I frowned as I examined the hat.

"Ah, good, you're still here," Valiant said, landing gently on the asphault. "You wanted to speak with me?"

"Yeah, something weird is going on," I said, looking up from the hat I'd taken from the now-docile supervillain. "I've been in seven separate supervillain fights these past two weeks, and in all but two of them, the supervillains were wearing hats like these, which provide psychic shielding to the wearer."

"Huh," Valiant said. "That's a higher rate than usual."

In a sense, the hat was confirmation of a greater fear- these were the best that this world's common heroes and villains could muster against the specter of mind control. If someone like me can knock over nearly the entire villain scene of a major city just with mind control powers and some muscle, then someone like Doctor Skinner really could bend this whole world over a table, with enough prep work that she was absolutely doing right this second.

It was hard to enjoy my victory, when all it did was prove how easy a time the real enemy would have.

"Yeah," I muttered. "I figured it'd make sense that people in this town would have more psychic shielding than most, considering you're here, but to this extent? Something's up. I don't know the local superscience like you do; what kind of turnaround time would we be looking at for a villainous gadgeteer churning out a batch of these hats?"

"It's impossible to say with certainty," Valiant said. "Some gadgeteers work much faster than others, and some are specialized towards churning out batches of things. However, we've been gathering data for most of a century, so... I would ballpark the median at a month or so of dedicated work to churn out a few dozen anti-psychic hats like you're seeing."

I grunted assent. "These are superscience, I can tell that much. Not mad science. Beyond that... you've been keeping all those hats, right? Does it look like they were all made by the same person?"

"That's a tricky question to answer," Valiant said. "It could be that they were all made by the same person, but it could also be that they were all made by different people using the same set of plans. Most superscientists have some ability to copy the work of others, if it's close enough to their own wheelhouse, with very variable definitions of 'some' and 'close enough.'"

"Hrm. Either way, this is a new trend, right?" I asked.

"It is, yes," Valiant said. "Starting with your sudden bout of heroism, in fact. Would you mind telling me exactly how and why you've started behaving this way?"

"In all honesty, I made a bet with Veronica Vega," I said. "If I can bring in enough money as a bounty hunter in one month to buy the house we live in twice over, then she's obliged to acknowledge my expertise and skill and stop casting constant aspersions on them."

Valiant stood there, motionless, probably blinking. "You know," he said quietly, "I was expecting you to say that you had budgetary concerns, or that you needed practice dealing with local superheroes. Something, anything sane."

"I mean, it's not like I'm throwing the money or the practice away," I said. "See this fox draped across my shoulders like a scarf? This is Lisa, a werefox, who I'm currently training in the ways of the hunt so that she can help me track down Dr. Skinner. It's just that this started for very petty reasons."

Valiant sighed, loud enough to be transmitted through his helmet mic. "Well. So long as something productive is coming of all this. I noticed that villain was mind-controlled; your work?"

"Yeah, that was me," I said, nodding. "After the second fight with villains that had psychic insulation in their hats, I dug through my files for a weapon I'd downloaded the plans for back on A-510. It was presented as a naughty novelty, since its sole function was to instantly remove people's clothes, but everyone who thought about combat instantly recognized its potential for removing their opponents' armor... and then swiftly discovered that it works really poorly on clothing meant to be protective, frequently failing to accomplish anything if your aim wasn't exactly perfect center-of-mass. Turns out the original creator had, in fact, been trying to make an armor-removing weapon, but ran into those same problems and decided to pretend they'd been trying to make a sex toy all along. I made some tuning modifications, so all it did was knock people's hats off, which made it a lot more reliable. Been carrying it ever since."

"Does it work on helmets?"

"Depends on the helmet. A hardhat? Yes. Your helmet? No." I looked back at the helmet in my hands. "Hey, odd question, but can I keep this one for analysis?"

"No."

"Can I borrow one of the many hats that y'all have already collected as evidence for analysis?"

"...Yes. You'll have to come down to the office to collect it in person, though. There's paperwork to fill out."

Between my specialty in robotics translating quite well to the automated fabrication of mundane goods- not that I could sell those goods, because they were tainted by mad science and would explode if a normal person tried to use them- and both Akane and I have a talent for cosmetic transformations, Lisa had a lot of latitude to try new fashions to see what felt right.

At first, I'd seen it as an obligation; simply something that had to be done. But over the three weeks Lisa had already spent living with us- two of which were spent bounty hunting- I'd noticed Lisa's general mood improving, bit by bit. And now, standing there, in big, stompy boots with three-inch heels, a short jacket that ended just above her waist, and a red-orange, black, and white skintight jumpsuit styled after the coat of a red fox, she looked over the fucking moon as she twisted and turned, examining herself in the mirrors we'd set up. It was a look that would set tongues wagging, but more importantly, it set her own tail wagging, with a healthy dose of good old-fashioned gender euphoria.

It amused me that, even with three-inch heels, she was still the shortest woman in the house, because she was naturally 5'6 and Akane, the only other person less than six feet tall in this house, was still a solid 5'10.

"You look amazing," Akane said, standing behind Lisa and grinning.

"Really?" Lisa asked, her face not quite catching up with her tail, worry and shame writ large upon it. "It's not too much?"

"Honestly, it doesn't feel like enough to me," Akane admitted. "You'll get there, though. Baby steps."

Lisa huffed, turning her head away from Akane and trying, in vain, to avoid blushing.

"It's gender euphoria," I added. "You're a woman. You want to be a woman, you like being a woman. And your ideal of being a woman, it seems to me, involves being acknowledged as attractive. Beautiful. Hot. Sexy."

"Just like me!" Akane added. "I get gender euphoria from this sort of thing all the time, you know. It's not just you being a weirdo. You're just experiencing something people don't talk about very much, plus some shame because you grew up in a society that hates women and also trans people."

"I- well- why doesn't Roxy dress like this, then?" Lisa asked, turning to look at me. "What the hell am I doing wrong?"

"Comparing yourself to me, for one," I said. "My gender is 'woman' with an asterisk or three. What gives you gender euphoria mostly does not give me gender euphoria. Trust me, I've tried. But... To put it into more simple terms... I'm butch, and you're femme. Of course we look different. Doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. Gender's just more complicated than a binary."

Lisa huffed.

"So anyway," Akane said, forging onward. "I do like the collar on top of the jumpsuit's neck, but, I think maybe you'd look even better with a cleavage window?"

"I have B-cups, leave me alone," Lisa said.

"I can fix that," Akane said. "How big do you want them?"

It was, now that it occurred to me, actually a very cunning plan on Akane's part. Get Lisa to a place she liked, but was ashamed for liking, and then offer her something like that but even more, so that where she currently was seemed instead like the reasonable compromise, and something Lisa would feel less shame about.

"I'll think about it," Lisa said.

"So... Movie night's tonight," Akane said. "You two still up for that?"

"You've been trying to get this together for two weeks," I said. "We can definitely honor that commitment. I'll just need some time alone down here to get some work done."

"Oh right, figuring out who made the hats," Lisa said. "You want me to put a spirit hound on that?"

"...That'd probably be easier, yeah," I said. "Alright, well, my afternoon just opened up."

Something I hadn't considered very much was the possibility that pop culture would be very different here.

For example, I was currently learning the hard way that, instead of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, these people got two fucking Charlie's Angels movies a year, each one with two hundred million dollars of budget. Not only that, but... honestly, they were actually pretty good.

"Spectacle is all fine and dandy," Akane explained. "But about ten years ago, sometime around 2011 or so, technology advanced to the point that a single skilled artist with a good computer could make a spectacle-laded animation on par with the blockbusters, and so Hollywood had to give up and start cultivating actual writing talent so that they could have something to thwap their big meaty moneydicks on top of."

"I don't believe that explanation for a second," I said. "Partly because I've tried animation before and know exactly how much effort it is that you just cannot take out."

"And yet it moves," Akane said, gesturing at the TV screen.

"And yet it moves."

Granted, it was still Charlie's Angels, and having actually watched one or two of the movies that got made on A-510, I was quite aware that at least part of the appeal was T&A, mostly aimed at a presumed heterosexual male audience, which made it hit a lot different.

"I feel like that wasn't entirely necessary," Veronica complained, as one of the Angels found herself naked in a suburban back yard and covering herself up with an inflatable float from the pool that was ring-shaped and thus covered as little as they could get away with.

"It could be worse," I said with a shrug. "I've seen one of the Charlie's Angels movies from Porn Parody Earth."

Akane paused the movie, and turned to look at me, expectantly.

"Why'd you pause it?" I asked, noting that everyone was staring at me, but refusing to acknowledge it.

"You can't just say Porn Parody Earth and leave it at that," Akane said.

"Alright, so. There's a universe technically labeled Earth S-569, which we more commonly call Porn Parody Earth," I said. "For reasons nobody fully understands, pop culture there has evolved such that explicit sex is a ubiquitous storytelling tool."

"So they all have HBO subscriptions," Lisa said dryly.

"It's more than that," I said, shaking my head. "You know how if an entire scene in a movie has no dialogue, it's noteworthy, and an entire movie without dialogue is a strange high-concept art piece? Now replace 'dialogue' with 'sex' and imagine an Earth where that's true."

"...Christ," Veronica said.

"So, the Charlie's Angels movie from there..." Akane began.

"Is an hour and a half of nonstop crime drama-themed sucking and fucking, yes," I said, nodding. "I actually happen to have a big media library of movies from S-569, although I've only watched, like, three or four of them. Mostly it's just an elaborate joke."

"A joke," Veronica said.

"It's so that I can suggest, at movie nights, that we watch some classic Vietnam War movies," I said. "Such as Full Metal Jackoff, or Forrest Hump, or Rambo: First Cum. Or if you prefer superhero movies, I've got some Alan Moore adaptations, like V For Vagina, The Jilling Joke, or Crotchmen..."

"I hate you."

"We could even play one of the more cinematic video games," I added. "Like famous Bioware space opera series Ass Erect."

"I would like to apologize in advance for what I'm about to say," Lisa said, inauspiciously. "But what does the porn parody of the bible look like?"

"There mostly isn't one," I said, prompting Veronica to sigh in relief. "Whatever it was that made Porn Parody Earth like this happened a good time after the time of the Roman Empire, and for the most part, has only really affected their film industry. Anyway, since we are under no circumstances watching any movies from there, I suggest we start the movie back up and keep watching."

"Why not?" Akane asked.

"Because," Veronica said, "she knows that if she tried to make me watch Big Trouble In Little Vagina, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself."

"I never get to have any fun..." Akane whined, before hitting play once more.

Late in the movie, Lisa texted me, and I frowned as I read it.

Lisa: the hound tracked the creator to the supervillain jailhouse, but it couldnt go inside to narrow it down.

Lisa: so all we know is that, whoever the hatmaker is, weve probably already arrested them.