Lyssa sprinted up the stairs of the apartment. The door to the roof was unlocked. She took a moment to slow down, to breathe, then she stepped through. The suspicious individual had put away their phone and was preparing to leave.

“Hey!” Lyssa shouted.

It was a man, thin, age unknown. He threw a glance over his shoulder.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was just curious. Wanted to see Stonemason work. I’ll get off the roof.”

He strolled towards the door, passing Lyssa. She placed a hand on his shoulder.

“What brand is it?” She asked.

“What?”

“Your phone. It looks retro. I was just curious.”

“Oh, uh, here I’ll get it-”

Lyssa stumbled back. Her nose was bleeding. It took her a second to realize she had been struck. She recovered quickly enough to catch the man’s head disappearing off the side of the roof; he had jumped off. She ran to the curb. Several storeys shrunk away beneath her.

“Shit. Come on. Come on!” She stepped aside in her mind, and let just a little anger in. Then she jumped. Her shoes strained from the impact, but nothing was broken. The hot, stone scales partially covering her had withstood the fall. She was beginning to smell her clothes burning.

You need to let me in all the way.

She remembered what had happened the last time she let Sethlana take full control. Lyssa kept a tight grip over herself. She gave chase borrowing just a bit of her fire. The man ran to the fence at the end of the alleyway.

“Stop!” She shouted.

He looked back, then kept walking. He did not stop, not while he was inches from the chain links, not while he was within the links, and when he was on the other side, he broke into a run.

Lyssa ran towards the fence. The metal was as solid as it was supposed to be. She stepped back. In her mind she saw herself under that single tree in the meadow. Alone. Izanami stood up in that shade, just for a moment.

The metal bent and snapped out of the way, creating an opening big enough for her to go through. The man had a head start, but he left behind a trail of gasps and expletives with every person he shoved. Lyssa followed before the gap closed.

All the pedestrians were getting in the way. Why were there so many here? Did they not realize an act of terrorism had just occurred in the neighborhood? It didn’t matter; she was gaining. Then the man swung himself around a bronze street clock into Thirty-Second Street. Lyssa did not slow down, slamming into the bronze pole with her shoulder. A spurt of sparks fell from her armor.

The distance had increased again. And she felt that much angrier. She exclaimed in frustration and pulled herself back on track, running faster than ever, harder than ever, trailing smoke from her burning clothes. The man made one last turn into an establishment. Welcome chimes tolled loudly as the door was slammed open, once by the man, once more by his pursuer. Then he stopped running, finally turning around to face Lyssa. Her expression quickly turned to panic.

“You brought a hot date?” A bear-like man said as he stood from the bar stool. His body was covered in fur, resembling some halfway point between man and beast.

“A stalker,” the thin man said. “Can’t seem to take no for an answer.”

Now that he was standing still, Lyssa could see him clearly. The most poignant feature was he seemed her age. To the right, a section of the dark wood wall morphed into that of a younger girl in casual clothes. All these people were in her generation.

“You led her here?” She snapped. “You’re not giving us a choice.”

Lyssa backed away. The anger was wearing off. She began to realize what she had done. But when her hand reached behind her she felt nothing but more wall; red flowery patterns on dark wood.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Stand still,” the bear-like man said. He approached, a fist clenched, a slight grimace on his face. “And close your eyes. I don’t like doing this.”

Lyssa tried to bring her gifts to the surface. But no fire came from her fingertips, and she could not feel the metal in the building. She was too scatterbrained, too scared. She could not feel the ‘demons’ in her mind. More than usual.

“Wait.” The voice was in her head, everyone’s head. “Bring her to me.”

“Hm.” A look of relief came to the bear-like man’s face. He struck Lyssa in the side of her head.

--

“Alright everybody back on the bus,” Samuel was saying, waving the students to move.

“Wait, we can help,” Amelia said. She and Penny stayed their ground.

“You are not authorized,” Samuel said. He stepped back and began mumbling to himself. “Shit. There’s always one in the first week.”

“We would not be acting as a hero,” Amelia said. “It would just be us looking for our roommate.”

“Right, because your friend simply got lost,” Samuel said sardonically. “It’s my fault. Hero students are always passionate. I shouldn’t have used this attack as a teaching opportunity.”

“Well, we’re not in high school anymore,” Penny said. “We’re eighteen. Adults. So you can either help us and synergize our efforts or we’ll just act alone. Neither goes against the Regulations.”

“You think so, kid?” He bore down on her.

“Gifts are not restricted from private use,” Amelia said. “We are not engaging anyone. We are simply looking for a friend.”

The lecturer mulled over it.

“Fine,” he said. He brought his radio to bear. “Alright, where did you last see this man on the roof? She followed him, right? Ask the support role students as well. Maybe they noticed something. Bring the zeppelin in an expanding circular patrol.”

Amelia gave Penny a look, to which Penny nodded. The animalian spread her wings, two pairs of glittering purples and blues dotted with false eyes. Nearby citizens stared she took flight, taking Penny with her into the air.

--

Lyssa woke bound to a chair. She had not been ready. She felt her pulse inside her skull, each resounded by pain. She had been wrestled from unconsciousness back to the waking world.

A middle-aged man sat in front of her, leaning on the chair’s backrest. His features, a gaunt face befitting a hearse driver, were shadowed by the cone of light precipitating from the solitary bulb in the room. A place that would have been claustrophobic if there had only been one occupant, much less another. Especially one that felt like his eyes were the ones inside Lyssa’s skull.

“You’re a M.A.G.E student,” he said. “At first I thought you were just another overly passionate child, like most hero candidates. But you genuinely have no idea why you’re doing this.”

“Who are you people?” Lyssa asked. “Were you the ones responsible for the train station?”

“You’re stuck in a chair face to face with a complete stranger, who could easily be a serial killer, and you’re asking questions like that? Ha. The answer is no. We were watching the situation unfold.”

“You let all those people die!” Lyssa thought of the crushed, unrecognizable form coming out of the rubble. “Why did you do nothing?”

The man snorted. “First of all, it’s illegal to without a license from a certified hero academy. Like M.A.G.E or Apex. Oh? You haven’t thought of that, I can tell. It’s against the Consolidated Enhancile Operating Regulation to engage in what could be constituted as hero work without a license.”

“That’s…” Lyssa struggled. They had just started classes. She could hardly recall the minutiae of the law so soon. “That’s not true.”

“There’s more nuance than that,” the man agreed. “But you had to think about it, didn’t you. What might have happened in that time? Regulation slows us down. The only reason we couldn’t stop the attack was because we couldn’t have guessed the bomb carrier was some little kid. M.A.G.E, on the other hand, didn’t even know it was happening.”

“You’re vigilantes,” Lyssa said. Her brow pinched as she realized. “Criminals.”

“Don’t be so naïve.”

“One of your men was prepared to kill me. I saw him. Until you told him to stop.”

“I told him to stop because I read your mind. You’re not like the others who watch Supe franchises all the way into adulthood and then sign up to M.A.G.E. And you’re not some righteous moron obsessed with Victory. You’re angry. You’ve been close to death before.”

“What are you saying?”

“Withdraw from M.A.G.E. Come with me. We’ve stopped attacks M.A.G.E couldn’t because they had to wait for permission. I’ll help you sort out the mess in your head too. We won’t let anyone go through what we’ve had to because of negligence.”

The man stood with a start out of the chair. The air in the room was getting dryer, hotter. The light bulb flickered. And one vacuous voice spoke.

“You know nothing about us.”

“Us?” The man backed away. He tried to leave the room, but there was no door. No walls. No ceiling. Nothing but darkness like the deepest zenith of a winter night. Tendrils of light waxed and waned far, far below a great shadow. From it rose a great shadow with hollow sockets for eyes, and brambles for lashes.

“Neat trick with the door earlier. I didn’t know I could do that.”

“What is this?” The man asked. “What are you?” He looked at his feet. The floor was tar. He was sinking. The shadow drew closer, placing her arms on his shoulders.

“Reality is in retrospect. And I am all retrospect.”

“This isn’t real,” he said. He closed his eyes. “This isn’t real. This isn’t real. I am not sinking.” He began to rise out of the tar. “The door is right there. I know the floor plan of this place. There is a door. This is an illusion.”

He opened his eyes, and found himself in a city on fire.