At 3 in the morning, Milly was sound asleep when suddenly a sharp pain coursed through her foot.

“Ouch!” Milly cried as she pulled away from the source. “What in tarnation!?”

For a second, Milly was worried a snake had gotten in. Instead, Niki sat ducked in cover at the foot end of her bed, arm outstretched. Since Niki didn’t react at all, not even to pull her hand back, Milly could guess what time it was.

A pair of tongs slowly spun away through the air, apparently knocked from Niki’s hand by Milly’s reaction. That also explained why Niki had taken cover behind the bedpost.

“Dang it,” Milly grumbled while she rubbed her big toe. She clambered out of bed and came over. “What’s wrong with you? I could’ve taken your head off!”

When Milly rounded the bed, she noticed Niki holding up a note, like a crucifix to a vampire.

Milly!

Principal Arkwright called.

Huge fire uptown police precinct.

Some heroes are already there.

Do you want to volunteer too?

PS

If you are reading this now,

sorry for the rude awakening!

Milly rubbed the sleep from her eyes while she read over the message. The first part seemed rushed. Judging from the way the second part seemed to have been tacked on later, she supposed Niki must have tried a few less jarring ways of stirring her awake.

A fire at the police station didn’t sound like too much trouble. Weren’t those usually near fire stations, anyway? If there were already heroes there, Milly doubted she could offer much help. One painful encounter with a coffee pot had taught her early on that hot things were still hot to her.

The siren call of her bed and warm sheets made a compelling argument to just leave it to the professionals tonight. If she crawled back in now, she’d probably fall right back to sleep.

Then again, even if she did, Niki wouldn’t know that and probably just pinch her again. Milly would have to find a pen, write a whole thing, figure out someplace to leave the note… That all sounded like a chore too and she’d be awake by then.

“Fiiine,” Milly groaned while she dragged her feet over to the door, then stepped barefoot into her shoes and grabbed her coat; pajama pants would have to do. In the process, she noticed the watch on her wrist. “Oh, cool. Niki mentioned…Huh?”

The watch’s vital monitoring function was familiar to Milly. Niki had suggested it. The idea was to keep track of how Milly was doing. Neither of them really knew what all this time at superspeed might be doing to her. The strange thing was that the numbers on the watch were changing rapidly.

03:02:36.456

03:02:36.457

03:02:36.458

Milly stared mesmerized at the display. Nothing else in her still world ever moved before her eyes like this. The closest she’d gotten was a single instance of Stella’s teleport. It took Milly a minute to even recognize what she was looking at. The display on the watch measured time down to a single millisecond. Even at her speed, that still allowed the last digit to change four times per milly-second.

Was it weird that it felt like the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen?

“Oh, right! The fire!” Milly snapped out of it and got two steps closer to the door when she got distracted by the big open box on Niki’s desk. More accurately, the various items that were meticulously laid out.

A small stack of comic books. A skateboard. A spyglass. A random teddy-bear that Milly didn’t recall asking for. A scout handbook, multi-tool, map, rope, and compass. A couple rolls of duct tape. A first aid kit with an instruction booklet. Three different padlocks, a leather pouch with several thin tools, and another instruction booklet on opening one with the other. A crowbar. A letter from the principal.

Milly skimmed the letter and chose not to question where Principal Arkwright had gotten some of this stuff on such short notice. She recognized the comic books from the library, though. That also meant she’d already read them, ah well. The letter was just reiterating what they’d spoken about during the meeting. It seemed Principal Arkwright felt it would be good to have it in writing.

“That’s considerate of her.” Milly gave it a second pass, trying to imagine what Niki might think about it. “Mhm, or she wants to make sure I hold up my end of the bargain and don’t have any excuses about forgetting? Bleh, I really do like my version better.”

“Anyway, I’m sure this’ll come in handy. I just gotta figure out how to carry it around. Weird, Principal Arkwright’s letter mentioned she included a backpack, but I don’t see—” Milly caught a glint of metal and her eyes fell on a little zipper that ran along the top of the teddy bear’s head. “You cannot be serious. What am I? Ten?”

Milly harrumphed and crossed her arms while she stared down at the teddy backpack. It looked as though it was wearing a tiny backpack itself, little leather straps around its squishy shoulders. A sneaky way to include more space than the bear alone would’ve allowed. It stared back at Milly with its glinting button eyes.

“I guess I could use it for now and trade later for a—Oh, who am I kidding. I love it.” Milly groaned. At home, her bed was a haven for stuffed animals. All of whom she’d purposefully left behind when she left for Arkwright Academy. It wasn’t mature, but that didn’t mean she was over them. “You look like a Theodore. Fine, you can come. It’s not like anyone is going to see me.”

Milly packed as much as she could comfortably carry into Theodore and left to go find the hottest place in town.

As it turned out, that was the easiest thing she’d done all day. As soon as Milly set foot into the chilly night air, she immediately noticed the red glow against the otherwise dark sky just to the north. Well, ‘dark’ by city standards.

“Dang! Just how big is this fire?”

——————————

“...Oh.”

Milly couldn’t bring herself to be more eloquent than that as she rounded the last corner into the plaza. She could feel the heat on her face from here. The police station was massive, easily ten stories tall, and it might as well have been an active volcano. Not only that, but the fire had spread to an adjacent and even more massive apartment complex. The tenth and eleventh floors were an inferno, cutting off the escape route for everyone up to the twentieth floor.

The plaza itself made for a hotbed of activity as well, but from the other direction. Big fire trucks surrounded the police station and firefighters engaged the flames. Paramedics had their hands full, treating people for burns. Meanwhile, police officers were divided between helping, keeping the crowd of people and reporters at bay, and guarding a few dozen people in handcuffs.

Milly recognized some of them as The Minutemen that she helped put away. “I reckon they couldn’t just leave the crooks in lock-up if the building is on fire… but this is starting to feel a little too coincidental.” She resolved to keep an eye on them.

However, all of that was ignoring the elephant in the room. An enormous figure towered above everyone: Eight stories tall, it cast half the plaza in the shade.

It wasn’t until Milly had made her way to the front that she realized who she was looking at. It wasn’t even the face that she recognized, but the old-timey polaroid camera (now the size of a bus) that dangled from Big Picture’s neck.

Or rather, Abigail.

“Dang, that’s a big gal!“ Milly’s neck hurt just trying to look up that far. Even so, Abigail only came up to about a third of the burning apartment complex. “Why does everything here always have to be so gigantic?”

Milly shielded her eyes from the bright flames to get a clearer look. Abigail was in the middle of holding her hands up to the windows on the ninth floor. Milly judged by the smattering of singed-looking people around Abigail’s feet, that she had to be getting people out.

Back when Principal Arkwright introduced Abigail as a professional hero, Milly hadn’t given it much thought. She’d been just one more face in the room for their meeting. Now though, when the woman was reaching through flames to grab handfuls of people at a time, Milly could see it.

It also brought into sharp focus that while she was sight-seeing, people were in actual danger.

“Okay, uhm,” Milly surveyed the chaotic scene, trying to figure out how best to help out. Her first priority was to keep people safe. To that end, she could either try to remove them from the threat, or douse the flames to remove the threat itself.

Staring at the raging flames that already had most of the police building engulfed, Milly surmised it was a lost cause, but the apartment complex ‘only’ had two floors that were on fire. If she could take care of those, the whole building would be okay.

Milly ran to the front of the apartment complex. The doors were already open, thanks to someone casually strolling outside.

Convenient.

Once through the door, Milly went straight for the stairs then began the arduous climb up to the tenth floor. She zoomed up the first three, but slowed down to a more manageable pace when she looked up the stairwell and saw just how dauntingly far she still had to go.

She could see the fire and rubble above already. The stairwell was on the side that was closest to the burning police station and somehow had gotten damaged. Maybe there’d been an explosion? It was hard to tell from down here, but she wouldn’t be able to go any higher than the ninth floor by the looks of it.

On her way up, Milly encountered a steady trickle of people all casually walking down as though this was just another Monday. None of them looked even remotely worried and some were even in the middle of laughing at some kind of conversation they were having with whoever was next to them.

All of them were eerily calm. Why were they only just now leaving if the floor right above them was on fire? Couldn’t they smell the smoke?

“Either this entire building is a zen monastery, or….” Milly heaved herself up another set of stairs and saw a young man holding open the door for another small group in the hall. “Ruth’s here too.”

The rubble now blocked her from going any further up along the stairs, but the walls were still just fine. She even had more room to maneuver because the stairs for the above floor were the rubble, leaving a path straight up.

Milly gulped. She knew she could run up vertical walls, but she’d purposely stuck to horizontal runs only after launching herself into the sky during her first outing. Her back ached just remembering her rough landing on the roof.

“It’ll be fine. I practiced loads, and worst-case scenario: I run into the stairs of the next floor… then bounce off and cushion my fall on these nice pieces of jagged concrete.” Milly failed to reassure herself.

“Come on! You know this works best if you are cool about it,” Milly chided herself while she felt her heart rate skyrocket. She grabbed the straps of her backpack and pulled the bear tightly to her back. “Even if you fall, Theodore can take one for the team. There’s loads of stuff in there to cushion—Hold up!!”

Milly unslung the backpack and dug through it. “I’ve got rope!” She took it out along with the crowbar and fashioned a makeshift grappling hook.

She threw the crowbar up the middle of the stairwell and over the railing of the next one. At first it moved quickly, but Milly could see it slow down as it lost speed due to drag.

Fortunately, it easily made it over the railing and out of sight. Milly gave it a moment to find purchase. The rope dangled in front of her. It too initially coiled like a cracked whip, but soon lost its vigor. Even though objects were easy for her to manipulate, she had to actively take part.

“Alright, let’s go.” Milly spat in her hands then clambered up.

Once she climbed past the tenth floor, she could clearly see the problem on her left. The entire section of the wall that faced the police station had collapsed inward. Through the gap, she could see the helipad on top of the station.

“Is that a T-Rex?” Milly gasped while she saw an immense green dinosaur stomping around on the roof, breathing fire directly down onto a large glass dome. “How? Why?”

None of that made any sense. Dinosaurs didn’t breathe fire, for one thing. Although, it looked misshapen and strange even from here. Maybe it was a dragon.

As if that made any more sense.

The strangeness didn’t end there. When Milly looked to her right, she saw the fiery hallway, but also a smattering of fireballs on stick legs that ran between the open doors of the apartments. They were the size of beach balls and had angry faces outlined with black stripes. Like some kind of poor rendering of a flame sprite.

Milly had to look twice to make sure she wasn’t looking at crappy cardboard Halloween decorations. They seemed so fake.

“Okay, that’s gotta be the work of a supervillain,” Milly surmised once the initial shock wore off. She would not be surprised if the police station was full of these things. That explained how it caught fire so easily.

Milly would have liked to explore the floor and examine these creatures some more, but she could feel the heat on her face from here. Engaging these things would not be easy, but maybe they’d despawn if she could find the supervillain and take them out.

“I’ll bet that’s what is going on over at the helipad,” Milly groaned. She didn’t have any means of getting there at the moment. “Okay, fine. I’ll see if there’s any people stuck above, then figure something out to get them down. Somehow.”

She climbed up to the rest of the way, there were no creatures on the eleventh floor. The fire must have just spread naturally upward.

Finally, she hoisted herself up over the railing of the twelfth floor stairs. There she found her crowbar. It was just on the floor, bent completely out of shape. A trio of impact cracks on the ceiling, wall, and floor suggested it had bounced around with the force of her throw.

But, it wasn’t secured to anything.

How the heck had she climbed up here then?

Milly ascended the stairs while she tried to square that circle. She was so distracted that she almost walked into a large rotund man in a bathrobe and slippers.

“Gah.” Milly took a step back. That could’ve been bad. She had to pay attention to the task at hand!

The man was part of a whole densely packed crowd of people that formed an orderly line as though they were just waiting to pick up their lunch. The queue went from the stairwell down the hallway toward the far window.

There, Milly spotted the distinctive red mane of the only person she knew who could pull something crazy like this off in a burning building.

Ruth had the air of a bored carnival ride assistant as she ushered for the next person in line to approach.

Unlike Milly, Ruth seemed to be more put together. Her curly, red hair was pulled back into a bun and she had actually taken the time to put on pants, socks and to tie her shoes properly. Strangely, the rest of her was still a mess. A frumpy sleep shirt was visible under her coat, and she didn’t have any of her make-up on.

Maybe it had less to do with vanity, and more with practicality.

Ruth wasn’t the only familiar face. To Milly’s surprise, Orchid stood next to Ruth and was leaning out the window at the end of the hall. She was even in a similar state of dress as Ruth. That ACE sign-up sheet Orchid signed at the party must’ve gotten accepted lightning quick.

“On the job training, I guess?” Milly shrugged while she approached the window to see what had Orchid so fascinated. The window faced the street on the far side of the fire, which would’ve been great if there had been any stairs on that side.

Orchid must’ve thought the same thing, because directly below the window was a gigantic common ivy plant, climbing up the side of the building. At least, Milly assumed it must’ve been, given Orchid’s power. From Milly’s perspective the plant was just as static as everyone else.

A coil of green vines and leaves constructed a spiral slide that went down three floors to the ninth floor. That explained the trickle of people Milly had seen below.

“Huh, okay. I guess they have this covered.” Milly scratched her head. Between the two of them, anyone that made it down here was as good as evacuated.

Well, that made things much easier. She could focus on making sure people made it to the two of them!

Milly set off up the stairs to check for anyone that might be still asleep, immobile, or stubborn.

The next floor was abandoned. All the doors were wide open, which made it easy to check the apartments. The same was true for the next three.

The only people Milly encountered were ones already coming down the stairs. Each of them looked calm, some annoyed, until they weren’t.

The change was jarring. Suddenly, everyone she came across looked scared or nervous at best, some took the stairs three steps at a time.

For a second, Milly thought they were fleeing from something, but then it dawned on her. They were fleeing the burning building, just like everyone else. The only difference was that they were outside Ruth’s range, four stories up and a football field away!

It gave Milly pause. Not only was Ruth’s power much more far ranging than she thought, but there was no way she’d spoken to all of these people.

Milly was also reminded of the people who calmly walked out the front door below on street level. If they were still under Ruth’s spell, then it wasn’t just range but the effects lingered.

That was probably fine.

On the fifteenth floor, Milly finally found some action. The first person she recognized was Stella, but she was accompanied by another one of the ACE sign-up girls, a middle-aged guy in a mastiff dog mask, and an actual mastiff.

They were in the middle of busting down a door that the mastiff was barking at, while the unknown girl was one door further down, knelt down with her nose near the keyhole.

“You know what? I don’t even want to know what that’s about.” Milly threw up her hands and made her way over to the door that was getting shoulder checked by the guy. “This I understand.”

Milly kicked the door off its hinges.

“Right! Now let’s see what they were up to.” She wandered inside and had a quick look around. She found the occupant in the bedroom, sound asleep with earplugs in. Milly couldn’t hear it, but she assumed the fire alarms had to be blaring. Those were some good earplugs. It was stupid, but Milly felt a pang of sympathy, the city was a loud place when she wasn’t deaf.

Milly plucked the earplugs out and kicked one leg out from under the bed. “That’ll wake him up.” With that, she made her way back into the hallway.

“I think I’ve got the gist. The dog —and maybe the girl?— can tell whether someone is still in the apartment. Big guy busts the door down. If that person can’t move on their own, Stella’s here to take them outside in a hurry.” Milly counted each person off on her fingers. That was all of them. “Can’t fault their organization, I suppose.”

So far, each job Milly had tried to do already had people on it, and they were better suited to it than she was. Whoever had assigned roles here had a firm grasp of the situation and everyone's capability. A symphony of coordination.

Milly wondered whether Niki would think it was a little too coordinated. Maybe more orchestrated. But if so, what was there to be gained?

In any case. Milly was left without a job at the moment. She supposed she could knock all the doors down and save this squad a bit of time, but that risked confusing them and messing the whole thing up.

“Ugh,” frustrated, Milly groaned and stomped her way back into the stairwell. There had to be something she could do. She racked her brain for any other ideas. Shut down the gas main? The firefighters probably already took care of that. Watch the Minutemen? She’d die of boredom.

She continued her sweep of the building while she thought it over. Nothing of note on any of the other floors. The rooftop gave her a nice overview of the plaza, though. Even Abigail looked small from twenty stories up.

Milly sat on the edge of the roof, kicking her feet.

From here, the spyglass gave Milly a good look at the fight taking place on the helipad. The T-rex was fighting someone that Milly didn’t recognize. A bald female figure that was half made up out of glass and seemed to be able to conjure many small glass walls that were opaque at the edges.

Whoever it was, their job seemed to be to keep it occupied so it couldn’t fireball the nearby buildings anymore. The dome and walls appeared to keep the fire from the T-rex contained. One more job she wouldn’t have to worry about.

If the pattern held, that was probably Terra and another one of the new girls with a glass power.

“Oh, I’ve got it!” Milly hopped up and sprinted for the stairs. “Nobody is dealing with those flame guys!”

Milly rushed back down to the tenth floor and picked through the debris for a handful of rocks. She couldn’t engage in melee with the flame sprites, but if the crowbar had that much force behind it…

Milly chucked a rock clean through the nearest flame sprite, leaving a big hole. The rock bounced off a wall and clipped another before it bounced slower and slower till it froze again.

“Hah! Gotcha!” Milly threw five more, putting big holes in all six creatures she could see. The rest would have to be in the rooms, but the flame sprite in the hallway kept her from exploring those. “I could chuck chunks through the doors and hope I hit something but… I got a better idea.”

Milly stepped onto the wall and casually walked horizontally along it toward the enormous gaping hole the T-Rex had made. With a little effort, she stepped onto the broken wall and then continued her walk on the outside. She rolled a piece of concrete between her fingers while she approached her first window.

She easily spotted one flame sprite inside. It looked to be gnawing on a dining table. “That’s for eating at, not eating on!.... Huh, I guess those are kinda synonyms, huh? That didn’t really work how I thought it would. Ah well, this’ll be between us, right?” she asked while throwing the chunk at it.

In no time, she’d covered all the windows and taken out everything in sight.

It felt good to know she’d at least contributed something. She could see the fire trucks below were gearing up to douse the fire and that would be a whole lot easier without these things messing around.

Maybe next time, she’d make sure to be on ACE’s comms and get a role assigned too.

Milly had found a pleasant spot on a balcony where she’d taken out the last of the flame sprites and surveyed the damage she’d actually done to it. This was the closest she’d managed to get to one of them. It looked as though the rock had gone clean through, but it had torn a jagged path through whatever substance made up the body. The flame sprite was made of fire, but it was some kind of distinctly solid fire. Maybe more like magma?

“Mhm, magma’s molten rocks, right? I don’t think that’s quite it. It looks finer than that. Molten sand? Nah, that’d just be glass. I wonder what plasma is made out of? Maybe I should carry an encyclo—Oh, fuck! Terra!”

Milly covered her mouth. She wasn’t supposed to swear, but also, Terra!

She ran along the wall and jumped onto a different balcony from which she could see the helipad. Now that she was much closer, the spyglass let her easily make out the finer details. The edges of the glass walls weren’t opaque, they were sand that hadn’t been hit directly with the flame!

Sand didn’t melt easily, but it must’ve been hotter than expected.

No wonder there were so many glass shards strewn about, seemingly without a purpose. Terra couldn’t control the glass! Every passing moment, she lost more and more sand just defending herself.

“What do I do?!”