Victoria and I flew back as the sun set. It was relaxing, I was a bit contemplative, and overall, it was incredibly beautiful. When the outskirts of the city and the trainyard were clearly in sight in the distance, I pulled up to a hover, and Victoria stopped and floated close so we could talk. My eyes were on the run-down and largely derelict railyards and warehouses. I could make them out well, even at this distance and with the darkness.

  “What’s up?” Victoria asked, her face still a bit radiant from the flight over.

  “I’m… nervous about being in the city like this,” I admitted.

  She looked at me, a grin spreading across her face. “Worried someone’s going to recognize you?”

  I squinted at her, giving her a sharp look. Her teasing hit me square in this new insecurity of mine, but… It was a poignant and concise way of getting the point through.

  I stuck my tongue out at her, and it went entirely way too far out. I said, “Oh my god, you’re such a bitch.”

  She just laughed for a moment, and I joined in. “Really, though, Morgan. So what if someone sees you? You’re an entirely new and unknown entity to everyone in this city, outside a very, very select few. Where’s the worry?”

  Reluctantly, I said, “Lingering doubts, I guess. Unrelated, but all conflated with one another.”

  “Well, quit it. A new you, a new page, maybe even a whole new book, huh? Nobody knows who you are, you get to have a fresh, blank slate start in ways other people might only dream about. Sure, have some first-day-out-as-a-cape anxiety if you want, but you’re not new, Morgan. You have a ton of experience!” Her tone was a bit stern with me, a touch more confrontational than it was a pep-talk. I appreciated that a whole lot.

  “It’s quiet down there, but what if I get spotted? Security cameras, one of the gangs, something like that?”

  “So what?” She floated a bit closer, within what I’d consider my personal space, up to where we were face-to-face. “This isn’t you, Morgan. And I’m not talking about the way you look or the fact we’re both flying right now. Phoenix Strike was effortlessly confident and had a presence that drew attention. You can say that’s costume and helmet persona, but we both know that is sort of a bullshit social construct and a convenient lie. Some people are more true to themselves when they have a mask on.”

  She reached out and poked me on the forehead to emphasize her point: “Be that woman, but also be the new you. You’re huge, blue, honestly spooky looking- but own it. Don’t just wear it, but be it.”

  I blinked back some tears and nodded.

  “We need to get you a name, one you pick, and you like. One that is you. So we aren’t talking about a past iteration but of the new you.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, saying, “I’ve been thinking about that. Don’t have anything great at the moment, but it’s been on my mind. Phoenix Strike retired and rode off into the sunset. She was a PRT product, in more ways than one, and doesn’t represent me, or who I am anymore.”

  She nodded firmly and said, “Good. I’ll think on it some, too; maybe we can get Amy involved, too. She’s actually really good with names; she came up with Panacea herself.”

  “It’s perfect, really,” I agreed.

  “Ready?” Victoria asked me.

  “Ready,” I said it, and I felt it. There was still that oozing, creeping doubt lurking around, but the bright costume and personality of Glory Girl had sent it back to the shadows for now.

  Phoenix Strike was a fine name, but it was only ever fine. I don’t want fine, I want perfect.

  We took off once again, approaching quickly and dropping altitude. There were some particularly large multi-story high warehouse-looking buildings with tracks running through them that looked perfect to my eyes. Vicky swooped down silently and gracefully into a landing that had her seamlessly transition into walking forward towards the big entrance at the end of the building.

  My flight was pretty loud by comparison, a low, deep throbbing whump-whump-whump. I could feel it in my chest, deep and rhythmic, like standing too close to a subwoofer the size of a truck. It wasn’t just sound. It was pressure. I didn’t think it was the sound of the individual wing beats; all six of them seemed to produce a low-pitched, constant drone. I think it was when the cycles lined up between the different speeds that each set was flapping at that made the louder, distinctive noise.

  I was pretty sure people would think it was a weird helicopter or something, or at least I hoped that would be the case. My wings cut off a good ten to fifteen feet above the flat surface of the ground again, and easily landed upright. These digi-legs were much more shock-absorbing for jumping, landing, and the like. I kinda liked them!

  I waved a big hand in front of my face. My approach and landing had kicked up a wicked dust cloud. That was going to take some getting used to and wasn’t particularly stealthy. Something to consider and plan around. I walked up behind Victoria in her Glory Girl outfit, who was busy examining the entrance.

  The giant hangar doors on each end were chained shut and locked, but the chains were rusted and didn’t look to have been moved at all in months, maybe years. There was a hell of a padlock connecting the ends of the chain where it was looped multiple times through the big handles on the door.

  I went to ask her what the plan was for getting in when she abruptly placed a palm against the door, took the handle in her other hand, and pulled, shearing the bolts for the mounting plate off of the door with a couple of loud snaps. Unlooping the chain from the U-shaped handle was easy afterward.

  With a haul on the non-broken handle and a screech of the rollers on the track over my head, she slid the door open, and we walked inside.

  Bingo!

  Inside, there were just a handful of maintenance lights burning from where they hung down from a four-story roof with exposed girders and beams. The inside space was largely open with multiple tracks and rail switches so cars and presumably engines could be serviced. This was a maintenance garage at one point for railroad equipment.

  There were a couple of box cars off to one side, over by cranes of the type you’d see on the dockyards. All the machinery and tooling had been stripped out, but there were a lot of scrap materials, leftovers, and various train parts sitting around.

  “Look at all of this junk in here. This is almost exactly the kind of thing I was looking for,” I said.

  “So what’s the plan?” Victoria asked, walking around a stack of wooden railroad ties to face me.

  “Well,” I started, then glanced around, taking stock of things. “I want to see what I’m working with in terms of strength, maybe compare with you? I think I’m far more of a Brute than I was previously. I feel strong and tough. Pretty fast too, as we discovered.”

  Victoria walked over to where a row of barbell-shaped railroad wheels was sitting, surrounded by wood and rubber wheel chocks. She put her hands on the thick axle and performed probably the single worst clean and jerk I’d ever seen in my life. She had used maybe half of her legs and half her back in the lift.

  I was reminded that powers are bullshit, and I winced. She turned around to face me with the makeshift barbell held over her head.

  My facial expression must not have recovered, because she went: “What!?”

  “Uhh…” I cleared my throat, then continued: “It was your form. If you had done that without powers, you would be wrecking your back.

  She shot me a glare so potent that I drew my head back slightly.

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  She asked me, “Does this look like a gym to you?” Her tone was edgy, dangerous.

  “...Yes?” Her eyes widened fractionally, and I added, “I mean, you’re using a set of wheels like a barbell right now!”

  The look on her face told me that was the wrong thing to say. “Well, here you go, miss meathead powerlifter, catch!”

  She shifted her stance, grunted, and hurled the barbell at me!

  “VICKY!” I yelled, and without thinking about it, leaned forward, my big hands wide, and I intercepted the ‘bar’ mid-air. My tail slammed down into the concrete behind me. I could feel my toes flex and my claws dig into the stone. Bringing the wheelset to a stop caused me to skid back a foot or two.

  I could feel the sheer mass and inertia of the makeshift barbell, but it wasn’t heavy to me. I could go higher, a lot higher.

  “En garde!” She yelled back, and she darted forward in a low hover, arms in position to start swinging as she came straight at me. I dropped the barbell with a dreadful clank and cracking of concrete, and then we were in the thick of it.

  I brought my forearms up and together to block with the backs of my arms, and a split second later, she was raining punches and kicks into the backs of my arms. Hard, but nowhere near her full potential, I thought, although she kept ramping up the more I took.

  Thuds and whumps built into harder and harder hits, finishing with a powerful kick that hit my forearms with a thoom! It knocked me back half a dozen feet, skidding and tearing through concrete with my nails. My tail was priceless; I didn’t, for a second, feel like I was off-balance. What I wouldn’t have given to have that in some of my past MMA matches.

  Victoria has a manic grin plastered on her face. I brought my fists down and swung my right elbow forward at her center of mass.

  I had to be mindful of the direction I swung the elbows on my big arms, because there was a large backward-protruding spike on a little bit of an offset from the ‘elbow’ of my forearm carapace. The way I was swinging my elbow now, I’d hit her with the flat of it if we connected, but not the blunt tip.

  She reacted by throwing a punch to intercept my elbow, and this time it was her turn to get knocked back, a bit further than I did. Her flight power was able to bleed off the energy in a less destructive manner than I was able to.

  Good thing this is a parahuman spar and not a regular human spar. Blocking an elbow strike with your fist is a great way to shatter the bones in your hand.

  She flew forward again to re-engage, and we duked it out. I was holding my own; I felt like I certainly had the power advantage by a solid margin, same with the mass. She was faster, more nimble with her flight, and more precise.

  We fought for what I felt was like four or five minutes, and a few times we’d brought in improvised weapons: wooden beams, hurling a crate or two, big, heavy lumps of steel that made up various train parts.

  She’d hurled one hunk of metal straight at my face and had caught me slightly off-guard with it, and I found myself wishing I had my Phoenix Strike helmet. My power flickered in my head. I moved to duck, and while doing so, in the blink of an eye, I momentarily blacked out, falling onto my big palms and knees.

  Then I was back, slightly discombobulated and disoriented.

  “Morgan! Are you okay?!” Victoria darted forward and put her hand on my spiky shoulder. I looked up, and she went: “Whoa… Wait here! I’m going to go grab you a mirror.” She flew off to a bathroom, and I heard a smash. She returned a moment later with a big, half-mirror shard of glass.

  I had a helmet of sorts on, but it was weird. Maybe just a little cool, too, I thought. I think a chunk of my hair tentacles wrapped around the sides of my head and face, and solidified. They had shifted from aqua colored to a deep, dark blue, darker than indigo. Similarly colored to the backs of my forearms and lower hands, but a bit darker.

  Numerous solid black and lidless eyes dotted the front and sides of the helmet. I counted eight in total. The front came to a crest and down to a point, a bit like a beak. A recessed hard jaw sat under the line of the ‘beak.’ A bunch of my tentacles still stuck out of the back, vaguely reminiscent of hair.

  “Yeah, I’m good, and yeah, whoah.” The jaw of the helmet was articulated like my jaw under it was. I could feel it sort of click and lock into place with the upper helmet when fully closed. I could breathe through the gap easily. I very, very carefully brought the back of one of my human hand fingers up and gently touched the surface of one eye.

  I didn’t feel a thing, and I tried gingerly tapping a claw on it. It was rock-hard, fully encapsulated, or something. I rapped my knuckles on the forehead of the helmet, between a widely spaced and outward-angled set of eyes. It clunked like my arm carapace. I didn’t feel a thing, and there was no shock transmitted to my head.

  “This is amazing…” I trailed off. I was aware of several things that were probably what caused the disorientation. My face under the helmet was resting in jelly-like padding, and my normal eyes were closed.

  I could see significantly more with the helmet…thing on. An insane visual acuity and an almost panoramic field of view, but I could focus on multiple things and places at once without moving my head or directing my forward vision to them. There was a sort of halo effect or aura rising upwards around Victoria.

  I rocked back onto my paws and knees with the assistance of my tail. The tail allowed me to move in ways a person couldn’t, and it was probably more than a little uncanny. I thought about our impromptu spar. Something was nagging at my mind.

  “Victoria?” I asked her.

  She leaned back against a shipping crate and straightened her hair out from in front of her face. “Yeah?”

  “Did you notice anything weird or noteworthy while we we sparring just now?”

  “Oh, I certainly did. You want my observations?” She asked me.

  “Please,” I replied.

  “Sometimes when you were fighting, it was jerky, uncoordinated, awkward, almost robotic. Very predictable.”

  I tried to close my eyes, found I couldn’t, and leaned my head back to ‘look’ up at the roof above.

  “I noticed the same thing, and I don’t like it. And I sort of… Have a theory as to what’s going on.” I said slowly, working through my jumble of thoughts as I recalled bits and pieces of the fight.

  Victoria crossed her arms over her chest and nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  I appreciated the space to collect my thoughts. “Whenever I tried to move like I’d move as the other me, it was like I was fighting my body to get it done. The balance, the dynamics, the muscles. It’s all completely, totally wrong for that. I can block a punch, sidestep a kick, but… I don’t think I should continue trying to move and fight like is second nature to me. It’s… It’s not working. I mean, I could make it work, but it’s not good.” I let out a sigh.

  “I agree with you.” I lowered my head to more clearly indicate I was listening, even though I could see and hear her perfectly fine, even mostly looking away. “I noticed that there were moments where you weren’t moving quite like a person, and those were extremely fluid and graceful. I’ll be honest with you. When you’re in the zone, or whatever? When you’re moving like that? It’s eerie, and it really throws me off in a way I think would be a humongous advantage for you.”

  “Can you explain better?” I asked her.

  “You know how some movers, like speedsters or whatever move, and your brain sees it and just goes like… that’s totally wrong, alien, it shouldn’t be possible?”

  I snapped the fingers of a human hand and said: “Yeah! I know exactly what you mean!”

  Assault and Battery of the Protectorate instantly appeared from nowhere in a seated and relaxed position, then disappeared in a trail of dust from a total standstill.

  “It’s kind of like that,” she continued, “but not exactly. A similar effect messes with your head. When you move around in that mode, my brain thinks of something like a tiger, maybe? Something with your sheer size, bulk, and mass moving around nearly silently, fluidly, like flowing from one place and position to another? It’s wild.”

  She paused a moment, then added: “So how do you feel about it? That way of moving?”

  I tapped a claw on my armored chin, thinking. “Predatory, maybe?” Threads started to coalesce in my head, winding and weaving together. I was onto something, something that excited me.

  “Yes! Exactly, that’s perfect.”

  I heard someone driving a big truck down what I assumed was a nearby road.

  “Okay, so I think I know what to do to keep moving, and maybe fighting like that. It’s the overthinking things like you’re always saying, but also like, me thinking about moving in human ways that makes me jerky, uncoordinated.”

  “I hate to put it this way.” I said with a sigh, “But I think I need to focus on moving more uh… instinctively, for lack of a better word at the moment.” It wasn’t a term I was happy with, but it’d have to do for now. I had a lot on my mind.

  “That makes sense to me,” Victoria offered.

  “I think I have a name.” I half-stated, half-asked her.

  She raised an inquisitive brow.

  “What about… Apex?” I asked her, a touch tentatively.

  I felt a strong connection to the idea, the conversation we’d had just now, and the realization that this truly was a fundamental shift in tactics, fighting style, appearance, mannerisms, and identity. I could walk on two feet, sit down and eat a meal, and hold a conversation just fine.

  Morgan Rivera hadn’t gone anywhere. But I couldn’t fight as Morgan Rivera, or her alter ego, Phoenix Strike. Lashing out with my claws, whipping with my tail, flapping my wings, leaping through the air, and landing on all fours. That was primal, a touch feral, fluid, terrifying, and mine.

  I’d thought about names before. Kraken, Mako, Chimera: creatures. Brutal, sure, but they only covered a piece of what I was. Predator? Wraith? Maw? Too villain-coded. Too obvious.

  Apex wasn’t about how I looked. It wasn’t even about what I could do, not exactly. It was a feeling. A place on a scale. Not a hero. Not a villain. Apex sat outside that tug-of-war. A clarity of purpose to move where others wouldn’t.

  Apex meant edge; it meant pinnacle, maybe not above others, but past what I used to be. Something beyond what the world expected of me.

  It didn’t carry morality in the name. No expectations. No costume to match. It was clean. Sharp. A new shape to grow into.

  It felt right.

  “That is…” Victoria rocked her head a little as she thought. “That is a solid name. It’s got some weight to it, but then again, so do you.” She held her hands out towards my direction, forming two “L” shapes with her thumbs and forefingers, and framed my bulk like she was going to take a picture.

  “Apex. Apex.” She sounded it out, rolling the word around in her mouth. “Yeah. Hell yeah. That’s you.”

  Headlights washed a beam of light across the room as that loud truck approached and skidded to a halt outside. Doors opened and closed, and a tailgate. A man’s voice sounded over the loud idling: “Hey, shitheads! We know you’re in there! Time to pay some tolls or you’re gonna get fucked up!”

  Victoria and I shared a look.