Alexandria Penelope Megalos had earned her callsign.

Fury.

Water from the showerhead evaporated before it touched her skin, turning the bathroom into a sauna as her fury overwhelmed her.

Fury was the basis of her power. Fury was her fuel. Fury kept her on her feet when everything else tried to knock her down. People thought fury was just another word for rage, but that wasn’t even close to the truth. Fury wasn’t a temper tantrum. Fury was a wound. Fury was an outrage. It demanded satisfaction.

Fury was proactive grief. Perhaps that was why her tears seamed impervious to the heat as they rolled down her cheek.

Noah is dead.

Every time the thought hit, it was just as painful as the first time she’d heard it. There were a few cornerstones of her life she had put her entire faith into. One, the Organization. Two, Waffle House. Three, Noah Tomorrow was going to live forever.

Noah is dead.

It still didn’t make any sense. He’d taken on Revenant, and that had been after Revenant had—temporarily—put down the Guardsman. Hyperion was powerful, but at best, he was merely in the same general area as Paragon’s base strength, and not known for his fighting prowess or tactical acumen. Despite their massive gap in relative strength levels, Fury would give someone like Ripper one chance in ten to take down Hyperion, due to having a perpetual puncher’s chance and experienced cunning.

Jason, the entitled pissbaby, the manchild homunculus, the walking dog fart of a human being who had inflicted tremendous physical and emotional damage on Anna, had killed Noah.

Noah is dead.

Their marriage had been…fraught, to put it mildly. Sure, they had been exactly what the other had been looking for. Alex was seeking stability after spending most of her twenties picking fights and partying like she wasn’t going to see tomorrow. Noah, in turn, had been looking for someone to shake up his nearly century-long existence, reignite his passion. And it had worked. They’d both more than rubbed off on each other.

But for all that they had wanted to connect, the gap was just too big, and neither of them had been able to survive in the middle. Noah’s calm patience began to feel patronizing. His certainty of purpose began to feel smothering. He was set in his ways. And in a lot of ways, Alex had been set in hers. She’d always thought of herself as a wildcard, a woman on the edge improvising her way through life, but that had been until she had realized there were certain things she hadn’t been willing to negotiate either. Her status as the Organization’s top Arbiter, for one. Paragon was as old-school as they came, and had no stomach for the less idealistic side of the superheroic world. It had been a wedge between them that had only ever grown.

Even with all of that, their divorce had been amicable. More than amicable. Hell, they’d still spent nights together afterward. She still loved him dearly, which was actually easier to remember when he wasn’t insisting on having a sitdown, three-course dinner every. Single. Night.

She shut off the water and stepped out of the shower. The master bathroom was a fairly small room, but the steam was still thick enough that she couldn’t see the far wall. She walked to the mirror—the only one she’d left hung up in the house, seeing as Anna should have very little reason to ever come in here—and wiped the steam away enough to see herself.

Her hair glowed with solar intensity. Fire seemed to erupt from her very pores and dance across her skin. Even in her current state, even to herself, her eyes seemed demented, radiating insane, uncompromising animus.

It scared her.

Noah is dead.

And Hyperion was alive.

Fury demands satisfaction.

And she would have it. Eventually.

That was another difference between fury and rage.

Fury could be cold.

And it could be patient.

With a thought, she shifted the temperature of the room, condensing the moisture from the air, weaving delicate and intricate flows of energy to collect it all and swirl it around herself, giving herself the shower she hadn’t actually taken in two seconds flat, scouring the impurities from her body with precision that left her skin untouched. Then, she streamed the water back into the tub, leaving the room arctic, cool and dry.

For now, Anna needed her.

The jackals were circling.

----------------------------------------

“Here’s the score, kid,” Alex said. “SCAR tried to get clever, and it bit them in the ass, but it’s also made things more complicated for us.”

“Oh no,” Anna said, voice flat. “Complications. Whatever shall we do?”

“Give up, probably,” Alex answered. “What’s the use in going on when things are inconvenient?”

Anna nodded, mournful, but her eyes lit up. “I guess it really is nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”

“I suppose we could always, by opposing, end them.”

“And how’d that work out for Hamlet again?”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“I don’t know, I only ever saw The Lion King. I assume he climbed up a big, phallic rock and lived happily ever after eating his subjects. It’s actually a pretty good metaphor for monarchism.”

One of Anna’s rare grins split her face. She loved it when people played into her gags. Alex supposed that everyone loved it when someone engaged with them on their terms, but she doubted there were many people alive who had it happen as infrequently as Anna Jones.

They were sitting in the living room now, mugs of coffee steaming, appropriately, on the coffee table in front of the couch, next to a thick, brown sleeve filled with legal papers. Anna sat next to her, curled up into as tight a coil as she could physically be in, her IV line running to the stand perched behind the couch.

She looked up at Alex, smile radiant.

And Alex’s heart mended, melted, and then broke again.

Anna was insubstantial. Part of it was her general color palette. Pale skin, pale hair, with strikingly dark eyes. She had the same vibe of some kind of Victorian gothic ghost, complete with the air of haunting tragedy.

And she was so gaunt.

Alex and the Liebowitzes had worked so hard trying to put some pounds on her—she may have been the only person to ever come to the Skip and gain weight—and it had taken SCAR less than a week to wipe out every bit of progress they’d made. It had been so much worse last night, before the Medico and the IV, and when her body had been mostly bruise and burn from a laser graze Alex didn’t even know if she felt. That had been all the fuel Alex had needed to create a frozen blade so hard that it made durasteel look like styrofoam. That had been fury.

“So what clever thing did SCAR do?” Anna asked.

“I said they tried to be clever.” Alex cleared her throat, just to have an excuse for how tight it had briefly gotten. “Aurora got a tipoff that you had been captured, and so they started making a fuss. They said that, if SCAR didn’t want to charge you, their At-Risk privilege dictated that they should turn you over.”

“So that’s what that judge’s order was?”

Alex smiled grimly. “No, that was different. See, SCAR thought that it would kill the school’s interest if they actually charged you, so they did.”

Anna’s eyebrows shot up. “So I’m wanted wanted, and not just SCAR wanted?”

“You’re no longer a HERO Act ‘designated malicious metahuman,’” Alex confirmed. “You’re now a real criminal.”

“Sweet. Can I get a tattoo?” She sucked in a sharp, excited breath. “Can I get a tramp stamp?”

“No. Shut up, dork.” Alex slapped her knee lightly. “What SCAR failed to realize is that, if they no longer were claiming to be holding you under the HERO Act, then they had to deal with the actual criminal justice system. You know, rights, lawyers, all that stuff. Things people are supposed to have if they’re being held by the government. So the school hired a lawyer on your behalf.”

“Was it Harvey Birdman?”

“Harvey Birdman is a cartoon on TV, Anna. How do you even know about that?”

Anna shrugged. “Local library had a section for old analogue media. Did you know libraries are behind most information preservation efforts, especially in the wake of the technophage—”

Alex gently slid her hand in front of Anna’s mouth, and Anna resolutely kept speaking mushy, garbled words into her palm.

When she was done, Alex took her hand away and said, “Stop derailing.”

“Dynomutt!”

“I’ll gag you. Anyway, your lawyer convinced a judge to issue the order to turn you over, we’ve worked out a slightly altered deal for you to go to Aurora University.” Alex leaned over to the brown envelope on the coffee table and picked it up, sliding the thick packet out and presenting it to Anna. “So, we’ve got to go through this, sign some dotted lines, and have it back to your lawyer by the end of the day. We’ve got a Starflight courier on standby, which is pretty expensive, so let’s get this knocked out, and then we can watch movies.”

Anna took the sheaf of papers slowly, eyebrows furrowed. “So…I’m still going to Aurora?”

Alex nodded. “That’s the plan.”

Anna just…looked at her.

Alex sighed. “Look, kid. I wanted to wait, and give you some time to recover. I floated giving you until next year. Hell, I wanted to see if we couldn’t use the very obvious evidence of torture to get the charges dropped with no strings, and possibly get a lawsuit going on your behalf, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. Heroforge Orientation is in a week.”

“So, what’s the deal?” Anna asked, getting that tone in her voice that made Alex think she was about to get unreasonably stubborn about something. “What are the strings?”

Alex said, “You’re going to plead guilty to all of your charges. In return, the judge is going to issue what’s called a deferral. Instead of sentencing you immediately, you’re going to be given certain conditions that you have to fulfill, and if you do, all charges will be dropped. You’ll be legally free.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You’ll be sentenced.”

Anna’s eyes went flat. “Okay. So, the deal is, I go to school?”

“Not quite. The condition is that you complete the Heroforge Program and graduate as a superhero.”

“Or go to prison?”

“That was always kind of the deal, Anna,” Alex said. “Now it’s more concrete. Really, it’s better for the people working on your side. Even if you fail, we’re establishing massive amounts of legal precedent to use against the HERO Act. In a way, SCAR tacitly admitted that they had no real right to hold you.”

Anna stared at her.

“Use your words, kid.”

“I don’t…” She got flustered like she sometimes did, the kind where even Alex, whose telepathic abilities were more theoretical than anything, knew that the problem was that every word tried to come out all at once.

Alex leaned over and put an arm around her, stroking her back.

It seemed to help her relax, but it still took her a minute or two to speak. “It don’t like being a pawn for all of this…legal garbage. I don’t like feeling like I’ve got no choice.” Her jaw set. “And I don’t know how any of this is going to keep the Skip from imploding.”

“Anna, worrying about the Skip isn’t your job,” Alex said. “Really, the Skip is just as bad an optics nightmare for metahumans as a whole as you are for SCAR. It’s hard to argue that metahumans aren’t a threat when you’ve got an entire borough of a city being held hostage.”

“We have to, or SCAR will—!”

“Anna,” Alex cut in. “Let’s not argue right now. Okay? Good idea, bad idea, it’s out of your hands. We need to focus on this.” She reached out and tapped the packet of papers Anna was holding.

The small girl eyed it suspiciously. “What is all this, anyway?"

“Mostly, a detailed legal rundown of the processes the courts are using and a agreement for your lawyer, one, accepting him as your lawyer, and two, acknowledging that he negotiated on your behalf in absentia, due to the time-sensitive nature of the issue.”

Anna looked up at Alex, eyes hard in a way that Alex hated to see. She was being weighed and measured, and not even Alex could discount the possibility of violence if she was found wanting. As much as she wanted to say that Anna was just a misunderstood kid, it was impossible to deny that there was something angry and violent inside her, something that worried Alex.

Anna was deciding if Alex was her friend, or just another jackal.

Sometimes, Alex wondered that herself.

She resolved, then, to be the former. She already thought she was, but where Anna was concerned, she wasn’t going to be the hand of the system. Not anymore. She was going to make sure this girl was okay, above all things. She would make sure that, no matter what, she never lost her freedom again, even if that meant joining her. She made that vow to herself.

She said nothing to Anna, because whatever Anna decided had nothing to do with the things Alex said.

Finally, the platinum-haired girl smiled tentatively. Their contact had provided all the answers Anna had needed.

She said, “Where do I sign?”

Alex told her. She explained a few more things. They made it official. Anna would go to Aurora.

But not for a week.

Alex had one week with her, and she was going to make it the best week of Anna’s life.