“C’mon, c’mon…” I muttered as I paced around the roof of the building across the street from Masuyo’s mutilated apartment, listening to the phone ring out—again. PRT officers were crawling all over the area below, and with the moon nearly full above me, I had touched down to avoid being spotted. Don’t be dead, don’t be dead…

“Hey, this is Masuyo,” the voicemail greeted me for the second time. “Sorry I can’t—”

I growled and barely resisted the urge to tug my hair out as I hung up and dialed again. Of all the nights she could have spent away from Palanquin! Why tonight?!

The phone reached the last ring before voicemail, and I nearly ended the call only to catch at the last second, “June, it’s 2:30 in the morning. Wh—”

Oh thank god! “Where are you?!”

A sigh came through from the other end along with the vague sound of rustling sheets. “I told you we weren’t—”

“I know you’re not at Palanquin,” I interrupted. “Lung’s attacking the area and threatening me—us. I flew to your apartment to get you, and it’s… fuck, I don’t even know what the hell happened here. Now where the fuck are you?!”

“Shit!” More rustling, and I swore I could hear somebody in the background. Feminine sounding, so probably Sabah, but their voice was too faint to say for sure. “Shiiit. Fuck, we’re, um… At Sabah’s place.”

“Start getting dressed and send me an address. I’m coming to get you.”

“W-Wait, you can’t come here!”

“Wha— Why the fuck not?!” I bit out, throwing my free hand up in the air in exasperation. “Was I unclear about the fucking gang boss threatening us and setting the neighborhood on fire? I feel like I was pretty damn clear about that!”

“You don’t understand…”

She trailed off as Sabah interjected in the background, this time far more distinctly, “What’s going on?”

“Apparently Lung is threatening June and me by proxy. He’s attacking Palanquin.”

“Not Palanquin directly,” I correct.

“June wants to come get us,” she continued, ignoring me.

“Is demanding to come get you!”

There was some more rustling, the mic crackling a bit as the phone was clearly handed over. “June? This is Sabah.”

“Where are you?” I ask for the umpteenth time, desperately trying to calm down. I wasn’t sure I was succeeding very well. In fact, I was fairly confident I was failing miserably.

“Look, I’m trusting you with this because I know who you are—” Huh? “—but I need you to understand that I’m not like you. I seriously value my privacy, so you can’t tell anyone!”

I was starting to feel like I had somehow slid into another, different conversation without realizing it. “Um, okaaay…? Look, all I care about is getting you two to safety.”

“Right. Right, okay, I can do this.” She sounded like she was psyching herself up for something, which only confused me more. What was going on? “We’re… We’re at the Dollhouse.”

“… the what?”

She groaned, and in the background I heard Masuyo laugh nervously. “Do a search on your phone for the Dollhouse in Brockton Bay. You’ll find us.”

“Okay… Sure, whatever. Just get ready, ‘cause I’ll be there ASAP,” I replied before hanging up. The Dollhouse? I thought to myself in exasperation as I pulled up my phone’s browser and typed into the search engine. And she values her privacy? Is this Dollhouse some fetish thing? I vaguely remembered Jess mentioning something about a sex dungeon his cousin went to regularly, and I had idly looked into it on the internet before deciding nope, I didn’t need to know anything further. Masuyo didn’t seem the type for something like that, but she hadn’t seemed the type to uproot her whole life either, and she proved me wrong there.

I tapped the top result and the page began to load. A few seconds later I was greeted with a logo proclaiming The Dollhouse at the top over a picture of a masked cape posing in front of a boutique clothes store, clothes seemingly floating in the air around her. The cape was full covered head to toe in old school clothes—Victorian, might have been the right description?—so it was hard to say for sure it was definitely Sabah… But with the context of her phone call?

Well that’s a thing then.

It took a moment for me to shove aside my surprise and find the address amongst all the info about generally stocked items, specialty orders, and the like. I didn’t recognize the street name, but that was no surprise. Plugging it into my map app showed the store was basically only a couple of blocks off the main road in front of Brockton Bay University. I hadn’t been there, but the place was large enough that I had seen it before when flying around the city. I made a beeline towards it while sending a quick text to Faultline with an update, and the cold air whistling past me left me grateful I had donned my full costume.

Of course, it’s cold here, but back there? I thought as I looked to my side towards Palanquin and the still raging flames. “Fucking asshole,” I swore, equal parts livid and afraid. Faultline had driven home just how lucky I had been to survive my fight with Lung and Oni Lee as unscathed as I did. If they hadn’t been trying to keep me alive to forcibly recruit me, and I hadn’t been able to push my metal into elsewhere, then I almost certainly would have died. And now he had completely ignored the unwritten rules and nearly killed Masuyo who, like me, had only survived by luck—by being in the right place at the right time.

I could make out the lights of firetrucks here and there, vaguely scattered around the area but not moving in. Likely waiting on that asshat to stop torching the place first. How much of the area would be nothing but ashes by the time he was done? It was a disquieting thought.

It wasn’t long before I reached the university, and after a further minute of orienting myself using the map app on my phone, I found the boutique and touched down. The place was painted in bright, cheerful colors that were probably intended to be welcoming, though the effect was countered by the shutters over the windows. Not that I was surprised—it was Brockton Bay at night time, after all. The shutters wouldn’t prevent a cape with the right power from getting in, obviously, but they would be a decent deterrent against the average thief. They also served to obscure exactly what was inside, so there was that too.

I walked up to knock, but the door opened a crack before I could even raise my hand. Sabah’s face peeked through at me, just staring, and I impatiently asked, “Are you going to let me in, or are you two ready to go now?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she squeaked as she pulled the door open wide enough for me to come in and stepped aside with a beckoning gesture. “It’s just, this is the first time I’ve seen you in costume.”

I slipped in, and Masuyo was waiting by the counter with a tight smile. “It is a unique experience, especially with the air filter changing your voice. I was a bit unnerved the first time I saw you costumed up in Philly.”

“Sure, sure, whatever,” I said, waving away that topic of conversation. “More importantly, are you two ready to go? We’re bunkering down at Palanquin.”

“I’ll be staying here,” Sabah denied with a shake of her head. She couldn’t have seen my surprised expression through my mask and goggles, but she must have read my reaction in my body language, since she went on to add, “I’m not known to be associated with you, and I have a business to run. School to go to as well.”

“That’s fucking stupid.”

“June!” Masuyo berated. “Don’t—”

“No, listen,” I cut her off. “You didn’t see the shit I just saw. Your apartment was bombed, Masuyo, and I don’t mean the usual explosion shit either. A big ass chunk of your apartment building is glass now, and I don’t mean that metaphorically. PRT were all over investigating.”

“Oh my god…”

“Imagine they did that here,” I stressed to Sabah. She stared at me wide-eyed and with her mouth slightly agape in horror. “I don’t even know how the hell they figured out Masuyo and I are related to each other, so who the fuck knows what else they might know. You gonna risk that just because of school and your business?”

“Sabah,” Masuyo murmured as she moved over to comfort Sabah, who had begun shaking. “I’m… I’m so sorry. I didn’t think—”

“It’s… I’m okay,” she replied, sounding shaken.

“You don’t look okay,” I pointed out.

Masuyo shot me a withering glare, but what I had said actually shocked a strained giggle out of Sabah. “No, I suppose I don’t.” She shook her head and muttered something I couldn’t quite make out, though Masuyo must have, judging by her surprised reaction. Before I could ask, she spoke back up, “I’m staying. I have to risk it.”

“It’s not like you didn’t literally just have Meteor come knocking at your door, but whatever, what do I know?” I said, baffled but not interested in pushing things. I barely knew her, after all. “Masuyo, you’re coming, right?”

Another strained smile from her, this one aimed at Sabah. “I wouldn’t want to impose on your hospitality.” She leaned in and gave the far shorter woman a quick, chaste kiss. “I’ll see you… whenever this gets sorted.”

“I’d like that, yeah,” Sabah said with a tight smile of her own.

“I wasn’t that sappy with Elle earlier, was I?” I asked as Masuyo pulled away from Sabah and grabbed a bag off the counter.

“Not at all.”

“Oh thank—”

“You were far worse.”

“Well fuck you too,” I replied, though there wasn’t any real heat in the words. Fondness, if anything. I was still trying to feel out exactly where the limits of our cousin-thing were, but there were some things that just needed to be said. I glanced at Sabah and asked, “Since you are staying, it’s probably best to not fly away directly from here, especially while I’m still in costume. Could you whip up something with your power that I could wear over this, so we’re not so obvious while we move a block or two over?”

“I don’t magic clothes into existence,” she dryly pointed out. “My power only gives me control over lightweight stuff like cloth.”

Huh. That seems… really, really weak. By some miracle of self-awareness, I managed to not say that aloud. I’d have to tell Masuyo later; she would be proud. Instead, I actually remarked, “So that’s a no then.”

“Well…”

“My god, what is Lung thinking?” Masuyo said as I flew us low across the rooftops back towards Palanquin, dodging around any active fires. It was risky, but Lung had to know I could fly using my power, so he was probably watching the skies for any sign of me. Down here we at least had some cover courtesy of the smoke and flames, though navigating through it all did present its own difficulty. “The Protectorate are going to be all over him for this.”

“Doesn’t he do this to Empire places all the time?” I asked. In truth, I didn’t know that, not really. I had been too preoccupied with becoming a member of the crew and traveling to other cities to actually bother paying much attention to what the Bay’s gangs actually got up to. Faultline had said it was her general policy to not take jobs in the Bay, so it just hadn’t seemed important enough to look into it. What I did know was Lung had made a big, showy blast of fire when he was berating his people the night I fought him. If he did that around his own gang, then surely he had no compunctions about torching an Empire stash house or something of a similar ilk.

“True,” she acknowledged as I steered the orbs I had surrounding her to follow me as I ducked around a corner. We only had a couple more alleyways to go through before we reached our meet up point with Newter. “And the heroes do punish that, but at the same time, it’s different. Those are Empire targets, with Empire members inside. These are civilian houses. It’s not the same, not really.”

That was a fair point. It reminded me of how the heroes reacted whenever the Teeth came to town. Those bastards frequently moved around, though they had seemed to gravitate back to New York more often than anywhere else, and all hell tended to break loose the moment they showed themselves. The only reason they got away with it was because they were so goddamned ruthless and because the heroes couldn’t properly take out their leader: The Butcher. Or rather they could… but only if the person who struck the killing blow wanted to become the next Butcher. Reports varied about the how of it all, and it sometimes took time, but eventually anyone who killed the previous Butcher would succumb and become the next in line. If it wasn’t for that, Legend probably would have blasted the bastard to smithereens by now, and the Teeth would have fallen apart.

Neither of us had anything further to say on that topic, and in short order we reached a manhole, which I tugged up into the air.

“Ugh, I should have known,” Masuyo complained as I maneuvered her to be upright over it and began to lower her into the hole. “Whose idea was it to use the sewer?”

“Mine,” Newter answered from below us as I hovered down after her and tugged the manhole back into place. “Best way to properly sneak around the city.”

He notably didn’t mention to her that he used to live in the sewers of Richmond before Faultline found and recruited him based purely on rumors of his existence. He hadn’t even mentioned it to me until a few nights before Providence when I had asked what, if anything, he remembered about his past. Even then he had been hesitant, like it was something to be ashamed of. It hadn’t bothered me, and I had said as much at the time, mentioning that if CPS hadn’t picked me up, I might very well have moved in with The Blinds, a gang in New York whose members lived in and literally operated out of the sewer system. The cape who led them was apparently willing to take in anyone that would work for their keep.

“So Meteor, what’s up with the trench coat?”

I coughed, feeling a bit self-conscious. Sabah had provided it, saying it was some sort of item she had made for a client who wanted to cosplay as some character from an Earth Aleph movie. Apparently the guy who ordered it ended up not being able to pay in full, so Sabah had kept the deposit and the jacket. The thing was absolutely huge on me, but that meant it was able to cover up my costume without issues. I had taken off my goggles and air filter, put them in the backpack with my orbs, and pushed down my scarf until we were far enough away from the Dollhouse to not associate Meteor with her. Unless someone had seen my initial arrival or otherwise recognized my backpack as being the exact one used by Meteor in Providence, the only time I had used it in public, Sabah wouldn’t be tied to us.

“We wanted to hide my costume as we left, and this was… available. It looks dumb, I know.”

“I mean, it looks a bit silly for you to be wearing that big of a jacket, but if you had one that fit, I think it’d look kinda baller.”

I privately disagreed, preferring my armor, but— Fuck! No, I’m Meteor, not Fighter! I berated myself, frustrated at the slip up.

The talking died out after that, but that was fine. We didn’t have far to go. The smell of the sewer was… not great, but that wasn’t a surprise to me, since I had been through it once already. Masuyo was more vocal in her disgust, though not in a verbal way. She settled for a quick bout of seemingly involuntary gagging while she covered her nose and pinched her eyes shut. I wasn’t sure how closing her eyes was meant to help with the smell, but in any event, we made quick progress, since Newter was extremely agile and I could outpace a car with my own power. In practically no time we were climbing up out of the sewers into the club’s loading bay.

“Wha— Why is there a sewer entrance in the loading bay?” Masuyo blurted, apparently recovered enough to talk now that she wasn’t surrounded by the odor of the sewer.

That… Huh. That’s actually a good question, now that she mentions it. I looked to Newter inquisitively, and he supplied, “What you didn’t think Faultline would pay to have a secret exit installed? C’mon, I’m pretty sure she has backup plans through, like, Plan Z. I think the official story if the Public Works dudes show up is a work permit was approved to build the loading bay, and nobody realized it was being built over a manhole.”

And speaking of backup plans… “Faultline mentioned she already has a plan for Lung,” I told Masuyo. “Said we’d discuss it once everyone was safe and sound.”

She grimaced, likely thinking of Sabah, and replied, “Well let’s not keep her waiting then.”

Nobody had anything to add to that, and the three of us quickly and quietly made our way up to the meeting room. Faultline and Gregor were waiting inside along with Labyrinth and Shade, and even though the latter two hadn’t been awake when I had left, everyone was now fully costumed up.

“Good, you’re here,” Faultline said when we slipped in. She turned to me and said, “Your text had said you would be bringing along the girl from earlier as well—Sabah, was it?”

“Well, uh, that was what I was going to do,” I remarked, looking to Masuyo for assistance. I wasn’t quite sure how to explain without giving up the other girl’s cape identity.

It turned out that much wasn’t necessary. “She appreciated the offer,” Masuyo answered in my stead, “but she isn’t tied to the crew in the same way and can’t drop everything as easily as I did.” And apparently that was satisfactory enough for Faultline, who gave her a simple nod.

“Very well then.” She leaned forward as the three of us took a seat. “I won’t mince words, everyone. This is not a good situation. That being said, matters should resolve in our favor as long as we tread carefully. For now, the plan is that we remain out of sight of the ABB.”

“You’ve looked out the window, right?” Shade asked incredulously.

“Yes, and if Lung intended to damage the club itself, he would have done so already,” she explained. “What he’s doing now, egregious as it is, is posturing. He’s trying to scare Meteor into leaving us to join the ABB. He will back off soon either because he feels his message has been sent or because the Protectorate will force him to. From what I’ve been able to determine in the limited time we’ve had, Armsmaster, Velocity, and Dauntless are already working to resolve matters, and more heroes are doubtlessly on the way. Injecting ourselves at this stage will only complicate matters, so as I said, the plan for now is to let the Lung situation resolve itself.

“As for the long-term? That’s a different matter, and there we have the upper hand.” She tugged a USB stick out of one of her costume’s myriad pockets and waggled it a little bit. “This is a copy of all the dirt we have on the ABB. How they’re laundering their money, PRT personnel they’ve compromised, known non-cape members—the works. It’s obviously not everything, but it’s enough to seriously hamper the ABB’s operations. If this gets leaked, they’ll need to scramble not only to make up the lost ground but to prevent a cascade failure from sweeping through their organization, and that will give the PRT and the Empire everything they need to truly cripple them. Lung may be the strongest cape in the Bay, but one man is not a gang, and without the financial structures, his fiefdom will fall to pieces. Even if Oni Lee sticks by him, two parahumans alone, no matter how strong, cannot hold out forever.”

“Blackmail, huh?” Newter remarked as he leaned back in his chair. “A bit anticlimactic, but hey, I ain’t complaining.”

I wasn’t either, but it felt… too easy. I believed Faultline when she said what the information could do, but I just couldn’t imagine Lung taking being blackmailed lying down. “You saw what I texted you, yeah?” I asked with a grimace that couldn’t be seen past my mask. “It can’t be a coincidence that Masuyo’s apartment building literally got turned into goddamn glass the night Lung throws down the gauntlet. What’s to stop him from doing that here—however it is he did it?”

“A fair point and what I was about to address next,” Faultline acknowledged with a nod as she tucked away the USB stick. “I don’t have confirmation yet, but there was a bomb threat at Cornell University at the beginning of the month. Though the primary threat never happened, the bomber decided to show they were serious at the start by setting off an isolated… well, ‘explosion’ doesn’t quite fit for what was, by all reports, a miniature black hole that lasted half a minute. That doesn’t precisely fit the situation you described, and the timing may just be happenstance, but the bomber was never caught, meaning it’s possible Lung recruited them. I’m still working on that. Our main focus is determining whether the bomber had any likelihood of being Asian-American, which will be a strong indication one way or the other.

“In any case, I’ve called some of my people to make arrangements. If they don’t get a verbal, coded check-in from me personally on a regular interval, then they will release the information. I’ll of course be making that abundantly clear to Lung when I have our response conveyed. Needless to say, posthumous release of compromising data, while a deterrent, is not foolproof by any measure. To that end, we will be discreetly relocating other living quarters for now and generally flying below radar until further notice with one exception.

“Shade, Meteor: This matter with the ABB will eventually blow over, and if we’re to ensure we still have work lined up on the other end, we will need you two to make an appearance in the next couple of days.”

“Faultline, you can’t—” “You crazy or something?” “Wait, the fuck?”

Masuyo, Shade, and I all paused and shared a quick look at our simultaneous outbursts, and before any of us could continue, Faultline clarified, “We need to show we will not cave to pressure, but we need to be smart and safe about it. Having all of us show up in public at once is too big of a target, not just for Lung but also for the PRT, who may well decide they want to renew their efforts to catch us after what happened at UPenn. Meteor being present is the strongest play we can make, with Lung calling her out specifically and her ability to make metal inviolable, but she needs someone at her back should something happen. Shade is the best choice here on a general basis because of her power’s diversity, but in particular she should have a very strong charge of Meteor’s power from all our time spent together, and if for some reason you don’t yet, then you start now, Shade.”

“I’ve got a charge of her stored up,” Shade confirmed. “Still seems pretty fucking crazy though. Might be able to surround ourselves with a shell in time and do her ‘elsewhere’ thing, but we ain’t got a guarantee that would save us. Fuck, might not even have the time for that much either.”

“It’s a risk,” our boss acknowledged, “and it’s one I’m willing to compensate you both for out of the crew’s general funds, since putting yourselves out there will be for the crew’s benefit as a whole.”

“Me too.” We all turned to Labyrinth, whose hands were balled up in fists on the table and shaking slightly. “Can help.”

“Labs,” I protested, the nickname slipping off my tongue, “we haven’t even agreed to this yet. It’s a huge risk.”

“And a huge risk entails a huge reward,” Faultline seriously replied. “For all three of you, should you join them, Labyrinth. Take time and think on it, that’s all I ask. We have some time to consider. For now, I must regretfully ask you all to pack back up anything you unpacked from our trip to Philadelphia. I’ve got people making last minute arrangements at our safe house, and we will be moving there by sewer once we have the go ahead. Please stay suited up and awake, just in case. Dismissed.”

Gregor, Shade, and Newter all began making their way out, the latter two grumbling a bit about the situation. By unspoken agreement, Labyrinth, Masuyo, Faultline, and I remained behind, and once everyone else had left, I spoke up. “I’m… I’m, um, sorry about this. Like, all of this.”

And I was sorry. Truly. But even more than that, I was starting to feel… excited about the thought of fighting Lung again. When I had been trying to get Masuyo to safety, all my thoughts had been on making sure everyone was safe, but once we were in Palanquin, the feeling had begun to swell in me and hadn’t stopped despite my best attempts to ignore it while listening to Faultline. God, what the fuck was even wrong with me? Faultline herself had said it before, I got lucky last time. But even knowing that, I just couldn’t deny what I was feeling. Deep down I actually, truly wanted to fight Lung again. Before I had moved to the Bay, the most dangerous thing I had ever really done was lift wallets and phones off of rich fucks who could easily afford to lose them. There had been running drugs that one time too, I suppose, but I hadn’t actually known I was doing that at the time and didn’t take any of Rodriguez’ ‘special’ jobs after that. The most dangerous thing I had ever fantasized about was getting in on safecracker gigs in the future… then just a few days after getting my powers, I straight up jacked a safe within a few minute’s distance from the local Protectorate headquarters and used it to trap a guy who could literally become a fire breathing dragon.

Is something… wrong with me? I uncomfortably thought of my compulsion, the reason I had to carry coins everywhere with me. “This blackmail you have…” I asked, feeling the urge to distract myself from all these uncomfortable thoughts. “Did you put all that together because of me?”

“Not quite,” Faultline answered. I could hear the smirk in her voice. “I collect information like this on everyone who could act against us. It’s always good to have a plan B, after all. I took you on despite the risk it posed of angering the ABB because I knew we had this at our disposal.”

That makes sense, I thought with a nod. It was like Newter said: Faultline had backup plans for her backup plans. She had been in this game for who knows how long, and she was successful at it. She knew what she was doing.

“I’ll do it.”

“Meteor,” Masuyo immediately pleaded, “stop and think about this! You heard her. Take some time, think about it.”

I shook my head. Faultline thinks putting me out there is needed? Well… maybe I’ll get my fight after all. “Not your decision. Sorry.”

“All the same,” Faultline calmly replied, a hint of something in her voice, “I want you to be certain. If you still feel the same this time tomorrow… Well, you know I won’t complain, and I will compensate you for it.

“Get your things together—all of you. We’ll be leaving Palanquin again soon.”