We hadn’t even gotten off-campus when I grabbed Fursona’s arm. “This is dumb. Really dumb. You’re a giant dinosaur, and I’m a Magical Girl who vomits pink and blue contrails if I fly. There’s no world where we’re more conspicuous as two college girls than we are as heroes, and we need to be sneaky.”

“What am I supposed to do with the suit, then?” Bianca asked.

She had a point; her bags were all but overflowing, and there was no way we’d be able to fit the whole dinosaur suit into a backpack. We couldn’t exactly leave the other fursuits behind, either. Who knew what powers we’d need access to in the next day or two? “Okay. Here’s the plan. I’ll ditch some of my shirts, I guess, and you put on your warm stuff and do the same. We’ll make it fit, even if we have to split it up a little.”

“Fine,” Bee said, and we doubled back to Roth Arena.

It was a simple project to break into one of the main doors, slip into a fan-side bathroom, and quickly change. The painful part was the pile of clothes we had to leave behind. Even with Bee and I overdressing for the February weather, a few of our favorites wouldn’t be making the trip to…

“Okay, now where?” I asked.

Bee shrugged as we slipped out of the bathroom and toward the edge of campus. I didn’t have a better answer, so we picked a direction and walked into the University District.

“I already miss the whiteboard,” I mumbled into the darkness, mittened hand in Bee’s. Not having a plan sucked.

“Me too.” She paused to tie her shoe, which was weird because it was velcro, not laces. “Don’t look. I think we’ve got Vs coming up. Two of them. The Agent’s probably going wide, not powerful.”

“That’s…not great for us,” I said. Neither of us could use our powers without our costumes—Bee was a little stronger and faster, but the suits carried a lot of firepower for her. If two Vs, even underpowered ones, pegged us as Understudy and Fursona, we were in trouble.

“No. Let’s beeline for a diner. That’s a normal college thing to do, right?”

“Right.”

“We’ll think there and try to make a plan,” Bee said.

The closest diner sat across the street, but it’d put us right in the villains’ path, so instead, I pulled Bee into the art studio we’d…saved…from Jumper in our first semester. I wrapped an arm around her waist, and we pretended to enjoy the art for about five minutes. It wasn’t bad, honestly; lots of landscapes and horses, mostly paintings, but a few sketches. Surely that’d be enough time, right?

I peeked out the window. No Vs—at least none that I could see. And the diner was right across the busy street—an easy hop for Understudy or Roo-Sona but an undertaking for Bee and me.

The minute waiting at the crosswalk was the most nerve-wracking of the whole evening, especially when some guys from one of the college frats joined us. I smiled nervously; the smell of booze was strong on them. Worse, when the light changed and we crossed, it was clear they were going our way, but at least they weren’t Vs. They were too loud, too drunk, and too unhelmeted to be henches.

Still, it was a relief when we stepped into the diner. The smell of greasy breakfast food filled my nose. Bacon and sausage, syrup, and not-quite-burned hash browns. The smell of Mom after a shift. My stomach growled, and it wasn’t the only one. Neither of us had eaten since a light lunch before the Episode started, and it was close to eight now. The frat guys joked loudly behind us as we waited for the harried-looking waitress to seat us.

Less than a minute after she sat us in the back, near the kitchen, though, I glanced over the top of my menu to see the two Vs we’d avoided before. And, worse, they had a third with them this time. “We’ve gotta go,” I whispered to Bianca.

“Why? We just got here,” she said.

“We’ve got company.” I nodded my head toward the Vs. One of them looked our way, and I pulled the menu back up as casually as I could.

Bianca nodded slowly. “Through the kitchen?”

“Sure.”

We slipped through the diner’s double doors and into a busy kitchen just as the poor waitress noticed us. She yelled something, but I was already leading Bee through the maze of burners and prep counters and past annoyed-looking line cooks. Someone’s dinner overturned behind us, but I didn’t even apologize. The door was right there. We just had to get there, and we’d be home free.

Someone burst into the kitchen behind us, and I grabbed Bee’s hand as I burst into a full sprint. We crashed through the metal back door and tumbled out in the alley. “Left!” I called.

Then I dragged her right, running until my lungs burned and feeling thankful for the hard-core soccer practices Sierra had put me through. We ducked around the corner just as the door slammed open again, this time accompanied by a chorus of annoyed and angry cooks and the screechy yells of the waitress.

We ran an entire block before I dragged her back into another alley, then looped back the way we’d come. Only then did I slow down, panting and sucking in deep breaths. “Okay, we need a better plan than ‘find a diner,’ I muttered.

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It had been almost twenty minutes, and we weren’t any closer to having a plan.

We were a lot closer to getting caught, though.

The pressure had been intense. So far, Bee had saved our butts twice, including once by ducking across Lincoln Street through oncoming traffic. The Vs had blasted their way through, but we’d managed to dodge them by doubling right back across. The wild goose chase was leading us toward Tottergarten, and we’d agreed that it’d be our port in the storm.

I didn’t like it. But I accepted it. Besides, it wasn’t like we could get on a subway and disappear that way, or find a rental car place, do the paperwork, and get out of the city. And the police would only get hurt—if they even helped us. This was superpowered business, after all.

We were only a few blocks from Mrs. N’s daycare when a bang filled the air and something flew over my head.

I whirled as the trio of Vs appeared on the street behind us. One looked familiar; a ridiculously edgy-looking sword hung over his shoulder, and his cloak looked more appropriate to his costume than the other two. My hand dropped to my wand, only to brush against my jeans. “Shit,” I muttered. I hadn’t even thought to text Honeycomb that we were coming—we’d been too busy running. That had been a mistake.

“You’re in that, yeah,” the swordsman said mockingly.

The fight didn’t last long; the V with the sword didn’t even have to get involved. A wave of sound slammed into Bianca, pushing her into the street and knocking her out. And, before I could react, a gun was in my face. My hands went up, and despite my best efforts, I went cross-eyes at the barrel.

He leaned against the wall, spat on the ground, and watched as the other two Vs tied our wrists with zip-ties. “Check their bags, make sure they’re who we think they are, and let’s take care of things.”

I tried to fight back, but without my powers, tied up, and against powered Vs, all I could really do was flail around on the ground while a lady sat on my back and kept me pinned. When she hit me with the pistol butt, it felt like getting hit by a steel pipe. Then, suddenly, Tails was in front of me, the plushie completely inanimate and yet sympathetic-looking at the same time.

“Yep, that’s them. Pack it up and get them to the car. The boss wants to gloat.”

Something pressed into my side. Cold, circular, and unyielding. That was enough to convince me to move along with them. Buying time felt like the right play, not going out in a blaze of glory. A small part of me wondered why I wasn’t freaking out. Any other Extra would be.

Then again, I was a super, even if I wasn’t in-costume, and I’d been in worse binds.

Okay. There had to be a plan or something here. I could…slow transform to Understudy. That’d take almost a minute. It’d be impossible, even if they gave me access to Tails. And the Fursona suits were even less possible. The Vs’ car loomed in front of us, a nondescript black one with tinted windows. I braced myself to be put in the trunk; if that was the case, I had a shot.

Instead, the V holding my arms shoved me into the passenger’s seat, then dumped our bags into the trunk behind us before climbing in herself. I had no way out, no way to transform. Fursona didn’t either; her captor sandwiched us in the middle between them, leaving the front passenger seat empty. For a second, I thought about making a break for it and getting out that way, but the gun was still digging into my side.

The sword V—I recognized him from last semester, but his build wasn’t quite the same; maybe it was a different hench?—started walking around the car toward the driver’s seat.

He never made it.

As the V on my side of the car reached for a black bag to put over my head, something slammed into the swordsman’s chest, doubling him over. A streak of orangish light no higher than his waist followed the impact, and a moment later, he was on the ground. As he picked himself up, the light streak turned the corner and hit him again, this time knocking him up onto the car’s hood. The V next to Bianca opened her door, stepped out, and fired her pistol.

Before she could get a second shot off, the streak slammed into her, too.

My eyes went wide as I saw, for the first time, the identity of the Vs’ attacker.

She was small. Not quite as small as Kaiju Kid, but definitely a pre-schooler. One of the Playpen Patrol members I hadn’t hung out with as much as The Cloud. I winced as she zoomed away, then finished off the last V. Then, suddenly, the battlefield was quiet.

Kid Zoomies opened the door. “Okay, civivens, you’re safe now!”

“Kid Zoomies, that was really dangerous,” I said, extracting myself from the back seat and letting the pint-sized superhero break the zip ties. Bee twitched, opening her eyes and groaning, then shutting them again.

“Nuh-uh. Playpen Patrol, go!” she shouted. “They were being bad, and Mrs. N says we have to stop people from being bad!”

“Okay. You stopped them from being bad,” Bianca said. She’d woken up and already had her backpacks and my bags out of the car. “Now, listen, we need to get you back to Tottergarten before you get in trouble.”

“Or worse, we do,” I added.

Kid Zoomies nodded thoughtfully. “We can go back. Mrs. N and Dad will get mad otherwise. I didn’t tell them I was leaving. I just left when Jungle Jim and the others came in!”

“Da…er, oh no,” Bee said, biting off the swear word. “So no one knows where you are?”

Kid Zoomies shook her head enthusiastically. “Nope! I had hero stuff to do, and they always say no!”

“Come on, let’s go.” Kid Zoomies hadn’t caught on that we knew who she was yet, and she didn’t know who we were—hopefully. If we hurried, we could just drop her off, and everything would be fine.

I hefted my bags and started walking. The last place in Tokyexico City I wanted to be was Tottergarten; there was no way more Vs weren’t waiting there, and Kid Zoomies’ attack had only worked because none of the Vs were ready for her—and because they were underpowered, mass-produced villains, not limited edition ones. Besides, I was done.

Wasn’t I?

It was only three blocks to Tottergarten; part of me hoped Kid Zoomies would take off, but no. She kept close, practically vibrating in place and talking a mile a minute about how she’d “saved the day” and “done hero stuff.” If it wasn’t so embarrassing to need bailing out against a handful of underpowered Vs, I would have been cheering for her, too. As it was, though…it stung a little.

Bee didn’t look any better than I felt. She kept eying the bag with the Roo-Sona suit in it, like she wanted to spend the time to suit up, but then second-guessing herself. I could sympathize. If Kid Zoomies figured out that not only had she saved two people, but Understuffy and Mouse, we were screwed forever. Might as well die from embarrassment.

My heart stopped as a hand whirled me around to face a wall of muscle. Bianca’s feet left the ground a second later as another hand wrapped around her arm and yanked upward.

“I’m going to give you two seconds to explain who you are and where you found this kid,” Brick House said, his voice empty of all emotion and his eyes two black pits under the streetlights. “And if your answer’s bad, you’re both dead. Talk.”