Shopping. An annoying necessity of one acquiring food and other utilities needed to remain alive. That would have been my definition of the word a few days ago. Now though? After spending an entire afternoon with Flare going through all the shops in the mall? I could think of very few things as fun as shopping. Date or not date, by the time the sun has decided it had enough for today and peaced out, I had a wide smile on my face. And also a very empty wallet and a drained bank account to boot.

"I never even was one to splurge like this." I sighed.

"It's fine! You needed a new wardrobe anyway." My companion smiled.

"Well, yeah. But we kind of forgot to look for stuff for our costumes as well." I lowed my gaze apologetically.

Our focus began with dressing me up and somehow didn't change until the bitter end. Sure, we got a bit of colored cloth and some of the clothes we bought could be used as a part of the costume if we were to use a needle and a thread and spend some time on it. But we were still missing a lot of stuff. In fact, we haven't even finalized what we wanted our costumes to look like.

"Hey, it's fine! As I said, we are in no rush! Let's just come back tomorrow morning and finish getting what we need!" She beamed back at me.

"Uh." I looked at my empty wallet.

"I'll pay for it. We're a team, after all."

I felt bad for leeching off of Flare after spending so much money on my own stuff.

"It's fine!" She snaked an arm around my shoulders." Let's just say you'll owe me a favor or something." She just could not stop radiating her positivity.

"Alright then." I sighed, conceding.

"Good girl!" She ruffled my hair.

It made me blush. Much less the hair ruffling and more her calling me a girl. It still felt incredibly nice. Like a compliment. Even when ignoring the 'good' part of the good girl.

"Well, I guess it's a goodbye for today!" She said as we stopped by my place.

"Yeah. Good night. See you tomorrow." I smiled at her.

We hugged and parted with a little wave. I watched her go for a few seconds, feeling uncharacteristically happy. Giddy, almost. Then, I finally walked into the building and fished out my keys on the way up the stairs as I thought about today. I had no idea it was possible to have this much fun outside of video games. Outside of virtual space and in the real world. If I were to go back in time two days and describe to my past self how great my day was, I would get stared at. And not just because I somehow managed to travel back in time.

Still smiling, I unlocked the door to my flat and scuttled in, closing the door behind me. Once again, empty silence welcomed me. But the current me didn't care. I rushed to my room, putting the bags on the floor, and opened my drawer. It was one of those with a big mirror attached to the inside of the door. A mirror I always dutifully ignored since I hated the sight of my reflection. Now though? Instead of the grumpy guy, the image of a pretty girl wearing the white dress I bought today greeted me. It was the very same dress that made me bawl my eyes like a baby. I decided to keep it on for the rest of our shopping adventures with Flare. It really made me feel like a girl. And that alone felt amazing. I still couldn't wrap my head around how something so seemingly simple was so groundbreaking for me.

I looked at the bags sitting next to me and bent down to dig inside them. I pulled out a black skirt and a white T-shirt out of it and held it in front of me. That only made the girl in the mirror widen her smile. I put the outfit aside for a moment and got out of the white dress. A new experience. If I wasn't a Felice hybrid, I wouldn't be flexible enough to reach the zipper on the back and free myself from its clutches. I was glad Flare showed me how it was supposed to be done.

Then, the girl in the mirror was down to her underwear. Right, underwear. I already had a bra, but this time the boyish boxers were gone as well. Replaced by something I was still extremely embarrassed to be wearing. And of course, Flare just insisted that I got them in pink color. Not that I minded too much. Pink was nice.

I got into the outfit I put aside and looked again. Compared to the dress, I looked slightly less womanly and more girly. I did a few poses, putting my hands on my hips, cupping my head with one hand, etcetera. And then another wave of anxiety hit me. What the hell was I even doing?

With a hand over my face, I closed the drawer and let out a sigh. Then proceeded to dig out my new pajamas from one of the bags. Naturally, they were also something Flare forced me to buy. White with pink hearts plastered all over it. I tried not to think about it too hard. Hearts generally signified something positive after all, didn't they?

I went to the shower and undressed. The second time showering in a girl's body was much less unnerving. I could actually enjoy the warm water as it ran down my skin. And I didn't even feel like a creep for washing my own body.

Once done, I changed into the extremely girly pajamas, brushed my teeth, and went right into bed, opting to sort out my drawers in the morning.

----------------------------------------

The next morning, I woke up, realizing there had been no nightmare this time. I still couldn't quite remember what the previous night's nightmare was about, but hanging out with Flare probably cleaned my head of the dark thoughts and thus there was no more fuel for any nightmares. Once again, I had to thank Flare for existing.

I sat up in my bed, stretching. I was not groggy. I was not annoyed to be awake. I was smiling. Pushing away the curtains at the window near my bed, I simply took in the morning light as it shined on me. There was something very peaceful about it. No compulsion to leave the bed and get the day over with. Just enjoying the moment.

Eventually, though, I remembered Flare would come to invade my home soon and I still haven't sorted out my new clothes. So I got up and went to brush my teeth in the bathroom. The visage of a girl greeted me in the mirror. I didn't avoid looking at the reflection like I always did. Instead, I shared a smile with my mirrored twin and got to work on my teeth.

Once done, I returned to my room and picked out the same shirt and skirt outfit I tried on yesterday as well as some underwear before changing into it.

Then, it was organizing time.

I cleaned out my wardrobe from most of my clothes and formed a mound of the ones I couldn't wear anymore next to me. Some of the ones that were small enough for my new build, I opted to keep. At least for the time being. Then, the ritualistic storing of my yesterday's spoils began. I was a pretty organized person. Shirts were folded into one pile while pants were in another. Every pair of socks had to be folded into one another to make sure they wouldn't get separated. New additions were the bras and the skirts. I had to designate a space for those now.

But all of that took me too long. Before I managed to finish reorganizing my wardrobe, the bell rang. Flare was here.

Not wanting her to see the mess, I temporarily stuffed the rest of the unsorted clothes into the corner of my wardrobe. It made me cringe, but better than having everything thrown around the room.

Then I skipped over to the main door and opened it. The ever-smiling redhead greeted me.

"Hey there, beautiful! Slept well?"

"Like a baby!" I smiled back.

A thought occurred to me. Since I was sort of reborn two days ago, wasn't I a baby under some convoluted definition of the word?

"Glad to hear it!" She entered my home as I stepped aside. "So what are the plans for today?"

"Well, we need to finish our costumes." I said as we headed to my room. "And also, I was thinking. We should do some research on the villains and go over some general strategies."

"Strategies?" She tilted her head.

"Yeah, like what to do in certain situations. So we don't get caught off guard."

"Ohh, right. Let's do that." She nodded.

As we entered my room, I booted up the computer, intending to find as much information on our potential foes as possible. As I did that, Flare pulled out a piece of folded paper from her pocket and unfolded it in front of me. It featured a sketch of a winged girl in a huge skirt with feather-like ornaments, pumping her fists and grinning. A red mask covered her face. And the entire figure was framed by a fire shape drawn around her.

"What do you think about this? The mighty Phoenix!" She grinned.

I looked at the picture, admiring the artwork, imagining Flare in that position, in that outfit.

"Looks great. But. Wouldn't it be kinda hard to fight with such a huge skirt?" I pointed out. "Also, when you fly. If you wear a skirt. People are. Uhh. Gonna see."

"Ugh. R. Right." She turned the paper around and looked at the drawing with a frown. "Ahh, dammit! I thought it would look cool! But it's actually super impractical, isn't it?" She crumpled the paper and threw it right into the bin next to my desk.

"I think it can work. Just make a few adjustments. A smaller skirt. Some underpants maybe." I tried to encourage her.

"Hmm, I guess." She folded her arms. "Well, what about your costume? Did you decide what it will look like yet?"

"Kinda." I nodded while pulling out a paper and a pencil out of my desk drawer. "I thought it might be fitting to have something that looked like it had ink splats on it." I drew up a figure in a sweatshirt and shorts. "But then that would look like my outfit was dirty. So I scrapped that. Instead, I thought of having one ink splat like this. With these going out like this." I made a big black blob in the middle of the sweatshirt and then drew tentacle-like black roots growing out of it across the rest of the outfit.

Flare leaned closer and nodded. "That does look really cool! Oh! I have an idea! why don't you make the big ink blob into a heart shape?"

"A heart shape? Uhh." I drew over the blob and made a heart shape before filling it in. Then I tilted my head as I looked at the modified design."I don't know about this." It looked like it was trying to say that my heart was black, corrupted, and riddled with something really nasty. So nasty in fact, that it was even spreading through the rest of my body.

"Come on! It will look great!" She prodded me.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Eh. I could try it I guess?" I half-frowned. "Anyway. Let's do some research now." I grabbed the mouse and opened the internet browser.

"Sure sure. See what villains we could face, right?"

"Right."

Usually, villains gangs didn't last very long. New ones always formed after a starstorm. Out of some crooks who thought life would go into easy mode since they weren't puny humans anymore. But most of them would quickly get caught and arrested by the more experienced heroes. Naturally, there were exceptions.

Today, there were still three active gangs in the city that didn't form just last starstorm. Dragon maw, the biggest one, supposedly controlled the city's underground, black markets, and even several legitimate businesses. Some people speculated that they even controlled the Neo Wardens from the shadows, though that was doubtful.

Then we had Tarbringers, a group of three Tara hybrids, hence their name. They were simple bank robbers and not much more. Most people knew that the only reason why they haven't been caught yet was because of Abyss, one of their members.

And then finally, the Lightbearers, also known as the gathering of monsters, since even though they had only a few members, every single one of them was powerful enough to take on entire organized hero teams. And win. And also, two of them were even classified as A-class threats. Incidentally, I already met with one of their members, Black rose. Luckily, he wasn't one of those A-class threats.

We browsed every known villain's page in great detail. And also stopped to see what new villains popped up this starstorm. One particular group that came up were 'The Liberators'. Who or what they were trying to liberate, I had no idea.

----------------------------------------

After we finished researching the city's villains, we went to the kitchen and I prepared some simple breakfast in the form of sandwiches since neither one of us has eaten yet. As we ate, I began telling her about the adventure I had yesterday.

"Wait, you fought a supervillain?!" Flare slammed her palms into the table and stared at me.

I carefully finished chewing the piece of sandwich in my mouth and swallowed before answering.

"No, didn't fight him. He just talked. Gave me some tearjerker about how not all villains are bad. And then put me to sleep with that relaxing rose." I chomped down on my sandwich again.

"Oh. Okay." She sat down and grabbed her sandwich again. "But still. You could have gotten hurt."

"Yeah." I gave her a wry smile. "Lesson learned. I'll do better next time. And also, you'll be there to back me up, right?" I said hopefully.

"Of course!" She pumped her fists. "Leave it to me!"

I smiled with appreciation. I could always count on Flare.

"So. Was Black Rose the only one?" She looked at me with concern.

"Yeah, luckily. After I sort of got out of that trance, Valkyrie and Frostfeather flew to me and we talked. Then they kind of ran away because of some other emergency, so I took some time to explore the warehouse that probably got attacked."

"Oh. And that was the lava-filled one. And you got drugged." She nodded understandingly.

"Yeah. And then found out I can get rid of toxins with my power." I finished.

"Well, that was one heck of an adventure. Can't wait till we go out together!"

I couldn't either. But there was still a lot we needed to go over before I felt confident in debuting as heroes. As I already told myself before, going out on impulse was a big nono. If Black Rose has been less talky and a little more murdery, I wouldn't even be here to think back on the mistakes I made. I didn't want to take such risks anymore.

"Yeah, but first, we need to finish the costumes and go over some strategies. So, maybe tomorrow will be our debut?"

"Sure! Let's go to the mall and buy whatever else we need and then have a secret strategy meeting. And oh! Is the gaming night still part of the plan?" She reminded me.

"Why not? Actually, that would be perfect. I can show you some tricks in there we could even use as heroes. Games aren't just for fun you know?" I grinned.

"Wait. Using video game strategies in real life? I'm not sure what to think about that." The look of exasperation was evident on her face.

"Don't worry. You'll see what I mean."

"Alright, if you say so."

After that, we finished our breakfast and went over what we still needed to get for our costumes. I wrote down a shopping list on a piece of paper to make it easier for us. Then, we left my place and set out towards the mall once again.

"By the way, how are you feeling, girl?" My friend looked at me as we walked.

I remembered how I broke down in tears yesterday, after wearing that dress. It made me a bit embarrassed, thinking back on it.

"Better. Much better. Didn't even have a nightmare today."

"Uhh. Not having a nightmare is a pretty low bar for feeling good."

"Uh, good point. No, but really. It's much better now." I gave her a genuine smile.

"Alright then, my little kitten." She returned the smile and put an arm around my shoulders.

I wanted to retort that I still blamed her for really becoming a kitten, but her the half-hug felt too nice, so I refrained.

We continued walking, my mood getting unnaturally good. So, of course, the feeling in my gut told me that it couldn't last forever. Something always went wrong when things seemed to finally look up.

And I wasn't disappointed. Or rather, I was, my instinct wasn't.

As we passed by the northern bank, we heard screams from inside.

"What the?!" Flare's head whipped around to look through the windows.

More screams, something crashing. And then, absolute silence. I couldn't hear even my own heartbeat or my breathing. As if I suddenly became deaf.

I looked at Flare, and she glanced around in confusion. Her mouth opening and closing, as if she was saying something. But no words came out. She then caught my eye, her expression serious. With a frown, she gave me a firm nod. I reluctantly returned it.

It was pretty obvious something was happening inside that bank and that powers were at play. So as aspiring heroes, saving the day was a given. I didn't really want to go ahead before we even had proper costumes and before we went over some tactics, but there was a crime happening right next to us. No way we could ignore it.

I pointed into an alleyway, making sure Flare could see. She nodded and we both sprinted over there. As we got close to it, something suddenly popped inside my head. I could hear again. The sound of the wind, my footsteps, my breathing.

With a shock, we turned to each other once again.

"What was that?!" My friend asked with trepidation.

"I'm guessing power that can mute the sound in an area. I think it's those new villains. Liberators." We read about them just this morning after all.

"We're gonna have to communicate without talking." I was already thinking of ways to do that.

We finally reached the side street and hid behind a trash container. Luckily for us, we did have at least the masks on hand. The ones handed to us by Frostfeather back at school after the starstorm. Those would be enough to protect our identities for now.

I removed my shoes, since it was easier to move around without them in my hybrid form, and we dropped our bags before hiding everything near the container.

"Flare, look at my face." I told her.

She did so, and after I put the mask on and turned on hybrid mode, I made roots crawl up and form a heart shape on my left cheek.

"This means, run or dodge left. My left." I retracted the roots and made them form the same heart on my right cheek. "And this would be my right. Got it?"

"Oh! It's like a secret code! That's genius!" She beamed at me.

I nodded and continued, ignoring her compliment. "If I do this." I formed hearts on both my cheeks. "I'm not sure which way, but we need to run like hell. Or just back off in general. Okay?"

"Okay okay. Got it." She confirmed. "Uhh, but why hearts?" Flare tilted her heard.

"They are easy to make and are recognizable." I shrugged.

"Alright. Fair enough."

"If I do this." I commanded the roots to make a sword shape on my left cheek. "It means to press on, to attack. Again left and right side."

She kept nodding. "Understood. How do I communicate back though?"

"For now. Umm, you'll be flying, right?" She nodded and I continued. "Since you won't be getting into close combat, we can make use of your limbs." I pointed to her legs. "Raise your left leg a bit while keeping the other one straightened. It will mean the same as heart on my left cheek." Again, I demonstrated by forming said heart. "Right leg is right side."

"Got it. Legs. Because we need to run. Makes sense."

"If you want to tell me to attack, make a fist like this." I formed a fist in a bit of an unnatural way. Letting the thumb stick out instead of curling. "I'm pretty sure you won't do that by accident."

"Alright. Anything else?" She asked as she practiced the fist gesture.

"I think that's good enough for now. We need to hurry. I can't hear the screams anymore, but that's probably because they are all muted."

"Right. Uhh. But it's not like we can just enter through the main entrance."

"No. Let's fly onto the roof and ambush them from the inside."

"Okay! Let's do that! Hold on tight then!" The fire wings burst out of her back and she scooped me up in a princess carry, making me put arms around her neck.

If I wasn't in my hybrid form, I would be blushing all over. But as things stood, I didn't mind it much.

She bent her knees and jumped, flapping her wings. We flew up from the alleyway and rose into the skies. We were far away enough so that we couldn't be seen from within the bank. We did plan on ambushing them, after all. There was no need to give them a warning about a nearby Rega hybrid taking flight.

We soared through the air and headed for the bank. At some point the sound of wind rushing past me vanished, and we were once again plunged into complete silence. As soon as that happened, we looked at each other with a frown. I formed two sword shapes on my cheeks with my roots. My friend - no my partner - nodded with clear determination and we pressed on.

As we neared the rooftop, I noted there were no lookouts stationed there. But the paranoid part of me kept telling me they could be invisible. It would be very hard to tell with sounds being canceled out though. On one hand, we could have been diving straight into a trap, on the other hand, powers like invisibility and camouflage weren't all that common, and the only known hybrid with a power of that category in this city was behind bars.

So I took the risk, swords on my cheeks again, and we pressed on. It took only about two minutes until we landed on the rooftop, and my partner let me on the ground. I immediately flicked my eyes around to see whether something was out of place. Looking for any slight movement. Small pebbles being depressed beneath a shoe or scattered as someone walked. But nothing stood out to me.

As I finished my little scan, I looked back at the confused Flare. No Phoenix. I needed to remember not to call her Flare when we were in the heat of things - no pun intended - or I would out her like an idiot.

Anyways. I formed a sword on my right cheek, pointing to the door presumably leading to the stairwell down. She nodded and we both approached said door. I tried to grab the handle and open it, but as expected, it was locked. Bummer. I briefly thought about using my power to shape my finger into a key, but then I realized I had no idea what kind of shape that key needed to be. There was also the option of letting Flare - sorry, Phoenix - simply melt the door down to let us in, but that could raise an alarm. And moreover, cause damage to public property. That's something heroes did their best to avoid, after all.

I sighed internally. Of course. I should have thought about it. Not all experience from gaming translated into real life. I was a complete rookie when it came to real-life heroing.

So, I resigned myself to trial and error. I stuck out my index finger and let the roots cover it. It was as weird and uncomfortable as I imagined. My companion stared in shock as my finger turned into the teeth of a key. I went to try to unlock the door with it, without any hope of getting it right on my first try. As I approached the door, however, I heard, no felt something beyond the door. Vibration. As if something was ascending the stairs in a hurry.

I quickly jumped back and grabbed Phoenix by the hand, while turning my finger back. She was surprised but immediately understood someone might be coming up from my alertness. I crouched down on all fours, ready to pounce and Phoenix flapped her wings and flew a bit above me to cover me.

Just as I predicted, the door swung open and a man came stumbling outside. He was a bit on the chubby side with short brown hair and a beard covering him. His face was red with exhaustion. And most importantly, he wore the bank clerk uniform.

I stood up upon seeing him, not dropping my guard completely as it could have been a trap. He, however, turned completely white as he saw me. A thought flickered through my head. If he wasn't a disguised villain and really just someone who worked at the bank, then he, in turn, must have thought I was with the villains, guarding the rooftop to make sure nobody escaped.

I tried to tell him I was friendly while raising my hands in a universal 'I mean no harm' way. Obviously though, my voice was useless, and he kept on shaking, not moving from his spot.

I looked in Phoenix's direction and formed hearts on my cheek, telling her to come down. He followed my gaze and slightly jumped as Phoenix landed right next to me. In the meantime, I extended my right arm to the side and let the roots crawl over it. Initially, it didn't help calm the man down, quite the opposite actually. But luckily he wasn't stupid, and soon noticed I was spelling things out on my arm using the roots.

'WE FRIENDS'

It was quite difficult to actually write with my power, and my arm wasn't that big to write long sentences.

'NEW HEROES'

Finally, the man stopped shaking as he looked at the messages, carefully examining them. My teammate, in turn, looked awed by the creative use of my power.

'WE CAN HELP'

Now he looked pensive. Of course, he did. We were unknown hybrids. Nobody knew about us. And anyone could claim to be a hero. His gaze shifted from my arm to my face, then to my companion's. He seemed to be thinking about it. And after a few tense seconds, for some reason, he looked at me a bit nervously, before turning to Phoenix and giving her a firm nod. She returned it.

'HOW MANY'

I already knew how many members the Liberators had, with one of them being captured just yesterday, but I still had to ask to confirm. He understood my question and raised his right hand, showing three fingers.

Three on two. Not ideal, but we had the element of surprise. If we could take one of them before they reacted, we could bring it down to two versus two.

I shared a look with Flare, already shaping swords on my cheeks. She, in turn, raised her hand and formed the awkward fist, signaling the same to me.

That was it. We were about to take down our first villains before we even had the chance to properly finish our costumes. If I wasn't in hybrid form, I would have had second thoughts, honestly. But the current me couldn't wait to kick some villain butt.