One at a time, they swarmed us like bugs, they seem to forget that I was also once a hero, although I’d worn a mask back then so I guess Sal should’ve hidden his fucking identity better. The idiot…

“Lethal Inferno!” screeched a frothing teenage girl at the top of her lungs. “Holy fuck guys, Lethal Inferno showed up at the lodge I’m at!” shouted another guy into his phone.

We heard similar paparazzi activity as they snapped us with flash photography and fans yelped.

The worst part? Sal was eating this shit up like a bowl of cornflakes.

“Yes! Thank you! One at a time please!” he said joyfully, taking and signing various clothing items, winter equipment, he even kissed a baby.

After around a solid ten minutes, the people grew bored and realized they still had a life outside of the bygone superstar’s presence and began to split up. After Sal was finished making a scene and signing all of their belongings, he found Selene and I sitting on a chair in the corner of the room beside the fireplace. I gave him a look and he rolled his saggy eyes. “What?! I enjoy the publicity!”

“You are an enigma now. I know you look unrecognizably stoned at all times, but these people obviously still fantasize about marrying you, so you need a fucking makeover when we get back to Avernus.” I replied, giving him a hard stare.

“Since when did I ‘get stoned’? And also since when were you such an adamant dickhole instead of that shy boy I knew? You could be a little nicer about me coming back to make it up.”

“It’s been almost three years now, don't you think people change?” I replied in anger, tilting my head.

“Oh, so you admit to it-”

“Peace be upon you. The Patriarch awaits your presence now.” a hooded man interrupted, tapping Sal on the shoulder. He was noticeably different from the rest of the people in the room, wearing a sleeveless red robe with tattoos and bracelets running up his skin. His lower face was concealed by a bandanna of wrapped black bandages, only showing his eyes.

“Sorry to keep him waiting, sir, show us the way please.” I apologize timidly, doing a fist to palm gesture in respect. I knew the ways of the Arcana already, as they were quite close allies to us, living in the general vicinity.

We all move with him, walking into an unused room after heading through a passageway. The room was rather musty and had a bunch of cardboard boxes, with the only piece of furniture actually in the room being a bookshelf and an old painting.

The monk takes a dark black matte book and opens it. The cover was so black that it felt as if he’d taken a piece of the night sky and was holding it in his hands. He whispered some kind of magic incantation which was filled with mystery and wonder, words and sounds that were so strange and inhuman. Sal looked impressed, although this was simply a party trick and this world had no complex isekai magic system. At least that I knew of.

The power of the Patriarch though, was something to be feared. If he wanted you to fear it, of course. To his followers he was a saint, a leader, someone who was kind and would help the downtrodden. He was of two sides, light and dark. He had a bit of a cultish following, and in all honesty, the only reason he was considered a villain is because his religion is a bit… demanding, to say the least.

The incantation ended, and a door opened from behind the bookshelf. Good lord I’ve seen this stuff a billion times. But darn is it effective to the unaware.

Stairs were revealed to us, and we descended them down into a completely different room, a darker one that smelled like ash and mothballs. Something was burning, smoke and incense filled the air as we walked through a tunnel, the walls lined with generic grey brick.

As we reached the end of the unnecessary hallway, and went through a door, we were met with the Grand Sanctum. In the center of the not-so-glorious or well lit cavernous chamber was a mirror. As we stepped down stairs between stone slab pews encircling the room, I looked up at the mirror, the glass rippling like touched water.

Several similarly dressed monks to our escort were either praying on the benches or waiting for us before the gloriously crafted mirror.

“Welcome Marionette, Lethal Inferno, and Invisible Cross.” one monk said, bowing to us. I replied in bow, along with my sister, but Sal stood starstruck.

“You never told me you were the Invisible Cross…” he muttered into Selene’s ear.

“Long story.” she replied in a whisper. Sal then let down a grand bow overdramatically. Showoff…

“The Patriarch awaits, enter his world, see what he sees.” they recited, parting to let us into the mirror.

We went up the steps and peered into the mirror for a moment. Selene dove in first, the glass warbling and distorting before returning to normal. Sal, who was ahead of me, paused for a moment.

“What’s in there?” he asked the monks.

“Enlightenment. And your meeting. Hurry up, we have a schedule.” they replied impatiently but still rather calmly. Sal shuddered and gulped, just taking the leap of faith into the mirror. I rolled my eyes and followed him inside, peering at my reflection as I went in. I was so fucking cute.

The mirror simply served as a doorway to what the Patriarch called home. He almost never stepped foot in the physical realm, and on the off chance he did, it was only in times of grave danger.

A vast white plain of nothingness extended before us, no sky, no ground, nothing. Nothing but a massive iron body made of nothing but perfect bronze spheres. It had arms, legs, a torso, and a head, the spheres connected in harmony, shifting only slightly as he meditated, hovering above the ground.

He was twice as large as us and probably ten times as strong due to his metal form. As we approached, the whiteness changed, butterflies and trees began to spring from the nothingness, and the sky began to pop up little splashes with each step we made as if the whiteness suddenly was hit by little squirts of water.

The Patriarch opened his form, and the world suddenly flared to life, flora and fauna appeared from all places, the pink sky with clouds that looked painted opened above us. The bronze man stretched, like he had bones and muscles to realign. “What a grand figure…” I thought, feeling in harmony with the world around.

“Welcome, children of the outside world.” the Patriarch said, his voice metallic but also perfectly clear.

“I’m twenty five, actually.” Sal stated disrespectfully. He was cartoonishly bad at life. I felt a little bad for him to be honest. Although, I did think he had a deep respect for authority... Odd.

“Hello Patriarch.” I said, ignoring Sal. “I suppose you were the one who called us, so, may we… hear your pleas?” I said nervously. Public speaking made me nervous, but my sister was more so and Sal was obviously not a good candidate for that task, so I guess I was the de facto speaker here then… Oh well.

“Indeed, let us converse.” he spoke, calm and collected. “There is word that there has been an assassin out to take my life. Whoever it may be, they seem to know full well about the Arcana.”

Oh… gosh, that’s horrible.” I gasped lighty. “How may we assist?”

“We need protection. This assassin isn’t a normal superhuman, they are a hero. Part of a group we all know too well.”

“The Ultrahuman Force, right?”

“Precisely.”

“An assassin in TUHF? I’d not heard of such a thing.” I asked, Sal looked over to me, raising his voice.

“Things have changed around there.” he began. “I only left a couple months ago, but they hired this new girl. Bluejay, and ever since she joined and climbed through the ranks, stuff got ugly. They hired new recruits quite rapidly, and then they hired someone that made me leave in disgust…”

“Do continue, Sal.” The Patriarch said, his face blank, non-existent, but his voice so full of emotion.

“That new hire. She was younger than you, Qui- Marionette, and she was… she was sent into battle. She was trained to become a killer. No publicity was to be made about her existence. But seeing that happen, I was forced to draw my resignation. That girl, Squizm, she’s the assassin. No doubt about it.” Sal sounded forlorn. And for once, I felt a bit sorry for what happened. I started to realize that maybe he was right about trying to get me out of TUHF.

“That is awful.” my sister said deeply, shaking her head.

“Odd name. What’s her power?” I replied curiously.

“She’s made of slime. She is able to squeeze through any gap. I saw her in the field once, she can dissect, reform, slice through stuff, stab with the slime, scary stuff. It wouldn’t be so terrible to have someone on their team like that, but she’s just a kid. I think she’s like fourteen now.” Sal explained, the thought of unpaid child labor disgusted all of us. Not only that, TUHF was supers only, if she had parents when her power awoke like I did, she would have been ripped away from them. No exceptions. They’d only see her on the TV, and from the sounds of it, she wasn’t someone they were flashing over the media, as I would have heard of it by now.

She was kept a secret from the public, she was a killer.

“This is certainly frightening news.” Patriarch said. “I must ask for your protection from her. I may be powerful, but only in here. If she were to find my material form, this one wo-” he just stopped, mid sentence.

“You’d what?” Sal spoke up.

A strange eerie silence befell all of us. The Patriarch was just there, still floating in meditative place.

“What… happened?” Selene shuddered, I felt a similar fear. With all that talk of Squizm’s power, perhaps she’d… no… that’d be… impossible, right?

“Check outside the mirror.” I said, running to the floating mirror hovering above the grass. Everything faded then, turning not to white, but to pitch black. We ran to the mirror as fast as our legs could carry us, leaping through to the other side.

And it was a massacre that awaited us.

Bodies of the monks, including the one who showed us in, littered the floor. But it was a massacre in progress. A man’s screaming corpse flew past us at mach speeds into the wall, exploding into tendons and gore at the sheer velocity.

Sure enough, more monks were about to die as they defended themselves as best they could, but it was a petty compared to what they were fighting.

She was a killing machine, and she was indeed as Sal described her.

She finished five men at once, ripping through them with ruthless efficiency.

Then she looked at us.

“The supervillains.” she said softly, and we instantly knew it.

We were fucked.