She had developed a headache after the attempt to mentally contact M.A.G.E base. The first time she had used the totality of her telepathy, ending like this. It was hard not to feel resentful. Of what? Of the situation, perhaps. Of the way things had turned out. Of the greater forces at work that had manipulated her, a student, into an operation she should never have been in the orbit of. And yet there she was. She wondered if this was what Bildungsroman felt at every moment of their miserable childhood: seething hatred at every misfortune caused by the influence of someone else. All her Selves were obsessive, singular beings. She was not a Self, no matter the origin of her persona, she was not some small part of another’s gestalt.

“I am my own master,” she muttered to herself. Hate was useful, but she would not let it define her.

She walked to the backdrop of a hundred heroes fighting a hundred villains. Cascades of light, sound, dust and matter flew past her face. In their perspective, this must have been the culmination of their work throughout this vast city. The arc of a hero that she had been made an unwitting part of.

They seem entranced in their own capabilities, self-possessed, self-obsessed. Power versus power. She watched in the shadow of the stadium’s empty corridors. A stray piece of shrapnel left a wire thin crack through a pane of glass a few feet away, embedding into the wall.

This was how it felt to be a bystander. Nobody asked to be nearby when one of these brawls went off, save for the manic depressives who wanted to ‘suicide by heroic collateral’. She was learning to be one of them, a hero that is.

“I am my own master.” The headache was slowly going away. For now she had to find whoever was erecting this shield. This must have been Whitworth’s plan, indirectly speaking. There was no way the Director planned every variable of this battle. But he must have known something of the enemy’s intentions. The enemy who had seemingly played around M.A.G.E’s boundaries and abilities as if they knew intimately how the institution worked.

She had little to no training, and that was the point. She was unpredictable. She did not know M.A.G.E’s protocols. And if she did something irredeemably wrong, who would miss her? It was ingenious.

So she needed to play her part and make herself indispensable. Find the shield gifted, stop them, and bring control of the situation back in M.A.G.E’s hands. Leave the theatric mayhem to the professionals.

She made her way through the innards of the stadium. The shield would never be generated outside of itself. She tested her telepathy tentatively, raising her awareness of her surroundings. As she walked, she planned. Where would they be in this village-sized place? It would most assuredly be guarded. She wondered if she had the strength to take on multiple gifted. She had used more of herself today than on any other—the first real test of her newfound independence. In the future she would have to use her gifts harder, and for longer periods of time.

She generated a layer of stone over herself. Her fingertips glowed, but no flames poured out of them, yet. She raised a hand, brushing her nails against the wall to her right, while flashes of light and thunderous sounds echoed from the left. Her shadow walked beside her, flashing in tune with the battle outside.

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All while she introspected. This was perhaps the biggest advantage of a stable unity, the ability to steer without worry about some psychotic takeover. Even that was beginning to be tenuous. There was a new force inside her, a powerful one. She kept seeing images of rocks on a beach. She heard the faraway sounds of water breaking over those stones, attenuated, as if her ear was pressed against a conch. As far as Selves go this one wasn’t intrusive, but it was draining her emotion. Hate, anger, frustration, fear; those were her motivators. Her emotions were power. She didn’t need this new sense of peace—of serenity that this new Self was peddling. She would need to deal with her later.

Minutes passed. She kept searching, steadily, doggedly, expanding her psychic radius, until…

She felt her senses brush against another psychic presence. It was below, in the locker rooms. There was a stairwell a hundred feet ahead, followed by a few flights of stairs that would lead to the place where the presence was stowed. Too slow. She blended her claws with her force-fire. Her metallokinesis pushed aside the floor’s structural supports as fire and force produced jets of disintegrating matter. She landed in between two walls of red and blue lockers, their padlocks rattling from her entrance. Dust clouds and rubble spread away from her feet, lit only by the white-yellow light of force-fire and flame claw.

In front of her, a group of gifted huddled, all surprised save for two. The psychic presence had been Oscar. He looked at her knowingly, as if expecting this result. The other unsurprised face was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her eyes closed, meditating. In her hands, a smaller version of the bubble shield was being sustained.

Lyssa put two and two together. She gripped the padlocks still; the rattling stopped. Then she put out her flames. The room plunged in darkness.

“Wait,” Oscar said.

Lyssa walked forward. She formed her armor.

“Just take me in, let them go,” the old man said.

Lyssa felt their identities. Barely memorable faces from what felt like a long time ago. There used to be another in their little family. A Rob? Robert? It didn’t matter.

“These are kids. They’re your age,” Oscar was saying.

“Oh please,” one of them said. It was the girl with the chameleon gift. Lyssa recognized her psychic scent now. A cute thing, shorter than her even. “She’s a M.A.G.E goon. We’re all dead. We might as well fight to the end.”

The others took on battle stances. The bear combimorph. The lady with a similar metal-bending gift. The man with skin of living steel. The teleporter, looked around wildly in the dark, clearly not much of a fighter.

Lyssa didn’t know them at all. But they had wreaked havoc across the city. Not that she particularly cared about New Langshir, yet; she was learning to care. She had friends here. People who didn’t immediately judge her or fear her because of the way her gifts worked. Was that enough reason to hurt strangers?

“Turn the shield off,” Lyssa said. She could hardly believe her own words. “I’ll let you go. The shield is blocking all signals. No one is whispering in my ears telling me to do this.”

“We can’t leave,” Oscar said. “The shield needs to stay up. This battle needs to happen.”

“Is this really worth it?” Lyssa asked. “All this?”

“Enough talking,” their metalbender said, raising her fists. “We gonna do this or what?”

Lyssa sighed. Light returned to the room, the firelight of her claws, hot enough to cut through war machines. They seemed unfazed. It didn’t make sense. Why fight so hard for anything? She had never known a fair world. What was worth putting this much effort in?

She brought her claws up. Maybe it would all make sense in the end.