I haven’t texted the number Kitsune gave me since we met, but I figure now’s the time. I don’t really know how to approach this, as I’ve never had my own phone or anyone to text. Mostly I just talk at people. So I approach it like I would any normal conversation:

Me: Hye.

Me: Hey.

Kitsune: Hye yourself :3 what’s up?

Me: Are you free tonight?

Kitsune: For you, I’m free. You thinking steak dinner or something?

Me: I have a lead on Pndahead

Kitsune: I’m in. Tell me where.

Me: the churhc

Kitsune: On my way to the churhc. :P Fifteen.

“Wait, you want to meet up with some random chick?” Mateo asks, looking over my shoulder as I text her.

“Her name is Kitsune.”

“Alright, where is this Kitsune, then?”

Of course, seeing the church again is not a great experience for him. It’s the same as we left it almost three months ago: riddled with bullet holes, crumbling on itself, scarred and burnt. My thermal sense shows no drones in the area. However, there is a heat signature hiding on the roof. Roughly Kitsune shaped. And then my heart picks up the pace and damn it. I take a deep breath and grab Mateo’s arm. “She’s here.”

“Ooooo,” Mateo melodizes. “Your girlfriend is here!”

“She’s not my…” I jab a finger in his arm. “Why didn’t you say anything like that about the Front? There’s like three women we met one after the other.”

“Yeah but you never went, ‘She’s here.’” His impression of me gets all breathy and low, and he grabs at my arm with ferocity. Then, he wilts and puts a hand to his breast. “You shoulda heard the way you said ‘she,’ man.”

I scowl at him. “Okay, shut the fuck up.”

A couple of seconds later, we land on the roof, Mateo riding monkey on my back again.

Beneath us the church almost seems to be humming and shadows move in the dark. Mateo calls out for Kitsune: “Oh Ms. Fox Lady! Are you here?” I look back at him like he’s fucking insane because he is – he could easily call down a swarm of drones on us, shouting like that.

The white fox mask pokes up from her hiding spot behind a cupola. She climbs over and her sneakers scrape on the roof of the broken chapel, heels treading on the moral heart of the Vanguard.

“She’s real!” Mateo says. “Your girlfriend’s real! She doesn’t ‘go to another school!’”

“Of course I’m real,” she says, laughing as she bounds over. “But I haven’t gone to school in almost eight years.” Once she’s made it over to us, Kitsune draws herself up to her full height, surprising Mateo by towering over him. Towering over Mateo isn’t hard, to be honest; he hasn’t hit a growth spurt yet as far as I can tell. But Kitsune is tall for a woman. Not too much shorter than me.

“Howdy. You’re becoming something of a rock star out there.” Kitsune runs a finger along my jacket. “Nothing’s hotter than a rock star.”

Megajoule’s warning lingers in my mind. Despite every blood cell in my body crying out to flirt back, I take a step back from her. “You might be barking up the wrong tree.”

She leans in and whispers so Mateo can’t hear, “Oh, I’ll bark anywhere you want me to bark,” and then playfully taps my cheek through my mask. “Besides, didn’t we have a good first date?”

Trying to distract myself from the word date I say, “I honestly didn’t know if you’d show.”

“What, and miss our second date? No way, hun. You’re stuck with me.” She points at Mateo, and her Affect speaks of… well it doesn’t speak of much, just like last time “Didn’t expect a third wheel, though. Who’s he? Your little brother?”

“I’m Volition,” Mateo says, puffing his chest up and straightening his shoulders. He doesn’t gain a lot of height on her with this gesture. “And he’s my sidekick, actually.”

“Oh, so this is the brain to the brawn?” Suddenly her Affect becomes readable, and she exudes the briefest bit of joy. She snickers and holds her hand out. “Kitsune. Charmed.”

“He’s the kid,” I say. “The one DC wanted.”

Now, she’s alarmed. She glances back and forth between us. “And you’re dragging him into more danger?”

“Dragging me?” Mateo laughs. “He’s my sidekick, ain’t he? I’m the one dragging him. He’s helping me find Pandahead.”

She goes back to being unreadable, which is more remarkable. Most people I know, once I’ve got the hang of their Affect, can’t simply stop giving off emotions. I can’t do it, either. She must have some pretty impressive training. Which, given that she told me she’s a desk duty cape, makes sense.

“You have something on him?” she asks.

“Yeah. Maybe. An address.”

“I do love a man with a plan,” she murmurs, and thank Metis I’m wearing a mask because my face flushes. “Hopefully the address points to his house so we can run up on him?”

“I wish,” I say, chuckling. I show her the card. “Marskin Delivery. Same people that own the warehouse I found the kid in. This is probably the address of a house serving as an office, from what I’ve been told. Maybe we’ll find a connection to Pandahead there.”

“Alright, we’ll dig around. What’s your friend’s power?”

“Hardlight manipulation. He can only make simple shapes,” I say. “But he can fly and use them as weapons.”

“Right, so I’ll be the muscle, he’ll be the light, and you stand around and look pretty.” She pats my shoulder and laughs a little, then moves on.

Man, I wish I knew how to flirt back instead of getting flustered.

“The fastest way there is if we both ride on Home Run’s back,” Mateo says, making direct eye contact with me.

“That seems improbable,” Kitsune replies. She holds out her hands. “We can shoot rock paper scissors for it.”

I sigh, rubbing my temples. “How about I settle it? Volition, you ride the lightboard you’re very capable of conjuring. I’ll carry Kitsune.” She can move, but I’m much faster, And also feeling her pressed against my back would be nice…

“Fine, fine.” Mateo pulls a thin purple disk out of thin air and jumps onto it, while Kitsune climbs onto my back.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“I’d rather carry you anyway,” I whisper to Kitsune, and she laughs. Her breath tingles my ear, and while I can’t exactly feel it the same way another guy could, it sings warmth into my neck.

#

A few minutes later, we arrive at the address: a three-story townhome wedged in with six or seven others beneath larger buildings. Covered in patches of blue paint and weeds, with a door that looks like it remembers being a brighter color once, the townhome looks like nobody’s been home in a solid year at least. I worry, seeing the broken windows and the other vacant houses nearby, that this is another dead end, scrubbed clean.

I gesture for Mateo to fly around the house and do a sweep of any potential threats. I know there aren’t any but he’ll enjoy doing it anyway. He salutes me and flies off. When Mateo comes back around the other side, a cat hiding on the fence yowls and jumps off, scared by the sudden light show passing overhead.

“Oh, poor thing,” Kitsune turns to watch it run across the road and through a nearby yard. “It’s bad luck to scare cats, Volition.”

“How was I supposed to know it was there?” Mateo asks, hopping down to the ground. “There’s no one, by the way. Not in the backyard or inside that I could see.”

“You like cats?” I ask Kitsune.

“Ha,” she says. “I am a crazy cat lady. I’ve got five at home.”

Five cats? My eyebrows crawl to my forehead. That’s a lot for someone with a late night vigilante habit. “I’ve got a dog, Pawpaw.”

She laughs, still using me to steady herself. Her laughter makes her rub against my arm a little. “That’s a great name for a dog.”

“It’s such a good name,” I agree, and I put my free hand on the arm she’s pressing against me. She looks down at my hand, gives the tiniest of nods, and my heat sense tells me that her heart has quickened.

Then she coughs, and says, “Let’s get in there.”

I vault up to the broken window, click the lock open, and head inside. The building is cold, lifeless compared to the energy in the air outside, and a thick coating of dust covers the furniture.

The front door screeches as I open it for Mateo and Kitsune.

“Welcome, welcome,” I say, gesturing for them to come inside. “Kick up your feet, relax a little while. I was just going to make some coffee!”

Mateo jabs my arm, snickering, and Kitsune says, “Charming place, I love what you’ve done with it.”

We search the kitchen and find it emptied of food and dishes, and all that waits for me in the bathroom is a toilet without any water in the bowl and a smell that threatens to peel my nose clean off my face. There’s no power; none of the lights turn on.

On the third floor, however, are the remnants of an office. A couple of old, chewed up desks and rusting cabinets. My heat sense doesn’t tell me much, but Kitsune marches in and starts digging around.

“Check it out, hot stuff.” Kitsune pulls a few ledgers from one of the cabinets. “Turns out they left some stuff behind.”

Man, she found that on her first try? Unless all these cabinets have stuff in them. I open one up, but it’s empty. I shrug, chalking it up to luck.

Kitsune splays the ledgers out on one of the more structurally sound desks and I join her to look over them. She hooks her arm into mine as we study the documents, making it more than slightly difficult to concentrate. But it feels nice, so I just do my best to focus.

My resolve is rewarded: On the cover of two different ledgers are the addresses of the Marskin warehouses I’ve already visited. Each ledger contains an identical map.

Both maps seem to be receipts of delivery to locations throughout Houston and beyond, from northern Harris County to the Bay Area. I trace along them with my finger, studying each symbol and name. They’re mostly guilds and business I’m not familiar with.

Wedged right in between Houston and Galveston is a symbol of a panda, but no name.

I tap the paper. “What else could that be?”

“That’s impossible.” Kitsune snatches the map up, poring over it with her fox nose inches from the page. The paper rattles from her trembling hands. “Clear Lake… it’s… that can’t be right.” Her Affect suddenly blooms with a cocktail of rage, terror, and sorrow.

Maybe she was there when Carnality went down. Or she lost someone in Houston when it happened. That’s the only reason I can think of for that combo of emotions. “I mean, if I had to hide something horrible like a trafficking enterprise, I think hiding it in hell is a great idea.”

“Clear Lake? What’s wrong with Clear Lake?” Mateo asks.

“It’s a no man’s land. Carnality died not far from there and it got swallowed up in the Null Zone. No powers, the Affect doesn’t work right.” I show him on the map where the Null Zone starts by scrawling a lumpy circle with a red pen that mercifully still works. There’s not enough ink to draw the full area, but I get the idea across. Mateo’s eyes widen as he sees that it swallows much of the land southeast of Houston and Galveston bay.

I fix my goggles, my hand a little jittery with nervous energy. “It’s suicide to even try to cross it. Even for me.”

“What do we do, then?” Mateo asks.

I glance over at Kitsune, who’s looking out the window and seems to be talking to herself.

“We’ll take it to the Front. Epione might know a way to get there.” I fold the paper up and put it in my jacket pocket.

While Mateo scopes out some more of the house, searching for any other clues, I try to see what’s up with Kitsune. She’s standing off by herself, clutching an old curtain in her hands like the cape of a rescuer and staring out the window, I think lost in some memory. “You alright?”

“Yeah. I hope you’re not thinking of going there,” Kitsune says, glancing over at me from the window.

“We’ll figure something out. I’ve got some friends who may be able to help. Maybe they know a way around it.”

“It’s still right in the middle of the domain.” Kitsune sighs and reaches for my arm. “But if you do go, just… be careful.”

“Worried about me?” I grin underneath my mask, lean on the wall next to her. “You know, you can always join-”

“No.” She turns her head sharply away. “I’m not going there. Sorry, no offense.”

I lift my hands in surrender. “None taken.” But rather than let that lie, I ask, “Maybe we can get together again soon, though. Do some mask work, have a nice date?”

For a moment, all she does is look at me. With my kinetic sense, I can feel her heart hammering away, her body trembling. Her Affect speaks of nothing, not even a whisper of emotion, so I’m left in the genuine dark until she reaches for my hand. Her fingers slide past my palm and up my wrist, which she grasps, and says, in her melodic voice, “Alright, Home Run. Third date’s the charm.”

#

“Oh, dear,” Epione says, fretting over the map we recovered from the Marskin office. Seated on our couch (I’m already thinking of it as “mine”), she has the map on the coffee table, where she examines it by the light of a single flickering candle, as our power is currently out.

“You’re shitting me, Homie.” Saw Off chews on her lip, hands on her hips, an eyebrow raised as she looks at the map. “Clear Lake is…”

“Suicidal,” Silent says, coming out of the garage covered in sweat. She’s taken off her jacket and stripped down to jeans and a tank top, but she still has her helmet on in the interest of protecting her identity. It’s an odd image, seeing someone in a mask but stripped as much as they can be without being indecent. “Also, seems like the power’s gonna be down for a couple of days, cause it ain’t on our end. Sorry, HR.”

Since I can’t scowl at her through my mask, I flip her off.

“Now, now.” Epione taps the paper. “We all want Pandahead. You may not realize it, but Home Run has stumbled upon a conspiracy, that once uncovered, will benefit our cause.”

I shrug, but that sparks a thought. “You ever think it’s funny that we have superpowers but there’s not free limitless energy? And the world generally sucks?”

“Why, yes, bless your heart, that is an interesting observation, Home Run,” Epione says. “I’m very glad you mentioned it. There are plenty of capes that could ‘save the world’ if they desired to, capes that can generate electricity, manipulate the forces upon which we rely for survival. Some can manipulate biology and grow food, and so on! If they were to bend these talents to our collective good, then all would be well. But things are not well, and one is left with the simple conclusion: the capes that can save the world simply don’t want to.”

Everyone absorbs that for a beat, including Mateo. “Wow,” is his only contribution. “That’s a bummer.”

“A supreme bummer,” Epione agrees. “Slightly less of a supreme bummer is the location of this drop off point. That has to be what it is.”

My eyebrows crawl up my mask. “Think so?”

“This spot is exactly where PK Resonance once established a base camp to study the Null Domain. They believed it would further their understanding of the Affect and how it relates to the body, as well as the distance an Affect could influence…” she sees us lost already and says, “They were doing research out there. But the facility closed down due to the dangerous conditions of the Null Domain.”

“So he might be using it?” I ask.

“Is it safe to go there?” Saw Off asks.

“Doesn’t matter. We’ve got to,” I say. “This is where we’ll learn more about Pandahead.”

Silent falls into one of her I can’t believe this growl-laughs, and says, “Or it’s an old or false lead. The information could be outdated. It’s a hell of a leap to take going into the literal fifth circle of hell.”

“Caution is important. But… we’ve tested the Null Domain.” Epione nods, tapping the paper. “My power should protect us from its influence. So long as you stay close to me, Carnality shouldn’t be able to possess you.”

“Are you sure?” Silent asks. “Should we really risk you for this?”

“What if Pandahead is the smoking gun we’ve been looking for?” Epione asks. “He’s got to be ghosting masks for a reason. Besides that, even if he is acting entirely of his own agency, it’ll be good to knock an enemy off the board. Earn back some of the masks who have splintered to follow the new Heavyweights in town.”

“Possess?” Mateo says, looking at me with wide eyes. He slaps my arm. “Did she say possess?”

“She did,” I reply, thinking that one person in my head is more than enough. “And also that if you stay close to her, you’ll be fine. But what if the lead is outdated?”

“That is also information,” Epione says. “Not the kind we love… but at least we’ll know it.”

Silent sighs, defeated. “Well, I’ve always wanted to face Metis and walk backwards into hell.”