Tuesday, February 2

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The good news was that I had Tuesdays off from school—not that either Bianca or I cared much about our classes with everything else happening. That meant it was easy to call Su-Bin, ask if I could come over, and schedule a time. Bee wasn’t coming; we’d agreed to stay separated on this mission, since there were…consequences…if it went poorly. Not just fighting, but worse.

The bad news was that I had no idea how to maneuver Su-Bin into aligning the local APPEAL chapter with the Pro-Earth League.

Sure, I had options. We were pretty good friends, and there was a chance I’d be able to do things subtly. But I didn’t exactly have a lot of faith in my ability to stick to the script. What seemed more likely was that I’d make suggestions and Su-Bin would push back, digging in even more heavily. That was especially true given the list of villains who’d joined up with the Pro-Earth League. Most of our roster were former villains, current villains, or heroes who could easily have been villains.

I could hardly move through Mindstorm’s lair without running into one.

So, really, the only chance I had was to shake up Su-Bin’s entire worldview. And I did have an option to do that, but it wasn’t a good one. It was also why Bianca wasn’t with me; she was protecting herself and providing a possible outlet if everything went wrong, then and possibly right after.

I stopped outside the apartment door and sent a quick text.

She didn’t respond, and I was left to twiddle my thumbs for a minute while I stared at the wooden barrier in front of me. If I was Understudy, I could find a window and crash in. If I let Shock and Awe take over, I could just flatten it. But as Anika DuPont, I was completely reliant on the girl inside to—

The door opened. “Hi, Annie,” Su-Bin said.

She looked bad. Angry, depressed, with half-done makeup she’d definitely slept in. Now wasn’t the time for this. For a moment, I debated leaving. I could fake a call from Bee and get out of here. This was a bad idea. But then she moved out of the way and made a ‘come in’ gesture, and I had no choice. I was committed.

Instead of running, I ignored the butterflies trying to escape my stomach and hurried over to Su-Bin’s couch. A different strategy was in order.

When I sat down, her face shifted to relief, and she flopped onto it next to me. “Thank god. I haven’t seen anyone in person except Cam all January.”

“So, your parents are keeping you cooped up here?” I asked. “Where are they?”

“Oh, both at work. I’m supposed to be studying, or in class, or something, but you try staying motivated for a math degree when you can’t get any fresh air. They’re convinced the entire world’s going crazy. I almost had them convinced I could attend classes one or two days a week, but then that book came out, and they clamped down again.” She slumped down even farther, then perked up just slightly. “You said you’d borrowed a game from the library?”

“Yeah. I picked it out just for you, and I think it’ll be perfect given your…situation. It’s about pattern-making, quilts, and cats.” As I explained the rules, she seemed to get a little happier, and when I gave her a board, she quickly laid out her starting tiles. I could already tell I’d be losing by our second game. “Yeah, that looks about right.”

“It’s a math game, even though it doesn’t look like it.” Su-Bin smiled for the first time, confirming what I’d dreaded: I didn’t have a chance.

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By the fourth game, we’d both agreed not to treat it as a competition. For one thing, Su-Bin was already setting up double reward bonuses, and I could barely even get the single rewards. For another, she had more cats than I did every round. The only thing I had going for me was the color streaks, and that just wasn’t enough.

More importantly, though, her mood had shifted, and I felt like maybe…just maybe…I could try bringing up APPEAL and the Pro-Earth League. “So, you and your club must have an opinion on everything that’s going on with Golden Goose and the supers on TV?”

“Yeah. I think it’s all a gimmick. It’s part of the Third Power War, and we’re not convinced it’s going to change anything about the balance of power. It’s kind of like, uh, professional wrestling earlier this century, where they had their CEO or whatever play the role of a villain. The Ilneats are just doing it for ratings, and it’ll work. People love this kind of drama,” Su-Bin rattled off almost breathlessly. She grabbed a dark blue tile with flowers and put it on her quilt, then reached for a gray cat. “Triple score for that one.”

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I winced and set out a piece to replace the one she’d taken. “Okay. But what if it’s not that?”

“It definitely is that. But sure, let’s play that game. Suppose it’s real. Suppose everything I’ve heard about that diary is true, and the reaction of all these supers is genuine. Let’s even pretend that the ‘good guys’—“ she air-quotes’d that for emphasis, “—win somehow, in spite of what looks like overwhelming odds. They’ve got a few good tacticians and some ridiculous powers, so they might be able to. What then?”

I shrugged and grabbed a yellow fern for another color streak, along with a banana to mark it. “I don’t know. Probably try to work out a post-Ilneat future?”

“And what does that look like? A constant Power War, or just a massive one that ends with some sort of new world order? Neither is good for you and me.”

“That’s something we’d have to figure out, but I doubt we can do that while the Ilneats control all the supers. There are, what, a million of them?” I asked.

“Way less. Probably less than a hundred thousand, mostly concentrated in big cities. They look powerful because the media portrays them as powerful, but they’re not any stronger than you or me.” Su-Bin glared at her choices and grabbed a piece almost at random. I relaxed; she’d given up on one of her double bonus objectives. And, at the same time, she clearly still had no idea I was Magical Girl Understudy.

Speaking of which…

“Su-Bin, honestly, how much of your skepticism is because of Magical Girl Understudy?”

She paused at that, a scowl returning to her face. I watched her turn the question over in her head, staying quiet even while she picked her piece and placed it on the board. “Setting aside that she’s on the Pro-Earth League’s side, I still don’t think they have a good plan for post-conflict. And I don’t see the conflict going well for regular folks. I mean, look at the fallout from Golden Goose’s death.”

“What do you mean?”

“Power Wars aren’t good for Extras in the best of times. When Golden Goose got killed, it caused a huge flare-up of violence in most cities, especially those nearest to Yorkston. Extras took the worst of it. That’ll happen again when the post-diary war pops off.”

“Oh.” I thought about that. She wasn’t wrong, which sent a shiver down my spine. Unless the Pro-Earth League made a play directly into the Hot Zone and forced the Ilneats to the table fast, it would turn into a protracted fight. It probably would boil over into residential areas, and there were some supers who were nukes. Tapdance came to mind, along with a few others. They would hurt Extras. They couldn’t help it.

“So, the Pro-Earthers have to prove they’re on the Extras’ side before they can have any sort of conversation with my chapter of APPEAL,” Su-Bin continued. “I get that we’re not exactly important, but I think the national organization’s in agreement with that, and many other groups probably are, too. Ideally—and I know I’m just a college kid, but we’re speculating today, right? Ideally, I’d like to see a post-Ilneat plan, the dismantling of the episode system, and a commitment to ending the conflict as bloodlessly as possible.”

That was something—an opening. But I couldn’t press too hard. It might be enough; I’d bring it back to Mindstorm and let her mull it over. Maybe it’d help inform our strategic needs.

It also meant I wouldn’t have to use my ace in the hole, and that was, in all honesty, a really big deal. Revealing myself would have killed our friendship, among other problems, and I was happy to have avoided it. I cleared my throat and placed another tile. “Okay. How’s Cam doing?”

“Oh, he’s fine.” She placed her tile, looking sad. “We were going to meet tomorrow, but with all this, I doubt I’ll get out the door any time soon. Speaking of Cam, though, can you do me a favor?”

“Sure, anything you need.” I meant it, too. If it didn’t involve outing myself—which I’d been prepared to do if I thought it might flip her attitude toward the Pro-Earth League—I’d do whatever I could to make her happy.

“Thanks.” She paused. “I want to play some games, the four of us, on Saturday. Can you and Bee get that virtual tabletop set up?”

I nodded, placed another piece, and raised an eyebrow at her. “That’s it? Definitely.”

We played for another hour or so, but then it was time to head back to the Green Room. I had messages to send to Mindstorm, a plan to talk over with Bee, and—unfortunately—classes to study for unless I wanted to repeat all this next year. So, I said my goodbyes, quickly called Bee, and waited for her to show up.

The moment she pulled up, I was in the car, buckling my seatbelt. “So, how’d it go?” Bianca asked.

“It went well. We didn’t get what Mindstorm wanted, but I also didn’t have to use the nuclear option. Instead, we’ve got a way for APPEAL and the Pro-Earth League to start coming to terms, and some insight into what her club’s thinking.”

“I still think it’s wild that Mindstorm cares so much about the local chapter. She barely mentioned the national APPEAL group as being important,” Bee said.

I paused at that. It was strange; even Su-Bin had invoked the larger APPEAL organization to give her argument more weight. Why hadn’t Mindstorm put any thought into the bigger picture? A thought struck me, and I grabbed my phone to pull up the lists of supers who’d joined each faction. The pro-galaxy faction, as they were calling themselves, had almost triple the members we did—and they looked stronger, overall.

That didn’t bode well, and there was no way Mindstorm was unaware of that. So, if she knew what was happening, what was her plan? I asked Bee, but she didn’t have any idea, either.

When we finally pulled into the Walnut Tower parking lot and headed up to the Green Room, I could tell that Bee had been busy. The door with the star and Rocko’s studio name was boarded up in such a haphazard way I couldn’t help but laugh. When I did, she glared at me. “Mindstorm put out a message asking us to secure our hideouts. I spent most of my time back in the Outback Stakeout House, tearing down all your plans and making sure they were thrown away.”

“And then I called you before you could finish…this?”

“Yeah. We’re at war, so we can’t have a way for the enemy to get directly into our fortress.”

“Not that it’ll matter if Tapdance joins their side and levels Tokyexico,” I muttered.

Bianca nodded. Then she grabbed my laptop, and I started composing an email. Mindstorm had to know what we’d learned.