Ten minutes into following the younger knight and his robed companion, Valerie was struck by the realization that her costume was more grime and holes than fabric. Intellectually she'd already known but only as the adrenaline from the fight ebbed away did it really... click. Before getting powers she wouldn't have been caught dead wearing anything so dirty or damaged. On the other hand the holes had been made by bullets; before getting powers that kind of damage would have left her messily dead so... it evened out?

"Whoa! Are you OK?"

She blinked. The purple knight boy was standing over her, his eyes full of worry behind his helmet. Why was he... oh. That stumble must have been worse than she had thought because she was lying on the snow-covered street not far from the manhole they exited the sewers from.

"That's a dumb question, Buckethead," the robed girl snarked.

"My name is NOT Buckethead!" the boy shot back angrily, the metal plating of his armored costume glowing oddly under the evening sun.

"Are you sure? Because from where I'm standing that sure looks like a bucket," the girl said, pointing at the purple knight's helmet.

"Why you little-"

"Shut up!" Valerie growled getting up slowly to ensure she wouldn't slip again. "We just beat up members of one of the city's biggest gangs and you're arguing about costumes?" Gah, this was why she avoided younger kids; they never took anything seriously. "You said you got a plan; let's hear it and then let's be about it, not waste time bickering in the streets."

"Huh..." The robed girl stared at her, head tilting left then right, giving an exaggerated impression of trying to puzzle out something despite her hood concealing her face and expressions. "Does getting shot make you cranky, or is it because your costume got ruined?"

"Yeah," her armored friend added in support, their prior argument apparently forgotten. "Hitting a gang was, like, totally your decision; we were just trying to find you."

Valerie's fists clenched. She was bruised, covered in disgusting sewer goop that oozed nausea-inducing stench at every step and her second attempt at a costume wasn't just unsalvageable but needed burning with extreme prejudice. She'd never desired anything more than she wanted to scrub herself raw then soak in a hot bath that moment, except for maybe getting superpowers. Snide remarks was what she had to deal with instead.

Years of high school and experience in dealing with worse cattiness came back to her; if she could resist decking Nora and Julie despite their attempts to sabotage her in team exercises or ruin her reputation, she could handle two idiots taking heroics too lightly. A silent count of ten and some deep breaths helped, too.

"Look, can we just forget what just happened and get somewhere we can clean up?" The goop dripping from her blonde tresses into her face just underscored how much she needed to do just that. She resisted the urge to wipe it off because if she started she might never stop. "Then you two can share the reason you were looking for me and we go from there." And if it was for something stupid she could punch them in the face before leaving.

"OK," the robed girl immediately nodded in agreement then started rummaging in her pockets. "You're invulnerable, right?" she asked, but before the older blonde could respond she took out a tiny glass vial and threw it at her. The delicate bit of glasswork shattered.. and suddenly her shoes, costume, even her hair were engulfed in orange flames.

Valerie leaped back and started frantically trying to put out the fire, but it was not just a small flame catching a lock of hair that could be extinguished with a pat or two if you were quick; every bit of fabric, every hair, they all burst in a coflagration like gasoline-soaked rags. It took her several seconds of leaping around in panic to notice her clothes weren't actually burning... and neither was she, even if the heat was intense enough to cause some discomfort through her invulnerability.

"Do you like it?" the crazy little witch asked eagerly. "Been trying to make a burning costume for ages but can't get the fire immunity to cover the wearer - but hey, if you can tank bullets..."

"Why the hell did you-" the blonde heroine started to say, then noticed the sewer goop and muddly sleet sizzling away in the flames, grime and mud hardening and flaking away as she moved. Whatever the strange... potion had done had rendered her costume fireproof, while her skin and hair were too tough to damage... but every bit of foulness she'd picked up in the past few hours had no such protection. It might not be as relaxing as a bath but the idea of every last bit of ickiness being purged in cleansing flames was more than fine with her. "Thanks," she added a bit lamely.

"Happy to help," the crazy girl told her, then promptly ignored the whole situation and started jumping away. "Come on, our super-secret base is that-away!"

"You guys got a secret base?" Valerie asked the armored boy, the two of them following in a more sedate pace. She found the sound of sizzling snow at her every step kinda cool; the risk of slipping in the molten aftermath not so much.

"Not anymore, apparently," the boy whose name or heroic identity she still didn't know muttered. "You're literally on fire... and you're melting a path straight to it."

Well, he isn't wrong, Valerie mused. Still better than running around covered in sewer sludge.

xxxx xxxx

The three teenagers made surprisingly good time through the city, despite the snow and icy winds. The coat of flames had faded, and even with it they had drawn less attention in the mostly empty streets than Buckethead had worried they would. Only a few years earlier the smallest application of obvious superpowers would have resulted in mass hysteria, but the public had been exposed to too many new heroes, villains and stranger events for it to be a momentus occasion any more. Or maybe they just didn't notice.

They went through Westridge and Mangolia Glenn in a few minutes, entered Andersonville after that and kept going south-east. As brick buildings and parks gave way to single-story homes and abandoned warehouses, Valerie lost patience and spoke.

"OK, I have to ask; how are you two keeping up?"

"What do you mean?" the armored boy huffed back, maybe a bit out of breath. He grunted as he leaped over a pothole, maybe an old crater from some supevillain attack that had yet to be fixed, but was otherwise fine.

"We just did a three minute mile in the snow and you're lugging around forty pounds of metal," she pointed out. "And miss Robed-and-crazy is wearing heels."

"Oh, that." He shrugged as if it was no big deal - and for some superpowers it wouldn't have been. "My armor is just better than it should be."

"And how does that help? It's still armor." Honestly, trying to get a handle on their powers was like trying to hold a greased eel; they were nothing as straightforward as superstrength and durability.

"Well, boots are for walking and running and stuff. Mine are better at it than normal." And that must have been enough explanation because he returned to huffing and puffing his way down the street at thirty miles per hour or so.

"How about you?" Valerie asked Haruspex. "Are your robes magical, or something?" With a name like 'Haruspex', it probably was something like that.

"Nah, I'm just doing steroids." What? "Oh good, we're here!" And on that note, the girl leaped over an old, rusty fence then followed the even rustier train tracks that cut through the area.

Seriously, what?

Valerie followed as the two younger kids vanished in the darkness under the old, crumbling bridge. She had an idea where they were; the old Ravenswood train station had been defunct since before the New Age and as the old fast transit system fell into disuse and the area was hit by supervillains it must have been abandoned. The rusting, slowly crumbling bridges and the rubble and snow filled passage beneath was all that remained... except for a small maintenance door the purple knight had disappeared through.

Totally unremarkable, the entrance would have been avoided by anyone not up to date on their tetanus shots and the lightless, half-collapsed corridor beyond looked unstable enough to repel anyone that didn't want to get falling masonry to the head, such as most sane people. But as that wasn't the kind of crew she'd ended up with and falling rocks wouldn't kill her, Valerie followed.

What she found blew away her initial impression entirely. After a few steps into the dark corridor the damage to the walls and ceiling simply faded away like a mirage to reveal a perfectly clean, servicable tunnel which, after another maintenance access, widened into a storage area easily large enough to fit her parents' apartment with room to spare. The place was mostly bare concrete and steel with a single incandescent lightbulb hanging overhead, the only furniture a pair of workbenches. The one on the left was practically sagging under the weight of sheet metal, steel vises, a hydraulic press and what looked like several acetyline torches. The one on the right was neater, cleaner, but just as loaded with chemistry equipment from the stereotypical glass vials and Bunsen burners of all kinds, to a small cauldron hanging over an electric camping stove.

"Neat, huh?" the girl said and when Valerie turned around she was very surprised to see her without her trademark robe and hood. She wore pretty normal clothes underneath - jeans and a thick woolen sweater against the cold - and looked even younger than Valerie had expected; a mature fourteen year old or a late-blooming fifteen year old was her best guess. Her hair was long, though not as long or voluminous as Valerie's, and a very dark red complemented by the green in her eyes and pale, freckle-covered skin.

She did not look like a Violet, the blonde thought.

"Why did you unmask now?" Buckethead demanded angrily. "You didn't even ask her yet! She might say no!"

"Oh come off your high horse, Billy," Violet drawled, her accent thickening into something more Irish than American. "We tried on our own for nearly a year and what did we accomplish? Parlor tricks at best! We need the help."

"Showing her the base wasn't enough?"

"Not with how you blasted her off that building," she reminded him. Then she tapped the bare wall in a complicated pattern of knocks... and a door appeared where there had been none. It took her only seconds to retrieve another robe from within, one similar to her own. "Here, you can wear it over your costume," she said, throwing it to Valerie.

"Fine!" the boy - Billy - shouted, obviously not feeling that it was. He unstrapped his metal helmet and threw it off his head, revealing a slightly older face with just as many freckles but brown hair instead of red. "Go ahead and share everything, but if this blows up in our faces, I reserve the right to say 'I told you so'."

"Excellent!" Violet happily rabitted up to the older girl and grinned widely enough and enthusiastically enough to make even the most oblivious individuals quite wary. "Would you like to join our super-secret, super-awesome superhero team?"

"You did all that just to ask me to join yor group?" Valerie demanded. "All that about a plan, all the secrecy and grandstanding... were just theatrics?"

"Wait, you followed us because you wanted to hear about a secret plan?" Violet asked in return with fake confusion. "I mean, we do have plans and some of them are secret... I could totally tell you about them if you want to."

The blonde heroine swallowed the first retort that came to mind. Then she did the same to a dozen more before settling for something more neutral and less... homicidal. "...why do you want me to join your team? Why go to all this trouble? I'd like to hear your reasons before making any decisions."

"Because the State Guardians kicked you out of their building without giving you any real info, right?" the other girl said and Valerie's mind went back to their first meeting, to how weird the two kids' behavior had been. Violet had mentioned talking to some older heroes first. Had they known the Crimson Countess would react as she did? "I mean, that bit about Truth and secret identities is useful, but nothing about powers and how they work, right? Nothing on who's who in the superhero and supervillain scene either, I bet. And didn't it strike you as odd that they didn't say anything about laws and rules we have to follow before telling you to stop local criminals or help in disaster relief?"

"That was odd," Valerie agreed. "But how could you know what they told me?"

"Because they say the same things to everyone they don't invite into they secret club and it's entirely unhelpful," Billy told her after unstrapping his chestplate and letting it fall to the ground with a dull clang. "There's no online information about being a superhero either, nor about how teams like the State Guardians work beyond speculation with no proof."

"Long story short, we think there's something really odd going on," Violet finished. "And we need help to find out what it is."