“Catch Bagman Slam Jam every Wednesday night at eight thirty pm sharp! Follow Bagman as he Slams and Jams the villains of New York City directly into prison! This week the infamous Nightmare appears in New York! Can Bagman find a way past his entrapping threads? Find out this week on BAGMAN SLAM JAM!”

- Advert for the final episode of Bagman Slam Jam

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I looked up to an empty room. The sound of a slamming door had roused me, but the one leading out of this room was open. The sounds of running feet convinced me to actually sit up and look around. People were running, but I couldn’t see them in the hall. It kept going for a whole minute, with people shouting and screaming far away. There were shouts for calm, but they were futile. Ignored.

Books lay open on the desk beside where I had been sleeping. Other desks had open books as well. Some didn’t, those books were on the floor. The open book on the desk in front of me had a bent page sticking up.

Sleepiness reminded me that I hadn’t gotten enough rest. Plus, it was warm. My body was telling me I should put my head down and shut my eyes again. Then the sounds of the people got quieter and I heard the sound of sirens in the distance. Any sleepiness evaporated when I realised what that meant.

A Calamity.

I stood, leaving my book and going to the window that light streamed through. Dust had been kicked up somehow despite the fact that I was the only one in the room and was floating in the light, obscuring the view. I waved a hand through the light to try displace the dust and winced in pain, a pained sound escaping me in the same moment. The dust swirled around my hand. All I had done was make the particles move a bit, not clearing the space at all.

The pain wasn’t actually all that bad, it was just unexpected. So I stepped into it and looked out while I ignored the discomfort playing around on my skin. It was early in the day, so the sun was still kind of low in the sky, letting it shine its rays into the classroom. I covered my eyes from the sun and looked at the sky.

Just sky. I found where the sun was and made sure my fingers were covering it. Then, with one eye closed I folded my pinky. Still just sky. My ring finger. More sky. My index finger. I had to adjust so I wasn’t blinded by the sun, but I saw it.

There was a long serpentine shape approaching, I could see it on the underside of my finger. It twisted and writhed as it moved, like a serpent swimming through the sky. Above my finger I could see the silhouette of wings flapping, and trails of light following certain parts of the moving shape like a long exposure photograph.

It was slowly getting bigger. Soon it blotted out the sun and I lowered my arm, looking at the dark shape against the bright sky. It’s movement was nebulous and difficult to follow, but the direction it was moving was clear. The Eclipse was approaching.

The Calamity had left the Zenith, its spot between the earth and the sun. It’s portion of the atmosphere that it had claimed for itself, where it maintained territory in a bright spot that no clouds dared to intrude upon. The brightest part of the earth that the Eclipse, Quetzalcouatl, called home had been vacated so it could come here.

Eclipse’s wings dipped down as the head of the thing reared up. It was hard to see with the sun silhouetting it, but I knew the moment it opened its jaw. Distance dulled the sound, but it still carried all the way across the city. It was an announcement, an eerie, almost serene sound that everyone knew to dread.

Light curved, I was blinded, and the killing began.

“Dude.”

I punched in the direction of the sound, catching a glancing blow on the speaker before I could even comprehend who had spoken.

“Michael, what the hell!?” Nathan demanded, tenderly touching his cheek.

My arm was extended over his shoulder. “Sorry.” I pulled my limb back and sat on my hand as I tried to get my breathing under control. I wasn’t hyperventilating, but I was breathing quickly. The situation was becoming embarrassing so I diverted my attention up at a random corner of the building.

That had been vivid enough that I thought I was there, back in Salt Lake City when it all happened. The vision was a consequence of opening the box. Life would have been better if Fail hadn’t shown up. Things hadn’t got so bad right away, but now that I was idle there wasn’t much I could do to distract myself.

“Are you feeling well?” Sonya asked, concern etched into her eyebrows.

“Yeah.” I responded, clearly not convincing anyone. “I had a shit night.”

“You weren’t online.” Nathan said, causing me to look at him questioningly. “Last night, I mean. Would’ve invited you if you were.”

“The console is downstairs and the screen has surround sound.” I said, reminding Nathan of what he already knew. “I’d have woken the whole house.”

“How late were you up?” Sonya asked.

I didn’t answer, she was looking at Nathan.

He shrugged. “I dunno, what do you consider late? Because it was only an hour after that, I swear.”

I looked back at the corner. The silence told me that Sonya had turned her attention to me. Since the answer to her question was ‘I’m still up’, I didn’t want to say it. Better to let my studies of the corner distract me.

“Michael.” Sonya repeated. I met her eyes. “Is something wrong?”

“You know why I’m in Graceland, right?” I asked.

Nathan sucked in a breath and Sonya looked confused. I looked back to the corner. There was the shadow of a tree moving gently over the surface. Pinpricks of light made it through the canopy, lighting up parts of the building.

I found another corner to look at.

I was dimly aware of Nathan giving Sonya a very abridged explanation as I tried to find ways to distract myself.

“Any news of the vigilante?” I asked when Nathan was done, forcing a subject change.

“Yeah, uh… no. Not since Clothesline.” Sonya said, pulling out her Vphone.

“Hm.” Considering the letters I sent, I would have expected something to have come up by now.

“Actually, wait.” Sonya rapidly navigated menus on her screen. “There’s a new name in the deceased list for Graceland.”

“I’ll put this plainly, and pardon my french.” Nathan said. “The fuck?”

“Mist. He’s one of the Collectors.” Sonya explained.

“Go back a bit. There’s a deceased list?”

“Well yeah, there’s five lists.” Sonya put her phone down and counted them off on her fingers. “Deceased, MIA, active hero, active villain, and the master list. There are a few gifted that come up multiple times on the master, since not everyone tells what’s going on when they rebrand.”

“How big is the missing list?” I asked out of curiosity.

“Short.” Sonya said. “Globally, I think a total of twenty names are consistently on there, but the number goes up and down. The big one is Hope, of course. Most of the rest are the ones that got chulainned and survived. Anyway, Mist is- or was a Collector. That’s the biggest name under the Entrepreneurs, most of them have been on the MIA list, actually. They spend a lot of time laying low between jobs. A lot of gifted actually go missing during Calamity atta-”

“I’ve barely heard of them.” Nathan cut Sonya off.

She took a moment to comprehend what Nathan had done, then the conversation kept flowing. “That’s because they don’t act very often. They do surgical strikes at the whim of their employers. That’s bank heists, assaults of enemy territory, fear mongering once or twice, and the occasional kidnapping hashtag-slash recruitment. They don’t act much, but they act big.”

“You think there’s going to be a big reaction to the vigilante?” I asked.

“Maybe, maybe not.” Sonya said. “There’s been speculation over Clothesline’s death, but no hard evidence has been released to the public. Mostly it’s been internet detectives making wild accusations at the Gray Apostles because of their connection to Orcus.”

A restraining order. I remembered. That was way off mark, though. I wondered if my letters had made it in time.

“I haven’t seen any news from the Regulation, though.” Sonya said, her Vphone back in her hand. “Just an update from GiftedList.com because I live in Graceland.”

“Gifted list, you said?” I pulled one of my Vphones out. The one that went with my civilian identity.

“Yeah. One word.”

I pulled up the web explorer app and navigated to the active Graceland page, then scrolled down to the list of Sentrys. My moniker was there, so I followed the link, a little worried about what I would find. It was just a picture taken from my debut, one of me on stage, staff in hand and standing against a grey background. There was a line of text detailing the date I had officially ‘gone active’ as well as my position on the team.

“You like Lock, huh?” Sonya asked, peering at my screen.

I looked at her, trying to think up a reasonable answer to that. “You could say that.” I swiped sideways and found myself on Slingshot’s page. Similar deal, an informative line of text detailing when she went active and a picture from the debut. Another swipe took me to Satellite. “How often does the Sentry get new heroes?”

“Fucking fast.” Nathan said, looking at his own phone. “They’ve taken on four new people recently. Muffle and Satellite, and more recently the boyfriend-girlfriend pair. They lose people just as fast as well.”

“How?” I asked, belated realising what he said about Slingshot and Lock.

“You know that topic we’re avoiding?” Nathan asked pointedly. I nodded, suddenly no longer embarrassed. “That’s one of them.”

“Talent poaching is a thing as well.” Sonya jumped in. “But it’s common courtesy to not poach within the bounds of the city. The Regulation makes the Sentry do the rounds to neighboring cities under the guise of PR visits, but really it’s so the teams there can get to know the Sentrys and invite them to the fold. You get a lot of underage heroes moving around because of it.”

“All the underage heroes in Graceland are with the Sentry.” I said, earning an approving look from Sonya. “Are we not poaching then?”

“Kind of…” Sonya trailed off. “I’d need to breach that topic to explain properly.”

Nathan cut in. “Don’t, then.”

“Is that fine?” Sonya asked me.

I didn’t know how to answer that one. Fortunately, I didn’t have to when I was saved by the bell. “What do I have next Nathan?”

“What do I look like, your butler?” Nathan rebuked indignantly. I waited, then, “You have calculus now. Good luck not hitting the desk with your head.” It was a weird habit of his to remember other people’s timetables. Weird, but useful.

“I’m heading in the other direction.” Sonya said as she hefted her bag over one shoulder. “See you boys.”

“Thanks.” I said. “Nathan, I mean. Bye. Not you. Fuck.”

“You should go home if it’s that bad.” Sonya told me.

“I’ll make it.” I told myself, waving at Sonya as she walked away. Nathan and I fell in step. After a moment I blurted, “I want to ask something.”

“About Sonya?” Nathan asked. I frowned at him. “Was just hazarding a guess, man.”

“The two from earlier.” I said, pausing so he could figure it out. “After english.” I specified.

“Michael…”

“Do you know their names?”

“You-” Nathan paused. “Why are you asking?”

“Idle curiosity.” I half-lied. My curiosity was not idle. The only reason I hadn’t asked sooner was because Sonya had shown up and I wanted to do Nathan the service of not bringing it up in front of other people.

“So you don’t intend to make a huge deal about it?” Nathan checked.

“When have I ever done that?” I asked. Discounting the time I worked with a villain and told my superiors about it, the time after I had to choke Prism out, or that time when I was mindraped into beating the crap out of Zephyr, that is.

“Uh…” Nathan scratched the back of his head. “Alright then, his name is Nick. I don’t know the other guy’s name.”

That made me frown. I was expecting something… I don’t know, something more menacing at least. “What did they want?”

“They were cordially extending an invitation for me to go to the hound races later this week. I don’t intend to go.”

“He seemed pretty insistent.” I commented.

“Yeah, well fuck ‘em.” Nathan shrugged. “They don’t control me and they aren’t going to get anything from me by going physical. I’ll bet he isn’t even that good in a fight.”

I grimaced, recalling how he had landed me in hospital. “If you’re sure…”

“I am. That’s your phone, by the way.”

A ringtone had been repeating for the past few seconds. Getting five or so seconds in before suddenly repeating from the start. It was difficult to distinguish new sounds in loud environments and I was… distracted in more ways than one.

I pulled it out and saw five messages from an unknown number. “Probably spam.” I muttered.

“Have fun…” Nathan trailed off as he split away to go towards his class. “If you can…”

Normally, I would have laughed, but I was looking at the messages.

I forgot to ask - Received 11.26

What’s your number? - Received 11.26

But I’m messaging you now so uh - Received 11.26

Please don’t be mad - Received 11.26

I made a number finder - Received 11.27

As I was reading another message came through.

Can we talk? - Received 11.27

I started typing out a response.

Like now - Received 11.27

Who is this? - Sent 11.27

Please - Received 11.27

Its L - Received 11.27

Why now? - Sent 11.27

I’m on break and think I need to - Received 11.28

I’m at school now, why? - Sent 11.28

Which school? - Received 11.28

Merryfair - Sent 11.28

I waited for a minute, but there weren’t any more replies. So I pocketed my phone and looked up to find that students were already heading into class for calculus. It was easy to fall in step with them and get into class without being late. I found a desk at the back of the room and leaned my head against the wall, wondering what Elsbeth wanted to talk about.

The teacher, a thin indian man with a pot belly, didn’t seem to care all that much about the back half of the room. All the students that actually cared about learning were up the front and the ones that preferred to talk and muck about on their phones went to the back. The front would do their thing, and the back would do theirs, never overlapping. The only rule was that if you were at the back, you stayed quiet.

It wasn’t a written rule, but it was agreed to by all.

Normally I would sit at the front and pay some attention to keep up with the demands of my Regulation overlords, but not today. Right now it took all my effort just to keep my eyes open. Leaning against the wall let me focus on the physics of the room without actually having to look through or close my eyes.

I spent the time trying to figure out how to listen through my power. The problem was that it was hard to tell whether what I was hearing came through my ears or my sixth sense. The back of the room was quiet, but there were still a number of overlapping sounds to sort through. Different places in the structure picked up noises at different times.

It was a fucking incomprehencible mess, in other words.

Still, it would be a good skill to have, if I could develop it. A small part of my brain pointed out that I hadn’t practiced much sign language since that first session with Muffle. There just hadn’t been the time. I would need to do something about that outside of being a Sentry to develop that skill, most likely. My thoughts came to a halt when I felt the physics of the classroom spontaneously warp. A spot about the size of a head vanished from my senses in the ceiling.

I looked up and saw a familiar helmet. Lucidity’s. I frowned and gestured outside with my head. She gave a thumbs up from the roof and retreated back inside the ceiling. With my bag with my hand and holding it on the side of me opposite to the teacher, I stood and walked out.

“Going to the toilet.” I muttered, earning a nod from the teacher.

If he noticed that I was sitting at the back today, or that I had my bag in my hand, he didn’t say anything. So I made it out unmolested and looked to see a masked girl just outside the class. I pointed away from the class and started walking, letting Lucidity catch up if she wanted to.

“Take your mask off.” I told her. “People will ask questions if I’m seen with a hero.”

There was a hissing sound. I glanced over to see Elsbeth wearing the cargo pants of her costume, but a short sleeved light blue tee shirt instead of the tactical jacket and bandoliers. My gaze lingered on her scars again, and her eyes. Just the one blind eye, actually.

“Sorry about this, Michael.” She said.

“Do you have a good reason?” I asked, aiming the direction we were walking to the exit of the school. “If you do, then it’s fine.”

“Yes. No. Maybe, it’s about the question. I dunno.”

“Seems reasonable to me.” I shrugged. “I’m not going to ask for you to say anything you don’t want to, given how well that’s turned out for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t sleep.” I said.

Neither of us said anything for a few moments.

“Thanks.” Elsbeth said.

“Welcome.” I said, looking at the exit from Merryfair grounds as it came into view. There was a teacher standing just outside the gate. I needed an excuse, but couldn’t think one up. The teacher wasn’t one I recognised, so that might play in my favour.

Elsbeth and I didn’t slow our pace, because pausing would have been suspicious and I’m pretty sure Elsbeth wasn’t thinking about that. We stepped out of the school grounds and I gave up trying to think up a decent lie.

“Wait.” The teacher said. I didn’t. “Wait.” The teacher said again, getting in our way. “Why are you two leaving?”

I looked at Elsbeth and she looked back at me. Then I looked back to the teacher and said, “Family crisis. We really need to go.”

“You two don’t look like siblings…”

I pointed at Elsbeth. “She’s not from my parents. Needed somewhere to go after Quetzalcoatl.”

He frowned as he turned that over in his head. Elsbeth’s obvious scarring helped sell the story. Eventually he said, “You can go, but you need a slip to leave during school.” The teacher pointed at a building. “Pick one up from the student centre before you go.”

Neither of us moved. I had an idea and asked, “Do you recognise me?”

“No, why?”

I ran.

“Stop!” The teacher made a grab for me but I was already too far away. He wasn’t fat, but he also wasn’t that athletic. It didn’t help him that I was tampering with the friction in my shoes to get a little bit of a speed boost. I glanced over my shoulder to find Elsbeth dodging around the man and following me.

I rounded a corner and used my power to speed along to the next while there weren’t any eyes on me. When I looked back I saw Elsbeth round the corner, see me, then dive into the pavement the moment she was out of sight of the teacher.

Seconds later she erupted from the ground in front of me and darted around the corner. I did the same, not wanting to be at the corner to let the teacher know which way we were heading next.

“You just ran!” Elsbeth was laughing. I let her infectious joy influence my mood, and smiled to myself. “Did you see his face? He was like ‘what are you on about?’ then ‘oh crap’. Pfft!”

“I’ll probably end up with detention.” I shrugged. “But that was worth it. Come on, let’s go somewhere.”

~~~

“We keep getting looks.” Elsbeth said.

“That’s because we’re two school aged kids and we’re outside of school, during school.” I replied. “Now what do you want to see? Story of Toys 4 or a Left at Home rerun?”

“Which Left at Home is it?”

“The second one, where he gets his plane tickets mixed up and goes to New York. I don’t know why they’re showing it, since it isn’t anywhere near christmas.”

“And what’s Story of Toys 4 about?”

“I don’t know, haven’t seen it.” My movie going had slipped since starting as a hero.

“Hmm…” Elsbeth thought for a while, looking at the available movies. “What’s ‘The Notebook’?”

I blinked. “Story about finding friends, I guess. A girl finds a techo notebook that makes her manifest and realise her life is the movie. I’d give it an eight.” I was surprised it was still showing. That was the movie I had seen the night Nick had mugged me.

I still couldn’t get over the fact that that guy’s name was Nick.

“Let’s watch that one.” Elsbeth decided.

“Okay, but we’re going to have to wait a bit. The next viewing isn’t for another hour or so.”

“Let’s get food.”

“Amen to that, but we should get the tickets first.”

~~~

We killed time by wandering nearby shops. Buying lunch was a quick endeavour, but eating it was less so. Since that left us with forty minutes still left to kill, we bought snacks from a dairy and I winced at the ridiculous markup. With twenty minutes still left to go, I found myself at a souvenir shop looking at the items for sale.

It was no surprise that the Regulation had their hands in commercialising their heroes. Each of the local Sentinels had figurines for sale, as well as each of the members of Aegis. The ones of Archangel, Kinetic, and Victorious were above the ones of Orcus, Sting, Voidling, and Zephyr, all in various poses. Above all of those figurines was one of Hope.

The notable Sentrys also had figurines, but they were off to the side and given less importance than the grown up heroes. I saw one of Blinker and Unshaken. They came as a pair. I hadn’t realised they were a thing. There were also Muffle Earmuffs, Snowflake Snowglobes, a collage of Collage, as well as a Lucidity themed diary and a little figurine of her that was meant to go on a keychain.

Elsbeth was embarrassed by her products, so I bought both. Her reaction put a nice feeling in the back of my stomach. I didn’t rub it in, but I basked in it. It was better than the wet and sticky feeling that had been nestling there before. That one kind of reminded me of blood.

“Wasn’t Muffle a recent addition?” I asked Elsbeth after making the purchase and returning to browse alongside her.

“Yeah, five months.” She said. “Why?”

“Just wondering how long it takes for them to make a Lock sticker or something.”

“Well I had a figurine after two months, but my guy said I was a special case.”

“The advertiseming guy?” I asked, eyebrow arched.

Elsbeth huffed. “Shut up, that was one time. I didn’t like the figure. It was embarrassing to have around. Collage gave me one to put in my bedroom, so I hid it in his. I don’t want me to look at me when I’m trying to sleep. Not that I really do that anymore…”

“Oh?” I prompted.

“I still sleep, but the time in my dreamspace counts, I think.” Elsbeth explained. “So when I’m done with an action packed day, it’s like I’m ready to go to lunch. Or that’s how it feels.”

“Seems convenient.”

“My guy says I should regulate as much as possible, or whatever. Try to keep to a normal timetable. But they also say I should put my all into being a hero.” Elsbeth gestured wildly. “I don’t even.”

“So why were you a special case?” I asked.

“‘Cause I’m a kid.” She answered with a resigned shrug. “I was nine when I joined up, and had a pretty good handle on my powers because I manifested years before that.”

“Can I ask when you manifested?”

“Five.”

I winced. The only benchmarks I had for manifesting was my own and my doppelganger’s. If her manifestation was anywhere between those, then her innocence had been lost far too soon. The topic was sensitive though, so I didn’t say anything.

I changed the subject. “So are you the longest staying Sentry in Graceland?”

“No, Blinker has me beat by a year and seven months.” Elsbeth said. “Unshaken joined two months before I did as well.”

“They’re about to graduate out, aren’t they?”

“They are. Then I’ll be the eldest Sentry!”

I laughed and pulled my Vphone out to check the time. “We should go. The theatre’ll be open by now.”

“Why do you care about Lock’s products?” Elsbeth asked as we left the souvenir shop.

I hummed, thinking of the videos I watched the night before. “Couldn’t say.” I lied.

There was a sharp ding. Elsbeth was holding an eight ball towards me that had the word ‘LIE’ showing.

“What’s with the eight ball?” I asked.

“Lie detector.” Elsbeth said.

“And you’re just bringing that out now? Why didn’t you use that when Michael was here?”

Elsbeth blushed. “I didn’t think of it at the time, and you were both being honest anyway. I have a good sense for that stuff.” I stopped myself from arching an eyebrow, but Elsbeth still caught onto my reaction. “I do!”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your face went all ‘Oh really?’ and my eight ball didn’t even ping!”

“So how honest do you think we were, having listened to all that?”

“I think you were pretty honest.” Elsbeth said, glancing down at the lie detector. There wasn’t anything showing in the viewing hole.

“I was honest and told the whole story.” I said, prompting a ding.

“Ah! What? Did you lie to me?”

“I just played your lie detector” Then, referring to my description for ‘The Notebook’, I said, “I was honest.” No ding. “I told the whole story.” I said, referring to the conversation between Fail and I, taking a good moment to change my avenue of thought. The word ‘LIE’ showed up on the eight ball with a ding. “I didn’t tell all the details because I didn’t want to describe each and every death I saw.” No ding. “Seems you’ve got some kinks to work out.”

“Darn it, I thought I had his power in the ball.”

“He definitely seemed to have a built-in lie detector, but there was more to it. You still haven’t told me why you visited me at school.”

“It’s fine.”

The eight ball dinged.

I raised an eyebrow.

Elsbeth slumped. “I need to talk to someone, but everyone was busy.” The eight ball didn’t ding.

“Why not talk to Slingshot?” I asked.

“She’s at school, still.”

“Orcus?”

“Just no.”

“Zephyr, even?”

“Even more, nope.”

“Why me?”

“Because I just like you so much!”

Ding.

“Ouch.” I said.

“Because it’s about the question I asked Fail…” Elsbeth said defeatedly as she made the eight ball vanish. She disguised the supernatural event by feigning putting it in her pocket. Anyone paying attention would’ve noticed that the ball was too big for the pocket, but the place was pretty empty, given the time.

I pondered for a moment, and suspended the conversation to get our tickets clipped. After we had left the staff member behind I said, “You were asked to keep that quiet, so that’s fine. Why is it bothering you so much though? I got catharsis from my questions.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Emotional release. It’s what a good story gives you in the end if the writers are kind enough to not finish on a cliffhanger.”

“How did you get that?” Elsbeth asked, trying to divert the topic as we found our way to our cinema.

“I asked who did a certain bad thing, and tattled on them.” I told her, sparing the grisly details. “Fail and I discussed the best way to make it happen, I did exactly that, and I got a good feeling to offset the bad. You don’t need to mention names, but a general understanding might help me grasp at what this is all about.”

“I didn’t make anything happen...” Elsbeth said. “Where are we sitting?” We were in the cinema now.

“Wherever we want. Do you see anyone else in here?”

Elsbeth looked around, then shook her head.

An idea occurred to me. “Can you make a truth detector?” Elsbeth punched a seat and pulled out another eight ball. This one was white. “We are the only people with tickets to see the movie in this theatre right now.”

The ball dinged and the word ‘TRUTH’ showed up in the viewing hole.

“I’m going to sit there, then.” Elsbeth pointed at the exact middle seats and started moving. The eight ball dinged and I followed along after a shrug.

“Good, now throw that thing away. It’ll ruin the movie.” The eight ball dinged to confirm my statement.

Elsbeth punched a seat again, pulling out a blaster. She threw the eight ball at the movie screen and used the blaster to skeet shoot it. It exploded in a cloud of white dust. I looked at the cloud lightly obscuring the spot where the picture was going to be. That hadn’t been meant literally.

“That better go away before the trailers end.” I said.

Elsbeth giggled. “It will.” Then she sighed and fell into her seat. “I didn’t get any of that word you used from my question.”

I sat in the seat next to her and let Elsbeth find the words at her own pace.

“So there was this person.” Elsbeth eventually said, gesturing with her hands. “She was bad. I didn’t like her. She… she hurt my mom.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything.

“Then she vanished. I didn’t know where to, I thought she was dead for the longest time. I asked what happened to her. Turns out she was just reformed into a good person and not by choice. I asked for more, you know, but it was just…” Elsbeth gesture something frustratedly. “It’s not fair.”

“So my first question is if powers are involved.” I said.

“They are.” Elsbeth nodded.

“This ‘good person’, do they resemble anything of the bad person?”

“No. But it’s like this whole big thing with everyone involved in it. Apparently I was going to be told when I turned eighteen.”

“Hmm…” Whatever I was about to say was interrupted by the pre roll ads suddenly starting. What she was talking about seriously reminded me of the conspiracy leveled against me.

Elsbeth sunk lower in her seat.

“I hate to say it, but I’m pretty sure the person you’re talking about classifies as two different people. That’s how I’m interpreting it.”

“The bad one is still around…” Elsbeth mumbled. “Just not like you or me. She’s not getting punished. She’s missing.”

“Do you know if she has agency?”

“Has what?” Elsbeth frowned at me.

“The ability to do anything. To take any actions at all.” I clarified. Elsbeth shook her head. “That would drive me insane.”

“She was already insane…”

“Maybe.” I admitted. This was beginning to feel something like an argument, which wasn’t what I wanted. Elsbeth had helped me without hesitation yesterday, and I wanted to repay that. “But I’m not here to argue about what an adequate punishment for a bad woman might be, I’m here because you pulled me out of school.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t say that, that’s my word. I wasn’t enjoying school anyway. And how about that escape from Merryfair?”

Elsbeth giggled a bit at the memory.

I leaned back in my seat and settled in to watch the movie for a second time. If my luck held, Nick would try and mug me after this. That was something I wasn’t sure if I was looking forward to. The movie held up on a second viewing. I gave it an eight out of ten and nearly fell asleep towards the end. But that wasn’t because the movie was bad.