When Finn got back to school, there were two main topics of conversation in his class. More specifically, people were talking about both his dance with Casey at the party last weekend, and the clip of Shade and Calliope fighting Ignis, which had apparently gone viral. He was involved in both of them, but people didn’t know about his role in the latter.

Going by the angle from which the footage was captured, it must have been one of the residents inside the surrounding buildings who filmed it. He’d already seen it, but now that he wasn’t actively evaluating his performance, he was coming to notice it was decent camera work as his classmates went around showing everyone the video.

“I'm telling you, this has to be a publicity stunt from the DHD. There's even pics of them talking to Damsel afterwards,” some guy was saying.

“Are you crazy? She was obviously trying to get them on her team.”

“I mean, If they get ‘em to sign, I hope they change Calliope's outfit. She'd look amazing in spandex.”

“Ugh. You are disgusting.”

“But what about that Shade kid?” Someone else said. “He just winked out that fire like it was nothing. Don't think any of the Junior Aces coulda done that. Well, except one.”

“Do you think he can color my hair black?” a girl from the side piped up.

“Dunno, but I doubt it. His power seems temp, not perma.”

“Guess he'd just have to follow me around all day,” she giggled.

Instead of his usual spot, Finn took a seat near the front of the class this time, a few rows away from Jack.

“Allister,” Casey said behind him.

“Hm?”

“You seem to have missed your usual stop,” she smirked, looking at Jack, then back to him. “Did you sleepwalk your way here?”

“Is that any way to talk to your boyfriend?” Ines teased. “Can’t you see he came to sit here because he missed you so much?”

Finn gave her a flat stare. “The only thing I miss is the privilege of not seeing your face.”

“Finn, how could you say that?” Ines brought a hand to her chest. “After everything I’ve done for you…”

He just shook his head and got his notebook out. It wasn’t like he’d deliberately made the decision to sit close to them.

“Allister,” Casey said again.

“What.”

“My father wanted you to know he was impressed by your dancing skills.”

Cyrus Wardell had been watching? But he hadn’t even been in the same room as them, as far as Finn was aware. Then again, he could have easily been observing through some other method. And why have Casey deliver the message after the fact instead of just coming up to Finn himself? There had been plenty of opportunities to do so.

Either way, Finn would be lying if he said he hadn’t noticed an overall improvement in his movements after Aiden’s crash course. That well-timed, rhythmic motion was probably the reason his face hadn’t been burned off yesterday.

“All I did was copy what I saw other guests doing,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Sure it was,” Casey responded dryly. Did she not believe him?

“So are you taking her out on a date or not?” Ines asked. “You already have her family’s blessing.”

Another girl overheard that and decided to meddle. “A date? They’re actually going on a date?”

“No,” Finn and Casey said in unison, then they exchanged a look.

That, of course, did nothing but fan the flames of curiosity burning among their classmates. The girls kept inundating them with questions as though it was an interview, and the boys mimed crass gestures at Finn behind Casey’s back.

And so, the rest of the class continued. The lecture itself didn’t end up being very interesting, which was expected, but Finn found himself paying even less attention than he otherwise would have. Was this a side effect of his power burnout? He hadn’t been able to manifest his power as strongly ever since he pushed it that far.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The results spoke for themselves though. He absolutely didn’t regret doing what he did. He hadn’t even known that would be possible, but seeing the pictures of himself in action, he became more motivated to create proper techniques with black. Or vantablack, he supposed.

Granted, it would require more training before he could apply it while in moving, let alone while in combat. Range hadn’t even been the issue with his power burnout, it had been intensity. And now that he knew what he could do when he pushed himself past his limit, he was dead set on getting a handle on it.

Still, he would have to wait until his power had recovered to do that, he thought as he walked toward the lunch table. Two hours had passed, and he realized he was abnormally hungry with how much food he’d gotten scooped on his tray. The school didn’t offer the worst food in the world, but he also wouldn’t ever choose to eat it outside the cafeteria. On any other day. Today, it looked so tantalizing he could hardly wait to dig in.

As he sat down, he was disappointed to see Jack would distract him from his meal. A flash of irritation rose up in him, but he suppressed it and ignored the other boy.

Despite Finn’s best efforts, Jack seemed determined to keep Finn’s attention from the meal, tapping him on the shoulder. “Finn, listen, you can’t go out tonight, do you understand?”

Finn frowned. “I won’t.”

“I know how much you- wait, what?”

“My power is burned out. I have to wait until it comes back.”

“That was surprisingly reasonable of you…” Jack said, eyeing him cautiously.

Was he really that bad? Whatever. Finn continued eating.

“And maybe notify Lyra that you’re not coming, or she might go to the meetup spot for nothing, you know?”

“Sure. I’ll let her know.”

Jack tilted his head, looking puzzled as he watched Finn gulp down the milk. “I thought you’d be more pissed about this whole thing.”

Finn didn’t say anything to that, simply wolfing down the rest of his food. Did his power burnout require energy to recover? That would be weird, but he didn’t exactly know how powers affected human physiology. This was something he would ask Jack about, but he wasn’t really in the mood right now.

Honestly, he was still angry about the fact that Jack had revealed his name to Lyra, but if he viewed it from a more positive angle, it had sped up their rate of improvement. As long as he was willing to show his face to Lyra, which he might as well at this point. Although, there was a chance she hadn’t looked him up at all. Maybe he could use his unmasking as a test to gauge her reaction and see if she was really trustworthy.

Probably not though, he wasn’t going to risk his identity. And even if he were willing to do that, he didn’t want Jack taking this as greenlight to cross boundaries in the future for what he thought was Finn’s own good. Hence his silence. It wouldn’t do to become a pawn.

“So do you think we’re good to go on that Venin operation?” Jack started again.

“We?” Finn stabbed down with his fork for another bite, but only hit plastic. And he was still hungry.

Jack hung his head forward. “I’m sorry, okay? I can’t change what happened, but I do feel like shit for slipping up like that.”

“...Alright, whatever,” Finn said. He would need his friend on future missions, as much as he wanted to deny it, and he didn’t want to let this drama go on for too long. It was slowing down their progress, and he had enough on his plate as it was. He looked down. Maybe not literally.

*******

Before Finn knew it, he was back home. The rest of the day hadn’t taken long at all, and he had finally gotten around to asking Moonflower why she hadn’t taken that infiltration mission.

Her answer was that she wanted him to have it since she had been ‘prepping for another big gig’ and couldn’t be ready to take the other request on top of that, at least not within the specified time limit.

Acceptable, as far as Finn and Jack were concerned. They would float the idea to Lyra once they knew more about each other, but for now, Finn spent his time recovering his power as fast as possible.

In the end, it only took two days for him to get back to full strength, and he was tempted to immediately push it further than last time, but he held himself back, knowing that would only slow him down in the long run.

That didn’t mean his training was put on hold completely, of course. He kept going through his usual exercises to make sure there would be no hiccups on the field. There was no reason to risk it anyway.

Besides increasing his pace, anyway. Though that seemed to be a constant in his life. Always burning something away to get himself ahead even faster. He knew what he was doing it for, so he wasn’t going to stop anytime soon, but his limits made it tedious.

For the time being, his priorities were to get his next Aegis store purchase, which was the glove capable of electrocution he could adjust the power of, and potentially some other upgrades for his staff.

After that, they would have to investigate those leads they’d gotten from Casey’s party. While Finn didn’t expect to get anything productive out of them, it might lead them to uncover something bigger if they kept at it.

Not that he wanted to waste too many nights on that. He had so many other threads of thought and activity vying for his attention, and now there were yet more being added.

Over the next few days, his missions didn’t turn out to be anything too threatening. They encountered no more villains, and the credits accumulated swiftly. Upon logging his last mission for the weekend, he wasted no time making his purchases.

He had overshot his goal by a few hundred credits, so he kept those for later. Currently, all he bought was the glove. It showed him a drop-off location and he went for it.

Lyra had asked them for help deciding what to buy, and Jack was happy to oblige. She ended up settling on a set of decent quality armor, similar to his own, but she would keep the bird mask.

In addition to that, she decided to double down on defense, buying a sonic shield projector gadget that would project a sound screen which was supposed to stop impacts from going through it. At their price range, the versions available to them wouldn’t even stop one bullet, but Lyra should be able to enhance it with her own power.

The Aegis store was adamant that they pick different locations to pick it up though, because the app wouldn’t approve of her following Finn no matter what she tried. He still wasn’t quite sure how that worked, but there must have been some reason for it.

Once they’d picked up their new gear and reunited, Lyra tested her gadget and confirmed she could in fact reinforce the shield with her ability, though that wasn’t a surprise since she had already known the frequency from the description.

Finn was keen to test his new weapon as well, but he wouldn’t use Lyra as his guinea pig, so he put it away.

“Calliope,” he said.

She looked up at him. “Yeah? Anything wrong? Your ears don’t hurt because of the shield, do they? That would really suck.”

“No, it’s about last week. I threatened to kick you off the team. I shouldn’t have, not over something so small. I won’t do it again.”

“Oh! Not at all, don’t mention it. Or do mention it if you want, just, I won’t do it again either. Uhm, I can’t really control it. Ah, I’ll try my best.”

“Shade,” Jack said. “Did I seriously just hear you apologize?”

Finn idly inspected his staff. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

With Jack’s laughter in the background, Finn and Lyra left for the day, deciding to spend some time practicing before they did their next mission.

He had a feeling they were going to need it.