“You have a way to win?” Bianca asked.

Mrs. N shook her head and set down the newspaper she always had. “No. If I had a surefire way to win, I’d make it happen. I think there’s a possible path to victory, though.

“After Miss Marino returned Kaiju Kid to me, I drove her back here and phoned her mom. She was beyond happy, and came as quickly as she could. But before she got here, Kaiju Kid talked. You know how kids are—no filter, whatever’s on their minds. She told me about where she’d been taken.”

“The Hot Zone? We know about that, and unless you’ve got Lady Lockless hidden away, we’re not getting inside. Plus, that doesn’t solve the problem of everyone teleporting away,” I said.

“It might. She wasn’t taken to the Hot Zone right away. That took, according to her, ‘a long, long time.’ But first, they put her in a room underground, somewhere stinky. I asked her what kind of smelly, and she said it was like her friend’s house, wet and gross. That gives us a lead—not much of one, since she couldn’t tell us where her friend lives. But it’s not what’s most important. What’s most important is that she wasn’t the only person stuck there. They had a bunch of empty rooms, and one of them had a lady in it.”

I was still trying to wrap my head around something. I’d been close to understanding it when the kids all yelled their names, but even though it was right there, it felt like I needed one more breakthrough to really get it. Now, it was fading away, and it took me a minute to refocus.

The Narrator kept talking after sipping some coffee and shivering a little. “Sorry. She said the lady made shimmering bubbles, but they weren’t doing anything. And she said one of her arms looked like it didn’t work very well. However, they didn’t get to talk because Kaiju Kid got moved again. From her description, I think that was Doctor Jackson.”

It took me a second. But, no, Doctor Jackson wasn’t back as a professor, and…Doctor Mays had never been the most financially successful super in terms of Episodes won and money made. Their powers hadn’t been ‘TV good.’

Bianca had the same thought. “That explains why he went pro-Ilneat. It was never about what he believed. If The Agent had his partner, he had no choice.”

“I agree,” The Narrator said. “ It means he might be turnable. It also gives us somewhere to look. In fact, I think it gives us a big hint. The Agent’s base is somewhere that’s falling apart and smells gross and wet. That means Thornton, the Poudre Districts, or possibly The Foothills, but they’re high up, not near a water source. I’m guessing here.”

She typed into her computer, then turned the monitor our way. The map of Thornton was zoomed in on a bunch of lakes and ponds that surrounded the Platte River as it wove its way through the district, but as her finger tapped the screen, I saw what she meant. Three perfectly square ponds and a handful of metal tanks—like the ones we’d fought near at the chemical plant—were clearly visible next to a handful of houses that had once been nice-ish.

“This is the West Brown Water Treatment Plant,” Mrs. N said. “I think it matches everything Kaiju Kid said, and what she described sounds like a prison for supers—like Almhurst, but private and secret. I know we’re relying on a toddler, so she could be making things up, but I don’t believe she is.”

I nodded. “Okay, so the five of us go check it out tomorrow and try to break Doctor Jackson out?”

“No,” Mrs. N interrupted. “It’ll be you two and you two alone. Vigilant Vow could hold his own with the right familiars, but Honeycomb has no business being in a war zone. And I can’t leave the kids here. Not after Kaiju Kid. This plan’s entirely on you two.”

“What’s your endgame, then?” I asked, feeling crushed. It was always on us. Mrs. N had to be the most powerful hero I knew of, and she wouldn’t commit herself to battle. There had to be more to it.

“Tranquility is my endgame. I’ve spent my entire life trying to teach kids the difference between right and wrong, trying to create superheroes who believe in right and wrong, who won’t follow the Ilneats’ studios for a few dollars. Tranquility is my model for success. She’s fighting for a better future for everyone, and she has since she was a toddler here. I’m training all these kids to do the same.

“If you win, it’ll be easier to move toward a world where heroes do the right thing because it’s right, not because it benefits them.” She stood up. “But if not, I’ll keep teaching the next generation to be better. And, with the Tranquility formula, I’ll have less McHammers…less Stella-Lunars, and more heroes like her, or like I hope you’ll be. By the time I’m old enough to retire, maybe superheroes will act like they’re supposed to. I really believe they will, and that on a long enough timeline, we’ll win.”

◄▼►

“Huh,” Bee said.

Bianca and I sat in The Narrator’s office alone; she’d left to talk with the Playpen Patrol’s parents about long-term arrangements for their children’s safety. “I wouldn’t have guessed.”

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

My head wouldn’t stop spinning. It wasn’t just the reveal that Mrs. N had been playing the longest game of any hero. I’d known she was legitimately good, so that didn’t change anything.

No, I was almost to that breakthrough about identity. And it had…something to do with the kids. How comfortable they were being Kenny, James, and Elisabeth, but also The Cloud, Milkbar, and Outlet. They could be both. Why? Our secret identities were so important to all of us that the studios had used them as a weapon. But for the Playpen Patrol, whether they were kids or heroes didn’t matter. So why?

The only thing I could think of was that to them, their identities didn’t matter. They weren’t James sometimes and Milkbar others. They were just…themselves—all the time.

And there it was. I could resolve the Anika DuPont versus Magical Girl Understudy problem that easily. I wasn’t them. I was just me.

So, the next question. How committed was I to winning this? How competitive was I? Could I make this path to victory work? I closed my eyes, thinking about myself. Not the domino mask I’d worn as Understudy or the student mask I’d worn as Anika DuPont, but who I was under all that. And eventually, as the seconds of silence turned to minutes, I made my decision.

“I think we can win this,” I said.

“You do?” Bee asked. “That’s a change.”

“Yeah, I do.” I reached for my phone. “It’s going to take as few moving parts as possible, though. Simple, punchy, and foolproof. That’s where Mindstorm went wrong, and that’s where we can be better than her. Go see if Honeycomb has a whiteboard around here.”

◄▼►

Honeycomb did have a whiteboard. It was small—little more than a hand-held one—but we didn’t need that much space. The plan was simple; there were only two moving parts we had any control over, not counting us.

The Narrator was okay with us using Tottergarten as a springboard and hideout until we started our attack on The Agent’s weird prison below Thornton. After that, we could drop off rescued prisoners here, and if it came to fighting, she’d keep the building and the innocents inside it safe. That left some question about whether that included us. She hadn’t committed one way or another, instead opening a conversation with Kid Zoomies’s dad.

The other moving piece was Su-Bin.

Or, more accurately, the anti-superhero movement in general. I needed an in with them somewhere, because there weren’t many supers left that I could rely on. So, I was making a late-night phone call.

It rang three times before Su-Bin picked it up. “One reason not to hang up on you.”

“I’ll keep calling, and you’ll miss your classes tomorrow if you turn the phone alarm off,” I said immediately.

Silence. Then Su-Bin snorted. “Fuck you, Annie, you know that?”

“Yeah, I know that. I’m sorry. But how was I supposed to tell you?”

More silence. “Whatever. What do you want?”

“I want to apologize and to tell you what’s going on.” I launched into a massive explanation of the last week or two from the perspective of the Pro-Earth League. What we’d been fighting for, how the fights had gone, and how hopeless it looked now. It took a while, but she listened. Or at least, she didn’t hang up.

When I finally finished, the phone stayed quiet. “So, yeah, this is the part where Understudy and Annie are both aligned. I want you to help me, because there’s no one else who can.”

“You want me to do what?”

“Protest the Ilneats outside of the Hot Zone tomorrow at 11:00.”

“Why?”

I paused. Understudy would have said it was so APPEAL wasn’t underfoot. Annie wouldn’t have even suggested it, because APPEAL was just a thing her friend did. “Because it’s the right thing to do, and it’ll help me help people. And because it’ll draw attention and let Fursona and I save someone’s life.”

“And how do I keep my people safe?” she asked.

“Tell them not to try to get inside and keep yourselves as unthreatening as possible, I guess. I think most of the supers on that side will be in a pretty good mood, and they probably won’t care much about you. They all but won today, after all. I just need something flashy to draw the eye.”

I took a deep breath and kept going before she could interrupt. “I think APPEAL’s right about how broken superheroes are right now. I’ve been talking to The Narrator and a couple of other real heroes, and I’m sorry for my part in all this, and I want it to stop.”

Even more silence. “I don’t want your apologies. I want your help fixing it—not just for you heroes but everyone.”

“Okay?” I asked, waiting for the shoe to fall.

It did. “If I’m going to spend the social capital getting APPEAL to show up Mid-Town, mid-day, on a Friday, you’re going to agree—in public—to some principles. First, superheroes and villains need to be cut loose from the Ilneat studio structure. Completely. Not a transfer of control. Not a rebranding. No aliens, no Hot Zones, no unscripted superhero shows, and no more gladiator fights for entertainment.”

“Sure, that sounds great. I agree.”

“Second,” she continued, ignoring me, “you’re going to come out in favor of something similar to the New Gotham Accords.”

“Absolutely not,” I blurted. Bee looked at me funny, and I mouthed the words at her. She rolled her eyes.

“Calm down. We’re not pushing to quarantine supers anymore. But, look, people can’t keep living in fear that Golden Goose and Lord Destructo could have an all-out brawl in their backyard at any moment, and with no consequences. The current iteration wants superhero shows to be scripted, which you’re fine with, and to be in only a few communities.”

“That still sounds like a quarantine,” I said dryly.

“It’s not. It’s creating a few ‘studio cities’ for supers who still want to do for-profit shows, and figuring out a fair tax percent to go toward people who want to live there as payment for the chaos. If you don’t want to play those TV games, you can live where you want, and even fight villains. But if you want the show, you go somewhere where people know the risks.”

I wasn’t excited about that. “All this is subject to negotiation, right?”

“You can agree, in principle, to the idea. It doesn’t have to be the exact wording. But you have to be in favor of something like what we’re working on.”

“And why do you think my opinion will matter in the grand scheme of things?” I asked.

“I don’t. But if you do win, you’ll be positioned for people to listen to you, at least a little. If you lose, that doesn’t hurt APPEAL at all.” Su-Bin paused. “It’s a no-lose situation for APPEAL.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Yes. Annie, I’m not doing any of this for you,” she said. That stung a little. “I’m doing this because it has to stop. We’re allies right now, not friends. I’ll reevaluate whether I want to be friends later, when I’ve had time to think. But right now, this is business.”

“I understand. 11:00 tomorrow. The Hot Zone,” I replied.

“You do your part. I’ll do mine.” She hung up, and I turned my thoughts toward tomorrow’s work.