The helmet stares at me while I finish putting on the rest of the costume.

  Trepidations aside, I don the helmet listening to the communicator turn on.

  The device crackles to life. “You really need a schedule, man. This random shit is wild.”

  “If I want my identity private, wouldn't it be better if my schedule was irregular so that observers from the outside can't predict me?”

  Asher lets out a slow breath before falling silent.

  “Anything really on the docket today or just patrol?” I ask stepping out of the elevator and leaving the building looking for something to properly scale to get up.

  What I wouldn’t give for a telepath on the team so Asher and I could communicate without me having to risk head injuries while I listen to whatever he needs to tell me.

  “Not really. Crimey’s Guys have been making some moves, potentially moving out in our direction, but I don’t think it’s a problem yet. Besides, you counter them pretty well as long as you don’t suck.” Asher says.

  “Crimey’s Guys?” I ask, balancing on the edge of the roof as I look for somewhere interesting to move to.

  “Small gang run by a tech genius of some kind. Probably a type two.” Asher explains. “The Crimer is the boss and the rest of them are Crimey’s Guys.”

  I take a second to try and see if there’s something nicer I have to say about that group, but I draw a blank. “That’s really stupid.”

  “Your current name is Placeholder Punchie Panda, so I don’t think you get to throw shade on anyone’s choice of super names.”

  “Your name is literally the same!” I reply.

  “No, it’s not.” Asher denies. “Just basically the same.”

  “And my name isn’t whatever you said it was.”

  “Placating Pandemonium Platypus?”

  “That doesn’t even fit the color scheme of black and white you’ve been sticking to.” I point out, bounding towards the center of the city.

  If there's going to be any nefarious evildoing, that’s probably the best place for me to find ?it.

  “But I kept my alliteration, and that was very important to me.” Asher agrees.

  “What did you mean by a Type Two tech genius?”

  “Reality warper. His tech is impossible to replicate. He bends the rules of reality.” Asher grumbles.

  “What does he do with his inventions?”

  “Takes pretty low-level supers, proper street cape level folks, not people like you who are just starting out, and then uses the devices to take their powers to substantial heights. Like turning someone who can exhale smoke into someone who can breathe fire.”

  That’s terrifying.

  An idea flits across my mind, and I can’t help but give it some consideration. The dude might be a villain, but I got superpowers from villains. If I’m going to refuse tools that can help me, I wouldn’t have gotten started.

  “Could he do something with my power?” I ask landing quietly on a rooftop. “Or at least someone similar?”

  “I mean that Enhancement stuff works on you, so there’s definitely a way to augment your power. The problem is that anything supposedly permanent would fall out of you when you use your powers.”

  “Yeah,” I agree.

  My awareness extends, pushing the boundary of my mental processing to look for trouble.

  Nothing catches my attention yet, but the nightlife of the area is only just beginning to wake up.

  Wherever comes tonight, I’m going to be here to stop it. I have to trust that fact.

  Asher coughs lightly, drawing my attention enough that I can listen to him while I sweep the area. “Hey, we're going to find your girlfriend. She’s still alive, you two will make up, and she’ll join the dysfunctional hero team, and something like that.”

  I should correct him on the girlfriend thing.

  But I can’t be bothered.

  “Yeah, I know.” I lie. “Your drones are up already?” I ask, turning my body northwards. There’s something flickering on the edge of my senses that doesn’t feel like a normal human to me.

  “Of course, what do you need?”

  “At the edge of my range toward Ace’s, there’s something that caught my attention. Going to get closer and see if I can clear up what I’m feeling.” I explain as I take off running. “I'd love to get a second opinion on it.”

  “God, am I jealous of an ability like that, sheesh.” Asher grumbles as I dart across buildings, passing through the ones that are in my way.

  “Get buried alive and maybe you two can see everything closing in on you even when your eyes are closed.” I snort as I crouch down to avoid being spotted by a police cruiser.

  I don’t think I’m on bad terms with the law. I’ve actually helped them a few times, but I think it’s easier for everyone involved if I don’t let them see me.

  “Back to Crimey’s Guys, the reason you’re a good matchup for them is you can take away their toys. Most of them will be well within your weight limit. Just a hand on it and yoink, no more bonus power for them.” Asher continues picking up the train despite both of us having thoroughly left that station at this point.

  I make a noncommittal grunt of acknowledgement as I roll to a stop back at ground level since the buildings are getting too far apart for me to vault between if I don’t want to leave foot-shaped indents in ceilings.

  Nothing new has entered my mind map, but as I’ve closed the distance, I’ve been shrinking it down so that I could get more detail, meaning something could still skirt the perimeter of my perception.

  “The drones are in position. Find somewhere stealthy to hunker down in while I scout and see what your magic brain can find.” Asher says quietly.

  “It’s not magic.”

  “Yeah, but you can bend the rules of reality easier than I can do multiplication, excuse me for calling it magic.”

  There’s no rooftop calling to me so I tuck myself down a side street leaning against a brick wall hiding in the shadows so that if people see me hopefully they just see a tall dude in the darkness not a man in armor waiting for something to fight.

  How do superheroes stay incognito when they’re doing a stakeout? Do they decide to just wear their normal clothes and change when it’s fight time?

  Pulling my mind map in until I can make everything out clearly, I mentally comb through it, looking for a discrepancy in how people are acting.

  I should be pretty close to where I felt that strange movement earlier, so they could be gone already, but still good to check.

  “I’m not coming up with anything.” I say quietly as soon as I’m confident in that answer.

  “I don’t think there’s anything in the area that I’m seeing at the moment, but here’s as good as any place to patrol.”

  “On it.” I agree before scaling a nearby building.

  My senses are incredible, and they’re definitely far more useful than my normal eyes, and the disparity will only get worse as my skill level improves.

  But there’s something special about actually seeing something.

  It also makes me feel significantly less creepy compared to the brain sense, where I just sort of detect everything in various levels of detail depending on how compressed it is.

  “Someone’s trying to break into a building a few blocks down.” I say into the communicator as I’m already jogging in the direction.

  “Just got eyes on it, not seeing any obvious signs of them being superhuman, so you should be in the green.”

  “Going dark.”

  I don’t phase my body despite giving the sign for it; I just phase my head so I can be alone with my thoughts.

  The idea of anyone invading my space makes my skin crawl, and my space has included my office before.

  I still need to think of some kind of revenge I can take on Asher for breaking into my base.

  Even if the kid is now helping me properly retrofit it into something significantly more appropriate.

  Rounding the corner, I flicker back to fully solid to get a proper look at the would-be criminal.

  “I don’t know if you’ve broken anything yet, but could I suggest surrendering?” I say, crossing my arms trying to strike a heroic enough pose.

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  He screams as he jumps in the air, twisting around, gun in his hand.

  Not wanting to have holes poked in my head, I phase my head at the sight of the gun, keeping my body solid so I can grab him.

  I can feel him beginning to pull the trigger as I step forward, making sure the armored part of my chest is in front of the barrel.

  Before any kind of pain can register, the shooter is on the ground, my knee pressing into his back as I hold his hands above his head.

  “That wasn’t nice.” I point out using a free hand to pull out some restraints to bind his hand with.

  Tuning out the cursing of the angry criminal, I pause listening to see if my communicator is active or not.

  “Caught someone eta on police to arrest him?” I ask attaching the restraints to a bike rack so that he can’t escape anytime soon without some kind of tool.

  “They’re on the way with video as well, so you’re good to go vigilante it up somewhere else.” Asher confirms.

  Since valiantly scrambling up a wall isn’t super impressive, I just drop through the ground, picking my way through the underground, not bothering to disguise my speed.

  Not like there’s anyone here who’s going to be bothered by slight scuffing from me running at full speed.

  “You want to harry the lab folks some more, or are you still insisting we’re on our training arc era?” Asher asks, his words garbled with the food in his mouth.

  “I hope that food is worth irritating me for.” I say.

  “Totally I got doughnuts!”

  “You had doughnuts delivered while I could have been fighting some kind of supervillain?” I ask, almost tripping over my own feet.

  “Buzz off. Besides you and the lab, the amount of supers is pretty low. Sometimes we have visitors like that inferno last week, but as far as I can tell, you’re the strongest in the city at the moment.”

  “Probably third.”

  “Right, your mysterious trainer that you don’t talk about. Does he have a wispy beard and talk super slowly?”

  “I’m not doing the panda shtick.”

  “It’s also approaching thanksgiving so you’re probably clear with it getting colder; less and less people are acting up.” Asher assures me.

  “Unless someone’s going to make a big show. And what about the criminals who will come here because there’s a rumored vigilante?”

  “We’ll hire you a sidekick at that point.”

  “I don’t want a sidekick.”

  “We’ll promote them straight to partner then I don’t care. We deal with this lab, you’ll have tons of people willing to throw their lives away to help you because you gave them back theirs.” Asher waves off. “Though I really need to get some better devices down there to see if I can do anymore spying.”

  Slowing to a stop, I tilt my head up to “look” at the stone above me as I focus on what feels like a caravan of vehicles parading above me really fast.

  “What’s above me?”

  “Vortex? If you mean in particular, let me go check…”

  I follow the direction of all the speeding vehicles, a bad feeling already forming in my gut as I chase after them.

  I can’t get above ground till Asher tells me what’s what on the off chance that I miss the crucial information while I’m unavailable.

  Still, I can’t just do nothing, so I push the map to its fullest, extending as far as possible, and I stagger to the side as I’m bombarded with information that I try to parse through as fast as I can.

  More vehicles are heading that way, most of them first response vehicles.

  “Jason!” Asher calls, his voice strangled. “Hospital fire. Go now!”

  With my next step, I fly through the ground, landing on the street before bounding forward at my highest speed, not caring if I accidentally damage anything while I’m running.

  Letting my awareness flow back down to a reasonable distance, I focus on traveling as fast as I can.

  While the damage isn’t available to me yet with my supernatural senses, the orange glow beginning to light the sky in the distance is more than enough.

  I’m close enough to smell smoke too.

  “Miracle!” I shout, remembering to use his fake name as I’m running. For once people might hear us, and I don’t want that to blow up in our faces. “What focus should I have? Getting people? Clearing rubble? Grabbing expensive equipment? Putting out the fire? Trying to see if someone started it?”

  Asher’s hyperventilating is the only thing that comes across through the communicator.

  “Miracle, listen to me!” I bellow as I overtake cars, running past them. While they might have to slow down for vehicles in front of them, I have no such limitation. “We’re going to do this, and it’s all going to be okay. I’m your hands. You’re the brain; if you don’t want me to act on my own, you’re going to have to direct me.”

  Leaping over a police car moving too slow for my tastes, I wait for Asher to calm down enough to respond to me.

  “Right. Your weight limit still isn’t enough to carry full-grown adults, but I still want us to save lives. I’m pulling up the map of the hospital now. I’m going to direct you to the children’s wing. That was probably evacuated first, and if it is, you’ll tell me, but I want you there.” Asher’s voice is trembling, but he’s thinking now, which is what I need.

  Barreling around the corner, I come to the burning hospital and race forward.

  “Unless I need to, I’ll try to keep my body solid so you can talk to me and I can carry and protect people.” I say, charging past the police barrier and the firefighters.

  “The mask and your body should keep you from too much danger from the smoke. Pull in that awareness trick of yours, though.”

  “Shouldn't I spread it out far as I move around?” I ask, darting into the burning ability and running northward to the kids wing.

  “All the movement in the area from the fire, smoke and everyone else is probably going to make anything farther out useless to you. But if it’s kept close, you can at least use that information to find people around you.”

  That makes sense, so I comply, pulling in the bubble of sensation until it only goes out thirty feet in any direction.

  Between the full sprint and how much is going on in this place, it’s a little nauseating to process this much already.

  “Do you need me to tell you where to go?”

  “Nope, I have a direction and a job.” I agree. “I’ll stay solid if you need to talk to me, but otherwise, if you need to talk to more people, you’re good.”

  “I’m going to see if I can coordinate with the officers to use my drones to help suppress the fire and have you coordinate with the first responders. Stay safe, Shadow.” Asher says before the click of a disconnection rattles through my ears.

  At least Shadow is better than any of the animals or jokes he’s been using.

  Most of the area seems to be evacuated, and while a lot of stuff is catching fire, nothing seems to be irreparably destroyed, though whoever tampered with the sprinklers in this place needs to be fired.

  Idly, I consider trying to fix the sprinklers, but with that being far beyond my meager skills as a mechanic, I discard the idea in favor of just directly helping people. I’m more likely to make an impact.

  An impact that’s about to be critically important to provide as I feel humanoid shaped things moving around in my awareness, one of them instantly catching my attention because of what’s around them.

  A group of people is approaching me, several of them a lot bigger and covered in thick padding.

  I ignore them.

  As I run past the presumable firefighters, I crash through a wall, sending drywall flying as I catch the falling medical devices that were about to fall onto the person in this hospital bed.

  “It’s going to be okay.” I say in my best hero voice. “I’m right here.”

  With a burst of strength, I toss the metal rack to the ground before picking the person up out of their hospital bed and bringing them to the nearest firefighter I can find.

  “Take them.” I say, thrusting them into the arms of the firefighter. “I’ll be fine. Just trust me.” I say before taking off again.

  My face burns as I run. Did I really have to bust through the wall like that?

  No, I didn’t sure I promised Asher to stay communicable, but I could have just phased through instantly.

  Casting my mind below me, while the basement has a lot of stuff, there’s plenty of room.

  Would it be bad if I started dropping everything on fire down there so that we could get people out safely?

  Wait a minute.

  “Miracle?” I call out, looking for a smaller fire to try my idea on.

  There’s no response, but I fail to find a small fire all alone by itself.

  Paper is plentiful, and it’s not terribly hard to get it to light.

  Holding the burning paper in my hand, I reach out with my power and phase the paper and fire, the whole thing turning black as night.

  Test two. The paper phases and the fire drops to the floor, dissipating quickly, no longer being able to burn the paper.

  Lighting another paper, I try test three.

  A burning torch in the air, I plunge my right hand into the flames and will my power to permeate the flames and only the flames.

  It takes a second, but now in my hands is a ball of black flame licking at my gloves and skin, trying to burn me.

  “Shadow?” Miracle asks, his voice filling my ears. “What’s up?”

  “How much does fire weigh?” I ask, holding the burning orb.

  “Why are you asking something like that? Unless you were…” He trails off quickly, coming to the conclusion that I reached. “Let me talk to everyone else. Are you sure you can do that with no ill consequences?”

  “I phased a small bit of flame successfully, but I don’t know what’ll happen to it when it turns back to normal?” I admit.

  “Get back to me on what happens. Even if it works, you can’t do the whole place at once, and we can only empty it so fast.” Asher says before clicking away to talk to someone else.

  With nothing to do but try and see what happens when I unphase it.

  A stinging pain fills my hand as I cut off my power. The fire’s definitely gone, but it was as if it exploded when it returned to fully solid.

  Looking around, I realize what I’m about to sign myself up for. My hand feels fine, as if I put it under slightly too hot water and then banged it against a wall, but that was a small fist-sized flame from a piece of paper?

  “They’ve heard the plan. Would it actually work?” Asher asks coming back.

  “It would.”

  “But?”

  “Explodes when it comes back?”

  “How bad?”

  “My hand stings.”

  “How much did you use?”

  “The fire that came from burning a stack of paper?”

  “Eeeee. Not ideal. You wouldn’t take the full force of the explosion, and if it’s just your hand hurting, it’s probably not going to be super bad.” Asher trails off. “But you would have to do it repeatedly. And the hospital is definitely going to sustain some damage.”

  I set my feet as I move to the biggest blaze I can find. “More than if we just let it burn? And how many more people can we save if I do this over and over again?”

  “Good answer.” A voice that definitely isn’t Asher’s says into our private channel.

  “Are people in position to get everyone out of the area I’m about to phase?” I ask, my hands shaking.

  “They’re coming in now.” The mysterious stranger says.

  With me being unable to privately talk with anyone, only the voices in my head can tell me how stupid this idea is.

  Worse than that, only I am here to be the one to say it has to be done.

  Nobody here is going to be able to do anything like I can.

  I don’t think I have some kind of duty just because I’m the only one who can do such. But I am here, and until Amelia is home safe, and the lab is dealt with, I’m wearing the mask.

  “Have a team still trying to fight and stop the fires because I’ll need time between each one to recover my ability. I can also help direct the search efforts.” I say aloud. If the channel is open to all sorts of people, anyone can listen.

  “Not needed. We can handle that. We’re ready when you are.”

  Before my courage can leave me, I shove my hands into the flames and activate my ability, phasing all of it I can.

  Instantly it’s trying to buck free from my control as the flame tries to spread in every direction, but I grip the air tightly.

  The fire eats away at my gloves.

  Not being able to pass through objects I’m affecting with my powers fucking sucks.

  “Go.” I choke out, putting it all into holding my ability.

  Several people give me a pat on the shoulder as they rush by, racing into the fire to save people, and I steel my will to hold it until they’re all safe again.

  Phase it. Eat the explosion. Repeat.

  Even if just for the night, I can bear the weight of all these lives.

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