After a nice pizza picnic at the beach, the trio went back to school. Martin lost the girls when he went to use the bathroom. His way back to the classroom was partially barricaded by a chattery group of students. As he circled the group he noticed a tall, black haired girl standing there. As Martin glanced at her he realised that she looked awfully familiar and yet not. He tried to look past the false features, past the dark hair and dark eyes and found himself face to face with his worst fear - his sister.

"Ember?" He said.

"Ehm?" The girl turned, blinking. "My name is Allinna. You must be mistaken." A barely perceptible refraction of her squinted angrily at Martin. He could only see the angry, ghostly resonance of his sister because his skinwalker eyes were far sharper than those of a human. It was definitely Ember!

"Why are you here, Ember?" Martin asked sternly.

The girl turned back to the crowd, resuming her chatter, throwing in a few jokes about dumb boys who can’t tell people apart.

"Shut it, pipsqueak. I'm on a mission." A barely visible ghost of Ember appeared in front of Martin's face, turning him around towards the row of lockers. The refraction directed his hand as if he was the one opening a locker.

"What mission? What the shit?" Martin hissed back. "You're nineteen. You can't just pretend to be in 8th grade."

“I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my clueless brother and the rest of this town from villains. There seems to be a lot of bullshit going on here, far too much for my liking.”

“I don’t need your protection. Ow! Stop that!” Martin protested as the ghostly ripple pulled him into the locker.

The refraction of Ember became far more visible, flickering with a menacing glow made up from offset colors, a green and blue ghost in the darkness of the locker, holding Martin down by his wrists. “This is official hero business. Do you understand? Don’t be going around calling me Ember. It’ll be an inconvenience to organize another identity.”

Martin groaned. He expected to face an alien monster piloting a teacher in school or perhaps some stranger-type super looking into Alexa’s shenanigans, not his irritating sister. Just when things were looking up somebody had to inject herself into the picture and ruin everything.

“Why do you have to be in OUR class of all the places?” He whispered at her angrily, feeling that anyone looking his way will likely assume that he’s talking to himself in the depths of a locker, like some kind of a crazy person.

“Have to keep an eye out for my little, defenceless bro. There’s something very sketchy going on in this school and I’m getting to the bottom of it as the local SCA Agent. I’m actually impressed you recognized me. Guess all those times I interacted with you via my avatars is finally paying off.”

Martin said nothing about his brain spider giving him the necessary tips to recognize her. He chose to focus on Ember’s looks instead.

“You look weird. Not just the hair. You look like you're four years yonger! What did you do to yourself?”

“Had my friends from the Academy magnify, shift and add to my power to erase a few of years from my body. Painful, but I’ll live. I'll put it back on once the mission’s done.”

Martin stared at the glowing refraction of de-aged Ember. His sister was mental. There was no other description for it.

“You’re messing with people, mentally.” He accused her. “Why not transfer in like a normal student or even come in as a Hero officer? Why do you have to shove yourself in as a memory of someone who’s always been there?”

“What? This is perfectly standard procedure for a covert op. Superstate agents constantly inject themselves into human organizations. When you graduate from the Hero Academy you too will become a Superstate employee - a predictor or an agent. Our family leans towards mind control and information gathering pretty heavily, you know.”

Martin knew. He knew that now far too well now. Except all of his mind control power was now permanently focused on a single skinwalker spider residing in his head, thanks to Alexa. He would not be a prognosticator like his mom, or an agent like his dad and his sister.

“Anyways. I’m gonna head to class. Don’t blow my cover. I’m Allinna.” The avatar of Ember smirked at Martin, fading away.

“Was that aurora borealis, localized to a single locker?” Alexa’s voice resounded from behind Martin, making him twitch and bump his head against the metal shelf.

“Ow. Damn it.” Martin emerged out of the locker, turning back at her and rubbing his head. “No. It’s much worse than a locker-based weather phenomenon. It’s my sister.”

“Ah yes. She’s probably planning to murder me.” Alexa nodded, looking far too cheerful for such a dark conversational note.

“What?!”

“Don’t look so concerned. I’m a tough cookie. Also I got Cottie now. I ain’t scared of no wardens.”

“Wardens?”

“That’s the slang for SCA agents, yo. We’re all prisoners of the gods up from above, don’t you know? It ain’t about protecting people. It’s all about keeping the sheep in line with the doctrine of the all-seeing eye in the sky.”

Martin chose not to argue with all of the wrongness in her statement. “Look, just be careful around her, okay? I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“Big whoop. Getting hurt is part of the game, Mittens!” She stated. “Accept the pain as a lesson, in order to avoid it next time. Accept the fear head on and learn to defeat it. You won’t cook that perfect pancake number one thousand without getting a little burned in the process. I had to get skewered only about 3024 times before I made all of my lovely anti-skinwalker devices.”

“Give me the fucking raygun.” Martin growled.

“Eh?”

“If my sister is going to be a big headache, I’ll give her one too.”

“Allright, don’t break it. You can do the honours of taking down the gym teacher too, while I act as an adorable distraction. The loops trick won't work on a tank super who can see through people. You on the other hand might get a lucky shot in, if he’s not looking in your direction.” Alexa unclipped the hairdryer raygun from her belt and chucked it at Martin. He caught it, nearly fumbling and dropping it.

“Um. Does this thing run out of charge or something? I’m planning to use it quite a bit.” He said.

“Nah, be my guest. There’s a uranium battery on it. That’s about two thousand years worth of zappery.”

“Good.” Martin nodded, heading towards the classroom.

“Steady my hand. We’re hunting Embers.” Martin thought to his little brain spider.

“You got it, boss.”

. . .

Ember slumped her head into the desk that was a bit too small for her, rubbing her temples. She had a headache that would not go away. She wasn’t sure if this was because she couldn't think of the most effective way to crush the little villain or because she failed to protect her dumbass brother from her vile influence. She was usually very good at destroying things. Breaking people with her power was easy. If it wasn’t for that damn Equalizer and her nullification gun she would already be done with this job.

Ember didn’t understand why her reports about Equalizer interference were swallowed up without any sort of response to action. The Equalizer organization was clearly run by a monster who was training orphans to become living weapons. There was no question about it from looking at Verse 24:19’s emotionless face. It was an unacceptable, horrid thing to do to a child and it bothered Ember to no end that her superiors refused to do anything about it.

She even submitted the perfect plan to destroy their cult. She could do it all alone, fly her cruiser straight into the heart of the Equalizer compound at full speed, crash into the building and murder their leader. The Equalizers were just humans who were misled by a supervillain. There was literally no difference between Eminence Equality and any other supervillain who had human minions! With the leader dead their organization would undoubtedly fall apart in a few days. Ember yearned to do something with her entire heart, desired to punish, to end injustice and suffering. The Equalizers stood in her way and she would remove their poor, misguided pawn one way or another.

The chilling migraine let go and intensified once again. Maybe this endless headache was a side effect of the partial de-aging. Her face was itching like crazy too, like a million microscopic ants were crawling within it. The things she did to protect her family.

Just another 30 minutes. Just another thirty god damned minutes of this kindergarten. Arghhhhh!

Ember formed an avatar behind the classroom wall inside the janitor's closet, shoved the bucket and broom aside and proceeded to kick the wall again and again in agitation, leaving small dents in the bricks.

The young SCA agent had no doubts that the questionable behaviour of the retired super Mr. Canard was entirely because of Alexa Terranova. She only saw a few minutes of the video footage from the cameras at the bank, of the two kids getting inside the building before she scoured the hard drive data out of existence with an electromagnet that was built into her suit. The 14 year old criminal was clearly destroying Martin’s chances of being a hero with idiotic, petty crimes. She was the lowest of the low. What kind of a moron steals an ice cream van to get into a bank just to set it on fire, of all the things?

Ember glared at Alexa with passionate hatred. She didn’t believe Martin’s “villain’s letter” story one bit. Doctor Terranova had not been seen in public for many years now.

Hero Resonance wasn’t an idiot. She dug deep into the matter this morning through her academy friends and via whatever SCA databases she could access, trying to find anything of value. There was nothing at all to uncover, nothing on the doc who lived in the church. Someone had paid the bills, but it wasn’t a person, just an automatic system sending money to another automatic system.

Villains didn’t just up and disappear like a fart in the wind from the scanners of Titanomachy or from the reports of the Superstate prognosticators. If the prognosticators could see no future activity for him it meant only one thing - the doc was dead.

Everything had to be Alexa’s fault! Ember suspected that the little supervillain accidentally killed her father and covered it up by locking up the cathedral somehow. The bones of the doctor were likely inside, waiting to be found. Ember had stalked the premises, tried to use her power to break a window, to open up the doors, but it was like the building’s outside was impervious to her attack and the inside didn’t even exist to her super sense that normally allowed her avatars to get through anything. It was beyond irritating. Villain tech be damned!

Ember could take the headache no longer. She raised her hand and asked the teacher for a bathroom break, whatever her name was… Fickers? Ickers?

She rushed into the bathroom, scratching at her face and splashing water on it. The headache subsided. Ember deduced that it too, was likely caused by Alexa - either a power or some infernal gadget on her person. Why couldn't her brother see what kind of a fiend he was dealing with? All of Ember’s training and motivation to push her little brother into the path of a great hero was turning out for naught. There was only one conclusion to it, one explanation - the little idiot was in love with a bad girl.

A refraction of Ember swung its ghostly fists against the mirror and the mirror shattered, detonating into a thousand pieces, shards of glass raining all around the bathroom. Ember scowled at the myriads of her broken, twisted reflections raining around her. Another pale ghost came into being, smashing its head against the sink, the ceramic shattering from the impact. Other avatars kicked at cubicle walls, smashed toilets. Everything in the 5 meter radius became a zone where nothing of value remained intact as Ember let out her rage.

The agitated hero stepped away from the mirror, and the motions of her ghosts flickered in reverse, destruction all around rewinding the damage, cracks sealing themselves, shards flying back into place.

Her avatars didn’t feel much. Destroying things and putting them back together always brought her joy, but this time all of the joy had been hampered by her inability to destroy one God damned 14 year old girl.

Biology teacher Tamara Kells made no noise from her distant bathroom stall, blinking in confusion as the sole witness to the inexplicable bathroom ruination and restoration which she witnessed through the small gap in the stall’s wall. She swore to take it easier on drinking in the mornings.