The necessity of the London Superhuman Accords is obvious when you examine any of Earth’s mightiest heroes in the context of pre-super law. The original seven Guardians would’ve been charged for so many counts of manslaughter that none of them would’ve seen the sun ever again.

It is unfortunate, but supers play by a different set of rules. Especially heroes.

Here’s a tip: never give a hero the trolley problem. A fair chunk of them will kill everyone inside to save one person.

Villains, surprisingly, are better at it. Well, kind of. At the end of the day, everyone chooses to save themselves.

Don’t even get me started on what happens when we involve vials.

- Excerpt from a speech given by Professor Ashton Lionel to the United States House of Representatives

#

The city was shockingly easy to get through. Even after living here for a solid year and a half, Vivian could never get used to how empty the streets were. In San Francisco, there wasn’t a quiet alley to be found. Just walking outside was an exercise in itself, involving a lot of elbowing, shoving, and shouting.

Here in cloudy Indiana, there was nothing to do but run.

“Hold… on…” Vivian gasped, panting. I am so going to start treadmilling after this.

Despite his claims of sitting around and giving orders all day, Lachlan was stunningly fit. His wiry frame matched Vivian’s, but there was a lot more strength and stamina hidden in there than in her body.

“You really are new,” Lachlan said, slowing down to a much more reasonable jog that was barely faster than his walking speed. “Most supes start working out pretty quick. Except Synths. And Marksmen. And Monarchs. And—okay, never mind.”

“Are you…” Vivian panted, struggling to catch her breath, “calling me… fat?”

Thankfully, Lachlan was an Esper, and he caught the humor that she’d failed to inject into her voice. He laughed, full-throated. Vivian found herself extremely jealous of the fact that he had enough breath to do so.

“You’re doing great,” Lachlan said, mirroring the text Sunrise had sent her earlier. “We’re coming up on the bank. Just a block further. Let’s take a moment to rest so we don’t sound like we’re about to puke all over the floor when we get there.”

“You sound like you’re about to go pick flowers,” Vivian panted. She was stupidly proud of herself for managing the full sentence without having to stop. “Just me. One sec.”

She needed about seventy-five to restore her breathing to something approximating normal.

“Uh, Lachlan,” she said once she had enough of her breath back. “I kind of still have an identity to preserve, so…”

“Figured you’d say that,” he said, flashing her the same infernally easy-going grin he had at her door. Lachlan reached into unfairly deep jeans pockets and handed her a fistful of black fabric. “I come prepared.”

She took the cloths. There were two of them—one was a cloth mask much like the medical one she’d worn yesterday, just much smoother, and the other one went around her eyes.

“Use both, either, or neither,” Lachlan said. “They stick on their own, but they’re pretty easy to take off. Oh, yeah, the eye mask is single-use. You don’t have an allergy to latex, do you?”

Vivian shook her head, then put both on. They didn’t restrict her vision, so she figured having both was helpful.

“To be honest, I don’t know how much they help hide your actual identity, but I guess it’s enough to signify you care,” Lachlan said.

“And you don’t?”

“Nobody left to care about,” he said easily. “Being a hero’s all I got now. You ready?”

That gave her pause. Everyone’s got their demons.

“Almost,” she said. “Do you have pepper spray?”

Vivian had meant to replace the bottle that Jester had smashed to pieces, but that was something she’d planned on doing today. Evidently, she was not doing that.

“Oh, do I ever,” Lachlan said, unstrapping his backpack. “You would not believe what I’ve got in here. Looking forward to what you can do.”

He tossed her a bottle.

I hope this works.

#

Their target was a bank. The same bank that Vivian had a credit card with, actually, though she’d never been to this branch by virtue of never having a reason to head into Lafayette. The city was a dead-end town, one of those places that people only moved into if they were attending college or desperate.

“How did you figure out they were robbing a bank?” Vivian asked. She’d put her earbuds in for this, and the police scanner had corroborated Lachlan’s declaration.

She gave the bottle of pepper spray over to her telekinesis and took her phone out with her now free hands, typing Lachlan Lafayette into the searchbar of an open wiki tab.

“You’re not going to find anything useful on the wiki,” Lachlan said, looking over her shoulder. She startled.

No results found for Lachlan.

“Like I said, I don’t have an official name yet. I’m not in the system. I’ll let you know, though. I’m an A-rank Esper with a D-rank Esoteric subclass, and the gist of my deal is that I can detect when superpowers are active. To some extent, I can sense what their users are feeling and what those powers do. I also have a pretty standard suite of Esper powers, but I won’t get too deep into it. I tracked down the usage, found the location, and, well, I’m not sure why else someone would be using powers at a bank, so…”

“You’re a Meta?” Vivian asked, stowing her phone into her jeans pocket.

“You keep up with super news, huh?” Lachlan replied. “If it becomes an official designation, then yeah, I think I get the entire packaged classified as an A-rank Meta with some Esper stuff. I haven’t paid much attention to it, though. It doesn’t change how I operate.”

“How I operate” apparently included having a handgun in his pocket, which he drew now as they wrapped around the back of the bank building. Lachlan explained that they were far less likely to accidentally get someone killed if they went through the back. If he noticed Vivian trying to hide her reaction to that, he hadn’t commented.

To be honest, Vivian was surprised. She hadn’t known Lachlan was capable of not barrelling straight at the problem.

Then again, that weapon…

“You allowed to have that?” she asked, gesturing at the pistol. “They’re illegal in most states, aren’t they?”

“Not for Guardians,” Lachlan said, running his hand along the back wall. He stopped when he found a false brick, which opened up to reveal a panel. “I mean, what else do you expect me to do? Talk them down? I don’t go for lethal shots, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

I shouldn’t either. Vivian needed to look into biology. Right now, her power was either near-useless or immediately lethal, and neither of those were particularly helpful for hero work.

Lachlan typed a long string of numbers into the panel, and the locked door in the wall swung open. “That’ll pop the silent alarm. Not that it matters, since I already told the authorities, but in case you ever get locked out of the bank, try the code After you?”

“Hold on,” Vivian said. “Let me try something real quick. Back up.”

Her direct telekinesis wasn’t going to be helpful today, but she’d confirmed with Rachel that she had good fine control.

Lachlan raised an eyebrow as she pointed the pepper spray straight up, apparently realizing what she was trying. “By all means.”

He backed up and Vivian pulled the trigger, ready to run at a moment’s notice. She had never been pepper sprayed, and she wanted to keep it that way.

Thankfully, she was right. Though her power wasn’t particularly strong, it was precise, and she was able to take hold of the capsaicin spray as it flew out, applying enough force to first counteract the bottle’s pressure and then gravity. She bunched it together into a spherical, rusty-colored cloud the size of her head.

Lachlan whistled. “Don’t hit me with that.”

Contrary to his words earlier, he walked in first. Vivian appreciated that. She didn’t exactly have experience clearing a bank of villains.

Wait, didn’t Lachlan say they didn’t let him into the field?

Oh well. They could be clueless together. Surely there was no way this could go wrong.

It went wrong almost immediately.

#

The first sign that this robbery wasn’t all that it seemed was the silence. Lachlan and Vivian both dropped to whispers when they walked in, conscious of the fact that nobody was angrily yelling for order.

“You know, the average bank robbery steals less than ten grand,” Vivian whispered, as focused as she always was, which was to say not at all. “Shouldn’t they, I dunno, be selling drugs or something?”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

The transaction last night had been for over twice what they could expect from this. Twenty-two thousand.

“I dunno.” All trace of humor had disappeared from Lachlan’s voice. “It’s Killjoy and Ephialtes. B-rank Synth focused on ingestible drugs, D-rank Washer with touch-range fear attacks. Don’t let either of them get close to you. They’re both in the lobby.”

None of the doors to the individual offices showed any sign of entry. Lachlan didn’t try any, focused entirely on what lay ahead, but Vivian tried using her power on the handles. They didn’t budge. Locked, every last one of them.

They discovered the reason the bank was so quiet when they finally made it to the lobby.

Two costumed figures stood in the lobby next to open bags full of wallets, handbags, and phones.

They didn’t even bother looking for cash.

Then Vivian took in the rest of the lobby and bit back a startled yelp. Lachlan huffed out a curse.

Twelve, thirteen… fourteen bodies lay unmoving on the ground, with another three keeled over on their desks behind bulletproof glass.

“Pleasure to meet you,” the woman who must be Ephialtes said. She sounded like she was on her third pack of cigarettes. Vivian faintly recognized her armored white bodysuit. There’d been a lesson on the mind influencing Washers a couple weeks ago in AS 120. Maybe this woman had come up?

Lachlan paled. “Oh, god.”

“Only two?” Killjoy asked. “We were supposed to get more, weren’t we?”

Now that he was only a couple dozen feet from her, Vivian had a much better view of his costume. Once upon a time, Killjoy had worn a stylized full-face mask alongside a leather coat that made him look like a true mad scientist. These days, his chosen design was a World War I gas mask and a bulky vest. He was strapped to the gills with canisters of what Vivian could only assume were his Synth drugs.

“What did you do to these people?” Lachlan’s voice shook, but his grip on his pistol was firm. “Answer me, Aiden. You were supposed to be the best of us, you fucking coward.”

Both of the villains wore coverings that obscured their expressions. It wasn’t enough to hide Killjoy’s full-body flinch. He righted himself, clasping both hands behind his back, but his silence told Vivian everything she needed to know about how he felt about that.

“They’re not dead,” he said finally. “You can check for yourself, Guardian. I wouldn’t break the accords.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Lachlan said thinly. He kept the gun pointed at the Synth.

Vivian looked back and forth between the two, unsure of their history and of what she could do next. Killjoy and Ephialtes were both out of her range, and she couldn’t get closer without them clearly noticing.

“We want to take these two down?” Ephialtes asked. “I know we were supposed to wait until more came, but it can’t hurt to start now, no?”

“Chill, Ephi,” Killjoy said, raising a hand. “This guy looks to be a fan of mine. What’s your name, supe? I ain’t seen your face before, but you’ve seen mine and those are Guardian colors. You new in town?”

Come to think of it, Lachlan had told her that he’d been here only half a year. From the vehemence of his reaction to the drug Synth, she’d assumed they had personal history, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

I wonder what Lachlan’s deal is.

Lachlan glared at the villain. His teeth were grit so hard that when he spoke, it came out as a hiss.

“Traitors don’t get to know my name.”

The gunshot was deafening.

Vivian had only heard actual gunfire a handful of times in her life before, and even then only in controlled settings with ear protection and the mental preparation that it was going to be loud.

Lachlan fired the gun right next to her. She wasn’t even wearing earbuds. She hadn’t expected it.

Her hands flew to the side of her head too late. Ringing reverberated through the right side of her skull, and she could barely hear Killjoy grunt in pain as he stumbled back.

Ephialtes sprinted forward, her mouth opened in a muted scream.

Lachlan fired again.

Earlier, he’d claimed he was going for non-lethal shots. Vivian suspected that he didn’t have a great idea of what “non-lethal” meant, because Ephialtes nearly doubled over as Lachlan’s shot hit her in the abdomen.

Then again, maybe he had a better idea than her. Ephialtes stumbled back—and did not fall. She rose to her full fight, visibly wincing, but her bodysuit looked to be armored heavily enough that the bullet hadn’t penetrated.

“That’s going to bruise like a bitch,” she said, rubbing her gut to emphasize. “You’ll pay for that, Guardian boy.”

Killjoy, too, was holding his side in pain but didn’t seem debilitated by the bullet. He spread his hands, revealing a chipped plate of armor where Lachlan had hit his vest.

“Hero with a gun talks shit to me about morals,” Killjoy said. He snorted. “What a joke.”

“The next ones will be lethal,” Lachlan said evenly. He seemed like an entirely different person now. His unmasked face twisted into a cold sneer. “Ephialtes, your effective range is less than five feet. Get that close to me and you’ll have a closed-casket funeral. Give it up. Guardians are en route.”

Which of your faces are real? Vivian, who had still yet to do anything of note other than bravely prevent her cloud of pepper spray from hitting herself or Lachlan, had to admit that she was a little scared of the boy to her right. He’d gone from cheery and flippant to cold and cruel in instants.

Like always, the memories came back at the worst time. If I was the kind of person who could tell, he might still be alive.

Killjoy shook her out of it by speaking. “Kid, I’ve been here for three damn years. Y’know I was with the Guardians for half a dozen before that?”

“Experience is a poor substitute for competence,” Lachlan said. “Hands off the capsules.”

Ephialtes took an angry step forward, arms raised. Lachlan adjusted his aim.

In that instant of distraction, Killjoy unclipped a fist-sized capsule from his vest and slammed it to the ground.

Thick blue smoke billowed forth from the capsule, engulfing both of the villains instantly. The cloud spread fast, covering the room in instants.

“Shit!” Lachlan yelled. He blindly fired into the cloud once, twice, three times, and even though Vivian plugged her ears with her fingers, the noise hurt and it drowned out whatever else he was trying to say. She caught only fragments through the bang-bang-bang report. “—you—ck—mok—“

“I’ll try!” she shouted back, hoping she understood him right.

Vivian focused on her telekinesis. She’d gone over this with Rachel: her restrictions were limited only to the amount of force she could apply. When she spread that across the entire radius of her control, that was very little force for quite a lot of space.

But even a small amount of artificial wind was enough to prevent the aerosol from hitting either of them. She carved out a small clearing within the rapidly-expanding smoke, pushing any blue particulates back beyond the border of her power’s range. Beating it back and maintaining her cloud of pepper spray at the same time was difficult, but barely manageable.

“Thanks,” Lachlan said, putting his gun down. His eyes flicked from point to point, looking for shapes in the smoke. He sounded like he was underwater, which might’ve been because everything was muffled to Vivian’s ears. “Keep an eye—“

She didn’t see the moment Ephialtes’ power hit him, but she caught the change in composure. He stopped halfway through his sentence, and when she turned to look at him, he was hunched over, breathing hard.

His mouth moved, but Vivian couldn’t hear the words. Lachlan looked up, and Vivian recoiled.

Dilated pupils, widened eyes, fast breathing bordering on hyperventilation—he was panicking.

Wasn’t Ephialtes supposed to have a touch-ranged power? Where is she?

Was it the smoke? It couldn’t be the smoke, could it? Vivian was still diligently clearing the area for it.

Lachlan was not doing well. He looked up, saw Vivian, and tripped backwards, shuffling away from her.

“Lachlan, it’s me,” she said stupidly. She held out both hands placatingly. “Let’s—“

“Get the fuck away from me!” Lachlan screamed. His hands shook as he brought the gun to point at Vivian’s face.

She flinched, instinctively ducking. Lachlan followed her movements, his trigger finger twitching. A thrill of hot fear blazed through her. One wrong shudder and I’m dead.

Cautiously, she lowered herself into a crouch, Lachlan’s wild eyes following her the entire time. She backed up as slow as she could. At the same time, she changed the parameters of her telekinesis, ready to dive into the gradually-thinning smoke cloud if necessary.

Easy does it. Easy—Lachlan screamed, clutching his head with one hand. He convulsed, and he fired again.

This time, the thundercrack of the pistol shot was accompanied by a quieter, higher-pitched snap and the phantom sensation of wind. Vivian’s heart jumped into her through. He almost shot me.

She acted, dropping the hasty telekinetic boundary she’d made in order to put more power into the capsaicin cloud. The contents of an entire bottle of pepper spray hit Lachlan in the eyes. He started screaming louder, and Vivian reestablished her defenses against the smoke, dropping control over the spray entirely.

“Ow ow ow ow OW FUCK—“ Lachlan cried out as the blue smoke flowed over him, obscuring him from view. She heard him hit the ground, whimpering in pain.

“Sorry,” she said.

There was a moment of silence.

Then Killjoy whistled. “Goddamn, Ephi. Good hit. Wanna do the other one?”

The other one? Vivian’s eyes widened as she realized what that meant.

“Wait, no!” she managed to shout, and then the power hit her.

Around her, the smoke started to fade, revealing the prone forms of fourteen—fifteen now, including Lachlan—bodies.

An all too familiar pressure set in, squeezing, burning, killing, and all she could see were the bodies. The bodies. The bodies. Their bodies. They wore her mother’s face, her brother’s, they weren’t moving and wouldn’t move and it was all her fault and then the corpses were moving and they wanted to get to her and they would never forgive her because they couldn’t forgive her because they were dead and gone and it was all her fault—and all she could think was go away go away go AWAY.

She lashed out with her power, shoving away anything and everything and everyone that got close, strike after strike after strike.

Abruptly, the worst of the panic faded. Her eyes unclouded. The smoke finished dissipating, entirely spent, and it revealed a room of people that were unconscious but still breathing. Her mother and brother weren’t here. They couldn’t.

The pressure didn’t let up. It wouldn’t for at least an hour, she knew. Vivian sucked in a deep breath, looking around. Her heart still pounded in her chest like it wanted to break out.

Ephialtes was on the ground, full-body spasming like a fish out of water. She hacked out a cough, and blood splattered onto her mask from the inside.

It was tinted blue.

Somehow, the first thought that came to mind wasn’t did I just kill another person or did I win or even what happened to her? It was that’s a really weird color of blood.

“Ah, shit,” Killjoy said.

Vivian whipped her head up at the sound. The villain still had wisps of blue smoke trailing off him, but he was at the door of the lobby. He had a capsule in his hands.

“Ephi couldn’t handle it,” he said, shaking his head. “Sucks.”

“You talking to me?” Vivian asked. Was she supposed to take him down? She could barely breathe, her heartbeat was so heavy. Maybe just capturing one would be enough to mark this as a success on her hero record. Wrong thing to think about.

“Sure,” Killjoy said easily, flipping the capsule around in his hands. “See, Guardians are on their way—“ he indicated the outdoors, which was how Vivian belatedly realized she could hear sirens approaching, “—which means I gotta bounce. Can’t have you chasing me, though, so here.”

He rolled the capsule into the lobby.

“Paralytic,” he explained. “It’ll lock your muscles up, maybe give the people on the ground some minor to major organ damage. Don’t worry. It shouldn’t freeze you longer than a day. Don’t push Ephi too hard, okay?”

And with that, he walked through the sliding doors, turned right, and walked out of sight.

The canister started to produce smoke.

Vivian cursed, dashing to it as fast as she could. He hadn’t rolled it in very far, and it stopped right next to someone’s prone body.

The moment she got within range, she focused the entirety of her telekinesis on holding the gas in. She was essentially penning it in with a low-power wind, but it grew progressively harder as more and more gas spilled out.

It was, at least, a task with an answer. Unlike the open-ended question of how I stop a robbery, this was something she could manage.

Elsewhere in the room, Ephialtes vomited up more blue blood. Lachlan hadn’t stopped screaming and clawing at his eyes. Most of that was probably Vivian’s fault.

Somehow, Vivian relaxed. Using her power to stop gas from paralyzing her

When Alexander (supposedly the Great) arrived ten minutes later alongside three supers she barely recognized, they found her kneeling over a contained sphere of noxious green gas in a bank lobby with fourteen unconscious customers, three unmoving tellers, a villain who was still uncontrollably shaking, and Lafayette’s greatest heroic Esper curled up and whimpering. At least Lachlan’s voice had given out at some point.

“Unregistered super,” Alexander said. “You are—“

“This isn’t what it looks like,” she said.

“You’re not the only functional super left in a lobby full of bodies?”

Vivian considered things. “Shit. Okay, it might be what it looks like. Also, I wouldn’t touch this gas. Killjoy said it was a paralytic.”

His gaze softened, and he gestured for the other supers to start helping. “I don’t know who you are, but you did good work, kid. We’ll get this sorted out.”

Then he looked elsewhere. “Holy hell, is that Lachlan?”

Vivian sighed.

It had been a long morning, but it wasn’t quite over yet.