Dark made the tiniest face as Leonine edge closer.

“Master Dark,” Leonine brushed one of his hands through his scarlet red hair, eyes alight, canine ears perked up, “I’ve finally made myself an arch enemy!”

I held myelf back form rolling my eyes.

“And..?” Dark smiled, “who has the honor of opposing you?”

“Daulphin, you know, hero who wears that ugly wetsuit? He told me I would regret the day I stole his Aqua-Auto! And now I’ve got an arch enemy!” Leonine spoke the words so fast they tripped into one another.

Dark’s smile had retreated as Leonine told his tale. Knowing Leonine, we both realized he had likely made a critical error.

“Leonine, all the hero cars have tracking technology. Did you disable it?” I asked. Leonine's powers had nothing to do with tech. In fact, his power was a far blunter, and simple control over flames. And I knew he hadn’t finished our training courses on encounters with the Hero Union yet.

Leonine paled, and gulped a few times before he managed to get the words out, “It’s in the company garage.”

Dark turned towards me, “Well Miss Bell—you may be on active duty at least for today. If they’ve had our location for this long, and noticed that Leonine’s stayed put here,” Dark glanced at his watch, “Knight should be here in about two minutes. Three of we’re lucky. Please tell me we have a backup HQ?”

I nodded, “After the incident in Italy, we have two.”

“Lovely. I’ll be outside if you need me.”

“Very good, sir.”

Dark sped off to stall Knight from breaching the Corp. and capturing villains. No one but Dark stood a chance against him.

I pulled out my phone and activated the deadman’s switch for all our files, paper and computerized, that were in the building. Then I punched in an alarm code.

Our emergency system went off, “Code Red, all employees be ready to initiate combat and flee. Code Red, all employees...”

I looked up from my phone. Leonine was frozen, his face a pasty color.

“Leonine, go! The Union’s probably here already,” I shoved my binder at him, “burn this, would you?”

He jolted, then seemed to pull himself together. He set my binder aflame with a squint—I made a note to set him up for extra training when this blew over—having a tell to his power could get him into trouble. Not to mention the whole “leading the heroes to our HQ.”

“Thank you,” I pulled my blazer off and threw it aside, wanting as much freedom of movement as possible, “get going, and please, be careful. Don't take the Aqua-Auto. Actually—give me the keys.”

Leonine handed me the keys, a bit bummed, and ran down the hall.

I pulled my curls into a ponytail and took out the mask I always kept on my person.

It was a slim dark blue piece of Flexalloy, a gift from a different era in my life, after I negotiated the No-Kill agreement between Villains Corp. and the Hero Union. Today would be the first time it got put to use.

I placed it over my face, feeling my blood begin to stir to life after so much time spent at HQ, dealing with piles and piles of paperwork, compensation, restitution, retribution, and of course, our bratty, batty, brilliant villains.

The windows in front of me shattered, and a red form rolled to stop and stood. A hero.

“Hello, Circuit,” I said, and brushed some of the sparkling shards off my blouse.