“You just want to talk,” huh? I sourly thought as I tried to figure out how to get out of this mess. Myrddin was slimed in place with a ring of metal around him, so he was tentatively out of the picture unless he had more tricks up his sleeve. I had no idea how quickly Zoom would recover from taking an immovable object to the balls at speed, but it would definitely be sooner than Shade’s broken legs. So the immediate concerns are Chevalier, possibly Sakura, and—oh yeah—the three Dragon-craft above us! I desperately wanted to know why one of the world’s most famous Tinkers was here, but I would have to figure it out later. I had bigger fish to fry.

“Meteor, confirm: Did you say three of Dragon’s ships are here?” Faultline said over the comms, her tone dark.

“Yeah,” I confirmed, narrowly resisting the urge to take my attention from Chevalier and look directly. I debated for a second whether to say anything further, since it would risk confirming Chevalier’s suspicions, but given Faultline’s rule that we avoid property damage wherever possible, I had to ask. “Permission to break them?”

Her response surprised me and made my heart warm. “Granted. I’ll be damned if we’re not bringing you home.”

Chevalier’s response was more predictable, albeit not in a good way. He surged towards us while reaching for his sword, and I grabbed his armor with my power and threw him back. As he flew through the air, he tried to bring the sword around for a shot, but I shoved it into elsewhere again. I wasn’t caught off guard by the sword splitting into three different swords this time, though I still didn’t understand why it was doing that.

The Dragon-craft closed the gap to us far quicker than I would have imagined them capable of, and before I could shout a warning to Gregor, two of the huge, metal beasts were upon us. Gregor cried out, but I couldn’t spare the attention as I narrowly dodged a tail swipe and shoved away the weapons mounted on its wings that were trying to aim at me. Goosebumps ran over my arms as the vaguely serpentine, winged tinkertech stared me down for a moment. Gas began to shoot out of cracks in the suit, and I immediately launched into the air before it could reach me. Gregor began to spray something at the gas that surprisingly seemed to be keeping it at bay, but with his attention on the gas, he didn’t seem to see the large machine gun on the craft closest to him was turning to aim at him.

“Please stand down,” Dragon’s synthesized voice projected from both of the craft. “I don’t want to harm you.”

“Coulda fooled me, lady!” I shouted as I split the gun into quarters and ripped it apart. While the Dragon-craft were too massive for me to manipulate on the whole, smaller chunks were something I could handle. Unfortunately, I was so distracted with guarding Gregor that I realized too late that the craft closest to me had taken aim at me. A roar like thunder filled my ears as I reflexively clenched my eyes and guarded my face with crossed arms.

I should have been dead, but death never came for me, and the thunderous cacophony died away. I peeked through the gap between my arms to confirm my power wasn’t going haywire, but as expected, enough liquid metal to make a small pond was floating in the air between the gun and me. I stared at it, completely flabbergasted, and who knows how long I might have stayed that way, just marveling at the fact I wasn’t full of more holes than swiss cheese. As it was, however, I was in the middle of a fight, and I noticed in the corner of my eye a veritable storm of pink petals descending upon me—apparently Sakura had been relieved of her charges. With a negligent thought, the liquid metal whipped around me to intercept, and though I managed to intercept almost all of it, I was forced to dodge when a couple of the petals slipped past. I hissed as I felt them slice through my pauldron and cut my arm, but it thankfully seemed my armor had eaten most of the attack.

Still, that was two lucky breaks in a row, and I definitely couldn’t count on a third. We need to get out of here, I thought as I fended off more of Sakura’s attacks while also trying to help Gregor as the two Dragon-craft on the ground pressed the assault on him and the third, a much blockier and seemingly less weapon oriented craft, hovered overhead. I could only just barely keep up as it was, and that meant I couldn’t come up with anything more complex than run like hell for our escape plan. I temporarily spread some of my pool of metal into a large, thin wall and shoved it into elsewhere. Sakura would be able to bypass it by going around, but it would buy me time to work. It seemed like someone had finally given Reconnoiter the memo that it wasn’t wise to continue throwing drones at me in a fight, so I didn’t need to break anymore to hide what I was about to attempt.

No, the only problem I was going to have was myself.

I took most of the remainder of my liquid metal and sent it in an arcing path through as much cover as I could towards where Gregor and Shade were, then I hastily pulled my makeshift wall out of elsewhere, split and hardened it into pellets, and sent them flying everywhere. Faultline had told me in training that even a bullet from a small handgun traveled at over a hundred miles per hour, and I couldn’t come close to matching that. Despite that, having thousands of pellets bouncing to and fro through the area at close to fifty miles per hour was nothing to scoff at, and I heard the cries of alarm from Sakura, Chevalier, and Zoom. The Dragon-craft, all three of them this time, immediately started to move to guard the heroes, and I rushed forward towards Sakura to keep them off balance and distracted as the metal I had sent around to my friends reached them.

I drew my swords as I approached, and both of the Dragon-craft turned turrets towards me in response. They had just begun to shoot what I suspected was containment foam when I shoved them so they pointed at each other, and I deflected the bits of foam coming at me with my swords before hurling them at Sakura. Once they had left my hand, I quickly used the last of the liquid metal I had kept immediately on hand to form a tall, narrow dome around myself and shoved it into elsewhere. Despite having left myself ample room to breathe, I immediately felt the familiar feeling of claustrophobia begin to settle in. It wasn’t as immediately suffocating as it had been in the past, and loathe though I was to admit anything Octavia had done was of help to me, I suspected that bitch’s insistence on me wearing armor meant it wasn’t quite as bad as it had been after I first triggered. Regardless, I doubted I would be able to stand this for long, and that meant I had to work fast.

Unfortunately, this was the part of my plan—if it could so be called—where everything was a gamble. Improvisation was going to come more into play, especially since I could no longer see directly what was happening and had to work by my power alone. Besides that, I had impaled Sakura with my swords, or at least I was confident I had, since they were moving but were more or less stable and above the ground and she had screamed very audibly as I had been forming my barrier. The unwritten rules said I was supposed to avoid lethal force, but I already knew Sakura could heal injuries, and she could apparently come back from a lethal attack based on what I had seen earlier when the Nightwalker doused her in acid. Hopefully what I had just done and everything I was about to do were in a gray area.

Using my swords to guide my aim, I began pelting Sakura more specifically with my makeshift orbs. She screeched in pain and what seemed like indignation, and I felt Chevalier and the two Dragon-craft that had attacked us move to flank her while the third craft began to touch down. I formed a barrier between her and where the craft was landing, then formed the metal I had left by my friends into a sort of box with no lid.

“Get in,” I said over the comms, my words wobbly and strained. I was beginning to feel light headed, and if there had been light inside my barrier, I could imagine I might have seen my vision narrowing. “Hurry!”

“We’re in,” Gregor replied as the boxy, transport craft began to move around the barrier rather than land. “Go!”

I hurried to shuttle Gregor and Shade away and briefly removed the shell around me from elsewhere in order to push one of the makeshift orbs in its path into elsewhere instead, causing the craft to abruptly slow and fall to the side with a crunch as it hit the immovable object. That was of course the moment Zoom punched the metal shell, which held up no better than tissue paper stretched as thin as it was. His fist clipped my arm and sent me spinning to the ground, and between that and the effects of the developing panic attack from my claustrophobia, I lost track of what was happening for several moments.

The next thing I knew, I had Zoom’s oversized foot pressing down on my arm just enough to pin me in place, and Chevalier was standing nearby with his sword drawn and its chamber pointed at me. The two combat Dragon-craft had their containment foam launchers aimed at me as well, and I could just barely see Sakura had pulled out my swords and was wobbling towards the transport craft with most of her body covered in petals as she tried to heal. Gregor and Shade were nowhere to be seen, and the box I had made to transport them had fallen to the ground from its previous height of fifty feet high or so along with all of my makeshift orbs, which had likewise fallen to the ground once I was unconscious. “You’re under arrest, Meteor,” Chevalier grimly intoned. “Tell us where Octavia Thatcher is. Now.”

“Y’know,” I snarked, glancing at my pinned arm—the same one Sakura had hit with her petals, Zoom had punched, and above all else was the arm Boudicca had broken just over a week ago. “You assholes already fucked up this arm enough back in Providence. Think you could switch to the other one? Old rightie is really feeling unloved.”

“This isn’t a time for games!”

“Meteor,” I heard Gregor’s voice in my ear. “I have left Shade in the transport you made, and I am near you. If Reconnoiter has any drones in the area, then please take care of them then lift your left arm to give the all clear.”

Reconnoiter still hadn’t put any more into the area, which I presumed meant she was either looking in the surrounding areas for Octavia and Bard or I had just broken all of them by now. “Could’ve fooled me!” I spit at Chevalier. “You’re fucking around with us when you should be hunting down Octavia! I already told you, we don’t have her!”

“I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re still mastered,” he grimly informed me as I watched a glob of fluid fly through the air, lobbed high in an arc, “but we still have to take you in for—”

He was cut off by Sakura wailing in agony, and he and Zoom whirled around to check what was wrong. One of the Dragon-craft kept its gaze on me while the other turned to look, and I severed the connection between the containment foam launchers and the craft. I nearly swore when they immediately fell off—I should have done that earlier! I berated myself—and both craft immediately lunged towards me. Taking the lesson I had just learned to heart, I dislodged the heads of each craft while I yanked my armor roughly to the side to dodge their approach. I had been quick enough to dodge the initial charge, but the closest one managed to slam its tail into my left arm before I could get away entirely—an irony that didn’t go unnoticed. I tumbled across the soft ground and felt three small, roughly cylindrical metal objects of some kind fly out of one craft on a path towards me. Not knowing what they were, I slammed them together to disrupt their flight path.

The only reason I wasn’t blown to pieces when the missiles jointly erupted in a tremendous explosion was they had only just left the Dragon-craft. As it was, I was sent tumbling away again, only this time far more violently. Like I had after being kicked by the Nightwalker earlier, I managed to slow my undesired flight down, but also like earlier, I still very painfully slammed into a goddamn tree.

I groaned as I tried to regain my bearings, and I heard Gregor’s harried voice in my ear, “Meteor, are you okay?”

“Did someone get the license plate of that vehicle?” I muttered as I took stock of the scene before me. Apparently the explosion had been close enough to the craft that fired the missiles that a huge chunk of it had been blown away, and it now laid lifeless on the ground. Chevalier and Zoom had both been caught in the explosion as well, and neither looked to be in good shape, though it was hard to judge with Chevalier covered in his armor. Neither the still bound Myrddin or Sakura seemed to have been hit by the explosion, but Sakura was completely engulfed in her petals once more. The misshapen patch of black, smoldering earth underneath her told me Gregor had thought the same thing I had—hit her hard, and she’ll recover. The other assault Dragon-craft and its transport sibling were left relatively unscathed by the explosion, but they didn’t interfere as Gregor cautiously but swiftly emerged from the cover he had launched his assault from and made his way over to me.

“That does not tell me if you are okay,” he scolded as he helped me gingerly rise to my feet. I appreciated the assistance, since I didn’t think I could move my armor finely enough with my power to not make getting up be entirely awful. Even still, I did need to use my power and his shoulder to stay up right.

“Guess not,” I admitted, grimacing a bit as I tried to work past the pain. “Everything hurts like a motherfucker, but I don’t think anything’s broken?”

“This is an improvement over our last outing, yes?” he gently joked.

I couldn’t quite help the snort that escaped me. “At least there’s that,” I agreed with a smile.

“Meteor.”

Gregor and I tensed as the lone working assault craft took a step towards us. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about all of this.”

I blinked, nonplussed. Hadn’t expected that… Wary of another trick, I grabbed the box I had been ferrying Shade and Gregor away in and began bringing it back over as quickly but safely as I could. Shade was still in it and injured, after all. “Yeah, well, it’s not worth much,” I replied, not bothering to hide how bitter I was. “None of this shit would have happened if you had all just listened. Why the fuck would we have helped that mind-fucking—”

I exhaled sharply as I cut myself off before I could keep going. I wanted to tear into Dragon and give her a piece of my goddamn mind, but Shade needed medical attention. “We’re going. Don’t try to stop us this time, or I might do something I’ll regret.”

“Wait, please,” Dragon said as the craft lowered itself a bit, seemingly deflating. “These three need medical attention, and the closest PRT agents are at least five minutes away with this terrain. Would you please help me get them into my transport craft?”

“You honestly—” I angrily started to snarl before pausing when Gregor laid a hand on my shoulder.

“We can do this,” Gregor soberly answered. “Despite coming to blows today, we are not villains. Please consider it our way of extending an olive branch in the hopes that we can maintain our business ties moving forward.”

“Gregor,” I hissed at him.

“I can’t speak for the PRT or the Protectorate,” was Dragon’s measured response, “but I can promise to put in a good word and my recommendation that they not revisit your group’s status in light of today’s events.”

“We are mercenaries,” Gregor whispered to me when I made a disgruntled noise. “We need to try and retain our relationship. You understand?”

I got it. I really did. But the idea of doing anything for the so-called heroes after the bullshit they had just tried to pull and the accusations they were throwing at us really got to me. I hesitated, my fists clenched at my sides. “I… I don’t…” Gregor gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze, and for a brief moment, I thought of the night I moved out of Masuyo’s apartment and the unwavering support he had shown and still did.

I huffed, and the makeshift orbs all over the area rose into the air. “Yeah. I’ll… I’ll move them in.”

The street signs illuminating the now dark streets of Philadelphia had long since begun to blur together, a sea of all colors of light set against a black that seemed so much darker than it had just yesterday. But then, yesterday I hadn’t known.

Mastered. Yesterday, that had just been a word, a concept. Being mastered was something that happened to other people. Not me. Not Elle. My gut instinct when the adrenaline had finally faded away and the reality of what had happened finally, properly hit me had been to quit the team. It was a stupid thought, but it honestly had crossed my mind. It wasn’t stupid to give a fuck about my safety—I had been taking care of myself for long enough to know that—but quitting wouldn’t have accomplished anything. We weren’t mastered while on the job; we were mastered at the goddamn zoo. A part of me had tried to argue I wouldn’t have been at the zoo but for being on the team, but that also missed the point. We were mastered at the zoo. I was attacked and nearly killed walking down the street after window shopping.

Danger is everywhere. I had already known that, but only now did that finally feel real to me.

But then there was more. I had already felt like I couldn’t quite trust myself after the revelation that my power came with a compulsion. That if I didn’t use it at all times, I might go mad and do something I would regret. Now that I knew I had been mastered for days without realizing it? Yeah, now it was worse.

“You two really are parahumans, right? Tell me!”

I jerked away from where I had been staring at the window, all my muscles tense and my power latching on to all the orbs in the bag that I had brought with me from the swamp to feel safe—to feel in control. My eyes darted around the minivan—Just the three of us—then to the world outside the van’s window—Sea of color and black.

Aisha was staring openly but uncertainly at me in the rear view mirror, and I could just barely make out the occasional, discrete sideways glance Gregor tossed my way. I realized I was breathing heavily, really heavily, and consciously tried to calm down. I halfway succeeded. My breathing approached a steady rhythm to normal levels, but I doubted I would actually be calm again for a while. If ever. After all…

Danger is everywhere.

“You alright, Junebug?” Aisha asked, her words still tinged with that uncharacteristically sober tone they’d had since this afternoon. There was no pained stress in her voice either. She had cheated her way into having non-broken legs by abusing her charge of Sakura’s powers. She would probably be walking with a limp for a week or two, but at least she didn’t have to make shady deals with parahumans on the roof of hospitals after being attacked for being there in the first place.

“M’fine,” I muttered as I pulled the bag of orbs in my lap tighter against my sweater covered chest and tried in vain to relax back into the passenger seat. When we had abandoned our makeshift getaway vehicle in favor of one actually planned for in advance, we had changed into some of the clothes packed away in it. The sweater and jeans I had slipped into weren’t a great fit, likely intended for Masuyo or maybe even Melanie, but they had reminded me of Elle, and I had needed that comfort. Aisha thankfully didn’t press, at least, she hadn’t since the first time she tried and Gregor had swiftly interjected that she needed to give me space to process things.

Like a bit of space would change the fact we could be mastered at any moment and never know.

“Shut up. Shut up right now, or I swear to god, I’ll command you to stop breathing. Do you want that? Huh?!”

If either of them noticed my flinch or the clacking sound of my orbs swirling around in my bag, then they were kind enough not to draw attention to it this time.

“We are here,” Gregor announced as he turned off the street.

Aisha turned to glance out the window, and my eyes flicked around, examining the outside world as the smear of lights passing by slowed down and settled into comprehensible words. I blinked, somewhat taken aback. “Wait,” I spoke up, “are we really meeting up at a restaurant?”

“Yes,” he calmly confirmed as he finished smoothly parallel parking and shifted the car into park.

“What about the Flycatcher?”

“We didn’t expect Dragon to be there today, so—”

“She might be trackin’ us,” Aisha bluntly interrupted. “Gotta lay low for a bit.”

You could be tracked and never know. Mastered all over again and never see it coming.

I tried to force myself to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth as the panic began to mount again, and Gregor heavily frowned at Aisha in the mirror. “We are only going to stay here to recuperate for a bit with the others while we wait to see if the PRT make a move,” he clarified. “If nothing happens in a couple of hours, then Melanie will let us go in small groups back to the Flycatcher.”

I nodded, seeing the sense in the plan but not confident I could say anything right now. I was still trying to bring myself back down to an acceptable level of manageable panic. He watched me carefully for a moment then pulled up the hood on his hoodie and said, “I will come around and get the door for you.”

I nodded again, and he and Aisha undid their seatbelts and slipped out. In what felt like a second, Gregor was opening my door, and I jumped a little bit. He paused halfway through the motion, his eyes meeting my panicked gaze as I clutched at my bag. He more slowly continued to pull it open, and when I made no move to undo my seatbelt, he asked, “May I help you, Juniper?”

“S-Sure,” I stuttered. Was this what Elle felt like day to day? Hanging on by a thread, barely able to talk—forced to rely on others for help? Feeling it firsthand myself gave me a deeper appreciation for how tough it was. He gently undid the harness while taking care to make sure it didn’t whip off of me, and I forced myself to let go of my bag with my left arm to allow it by and with a deep, steadying breath, I let him take my hand and guide me out onto the pavement. Aisha was staring but clearly trying not to, and I did my best to appear like I didn’t notice.

The three of us made our way into the restaurant, and I didn’t let go of Gregor or my bag the whole way. The greeter at the front, a tall blond lady with a friendly smile, didn’t ask for a name and simply led us deeper in. We passed right by the dimly lit dining area, and though I could tell from the noise and the movement of metal there was a surprising number of patrons for a Tuesday night, I couldn’t properly see much thanks to a chest high wall topped with frosted glass that extended straight up to the ceiling. There were only two breaks in it where one could pass through, but the staff member guided us straight past those and carefully knocked a pattern on the door off the hallway.

The door opened after a moment, and I tensed when someone I didn’t know was revealed: A beanpole of a man with tanned skin and wiry black hair. He took one look at us then nodded. “Excellent. Thanks, Eighteen, I’ll take them from here.”

“W-Who are you?” I shakily demanded as I took a half step back.

The two looked to Gregor, and he quietly explained, “Their names are Sebastian and Erica. They are friends and Ariel’s… kin.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head and not at all reassured. “Eighteen. You called her Eighteen, not Erica.” The balls in my bag were beginning to clack as they swirled around, making the bag writhe like it was filled with bugs. “I-I’m looking for some c-cabbage. Do you know where I can f-find some?”

Gregor turned towards me and knelt down so he could look me in the eye. I was struck by just how much taller and bigger he was than me. It hadn’t really hit me until that moment, but I don’t think I had ever felt so vulnerable around him either. Danger is everywhere. “Not at all,” he carefully answered, “but I know a good place to get some soup, if you’re interested.”

My eyes flicked from him to them and back again. “I don’t understand,” I whispered.

He paused momentarily, a brief flash of uncertainty crossing his visage, then quietly explained, “When Ariel tried to save you and Elle at the zoo, did you see…?”

“There wasn’t any metal, but…” I glanced back at the two… people with wide eyes. “Then they’re…?”

“Not homegrown?” the man Gregor had called Sebastian interjected with a raised eyebrow. “Yeah, we’re different. This isn’t the best place to be talking about that sort of thing though, so if you’d come inside, that would be just dandy.”

In the end, it wasn’t Gregor’s reassurances that got me to go inside, but who I saw step into sight just behind Sebastian. Melanie stood there in jeans with a leather jacket over a faded t-shirt, and right next to her was—

I rushed forward, all but shoving the man in the doorway out of my path before dropping my bag and sweeping her up into a hug. “Elle,” I breathed out, burying my face in her hair and the smell of citrus. She hugged me back, and for a minute I just basked in holding her again after everything we had been through. I eventually pulled back a bit without letting go and looked her over, checking for injuries. “I don’t understand. I thought…?”

“I did shoot her with Newter’s spit, but it was diluted,” Melanie spoke up from beside us. I glanced her way and saw that Masuyo and Newter were here too and dressed in plainclothes like Melanie, though Newter was covered up in a hooded jacket and gloves. “We couldn’t have filled all of the water guns in the amount of time we had otherwise.”

I looked back to Elle. Her eyes were distant, but she was facing me. In that gaze that looked past me—through me—she saw whole worlds I would only ever catch glimpses of. But after what we had been through, I could now see one far more clearly. “You said I deserve better,” I murmured, “but you’re wrong. You deserve better than me.”

Her hands clenched my arms a bit where they laid, and her head tilted ever so minutely. For how deep in her bad space she was, it must have been a herculean effort for her. My lips tremulously quirked up a bit. “Why?” I said for her before shaking my head. “You’re the strongest person I know, and you’re proving it right now, silly. I’m nothing in comparison.”

Her grip didn’t yield, and her distant gaze didn’t waver.

I paused a beat then asked, “But if you’ll still have me… I promise the second date won’t be as bad?”

Her hands let go, and for a brief moment, my heart sank. Then she shifted forward and gently tugged me into a hug.

I started crying, but they might just have been the happiest tears I had ever shed.