In our dearly misguided and shallow nation, which we must appreciate no matter how unfair it can be, we have exactly three-hundred-and-sixty-six superpowered persons scattered throughout. Every superpower has at least one countering superpower, which can often be the immediate downfall of a great hero or villain. For example, one of the greatest villains in our history, the Perilous Veil, plunged all of Benediction—from the lighthouses stationed at the wave-breaking outcrops of the bay, to the jagged rock pools miles back from Central Benediction—in darkness for almost an entire year at the peak of his power. Then, the Ad Astra of their time, a young hero with supernova abilities, came of age and, long story short, the man with overwhelming powers of darkness could not cope with such light, and balance was restored after an almost anticlimactic bout of fisticuffs.

Invisibility happened to be one of Tobias's counterpowers, but he felt even further countered, and outmatched, by his feelings for her. It always felt unfair to fight against your counterpower—something he had rarely had to do, and even more rarely had to do alone—but it was a great deal more unfair when they happened to be your weakness in a more emotional sense.

I could not provide justice to the emotions Tobias felt as he clamped his clammy gloved hands on the desk and waited for his beloved friend to make a move. It was a complicated blend of anxiety, relief, love, and excitement. She would not show him recognition, he was almost certain of that, at least. He bit his tongue to keep himself from whispering her name, from telling her it was only him—it was Tobias! He bit his tongue to keep from asking her to put on protective gear. His heart pounded in his chest.

A blade stopped his breath, sharp and curved against his throat.

Brows high and arched, he met Viola Mae's purple, slanted eyes as they shimmered into view behind a black, angular mask and he stared with as much wonder as fear. His breath returned slowly, as steady and calm as his hands as they came off the bench to raise peacefully. Perhaps she could not see the marveling and excited little upturn of his lips behind his blue mask, but he knew that the slight wrinkle in her brow came moments after their eyes met and his creased and flicked from her to his still hands, to her.

The knife lifted slightly.

"Who are you and what is your business here?" boomed a voice to interrupt his moment's peace. Tobias whipped around, Spectre's knife pulling reflexively away to keep from slicing his throat and ending him then and there—which would have been highly against Higher Defense Headquarters' protocol.

Tobias's eyes narrowed and his fingers curled to trembling fists at his sides. "I work here. I worked with the head scientist," he growled through clenched teeth and incessant mental reminders to himself to keep it together. Benjamin Jones, the cowardly swine... He stood so boldly and superiorly in his spandex, chin tilted with his arrogance, as if goading Tobias to kiss his feet just for arriving. Tobias sneered inwardly, though behind his mask and fitted hood, schooled his expression to a blank slate. He tried to disguise his voice, speaking in a lower pitch and a slight accent, "I mistyped the alarm code."

Mr. Might swaggered one step closer, his wide chest a hair's width from Tobias's raised chin as he maintained tense eye contact with the fully-covered man dwarfed in his shadow. The arrogant hero's perfect, photogenic face broke into a perfect, photogenic smile, and Tobias began to sweat. "I think you are lying to me."

Tobias swallowed and shook his head. His mind went blank. Was this it? Had they found him out, already? His head spun. One hand slowly snaked behind himself, crawling cautiously but certainly towards the petri dish of S.S Inhibitory Virus. A sharp blade slithered across his knuckles, tearing open his glove, and he pulled his bleeding left fingers to his chest. The fingertips of his latex protection fluttered to the floor, exposing his red skin to sight and to contagions. He thrust his hand into his coverall pocket and pulled out a fresh glove; as a good scientist was always prepared. Though he had not stocked his pockets that day, a few extra disposable masks and gloves were tucked inside from a previous use.

Before he could pull the glove on, a tangle of thorny vines wound around his wrists and constricted them until he, gasping, dropped the glove and cried out sharply, voice undisguised, "Enough!"

Vine Voodoo watched him, the plants climbing her limbs shifting restlessly. The vines binding his wrists tightened sharply, then relaxed enough that blood could flow.

"What was he reaching for, Spectre?" Vine Voodoo asked, nodding towards the covered dish.

"No, don't—" Tobias protested, earnestly desperate to keep his friend away. She raised the knife to him and he bit his tongue and stood back.

Spectre pulled the paper towel away and her eyes grew wide, then narrowed in an instant. "A virus."

The three heroes stepped away swiftly, crouched tensely with all their eyes focused suspiciously and dangerously upon him. Spectre exchanged her curved dagger for two lethal throwing knives. Mr. Might held his hands out before himself, fingers relaxed and ready to curl to fists instantly should force be required. Vine Voodoo's plants, Tobias noticed almost too late. He never noticed her enough. She was not his lover, nor his enemy, but she was a hazard that always lurked. And just moments before she performed her sneaky attack, he predicted it with barely enough time to throw his hands down to his shin.

In a second that flashed past too fast for his own comprehension, Tobias was on the floor, his spine slammed against the hard tile in an explosion of white pain and blindness. He was barely conscious of his own voice escaping his chest, propelled out of his lungs like gunfire in a blast of overwhelming pressure. His fingers came away from his peg leg's boot, gnarled tensely in agony.

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It was all he could do to lift his head to ogle his feet and collapse back in relief at the two boots that remained attached in his two-legged man disguise. He wheezed, letting out a whine in the back of his throat that was equal parts pain and shock. His eyes blinked blankly at the bright white lights overhead and the blurry, white-speckled visions crowding the corners of his eyes. Something wet tickled his lips. It tasted of iron.

He lay confused, unbreathing, uncomprehending, tasting the warm blood as it streamed from his nose. Voices echoed in his head, sounding so distant and dissonant that he could not make any sense of what his spinning head glimpsed. It all blended together under the ringing of his ears.

Mr. Might stood over him, looking down. Backlit by the bright white LEDs overhead, he appeared dark and looming like a shadow. Tobias couldn't move, staring speechlessly as the man's fingers curled around his surgical mask and pulled it, with his hood, off to expose his false brow and straight blonde ponytail. Mr. Might crouched, tilting his head at the downed man's new disguise. He slid his costumed hands into Tobias's coverall pockets and turned them out. A few masks and a handful of gloves and pens spilled to the floor, along with an expired identification card with his real face and details inscribed. Mr. Might considered one of the masks for a moment and eventually put it on, then tossed one to each of his team. He held up the card between two fingers. "Toby's I.D? Why would he have Toby's I.D?"

Tobias tried to speak, but only a pathetic wheeze staggered from his parted lips. He gasped for air.

"Is the virus that he is working with active? Why did he reach for it?" Vine Voodoo asked. On the job, away from cameras, her hippy-speak was lost to seriousness. All her 'right on's and 'solid's were mere tools in a role that made her stand out among other nature callers. "Before you get all wrapped up in who the man is, make sure that we aren't about to pick up some sort of dangerous contagion that we know absolutely nothing about. Is the virus dangerous? Can we be infected? Why is he working with a virus, and why is it in Tobias's lab? And, again, why did he reach for it?"

Mr. Might shook Tobias's shoulder, jostling every bone and organ in the man's shocked body and jumbling further the thoughts and futures screening unfathomably through his mind. Leafy vines pinned his arms and chest to the floor. Mr. Might lifted his head by his collar.

"We want answers, "Toby"," Mr. Might sneered, waving the old I.D before his eyes in what was hardly more than a blur to Tobias.

Tobias nodded groggily, gulping. He tried to raise his hands in peace, but his arms would not lift from the floor, held fast by rustling plants. "Pinkerton!" he gasped, pressure exploding in his chest. His hands slipped from the vines as they loosed, Vine Voodoo keeping them threateningly nearby in the case that he would become aggressive, or make it clear he was hostile. They bobbed like cobras before a snake charmer. Tobias raised his hand to dazedly smear the blood dribbling from his nose and pointed to a lab coat hung by the door. His chest rose and fell more surely. "Wilbur Pinkerton," he panted, barely remembering his false face himself. "I'm Wilbur Pinkerton. I worked with... Dr. MacClain."

Vine Voodoo suspiciously stalked towards the coat. She rifled through the pockets at its waist, then turned it around to where an identification card was clipped to the breast. She unclipped the card, frowning at it, and held it out at armlength, eyes flicking between it and the shuddering scientist on the floor. "It checks out."

He exhaled heavily with relief and collapsed fully backwards, hair billowing over the tiles.

Mr. Might frowned, narrowing his eyes. "Why do you have Toby's I.D on you, rather than your own? And why should we believe you work in this lab?"

"All the protection equipment..." he panted, "... looks the same. He must have... left the I.D in... there... the pocket." Tobias massaged his aching head. It was painful to maintain a false accent on top of the wooziness. "There is a log by the door in the locker room, to the hallway. It's on the wall, on a plastic shelf. Can't miss it."

Spectre appeared moments later with an average-sized black-covered book, lifting it in the air. "He's in it. There are even logs of what they did each time."

"That is classified," Tobias snapped, lifting his head sharply. The sudden ferocity made him dizzy, and he slumped back again, head lolling on the cold, hard floor. "Put it back, please. You wouldn't like what I do. What Tobias did."

Vine Voodoo nodded to her. "The Director would be flip if we snooped more than we have to for the case. Put it back where you found it, sister."

Spectre loped back through the door to the locker room and returned empty-handed, frowning.

Vine Voodoo interjected before Mr. Might could continue his interrogation. "What you and Tobias did... You are working with a virus? Is it dangerous?"

Tobias nodded, closing his eyes. There was a migraine coming; he could sense the familiar ache rising gradually. More than that, there was the bleeding nose and the blurry vision, added to the scattering of his senses and his thoughts, and the suddenly overpowering urge to sleep. The one thing he could grasp from it all was that his powers would be of no more use to him until he had rested and eaten. He was spent, stamina all but depleted. He was supposed to be stronger. Why was he so weak? It felt unfair. Frustrating. Infuriating.

"There's another one over here," Spectre's voice said from the direction of the incubator. "It is labelled differently."

"It's... research," Tobias breathed. "Please... go."

"Is this really what Tobias worked on?"

Tobias nodded again, tiredly wiping away another slug of blood. Mr. Might's hand felt strong and unwelcome on his back as the hero pushed him up to sitting, where he slouched. His spine tingled with small shocks; his shoulder blades twitched at stabbing pains. Vine Voodoo's plants retreated to their caller, spiraling around her limbs.

"What is it?" Vine Voodoo asked. "Why did you reach for it, if it's dangerous?"

Tobias coughed and moaned. "Classified. I..." He took a deep breath, trying to conjure a lie that sounded better than the truth of how he thought he had a chance at stupidly, carelessly infecting Benjamin. "I wanted to protect it, and you. If anything happened to it, we could all have been infected. Please, go, before the worst should happen."

Mr. Might helped him to stand and, after picking up everything he had taken from the man's pockets and returning it, carefully escorted him to the stool by his computer. Tobias dragged his disguise boot over the tile and sat awkwardly with his leg outstretched to keep the boot on the floor. He grabbed a tissue from a nearby dispenser to hold against his nose and blinked at the screen lethargically. The Nature Calling Inhibitory Virus was completely still, and Tobias realized with a dreadful resignation that the sample would never function again, exposed to the heat now for too long.

Nothing was going according to plan A. But, at a glance out the window across Central Benediction's sky-reaching metropolis and curving, raised highways which buzzed with activity, Tobias could see the bubbling of a familiar place across the bay. Slowly, his lips began to curl upwards, because as he watched, transfixed by the orange glow in the distant darkness, Plan B began to fall into place.