone’s tracked path on her handheld, a little blue dotted line winding through a 3D graphic map of Houston.

She forgoes Kitsune this time, opting for her cape uniform, but uses the same tricks to travel - tendrils winging her from building to building, only this time made of invisible air, not steel. Far easier for her to manipulate and dismiss.

The drone’s trail leads her to a townhome in the Greater East End. To her left, the heart of downtown rises in glistening spires, and to her right, or more approximately to her five-o-clock, is the lone, crimson tower smiling at her from out of the Null Domain. She shudders and pulls herself up the outer wall to the second floor of the townhome, clinging to it like a spider by creating handholds in the wood.

It’s a ritzy little place for being so far out from downtown. A brick building, so rare these days, with an actual garden and lawn. Gated off, with a nice car, though Bedevil imagines that doesn’t get much use given the condition of Houston’s roads. The only drivable place is downtown.

Mr. Spiral is in the second story living room, sitting on an obnoxiously orange couch, looking utterly human compared to his appearance during the fight. His normal form isn’t anything like what Bedevil expected. Mr. Spiral is a tall but stocky man, with dark gray hair just beginning to turn silver. While watching the late-night comedies broadcast through the Vanguard network, he doesn’t smile so much as twist his lips into a mimicry of one.. He’s got tired old eyes, buried under mounds of wrinkly eyelids and hairy brows, that watch the room like a senior dog. What surprises her the most is his physique — heavily muscled arms absolutely strain against the sleeves of his white undershirt and the legs of his tie-dye pajamas.

Still, nothing she can’t handle. She holds her hand out and Dotty returns to her, floating down from its hiding spot on the roof. The little drone folds up into itself onto her palm.

“Anyone else in the house?” Bedevil asks.

“No one,” Dotty answers.

Good. Bedevil hides Dotty in one of her uniform’s pockets along her back, and then dissolves her cape into gas.

She melts the window with a touch, turning it into water, and floats into the room, suspended by many spider-legs of invisible air. Mr. Spiral is caught in 4K with his mouth agape at the sudden intruder.

“What the fuck? You’re-”

“Charmed,” Bedevil says, holding her hand out. Her power moves through the air, carrying a PK dampener cuff in one tendril, while another moves into his own sofa to animate the wood, canvas, and cotton inside. The materials twist together into tight bands that wrap themselves around Mr. Spiral, all the way from his feet to his jaw. Bedevil allows his head freedom, but she does shape thousands of tiny, sharp teeth into the bands of couch tying Mr. Spiral down. The cuff locks around his neck and whines as it activates - denying him the use of his power. “And you are one… Mr. Spiral.”

“Who- you’re that chick in the white fox mask!” Mr. Spiral shouts. “And that’s not my name!”

“I actually do not care. What I do care about is that you almost killed over a dozen people tonight, and that you’re working for a criminal organization run by a person named Pandahead.”

Mr. Spiral’s mouth drops yet again, and his old dog eyes widen as much as they can with the wrinkly flesh around them. “I don’t- I don’t-”

“You do.” Bedevil floats over to him, turning the TV off with her power. The most wonderful thing about the way it propagates from her means that she can mimic a dozen other powers - telekinesis, flight, super sense, so on. All from her power of atomic manipulation. “I suspect, being a hardened criminal, you know the drill. So you should absolutely talk before this gets ugly.”

Mr. Spiral scowls, but he’s not someone who meets gazes. He looks away with his rage, looks anywhere in the room but her. “I’m not saying anything.”

The rope saws into Mr. Spiral’s right shoulder. He screams like hell, and blood oozes out of from between the cords.

“Your boss is actively kidnapping and killing people. If I have to grind you down to your bones to get information out of you, I’ll do it.” Bedevil holds her hand up as a warning. She doesn’t like being this way, but she can’t help her anger at what Home Run told her, her frustration at what her mother has ordered her to do, and her fear that she’s going to be in this hateful place much longer than she wanted.

Mr. Spiral falls into agonized gasping, his head slumped over, his eyes locked on the carpet. “You- you have no idea what he’s capable of…”

“He’s nothing new.”

“He’s… you should be afraid of him. You should turn your head the other way. I don’t even know how far his reach is.” Mr. Spiral meets her eyes now, and he has the look of a man locked in the stock of a guillotine.

Bedevil plants her white Converse on Mr. Spiral’s shoulder. “Who is Pandahead?”

“I dunno, some guy, some guy!”

Bedevil presses her foot harder. She worms tendrils of air between his fingers, threatens to snap them out of place. “Some guy better get more distinct.”

“I don’t even know if he is a guy!” Mr. Spiral whimpers like a dog that just got kicked. “I don’t even know if it’s one person!”

Now that’s information. “What makes you suspect they might not be? Does the person claiming to be Pandahead change physical appearance?”

“No, not like that. Always the same tiny psychopath,” Mr. Spiral says. “But sometimes, they talk… different. I can’t explain it.

Tiny - a good physical descriptor. She logs it away in her mental file on this Pandahead. “So you work for him sometimes?”

“I—” He cries a little.

“C’mon.”

“The masks, I keep the masks in check for him.”

“What do you mean?” She presses just that much harder into his shoulder. He whimpers, tries to pull free, but he can’t move an inch.

Mr. Spiral grunts, and through gritted teeth, says, “The masks in this city all have it out for Pandahead. He’s—”

She waits for him to answer.

But he looks away, turns his head and shakes it. “I can’t.”

Bedevil’s head is throbbing from all the exertion. It’s been a long night, and she’s coming up against the limits of her power. She doesn’t have time to threaten. But she can manage a few simple cables for as long as it’ll take someone from Houston Hall to arrive. She lifts Mr. Spiral up into the air, still bound up in the PK dampener and the couch ropes. “You’ll be safe from him in a Vanguard cell.”

Mr. Spiral stammers. “I d-don’t think that’s true.”

She ignores him. He’s just scared, like every other eventual informant, of being killed by his boss. “They’ll get the information from you, one way or another. I suggest the easy way.”

“You don’t get it! He’ll devour me!”

Devour? Interesting choice of words. “What are you more scared of? The possibility he’ll find out? Or the certainty that you’ll spend the rest of your life rotting in jail?”

Finally, she’s hit the mark. Mr. Spiral pales visibly, scrunching his face up like this is the world’s most impossible choice. “P-please, I’ll tell you. If you let me go. So I can get the fuck out of Houston.”

Bedevil bites down on her instinctive reply: We both know I’m not going to do that. She remains silent instead, hoping he’ll take that as an agreement between them.

And he does. The secret at the back of his teeth comes tumbling out of his mouth. “He’s taking Affected masks. At least Cruiserweight. I don’t know what he’s done with them but I know he’s made a ton of enemies in Houston.”

She arches an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean taking?”

Mr. Spiral groans more, this time more out of frustration than pain. “I mean taking! Kidnapping! Capturing! Imprisoning! I don’t know what else. He’s ghosting the masks in Houston for some reason.”

Now that’s incredibly odd. It lines up with what Home Run told her, that one of his mask friends had gone missing.

“He’s not killing them?” she asks.

“I mean, he might be, but he takes them first. Lotta gang leaders, lotta muscle.” Mr. Spiral squirms in Bedevil’s cords, looking not unlike a worm halfway out of a cocoon. “Please, let me go.”

Bedevil clicks her tongue. “You have a right to remain silent…”