"And that concludes the first weekend meeting of the Naval Brigade," says Jane, another senior from the Brigade. "Thank you to our single initiate, notwithstanding the members who are rising from our middle school branch."

I am covered in water from our initiation rites, which inexplicably included a water balloon fight. I got the sense while it was happening that we were making things up as we went, even though Amanda showed me ten pages of documentation for various rites that say otherwise. Girls and the spare guy from the sixth grade up into senior year all look to me with the same intense, almost frenzied smile on their face, which practically screams, You're one of us now.

I fidget on the sofa. I'm crushed between the edge and several girls I know, and I begin to realize, astoundingly enough, that I might be socially in over my head here. Amanda is with Megan halfway across the room, the two of them talking in a low rumble I can't make out from over here. They're clutching each other's hand against the wall, spread out in this perfect constellation of what a pair of people should look like, and as I lean against the armrest, I realize I should probably have backup friends.

As conversation resumes, Amanda strides back over and squeezes my hand. Megan looks down at me with a slight pity, her brown eyes welling with untraceable emotion. "Nice to see you too," I say.

"What? Yes?" Megan says, her vision suddenly snapping into focus. She jolts backwards as if I'd hit her. "Right, sorry, I was lost in thought there. That must have seemed exceedingly rude, too... hi, Will."

"You've been lost in thought all day," Amanda says. "You sure nothing's up, Nutmeg?"

Megan fidgets.

Amanda grabs my hand. "Look, I've got plans with Will. We can talk about this later."

"I'd be happy to come along," Megan says.

Amanda pretends to consider it. "It's kind of going to be an us thing. Plus, it's sports, so you'd be bored out of your mind. If you want to do something Sunday, though, it's been a while since we last hung out..." Amanda raises her eyebrows, both of them, and gives Megan a long, hard, mildly hopeful look.

Megan says, "You said you'd rather put out your own eyes than willingly watch any kind of sporting event."

"So you were paying attention," Amanda says.

"I'm always paying attention," Megan insists. "You've been off today. Are you sure you don't want to, I don't know, go talk about this?"

Amanda looks to me. "Tomorrow," she says, beckoning me out. "Love you, Meg."

Megan's face tenses up a little bit, like she's just eaten a lemon that she can't tell anyone in the room a bit. I can practically see her trying to untense her own face.

"Well, now they definitely think we're doing just about anything besides watching a sporting event," I say as I'm carried, practically against my will, out of the room and towards Amanda's mom, who is waiting with her car to take us over to Lincoln.

"Don't worry," says Amanda, grimly. "They all know I'm a lesbian."

"That lowers our number of possible covers substantially, though," I argue, although I figure the conversation needs to be dropped the second I hit the car seat. Amanda sits on the other side, and we both see Megan peek out of the house and wave, standing out there as we begin to pull away.

Amanda opens her phone. "Yep."

"Yes what?" I ask.

Amanda shows me her phone. There's a flurry of messages there, all of which are directed from someone whose designated set of emojis seem to indicate that they are indeed from Megan Briggs, or a Lisa Frank dolphin who Amanda is rampantly infatuated with. As Amanda snatches it back before I can read the content, she mouths later.

"Amanda, I love you," says her mom, with an accent that is borderline unplaceable, like what people out of the country think Americans sound like, "But you said you'd rather put out your own eyes than willingly watch any kind of sporting event."

Amanda takes in a long, deep breath. "We talked about the upcoming release of the next Fire Emblem game today at Naval Brigade, mom. It was a good time."

"They're all the same and you know that," she says, defeated. The conversation is like a river which has suddenly been forcefully diverted into a dam as to avoid flooding. I just plaster myself in the corner so I don't have to deal with the overflow. "I'm fully willing to spend money on video games, but I'm not spending money on the same video game thirteen times."

"We buy both versions of every new Pokemon game!" Amanda exclaims. "At least Fire Emblem is a different game every time. They sell you the same game twice for Pokemon, and no one complains about it!"

"You love Pokemon and you know that," her mother says.

"So do you!"

"I won't deny it," she says.

My mouth drops open. "You guys share games?"

"Most of them," Amanda says. "It's how we nurture our intergenerational connection. Because the family that plays together, stays together."

"Damn right. I grew up at the tail end of all this," Amanda's Mom says. "Believe it or not, not all old people are fossils, frozen in culture from our generations. Some of us are keeping with it. You all have a lot of good stuff to choose from, and while I'm still living, I think I intend to choose from it." The car screeches to a halt in the Lincoln High parking lot. Unsurprisingly there are not many people there. I don't know how both of our targets are coincidentally going to be at a high school volleyball match, which I didn't even know people went to.

You're early, and it will be packed in an hour. The volleyball team is nationally ranked. Seeing as Lincoln never wins anything else, this draws a crowd.

I smirk patriotically, even though Cherry Ridge has done less than nothing to win over my allegiance thus far. "Looks like everyone'll be here," I say, closing the car door. "No need to worry about it."

"You sharing jokes with the alien?" asks Amanda. "Dang, when do I get in on this?"

"I don't know," I say. I look upwards, which is currently my visual stimulus for attempting connection with Shiloh. There's nothing there but a silver-streaked sky, the stars hiding around the clouds and trying to shelter themselves from the violent blare of the streetlights below. Still, once my eyes catch the moon, I can almost imagine Shiloh's purple gaze. "How are we supposed to know which ones are them, or where they are?"

You'll find them, Shiloh promises. They've been seeing portals, like you have. You'll be looking for Karen and Garrett. All that matters is that you're here, and when the time comes, you're going to help them through.

"You're going to have to give us something stronger than that," I say, looking to Amanda, who is kicking pebbles clear across the parking lot.

Shiloh makes an untranslatable noise of exasperation. Close your eyes. You will note a dull red glare around areas of Diosite concentration that also localize to me. It will intensify as you get closer.

I close my eyes. Amanda looks like a woman on the world's worst infrared camera, but it's possible to just make out her outline. "What are you doing?" she asks.

"We're going to be chasing signals," I say. "Close your eyes and you should be able to tell where they are-- they'll be outlined in red. I guess it's helpful, since we're not using our powers, right?"

"There are portals everywhere if we need them," Amanda responds with a shrug.

I imagine us bursting onto the Lincoln High field in full uniform. Besides the fact that it's funny, it sounds completely unworkable as a plan of action. The next few visions are of people holding us down, adults yelling at us both with a mixture of anger and mild panic as they realize we've apparated in from nowhere, the government swarming in from black limos and taking us off for dissection...

"We should have code names!" announces Amanda.

This manages to jolt me out of my panicked downwards spiral. "I, uh-- if we need them?" I definitely don't want to mention that I'd kind of already thought of one. Kind of. It was a tentative thing. I drew it out, and all, but completely tentative. "I mean, I haven't really thought of anything, but--"

"Usagi," she says, with an alarming degree of certainty. It's like I'm having my fate read back to me.

"Doesn't that mean rabbit in Japanese?" I ask.

"Yeah, but it's like... moon rabbit. It's a thing! I swear it's a thing."

"I believe you. What were you going to go with?"

"Simyick," she says.

"Is that... from something?" I ask, with a startled laugh.

"Oh, like, the primary ink colors. Cyan, yellow, magenta, black."

"So it's not simyick, it's C-Y-M-K," I say.

"Attaboy. Now, if something does happen, we don't have to use our real names." Amanda slaps me on the back and I'm once again reminded that Amanda needs no weapon. Amanda could probably crush whoever we're up against to death without thinking about it too hard. "Looks like people are pulling in. Let's go where the action is."

I'm pulled along by the sheer force of her personality, which holds me in her wakes even when she's not physically yanking me around. We end up on the stands, far in the back, pretending that we're students from the school. We're not wearing Cherry Ridge shirts, so no one asks questions-- who knows all the freshmen by now, anyways? No one notices us in the back, and we sit there, watching the first volleys of volleyball.

I blink. There's nothing in the crowd. "I see why I never did this now," I tell Amanda. "I don't understand how this even loosely qualifies as entertainment."

Amanda gives me an equally dispirited shrug. Her eyes follow the ball, back and forth, and then she, too, gives up. She closes her eyes and looks out over the crowd. "Nothing?"

I shake my head.

"Where would someone like us hang out?" asks Amanda. "You know. Superhero material."
"I'm glad you think I'm 'superhero material'," I mutter. I know where I'd be hanging out in this circumstance-- at home. "That was a joke, right?"
Amanda looks at me, eyebrows kneaded with distress. "No." She hops down the rafters, into the sea of people, and I follow, folding in behind her into a liminal space where I don't really have to think about it that much. It's the way I follow my brother around in public. Now, faced with hundreds of kids from a school I don't go to, I can see why he probably wants to push me out of his life right now. Amanda is still blinking like she has sand in her eyes, and then, like a pointer, she freezes. "Of course. She's with some coolkids." She raises a finger to some kids up on the rafter of the concessions stand, on the far side. Deep, thrumming music emanates from their corner. They look like a pack of ravens: fierce, cunning, not on the ground, mildly terrifying. In the midst of them is a girl with braided black hair, laughing alongside her friends. I want to believe she can't possibly be our target, even though I instantly want her on board, and when I blink back red, my mixed emotions settle into the certainty that accompanies an unfortunate, obstinate truth.

"No," I echo back. "Absolutely not."

"I should get my paintbrush from the Veins," whispers Amanda. "I could try to poke her down."

I suck in a breath. "Do you think we could wait until later? Get concessions?" I ask. "We could just stand here all night, and if she stops by..."

Amanda pounds her fist against her other hand. "You're right. Right now, we're bound by societal convention. We'd have to catch her on the way back, since we'd be further out of sight..."

"I don't know," I say. It's late-- not real late, but out-with-friends late. Even though the sun is just setting, it feels like we've been here for hours, I don't get volleyball, and the game seems to go on forever. My family isn't expecting me back, but they have to be doing something without me, right now, and it's great to be around Amanda, but I'd rather be at home.

"Are you okay?" asks Amanda.

"Yes," I lie. This is usually where Adam says back, no, and then we don't go home, but he helps me find a corner and we talk for a few minutes before he reenters the fray. Sometimes he'd look exasperated, but without fail, he always helps me get into a corner. I can't lie to Amanda, even though I just did. I can feel her looking through everything I just said. "I need to go to the bathroom. Keep me posted."

The guy's bathroom is silent as death. Coincidentally, it also smells like death. The facilities are standard, slightly run-down, but the walls are stone. It makes me feel like I'm going to pee in a crypt, fortunately, I don't really have to go to the bathroom. I close my eyes and try to lean against the wall while affixing as little of my body to the disgusting surface as possible, and out of the corner of my eye I catch a dim red glow.

The other guy. Right.

he's here, I announce to Amanda over text.

SHOOT, comes an immediate response.

I smile. At least I've managed to do one thing right tonight. The smile quickly flickers out when I realize that I've only defined my problem, not figured out a solution. What do I do now?

idk

Thanks, Amanda.

can't exactly do anything either, Amanda adds.

So we wait. I get out an app and try to play something in the dim light of the bathroom, but the reception in here is garbage. We might as well have crawled into the mouth of a mountain. There's no noise besides occasional breathing from the stall, not loud, potentially-awkward breathing, just normal person breathing. My face is flushed violet. Occasionally someone walks in, does their business, walks out, and I want to die. Eventually I end up in a stall, up on top of a toilet with the door locked, conveniently tilted forwards to avoid the portal on the wall behind me, which is cleaving the already ominous ceiling in two. The kid next to me has not exited. If I look over, we have no chance of recruiting him. Did he get hazed or something? Is he catatonic?

I don't know how much longer I can reasonably sit in here. Every time someone jiggles the door and sees it's still locked, I get anxious. Amanda's texted me a few more times, but there's no good news. Eventually, I can't sit here any longer. The game will end eventually. I can not have spent all night in a men's bathroom for nothing. We need to go for it.

Amanda types, rescinds, then replies, Yeah. Count of 3?

3.

2.

I can't do this alone. As I type 1, I let myself fall backwards into the Veins. No. Shoot. I can't go in there either. I grab back towards the exit, feeling the warmth and light envelop me, and drag myself out, costumed. The resulting clatter causes me to fall into the front of the stall, my foot just barely missing a trip into the bottom of the toilet bowl. I hit the door with a slam unbefitting of any superhero, and as my breath catches, I still myself, holding tight to the wall.

A scared, raspy voice asks, "What's with the glowing? Is there a bomb attack?"

"Do not be afraid," I say, my voice booming through the men's restroom.

"A-a-are you an alien?" asks the voice.

"Are we alone?" I ask.

There's a slight rumble of noise from outside, but no one in here. That's not going to last long. I don't know how I'm going to convince him to climb up the wall and into the portal in a decidedly shorter amount of time, but there might also be a portal elsewhere. Maybe beside him. I peek over and yeah, there is, right up against the wall he's slumped away from. He glares at me like I'm the sun, and braces his teeth like a small dog preparing to do battle. His face is covered with acne, and he's unnaturally thin, like a stick bug wearing a human suit. "Oh great, you're just a kid. What kind of an opening line is 'do not be afraid'?! That is exactly the kind of thing you tell people when they absolutely should be afraid."

"Hi," I say. "It's nice to meet you too. My name is-- you can call me Usagi, and I need you to jump through the hole in the wall."

He leers. "My mom will be here in ten minutes. Heck no I'm not jumping with some stranger into who-knows-what."

There's definitely some kind of commotion outside. I wish I had my phone, but it's with my other outfit, which means I can't contact Amanda. The tension is beginning to get to me. My heartrate kicks back up and starts going, pounding in my chest until I can hear it in my ears.

"How long have you been there?" he asks. "That's kind of creepy."

"I don't know. How long does it take to use the restroom?"

He looks at the wall across from me. I know he can see the darkness too, but from experience and a smattering of intuition, I don't think that's what this is about. Amanda asked where she thought the 'superhero material' people would be. Well, if they're anything like me, this would be exactly what I expected. "I never had to go. I just come in here sometimes when my friends abandon me so I can wait for my mom to pick me up," he admits.

"That sucks," I say.

"Thanks," responds the voice, dryly.

"If you're outside," I suggest. "Usually the woods are a better option? Usually I go on a walk, right? All around the block, two to three times, and then it's over. If I'm at a party, I'll be on the DS instead--"

The stall door slides unlock. I remove myself from the bathroom, and his jaw drops when he sees me in all my attire. If I had looked fantastical to myself in the mirror, I can only imagine what a stranger is experiencing. Recomposing himself, he says, "What do you want from me?"

"It's not about me," I say. "But you know the hole in the wall?"

"Yeah," he admits, weakly. "It's not a hallucination?"

I shake my head. "Tell your mom you'll be a while. We're going to go somewhere better than this."
He's a fast typer. I can't imagine we'll be alone for much longer, so I'm incredibly relieved to enter the Veins through the hole in the wall. We don't enter the dark area Amanda and I met in, which was what I'd expected, but instead, we're in a room that vaguely resembles the one my grandparents used to live in, way up in the mountains. It's built like a lodge, with rooms on the top floor accessible from a square hallway separated from us only by a railing, and the bottom floor is a large, open pad, occasionally decorated with pillows. Shiloh is sleeping in the corner, one eye open, and Amanda is holding someone against the ground.

Right. She should be the new recruit. I think I've seen her before somewhere, but I can't place where. Her hair is a dark cloud around her head, and she wears a slick black jacket, which is punctuated around the neck and sleeves by a white furze. She looks thrilled to be here.

"Get off, you creep!" she exclaims. "What the hell do you want? Where are we?"

"What took you so long?" Amanda asks me. I begin to realize how bad this situation looks.

Someone behind me asks, "Where are we?" I turn around and catch a kid in bright red glasses and gray hoodie, two long tubes forming infinities on his sleeves. They pulse with an unsteady purple light, like lava lamps. I squint at him for a second, trying to piece this together. I came through with a kid, someone's behind me right now, and my mind's definitely messing with me, because it refuses to acknowledge that that could be him. It's like trying to press two magnets of the same polarity against each other.

"It's nice to see you, Garrett," chirps Shiloh. "Amanda, if you could release Karen."

Amanda drops Karen like a hot iron, since Karen suddenly discharges a visible amount of electricity. Amanda's hair stands on end as she backs slowly away from Karen, who dusts herself off. "Thank you. Now, if you'll please, where am I, and Garrett Ingram, what the hell are you doing here?"

Garrett sucks in a nervous breath. Like me, his outfit has afforded him some confidence, but the kid might need more than that. "H-hey Karen. You look..." he wisely pauses to compose himself. "I like your outfit. And the hair. Don't you have it braided?"
"What?" Her hands go to her hair. "Goddamn superhero bullshit is messing my hair up. Great. Thanks. Whatever. I want answers, and I want them now. Who are you? What do you want? How did I get here?"

"I can answer that last one," Amanda offers. "I slide tackled you into a portal."

"Not just that! You got this goo all over my..." the girl looks down at a sleek black jacket, which is notably untouched. "Clothes."

"Does it wear off?" Amanda asks Shiloh.

"Any time you transform," Shiloh assures her.

"That's unfortunate," Amanda says.

"What?" Karen asks.

"I mean, it's good for you, but let's say I want to keep someone stuck. For instance, that supervillain we're going to have to fight in a few weeks... months? That guy. Am I going to have to stand there for hours so the paint doesn't chip when we capture him? That sounds inconvenient."

"Supervillain?" Garrett's voice raises, edging towards a crack.

"Hi! My name's C-M-Y-K, call me Cy, and this is my buddy, Usagi. The two of us are about to save the world! You're invited!" Amanda moves to stand by me, and by stand by, I mean she has me grabbed around the midsection, and I can't breathe. The two of us already make the most strapping duo known to man.

"Wait," Karen says. "Convince me that you're the good guys, here."

"What?" I ask, suffocating.

"You heard me. You're the ones who assaulted me and pushed me into... what even is this? I think at the very least, you owe me an explanation."

"I think Shiloh could do a better job than I could," I say, waving her down.

Shiloh looks at me, pleadingly, and while his mouth is formed into a sad little pout (aww), there's something more ominous in his gaze, as his eyes have remained completely still and glassy. I look into the twin purple moons, and I know that they're not going to listen to an alien. They want to hear it from a person, and it turns out, seeing as Amanda is a little brusque, that right now that human is me. "Never mind then. I guess I'm doing this. So, there's a bit of a supervillain situation going on. I bet you're wondering, 'why me'? 'Why like this'? 'Why not call the police'? 'Why should I listen to the people who just slide tackled me into a portal'? Thanks, Ama-- Cy, for that one. Anyways, I'm also sure you're familiar with at least some superhero origin myths. Sometimes you're born with powers. Sometimes they're given to you. Either way, it's usually not like you 'deserve' them by any cosmic standards. Things happen, seemingly at random, and some people end up with responsibilities we never thought we'd have to take on. Still, though, don't we all kind of dream about that being us? About being the people, who at random circumstance, get plucked from the fold? Doesn't it feel good to be recognized by something, even if the cause is seemingly arbitrary?"

Shiloh's gaze assures me it isn't, but I don't believe him, not yet.

"But you don't just get powers. You inherit some kind of cosmic cost to that. Maybe it's a literal prophecy. Maybe it's just knowing that if something happened, you'd be the only one equipped to stop it. Regardless, the cost's there. Yet somehow, people always seem to step up... because otherwise, what kind of a story would that be? Powers can destroy people, but just as often, they can be tools for incredible good. Because we feel like we have to do the right thing. It's in our hearts."

Yeah. That was way too saccharine. Garrett seems to be nodding, Amanda flashes me a thumbs-up, and Karen has her arms crossed. Please don't say I have to keep talking. I don't think any kind of powerset would keep me going.

"That's great," Karen says. "Can you please tell us what we're supposed to do, though?"
I look back to Shiloh again. "There's someone out there who found a stone, like we did, and without the right guidance, there's a chance that it could end up doing terrible things. We've been given powers to stop it--"

"What makes you so sure we're not going to fight a hero, too?" Karen asks. "If you believe we're good, or that this is a good thing, for us, I want to know what makes you think that makes them different. I want to know why this isn't just a power fantasy for you, or why you're not just doing exactly what the ferret says. Otherwise, you don't get to preach about being a hero. What you're doing is being compliant."

I pause.

"The Diosite, unattached to anything, is a naturally corrupting influence," Shiloh cuts in. "Historically, from averted crisis after averted crisis, it's only ever been known to create sinister impulse, whereas we've always been there to get in its way."

Karen leers at Shiloh. "I see."

I can feel Shiloh's fear. My hair stands on end at the same time his does, and when Karen looks through us both, she's not just judging Shiloh. How much of what I said was true? Did I mean it? I think I meant all of it. Was I really expecting a speech to go well? I can't talk in public. I can't talk anywhere. I should have realized being in the costume did not make me magically inspirational. Karen walks towards the door.

"Karen," Garrett says.

Karen turns. She's the purpling storm, her voice like lightning, but also, honestly, she's just right. I can't imagine walking away from this, yet there's not even a question for her. If you can't give a good answer, I'm gone. Should I even be... "What?"

"I'm not going to be able to live with myself if something actually does happen," Garrett says. "I don't think you will, either. We know they're not lying about this much. We're here."

"Shock value," Karen says. With a flick of her fingers, she adds, "Pun not intended."
"Sure," Garrett says. "But I'm sticking around."

Karen watches him, then her gaze flicks to me. "I'll be in touch. Garrett, get their phone numbers. Text 'em to me. Nice meeting you all, kinda, and next time, ask nicely. I don't respond well to bullies. Ferret. Is this the exit?"

Shiloh nods. "Real world's out there. Right where you left."

"Great," Karen says. "I already know I can't tell anyone. I'll see you all later."

The door swings shut.

Garrett shivers.

"Huh," says Amanda.

"You could have chipped in at anytime," I offer.

"I thought you had it handled," Amanda shrugs.

"I didn't!" I yell. Garrett is looking after the door. In a kinder tone, I ask, "Are you two friends?"

"No," he says. "We should go, but, um, I liked your speech."

I lower my gaze. "I'm not a public speaker."

Garrett shrugs. "No one is," he says. "Doesn't mean you don't have anything to say. I'm kind of geeked about all this, so, yeah." He flashes us a weak thumbs up.

Amanda mutters, "One for two."

We emerge into the budding night. I check my phone, which informs me it's still just eight, which sounds wrong, considering this night has gone on for lifetimes too long. Garrett has his hands clasped together, looking somewhat less threatening without the pointed glasses and loops, and he hands us both his opened phone, new contact screen lit up.

I fill it out and hand it back. "Sorry," I say.

"What are you apologizing for?" he asks.

"Yeah," Amanda says. "I totally screwed the mission, and I'm not apologizing. You shouldn't be apologizing at all."

The moon hides its face behind the nearest bank of clouds.

"We've got a lot to grow into," Amanda says, "That's all."

I don't know if I should be upset with her or not for tackling someone into a portal, angry at myself for not knowing the right words to say, or angrier at myself for wanting this so badly I never considered what I was actually getting myself into. Still, I find myself leaning on her until her mom pulls up, long after Garrett gets picked up.

"I guess you're right."