Striding into HUE, Sami could feel a strange energy coming from Darius and Lilly, who were murmuring to one another conspiratorially. Interested, Sami made his way over, placing Darius’s coffee on the counter. He grabbed it on the way back from deployment, hoping to feel just the slightest bit less useless about his outing.

  The extra time allowed his Shadow Hand to reform before he returned to HUE. Sami timed it to be about an hour from loss to reformation. To his delight, the restoration was getting faster. Before engaging the whispering duo, he began running Power Sense again. Similar to working out Shadow Hand, he wanted to push it to be able to scan nonstop.

  Darius grabbed the cup and raised it to him in appreciation before taking a sip. Immediately, he spat it out in a mist, holding it away from his face.

  “Oh, right,” Sami said, embarrassed. “I didn’t ask for sugar or cream or anything. Sorry, my mind was kinda on the deployment having gone wrong.”

  “Black coffee should be illegal,” Darius said, then slowly went for another sip, the need for caffeine outweighing his reluctant taste buds.

  “We heard about the deployment,” Lilly chimed in. “Sounded like you and Steve did pretty well, all things considered. No injuries, protected civilians, and figured out the parking issue.” Lilly reported, her posture strangely taut and lingering on Darius.

  Sami dug into his pocket and rolled two dice on the counter toward Lilly. “You guys seem tense. What’s going on?”

  Lilly eyed the dice confused, frowning slightly.

  “You can’t just give these to me and ask a totally different question.”

  “I can’t?”

  Lilly picked up the dice. “What are these for?”

  “Oh, they’re two different dice from two different brands. They’re kinda the same weight, but one of them has sharper edges, and the other is more rounded. Can you swap them?”

  Tumbling the dice in her hands, Lilly placed them on the counter, peering at the differences between them. Brushing hair from her eyes, she shrugged.

  “I dunno. I’ll test it later when I have less work.”

  “Is that what you guys were talking about?”

  “Nah.” Darius turned around the monitor at his desk. “Dawson’s a live streamer.”

  Sami leaned over the desk, peering at the username: HeroHueristics.

  Blinking, Sami slid his face even closer in confusion. “I think he spelled ‘heuristics’ wrong.”

  “No surprise. The guy kind of has a knack for missing things like that when he thinks he’s sounding cool.” Darius spun his monitor back around.

  “I’m telling you, it’s on purpose. He wanted the word to look like it starts with ‘HUE.’ Which means he’s trying to borrow from the HUE brand, which I’m pretty sure isn’t allowed.” Lilly said, leaning in to look at the name again.

  “It’s not?”

  “It feels wrong somehow, even if I can’t explain why. Copyright or something. The whole channel is skeevy, honestly. I’m trying to convince Naomi to tell him to shut it down.”

  Sami worked his jaw in consideration. “If he’s just talking about his experience, I think it’s okay. If he’s not sharing personal details or anything like that.”

  Darius and Lilly exchanged a knowing glance.

  Taking a sip of coffee, Darius winced. “Go talk to him. You’ll change your mind.”

  “What, did it already go to his head?” Sami asked, making his way to the door to the warehouse.

  “Come tell me when you want him to shut it down!” Lilly said as he scanned his badge. “I can make a petition for all the members that want it removed.”

  Interested in how bad it was, Sami opened the door and took two steps inside before being accosted by a phone camera with an attached ring light in his face.

  “And here we have Sami! He’s a Rank 3D, but his Shadow Hand is really cool!” Dawson said, walking around Sami slowly like he was a lion circling prey.

  Eyes wide and stunned, Sami gave one last glance to Darius and Lilly behind him, who smiled sympathetically as the door slid closed.

  “Are you seriously streaming right now?” Sami asked, putting up his Shadow Hand to block the lens.

  “Thanks for the gift subs HUE-Hater88! Really funny name, my guy!” Dawson flipped his phone to beam at the camera.

  Sami stared in mild disgust, witnessing a metric ton of frog emotes blast by the screen at light speed. There were thousands of viewers, and Sami couldn’t read a single chat message before a hundred new ones pushed it off the screen.

  Raising his eyes slightly, Sami could see the other members of HUE watching from a distance, all with discomfort or judgemental looks. Evidently, Sami wasn’t the first to have Dawson in his face.

  He raised his Shadow Hand to block the lens as Dawson flipped the camera back on him. “Sami’s a good fighter, and he was almost as brave as myself in the face of the ambush.” Dawson shifted the phone to record past the Shadow Hand.

  “Don’t you think this is a bad idea?” Sami tilted his chin to the phone. “Broadcasting everything about HUE and telling secrets in real time?”

  Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

  “Errm, do you think it’s a secret to say you’re brave?” Dawson forced a laugh.

  Sami frowned, surprised to see Dawon’s blue bubble shining slightly after he spoke. What kind of power was he emitting?

  Suddenly, he squinted at the bubble. Two Power Sense bubbles? Dawson used to only have a red one.

  “Dude, did you get a new power? When did that happen?”

  Dawson shivered, frowning at Sami slightly. “Who said I have a new one?”

  “I can see it, remember?” Sami tilted his nose up to the new power.

  “It’s not really relevant right now.”

  “I think it’d be good to learn if there’s a pattern to a second Awakening,” Sami said. “Your audience might, too.”

  “I think they’re a lot more interested in you. Sami. Very hot in trending pages right now,” Dawson said, sounding like a news anchor presenting a guest.

  Working his jaw, Sami focused on speaking in terms that Dawson would understand.

  “You’re being pretty cringe, dude,” Sami said, never having actually spoken those words out loud before.

  Dawson took a step back as if stabbed by a knife. Looking at his phone screen, then back to Sami, he shook his head, offended.

  “There’s nothing against the rules about filming in the headquarters. I read our contract. It only mentioned no photos or videos in the dorms or bathrooms.”

  “Probably because they didn’t think anyone would be rash enough to do something like this. The rules were made for things like selfies for family, not streamers tracking every moment of HUE’s base of operations,” Sami said, his patience already thin after events of deployment.

  “But it’s still not against the rules.”

  Face scrunching slightly, Sami nodded to the watching members behind Dawson. “It’s common sense. People are uncomfortable.”

  “But it doesn’t say anything in the rules.”

  “I’m not talking about the rules.”

  “I’m not breaking any rules, so I’m happy to keep streaming. Thanks for the dono, OGTrilogyOnly!” Dawson waved a peace sign in front of the camera.

  “Are you dense?” Sami pointed a finger-gunned Shadow Hand at his temple.

  Dawson’s mouth dropped open, head leaning back slightly in shock. His blue Power Sense bubble shined again.

  “Huh?”

  “I was trying to be polite and suggest you turn off the stream because it’s an idiotic thing to have running. We’ve been attacked once before, and we’re pretty sure they didn’t know our powers. You want to be the reason people know it’s the right time to attack headquarters? What our weaknesses are? Or know when someone is alone?” Sami nudged the phone aside and looked straight into Dawson’s eyes.

  “This… Is good for our public image. It’s getting a ton of views and some of the press have picked it up. Shows we’re cool people and have cool friends.” Dawson raised his camera slowly like a shield between himself and Sami as he made his defense.

  Using Shadow Hand, Sami shifted it away again. “Is that the image you’re trying to portray for HUE or the image you’re trying to project for yourself?”

  “Why do you have to be annoying about this? I’m not hurting anyone,” Dawson said, pushing the phone back up.

  Sami’s jaw set. Being called “annoying” reminded him of Annie. Scared of doing anything real and begging to be left alone to meld with her couch. Gripping a hand into a tight fist, he could feel the frustrations of failing to stop Underground members adding up with the current conversation. Catching himself, he made sure not to let the rise get the best of him. He especially didn’t want to say something he’d regret on camera.

  “Look, I’m sorry for being rude. Turn the stream off, then we can talk more seriously about it without the audience,” Sami suggested.

  “No. The stream stays on until Naomi or Apex say I have to turn it off!”

  Sami sighed, already feeling like Dawson revealed too much information by naming people of authority.

  “Dawson, seriously.”

  “I am being serious!”

  Sami gripped to the phone with his Shadow Hand and he felt Dawson pull back harder.

  “Let go!” Dawson demanded, using both hands to pull.

  The strength of Shadow Hand surprised Sami; it withstood Dawson’s tug without dissipating. There was a time when it could barely hold up his phone. Constantly using his power was adding up. He needed to ask Steve to set up another clay dummy for him to punch. In the meantime, he continued to twist the phone, keeping it from Dawson’s grasp.

  “Just pause it for a minute and let’s talk!”

  “No! You can’t make me!”

  Sami squinted in puzzlement, feeling like he was speaking with a kid acting out. At one point, the phone screen flipped his way, and he saw hundreds of chat messages with the same text: “Are you dense?” followed by emojis of a finger gun pointing to a face with a raised eyebrow. Dawson’s chat was mocking him. This couldn’t have been as good for HUE’s image as he suggested.

  Utilizing his moment with the screen, Sami bit his cheek and went for something less than savory. He pulled hard with Shadow Hand and tapped with his real finger rapidly, ending the stream.

  The next moment, his Shadow Hand collapsed to the floor, severed from his shadow. Blinking, Sami saw Dawson holding his phone close to his chest, one of his hands sharpened into a blade.

  He had cut Sami’s shadow arm off.

  “That was messed up,” Dawson said, his voice cracking slightly. “You shouldn’t touch other people’s stuff!”

  Sami scoffed in bafflement, feeling like having his arm cut off was a bit more serious than turning off a phone.

  “It’s not against the rules,” Sami replied smarmily.

  Turning back to the other members of HUE, Dawson found no support in the faces of his team. Lowering his head, he rushed away from the main warehouse, running to a side hall into the dorms. Watching him closely, Sami tried to re-summon his Shadow Hand, but to no avail. He would have to wait for it to reform again. While he originally wanted to talk with Dawson once the stream was off, he was too upset with him to want to have a reasonable discussion. Sighing out his nose, he made his way to the other members of HUE.

  “Thanks, Sami,” Claire said as soon as he approached. “We couldn’t get him to turn it off. Apex is out, Naomi is sleeping, and he didn’t listen to Steve.”

  “I might have gone too far,” Sami said, recounting the events with a scratch to the back of his head.

  “Not far enough,” Gan Wen said, arms folded in his robes. “The construct should have been destroyed. If he took more time to record me, I may have destroyed Doe Son.”

  “I lost my cool, and it wasn’t really his fault. Plus, he’s on our team. We should try to make it up with him before we end up deployed together. And get Naomi to change the rules.”

  “Or get him off the team if he can’t work with a team,” Claire added.

  “We don’t have to go that far,” Gutshot said, looking forlorn.

  “Don’t tell me. Because he’s your dad?”

  “Well, yeah!”

  With Dawson out of the room, some members started to train with one another. Francine was throwing fireballs at the sword possessed by Kutso, who floated and weaved between the flames. Sami stepped to join them, but stopped short when he tried to summon his Shadow Hand again.

  The shadow jiggled lightly, but no hand stretched from it. He couldn’t train anything physically, so he resigned himself to running Power Sense and trying to gain insight from the bubbles above people.

  Then, looking around at the members around him, Sami realized just how much he’d insulated himself from the rest of HUE by sticking to his friends.

  Feeling foolish for not having done it before, Sami went to introduce himself and meet the rest of the team.