While my armor is comfortable and light, I still wonder if it’s the right thing to do wearing it. It limits what I can do. Not fighting wise it increased that vector. But while in it, I am closer to a hero, and I didn't want to do anything that could ruin that.

  Sometimes I wonder if just dressing up in my normal clothes with a shitty mask would free me up more.

  It's not that I wanted to break the law, but heroes got in trouble for breaking certain laws more than others. My slipping into the houses of criminals and beating them silly wouldn't go over well with anyone.

  Especially with the goal of today, since getting caught wouldn't go over well for me when I'm slipping into a nonprofit lab that is working on a way to give people super powers.

  Hopefully it's a quick in and out venture.

  Worst-case scenario, I get caught and I have to fight my way through several supers and probably will need to change what my suit looks like.

  Though oddly enough, despite much of my snooping, I couldn't find many cameras via my mind map.

  There had to be some, but it was as if they didn't even want a digital record of their own presence.

  I was fairly confident I could fight and or escape dealing with multiple supers at once, though there were certainly combinations that could do me in.

  If Caleb had some kind of energy ability, I wasn't too concerned.

  Kurt was substantially more terrifying to deal with much earlier on in my career, of like a few months ago, and I dealt with him fine. We've yet to find anything I couldn't phase through outside of stuff already affected by my powers.

  So I guess I needed to fight someone who didn't have abilities like mine.

  I have to slow down soon because I don't want to jump straight onto the lab's roof or one right next to it while I take stock of the situation.

  Even though I am breaking in today and have spied in this place multiple times, doesn't mean I wouldn't try to be cautious.

  Like every other time I had been there in the middle of the night, the place is still active. While some people were asleep, the majority were up and about.

  It is irritating to discover once again that Caleb and his new super friends were still training once again.

  It makes sense, but it irritates me greatly.

  Amelia and I could both go a day or two without sleep and still be at full functionality, presuming said days were only normal levels of strain.

  Cass needed more sleep than us, but her power was substantially more involved, so I wasn't sure what could be the factor.

  I suppose I need to stop coming in every other night because the schedule I'm finding indicates they do all their overnight training on even days.

  The decision is right in front of me. Do I risk it and go in anyway, or do I take the smarter decision and leave it for tomorrow?

  The risk isn't worth it. With a sigh, I stand up to my full height and begin leaping off in another direction, bounding across the rooftops.

  There'll be another chance, so I'll focus on what I can do right now.

  Both Cass and Amelia had patrolled earlier in the day and were still tying up some loose ends currently, with Cass going to bed soon to try and fix her sleep schedule while Amelia continued to explore and help out.

  Seeing Amelia in the full Fractal getup could be fun.

  I could also go and do the pretend to be a gargoyle superhero thing. It isn't exactly my favorite, but it can be fun, and it lets me watch over a large area at once.

  Though I can't do it at the top of some buildings, my map is too wonky from the height.

  Could be one of those street performers where I just stand motionless on the sidewalk for hours. And by I, I mean I would leave my suit there and walk out of it.

  I didn't have the skill to remain motionless.

  I catch a strange movement at the edge of my awareness behind me and crash to a stop, rolling along the street to fumble my way to standing.

  Why were Caleb and his super goons leaving their lab in an armored car of all things?

  I have a bad feeling about this.

  “Fractal?” I call hoping we are in the same voice channel. I’m pretty sure I set it up properly, but without Asher there to make sure I didn't bungle things, well now was a bad time to test.

  “What's up, doc?”

  I stay silent for a moment.

  “Yeah, I couldn't come up with a fun joke name, sue me.”

  “I just wanted to bask in the moment for a bit.”

  “Har har har so what did you want?”

  “Do you want the what I want answer or the what's actually going on answer?”

  “What's actually going on.”

  For a long moment I consider lying. Long enough for Amelia to sigh loudly.

  “Caleb and company just left their lab in an armored car. It's the first time I've ever seen all three go somewhere together.”

  “Shit, that's definitely not good,” Amelia says.

  “No, it's not.”

  “So you're going to ask me to avoid them? I'm going to say fuck no, and you're going to provide me with directions for the geo of us to meet up so we can do some spyin.”

  “Yes, that's more or less how it'll go.”

  “Do you want to do the song and dance or skip it?”

  If I thought I had any chance of convincing her to not do it, I would in fact have decided to do our song and dance, but I didn't have that high of an estimation of my ability to convince her.

  Which means I'm going along.

  Sometimes I hate just how well Amelia knows me.

  “Yeah, we’re going to both do some spying and hope it doesn’t break out into any sort of fight, and if it dies the plan should be to run away.” I say, hoping that line in the sand is fine enough.

  “So long as they’re trying to fight us and not someone else. I’m happy to run away from people trying to be an ass to me, but if they’re trying to hurt someone else, I’m going to stop them,” Amelia says, not leaving any room for debate.

  “I was never planning on letting that happen, but I do want to watch first.”

  “So long as they don’t try to pull out some magical dingus syringe that’ll strip people of their powers, we can be stealthy,” Amelia assures me.

  “Do you have any plans of being stealthy?”

  “You do realize your thoughts on stealth are just hiding below things, right? I’ll fly above them, close to the roofs of buildings; it’s not as if I look up that often,” Amelia points out. “And we don’t have any actual fliers on the team, so they wouldn’t think about how they need to look up.”

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  She makes a good point, but I don’t want to mention that.

  Quickly, I give her the directions of where the two of us should meet up as I start running back towards where Caleb and company were going.

  Amelia quickly unites with me, and the two of us prowl along the rooftops, both of us relying on my own spatial senses to make sure we don’t lose them.

  While I think the odds of them looking up and behind them are low, they aren’t impossible, so off to the side and out of line of sight while I could still hunt them is better for us.

  “They seem to be getting close to a residential part of town,” I mumble, trusting the communicator in my helmet to relay the information as I vault to the next rooftop.

  The direction we were going was actually kind of close to where the telekinetic and size-manipulating siblings were. I hadn’t seen them since the night everything went to shit all at once.

  Amelia let out a low hiss. “That’s not so good. I am a lot weaker in a residential area. Constructs gotta be smaller, and I can’t just shotgun freeze everything.”

  “If we keep them to the street, will you be able to manage?” I ask my mind racing for plans. For the most part, our plans have boiled down to just fight better than the enemy, but slowly we were improving.

  “Oh, definitely, and as long as you jump and phase, you’ll miss all of it. And if you mistime it slightly, you’ll just phase yourself out.”

  “You’re using that as an excuse for friendly fire.”

  “It is not my fault that both of my teammates happen to be entirely immune to the abilities I have and help me build bad habits.” Amelia teases.

  When the armored car slows down to a stop in front of a house, Amelia and I speed up, trying to catch them.

  As a group, Caleb and the two women jump out of the car almost at the same time as I see the door to the house open up, two young men stepping out that I recognize.

  My memory isn’t the greatest, but memorizing every super who hasn’t been a villainous asshole wasn’t that hard.

  As it turned out, they were after the train siblings.

  The supers seemed to be talking to each other, gesturing animatedly before the siblings seemed to decide enough was enough and that they wanted to go back inside.

  At the same time, Amelia and I pick up the pace, with her summoning a board of ice for her to ride faster.

  Unfortunately, Caleb stops them from leaving a bolt of presumably amber energy lancing out of his hand and blocking the door from them.

  As soon as we get close enough to see, Amelia starts cursing loudly as we watch one of the trio rocket towards the siblings, large metal dagger-looking device in hand.

  With a shriek, ice blossoms up from the ground, forming a wall, stopping the dagger before it can hit one of the siblings.

  “You guys know that trying to strip someone of their super powers is actually a crime, right? Just like if you were going to forcibly give someone a tattoo? What’s next, you’re going to brand folks?” Amelia asks, her voice projecting out of the armor and distorted for the signature Fractal voice.

  I crash to the ground in the middle of the street, doing the superhero landing pose on a whim. “Sorry, boys and girls, but we’re not going to let you take away the siblings' powers.”

  “Heroes.” Caleb spat as if it’s the worst curse he can come up with. He slowly turns to face me, and I have to say whatever lab he’s working with is doing great when it comes to the whole evil super soldiers thing.

  Dark grey and black fatigues and all sorts of gizmos sticking out around him whirling with amber energy.

  No mask, but I suppose that is the basic attempt to humanize him.

  The other two had the same basic uniform, but that’s where the differences ended. The lady holding the dagger-looking thing (was it a syringe?) was in a skintight ensemble that reminded me of the appearance shapeshifter’s clothes had.

  The final one is similar to mine. Same core uniform, but it is armored all over without breaching into full power armor territory like Amelia’s.

  Their car is nearby, still idling, but from the looks of rage on all of their faces, they don’t seem all that keen to run away.

  That’s fine.

  We’ve got this.

  Suddenly, all three of their expressions break out into wicked grins.

  “You’re lucky, Fractal, and whoever you are. We were just told we can fight you. Soon you’ll be free from your curses.” Caleb intones, the glow building.

  “Fuck you!” Amelia barks, shooting out a lance of ice energy that seems to scatter upon getting close to Caleb.

  With the pleasantries over, the battle breaks out. The lady with the dagger syringe embedded in the ice seems more preoccupied with taking it out than fighting, which suits me just fine.

  Caleb and Amelia are trading blasts of energy, hoping to catch the other off guard.

  And finally, the armored lady barrels into me, seeming happy to fight me in melee, pitching our skills against each other.

  I am better than she is, and I am both stronger and faster. The problem being that there’s something wrong.

  She has barely budged, no matter what I do.

  And she’s trying incredibly hard to grapple me while I am doing my best to disguise my ability to phase.

  If they don’t know what I can do, I could use it for surprise at least once.

  I just need to move her around the battlefield for a bit so I can execute on my plan.

  “I’m not going to say I told you so because you never actually said it wasn’t going to be some kind of giant fight but I’m definitely going to think it cause you were also definitely thinking it wasn’t going to be some big fight!” Amelia says as she rockets up dodging the bolt of orange energy.

  “I had hoped they wouldn’t attack us first. I was certainly expecting them to accost someone else.” I growl, pushing hard to shove off the woman on top of me.

  Her powers are odd. She isn’t stronger or faster than me. In fact, she’s my lesser in both dimensions, but she is incredibly hard to move no matter what I try.

  I mentally remind myself to thank Asher for fiddling with the helmets so that we can talk to each other without having to worry about the enemy overhearing us. This way, Caleb won’t know it is us.

  He almost certainly expects it, but I wouldn’t put money on him being sure.

  With it being a three on two, it really isn’t going that badly for us. The gigantic wall of ice managing to stop the third member from continuing to accost the young supers while I fight off this girl.

  Caleb continues throwing bolts of energy ?at Amelia while trying to lead his shots, though poorly.

  “So, any ideas about the powers of the other two? Caleb seems pretty easy to figure out.” Amelia says as a lance of ice flies down before being broken up by a beam of amber.

  “The one I’m fighting is incredibly hard to move, might be hard to hurt. The other one seems to be some kind of chimera shifter.” I say, watching the woman next to the ice wall begin to distort and mutate.

  “Want to change dance partners? I can play with hard to move; she would probably appreciate being frozen only adding to her power.”

  “I’m just aiming.”

  “Cool, cool, stay frosty. Switching to public chat mode after this so we can talk to our friends.”

  Amelia stops bantering as she summons blades of ice, aiming to stop Caleb from throwing attacks out.

  As soon as we have danced around to the point of my opponent standing directly between me and Caleb, I enact my plan.

  With a burst of effort, I phase as I dash forward. It is more of a horizontal leap than a run as I close the distance between myself and my former friend.

  His eyes widen in fear just as my hand turns solid, slamming into his nose and sending him to the floor.

  “Fractal now!”

  White light balloons out of the sky as if the sun is rising, and I leap into the air, phasing as the wave of cold passes over everyone, freezing them.

  The localized blast doesn’t freeze any of them stiff, but I run towards the shapeshifter since she’s the only one moving. Caleb reeling from the blow and frost and Anchor Girl being the slowest of everyone here, seeming to struggle the most with the ice holding her hostage.

  The chimera responds as well to the tackling as I did when tackled by random supers with augmented strength.

  Which is to say, poorly.

  Unlike me, though, she uses her powers, contorting her already chimeric body to shape into something that would give her the tools to presumably crush me.

  With it having worked on Andromeda, I did the same thing here.

  Hand on her torso, I flood her body with power, spiking her immutable before my helmeted head slams into hers before letting her go as she recoils in pain, her body undulating in a frankly horrifying way as she begins to shrink back down.

  “Now I’m sure you’re having fun rolling around with another woman, but would you be so kind as to help me not get lassoed, Caleb’s back up.”

  Pushing myself to my feet, I dart across the battlefield.

  My role is simple. I had to knock people down so that Amelia can freeze them properly.

  Part of me considers dropping one into the tunnels below, but I scrap that plan, not wanting them to break their way out and ruin the street.

  The fight quickly shifts in our favor with me able to bring any of them down quickly so that Amelia can start icing them.

  It’s clear they were probably at the same level of super powers as us, but they aren’t as skilled with their abilities or working together.

  I hope they won’t have the opportunity to change that.

  When I notice that some of the people in the armored car start preparing for something, I realize the fight might be shifting fast.

  “Grahh!” Caleb shrieks, his voice distorting as a wave of energy launches both myself and Amelia far away.

  Almost instantly we’re back on our feet, racing towards them, but the distance is enough ?for the technicians in the car to get out and bring their hobbled superhero team back inside before racing off.

  “Does that count as a loss?” I complain, not bothering to chase them.

  We know where they’re going, though I’m not stupid enough to attack them in their base just yet.

  But with knowing where they’re going, I don’t feel a need to chase after them.

  “Well, they ran away screaming and crying for their mommas to kiss their collective booboos, so I think we won. But do you want to skedaddle? People and or reporters are going to show up, and we've got to clean up. Some.”

  “No, I’ll stay.” I sigh.

  “Gonna finally introduce yourself to the world?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I say, trying to get my temper under control.

  “Got a name idea?”

  “Crypt.”

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