Celestial Worm Pt 10 (Patreon)

 Part Ten: A Deeper Perspective

[A/N: this chapter commissioned by @Fizzfaldt and beta-read by Karen Buckeridge, the author of Ties That Bind. For an explanation as to why it is a few days early, see A/N 4.

A/N 2: The names Sagun and Edeena both mean ‘divine’. I am very pleased with this.]

A/N 3: There are references within this chapter to events, people and places from the future of the Celestial Wars series. These are not spoilers precisely, merely things that will come up in later books.

[A/N 4: Karen and I will be attending Gold Coast Supanova on April 13-14, at the Words on Paper (Ink) table (#58) in the Alley. We’ll be glad to chat with anyone who shows up.]

https://imgur.com/sI9kuWZ 

Winslow High School

3:31 PM

Taylor

 Janesha looked at the closed door to the classroom, then at the remainder of the students in the room. Nobody seemed to be staring at her any more, probably because she wasn’t doing anything outrageous to draw attention, and sitting in the same room as a cape for an hour tended to dull the ‘wow’ factor. Most of them were talking quietly among themselves. Taylor was pretty sure there was a poker game going on in the back corner.

She’d been thinking about Janesha’s status as a cape, mainly because of her argument with Ms Parsons, and had reluctantly come to the conclusion that she might’ve been a little off on her definitions. Janesha wasn’t a parahuman, that was for certain. In Taylor’s mind, she’d have had to be born human first. But, and this was the roadblock Taylor had run into, some definitions of ‘cape’ didn’t actually equate to ‘human with powers and a costume’. The most basic version of the term essentially went ‘if you’ve got powers above the capacity of a human and wear a costume, you’re a cape’. Under those circumstances, there was no requirement to be human or otherwise.

Janesha had what anyone on Earth Bet would call a costume. She’d call it her uniform, because amongst her peers, it was technically so. But until another Mystallian showed up on Bet to compare it to, it was effectively a costume (and a pretty cool one, at that). The second part of the requirement—having powers—Janesha met in spades. If Taylor understood things correctly, it wasn’t so much that Janesha had powers, but that she was power.

All celestials were that way; power made flesh. It was a conclusion Taylor had reached after Janesha had casually mentioned that death was not the same for celestials as for mortals. Upon suffering a mortal injury or disease, all celestials who could die either through a lack of established immortality or the presence of a specific powerbase thrall mandating their death either specifically or generally (Taylor thought that last one was kinda suicidal. Who would want to put in place an end date for their existence?) simply winked out of existence. Like vampires in the movies, only without the ash pile. Without a mortal soul to carry them over, their bodies vanished into nothingness.

From what she could tell, the Asgardians had at some point attempted a work-around for this problem, but what they’d ended up with was something Taylor figured she could spend the rest of her life dissecting and still not make any sense of. They’d not only put it in their thrall that they could die (how dumb was that?), but then they went to the trouble of creating a catch-clause that kept their essence from disappearing when it happened.

That in itself wasn’t the stupidest part. Asgard had a feasting hall called Valhalla. A glorious place where deceased mortal warriors went to party out the rest of time. But this was not where the Asgardian gods ended up. No, it was in their thrall that when the gods themselves happened to die, they went to Hel. What? Who came up with this insanity? If she going to be a goddess writing the playbook of how things were going to work, she’d be the one dying and going to Valhalla, not the mortals who worshipped her. Worse still, when they got to Hel, they became enslaved to the ruling goddess there (also named Hel, because screw originality). Fucking what?! An eternity of being a slave, and they seriously put their hands up for it? The more she learned about the ways of the celestials, the crazier some of them seemed to be. Taylor hadn’t even bothered to ask what happened to Asgardians if they died outside the reach of that thrall; though she suspected they simply vanished, like unestablished celestials did.

“Is he coming back?” asked Janesha. Her question was not unexpected. As per his occasional habit, Mr Quinlan had shambled out of the classroom with twenty minutes to go and had not returned. This practice tended to confuse students new to the class.

“Maybe,” Taylor replied with a shrug. “He does this occasionally. Once in a while he comes back. Usually, he doesn’t.” Some among the student body believed that Mr Quinlan had a drinking problem. Others maintained that he had no problem with it at all, and did it as much as possible.

Janesha raised an eyebrow and snorted in surprise. “And nobody does anything about it?” She shook her head in disbelief. “Damn, if one of my tutors had ever been dumb enough to try that even once, him and his whole fucking family would have their minds ashed or be mentally turned into dung beetles by the time Mom was finished with them.”

Taylor arched an ironic eyebrow. “You have seen Winslow, right?” Wait … did she just say the tutor’s whole family would suffer that fate with him? Wow. That was … kinda harsh.

“Well, yeah, true.” Janesha chuckled, then crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out. “From what I saw of that Blackwell bitch, she doesn’t give a shit either way. I’ve never seen a bunch of people so uninterested in actually doing their jobs.”

“Mm-hmm.” Taylor was still listening, but she’d noticed a couple of guys whispering together across the room. She wouldn’t have cared, except they kept sneaking the occasional glance toward Janesha … and both of them had shaved heads. Oh, please tell me they aren’t planning to do something stupid to Janesha. If they were lucky, Janesha would only eviscerate them.

“Well, I’m officially bored.” Janesha stood up abruptly, startling her out of her internal rhetoric. “And you sound bored too. So, what’s say we just get the fuck outta here? Unless you really want to stay?”

Taylor couldn’t shake her head fast enough. “Nah, I’m all Winslowed out for today.” She got to her feet as well and began to shove her books into her bag. “Are we gonna be riding Cloudstrike to the Boat Graveyard?”

Janesha stretched, working her spine back and forth. Taylor knew she was only doing it for effect, as she’d seen her cast stimulation waves to bring herself back to a state of physical perfection before. “It’s up to you, but if we take Cloudstrike, she’s not going to be happy with a trip that starts here and ends at the boat graveyard. Though with her temper, she’ll make short work of a few vessels which may be a good thing too.” Behind her, the Empire guys got up and began to wander in their direction.

Taylor moved to intercept them. “Can I help you?” she asked bluntly. She didn’t know or care what their intentions were but if they made it to Janesha, it’d probably be the last thing they ever did as humans.

“You shouldn’t be hanging with people like her,” the nearest one said, as if doing her a favour.

This was such a backflip on how people normally said this sort of thing to other people about her, that Taylor had to swallow her smile. “What, capes?” she asked, deliberately misunderstanding his meaning.

The reminder that Janesha was anything but unpowered brought a grimace to his face. “Don’t be a fuckin’ idiot,” he sneered. “She might be a cape, but you ain’t. Friends of people like that have been known to get hurt.”

Taylor knew all of her teeth showed in the smile that worked its way across her face. “Was that a threat?” she asked, taking a half step towards the speaker. “Are you seriously threatening me?” When he failed to deny it, a snort of amusement escaped her lips. “My God, that’s probably about the stupidest thing you’ve ever done in your life. And yes, I’m including the lapse in judgement that led you to join the Empire Eighty-Eight.”

Janesha came to stand alongside her with her arms folded in warning, but didn’t add her thoughts to the mix. Taylor got the impression it wasn’t because she couldn’t, but because she wanted Taylor to handle this herself. Still grinning like a shark, Taylor glanced at her powerful friend and winked. This was seriously too easy, and waaay too much fun.

The speaker must have seen the wink, because a second later, he had a flick-knife in his hand, which he opened with a roll of his wrist. “You dumb, stupid cun…”

Refusing to let him finish that sentence, Taylor got right up into his grille and shoved him hard. By getting between them and Janesha, she’d been trying to save their stupid, skinhead lives … and in a way she still was.

Unprepared for the move and for the celestial-granted strength she put behind it, he flew back, flailing his arms wildly. He cannoned into his buddy and they both kept going, rolling over an unmanned desk before sprawling awkwardly to the floor. While they were still trying to untangle themselves from each other, she moved over to them and assessed them for damage. Nobody had been cut by the knife, for which she was mildly thankful. “Take a hint,” she said bluntly. “You idiots stay away from Janesha and me, or the next time I’ll let her deal with you.”

Right on cue, Janesha clicked her tongue in mock irritation. Or it may have been real; Taylor couldn’t tell. “Taylor, what have I said about hogging all the terminally stupid assholes?” the Mystallian asked, shaking her head ever so slightly. “Don’t you know that guests are supposed to have first dibs?”

“Fuck you!” blurted the guy who’d had the knife. “Hookwolf’ll gut you, you n—”

He broke off with a sound of ugly agony as Janesha stamped her booted heel into his crotch without a hint of remorse or effort: like crushing a bug she’d already forgotten about. Not being a hundred percent sure of the constraints of her own strength, Taylor didn’t want to try that stunt yet, but the way the guy stayed conscious enough to curl around the afflicted area made her realise Janesha knew exactly what she was doing. It didn’t stop her as a fellow human being from feeling some small measure of sympathy towards him. Nowhere near as much as every other guy in the room, if the way they all winced simultaneously and sidled away from Janesha was anything to go by.

Still with her foot on his crotch, Janesha as she looked around challengingly. “Anyone else want to say something stupid before we go?” she asked, eyes roving around the room. “No? Good. Let’s get out of here, Taylor.”

Without looking, Taylor reached out toward her. She felt the leather glove close over her hand, and stepped forward in time with Janesha. They stood in the forest of crystal columns, then stepped again to end up at the Docks.

“Wow,” Taylor said, giggling a little shakily as reaction caught up with her. “That boy is never gonna have kids, not the way you groin-stomped him.” She put her hand to her chest, feeling her heart rate. Despite the fact that she was almost impervious to harm, it was still elevated. Some reflexes never went away.

“Eh, he should get over it. Eventually.” With a wry grin, she added, “Better question is, will anyone notice his absence in the species gene pool?” Laughing at her own wit, Janesha tossed her hair. “Anyway, you started it by shoving the moron. Nice control, by the way. Pretty sure you didn’t want to have to explain putting him through the wall.”

“Yeah, it might’ve been hard to explain away …” As it was the first time Taylor took in her surroundings, her jaw dropped. “Ho…whoa…Janesha, we’ve got company.” And boy, do we have company!

The audience that had gathered was made up of several groups, the largest of which consisted of a crowd of burly individuals. She didn’t know all of the Dockworkers, but enough of the ones she did know were there to make the identification of that group easy. Her father, who’d been standing at the front of that crowd talking to Armsmaster, noticed them and started toward her. The armoured hero followed a few feet behind.

The next group would’ve been easy to name, even if Armsmaster hadn’t been there. The gaudy costumes of the Protectorate and Wards stood out against the general decrepitude and decay of the dockside, with Dauntless, Kid Win and Aegis holding their positions in the sky above. Or at least, she was pretty sure that was who they were. The PRT soldiers accompanying the ground-bound capes in their dark armour and opaque faceplates were a grim counterpoint to the bright outfits of the parahuman heroes.

Not that those were the only heroes on site. Standing near the Wards were Brandish, Flashbang, Manpower, Glory Girl and Panacea of New Wave. Lady Photon, Laserdream and Shielder shared the skies with the government heroes.

Just as Taylor’s father got to them, Janesha turned her head as well, taking in the gathering. “These would be your Dockworkers?” the Mystallian surmised. Taylor wasn’t at all surprised at the conclusion; Janesha wasn’t stupid, and she had her mind bending to fall back on.

“Yeah,” she said, before her father could respond. “Hey, Dad. I guess you spread the word?” She gave him a quick hug.

“That’s right.” He ruffled her hair fondly. “I figured they’d earned front-row seats to whatever Janesha does here today. It affects them more than most.” He looked around at the other people on site. “Though I have no idea how they knew to be here.”

Taylor turned and rested against her father’s lean form, while he kept a hand on her shoulder. “Well, Armsmaster might’ve visited Winslow today, and Janesha kind of told him what we were going to be doing.”

“Correct, Miss Hebert,” Armsmaster said as he caught up with them. “Good afternoon, Miss Janesha. I felt it would be interesting and instructive for the Protectorate and Wards to observe you in action. If that’s okay with you, of course.” He paused, probably to deal with something that his fancy helmet HUD was showing him. “Though, if I’m not much mistaken, Winslow High has yet to finish classes today. How is it you’re here early?”

Called it, Taylor mused to herself.

Janesha rolled her eyes. “When the math teacher decides to walk out of class to go get drunk twenty minutes ahead of schedule, what am I supposed to do? Teach the class myself? Screw that. If the teacher can book, so can we.” She rubbed her nose as she took in the crowd. “Okay, I get it that the PRT, Protectorate and Wards are on site. But who told New Wave?”

“Gallant,” Armsmaster said with an irritated sigh. “He and the younger members of New Wave are close.” But then his lips drew down in a frown. “Getting back to what you said earlier. Which teacher at Winslow is leaving class unattended to get drunk?”

“Mr Quinlan,” Taylor cut in, not having the slightest regret for throwing the math teacher to the wolves. “He doesn’t do it every day, or even every other day, but he does it often enough that everyone knows.”

Armsmaster shook his head, his lips pinching together tightly. “Expect some serious changes to be made at that school,” he said, almost in a promise. “As soon as we’re done here, I’ll be paying a personal visit to the Board of Education. That level of laxity and inefficiency is truly reprehensible.”

“Knock yourself out,” Janesha said airily. “It’s your school, so it’s your education standards he’s turning to shit.” She cocked her head towards Danny. “If you brought all these dockworkers in, don’t you figure they deserve a front-row seat? The way it is now, most of them won’t be able to see a thing.” As if deciding for herself, she pushed between the armoured hero and Danny and kept going. “Hold that thought. I’ll be right back.”

“Uh, okay,” Danny said, but Janesha was already on her way to the crowd. Taylor gave him a tiny shrug. Janesha hadn’t been asking for permission; she’d been telling him and Armsmaster how things were going to be. Because that’s what she does. Duh.

“Everyone!” Janesha didn’t shout, but Taylor felt her voice in the same bone-deep way it had when Janesha whistled for Cloudstrike. “Quiet down and line up like you were sitting on a stadium!”

Dockworkers were among the most contrary people in Brockton Bay. Taylor knew this like she knew that the sun came up in the east, and the ABB was made up of Asian gangsters. Who else would’ve hung around year after year, doggedly persisting as their livelihood slowly ebbed away? For a total stranger (even a cape) to give them orders without even an introduction should’ve sparked half a hundred arguments. Instead, they all shuffled silently into rough lines.

Despite the fact that Janesha was not in their chain of command (except inasmuch as she’d inserted herself into it) the assembled heroes and PRT personnel also fell into line. Armsmaster watched this then turned to Taylor, opening his mouth to ask a question.

“She’s very persuasive,” Taylor answered before he could voice his concern. “People tend to go with the flow around her.”

“True,” agreed Armsmaster. “She is definitely a very strong-willed young lady. If she should ever choose to join the Wards …”

“Yeah, nope.” Taylor cut that line of thought off before it could properly begin. “She’s never gonna be interested in the Wards. Besides, she’s good enough on her own.”

“Also true,” conceded the armoured hero, then looked around. “I don’t see Cloudstrike anywhere.”

“Janesha decided to leave her at home,” Taylor explained. “We’ll probably take her out for a flight later. She really likes to stretch her wings, and a short hop across town will just annoy her.”

“Does this have anything to do with why the three of you were spotted re-entering the atmosphere this morning by one of Dragon’s satellites?” Armsmaster asked, and she could almost feel his eyebrow rising under that helmet in a silent, ‘Yeah, you know exactly what I’m talking about, and I know you know’ kind of way. “How far and fast can Cloudstrike fly, anyway?”

Taylor snorted softly and shook her head. “You literally would not believe me if I told you.”

While they’d been talking, Janesha had walked forward, up the side of the formation. She didn’t give any more orders, but the lines evened themselves out as if by magic. Danny looked at Taylor as if to say are you seeing this too?

Taylor nodded in reply. It was a celestial thing, of course. She and Danny were both fully aware that the mortal world was actively eager to do the bidding of a celestial. It was also clear (to those in the know, of course) that the lines were evening out because Janesha was bending them into stepping forward or back as required. From the look on his face, her father had already realised this. If Taylor had to guess, he wasn’t totally thrilled that she was casually controlling his men and women like that, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Janesha had shown the extent of her tolerance for their telling her what to do, and neither Taylor nor Danny wanted to push her in that regard.

Sometimes, Taylor reflected, Janesha just came right out and demonstrated how horrifyingly powerful celestials could be, and how this translated to a lack of concern for the rights of any mortals that might be in their way. “I’m just glad she’s on our side.”

Danny shook his head. “No. She’s letting us be on her side. And for that, I’m thankful.”

Armsmaster looked at the both of them, but made no comment.

Having reached the last row and straightened it out, Janesha raised her hands in front of her then clapped her palms together. As if in response, a two-foot-high concrete bench grew out of the ground behind the last row of Dockworkers. She clapped again, and a section of concrete rose under the entire back row, to make a concrete bench for the row in front. Walking back toward Taylor and Danny, she clapped her hands in a steady rhythm; each time, the benches at the rear rose another two feet, literally growing a stadium out of the solid ground.

By the time she reached the last line, the people farther up the stadium were sitting down on their newly-made seats. Taylor could tell that the benches weren’t solid blocks, but instead flat slabs, given that she could see daylight behind them. From this, she surmised that instead of pulling in one block of solid mass from wherever, her friend had reshaped the concrete beneath them, lifting it in stages.

“Nicely done,” Danny said as Janesha returned to them, ignoring the insane applause that erupted in the stands behind her. “But what was the clapping for?”

“The rhythm gave them a chance to know when it was their turn to expect a seat,” she said with a cheeky grin. “It keeps people calm when they think they know what to expect.”

Before he could respond, there was a streak of gold and white that resolved into Glory Girl hovering in front of Janesha. She reached out and tapped Janesha on the shoulder. “Tag,” she said, smugly. “Where’s your flying horse?”

“Mystallion,” Taylor said in unison with Janesha, Danny echoing them half a second later.

“Yeah, whatever.” Glory Girl looked around theatrically. “Where is it? I wanna rematch. And this time don’t teleport.”

Janesha’s expression darkened and she took a step forward, then a step up, as if she were standing on the air. Face to face with Glory Girl, she spoke in a low, intense tone. “Check the footage that’s all over the globe by now, Glory Girl. We didn’t realm-step anywhere. We went in a very straight line to Rio and back, and you just couldn’t keep up. Accept that as a fact, because I have no desire to pander to your sore-loser complex until you finally realise this and give up. Now back off and let me work. I’ve got a job to do.”

It may have been Taylor’s imagination, but she felt she heard something coming through Janesha’s voice partway through her speech to Glory Girl. From the way the teen hero turned and flew away without further argument, Glory Girl may have heard it too. Or maybe she just realised that it’s a bad idea to mess with Janesha. Two down, three hundred fifty thousand in this city alone to go.

“All right then,” Janesha stated, slapping her hands together. Taylor noticed she seemed to do that a lot. “Is there anyone else who wants to bother me with extraneous crap? No? Good.” She headed toward the dockside where dozens of ships lay. Some were at anchor while others obviously rested on the harbour bed, waterlogged or altogether sunken. None were in great shape, after fifteen years or so of neglect and vandalism.

It was nearly high tide, so the ocean level was only about six feet below the edge of the dock. Without pausing, Janesha strode up to the edge and jumped off. There was no splash, and in another few moments Taylor saw her strolling across the slowly heaving swells toward the nearest ship as though she were standing on solid ground. Taylor had just seen her (presumably) use her touch-shifting on air to make it act as though it were temporarily solid, so walking on water didn’t seem out of place. That was when another thought struck her, and she barely managed to hold back a facepalm. For someone who doesn’t want any worshippers, you’re seriously pushing your luck emulating the very guy you swear you don’t have any time for.

When Janesha reached the ship, she put her hands to its hull. Taylor wasn’t sure what to expect; for all she knew, it was going to grow legs and walk out of the bay or collapse like a punctured balloon or turn into solid diamond. She’d long since learned not to think small when it came to Janesha and her capabilities. Which was why she wasn’t totally astonished when Janesha picked the whole damn ship up and held it over her head, leaving a hole in the water. Tossing it in the air, the celestial teen caught it one-handed as it came down bow-first. Water poured out of open hatchways and splashed into the hole that was left behind, accompanied by random trash and sealife that had been lying around on the deck of the ship, or occupying the interior. Walking back toward shore, Janesha didn’t seem particularly concerned by the fact that she was holding a fifty or sixty thousand ton ship over her head like a child’s toy. Minor issues such as the breaking strain of steel and the shifting centre of balance of the ship didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest. Taylor was pretty sure that the distant sound she could hear was the hundred and fifty or so spectators all whispering “Bullshit” at the same time.

Well, she thought with a private grin. They came for a show. They got a show.

<><>

Contessa

Cauldron Base

Some Other Earth

It had been a trying few days. All Contessa wanted to do was sit back, relax and catch up with the news of the day. She settled into her favourite chair in her private quarters, in front of her favourite desk, the one with an eighty-five inch screen set up as a backstop. The coffee had been brewed to her liking and was (of course) perfect; tapping a key, she set the big news items scrolling through as she leaned back and sipped at the cup. A tablet rested on her thigh, ready to note down anything interesting.

There were a few incidents that had happened the day before yesterday, and she paused the newsfeed as she took up the tablet. It only took a few moments to make the required reminders to look into them. If civilisation was to continue in such a way that the Golden Fucking Moron could eventually be eradicated, then she’d have to get rid of some of the more egregious threats. It was a delicate balancing act between necessity, her capabilities and her willingness to act.

Restarting the feed, she got comfortable as something called ‘the Whistle’ popped up in the top right-hand corner of her screen. It was nothing to be worried about; probably just some new cape showing off their abilities. Happened all the time. And then the corresponding image filled the screen. Contessa, caught in mid-sip, inhaled half a cup of coffee and sprayed it all over the screen as she fell out of her chair.

<><>

Dorian

The first Dorian knew about it was when he heard the thump, then the hacking and coughing that followed. He hurried through from the quarters he shared with his brother to find Fortuna on her knees, the coffee cup off to the side in a growing pool of coffee, and tiny dribbles of the brown substance all over the desk screen. She was red in the face, with tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Shit, Fortuna,” he said rushing to her side. “What happened to you?” With his team leader’s natural propensity for ensuring things went her way, he would never have expected to find her in this state.

“Mystallian,” she rasped, pulling herself to her feet with only a little assistance from him and pointing wildly at the screen with her left hand. “There’s a fucking Mystallian on Earth Bet.”

His eyes widened in horror. “You’re shitting me. You have to be shitting me.” His gaze lifted to the frozen image of a winged horse with two passengers soaring over Rio de Janeiro on the screen.

If the flying equine wasn’t enough to convince him, the black of its rider’s garb with the accursed gold insignia on her cloak that marked her as a denizen of Mystal did. “Mother-fucker. You’re not shitting me.” Drawing the air into his lungs, he let out a tremendous bellow. “CLARE! GET YOUR SORRY ASS IN HERE!”

It didn’t help Dorian’s rising temper that his brother chose to maintain the dumb-as-dogshit persona which he presented to the mortal members of Cauldron, shambling in from their shared quarters with an idiotic slack look on his face. The ash-pits that were his eye sockets stared blindly at Dorian. “Wha’ wrong?” he asked, in a sing-song voice that implied utter naivete.

“There’s a fucking Mystallian in this sorry excuse for a fucking realm!” snapped Dorian. “That’s what’s happening!”

The change in Clare’s stance and attitude would’ve been funny in any other circumstance. He straightened to his full height—a few centimetres taller than Dorian—and his eye sockets flared up with the flames common to his mother’s heritage, transforming the recesses from dead ash to live embers. “The fuck you say!” he snapped, crossing the room in two long strides. He took in the image on the coffee-stained screen and turned to Fortuna. “How the fuck did this happen? How many of them are there? Are we compromised?”

Dorian was shorter than Clare but more physically powerful. With one hand, he took hold of the front of Clare’s tunic and slammed him into the wall behind the desk. Dust shimmered down from the ceiling. “How the fuck did it happen, brother? You’re the one who’s supposed to see all and hear all. Have you been looking up your own ass for the last thirty years, or just fucking spying on women in the fucking showers? How did even one Mystallian show up here without you being all over it?”

Clare tried to push back, but didn’t have the body strength to do so. “Because for the last thirty years, brother, you and Fortuna have had me listening for one realm-damned fucking word night and day, week in and week out, just so I could tell you when someone wanted to go somewhere. ‘Doorway’ this and doorway that. Doorway here, doorway there.” Clare’s eye-flames were miniature infernos. “I’m fed up to the fuckin’ back teeth with it. But if I’m listening for ‘doorway’, I can’t be blamed for not searching for the fucking enemy.”

“Well, now you’re doing both!” Dorian glanced over his shoulder at Fortuna. “What do we do, Fortuna? Revenge for the loss of our team is one thing, but if the Mystallians have found us …”

“They haven’t found shit,” Clare declared with a snarl, causing Dorian to release a breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding. Despite the fist Dorian had tangled in Clare’s tunic, the psychic of their team tilted his head and rubbed his chin in thought. “Look at her, brother. She’s young and dumb, and not in the way I’ve been pretending to be.” He stabbed a finger at the screen. “I mean it, brother. Open your eyes and look! She’s interacting with the people around her on a personal level. No Mystallian worth their essence would lower themselves to that.”

“A kid?” demanded Fortuna, shifting her attention between them and the screen. “Our plans are being fucked up by a realm-damned kid?”

“Kid, adult, it doesn’t matter,” Clare went on. “If she’s here, the others won’t be far behind her! This threatens the Cause itself!”

“Only if we reveal ourselves.”

Dorian had always admired Fortuna’s calm under pressure, knowing how her mind had to be working at a thousand miles a second to take all this new information into consideration. He held Clare still, awaiting her final decision. As always, he wasn’t kept waiting long.

“If we stick to our training and stay in the shadows, the Mystallians will never know why there are so many Earth replicas here. Only that there are. The Cause will remain intact.”

Clare shook his head. “This threatens the Cause! I don’t want to go into the sin-bin for all eternity!” he said, still shaking his head. “We have to call it in…”

Dorian hauled Clare away from the wall and slammed him into it again, driving him a good ten centimetres into the brickwork this time. More dust drifted down. “If Fortuna says no, it’s no. End of fucking discussion. We’re going to keep our heads down and wait for an opportunity to strike.” He leaned close, sliding his wrist under Clare’s chin against his windpipe. “And if you ever try to usurp Fortuna’s authority again, I will fuckin’ skin you alive. We might be all that’s left of Abaddon, but she’s still the team leader, and you will remember that.” He gave his brother a shove that cut off his air for a moment. “Got it?”

Clare’s expression wasn’t happy, but Dorian hadn’t given him a choice in the matter, so he nodded. “Got it, brother. I’ll stay on top of this and let you know exactly how many there are and what they’re up to.”

“Good.” Dorian released his brother with another shove and stalked back over to the large screen. What was it about this realm, he wondered, that drew unwanted visitors?

<><>

Thirty Years Previously

In Orbit

“Abaddon, listen up!”

Fortuna paused to eyeball the fifteen men and women of her strike team. She considered them all to be her brothers and sisters, no matter how many generations technically separated them. Each and every one of them shared the same never-sufficiently-realm-damned ancestor that they hated with every fibre of their being, and that hatred was what brought them out here to the ass-end of the Unknown Realms. It had taken a little time, but they’d managed to cobble together a realm that suited their training exercises perfectly.

Abaddon’s target was the heart of Earlafaol itself; specifically the North American continent of the world called ‘Earth’ by its mortal residents. It was protected as few other targets in Creation were protected, but the Cause demanded that they devise a way to break through those impenetrable defences and retrieve the weapon they’d lost to Earlafaol’s mistress. Should be simple, right? Just sneak in and take him back. But nothing was ever that simple, which was why Fortuna and her team were out here, doing multiple dummy runs in a realm where they were entirely unlikely to be disturbed. Davin’s orders before they left home had been very clear. “Don’t come back until you succeed.” Their eldest brother was a straight shooter like that, and he had no problem backing up his orders with a lot of pain when you failed him. Not that Fortuna had anything against the sin-bin. It served its purpose and kept everyone in line. She was just grateful that her own innate ability kept her from screwing up that often. In fact, in all the eons she’d been alive, she could only count two instances where she’d been sentenced to the sin-bin, and those who’d caused her to fail suffered just as badly but for much longer once she got out.

Her plan had been a simple one. She’d already set up a planet outwardly identical to Earlafaol’s ‘Earth’, then meddled with the local laws of physics until reality split and warped, not once, but dozens of times. The stupid little green and blue mudball had been duplicated so many times that they could try out one attack scheme after another for years without needing to reset the realm after each exercise. And after so many years of practice, they really were getting very close to succeeding. But Fortuna knew close wasn’t good enough. If the constructs they had standing in for the Pryde were not a patch on their true opponents, they couldn’t risk taking on the real Pryde until they could beat these things so easily it was a joke. And until they reached that point, they couldn’t go home. So they kept training.

She gestured at the planet below. “Today we’ll be working with attack posture zeta-seventy-three. Rory, you, Clare and Valeria will come in hard from the north.” She looked up at the burly man with black eyes, short dark hair, and a full dark beard. He had his arms folded across his barrel-wide chest in concentration, absorbing everything she said. “As soon as you get that lake in sight, light it up. The more of their young you can take out before they realise we’re there, the more outraged they’ll be and the easier they’ll be to defeat.” Rory nodded and opened his arms to hold his hands about a foot apart. A string of lightning flowed between his palms and after focusing on it for a second or two, the intensity of it increased until all of their white cloaks lifted away from their armoured bodies despite the vacuum of space, along with any hair not hidden by their helmets. “Save it, brother. Now’s not the time to get cocky. If we can’t beat these fucking constructs with one hand tied behind our backs, we’re never going to get past the real mother-fucking Pryde.” The lightning show ended abruptly.

Her eyes scanned the faces until she found who she was looking for next. “Tyrone; you, Logan, Mason and Mia will come in through the mountains to the west.” Her gaze burned into Tyrone. “I’m counting on you to destroy as much of that fucking mountainside as you can. Kill everything in your path, but avoid harming the naga nest. At the end of this, we need those fuckers alive, even if we have to round ‘em up and put their females in chains.” Tyrone nodded in understanding.

“Oskar; you, Leon, Anna and Yuto come in from the south. Use the skins of the mortal mountaineers in those cabins here to get as close to the Prydelands as you can undetected, then hold your position until you hear the mountains shake. Once Tyrone’s crew start blasting, come in with every blade in your disposal.” Oskar pushed himself from all fours on to two feet and opened his rounded jaw like a hinge to expose row after row of razor sharp malleable teeth. When his forked tongue ran around his lips hungrily, it too had a serrated edge that was designed to remove flesh from skin without damaging the useful outer layer. “You’ll eat soon enough. Stay on point, or I’ll sin-bin you myself.” Oskar dropped back on to all fours and, like his brother before, nodded in understanding of the plan.

“Nicky, Roxanne and I will come in from the east. We’ll be the most exposed, but the three of us should be able to dodge our way through most of the shit they throw at us.” She looked over her team again. “Remember people, we’re looking for maximum damage to get the Pryde’s attention, and it’s not going to last long. A minute or two at best before they get their shit together and swamp us.”

Again, her eyes scanned those before her and landed on her trusted second in command. “Dorian, I need you to get a bead on Trysten. The second this all blows up, you need to get in, grab that traitorous little fucker, and get out with him as fast as you can. As soon as you’re clear, we’ll pull back. Any questions?”

“Yeah.” Clare raised his hand, then pointed past Fortuna. “What’s that?”

“What’s wha …” Turning, she saw what he’d indicated. Not twenty feet from them the very fabric of space-time was twisting and rupturing. Something was coming through from the celestial realm; something huge. And when it came through, it was even bigger than Fortuna had thought. Also, it was travelling far too fast. “Oh, fu—”

Fortuna had no way of evading the thing, so she did exactly the same as every other member of Abaddon had been trained to do. When under attack, destroy their mind.

Like the rest of her people, Fortuna was a ranged bender, though at this short a distance even a touch bender would’ve sufficed. Either way, once the connection was made, mental attacks by benders were near instantaneous and sixteen ranged attacks struck the continent sized, whale-like creature, lancing through what little it could put up for a defence, and utterly destroyed all capacity for thought.

In hindsight, this was perhaps the worst move they could’ve made. Even as the ludicrously immense creature convulsed, its entire mental being obliterated, it was literally right on top of them with no chance for them to take even the one step necessary to realm-step out of its way. It may well have been on the point of slowing or stopping before all rational thought was destroyed, but that couldn’t happen now.

The gigantic biological meteor smashed into Abaddon and drove them all headlong into the planet below. Carried along helplessly, with no time to devise a plan of escape, Fortuna saw the ground approaching fast.

This is gonna hurt.

<><>

Nineteen Years Previously

The Realm of Earlafaol; Earth; North America; Prydelands

Zeus hated feeling indebted to anyone. He was the ruler of his own realm, the supreme ruler of Olympus. People owed him debts. Often, for his assistance, he was able to extract boons from others to get those few things he was unable to accomplish for himself. It was good to be the one in charge.

Only, he wasn’t in charge here. But the sting of not calling the shots was somewhat mitigated by the fact that the de facto ruler of the Prydelands (and thus the entire realm of Earlafaol) was not in the habit of holding anything over the heads of anyone who needed something from her. She gave without demanding the exchange of something of equal or greater value, which was an unheard of trait amongst the celestials. That, and the knowledge that the infants he held would be well treated despite their hybrid background, was the only reason he’d opened a bloodlink here in the first place. “So, you’ll take them?” he asked, focusing his attention on the answer to his question and not on the very formal library in which he stood.

“Of course,” replied the woman with the long black hair that almost reached the ground and matching obsidian eyes standing opposite him. He knew that she got her looks from her father; by contrast, her mother was of his bloodline. She was almost as tall as him but she got her slender, almost dainty build from her mother. A warrior she wasn’t; unlike others in her family. However, she didn’t need to be physically impressive. She had others to do that for her, and they did it spectacularly well. The peregrine falcon (which he well knew was no falcon at all) that rode on her shoulder and cocked its head at him as if it knew his thoughts was but one example. “Thank you for bringing them to me. I will ensure they know of their heritage, once they are of an age to understand it.”

A gesture from her brought a pair of servants forth to relieve him of the children. They’d been the result of a passing whim; a mortal woman of impressive beauty had caught his eye, and he’d indulged himself. She’d gotten pregnant by him, which was where things became problematic. Children of the gods tended to be venerated by the mortals around them, but were despised by the celestials. Hybrids, as a rule, didn’t live long. His own bastard offspring even less so, given Hera’s vengeful nature. Even as ruler of Olympus, he would not have been able to flout her will for long without spending every moment hovering over them. Normally, as in eons past, he would’ve simply shrugged and let nature take its course. But he’d liked their mother and in a moment of weakness, had promised to see to their well-being. Before Earlafaol, that would’ve been impossible. Now, it seemed, anything was possible.

“Just so long as they don’t get it into their heads to come back to Olympus and try to overthrow me,” he said, only half-jokingly as he passed the sleeping bundles over to the two women. With his arms now free, he lifted his right hand and rolled it in a half circle that ended on his hip. “Hephaestus!” he called.

The blood-link formed in an instant, the ugly features of his son filling the space between him and Lady Col. The smears of soot and dirt on Hephaestus’ face didn’t improve his appearance in the slightest, but Zeus didn’t care. The tremendous forge beneath the volcano turned out many useful items for the court of Olympus, after all.

“Until our paths cross again, Lord Zeus,” the petite woman called through the image as Zeus reached for Hephaestus’ hand.

“Your health, Lady Col,” he replied in farewell, then clasped the blacksmith’s calloused paw and stepped through the bloodlink. As it closed behind him, he let the tension sag out of him with a tiny sigh.

“Father.” Hephaestus acknowledged him with a brief nod. “Do I need t’know what that wuz about?”

“Not in the slightest,” Zeus replied, releasing his son’s hand. “And if your mother asks …”

One of Hephaestus’ misshapen shoulders lifted in a half-shrug. “I wuz workin’ in me forge all day. Didn’t hear nuthin’, didn’t see nuthin’.”

“Good boy.” Zeus clapped his son on the shoulder on the way out of the forge. The hard part was over. Now he just had to weather the storm of Hera’s anger.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t done that a million times already.

<><>

Eighteen Years Later

The Realm of Earlafaol; Earth; North America; New York City

The Apartment of Sagun and Edeena Hawthorn

Racing Edeena up the fire escape, Sagun got to the window first. They’d left it locked, but he focused his will upon it and it obediently unlocked itself and slid open. Climbing in, he let out his pent-up emotions in a gust of laughter. Stepping aside to let Edeena follow him in, he pulled off his mask. Like the rest of his costume, it was a bright gold in colour. “Wow, what a rush!”

“Holy shit, yes!” Edeena burbled, pushing the window shut again. “Why we waited for so long to go out in costume, I have no idea!” In contrast to his costume, hers was all silver.

“We rocked out there.” Sagun gestured to the curtains and they closed over the window. “Did you see the look on that mugger’s face?”

“Or the cop, when we handed him over?” Edeena reached out and flicked on the light … then froze.

Across the apartment, seated in Sagun’s favourite armchair, was a stranger. A woman in a business suit with short red hair and a jacket ostensibly hanging open to reveal a pair of holstered guns in a double shoulder holster. A badge was clipped to her belt. Sagun wasn’t close enough to read the inscription on it, but he knew one thing; no matter what it said, it was bad news for them.

“Who are you?” he snapped, preparing to defend them with his power. In an instant, if he had to, he could cause the armchair to sprout tentacles and fasten the intruder in place. “What are you doing in our apartment?”

“Well clearly I’m not waiting for a pizza,” the woman shot back with an indifferent sneer as she rose and buttoned her jacket. This didn’t seem to make her look any less dangerous. “I’m here for you two show-boating knuckleheads. As for who my name … I’m Agent Nascerdios of the FBI. But that’s just one of the many hats I wear.” The name-drop, she didn’t have to say, was to drive home to them exactly how screwed they were if she did want to make things official. Quite apart from the FBI, everyone knew of the Nascerdios family. Their wealth and power in the global scheme of things put them on par with God.

“Okay …” Edeena said cautiously after a moment. “If you’re talking about other hats, that means you’re not here to arrest us. So, why are you here?” Sagun hadn’t thought that far ahead, but he realised that she was correct. Edeena always had been the smarter of the two.

“Because you two idiots have caused a hell of a stir on the streets. In just a few hours people are whispering about the pair of masked crusaders who are taking on street crime using inhuman abilities.” She rolled her eyes. “Really? Goldstar and Silverbolt? Did you two clowns actually want anyone to take you seriously?”

“Doesn’t it worry you that what they say might be true?” Sagun asked, lifting his chin in challenge. Nascerdios or not, he was certain his power gave him the upper hand.

The woman looked at him as if he’d grown a second head (something he could actually do) and snorted dismissively. “Honey, the day I’m scared of the likes of you, is the day I march back into the Well of Hell and tell Belial and the every one of his sons what they can go do with themselves.”

The two siblings looked at each other pensively; a move that was a move not lost on the armed woman. Sagun only had the vaguest idea of what she was talking about, but he was beginning to get the impression that they were in more trouble than they’d previously imagined. “Oh, so now you two morons start thinking with more than your egos,” the woman drawled, dropping her hands on to her hips. “A day late and a dollar short.”

“Lady Col sent you, didn’t she?” Edeena asked, edging her way over to where her brother still sat on the lounge.

A slow, almost mocking golf-clap followed her. “Close, but if my sister was involved, she’d still be making excuses for your sorry asses.” The clapping stopped and the woman’s hands found her hips again. “Newsflash. I don’t play by those rules. I’m more of a shock and awe kinda gal.”

Sagun blinked. “Wait, you’re Lady Col’s sister?” He stared at her. If he ignored the red hair, there did seem to be a certain amount of family resemblance to the woman they’d called ‘Lady Col’ all their lives.

“Oh, quick on the uptake, aren’cha?” Agent Nascerdios jeered.

“So … what are you doing here?”

The woman gestured at the window and by inference the street outside. “The little stunts you’ve been pulling all evening have got you pissing in a lot of people’s pools and no one’s happy about it. Do you really think it’s a coincidence that none of the mortals here have ever had any confirmation of the powers that really control the universe?”

Sagun and Edeena looked at each other. “So, are we going to super hero prison or something?” he asked.

The FBI agent closed her eyes and tapped two fingers into her forehead over her nose. “I am going to take every last one of those fucking comics of yours and jam them one by one up your fucking asses if I hear one more realm-damned comic book reference out of either one of you. I swear on the Twin Notes of all existence …”

“Well, how else do you explain what we can do?” Edeena asked, earnestly. “We can change shape, and change the shape of others …!”

The tapping against her forehead increased. “Now I know how Dad felt,” she murmured under her breath, shaking her head. She then dropped her hand to her side and fixed them with a ruthless glare. “It’s called shifting, you idiot, and you pair are a long way from the only ones that can do it. Okay?”

“Can you?” challenged Sagun. They’d never met anyone else who could do what they could. What were the odds that this pushy government agent, or whatever she was, could really match them?

With slowly dawning horror, he watched as she did just that. The empty coffee mug he’d left on the side table near his elbow folded downwards and changed into a white rectangular packet of Rothmans cigarettes. Hastily, he brought his own powers to bear. She won’t be so smug when I turn them right back. But concentrate as he might, his power just skidded over the cigarette packet. Agent Nascerdios watched him with a sardonic smirk, and he realised that she knew exactly what he was trying to do. She’d also known all along that he’d try to show her up, and she hadn’t said a word, just to drive it home to him that her power outmatched his.

The cigarette packet opened without aid and a single cigarette pulled itself free and flew across the room into the woman’s outstretched hand. As if she’d done it a hundred times before, she placed the cigarette between her lips, then snapped her fingers to create a small fire from their tips and puffed the flame through the cigarette as if she was holding up a lighter. “You might say that,” she said, shaking out her fingers and breathing a stream of smoke into the ceiling.

“They say smoking will kill you,” observed Edeena tentatively.

“I’d like to see it try.” The woman flicked her eyebrows as if the idea amused her.

Sagun didn’t find her funny at all. “So what happens now?”

“Now, you two get brought up to speed on exactly what you are, and exactly why we’re all keeping our heads down for the foreseeable future.” She took another drag on her cigarette and breathed out the lungful of smoke without ever taking the cigarette from her lips. “No more molly-coddling you two twits.” She gestured to the empty seat beside Sagun. “Sit down,” she commanded of Edeena. She then hooked her foot under the coffee table and dragged it closer to them once Edeena had parked herself alongside her brother. “Okay, for starters, you two aren’t thinking big enough. Superhumans are for amateurs. You two have divinity flowing in your veins.”

Sagun looked at Edeena again, waiting for her to interpret what that meant to them. The way Edeena’s eyes flared with realisation, he knew his academically inclined sister had heard something he’d missed. “What, like we’re gods?”

“Hybrids, actually, but yeah. Your dad’s a god.” She took a third drag. “Pretty substantial one, too. Hung around a lot with my old man back in the day, and they’re still pretty tight. Have you two ever heard of Hercules?”

“Son of Zeus. Greek mythology,” Edeena answered, parroting an encyclopedia. She was always more into that stuff. Sagun preferred his comics.

“To you two, he has a different title.”

“What, ‘dad’?’ Sagun jeered with a snort.

“No, wise-ass. You two get to call him ‘brother’.”

Edeena’s jaw just about fell into her lap. Sagun didn’t see what the big deal was. “Zeus is our father?” she screeched in excitement. She turned and shook Sagun’s arm. “The god Zeus is our father!”

In Sagun’s eyes, that still didn’t outdo Superman or the Fantastic Four. But, since Edeena was happy, he decided not to burst her bubble just yet. “And what does that mean to us?”

“Well, since he dumped your asses here, I’m guessing he wants nothing more to do with you.”

Edeena’s bubbling enthusiasm collapsed like a balloon to a dart.

“I’m guessing tact’s not in your repertoire either,” Sagun scowled, placing a comforting hand on his sister’s arm.

The woman shrugged. “Depends on the situation. You two have pissed me off, so you’re not getting any slack outta me. Putting it simply, your bullshit antics are going to get us noticed, and we can’t have that. So you two have a choice to make.”

“Here it comes,” Sagun whispered with deliberate volume and maybe an accompanying eyeroll.

“Don’t push it,” the woman warned, twisting her lips to one side. An impressive feat since she still had the cigarette in her mouth. “No one’ll miss you if you were to suddenly vanish … one way or the other.”

That sounded suspiciously like a threat to Sagun. For a moment, he wondered if it was deliberate, then decided that of course it was. “So what’s our choices?”

“Stay here. Keep your heads down and your noses clean. Live a long, potentially eternal life doing only what the mortals around you can do.”

Well, that seemed lame to Sagun. “What’s our other option?”

“I take you to the edge of the realm. Show you how to realm-step … and boot your asses to the curb.” She pushed the rest of the cigarette in her mouth and chewed it up, making a show of swallowing it as effortlessly as a mouthful of water. “If you pick option two, there’s no coming back. The Pryde constantly patrol the borders, and they’ll kill anything celestial that tries to sneak in uninvited.”

Sagun seized on the name. “And the Pryde are?”

“Not to be fucked with.”

Sagun looked at Edeena, who was still shell-shocked. “How long have we got to think about it?”

The woman stretched out her arm and rolled her wrist to look at the watch that probably cost more than Sagun would make in a decade if the gold and diamond embellishments were anything to go by. “Well, Tron is opening in the Garden in a few minutes and I’ve been looking forward to seeing that. So I suppose I can give you till the end of the movie to make up your mind.” She rose to her feet and dusted her hands, as if she hadn’t just dumped the world on its ear for them. “Oh, and don’t try to run. If I have to hunt your sorry tails down, I will find you before dawn, and then you reallywon’t like what happens next.” She extended her jaw like something out of a horror movie, then grew a set of fangs that wouldn’t have looked out of place on an angler fish. Somehow, even with that insane dentition, she was able to talk normally. “Capisce?”

“What if we contact Lady Col?” He was grasping at straws, but Lady Col had always looked out for them.

The woman’s face returned to normal and she shrugged again. “The rules aren’t changing anytime soon, chuckles. If you stay, you keep your heads down just like the rest of us. If you want to try your luck out there, I’m the one to arrange that too.” As she made her way to the front door, she yanked it open and paused in the doorway. “I’ll let you know if the movie’s worth going to see, or if it’s total shit. In case you choose to stay.” And with that, she was gone.

“Did that really just happen?” Sagun asked, looking at his sister with the hope that this was some demented dream.

“Yeah,” Edeena answered, the first word she’d spoken since being told their father didn’t care for them. Sagun had always thought that was the case, which was why he buried himself in his comic books, even going as far as to pick up a job at the local comic store where he could get them at wholesale. Edeena was a totally different stripe of cat, mentally speaking. She’d always hung on to the belief that their father was just waiting in the shadows for her to prove herself, and once she had, he’d come swooping in like a white knight to carry her away. So she’d studied, and had studied hard. Sometimes he wondered which one of them had the wilder imagination.

“What do you want to do?” They both asked the question at the same time, then laughed hollowly. “You first,” Sagun said, always the gentleman.

“I don’t know,” Edeena replied. “I mean, is there any point to any of this, if it’s all meaningless?”

Sagun decided to throw out a hypothetical. “What if we left?”

“What?”

“I’m serious. What if we left? If it’s a rule here that we have to conform to bullshit normality, what’s the point of being here? If we left, we could do anything. Be anything. We could be…we could be …” His eyes searched the many wall posters for suggestions. “We could be bigger than Galactus!”

“But there’s going to be dangers out there too. Dangers we have no way of being prepared for …”

Sagun slapped the box of sealed comics he had under the side table. One of dozens of boxes he had scattered all over the apartment. “If we can be anything, I’m pretty sure I’ve got that covered. There’s not much that hasn’t been explored in a comic somewhere, and I’ve pretty much read them all.” His eyes shone as the possibilities raced through his head.

“But if we leave, we can never come back.”

“So we’ll make another world just like Earth. Come on, Edeena! We can do anything!”

“You’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you?”

Sagun hadn’t wanted to admit it, but yeah, he had. “You think I want to spend the rest of eternity working at Forbidden Planet? When I can be …” He stood up and puffed his chest, his imagination running wild. “… The. Forbidden. Planet?”

A cushion hit him in the side of the head, knocking him sideways and detracting from his moment of envisioned glory. “You’re such an idiot.”

Sagun plopped into the couch, laughing. “I’ve got ninety minutes to convince you to come with me. I don’t think it’ll take that long.”

<><>

Empty Space

At the Edge of the Realm of Earlafaol

Three Hours Later

At any other time, Sagun would’ve called the view spectacular. Behind them, a mass of galaxies spread across the sky, too many to count. Before them, more galaxies. To the left and right, up and down, there was a noticeable divide. It wasn’t empty, but the points of light were significantly farther away. He could well believe he was standing on the border between two realms.

“I still can’t believe you talked me into this,” grumbled Edeena.

“I can,” Agent Nascerdios said dryly. Against all accepted laws of physics, she was smoking a cigarette in the vacuum of space. Sagun wasn’t quite sure where the smoke was going. “You two are joined at the hip. Where one goes, the other follows. I’ve seen it before. Seen it end in tragedy too, but it keeps happening.” She took the cigarette out of her mouth and ashed it, more for show than because she needed to. “You know how to realm-step now. The Known Realms are that way.” She gestured over an arc with her arm. “Don’t go there. You’ll be killed just for being what you are. Everywhere else, knock yourself out. Carve yourselves out a realm, set yourself up as lords over all, I don’t care. Just don’t come back to Earlafaol.”

“Fine.” Sagun turned to Edeena and took her hand. “Let’s get out of this dump. We can do better on our own, anyway.”

She took a deep breath. “Yeah. Let’s do this.”

Together, they stepped up into the celestial realm, taking care to move away from Earlafaol. Down into the mortal realm. Up again. Down again. After the first step, Agent Nascerdios was no longer in sight, but nothing else seemed to change. Travelling this way, Sagun realised, was going to take them a very long time to get anywhere.

“Wait a minute,” he said as they stepped up into the celestial realm once more. “We’re doing this wrong.”

“Wrong?” asked Edeena. “After all the effort you went to, to convince me to come along, you’d better not be having second thoughts now.”

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head for emphasis. “We’re walking when we could be flying.”

“What, like this?” she asked, drawing on the ground beneath them for mass. A moment later, great silvery wings unfurled from her back. Experimentally, she flapped them a few times, lifting into the air.

“Wow, I say ‘flight’ and you go straight to bird wings,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “I was thinking of something a bit more superheroic. More high-tech.”

“Hawkman’s wings are high-tech,” she pointed out smugly.

Loftily, he ignored her comment. Using his shifting, he drew on the ground beneath them as well. The construction that formed on his back was far different from her wings. It was streamlined, with fins and blast nozzles. To match the rest of his costume, it was a burnished gold in colour.

“A jetpack,” she said with a snort. “How very comic book nerd of you.”

“You’ll be laughing on the other side of your face when I leave you in my dust,” he said with a cocky smirk.

“Oh, really,” she challenged. “You and what …”

Grabbing the control handles, Sagun triggered the jetpack and blasted into the air. Distantly, he heard her yell “Hey!” behind him, but he didn’t care. He was laughing too hard.

His jetpack let him stay ahead of her until it ran out of fuel; when he landed, she overtook him. It didn’t matter now. They were venturing into the Unknown Realms in style.

Agent Nascerdios could suck it.

<><>

Nearly Ten Months Later

A high pitched roar shook the rock walls until large boulders crashed to the ground. Edeena was huddled in a ball with her hands over her head and it was all Sagun could do not to join her. But he wouldn’t let himself. It was his fault they were in this predicament, not because of anything they’d done, but because he’d talked his sister into coming with him. Stretching his arms over his head, he shifted his upper body into a thick blanket which he used to dampen the sound of the thing outside. There was little he could do about the way it pounded at the planet in frustration. They hadn’t been doing anything, except flying through space, when this thing had blindsided them. It was huge! Easily the size of Manhattan. Maybe even New York itself! With grey skin and more horns and teeth and pointy bits protruding from its hide, they were barely the size of a pea to it and should have been swallowed whole. And they would’ve been, if his knowledge of comic books and science fiction movies—thank you, Star Wars—hadn’t told him that the volcano-sized opening underneath them was in fact a massive mouth, with rows and rows of jagged teeth.

He’d grabbed his sister’s arm, and they’d cut through into the mortal realm. But that rhino-shaped monstrosity followed them. They’d stepped to and from the realms in the hopes of losing it, but it kept coming, like it could sense their divinity and wanted it more than anything else in existence.

Finally, Sagun hid them deep beneath the crust of a planet. Long ago, he’d learned what that FBI agent had been trying to tell them. That unlike the celestial realm, things weren’t actively trying to kill you in the mortal realm, and would even go out of their way to keep you alive. Hence this cave-like room that floated in the middle of what should have been the planet’s molten core. And the thing out there wasn’t happy that it couldn’t find them. It felt like the whole planet was shifting on its axis from its blows.

Edeena sobbed with every blow, causing Sagun to regret ever bringing her out into this. Hadn’t the agent warned them? “I’ve seen this end in tragedy too,” she’d said. Suddenly, working the rest of eternity in the comic shop didn’t seem so bad.

It’s gonna be alright, he mentally promised his sister, using his blanket half to hold her close.

Three days was how long it took that monstrosity to give up and leave them alone. Three of the longest, most scary days of his life. Sagun filtered the cave to give them fresh air to breathe and food to eat, though Edeena hardly touched a bite.

And then the beast left. Just to be on the safe side, Sagun kept them in the cave bubble for another week, but when the seventh day ticked over and the world hadn’t so much as hiccupped, he realm-stepped into the planet’s orbit to investigate.

The world was a wreck. Floating high above, he could see where the beast had punched and gored holes in the crust that should have shattered the planet. It seemed only his and Edeena’s determination to survive had kept the fragile husk together. He hoped there hadn’t been any people living on the surface. If there had, there weren’t anymore. Oops. Well, not my fault. Not really.

Three steps later had him back beside his sister. “It’s gone, baby,” he said, as she wrapped her arms around his neck and cried. He dropped his chin on to her head and cuddled her close. “And this whole planet’s gonna blow just as soon as we leave.”

“How can we fight something like that?” she sobbed. “It’s too big!”

Sagun looked at the molten core around them. “We just have to get bigger,” he declared. “This planet’s a goner anyway, so we’ll take its mass. We’ll be even bigger than Galactus. And then things like that won’t ever be able to touch us again. Nothing will ever be able to touch us again.” He pulled her face away from his chest and looked her in the eyes. “We’ll be the ones to splut it, not the other way around. ‘kay?”

Still teary-eyed, Edeena nodded. “’kay.”

Unfortunately, neither of them really understood how biology worked and they didn’t have an elder to teach them how to use their divinity to offset physical limitations. So by the time they’d subsumed a large portion of the planet, their human forms were a thing of the past. Edeena hadn’t liked that part of their evolution, but once Sagun showed her how they could create flesh puppets of themselves to act through (provided they kept the puppet tethered to them), she began to warm to the idea. The huge slug form was for travel. For safety. For protection. Like the armour of a tank or battle cruiser. It wasn’t the real them. She finally came around when he promised her that once they set themselves up in a realm (however one went about doing that), they could return to their former selves.

Now gigantic, the two space whales set out once more, undulating through the cosmos together.

<><>

A Month Later

“Whoa,” breathed Sagun. His puppet avatar stood atop his whale-fin, next to where Edeena’s puppet stood atop hers. “Will you look at that.”

Edeena tilted her head to one side. “How does that even work? One celestial realm, but there’s dozens of mortal realms, stacked together like the pages of a book. And they all kind of look like Earth.”

“Answer: there’s a lot of weird shit out here in the Unknown Realm,” Sagun stated with absolute authority. “But this is perfect for us. I mean, check it out. We can set up superhero worlds in parallel, have crossover events, alternate universe doubles, absolutely everything we ever wanted to do. And we’ll be the absolute most kickass heroes in any universe we’re in. The Superman and Captain Mar-Vell of our universes. Other superheroes will be lining up to get autographs from us.”

Edeena blinked. “Wow. That does sound … amazing.” She turned her beaming gaze on her brother. “But how are we going to give other people powers? It’s not like we can go out and invite other celestials here. From what that Agent Nascerdios said, they’d probably try to kill us.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” he replied. “You know how she showed us how to make constructs in the celestial realm before we left Earlafaol?”

“She also said that would only work if we were ‘attuned’ to a place, and that takes time,” Edeena pointed out.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said impatiently. “But if we decided to get attuned to a small area … you know, just the local star cluster … then it would happen pretty quickly. Then all we’d have to do is put down constructs in the celestial realm and imbue them with powers that people could use to be superheroes with. Then we set it up so people get powers. Voila, our own superhero story for as long as we want to play with it.”

“Well, we have to make sure that some of the powers are dark and creepy, otherwise we’ll have really boring supervillains,” Edeena mused. Then her eyes widened. “Hey. Maybe we could set it up so their state of mind has a say in how the power turns out.”

“Ooh, I like it.” Sagun offered her a high-five. “And with multiple worlds to draw on, we can do doomsday events and everything. People from a dying world shot to a new one to become heroes, and all that stuff.”

Edeena nodded. “Oh, heck yes.”

Carefully, they marked out the boundaries for where they wanted their attunement to run to. Given how difficult Agent Nascerdios had said setting up a realm was, Sagun found it fairly easy. He just followed the boundary line that was already there.

<><>

Four Weeks Later

“Done.” Standing once more on the fin of his hovering space whale, Sagun dusted his hands off and admired their handiwork. The surface of the celestial realm below them was covered in crystals of all sizes. Some were linked to Sagun’s body and thus his celestial capabilities, while others were linked to Edeena. He’d had an absolute ball making up the most weird and wonderful powersets to give to people, and he seriously looked forward to seeing what the mortals did with them.

“Holy shit, I think this is really going to work,” Edeena agreed. “So what do we do now?”

“Well, we want to set up alternates,” Sagun said. “So we each go into a different world and set ourselves up in it. Once we’re sure we’re set up the way we want, we blood-link each other and compare what we’ve done. Then we can start giving out powers.”

“Cool.” Edeena’s eyes sparkled, then the corner of her mouth crept up mischievously. “Though I have to wonder, what is that fuzz on your face?”

“It’s a beard,” he replied with dignified affront. “If I’m going to be their most powerful hero, I need to look the part. A beard is mature. Manly.”

She snorted. “More like a dead ferret stapled to your face.”

“Hey! Don’t diss the beard!”

“Make it look more like an actual beard and I won’t.”

“Fine.” He rolled his eyes, but his facial hair reshaped itself. “Better?”

She put her hand over her mouth, but her eyes danced with mirth. “Now it’s a dead skunk.”

He glowered at her, then tried again. “Okay, how’s this?”

Opening her mouth, she paused. “Yeah … that’s actually much better.”

“Good.” He thrust out his chin and deepened his voice. “Rejoice … for Sagun has arrived among you.”

Half-turning her head, she gave him side-eye. “You’re just going to use your real name? Whatever happened to a mask and a secret identity?”

He gestured; the costume vanished and his skin turned gold. “Who needs it? We’re gods now.”

“Whoa, hey!” she shielded her eyes. “I did not need to see your junk!”

“Sorry.” Pants were quickly added to his ensemble. “Anyway, let’s whale up and go pick a world each.”

She shook her head pityingly. “‘Whale up.’ Sometimes I worry about you.” But she reabsorbed her avatar into the mass of her main body. Seconds later, he did the same. Flukes pushing strongly against nothingness, they swam forward and dived into the mortal realm, each to their own world.

<><>

Three Days After the Impact

Contessa

The crater was vast, filled by a huge twitching mass of flesh. One small part of it, quite near the edge, was twitching more than normal. The twitching gave way to a minor upheaval, and then the sharp tip of a claw poked through and sliced across. Hands reached out of the gap and sawed through the surface layer to make the opening larger. Nearly a minute later, Fortuna dragged herself into the open air. Or rather, some of her.

She was a mess. The toughest and strongest of her brethren, even with all of her self-shifting at her disposal, she had barely survived the impact. In fact, her body was simply gone from the waist down; an injury that would’ve killed any mortal. Determined not to lose by dying, she accepted the loss of her lower half, sealed the wounds shut, and kept going. All the while, swearing up a storm at how badly she would destroy whatever had the audacity to ambush her team.

If her shifting had been more versatile, she would’ve been able to touch-shift the ground to become part of her body and thus become whole once more. But the only way for her to gain more mass was to eat it and the tremendous weight of flesh above her was too tough to bite into. So she had to crawl out, inch by agonizing inch.

As soon as she was out from under the crushing mass, she swiftly reshaped her body to that of a child of that weight. Nine or ten years old, she gauged. Not that it mattered. Shifting her metabolism to that of a hummingbird meant in short order, she’d be back to her full height. She was about to do that, when she noticed the slug’s body was attempting to salvage something of itself. In the distance, she saw an avatar of sorts that it could pour all of its celestial energy into, just as she had done, before the final flicker of death took their light. “Oh, fuck no!” she snarled, extruding a claw from her hand once more. This thing was not going to live. No fucking way.

Clambering across the misshapen flesh forest, she found its mind may be ash, but self-preservation of the body was still there and even now, it was forcing a superior shape-shift against her in self-defence. Her own body seized in fits and starts as it instinctively knew enough to keep her away from the vital seat of its consciousness. Not that it was going to stop her. Her team was dead and she’d be sent into the sin-bin for centuries for their loss. But she’d see this thing disappeared first.

She was so intent on her new mission, that she failed to hear someone coming up behind her until she heard a woman’s voice in the language of the local worlds. She’d never bothered learning it, but now she turned her head until she saw the speaker—a dark-skinned woman—and went into the woman’s memories to see what she’d wanted her to hear. “Do you need help?” the replay asked, after she’d spent a few hours of learning her language.

A sly, cruel smile worked its way across Fortuna’s face. The timing of the woman’s arrival was nothing short of brilliant, since the shape-shifting shithead couldn’t tag both of them at once. On top of that, the woman hadn’t noticed her hand had a huge claw sticking out of it. Once again, Fortuna fist pumped her innate ability that always found a way to look out for her … most of the time.

Fortuna returned to the physical realm and immediately reshaped her hand, subtly redistributing mass so that she held a short-bladed knife. Feigning ignorance of her language in the beginning, Fortuna used a combination of gestures and incoherent grunts to convince the woman to assist her.

With both hands on the knife, the blade plunged home, right where Fortuna’s innate luck told her to strike. Without a mind to rebuild from, leaving the blade embedded in the avatar prevented the abomination from interfering with things, but didn’t quite kill her. Given how determined she’d been to end it, she cocked her head to one side thoughtfully. Her innate ability had only incapacitated it? Why? Dead was the objective. Not incapacitated. Unless keeping it alive served a future purpose.

Fortuna hadn’t lived this long by not trusting her innate ability. So for now, it would live. For now. Looking once again at her ‘saviour’, Fortuna dove back into the woman’s mind, wanting to know where she came from. That was when she noticed that the female had stumbled through a portal from another one of the worlds. Through the eyes of a celest, Fortuna wanted to facepalm. The mortal world had sensed the imminent death of multiple celestials and opened portals to try and save them. Not where they would be useful … like right in front of where they were all falling ...!

Despite being deep inside the woman’s mind, Fortuna closed her eyes and breathed out a frustrated sigh. She could see the intent of the woman, even though nothing had been said yet about what would happen now. The woman saw her as a young child. The child she portrayed. And she wanted her to come back with her, feeling this would forever haunt her or some nonsense.

She thought about her options. If she contacted Davin, she’d be sent to the sin-bin. Her innate luck had made the death strike against the celest an incapacitating one. And now this woman wanted her to go to her home world. The sin-bin was always going to be in her future. Failure wasn’t tolerated, and this whole mission was now a categorical failure. But her innate ability was nudging her in a different direction. As always, when the odds were stacked in favour of her innate ability, she followed her instincts.

Returning again to the physical realm, Fortuna gave the woman what she hoped was an innocent smile as she held her hand out. The realms only knew how long it’d been since she was a fucking kid.

<><>

One Day Later

The heavy pulse of an incoming blood-link against the inside of her brain drew Fortuna out of her deep sleep. She had no idea who was trying to contact her, but if it was Davin, she needed to answer now. Sitting up in bed, she cast a stimulation wave and recreated her armour complete with helmet before accepting the call. “Yes?”

The image that formed before her was as welcome as it was unexpected. Dorian! Sturdy, dependable Dorian! The brother and trusted second in command that she never thought she’d ever lay eyes on again, stood with the landscape of the flesh garden behind him. In view of the link, with Dorian’s hand on his shoulder, was Clare. “Fortuna!” Dorian burst out. “You’re alive! You’re …” He blinked, his eyes dropping the length of her tiny body and back again. “… a kid?”

“Don’t fucking remind me,” grumbled Fortuna. The woman, whom she’d nicknamed ‘Mother’ because Fortuna had no memories of her real mother, had insisted on caring for her, not simply casting her off once they got back to her world. If she was to re-age herself to adulthood, she’d have to get rid of the woman, and she had no desire to throw away a useful mortal tool just yet. Besides, on sifting through the memories of the celestial she’d killed, she had acquired one important fact.

There was another one. Here. On the world that ‘Mother’ called home.

‘Mother’ was out at the moment, so Fortuna grasped Dorian’s hand with her left and flicked the fingertips of her right hand at Clare. Without a word, Clare took her hand and in a single step, went from the crash site to standing alongside his sister and field commander. Dorian quickly followed suit. Both stared at the unexpected palatial surroundings.

“Okay, I’m impressed,” Dorian said. “Where are we?”

“‘Earth’ number four,” Clare answered, his psychic abilities already filling him in.

“Okay,” Dorian accepted the fact easily. “And how in the realms did you end up here?”

“Long story,” Fortuna said. “Mortal allies can be useful, especially as fronts in a new world. How did you two survive?”

“We nearly didn’t,” Dorian said. “Took us this long to wake up and crawl out.”

“Were there any other survivors?” Both Dorian and Clare shook their heads. “Fuck.”

Breathing heavily, Clare dragged his lips between his teeth so hard he broke the skin. “So, do we go home and face the music?” It seemed her brothers had worked out their future as quickly as she had, and none of them were looking forward to it.

Fortuna shook her head. “Not yet. We’ve still got a job to do.”

“What job?” asked Clare. “There’s no way we can mount a serious attack on the Prydelands and hope to beat it with only three of us.”

“I didn’t say it was for the Cause.” Fortuna put a snap into her voice. “This is revenge. Our brothers and sisters lie dead under that thing and it’s got a partner. Here. The arrogant little fucker is on this planet … OUR planet, and he’s arranging matters to his satisfaction like he owns the place! Well, no, on all fronts. It’s ours! His partner fucked us up, so now we’re going to fuck him so hard up the ass he’ll never fucking land.”

“And how are we going to do that?” asked Dorian, leaning forward slightly. The light of battle in his eye made it clear he really wanted to know. Revenge after all, was at the core of the Cause.

Fortuna smiled. “Well, you see, he wants to make a world of superheroes.” To save time, she pushed them both into Clare’s mind and started a slide-show to explain what she’d learned in the last twenty-four hours. It was as inexplicable to them as it had been to her, but it was a handle on the intruding celestial and thus they were on board with it.

“And how does this help us?” asked Clare, once she was done.

“The fucker has altered physics to make it easy to get super-powers,” Fortuna explained. “Back on the last world, there were people who’d mutated into monsters, probably from inhaling tiny particles of the celest that crashed. If we cut the bitch up and feed her to people, people we choose …”

Dorian got it first. “They get powers and we get to stick it to the motherfucker,” he exclaimed. “Desecrating his bitch and feeding her piece by piece to the dumb-ass fucking mortals here.” He shook his head in amazement. “Fuck me, that’s brutal. I fuckin’ love it.”

Clare grinned wide, the flames in his eye-sockets flaring brightly. “Fuck, yeah. Count me in.”

“Wait,” Dorian said. “How do we explain me and Clare to your mortal minions?”

Fortuna shrugged. The answer was delightfully easy. “I’ll just say you’re the first two I tried it on.”

“Fuck yes,” Clare said. “Let’s do this thing.”

Fortuna reached around her neck and undid a thin chain from under her armour. Her brothers did likewise. Each of them produced a gold ring that hung on the chain over their hearts. “This’ll probably cost us another few decades in the sin-bin,” Clare warned, eyeing the simple piece of gold that would completely cut them off from everyone back home and each other.

“Fuck it,” both Dorian and Fortuna replied simultaneously, and then all three slipped the seclusion ring on to their finger.

<><>

Eighteen Months Later

Sagun sighed in satisfaction. He’d adjusted the world to suit his needs. It was primed for the emergence of super-powers. All he needed now was to check in with Edeena and they could go with Operation Super-Powers. Flourishing his hand to create a blood-link, he proclaimed, “Edeena!”

There was no answer.

“Edeena!” he repeated, gesturing to open a blood-link. Again, silence.

“Edeena!” A third time, nothing happened.

He realm-stepped then, into the celestial realm and then into the next world over. Again, he tried to blood-link to her. It should work anywhere, but maybe things worked differently here.

There was still no answer.

From world to world he stepped, calling out for her ever more desperately. When he came to the end of the chain, he started back again. This time, he searched each world carefully, randomly interrogating the natives to see if they’d heard of a brilliant silver lady with magnificent powers.

None of them had.

His search was fruitless; at one point, he flew over a carefully camouflaged dome set in the desert without even noticing it. He pushed himself ever more harshly, searching every world for a third time, then scouring the boundaries of the realm in case she was somewhere out in space.

She wasn’t.

In fact, Edeena was nowhere to be found.

On the world he designated Earth Bet, he came to a hover over the Atlantic Ocean. Sadness radiated from him, because never would he cease grieving for his lost sister, the only person he considered kin. With nothing else to do, he carried out his part of the plan to award powers to people in honour of her memory, though his heart wasn’t in it anymore. He was numb with grief.

It wasn’t until much, much later that he learned some of the powers were connecting from the dulled crystals that Edeena had put into place.

<><>

Present Day

Fortuna

“So what are we going to do about the Mystallian cow?” asked Dorian. “Do we kill her?”

“Yes! Oh, yes. We sooo could,” Clare insisted, rubbing his hands together in delight.

Fortuna shook her head. She was over the coughing fit by now. “No. Even the fucking Triumvirate wouldn’t be able to get the better of her if she saw them coming.”

“I’m not talking about the pawns! We could do it! Three on one! Dogpile the bitch!” When Fortuna shook her head, Clare’s brow arched upwards and his shoulders slumped. “Whhhhyyyy?” he whined.

Dorian slapped him in the back of the head, hard enough to force Clare forward two steps and almost drive him to his knees. It saved Fortuna the trouble.

“Right now, it’s only one. If the others know she’s here, they’re going to expect regular reports, and if they don’t get them, they’re going to come looking to find out why. I’m not giving up on Scion that easily. We’re finally starting to get everything to the point where we can start turning his creations against him, and I’m not going to blow it and the Cause just because you want to murder one of the Mystallian kids and bring the wrath of everything down around our ears.” Her smile grew dangerous. “No, I think we can use this situation to our benefit.”

“How?” Dorian asked. He wasn’t asking in doubt of her, but clarification.

“Because how delicious would it be if the Mystallian cow got pointed at Scion, and we got to watch that shit go down in living colour?”

Dorian tapped his lips. “Both our enemies fighting each other for our enjoyment? I can think of worse things to do on a Sunday afternoon.”

“We’re still going to have to plan this carefully,” Fortuna said, drumming her fingers against her hip. “Scion is aware of us, but so long as we’re wearing our seclusion rings, he hasn’t been able to find us. But if he gets a chance to talk to the brat, they could both turn on us. We need to keep them apart until we’ve got them stirred up to the point that neither one has any interest in talking.”

“Scion’s built himself a decent powerbase here,” Dorian reminded her. “There’s every chance he could beat her.”

“In which case, he’s gonna wish he was dead by the time the Mystallians were finished with him. He’s a hybrid, and if he manages to kill one of them, they’re gonna make what’s gonna happen to us look like amateur hour.”

Clare stiffened and cocked his head. “Alexandria wants a doorway to Cauldron.”

Fortuna nodded, dropping her weight into her chair and lifting her tablet back into her lap as if she’d been reading it all along. Clare dowsed the fire in his eyes and allowed his shoulders to slump. His head rocked to one side and a thin train of drool formed at the corner of his lips. After all this time, he’d perfected the act. Dorian waited for Clare’s mask to be finalised before he created the doorway that brought Alexandria to them.

“Have you heard about the new cape?” she demanded, only to stop when she realised all three of them were in Fortuna’s private office and coffee had been spilled everywhere. “Is everything alright?”

Clare giggled as if Alexandria had said a funny joke and Dorian took him by the elbow, guiding him out of the room. Contessa looked up at the powerful cape and smiled. “Everything is just fine.”

<><>

Taylor

It had only taken Janesha three hours from start to finish. As she reshaped the last ship into a solid steel block, the water under her feet began to part. The seabed was revealed, along with all the trash that had been dropped there over the decades and quite a few bits of debris from the ships themselves.

“Well?” she called out. “What are you waiting for? You can’t expect me to do all the work myself, can you?”

With a roar of laughter, the Dockworkers surged forward off the stands. The superheroes were only a little slower off the mark, heading down into the now-exposed harbour floor to wrestle the larger items out of the mud. Taylor went to join them, but Danny put his hand on her arm.

“Not today,” he advised her quietly. “We don’t want to show what we can do just yet.”

“Why not?” she asked. “I’m as strong as anyone here and you know it.”

“Knowing it is different from needing to use it.” He folded his arms. “The time will come.”

Taylor snorted and folded her arms as well. “Not quickly enough.”

“One day at a time, kiddo. One day at a time.” 

 Part 11