Instead of her usual Apex provided white and bronze superhero suit, Alex was, for once, just trying to blend in with the crowd.

Tonight, she wore a considerably more casual look consisting of a black leather jacket and dark jeans, constantly tucking her white suit underneath her jacket, hoping Quinn wouldn’t notice the mesh material peeking out of the top of her zipper. As demanded, she was as inconspicuous as a six-foot tall woman with arms larger than most men’s could be, anyway.

Alex was seated a few rows back of the court-side seats in the Ascension Ingot’s fifteen-thousand person capacity stadium, grateful for the dome overhead keeping out the winter air. Tonight’s wrestling event was the first time the stadium had been opened since Ascension shut down after the Surge, and the crowd was absolutely electric, practically foaming at the mouth for every wrestler’s introduction. Two of the undercard matches had already been completed, but Alex had barely watched a second of them.

It used to be her dream to join the professional wrestlers in the ring, leaping from the top rope and putting on a spectacular show just like the ones that had hooked her since she was young, but now she wore a very different type of outfit, and had enough strength to crash through the mat and crack the stadium’s foundation if she tried to drop an elbow off the top ring. Instead of being sucked in by the pomp of the matches like she used to be when watching them on TV, Alex found herself shifting uncomfortably at every errant elbow or knee grazing her back, wondering who might recognize her and decide to attack while she was distracted.

In trying to keep a lookout everywhere, however, Alex’s attention was spread out like an errant radio station scanning through every channel.

Everyone was too close to her, and Alex felt like the stadium walls were closing in, trapping her inside with fifteen-thousand potential threats. When she wasn’t staring down someone for accidentally touching her, her eyes were darting to every scream not drowned out by the crowd’s applause, quickly assessing if it was related to the match or from someone under attack. The Surge had changed her, and not just physically: she hadn’t been out in a crowd for more than six months, and couldn’t remember the last time she was just supposed to…enjoy herself, with another Protector, Weaver, guarding her section of Ascension for the night.

Alex jumped as Quinn tapped her on the shoulder, drawing her focus, beers occupying each of her hands. Deep in thought, Alex hadn’t even noticed her return from the concessions stand. With more than a little embarrassment, she realized that her face must’ve betrayed her frantic thoughts because Quinn stared at her for a moment, her eyebrows raised. “You look like you’re thinking way too much for someone who was talking about this event every day since I started working at Apex a year ago.”

Has it really been that long? Alex wondered, glancing around the packed stadium. A year of fighting, a year as Titan. And what did it get us? The ability to come back to these events, pretending we’re safer now because I stopped a few villains? They’re a threat, sure, but we still don’t know any more about the Surge now than we did then.

Alex glanced around the packed stadium. Apex estimated that around six hundred people in all of Ascension had their DNA irreparably changed by the Surge, with far fewer than that displaying powers that were strong enough or dangerous enough to put them on Apex’s radar. Alex had spent the entirety of the summer skirmishes working to capture the villains Apex deemed the most dangerous, spending months fighting to capture and deliver the villainous quartet that positioned themselves at the top of Ascension’s food chain, but that still left an almost untold number of people out there with powers to do with as they pleased, and no real way for Apex to identify them until they decided to unleash their destructive powers.

“Sorry,” Alex finally said, her shoulders remaining tight. “I just can’t help but look around and wonder if Amperage is going to try and take over the sound system and fry the place, or if the Showman is going to try and rip the roof off.”

“You made the city safe for events like this to resume.”

Alex took another glance around the packed stadium. Is it? She wondered. There’s still plenty of people we never caught, plenty of people who could do serious damage to this stadium before I had a chance to react.

“Incidents are only down for now,” Alex retorted. “There’s still so many people out there with powers that can do things we can’t even dream of. And look at this place! I’m invincible, Quinn-”

“As you so often like to brag,” she murmured.

“-but none of this feels safe. There’s too much risk, too much that can go wrong.”

“What would you like us to do?” Quinn snapped. Alex raised an eyebrow in surprise, but Quinn continued. “Do you want to keep all the regular, squishy people inside forever? Hire a million Protectors and put them on every corner just on the off-chance that Maelstrom breaks out of the prison Apex built in the mountains, somehow hears about this event, and comes here to get revenge against you”

Alex shrugged. “No, I guess not. Events could happen anywhere, really, which is…part of the problem, and part of why it’d be great to have a Protector who can go anywhere he’s needed. “

“He’s working hard to get accepted,” Quinn told her, smiling softly. “But enough about Ethan. It’s your first night off in six months, and if you can at least pretend to enjoy it, maybe you actually will.”

Alex shrugged. “Hard to argue with that.”

Quinn grinned, gesturing to the cup. “I bought you a beer. When’s the last time you even had a drink?”

Alex shrugged. “I…haven’t really had the time to drink since the Surge,” she admitted.

“Now,” Quinn raised her beer, clinking it against Alex’s own, “let’s spend the next two hours watching grown men in tiny underwear jump off ladders on top of each other and pretend to be hurt, okay?”

“Wrestling sounds a little less professional when you put it that way,” Alex said. “It’s actually an extremely technical blend of athleticism mixed with acting that’s very difficult to convincingly portray while remembering your marks and dialogue.”

“There we go,” Quinn smiled, “when Amory told me she had an extra ticket to this event and couldn’t go, I asked her if I was going to go with Alex, or with Titan.”

Alex took a long sip of her beer, her stress alleviating with each sip. “You know I didn’t pick the name, Apex had to give the news something, and after they found out my family was from Greece, they decided to go with it and-”

“Work talk can wait,” Quinn interrupted, grabbing Alex’s arm and pointing to the ring. Without warning, the stadium lights suddenly went dark, and tendrils of thick, gray smoke crept their way through the tunnel, following a figure making their way slowly, deliberately onto the ring. Alex let out a gasp as the lights snapped back on to reveal a man standing in the center of the ring, dark skinned and dressed in a white suit with black flowers detailing up the sides. He had a red rose gripped in between his teeth, his face concealed by his black hat. “What the hell is happening right now?”

“Oh, man,” Alex said, leaning forward. She gripped the plastic seat back in front of her, causing it to snap. She put it back gently, hoping nobody noticed, only to groan when she caught Quinn laughing at her.

“It’s Le Mort Blanche! I am literally that guy’s biggest fan. Me and my Dad would watch every one of his matches. I thought he was retired!”

Suddenly, Le Mort Blanche was engulfed by three wrestlers running at him from every angle, desperately escaping pin after pin. Alex couldn’t take her eyes off the action, captivated watching Le Mort slam each wrestler one at a time, barely holding back the challengers to his decades-old championship belt.

“Maybe this night will be okay,” Alex said quietly, feeling at ease in the chaos engulfing the ring. Leaning back, and with a huge smile on her face, Alex took a big sip of her beer when a sudden scream through her earpiece caused her to nearly choke. She set her drink down hastily, foam splashing the concrete and Quinn’s shoes. Quinn jumped up in surprise. She started to say something, only for her heart rate to spike when she noticed Alex’s finger pressed against her ear, her face locker in concentration. Something was wrong.

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“Titan!” she heard a man’s urgent voice come through her comms, the slight Midwest accent still present through his panic.

“What is it, Weaver?” she asked, trying to focus on his voice over the sounds of his battle.

“I responded to a call of someone damaging infrastructure on the city’s western edge, but it’s someone we’ve never seen before, and they hit hard. They shook me and I’m in pursuit, but it looks like they’re headed to your location! We’ll be at the arena in thirty seconds!”

“Redirect them, now!” Alex snapped, her eyes widening at the cheering people packing the arena. “Divert them anywhere but here!”

“It’s too late!” Weaver cried out. “She’s too strong!”

“Damn it,” Alex yelled, unzipping her jacket and tossing it onto her seat, revealing her white costume underneath.

“What’s going on?” Quinn asked, standing, already on her phone to Amory.

“Call Apex and have them evacuate the stadium, now!” Alex yelled to Quinn, rising into the air over their seats, readying herself for whatever was coming their way. She ignored the gasps from the people around them.

“Tyler, give me everything you can. What’s happening? What can they do?”

“I can’t get any space! She’s shattering every construct I make before I can-ah!”

After a loud thud that Alex had to guess was caused by something slamming into his head, Tyler’s voice cut out, and Alex was met with an eerie silence in her earpiece despite the roaring crowd. Her breathing quickened with anticipation, her eyes darting around the stadium, searching for a threat that only she knew was coming. People were beginning to stare and murmur at the woman floating in front of them.

Without warning, an alarm began blaring overhead, prompting the wrestlers to stop mid-match, one wrestler gently placing another down on the mat. Alex gave a quick sigh of relief when people began to, begrudgingly, make their way for the exits. There were murmurs of confusion, but the proceedings were, for now, as orderly as could be expected.

Quinn to the rescue, she thought, hopefully we can get enough people out of here before-

Without warning, a deafening crack overhead drew all fifteen thousand pairs of eyes upward, including Alex’s own. Without an obvious source, a jagged scar appeared in the top of the dome as if it was ripping itself apart, causing panicked screams ringing out across the stadium.

It was the beginning of a massive disaster, but Alex felt oddly calm. She had feared this moment all evening, but now that it was here, her experience took over, practically stopping time around her. Her breathing slowed. Her legs tensed, ready to launch into action. Her eyes shot up to the roof, working to quantify the highest risk to the most people.

The Jumbotron, hanging over the center of the ring, was secure, for now, but that would change if more of the roof gave away. Alex took a deep breath and launched herself to the roof just as the cracks jumping across the ceiling gave way, sending pieces of rock breaking loose and crashing off the jumbotron, threatening the wrestlers below.

The ring had mostly emptied now as the wrestlers scrambled over the ropes, but Alex flew past a piece of cement the size of a shoebox that slammed against the jumbotron, breaking in two and cracking the slow-to-leave Le Morte Blanche across the nose, drawing blood and sending him crumbling to the mat. Alex shot into the air, hoping to do something to stop the whole dome from crumbling, only to have her attention pulled away by another noise that instantly sent a chill down her spine: the sharp snapping of the jumbotron’s cable, the immense weight of the machinery breaking loose of its binding from the weakened ceiling, sending the jumbotron plummeting towards the ring below.

She changed course mid-flight, gritting her teeth and diving downward, swooping under the jumbotron and getting her hands above her head, sliding them underneath the bottom of the enormous screen. She pushed upward while the thirty ton scoreboard forced its way down to earth, slowing, but not enough to stop a major collision. Alex took a peek down and caught sight of the mat just a few feet away, giving her just one moment to bend her knees slightly before crashing into the mat. The ring gave way under the tremendous weight, groaning as the pieces of wood underneath cracked and splintered, the Jumbotron shifting to the right while Alex broke through the mat and felt Le Morte Blanch roll and bang against her leg, falling through the ring and and landing clumsily on the several foot thick concrete foundation with a groan, soon drowned out by the concerning crack of the concrete threat to give way against the strain of the jumbotron’s weight. She managed to hold the massive scoreboard just above her head, straining and clenching her jaw so hard she thought her teeth might snap.

“Big fan,” Alex groaned, her legs sinking into the concrete foundation. Blanche’s eyes were wide and his skin was the color of his mask.

“I’ll autograph whatever you want if you get this thing off of us!”

Despite not needing the extra motivation to allow them both to be squashed, Alex felt a small smile creep its way onto her face as she used all the strength still left inside her, dropped to a knee, and let the jumbotron slide off to the right, away from Le Morte Blanch. With a screech so loud it brought tears to Alex’s eyes, the jumbotron shattered against the first section of thankfully unoccupied seats sending glass and metal flying into the rest of the still-fleeing crowd, rolled in an unnatural fashion, and finally came to a stop just before it blocked one of the exit tunnels entirely.

Before she could even wipe the sweat from her brow, Quinn’s voice was in her ear. “Left!”

With barely any time remaining, Alex’s eyes shot back up, clocked Weaver’s bright yellow suit ten feet above the ground in the middle of a the falling rock, and launched herself at him, nearly parallel with the ground, wrapping her arms around him and crashing into the stadium wall, leaving a dent in the wall.

Panting and covered in sweat, Alex breathed a sigh of relief that nobody was seriously hurt, then shakily rose to her feet, utterly exhausted. She scoffed when she saw her face plastered to every screen in the arena, waving them off just as a roar of applause broke out from the crowd.

“Is Tyler okay?” Quinn asked. Alex watched his chest rise and fall lightly, noting the cuts and bruises all across his face. “I’ve already called for an ambulance, they’ll be here soon.”

“Barely,” Alex answered, grimacing. She studied his face for a moment, unable to tell what kind of powers his attacker had. There were no obvious burn marks, and no consistent puncture wounds.

“Awesome save,” Quinn said. “I’m working on getting the rest of the crowd evacuated. I’m not a structural engineer, but the roof seems…contained?”

Alex glanced up, squinting against the stadium lights. The highest portion of the domed ceiling had all been ripped downward in large chunks that had lodged themselves in different parts of the stands, some crashing through the seats entirely, leaving jagged chunks of concrete and rebar sticking out of the sections. But up above, she noticed, the ripped portions left an almost perfectly circular hole out to the night sky. The edges, which should’ve been jagged and somewhat random if this were an accident, were completely smooth, as if someone had cut a hole perfectly through the concrete. She shook her head, confused.

“This had to be deliberate,” Alex said quietly. “But…who did it?”

“That’d be me!”

Alex and Quinn’s heads whipped around to the tunnel where the wrestlers had escaped. Walking down confidently, holding a stone spear with a sharp, glowing red tip, was a woman Alex recognized. Alex pointed at her, scowling.

“You’re the Altered I fought in Maybell,” Alex took a step towards her. “You should’ve stayed there.”

“And miss the show?”

Quinn’s eyes narrowed at the woman’s voice. “Who are you?”

“My name is Slate,” Rainey told her, stopping just outside of the now destroyed ring.

Quinn leaned over the railing, trying to get a closer look.

Alex’s eyes narrowed, anger rising in her chest. “You did all this for me? To put on a show? You could’ve killed everyone in here.”

Slate waved her off. “This is what you do, right? Anywhere you are, you save people. You make everyone feel like things are under control, even when you know they’re not.”

Taking a brief glance around, Alex realized the arena was still nearly half full. People had stopped evacuating to watch the showdown.

Why won’t they leave? She wondered, silently urging them to run for the exits before Slate could endanger them further.

“Even now,” Slate said, dragging her spear behind her, circling Alex, “they think you’ll protect them.”

“And they’re right,” Alex told her, launching herself at Slate, her cape whipping behind her.

Rainey, hoping to goad Alex into attacking her first, was ready. She threw up a ten foot tall concrete barrier right in front of herself which Alex crashed straight through, knocking her to the floor with a groan.

With a quick swipe, Slate raked the back of Alex’s leg with her spear, then dodged away, almost as if she was testing to see how invincible Titan really was.

Alex threw herself to her feet, ready to spring back into action, then paused, feeling an odd sensation that was at once strangely familiar and…wrong.

Despite being invincible, she could still feel pain, and right now her leg stung, irritated by the tip of Slate’s spear. She glanced down, not surprised by the slashed fabric, but her eyes stared in disbelief at the red stain growing on her white pants.

The firestone incident had left a small cut in her leg, nothing more than a welt of blood that quickly disappeared. Now, for the first time in over eighteen months, she was fully bleeding, cut by whatever power Slate possessed. And, making matters worse, unlike in Maybell, there were thousand here to witness it. There was an audible gasp from the crowd as Alex’s palm came away from her leg red, smeared with blood from the gash Slate left her. She was suddenly very conscious of the 4,000 or so remaining people watching, almost all of them with their phones out recording or streaming to millions more.

“Guess you’re not so invincible after all, huh?” Slate grinned.

Alex paused. After a moment of near silence in the arena, she smiled, raising her arms up to face her now captive audience.

“Over the past year, I’ve been struck by lightning, smacked by a truck, and flew through the eye of a hurricane,” Alex yelled, her voice echoing through the stands. She wiped the blood on her sleeve, staining it red. “It’s going to take a lot more than a cut to take me down.”

The crowd roared its approval while Slate looked shakier than before. She lowered herself into a crouch, spear out and ready to strike.

Despite the pain, Alex smiled, but a thought nagged at her in the back of her mind.

The only person who knows how I can be hurt is Ethan, she thought. So either he voluntarily told her, or he’s in a lot of trouble.

Slate rushed at Alex, who parried her spear aside with her forearm, careful to avoid the tip.

Wherever he is, he’s going to have to wait if he needs my help.