The distant sounds of battle grew fainter when she took another left turn, chasing after some more stragglers that hadn't gotten away in time.

Her motorcycle thrummed silently as she extended her hand, a translucent purple petal on her fingertip touching an angrily stalking man with a gun the moment she drove by. His eyes glazed over and he turned in place, running off in a straight line. She floored the accelerator to get to the next street.

Being a psionic, Colette knew she was probably never going to be loved the way a lot of other heroes tended to be. The stereotypes about her kind of power were prevalent; out of all the people she’d met as Moonflower, only a small minority wasn’t wary of her ability. Mind control was always the foremost concern when people saw mental force constructs, and it didn’t help her case that with her, that was exactly what they got.

It took a special type of person to rise above the preconceived expectations and prejudice. Larger than life paragons. The likes of Darkshiv or Saio-Queen. Colette was not that brand of superhuman, nor did she think she needed to be. Sure, she had some aspirations to take on jobs beyond street level more consistently in the future, but she didn’t see herself taking the limelight the way some of the global top ten did.

She didn’t even consider herself much of a hero, if she was being honest with herself. Which she liked to think she quite often was, by the way. In her position, you only ever did well with heaps of self-awareness and soul searching and all that jazz.

It had taken a lot of inner work for her to get to this point. Becoming so comfortable in your own skin wasn’t easy, despite how she made it look. Not to start acting like a shrink or anything, but the psychological patterns causing her to make decisions that had led her to this point weren’t exactly the most rosy or pure. She doubted a kinder, more innocent girl would’ve gotten a power like hers.

Though she would be the first to admit her background was a privileged one—being the daughter of a successful CEO and all—she’d grown up feeling like she lacked something. Be it excitement, tension, danger, or whatever else didn’t fit into the lifestyle of a typical girl her age. Okay, yeah, she was a bit of a thrill seeker. Sue her.

Anyway, the point was, her life had always felt like it was missing certain elements. Aside from being a bit dull, that was. If you pointed a gun at her head and forced her to use a single word to describe it, she’d say influence was what she was really after. And her manifestation of it, of that desire, was pretty sinister. No point in denying that.

But she was a merc, at the end of the day. At least, she’d started as one and that mentality carried over into her current work under Cyrus. So she couldn’t say she was particularly bothered by the idea of enthralling people. It was both temporary and limited to criminals. The second part was a self-imposed limitation; it wasn’t like she went around using it on random people or her friends unless she had a good reason.

Right now she was using her power on the most disruptive people in the area, ones trying to take advantage of the chaos and threatening the safety of everyone else. Just sprout a petal, impart a command, and tap their heads with it. Simple stuff. That way the emergency services effectively had double the number of people maintaining some semblance of order. See? She could do good.

Quillvoy was helping the boss, so chances were she was on her own for the rest of the night. And this was how she was spending it. On the periphery, helping people get away. After all, she couldn’t very well just start a bout of fisticuffs with an Unbound, now could she? That was something the rest could handle. Definitely. Maybe…

Alright fine, she was worried. She had no idea why it was taking so ridiculously long for the supes from Central to show up. The area was beginning to clear out when the tremors abated a little. People were reaching the edges of the district, and her readout told her… that Mistral was dead. What the…?

From that point onwards the notifications just kept streaming in. Death after death, from names she recognized and ones she didn’t. But luckily none of her friends were dead. She hoped it would be over soon because this was becoming nerve-wracking. Even with all her experience, and being removed from the situation, she intellectually understood the danger they were facing.

Minutes later, she read about the incoming explosion and banked right. Hard. She was about to push for all the speed she could when purple sparks lit up around her. She blinked, uncomprehending for a moment, thinking this was her own power malfunctioning. Except she wasn’t doing anything, and then something strange happened.

The scenery changed from the empty street to a crowd of exhausted-looking heroes in an instant, civilians farther back. The sight disoriented her for a moment. That was simply her brain catching up to the transition from one environment to the next though. The transportation itself had been seamless. Instant. No vertigo whatsoever. Even her momentum had been stopped entirely, making it so she sped up for a second before letting go.

Who had teleported her? The reinforcements, right? They must’ve finally arrived. She looked around and soon spotted them there in the center of the group. A man in a lavender ninja outfit made of silk. Her eyes widened in recognition. That was the Voyager, Apexia’s famous mass teleporter. So that was who had saved her.

And if he was here, then the other members of their team should be as well. She didn’t have to look for the next one. Instead, the giant transparent wall spanning all the way up into the clouds was enough of an indication. Standing at the bottom with her hands pressed against it, a blonde woman in an off-white coat with knee-high boots of the same color and a kind of helmet mask, twin pigtails poking out from the back. Cerese was her name.

Before she could try and spot the next one, her attention was drawn by the telltale swirling of Warp’s portal, which spat out Calliope of all people before winking out. Wait, not everyone had made it? Colette abruptly grew more panicked. Who else could she—

The horizon lit up, a wave of roaring heat exploding outward so brightly it would have made her squint if she wasn’t looking through her helmet’s visor. It crashed into the Cerese’s barrier, but the woman’s power held strong, not straining in the slightest to weather the blast.

All the same, she could feel the ground rumbling, the devastation clear in spite of the force not reaching them. Her arms twitched, instinctively wanting to cover her from the danger she knew she was safe from. She kept them by her side, looking around for the others when the light had died down enough to make out the others again.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Her hardened soles came down on the pavement one after the other in a rapid clip, motorcycle forgotten. She slowed her pace when she came closer to the rest of the group, and spotted all the Junior Aces. Captain included. A sigh of relief left her. Then she realized the position Aiden was in.

He was on his knees. Nar was on his knees, slumped forward.

Colette ran to his side, putting a gloved hand on his shoulder. “What…” She wasn’t often lost for words, but seeing him like this was apparently enough to get her to that point.

“I failed them,” Aiden said tonelessly, completely breaking character. It was unthinkable, she hadn’t seen him do that before, ever. Even in the most dangerous and serious moments, he would at most remain quiet. But he’d never let anyone hear him sound so defeated.

Mistral hadn’t made it, she knew that. Yet that shouldn’t have warranted this bad of a reaction, should it? Casualties in such numbers didn’t occur often, but they weren’t entirely unheard of either.

“It all happened because of me,” her boyfriend continued, letting out a long breath. She squinted, trying to spot the charisma and ambition of the charming young man she’d fallen in love with. He was sitting straight now, though that didn’t fool her. Behind the deceptive, perpetual smile of his mask, his expression couldn’t have been anything resembling cheerful or mocking.

At that moment she realized he’d said “them.” Plural rather than singular. For the umpteenth time, her eyes swept over the area, and now she realized there was indeed someone missing. A certain color manipulator that she’d grown fond of in recent times.

Shade was nowhere to be found.

Lyra’s shocked rambling confirmed it. “I can’t hear him. He’s gone. Gone… I can’t find him. Ican’tfindhimIcan’tfindhimIcan’tfindhimIcan’tfindhimIcan’tfindhimIcan’tfindhimIcan’tfindhimIcan’tfindhimIcan’tfindhimIcan’tfindhimIcan’tfindhimIcan’tfindhimIcan’tfindhimIcan’tfindhimIcan’tfindhimIcan’tfindhimIcan’tfindhimIcan’tfindhimIcan’tfindhim…”

The girl was on her knees and elbows, cradling her head as the buzzing around her grew more frantic. It was a low hum at first, then it became more insistent, louder. Then Colette started feeling it in her body, traveling through her legs and chest. The pitch rose, and her ears started to hurt.

It clicked in her mind that second, because she had read the girl’s file. Lyra Chen had become a missing person’s case, the trail of which had gone cold, courtesy of Cyrus. However, the reason the girl had gone missing was due to an incident with her power going out of control in some bar. At first Colette had assumed it was a control issue that had been remedied. But if her power was tied to emotion or something similar…

She stepped forward with a petal on her index finger before the soundwaves became so loud she could no longer think. A small shockwave nearly blasted her off her feet, staggering her. She persevered, making contact with her power when she was in range and speaking a single word:

“Sleep.”

The grieving girl collapsed like a sack of bones, going limp as soon as she’d imbued her intent. She didn’t need to speak to apply her power, per se. The spoken command just helped steady her. An essential step, since it had felt like her brain was getting scrambled.

In the corner of her eye, another heroine sent her a grateful look, but she just felt drained. She hadn’t even done much, really. The only thing she could feel was the weight of the past evening making her weary.

The headache was getting bad enough that she was considering a costume change just so she could rub her temples during times like this. She lowered herself to the ground, dimly aware of Cerese lowering the giant shield and the smoke having cleared.

A glow rocketing down behind her shocked her back to full awareness. She saw the people gathered look up at a spot above her shoulder and followed their gazes. A woman who looked like a girl about her age floated there, wearing a white bodysuit with no embellishments or capes, completely unmasked. Her shoulder-length brown hair blew in the wind as she coolly watched the cratered wasteland ahead of them. Colette could barely believe her eyes now that she was seeing this heroine in the flesh. She’d imagined meeting her a lot, though certainly not under these circumstances.

“Voyager,” the strongest heroine in Apexia spoke. “Prepare a maximum security prisoner transport. I’m taking her alive.”

“Understood, Noor,” Voyager replied, pulling out a communicator and speaking rapid instructions into it.

Noor’s eyes had never left the rising form in the center of the crater from the moment she arrived. In the distance, Viperia got back up. The giant lizard didn’t seem to have a scratch on her besides a cut on her chest. And she bolted upon seeing who she was facing, not hesitating for a second.

District A10A’s main hero team captain only moved when Viperia tried to run, covering kilometers of distance in a fraction of a second, a multicolored silhouette left in her wake. She appeared in front of Viperia, barring the lizard’s path. Moonflower used her helmet cam’s zoom-in function to see more clearly.

Viperia tried to turn the other way, and all she got for her efforts was a fist to the face that impacted her so hard Colette heard the sound of it reach them a few seconds later. The lizard slid across the barren landscape, far enough to carve a trench from one end to the other.

To her credit, the shifter recovered and went on all-fours with her mouth wide open, dark smoke wafting from her maw. Then, in a flash, Noor came down on her head with both feet to snap her jaws shut, cratering the ground with just a casual landing.

Viperia actually tried to shrink her way out from under the heroine’s boots, and she managed it briefly. Entering some weird humanoid lizard form, she sprinted away. She didn’t make it more than two steps before Noor caught her by the throat. She struggled and clawed at her stoic adversary, to no effect whatsoever.

The number four hero tossed her into the air so fast it broke the sound barrier, and Viperia went flying into the sky until she was a tiny black dot. Above her, a massive tangle of light shifted and twisted in the air, then settled into a giant clone of Noor herself.

Made purely out of aurora lights.

Noor reared back a fist, and her avatar mirrored her movements, cocking an arm back. She punched.

The massive arm came down on Viperia like the hammer of a god banishing her from the heavens. The supervillain shot back towards the ground with more speed than any military fighter jet Colette had ever seen. And when she touched down, the land rippled.

This time, Colette didn’t stop her arms from covering her face against the dust, and she was sure the people around her were taking cover too. Cerese hadn’t raised a barrier, so it must not have been dangerous for them.

It didn’t take long for the dust cloud to disappear, one of the heroes using a power to clear it, and when they could see the outcome of the fight, well…

Noor was hovering over them again, this time with an unconscious human woman tucked underneath one arm. Colette just gaped. That last blow had knocked Viperia out of her shifter form.

Seeing that, every person present relaxed. And the cleanup began, many with a heavy heart from the losses they suffered tonight.

While the battle was over, Colette knew full well things would never be the same.