Isaac very slowly reached to switched off the vacuum cleaner. His mind raced with explanations for why he might be doing what he was, and while he hadn’t yet actually done anything actionable, that wasn’t how criminal organizations worked. Just by reflex he started dumping inertia into himself and his clothes as he turned around to face Smokeshow, almost at a level with her face thanks to his slouch.

  “The toilet keeps running,” Smokeshow said, waving her hand down the hall. Isaac blinked at her, still not sure if the gangers were messing with him. Surely she recognized him face to face. “You think you can take care of that?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Isaac said, responding automatically while he was struggling to catch up.

  “Great,” Smokeshow said, and sauntered back down the hall toward the elevator. Isaac stared after her, finding it difficult to believe he hadn’t been made.

  In fact, he knew he should have. The only explanation he had was that something about his power was amplifying his disguises, but he’d never gone around fooling people with his cosplays before. It was useful, but he’d have to figure out what the hell was going on before he risked trusting it again. An investigation that he’d have to leave until later, since he had the chance to do something now.

  He carted the vacuum into Crash’s room, switching it on to cover any noise and running it up against the closed door so he’d have a bit of warning if someone else appeared. Then he shook himself, divesting Lou’s costume of inertia with a mental shudder. He needed to get rid of that habit, now that he’d found out how dangerous it could be to be trapped in inertially-invested clothes, but he would need to figure out what he should do instead. For now, he had work to do.

  Pulling the tape out of his pocket, he slid it into the drive and executed the normal wake-up combination on the keyboard. The operating system was the same one used by most public libraries, which was normal for the old micro-vac computers, so he knew where to look. Logs from mailing, comms, and documents. While it transferred, he went ahead and finished vacuuming the room, because it needed it. Crash seemed to have a habit of tracking dirt inside.

  Of course, he did go and fix the toilet, once he put the computer back as he found it and had the tape safely in his pocket. For all the expense of the security system, the facilities were still on the cheap side, so the screws tended to get loose over time. Easy to fix, but he wasn’t surprised Smokeshow had never learned how.

  The remainder of the morning as they finished the checklist rubbed his nerves raw, if nothing else because it was so quiet. All the equipment was returned to the closet, and Isaac was freed back onto the streets. The tape in his pocket seemed to weigh ten times as much as it should, and as he walked along the sidewalk he realized he’d inadvertently given it a bit of extra inertia. Not much, but enough to make it consequential as it moved.

  Once he fixed that, he ducked into an alley long enough to pull off Lou’s distinguishing features, and made sure nobody was watching as he climbed up to retrieve his bag. From there it was a straight shot to the self-store, though he started at every car horn and tire squeal, worrying about too many things at once. The moment he got inside, he slid the tape into the drive he’d gotten for it, waiting for the clamshell to load and then typing in the commands to access the drive.

  Every single one of the files was in an unknown format. Isaac blinked at it, and then sighed, thumping his forehead with his fist. Of course it was protected. He hadn’t even checked, and the protection might not have kicked in until the files were copied out of the mini-vac, but it was obvious that there would be something to keep someone from casually getting it. Protection against exactly the sort of casual infiltration he’d performed.

  He got up and paced, too jittery to stay seated, but the answer was obvious. He had to get it cracked, which meant going to a tinker. There wasn’t a guarantee any given tinker would even be able to recover the files – assuming they were the real thing and not some junk created by a security program – but he had to try.

  “Do I still have his information?” Isaac wondered aloud, putting the drive aside and poking through his clamshell. Most of the kids of the Lost Generation knew each other, more or less, but few remained friends as they’d all gone separate ways after leaving foster care. More than a few had gone into the slums and the gangs, but some had managed to stay afloat in other ways, including a few tinkers. Cayleb, obviously, but since Isaac couldn’t get in contact with him, his other option was Greg.

  Isaac had commissioned the guy for help with some of his earlier costumes, and found that he was more of a mechanical tinker than an electronic one. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t crack a file. Isaac didn’t understand the realm of tinkering particularly well, even after Cayleb’s lengthy rants, but he did know that there were dozens of different solutions to any given problem, no matter what style of technology was involved.

  When he did find Greg’s number, it was actually in one of his old notebooks, not on the clamshell. He had to go find a payphone, but the number still worked. After a few rings, the line clicked as someone picked up and a half-familiar voice answered.

  “Y’ello?”

  “Hello,” Isaac said, channeling Harkeem’s soft-spoken voice and the terrible accent it had. “I have a job for Greg.”

  “Yeah?” Greg didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic about it, but he never did.

  “I have a Royal Max data tape, model number two six seven. The data is obscured or encrypted in some way.” With Harkeem’s voice, it sounded oddly professional, or maybe just out of some crime drama. “I am, of course, willing to pay a premium.”

  “Not really my specialty,” Greg said, voice warming infinitesimally at the prospect of pay. “But I can give it a look. Not going to be cheap, though.”

  “Good work never is,” Isaac assured him, knowing that Greg had enough of an ego that some extra praise would help.

  “I’ll take a look,” Greg said. “Twenty thousand if it’s something I can do.”

  “Twenty five, if you start on it immediately — and of course, exercise utter discretion.” It depleted his stock of currency more than a little, but there was no point to having the money if he wasn’t going to use it.

  “Twenty five up front,” said Greg, quickly enough that Isaac figured he was not only being ripped off, but that Greg might need the money.

  “Deal,” said Isaac. Once he had the particulars of Greg’s address, he returned to the self-store to fully change into Harkeem and make a copy of the data for Greg. The miricycle brought him to an address very similar to his old apartment — something on the edge of the slums, but not quite in it. It was larger than Isaac’s previous address, but that was only to be expected from a mechanical tinker who needed the room.

  Greg answered the door. He was as Isaac remembered; tall, thin, narrow of face and shoulder, sharp of nose and chin. If he didn’t dress so sloppily he would probably look respectable, but as it was he just looked under-fed and over-worked.

  “What,” Greg said rudely. Isaac held up the tape cassette.

  “I called earlier,” he said, in Harkeem’s polite tones. “About a job.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Greg replied impatiently, holding out his hand. “Creds?”

  Isaac dropped the tape into the outstretched hand instead, and then withdrew the credsticks he’d counted out earlier from his suit pocket and held them out. As acerbic as Greg was, he’d never actually stiffed Isaac, so while it was strange paying out so much, he didn’t feel too worried. The tinker grunted and vanished, leaving the door open, and a moment later returned with a small disc of metal, like a coaster but with a flag embossed into the center.

  “When I’m done the flag’ll pop up,” Greg said, handing the coaster to Isaac and then closing his door without another word. Isaac blinked at the closed door, then turned away, a bit at loose ends. All the momentum he’d built up over the data evaporated into nothing, and he meandered back to the self-storage, unsatisfied.

  Rather than sit and stew on cold concrete and cold granola, he took his minicomp and went back out to one of the cafes under Harkeem’s fussy guise. A pair of supers shot overhead between skyscrapers as he pedaled, one in bright colors leaving a glowing trail behind her, and the other in heavy armor that hummed as it passed above him. A rumble came from somewhere else in the city, and people drifted toward the shelters, including Isaac, ready to duck inside if the sirens sounded. But after a few minutes the all-clear chime sounded instead, and a few dozen strangers extricated themselves from the entrance hall and resumed what they were doing.

  Isaac himself ducked into the nearest café that advertised cybernet access, ordering a soup and sandwich and plugging in his clamshell. The modem clicked and whirred and beeped through its connection, and Isaac checked through his mail – nothing, as usual – and browsed his bulletin boards. Most of it was what he expected – people showing off their costumes, requests for commissions, gossip about superheroes – but there was one post in the convention staff board that caught his eye.

  Someone doesn’t know the rules!

  We’ve got a couple of metas threatening the backstage prep. We reported to Star but they’re too busy to have someone hang around and deal with some dreg troublemakers. If anyone knows a meta who can deal with these vandals we’d appreciate it. Swing by at eight-ish if you’re willing.

  Below the message was a few bullet points about when the offending parties showed up and what they’d done. Low-level destruction, mostly, and normally Star Central would have dealt with it. Plenty of actual supers attended the convention, after all. But given the current tensions, it didn’t surprise him that something so minor was just not high on the priority list.

  While Isaac didn’t really want to get into other super-fights, he wasn’t about to let the convention get ruined. It was something he looked forward to every year, and now that he’d invited Smokeshow – however poor a decision that had been – he had to carry through. He hadn’t forgotten about the weirdness with his costumed identities either, and his original intention had been to think the phenomenon over before anything, but a low-stress venue might work just as well.

  He swallowed the last bite of his sandwich and disconnected the clamshell, heading out of the café and wandering toward the nearest mall. It wouldn’t do for Ravdia to arrive on a miricycle, but he needed something other than showing up on foot. He wandered through the mall, skirting around groups of teenagers hanging out or playing on the arcade machines as he watched people, always on the lookout for inspiration. Women in dresses strode through the second floor with purpose, high heels clicking on tile; three identical men sat in chairs at a barber shop, getting their beards sculpted. Isaac glanced over bikes, scooters, and even eyed the incredibly expensive and generally unreliable hoverboards, but it was entirely by accident he spotted the perfect thing for Ravdia.

  Shoes with wheels in them. Like roller skates, but lower profile. Utterly stupid in many ways, but exactly the kind of thing that would fit a magical girl. More, watching people earlier had reminded him that what people wore changed how they walked. Heels were made for strutting, and the skates would alter his own movement, hiding his stride as well as offering a bit of speed and mobility. It was a shame that his feet were a little too big to really sell it properly, but hopefully with the rest of the outfit it wouldn’t be noticeable. Isaac bought a pair, ignoring the look the cashier gave him. He was used to people being baffled by the things he purchased for costumes.

  Painting the shoes the proper colors and decorating them with pseudo-runes didn’t take much time, but he had to learn to use them, too. A heel click extended the wheels, though they were low profile, and trying to skate sent him sprawling a couple times before he started getting the hang of it. In the privacy of the self-storage, he donned the whole costume, holding the flail-batons and skating circles around his car.

  It took him a while to get the hang of it, but by the time Isaac needed to head to the convention warehouse, he was at least good enough that he wouldn’t embarrass himself. Ravdia’s costume went into his duffel and he rolled out the miricycle, heading off as the streetlights flickered on and illuminated the sidewalks. He really did wish that he had super-strength, as it’d make leaving the self-storage easier. Getting over the chain fence every time was becoming a chore.

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  The warehouses where the convention stored all of its tables, placards, stand-ups, and all the other bits and bobs required to host thousands of people with hundreds of fandoms were all the way on the other end of the city. It was a shame they didn’t have meta security on site, but most people couldn’t afford that for the same reason few people hired even dreg metas for normal jobs. The extra insurance was expensive, and most people didn’t like working next to someone who could accidentally or purposely set them on fire or throw them through walls.

  Isaac rolled the bike along a loading dock at the rear of a warehouse, hiding it behind a stack of old pallets, and started strapping on Ravdia’s outfit. Purple roller-shoes, foam armor and a hat with an all-around veil secured to the armor. He flicked the hidden switches on his flails, making sure they properly lit up, then deactivated them and rolled around to the front of the warehouse. The lights were on, and he was sure someone was watching as he skated up and rapped on the door.

  “You don’t look like a thug,” said an amused female voice as the door opened. A short old lady that Isaac recognized from past years stood there, backed by two larger men who, while not metas, certainly looked tough enough.

  “Ravdia is here to defeat those who threaten the peace of our home!” Isaac said, in his passable female voice and cribbing lines from one of the magical girl shows he’d ended up seeing at MetaFiCon. He only had a certain amount of pre-rehearsed lines, and he’d be sticking to them. Which wasn’t actually unusual for supers, especially those starting out, since most people weren’t really cut out for public speaking.

  As he spoke, he was hyperaware of his power, as he’d started to push inertia into his costume — now newly reinforced so it wouldn’t collapse on him. While he was doing so, even as he was trying to sell himself as Ravdia, he could feel just the tiniest bit extra going somewhere else. It was almost enough to make him fumble his words, but the momentum of his pitch kept it going. Instead of stalling out, he just shook the flails like pom-poms, flicking the switch to light them up. Anyone who took a close look would probably suspect those effects, but there were some real magical items in museums that looked absolutely cheap and tawdry.

  “Well, good. I don’t know who these hoodlums are, but if you could run them off I’ll get you a couple VIP passes to the convention.” The lady offered him a winning smile, but of course Ravdia wouldn’t care about such things.

  “Defeating evil is its own reward!” Ravdia proclaimed, spinning the flails. Isaac hadn’t yet put too much inertia in them, but still kept them well away from anything or anyone.

  “Oh, to be young again,” the convention lady laughed. “Well, just need to make sure you scare away these people. They’re not even proper supers, just some dreg toughs who think we’ve got something valuable in here.”

  “Nothing will happen on Ravdia’s watch!” Isaac was already finding the high, girlish tones a strain, though the excitable attitude made it easier to deliver them. No need for subtlety.

  “We’ve got a picture of these guys on the warehouse cameras,” the lady said, beckoning Ravdia in. Isaac actually divested inertia as he skated in, making it so he could shift direction far more easily than usual — and preventing him from hurting anyone with the speed of the skates. Ravdia was in constant motion, circling the group and weaving between shelves even over the short distance to the little security office.

  The old, bulky monitor there wasn’t much larger than his hand, and the cameras were only in black and white, but the photo was clear enough. Three men and one woman, but only the woman and a similar-looking man seemed to have metallic skin, marking them as meta. But, as the old lady had said, probably dregs. Without an increase in strength, a toughness power was not all that useful.

  “Ravdia will punish these evildoers!” Assuming they showed up. Isaac was feeling less and less certain, wondering why he’d rushed into another potential super-fight and hoping he wasn’t going to turn into one of those combat fanatics that characterized the upper brackets of Star City’s lineup. But he had to keep going, keep doing something or else he’d simply stall out and sink into the kind of complacency that had turned Kevin into a tweaking, strung out-ganger. Or he'd just leave the city. If he was going to help take down Blacktime’s empire or help Cayleb, he had to remain in motion.

  He skated back to the entrance, out into the parking lot, and started patrolling the warehouse exterior — or at least, wandered around in front of it. A proper patrol probably needed more than just skating around on repainted sneakers, waiting for someone to arrive. The warehouse staff should also have asked more about him, or at least shown skepticism that Ravdia had any talent, but none of that had happened.

  It wasn’t that they recognized Ravdia; that was clear. It was more that they didn’t regard her like a newbie super, which was to say with caution and disbelief. A newbie super was a hazard to themselves and others, which was why Star Central spent so much time training them and took a very dim view of vigilantes. It was more like Ravdia gave off the impression of being an old hand at it, or at least having a reputation.

  He thought about it as he made circles in the parking lot, pretending to be the upbeat magical girl. The flails made arcs as he continued getting a handle on them, and there was more than enough time to give them all extra inertia — though not all the way to the limit, because he didn’t want to really hurt anyone. Fortunately for his peace of mind, it was less than half an hour before a car drew up, a new-style straight-six engine growling under the hood of the hot rod.

  “Showtime,” Isaac muttered under his breath as he saw the kids getting out of the car. The metal-skinned guy and girl were clearly siblings, and younger than he’d thought. Still in their teens, and rather than gangers they were just spoiled brats. More likely getting their kicks than trying any serious extortion; he’d seen the like before. Columbuzz had even pointed out gang-tourists a few times on the abortive patrol.

  “Halt, evildoers,” Ravdia shouted, skating up at speed while Isaac flicked the switches to make his flails glow. “Return from whence you came, or face the wrath of Ravdia!”

  “What the hell?” The metal guy said, as the other two toughs came up behind the metal siblings. They looked a bit warier than the metas, but since Ravdia didn’t wear the star that indicated an official superhero, they didn’t seem too worried. “Who are you?”

  “Ravdia is magnanimous!” Isaac almost lost the voice at the end of the word, and swore he’d keep to easier canned lines. “You have one chance to leave!”

  “Yeah, whatever,” the metal woman snorted, stepping forward and putting her fist into her palms in a pale imitation of Crash’s metallic sound. “We don’t care about some rando in a fancy costume. Is that plastic?”

  The woman had a good eye, so Isaac zipped forward on the skates and simply bumped her, chest-to-chest. He wasn’t going all that fast, but with his inertia it was like hitting the metal-skinned lady with a bank vault. She went flying backward, hitting the car and smashing one of the windows. Isaac winced, even though Ravdia just stopped on a dime – easy enough now that he’d gotten used to the skates – and turned to the metal man.

  “Ravdia—”

  “My car! You bitch!” The metal man shouted, interrupting the next canned line, and leapt forward, arms wide to grapple. Which made Isaac jerk backward, as inertia didn’t mean anything with no leverage, and by reflex he whipped out the flail, catching the meta on the arm. The soft, foam ball at the end bopped his upper arm, and he screamed as he went twisting and toppling away from the impact.

  The non-metas whipped out their guns, and the bullets hit the plastic and foam, spending their energy against the relatively soft but inertially significant material and dropping. Inside the armor, it felt like being in a rainstorm if anything, the protection far better than just the clothing from before. Instead of hitting them with the flails, which might well kill them, Isaac skated up and pushed them with his shoulder, first one and then the other. Their attempts to deflect him didn’t work, because he wasn’t like a normal person. It was like trying to push against a small car, and even moving slowly there was an inevitability that forced them back and then made them topple over the curb.

  Then the metal woman tackled him. He hadn’t thought about her after he’d sent her flying, and clearly he wasn’t much of a fighter because he hadn’t even noticed her getting up again. She thumped against him at full speed, rocking him back a little bit. The skates let him slide rather than fall, the woman’s arms gripping him and actually pinning his arms to his sides. Once again Isaac vainly wished that he had actual strength to go with his powers, and vainly tried to escape her grasp before bashing the inertially-invested hat against her face. She screamed and fell away, her nose and mouth bleeding in an oil-slick rainbow.

  “Jasmine!” The metal guy shouted, pulling himself up, favoring the arm Isaac had bashed.

  “In the name of the moon, evil will fall!” With the canned line, Isaac whipped out the flail. The man tried to block it with his other hand, but without super-strength, all that happened was that the flail smashed his hand into his chest and sent him flying again. One of the fake gems popped off the ball of the flail, and Isaac saw the star-shaped plastic embed itself into the car’s bodywork. Hopefully nobody else noticed.

  “Uh, guys, I think she’s a real super,” one of the non-metas said, getting up from where he’d been sprawled on the asphalt and holstering his gun.

  “Ya think?” The metal lady snarled, glaring at Ravdia and spitting the oil-slick blood onto the road. “Where the hell did you come from?”

  “Surrender, villains!” Isaac was genuinely running out of canned dialogue, and he wasn’t sure how well he could improvise. He also was clearly way too much for the dreg-class thugs, though if he didn’t have the armor and time to prepare it would have been different. Or even if they’d gotten a good grapple on him. Even the non-metas could probably have pinned him, given a chance. He just wasn’t big enough to be able to fight that much muscle.

  “I don’t—” the guy said, then stopped as Isaac hopped off the curb and skated over to the car, holding up the flails menacingly. It was the best thing he could do to try and force compliance, since he hadn’t thought far enough ahead and considered how to actually secure anyone in a super-fight. At the very least he should have gotten some high-strength cord, but for the moment he went with threatening to ding the fire-red hot-rod.

  “Hell with this,” said the woman suddenly. “I’m outta here.” She turned to run, but skates were faster. It was rough on the asphalt, compared to the better-kept concrete of the warehouse front, but Isaac could still catch up before she vanished along the street and bonked her in the small of the back. She went sprawling, the metallic sound of her skin scraping along the pavement setting his teeth on edge.

  “Stay down!” Ravdia said cheerfully, returning to where the others were by the car and pointing at the guns. In the armor, Isaac might be bulletproof, but other people weren’t, and at some point normal people would get involved. He doubted that the kids were ready to turn a regular brawl into a homicide, but people got stupid.

  Fortunately, the normal guys didn’t try to fight. Apparently getting thrown by a light shoulder-tap was enough to convince them that it would be better not to tempt fate. Something Isaac was thankful for, because he wasn’t sure about what he could do without really hurting someone. From there, though, he was at a loss. Vigilantes weren’t all that common, and it wasn’t like he had a direct line to Star Central.

  The problem was solved when the warehouse door opened and one of the backup men came out carrying a package of zip-ties. Isaac helped, although the gloves made him clumsy, ensuring the culprits were bound before going back to retrieve the metal lady. He couldn’t pick her up, and didn’t want to betray his lack of super-strength, so he just herded her over to the car.

  “Police are on their way,” the guy helping him zip-tie the assailants said, and Isaac nodded. That was his cue to leave, but first he had to clean up after himself. That piece of costume jewelry was still embedded in the side of the car, and Isaac slid over to yank it out, divesting the inertia in the process. From a superficial inspection of his flails, he hadn’t lost any other pieces, but he’d have to retool his props so they were less likely to fall apart.

  He wanted to head off, but even zip-tied, without him there the metas could very easily break out and then take out their frustrations on the staff. So instead he stayed, idly flipping his flails back and forth until one of the ever-present distant sirens became very immediate, and a Star Police Department car rolled up next to the hot rod. Rather than slink off into the night and gain notoriety as some kind of criminal, Isaac tapped the heels of the roller-shoes to stow the wheels and stood next to the warehouse lady after she emerged from inside. Not surprisingly, they did have a super with them, and one Isaac recognized — Steelfist. Strength and toughness, but nothing else, so he was restricted to normal vehicles to get around.

  “Huh,” said Steelfist, as he looked between Ravdia and the thugs. “Keep your nose clean, kid. You want to do hero work, go to Star Central. They’ll be happy to take you.”

  Isaac nodded enthusiastically, as Ravdia would, even though he had no interest himself. He turned to leave, but found the convention lady holding out a hand with two slips of paper. The promised VIP passes. It seemed a little bit pat, but he took them and saluted.

  “Ravdia thanks you!” The final line was chipper as always, and immediately he tapped his heels and skated off before the police could start asking questions. He circled around the block to the area beside the loading dock, grabbing the miricycle and heading along the row of warehouses to get further away from the incident before stripping off the armor in a hidden corner by an electrical box.

  Isaac filled his lungs with the cement-scented air, finding himself a little shaky now that the fight was over, but glad that he’d engaged in that particular one. It hadn’t been too dangerous, Star Central hadn’t come after him, and he’d kept metas from trashing the convention warehouse, or whatever they were trying to do.

  Most importantly, he’d gotten an idea of what exactly was going on with his identities. Everyone used their power in unconscious and reflexive ways, and training that was one of the requirements for being an actual super and not just a meta. He’d learned to use his power externally entirely by accident, when he first started investing inertia in clothes. He hadn’t even realized the hoodie he’d discarded had anything in it, and because of that he’d nearly killed Cayleb — which had driven him to get completely reflexive at pulling out any investment he’d made.

  Something more fundamental was going on, and come morning he’d need to visit the public library to see if he could track down something substantive. If he was going to start changing his reflexes and habits, he needed to understand more about his power first. There wasn’t much else to do while he waited for Greg to get back to him, other than hang out with gangers, and he wasn’t sure how much he wanted to do that. After all, he already had what he wanted, and Chains was only ever meant to be a means to an end. But abandoning things there didn’t seem right to him. Not only would it be a dead giveaway he was the culprit, but he might still need the identity. And it might even be possible to convince Smokeshow to try something other than crime.

  It would all depend on how fast Greg could crack the tapes.

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