“Yeah, I have no idea why they picked red paint,” Asher says through the comms as his drone takes a gander at the message presumably left for us.

  “Do you think they left that message for us, for us or do you think they left it for a different you?” Amelia asks, poking the wall with a finger. I’m not sure what kind of sensory feedback she’s supposed to get from a wall through her armor and ice, but whatever floats her boat, I suppose.

  “I just finished checking everywhere. You were thorough; there’s nothing here,” Cass says, her body slowly reforming as ash flows into the room.

  I hadn’t realized that she had a full suite of sensory abilities in her ash form. Between the two of us, I’m curious about who does the scouting thing better though I bet the answer is her.

  Being in multiple places at once is just so powerful, even if I cover more area in a singular spot.

  “We can begin ramping up our training, I guess, though I don’t know what all we want to do about it? Until they do something, is there any harm in letting people run around?” Asher says as his drone spins around to look at the three of us.

  “I mean, I’ve always wanted a nemesis, but I don’t think some folks just slinking around setting bombs is my kind of vibe,” Amelia says, blasting ice to form herself a chair to sit on.

  “We don’t know they set off the bombs, but yeah, it’s not a bad guess,” Cass agrees.

  “Nemesis or not, I don’t think our modus operandi is wrong. Until something happens or we catch something, it’s going to be hard to do anything about it,” I say, voicing my own thoughts.

  I definitely want to catch them, but I don’t know how we’re supposed to do that without a lead. Nor do I want to ask for help.

  So far they’ve gone for abandoned areas as if they’re weapons testing, and only the first one had any injuries, let alone casualties.

  It’s as if they’re testing something.

  “We need to find them sooner or later. They’re dialing into a specific size of explosion or seeing how big of a boom they can get in a smaller package. I’m not sure, but it seems like they’re just testing stuff and using the city as their lab as they try to dial it properly,” Asher says, having reached the same conclusion I did. “If I were them, I would bet as soon as they’ve figured out the right size of explosion they want...” he trails off.

  “Is there anything we can do to track them? What if I went on TV and asked for all prospective hellions to come to a day camp with me if they pinky swear to not explode the city anymore?” Amelia suggests.

  I don’t even know if that’s a serious suggestion on her end or not; it could really go either way.

  I think she’s just messing with me?

  “I think you would get a lot of excited kids showing up who didn’t know what hellion meant,” Cass snorts.

  “Well, I would make a great role model.” Amelia shrugs. “Can’t be all bad that I’m helping out a bunch of children.”

  “On how to become hellions,” I say quietly, eliciting laughs out of everyone.

  “Just because I tried to punch my way to the top of the world doesn’t mean that I was ever actually a hellion. According to my focus group, I have always been a delightful angel who has never done anything wrong.”

  “Would that focus group be your daughter?”

  “No comment. My lawyer says that I will shove my foot in my mouth.”

  I let out a genuine laugh as I stop my pacing around the room. I know there’s nothing here that is going to make it so that I don’t have to hunt somewhere else, but I would love an actionable plan.

  “So what are the odds that they’re the bombers and it’s something entirely unrelated?” Cass says, focusing us back towards the objective.

  “Not bad there're tons of people who want tech like that, hell I was going to do it if I could get away with it, but we know it’s almost certainly a group,” Asher says, the sound of his keyboard rattling punctuating his thoughts as he researches.

  “Wait, we do?” Amelia asks, voicing at least my own thoughts.

  “I know each of the three of you could empty that lab on your own without much issue, but any normal person would need a team. And most of the time, if they’re smart enough to use the tech and have the power needed to do it all on their own, they would already have the tech to get powers or have done it with less.” Asher says with a sigh.

  “So you’re saying because they stole everything at this moment, they likely don’t have powers? And that it’s a group?” I ask, making sure I’m on the same page.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. Also, I bet that as far as the suits are aware, everything is hunky-dory. It was the shit list job anyway to guard this place as bureaucracy decided what they wanted to do with it. I doubt they were checked on in person. With the right setup, it wouldn’t be hard to make them think everything is fine.”

  Cass coughs slightly, clearing her through before she begins to speak. “Does that mean we should tell them?”

  “No, why would we? We can reap all the reward without any of the detriment as long as we don’t tell them.”

  “So the reason you don’t want to tell them is so that you can claim you had no idea you stole from them by association?”

  “No, I stole from criminals that we locked up. I have no idea what or where the stuff was before all of this,” Asher says, coughing lightly.

  “So, our desire for loopholes aside, do we have a plan for how we want to do this besides having him run around like a loon looking for people with suspicious red paint, bodies, and a whole bunch of ill-gotten gains?”

  “You know, when you say it like that, it really doesn’t seem like that much of a plan.” I point out.

  “That’s because it’s barely a plan at all; it’s a dumb idea that we are calling a plan until we have a better idea.” Amelia accuses.

  Which is entirely correct if we’re going to be honest, but that doesn’t mean that I necessarily have to like it.

  “Well, we can do the whole patrol show of force thing, stop a few bad guys that normal folks could stop, and then we can try and make people feel generally safe. Anyone being nefarious will hopefully hunker down low and Jason could find them?” Cass offers wincing when she realizes she used my real name. “Sorry about that.”

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  “No need to worry; it's a relatively common name.”

  “A true hero's name, you could even say.” Amelia jokes.

  “No, my superhero name is not going to just be my regular name, no matter how funny you think it is.”

  “Drats.”

  The conversation continues to wander about as we come to the inevitable conclusion that we have no idea what we’re supposed to do to stop this but don’t want to just charge headlong into it all without any semblance of an idea.

  Amelia eventually gets off her throne of ice to join myself and Cass in pacing around.

  I’m beginning to suspect this is a situation where there’s no good answer and we just need to charge forward with the answer we do have.

  “Alright, so how do we get out of here anyway? Cause I’m tired of being gloomy in the dark, I became a superhero so I could get out of places like these.” Amelia says, hugging herself as she walks towards me.

  “Follow me. I can show you the fastest way out.” I say, beckoning them to follow. Though I know Amelia knows the way out probably better than me.

  Filing that tidbit for later, we use their secret exit back to the surface, and Amelia summons a giant surfboard-looking thing out of ice before rocketing off.

  “Are you sure that the nemesis stuff isn’t something we need to worry about?” Cass asks quietly once both the drone and Amelia are out of earshot.

  “Nope, not in the slightest, but we don’t have anything we can do about it so far, so I don’t want to fuss over it.” I admit stretching a bit. I’ll be running around with everyone else doing patrol, though I don’t plan on being spotted, hopefully.

  “One takes at a time, yeah, I can get behind that.” Cass sighs as her form begins to expand into her brawler form.

  “We could always go back to the task Fractal wants to discuss.” I joke.

  “Oh?”

  “She wants to buy a superhero house so that we aren’t all in places we can’t secure.”

  “Do you have the money for that?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “I figured.”

  “But it got you not thinking about the nemesis folks, so that’s all you really needed.”

  “Thanks. Maybe we should call you Wraith for your superhero name. You’re always being shadowy.”

  “Please don’t recommend that.” I groan as Cass takes off into the air, as a billowing cloud of ash.

  I know she said she can’t actually fly, but I wonder if she’s lying, since watching the cloud move off in the air definitely looks like flying to me.

  “Alright, everyone, Homecoming is back home, so we’re back to our regularly scheduled program of trying to save the day.” Asher says the communicator blazing to life. “In the few minutes you all were without my guidance, did anything abysmal happen?”

  “Well, we were plotting on how to overthrow the city, but I couldn’t decide if it should start with ice cream for everyone or with world domination.” Amelia says not missing a moment to sow the seeds of confusion.

  “Why would you start with world domination if you just wanted to be the leader of the city?” Asher asks, sounding baffled.

  “Technically, I don’t think there’s any rule against me claiming to rule the world, just nobody would listen to me, so I think world domination is actually easier than getting an entire city of people to listen to me.” Amelia explains.

  I do my best to ignore the madness that is being spouted by those two as I drop back down into the tunnels and begin running at the highest speed I can while still processing most of the information my mind map gives me.

  I’m always a little bit suspicious that there’s going to be someone else down here that’s messing with us and mostly me, but I’ve yet to come across anyone.

  The thing is that’s only with me taking my usual paths there are a ton of tunnels and there’s a lot of them that combine to other underground facilities.

  It really does make me wonder who built them. Is this the old base of some super powerful geokinetic that decided the best way to make sure nobody could get his stuff was to build a whole-ass giant labyrinth?

  That made more sense than some of the insane ideas I’ve had before, so I can’t be entirely surprised, I suppose.

  If I were to make a super bunker to maximize my power, I would have everything be segmented and moving around so the only way you could navigate it was with the power to phase and perfect awareness of everything going on.

  “Do you think purse snatchers ever think about the fact that there’s a superhero right in front of them? Cause I literally watched someone try to do a smash and grab in front of me as I was walking towards them?” Cass says in a huff, sounding annoyed.

  “Sending police over now, any powers displayed?”

  “If you count cosmic stupidity as a power, yes?”

  Amelia giggles. “No cosmic stupidity is my power. But there’s nothing going on in my branch of the woods. I’m just flying around dropping ice sculptures down.”

  “Fractal are you making modern art wherever you’re patrolling?” Asher asks, having already been derailed from the conversation about Cass’s captured criminal.

  “No, I’m making ice unicorns. I don’t think that counts as modern art. I have an entire herd of them running through the old abandoned rec center’s parking lot.”

  I am so close to asking her why in the world the decision of choice was ice unicorns, but at this point I can barely be surprised.

  I can feel some people moving about ahead of me, so I tune out their conversation, only keeping enough attention to catch my name or if there’s a drastic change in tone.

  In an effort to silence myself, I slow down. The armor isn’t the loudest thing in the world, but me running at highway speeds definitely isn’t subtle, so a little bit of thought can go a long way, I hope.

  As I get closer and the detail clears up, the first thing I can tell for certain is that whatever is moving isn’t human but a robot.

  At least I don’t think humans have tractor treads, three extendo grabby arms, and what looks like a very high definition camera hooked on top of the boxy thing.

  I guess it could be some kind of terrifying shifter. After all, it wasn't that long ago that Cass got to fight someone who could turn into a car that could turn into a giant metal robot.

  Why the order of operations mattered so much boggles the mind, but I’m not going to throw stones in my glass house when it comes to questioning abilities.

  The device the robot is messing with is interesting: all wires, gears, and gauges as if it’s some sort of steampunk novel’s idea of a time travel machine.

  Oh shit.

  Throwing away all concerns for stealth, I run at full tilt. It’s not the same as the other bomb. The one I saw was substantially bigger, and I hadn’t thought it was steampunk at the time.

  However, a random robot trying to set some random weird looking device in some random spot of the underground is far too suspicious if I end up breaking someone’s toy robot that’s going to be a problem for future Jason I’m sure he can figure it out.

  Passing through the wall, I crash torso first into the robot, knocking the strange steampunk device out of its hands, and I nearly watch it in slow motion tumble through the air, steam hissing and lights blinking in agitation.

  I go immutable as the device hits the ground, and thankfully I don’t accidentally cause it to explode, though the robot whirls on me, beeping angrily as it begins shooting me with gunfire as a loud static sound fills the air.

  “Sorry!” I apologize, slipping back once I’m normal again. “I think your robot has a shitty signal.” I quip before turning my boot immutable and crashing it down on the robot as hard as I can, causing the device to shatter.

  “What’s going on?” Asher says, his voice breaking through the reverie.

  “Found a robot with a weird scifi steampunk device that’s beeping angrily.” I say, moving over to the device and picking it up as I try to figure out just what it does.

  “Bomb?”

  “Maybe, but I don’t know how to turn it off.”

  “Just use powers and break it. I want enough to look at it later, but that’s not the biggest concern. Bring me the robot too!” Asher orders.

  “I want to fight a robot too. Come on, supervillains, let me fight a mecha!” Amelia complains, adding helpful color commentary.

  Following my instructions, I use my powers to begin disassembling the tech until it’s no longer beeping at me in any way.

  “Miracle, mark where I am on the map so we can check here later, and I’ll begin heading back.” I say, gathering up everything I can, mostly using the crater in the robot as a holding spot.

  “On it.”

  Hopefully, this is how we start getting them.

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