“Do you guys hear that?” Amelia asks, cocking her head to the side, listening for something.

  I don’t know what she’s hearing, but the others of our lunch party tilt their heads to the side trying to listen.

  For myself, I let my senses begin to roll out past the restaurant and into the surrounding area where I finally catch it.

  “Everyone down!” I roar, pushing Amelia to the ground as I place myself between her and the incoming blast.

  I glance over at Cass and hope that just the look in my eyes is enough for her to realize what to do.

  I’m about to spike myself immutable to protect Amelia when a wall of ash forms around us, including Cass.

  The explosion of rubble crashes into the barrier Cass made before I can parse how she’s in almost two places at once.

  Once the noise has settled down, Amelia twists in my arms, and I can feel the world beginning to frost over.

  I squeeze Amelia gently to draw her attention before giving a firm shake of my head as I gesture to Cass.

  One of us is already giving up our secret to some degree, but at least Cass has the power to seem like she’s in two places at once.

  Amelia glares for a moment before nodding. “Everyone okay?” She calls to the people at our table.

  Asher gives a thumbs up, and Cass nods before slithering over to whisper to me. “Can you tell me what I’m going to be dealing with?”

  “No idea. I saw an armored car burst in and rock the building, not sure what else besides that.” I admit helping Amelia up to a crouch.

  “Do you think wrong time, wrong place or targeting us while in civilian identities?” Asher asks quietly as he pulls a modified phone out of his pocket and begins typing.

  “No idea, but we’re going to have to try and find out at some point. You sure you have this?” I ask Cass, keeping my voice low.

  “I have to though with my attention mostly on one half of me I’ll want you all to lead me out. Pretend I got dazed or something,” Cass says as the ash wall forms into the form of Smoulder, glowing ember hair blazing bright with righteous fury.

  “What if a medic asks about you?”

  “Tell them I am a registered super with an odd biology and they’ll usually just leave me alone at that point.” Cass admits darkly.

  “Jason, do you want to lead Cass and Asher out or do you want to try and evacuate everyone else?” Amelia asks.

  Casting my mind around, I’m not sure which is the better option, but with how destroyed this place is, I would rather the two of us stay together, but I know that’s the wrong choice. There were tons of people out here for lunch.

  “I’ll escort these two out and try to find a good way to bring everyone out.” I nod. “If something happens—”

  “I know, I know, freeze them ice cold. You two don’t prevent yourselves from saving the day.” Amelia says before scampering off toward where an elderly couple had been eating.

  Most of Cass’s attention had been on defending our table, but the wall had helped many. Hopefully they’re alive.

  Turning my attention towards my task. “Both of you good to move around?”

  Cass’s normal body, and Asher give me nods. “Alright, follow me, but let me go first in case something happens.”

  Forging the way through the destroyed building, I focus on leading my friends out through the nearest exit. Despite it being a fire exit, the alarm doesn’t go off, though be that because of negligence or that the crash destroyed that system already, I’m not sure.

  Hopefully, they know about what’s going on already, and I don’t have to worry about that.

  As we burst into the daylight, I keep my eyes to speak on Cass’s fight and on Amelia’s rescue mission.

  “Are we clear here?” Asher asks, looking around. To see the empty lot where the restaurant probably receives the food truck.

  “From what I can tell, all the stuff we don’t want to be near is on the other side of the building.” I relay turning around. “I’m going to join Amelia in search and rescue.”

  “Are you sure you should do that?” Asher asks as I put my hand on the door.

  Both Cass and I exclaim our own shock at that statement, but before I can really start building steam, Asher continues.

  “Rescue is all well and good, but Amelia has it covered, probably. Cass also has fighting it covered; you could try and find out who’s doing this,” Asher points out, but I’m too irritated to agree.

  “Figuring out who did this and who tracked them down is for after everyone is saved.”

  My piece said I wrenched the door open.

  Using my spatial awareness, I go from person to person, ushering each of them out of the restaurant through the fire exit to join Asher and Cass in the group of refugees.

  Amelia, upon seeing where I have been escorting everyone, begins moving the large group she had been gathering to head down that direction.

  As I pass by her, Amelia tries to grab my arm to prevent me from seeing something, but she’s already too late. There’s only one reason Amelia would leave people’s bodies in the restaurant right where she came from.

  There’s still people moving around though, so I pull my arm out of her grip and begin picking my way through the last of the survivors.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Unfortunately, while I don’t need to phase to get anyone I know I’m using far more strength than I should to get them out. Best-case scenario, nobody thinks about it or chalks it up to hysterical strength.

  Worst-case scenario, I’ll just tell them I’m a low-level physical super. Not like they aren’t pretty commonly heard of.

  Once I’m sure that everyone still breathing is rescued, I do one last check on all the still bodies each time hoping that they’ll be the one who is still alive and each time feeling utter despair as they’re dead.

  In the attempts to keep my breathing steady, I start heading my way outside. I desperately want to clean myself off, making all the grime and blood covering me fall away, but I can’t do that.

  There’s no world where I could have done everything I did without getting anything on me.

  I can still feel Cass fighting behind me, but thankfully everything seems to be going alright for her, though it is taking a while.

  The question of where the truck that burst through the building went all I can tell is Cass is fighting some giant robot cyborg feeling thing.

  Upon reaching the door outside, I pause to breathe. On the other side are my family, who I saved and are safe, and the people we could rescue. That’s a good thing. I shouldn’t be torn up about the people I couldn’t.

  No matter how much stronger I get, I know that it won’t ever be enough to save everyone.

  But if I had noticed earlier.

  There might not be a power level that will let me save everyone, but maybe there’s a level of awareness I can get to that will let me save more.

  When I’m finally ready to head outside, I have to wrench my hands out of the metal I had accidentally tightened my grip to the point I hadn’t been able to remove my fingers without warping it more.

  Whoops.

  The light is almost blinding even through my sunglasses after spending so much time in the recesses of the dark building but as I blink away the light; I see all the people we had saved along with an ambulance and police car that had pulled up while I was inside.

  Only thing I can’t see are where Cass, Asher, and Amelia have wandered off too and as the blood pounds in my ears, I sweep the area looking for them only to find Amelia being fussed at by a medic.

  As I get closer, I realize it’s due to Amelia’s unnaturally pale skin that’s having her receive attention by a spare, but the moment she sees me she bolts to her feet and crashes into me.

  “Where are the others?” I ask, holding her close.

  “Cass is sitting down. Asher’s seeing if he can have drones deliver water at least,” Amelia admits, trembling.

  Or maybe I am.

  “We could have stopped this. If I had known earlier.” I mumble.

  “And if I had reacted faster, I could have blasted the wall with ice. We either both did fine or both failed, so are you going to call me a failure?”

  I shake my head, and the two of us stand there, both trembling with the weight of lives we both know we could have saved.

  Even if I can’t save everyone, between the four of us, we certainly could have saved everyone in the restaurant.

  Eventually the hug is too much, and I pull away as I take a shuddering breath to stabilize myself.

  “Cass, almost done?” Amelia asks.

  I cast my attention in the direction of the fight, and I can definitely tell Cass is beating the robot back, though if that’s winning, I’m not sure.

  “She’s probably winning.”

  “That’s good, but let’s go sit with her to provide moral support.” Amelia says, dragging me towards our friend and sitting us down across from her as she stares off into space. “So, Cass, whatcha doing?”

  “Thinking about if a transformer can handle being melted.” She says with a shrug.

  “Transformer being melted, I mean, probably… Oh, that’s what you mean, I guess, probably not, but it probably has unimportant bits?” Amelia says, catching on halfway through her statement.

  “That’s what I was thinking. Probably the tires. I just don’t want to…” Cass trails off as she looks at the strangers around. “I think this analogy has run its course. Honestly, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to keep going at this point.” She laughs.

  “How long do you think we can go home?” Amelia asks, putting a head against my shoulder. “I’m ready to not be in the public eye. My parents are supposed to think I’m still dead, so them having the chance to internet stalk me isn’t ideal.”

  Despite Amelia’s complaints, it does take more than any of us would like to deal with, leaving all of us, myself included, incredibly agitated.

  “Next time something bad happens, I’m going to turn into an icicle. They can’t interview an icicle for questions. Why do they need to know why I wanted to help people! Why should I explain to the medic that my natural skin tone looks like I’m suffering from death!” Amelia swears loudly as we get into the car.

  “Straight home or do you want to do something till it’s time to pick up Bianca?” I ask, turning the car on and driving in the direction of home regardless of what her response is.

  I strongly doubt that the location of a fight is the place ?we’ll want to hang out anyway.

  Though the more time we spend as superheroes, I wonder if it’ll corrupt all the places we go visit from bad fights?

  “Home.” Amelia says, pulling a knee to her chest. “It hurts.”

  “Yeah, it does.” I agree.

  Without too much hassle, we make it home and retreat to the front room to watch mindless television.

  “We probably shouldn’t go out and patrol to help relieve our consciences, huh?” Amelia says.

  “Probably not.” I agree despite my mind turning over how I’m going to disentangle myself from the current situation so that I can go and do exactly that.

  Asher asked me to investigate anyway, so it wouldn’t even be just me blowing off steam.

  “You’re not beating yourself up about it, right?”

  “Not anymore than you are.”

  “Well.”

  “Indeed.”

  We watch in silence for a bit longer before Amelia gets up and begins rummaging for something in my jacket.

  “Need the keys?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I wanted to go out for a drive to clear my head. no you’re not invited. I want to be alone. Why are you putting shoes on?”

  “I was going to go out on a run.”

  The two of us out on our respective adventures, I begin running to the clock tower, fully intent on going out to patrol for a few hours.

  It just feels odd to do it without my suit, so I need to get that.

  Upon seeing each other, Amelia and I shoot finger guns at each other as we point at one another.

  “So how’s your run going?” She asks, laughing.

  “About as good as your drive to clear your head now, isn’t it?”

  “Would you believe me if I said I had done this because I saw you heading this way and I was stalking you?”

  “Besides the driving in the opposite direction as me?”

  “Well, aren’t you Mr. Rememberer?” Amelia says, sighing dramatically as she sits on the floor. “So are we both going to stop each other, and if so, do we actually listen to one another, ignore one another and do it anyway, or work together?”

  “I don’t know all of them, and none of them seem like good options.”

  “Neither of our suits are actually ready for this, so how about we call it here and head home for today? The moment Asher says we’re in the clear and Bianca is either at daycare or asleep, we go?”

  “That’s a good plan.”

  At that moment, both of our phones chirp, and I pull it out to see I got a text from Asher.

  “Damn Mom caught both of us,” Amelia complains as she forces herself to her feet once more. “I hadn’t known that he had moved the suits to his personal lab, so there wasn’t even a point in coming here.”

  “I’m not sure I’m enjoying being told that I have to rest for the sake of my own well-being.” I complain, trailing Amelia as we head for the stairs.

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