The light of my tattoos flashed and flickered, then grew until the alley was washed out in biohazard green. My skull ached as the horns retracted, and my hair grew out. I felt the equipment fading away as my jeans and tshirt rematerialized on my body.

I was human again.

I smelled myself and recoiled. Unfortunately, the gunk from my hero form didn’t disappear along with the hero.

“Shirt,” Elise ordered in her very feminine human voice and I hucked the tank over my shoulder at her.

My elbow throbbed and I looked down to find a pink scrape. Raven had a passive [Dampen Pain] ability, which was awesome but also awful when I popped back into Claire and felt everything I hadn’t as my hero. Why I could use some abilities and passives as a human, but others remained strictly tied to my Hero form, I had no idea, and it was infuriating. I rubbed at the spot idly as I heard Elise struggle with her clothes.

Because Piper, Norah, and I were all similarly shaped and sized as our heroes, we could safely leave our clothes on for the transformation, but Elise’s upper body grew too rapidly before her hero gear manifested. It only took two ripped shirts for her to start carrying a spare around.

“I’m starving. I hope they’re back.” Elise walked toward the alley exit, adjusting the elastic band of her skirt as she tucked in the tank.

“Back to your normal size. So, you gonna talk to Edgar?” I put my arm over her shoulder as we walked toward the apartment. The streetlights outside our hideaway alley were bright orange, illuminating the college students as they returned from work, or headed out to a party.

“I don’t know. He’s working. It doesn’t seem like a good time.” She chewed her lip as she looked down.

“The present is the only time we have, you gotta make the most of it and seize the things you truly desire.” I didn’t really think Elise, the sweetest, smartest girl I knew, was a very good match for the stuck up Edgar, but she saw something in him she liked, so who was I to judge.

“Yeah, but maybe tomorrow’s present will be a better time, I have some homework to get to tonight.”

I shook my head. “Oh, Elise, your procrastination inspires me.”

“I’m not procrastinating!” She protested, her little voice sounding so comical. There was no bee sting feeling in my chest accompanied with her embarrassment. “Homework is more important than a boyfriend. I’m prioritizing.”

I took the steps up to our building two at a time. “Sure thing, friend.”

“Why don’t you have a boyfriend if they’re so important? It’s been what, three years?” She asked indignantly as I held the door for her.

My cheeks flushed and my gut turned. I looked away. “I didn’t say having a boyfriend was important. I like being single. I don’t have to worry about what some guy is going to think when I show up back home at ten, or midnight, covered in nasty stinking dried goop.”

Elise trotted up the stairs to the third floor. “See, you’re just making taking to Edgar even less appealing.”

I stopped her at our apartment, No. 348. “Are you going to wonder “what if” in two years, ten years? I wouldn’t want to wonder.”

I scanned my ID to unlock the door and we took our shoes off before crossing the threshold. “We’re back!” I yelled and sniffed around. There was no scent of thai food on the air, only shower steam and soap. I could hear the classic sixteen bit music from Piper’s favorite handheld game playing from the couch.

“Yo.” Piper’s hand appeared above the couch on the other end of the room and gave us a wave. The kitchen was off to the right, a small closet to the left, and farther into the apartment to the left and right were two bedrooms. Yep. We shared rooms.

“Is the order in?” Elise asked as her stomach growled.

Piper shot up from the couch, her eyes wide. “Shit.” She threw the game aside and her face lit up with the glow of her phone. “Nooo! They closed ten minutes ago!”

“Well, thai food for another day,” I said as I wrenched my shirt off my head and unzipped my jeans.

“I really wanted it tonight,” Piper grumbled and flopped back.

“Should’ve stayed on target.” Norah chastised as she scrubbed her straw colored hair with a towel.

Piper rolled off the couch and cracked her back. “The water washed the thoughts out of my brain. I swear, I’m cursed with the short term memory of a goldfish.”

“Pizza then?” Norah asked as she walked to the fridge for a coupon.

I thought about my funds, and the upcoming bills. If we weren’t having thai, I didn’t want to spend the money. “Nah, I’ll just have something here.”

Elise waved her off, too. “I’m trying to be dairy free for a while.”

Piper made a grunt of disgust. “How could you go without cheese?”

“With great difficulty,” Elise said as she trod toward the bathroom.

I kicked my pants off and tossed them in the laundry bucket near the front door. It was nearly full, and I checked the whiteboard above it. Crap, my turn.

“I’ll be out in ten,” Elise shouted from behind the bathroom door.

I grabbed my laptop from the tiny kitchen table and plopped down next to Piper in the living room. We had some nice commodities for college students, but we were so busy with school, work, and hero business, we hardly ever played our games or watched our forty inch T.V., unless for finding some trouble to dash on the local news.

I popped open the lid to the laptop, but I didn’t really want to do school work. Instead, I opened my character sheet privately, in my own vision, instead of sharing it with Piper. I stared off into space, my eyes pointed vaguely at my laptop screen, as I scoured over my stats.

Terra’s Heroes character booklet had taught a lot about what we needed to know, once we actually figured out what our hero powers were. It left a few gaps in our understanding, until we leveled up and started applying our ability points, but after two levels, it was pretty clear what was going on.

Our stats would bank points based on how much we practiced a certain attribute from the Body, Mind, and Essence. We would bank skill points in a reserve as we worked up to the next level. The banks had a specific depth, and once they were full, no additional practice would bank points until we leveled up. Leveling up added the reserve to our active skill point total, and made us more badass.

Essence was a wiley thing that couldn’t really be nailed down, and was far more important for Norah’s character than it was for Elise’s. One of its categories was literally Chaos, like, what the hell. We came to think of that as random ass shit happening, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but the more we leveled it up, the more things seemed to happen in our favor, specifically Norah’s bombs wouldn’t hurt us as much.

Essence also housed the stat Will, the currency we used for casting spells or activating abilities. We sort of equated it to the Hero version of human “Adulting Points.” If we did the dishes, laundry, and our homework, we were out of adulting points for the day, and in Piper’s case, for the week.

Mind was just how it sounded. Logic came from doing puzzles, working on mathematical problems, and the likes. Charisma was a stat I lacked in very much, given the fact that my character looked sort of like a demon. My human charisma I’d say was far better than my hero charisma. Wisdom was a character stat that only Norah and I had, and seemed to come directly from research and experimentation. Her’s was higher than mine, but mine didn’t seem to do much in the way of affecting my spells, at least not yet.

Body was even more simple to understand than Mind. Strength was just that. Do one hundred push ups a day until level up and a lot of Strength points would be banked. Agility was also clear cut. Running zigzag patterns, sprinting, boxing, all these things banked points. Stamina too, just do anything mildly strenuous for a long time, and points would be earned. Vitality was the strange, almost masochistic stat. Vitality was earned when physical pain was ignored and pushed through. Good for me that one of my abilities was [Dampen Pain]. I maxed out the banked points on Vitality almost every level. Not that I’d leveled recently…

The worst kick in the pants of all was that while some abilities and spells could be used in Human form, none of our stats would earn levels unless we were transformed. It meant that all those months of studying Elise had done for school did jack squat for Groff’s Mind stats.

I switched over to my spells and abilities to look around.

My first few levels I’d thought that maybe Raven would be a great ranged attack character. It wasn’t until I’d looked at the others’ spells and abilities sheets that I realized mine was very much tailored towards Mind abilities at higher levels, and the other categories tapered off before the first Ascension.

Ascension was a point of curiosity for all of us. We’d read the Terra’s Heroes: Master Guide, and anything else we could find, front to back many times and never got a straightforward answer on how one would actually Ascend. Whenever we tried to select the button in our sheet, we’d get an error popup that said “Missing Ingredient: Ascension Core Fragment.” We’d never encountered one before, and had no idea what it might come from.

“Done!” Elise called as she pulled open the door to the bathroom.

I closed out my character menus and hopped to my feet. “Any hot water left?”

Elise grimaced and patted my shoulder as she passed me toward the bedroom. “Best of luck, friend.”

The shower was freezing, but I guess that’s what I got for being last. I pulled on the tangles in my long blond hair as I mashed soap onto the goop. It was weird how my short black hair in my hero form transferred the goop all throughout my long human hair. But whatever. I didn’t want to have to shower in two different forms, anyway.

When I emerged, Piper had gone to bed, and Norah was scarfing down a sandwich. Elise wasn’t anywhere in sight, either. My stomach grumbled and I grabbed my phone from the table. My bank account had just under nine hundred credits, but I knew five hundred would disappear in three days for the mom bills, and I’d owe Elise one fifty in ten days for the rent. With term coming up, I’d need to save all I could for that payment, too.

“I’m headed to bed,” I said as I waved to Norah. She gave a non committal nod and grunt as she worked through something on her holoscreen laptop.

I opened the door to Elise and my room slowly, holding the knob up so the hinges wouldn’t squeak. She was asleep on her bed, so I tiptoed to the closet and donned my sleeping t-shirt. The mirror reflected shadows in the darkness as I braided my wet hair. I looked old for twenty two. Or at least, the bags under my eyes made me look old. I pulled at the lower lid of my eye and looked at my reflection, then stuck out my tongue rudely.

I tiptoed to my twin bed next to the door and looked at the green glowing clock: eleven thirty, damn. I set my phone to go off at six and prayed I’d get up.