The girl in the mirror checked over every minute detail for the third time, searching for any imperfections while occasionally glancing the clock on the wall as the second hand ticking down in a constant beat.

06:42 PM

She sucked in a deep breath through her nose and blew it out through her mouth, repeating until she felt a tenuous calm settle over her. It was the sort of calm that almost undoubtedly wouldn’t hold up when the time came, but it was the best she could do, so it would have to be enough. She had been dreading the coming conversation for too long for her anxiety to actually rest until it was done and past, and she was afraid it might not get better even after that.

One of the many domino masks she had been given was affixed to her face, the fresh adhesive holding it securely in place and surrounding her pale blue eyes in darker blue. Her light blond hair flowed down over her shoulders, obscuring some of her spare robe, which felt a bit off on her shoulders. She doubted there was actually a difference between it and the original—more likely just a superstition born from nerves—but it knowing that rationally didn’t change how it felt to wear.

She glanced at the clock again—06:45 PM. She took another deep breath, in and out.

“Showtime,” she muttered before turning and leaving the bathroom. She nearly had a heart attack when she found her cousin—second cousin, really—leaning against the wall of the hallway across from the bathroom door. “Jesus fuck, Nikki, give a girl some warning next time maybe?”

The other girl glared at her balefully, the expression not diminished by the black eyepatch with its white Odal—also known as Othala—rune. “Really? I’m in costume, and you use my real name? You’re lucky it’s only Victor and me here, Rune.”

Rune winced, clearly abashed. “Right, sorry, Othala. Can we… you know, not do this right now? I’m new, I fucked up, I get it. I’ll do better.”

Othala crossed her arms over her chest where her namesake rune was emblazoned on her dark red bodysuit, the black symbol resting within a white circle and a black border. “I’d be more sympathetic if you weren’t making such huge mistakes. Tossing out my real name while I’m in costume, botching the hit Victor gave you to prove yourself...”

Rune studiously looked away. “We need to get going if we’re going to be on time.”

“Fine. Let’s go.”

The pair moved together down the short hallway and into the main room of the empty office space where Victor was seated on a stiff, black leather couch waiting. The blond-haired man was garbed in a costume featuring a black breastplate with a v-shaped neckline over a fitted blood red shirt, black pants tucked into black combat boots, and a black domino mask. He stood. “Ready to go, love?” Othala nodded, a grim smile on her face, and he turned to leave without greeting Rune at all. Rune frowned but said nothing, understanding—if not appreciating—why he was giving her the cold shoulder.

The trio made their way to the elevator Rune had used earlier that evening to reach the faux consultation agency on the eighth floor. She didn’t know for sure whether this facility had already been under the Empire’s control when she joined or whether it had been purchased especially for her use after she joined. Although Othala and Victor’s house was not that far away, the building was a mere two blocks away from The Towers, the apartment complex Kaiser had set her and her family up in. More damning was neither Victor or Othala could fly, so they would have no need for a top floor facility and with keypad protected, exclusive access to the lone elevator in the building that could reach said floor and the roof above it. In any case, she was completely unfamiliar with the building beyond what she used it for. She knew some sort of health clinic was on the first floor, but she had been encouraged by Victor to avoid it and all other floors because “even the best security can be fooled by making yourself known,” or so he had said back when he first brought her here.

She had been so pumped and high on life then, everything happening so fast. Triggering and breaking out of juvie, being introduced to Kaiser by her uncle, moving to Brockton Bay, finding out she had parahuman family, getting to design her first costume. It had felt like her life was finally turning around, but then she had been introduced to the rest of the E88’s parahumans, and it all started going down hill. Kaiser, Fenja, Menja, Krieg, Hookwolf, Stormtiger, Cricket, Victor, and Othala—a full nine capes, and that wasn’t even counting the five she had been told were no longer active but were still in the Bay. Nine capes, and the only one who wasn’t an adult was Othala, but she was seventeen and married to Victor. Hookwolf, a savage beast of a man, had sneered at the idea of bringing a teenager into the group, which had prompted Stormtiger and Cricket, who were firmly in his camp, to likewise complain. Kaiser had proposed she prove herself, and she had passed every test thrown her way by the other capes, from being a guard for drug shipments to roughing up shops that hadn’t paid the Empire for protection. The last thing she had needed to do, the lone test proposed by Hookwolf himself, was kill an enemy of the Empire—practically, that meant some random minority.

Which was how Fucking Fujiwara came into the picture.

It should have been easy. Right around the time she’d decided it was time to work on the last test, one of the informants in Victor’s network had turned up a juicy hit. A Japanese boy who had transferred into Winslow High School and not only had the audacity to try and claim he was a girl but had admitted he was really a boy and dressed and acted like a girl anyway. Information like this wasn’t important enough to bring up to Kaiser and was normally handled on the ground level, especially as initiation—her initiation this time. The informant had provided the guy’s picture from his school ID and the time classes let out at the school, and Victor had passed it on to Rune with the warning to do it somewhere quiet. Since she didn’t go to school herself on account of being a juvie runaway, she had done a stakeout of the school on the roof. She had expected it to take a few days to actually find the guy amongst the sea of people, but she had lucked out and spotted him that very day. After stalking him to the Market, the guy had actually done her a favor and started heading towards the Boat Graveyard, so she had used her power to borrow a nearby car and kidnap him.

It should have been easy. Take a recording of drowning the fag while using her power to hold up the phone. No muss, no fuss, and a recording of her first kill to shove in that bastard Hookwolf’s face at the next meeting. Instead, she had been left broken and beaten, and to make matters worse, the prick had used her stolen costume to embarrass the E88 at the Market. Videos had been on PHO within minutes, and despite the Empire’s best efforts to contain it, the internet had been the internet and kept reposting. The worst part had been how plausible it had all looked, employing her costume and her modus operandi. The voice had been off, but she was a new cape known only by a fledgling reputation and hadn’t been caught on video yet, leaving nothing to compare against. Everybody except the people who knew her had been fooled, and that was a problem. One day, one video, and a month’s work had gone straight to hell.

Rune did her best to keep the sour look off of her face when the elevator opened and she stepped inside. The ‘consultation agency’ took up the entirety of the top floor, so it was a short ride to the roof, where the three of them stepped out and passed through a set of double doors secured by another keypad. There, roughly in the middle of the roof, was a large, circular metal platform with a raised railing at its perimeter and arcane characters inscribed around the exterior of its base. It had been a gift from Kaiser upon her joining, and Rune loved it.

“Fuck.” Seeing the question in Othala’s and Victor’s eyes, she gestured at her gift. “I just remembered that bastard’s power works on metal. I won’t be able to use this!”

Othala’s eyes slid closed, and her expression seemed to convey she was trying to will herself to be patient. Victor barked out a single laugh. “All the more reason to finish this quickly. It stays grounded after today then.”

The trio finished crossing over to the platform, Rune swearing under her breath the whole way, and as they stepped on, Rune took a moment to lay her hand on the rail, pushing her power into the heavy object. It smoothly lifted from the roof under her direction, and she flew them towards their destination: A German restaurant at the edge of downtown and the commercial district called Abend Stube. Rune had almost laughed aloud the first time she’d been told it was a frequent location for E88 meetings. She was a hundred percent on board with putting the other races in their place, but she thought doing it in the name of a political party that failed a few decades shy of a century ago was moronic. Holding meetings at a German restaurant just further fit into the stereotype and was completely ludicrous.

Not that she would never admit any of that aloud, even in presumed safety. Some things were best said only in the safety of one’s head.

The sun had begun to set around 6:30, and the encroaching darkness masked the group’s flight to the restaurant from wandering eyes. Still, Rune was careful to not descend until they had actually reached the skies over the restaurant itself. “Wandering eyes are not the same as actively searching ones,” Victor had advised when they first began practicing using her power for flight, and she could definitely see his point. She brought them down onto the restaurant’s roof, and in short order they all descended the roof access ladder and entered through the employee’s entrance of the restaurant. The entrance lead to what amounted to a foyer that had lockers for the employees to store their things, a single unisex bathroom, a doorway to the kitchens, a doorway to the restaurant itself, and a doorway—the only doorway—leading to the private backroom. The latter had a keypad akin to the one protecting the elevator at the facility she had changed at earlier, barring access to anyone outside the E88 or those allowed inside. The enticing smell of meat and warm bread wafted into the room from the kitchen, and Rune took a moment to briefly savor the scent as she checked the clock hanging by the doorway to the kitchen. 6:59 PM—they were on time.

Kaiser was already seated at the head of the table and waiting, his elbows braced on the table and his fingers laced together before him. Rune had been brought to the regular dining room once before by Othala and Victor, all of them in their civilian guises, and the lighting had been somewhat dim. Ordinarily the private dining area was as well, but it was brightly lit on this occasion, so much so that Kaiser’s armor cast a bit of a glare in her eyes. Ordinarily the restaurant would have laid out multiple tables together to create a sort of rectangle, and the Empire capes would sit in the same places. Kaiser would be seated at the head of the table with Fenja and Menja at his side, Hookwolf would take the first seat on the side to Kaiser’s left with Cricket and Stormtiger following, and Krieg would take the first seat on the side to Kaiser’s right with Victor, Othala, and Rune claiming the following seats. This time, however, only one table had been laid out, and none of the other Empire capes were present. Rune paused briefly at this confirmation the evening’s meeting would not be an ordinary one, and she did her best to not let her fear show in her body language as she fell into step behind Victor and Othala. There were two seats to Kaiser’s right, and one lone seat on his left. It was a given that Victor and Othala would sit together, which meant she would be sitting alone.

The message was clear: Victor was no longer able—or maybe willing—to shield her any longer.

Rune carefully took her seat, reflexively suffusing the chair with her power when she pulled it back from the table. Kaiser didn’t speak or move until after all three of them had taken their seats, and even then, he merely slid a tablet Rune hadn’t noticed until that moment across the table and tapped the ‘play’ button. She gulped as a particularly clear video of Fujiwara’s stunt in her costume at the Market began to play.

“That’s right, pitiful shopkeepers! Your clothes belong to the Empire! Bow down before our superiority complex and despair!” the bastard yelled in an abysmal attempt to approximate her voice before zooming off screen cackling. Rune flinched as a blade erupted from the tablet—no, from the table through the tablet—shattering the screen and cutting off the bastard mid-cackle.

“I trust, Rune,” Kaiser intoned, his rich voice so casual he could just as easily have been discussing the weather instead of making threating gestures with his power, “that my displeasure with your handling of this matter is self-evident.”

“Yessir,” she quickly answered in what was most definitely not a squeak. That would have been undignified.

Still, even if she had, which she hadn’t, nobody could blame her. Any solid surface within his reach was a pincushion waiting to happen. She didn’t know how far his reach was or whether he actually needed line of sight either, so for all she knew, he could off her from a mile away without looking.

“Excellent,” he drawled while leaning back just a bit, pulling his elbows away from the table. “It should be equally clear that I expect a swift response. Make an example out of him publicly.”

“Yes sir,” Rune replied, trying to force her fear levels down from I might be about to die levels down to reassure him so I don’t die. “I’ll find Fuj—”

Another blade shot out of the first one, aimed straight at her neck. It ultimately stopped short, but she had already unconsciously slid the chair back a solid foot with her power before she noticed. Rivulets of sweat carved their way along her face as she stared at the blade, terrified.

“I was under the impression you had been instructed regarding the Unwritten Rules,” Kaiser intoned dangerously, the false warmth from earlier gone. “I have no time to play the teacher, Victor. Clean up this mess.” He pushed his chair back, rose to his feet, and calmly strode past her. He stopped just behind her chair, and she couldn’t resist a tiny whimper as the second blade began to slowly extend towards her once more. “You would do well, Rune, to mind your mentor. Make an example, lest I do so instead.” Then he left, the door to the private room swinging shut behind him.

Rune immediately tugged her chair back again to escape the advancing blade. The edge stopped immediately, and when she reached up to touch her neck and examined her fingers, she found them slightly bloody.

Victor rose to his feet and pushed back his chair in one swift movement then crossed the room to where she sat panting, adrenaline thrumming in her veins. “You know what you did wrong?” he questioned, his voice hard as ice.

“N-No!”

“Really? You can’t even fucking guess?”

Rune looked back over what had been said and done, wracking her brain. “I… I was saying Fuj—his name, then Kaiser… But, the Unwritten Rules don’t apply here!”

He took a step closer, looming over her, and she stared. “They do apply. You don’t go after a cape’s secret identity or their family.”

“But… But I didn’t—”

“You didn’t before, no,” Victor interrupted. “But the moment that kid became a cape? The Rules applied.”

“But if that’s true, then he broke them when he stole my phone!” Rune argued, stubbornly trying to prove she had done nothing wrong.

“The phone I told you not to take with you on duty?” She winced at the reminder. “That would ordinarily have been enough for him to be free game, except it’s pretty clear from your story he was a fresh trigger. Allowances are made for people like that because they don’t know any better yet.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” she hissed. “He doesn’t have a cape identity, so how can I go after him?!”

“He doesn’t have a cape identity yet,” Othala said, finally entering the conversation from her seat, “but he will. Few people with powers wait long before going out as a cape. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone waiting longer than a month.”

“A month?!”

“You need to start hearing the whole message, not the parts, kid,” Victor said as he turned on his heel and walked back over to Othala. “Next time we won’t be able to bail you out.”

Rune’s jaw dropped. “So then… You’re?”

“Helping?” He extended his hand to Othala, who daintily placed her hand in his before rising from the table. Rune couldn’t help the tiny pang of jealousy that flared up at that. Her cousin made being the perfect lady look so easy. It wasn’t a difference of age, or she doubted it, at least. Two years wasn’t that big of a gap in her eyes. So why did doing the same always make her feel so awkward, like she was playing pretend? “Yes, we convinced Kaiser that you were caught off guard because you had never been around someone else triggering and hadn’t been in a cape fight yet.

“You’ve got one chance.”

She gulped. Her eyes flicked over to the blade that still hung perfectly perpendicular to the floor, its metallic gleam ominous even though it was no longer bearing down upon her.

“So fight me,” she blurted as the couple came around the table. Victor gave her a look then broke the blade in half before breaking it free from the portion growing from the table. He stole skills temporarily or, if done for long enough, permanently. He was no brute who could snap metal—Othala must have given him super strength.

“Fight you,” he echoed as he continued to break the blades down until they were small enough to be carried outside.

“If I can’t take on F—him—until he’s a cape… then I need to practice fighting capes so I’m ready for him.”

Victor gave her a toothy smile.