As we run back to the car, I decide not to grab my suit but to stay normal and in the car. Fractal will help calm people down.

  “A kiss for the knight in shining armor before she goes to save the day?”

  I roll my eyes before granting her wish. “Stay safe.”

  “I’ll stay safe enough,” Amelia promises, hugging Bianca goodbye before awkwardly maneuvering out the back.

  “Bianca, do you want to go watch your mom do superhero work or help me catch whoever did it?” I ask, twisting around to see her expression.

  Bianca tilts her head side to side trying to decide what could be the most fun, but she eventually points to where Amelia had run off to, and I oblige.

  I don't know who set the device. I didn't see anyone do it, and I really doubt driving around aimlessly is going to help that situation.

  It could, but all I would be doing is looking for any technology that is vaguely familiar.

  Thanks to the recent explosion and my family having been prepared for it, Bianca and I manage to drive to the location before the streets got bad.

  Once I've found a good place to park, the two of us quickly get out of the car and move to a good vantage point.

  The din of all the people congregating around to see a superhero battle is sickening; almost nobody seems to have the self preservation to stay away.

  Yes, Bianca and I are doing literally the same thing; however, it's different when we can both survive it.

  On the off chance the scene of the crime adage has any bearing, I slowly begin mentally combing through the watchers to see if they have any of the suspicious tech.

  I ignore the survivors Amelia, and the first responders are pulling out; they don't need to be accosted by my spying.

  The smile on my face that shows up when I see Amelia clad in her full armor burst out of a fallen building and begin blasting ice to help hold everything together for at least a little bit longer is infectious and Bianca throws her arms up in a cheer as she watches.

  There is something incredible about seeing a real-life superhero, even if the magic of mystery behind it all is more or less gone. It's not as if I don’t know Amelia or am unaware of everything she’s going through in that moment. I know her, and I have a pretty good guess at what she’s doing right now.

  Maybe because I know so much about it, the grandeur of superheroes seems even more incredible.

  Bianca shivering in my arms is enough to pull my attention away from everyone, and I find her looking behind us, her face contorted into an expression I neither recognize nor like.

  “It'll be okay. I'll make it go away.” I promise in a shushed tone.

  I use one hand to gently try to turn Bianca’s head, and she quickly complied burying her face in the crook of my neck as I make a slow pivot to see what's behind us that has her on edge.

  As I lock eyes with Caleb, only my willpower manages to let me keep my expression neutral as the two of us lock eyes.

  Why he was looking specifically at me and Bianca instead of literally anywhere else also sets my teeth on edge. I don’t bother trying to mentally parse through what the odd expression on his face is, but I watch him raise a hand halfway up to greet me before realizing the situation.

  Yet he doesn’t stop looking away for whatever forsaken reason.

  With a sharp turn in another direction, I begin walking away from both Caleb and the group of people in general. If Bianca and I really want to watch it, we can find somewhere to watch, even if it requires a little bit of power use.

  When I notice Caleb following us, my mood sours aggressively. “Bianca, do you want to have me go up and talk to him or just run away or go back to the car?” I ask as Bianca just shakes her head, seeming not willing to look up.

  Pulling my phone out, I send a simple text informing Caleb that if he keeps following me and scaring my loved ones, I will deal with him personally, and he’s not going to like how I decide to do that.

  Caleb pulls out his phone, and I can watch him read it, his expression now that I’m watching it instantly souring as he glares at the back of my head.

  I flip him the bird in response before not so gently weaving through the crowd to get back to my car.

  Amelia should be finishing up pretty soon from everything I can tell. There isn’t actually anyone here for her to fight; she’s just helping with people, though I make sure to text her the location of everyone I can feel that’s currently trapped in order of what I think is priority.

  Bianca seems to settle down some once we’re in the car, but I turn on music and gently do her hair once all the snow is brushed out of it as I chat with her about what kind of name I want to select.

  Bianca doesn’t seem to have any idea either about what kind of name I should go with, but she seems happy to listen to me prattle on about all of my woes, which is nice, even if I sort of feel like an asshole about it.

  “Do you want to be a superhero when you’re older? And would you want to fight alongside me and everyone or build your own superhero team?” I ask quietly once Bianca’s hair is done.

  Bianca grabs my hands as she seems to think hard about what is the option she likes the best before shrugging.

  “It’s a lot of stuff to think about, so when you talked to Mom, when did she say you could be a superhero?” I ask, watching the woman in question fly out of the building, a giant bubble of ice behind her carrying multiple civilians.

  I wonder how many are going to struggle with hypothermia or frostbite because of that kind of rescue. More than a few, I’m sure. But they had to choose between being crushed and ice, so that shouldn’t be too bad.

  Now that I think about it, we really aren’t a great group when it comes to protecting large groups of people without any consequences.

  I can’t protect groups; it’s just not within my power set currently. Cass could, I guess, though she would be entirely relegated to defense. And Amelia would chill anyone she’s protecting.

  It hasn’t been a problem so far, but I do wonder if it’ll stay that way.

  Only twenty more people I can see, though I think seven of them will get out on their own.

  Directing Amelia to the remaining thirteen, I idly wonder if this is what Asher deals with when he’s trying to tell us what to do because if that’s the case, this is definitely a hassle.

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  When we get a text from Amelia telling us where to meet her, I gently place Bianca back in her seat and promise her that after all of this trauma we’re going to get ice cream.

  Finding somewhere to meet back up with Amelia where she could get into the car and out of her suit proved to be more difficult than I had expected it to be, and upon locking eyes with Bianca, Amelia instantly turned on me, glaring. “If you did something to her, so help me, I’m going to test just how indestructible you are, bucko. This is supposed to be a good family day.”

  I must have visibly reacted as if I had been struck because Amelia already looked sorry about what she had said to me.

  Bianca on the other hand also wasn’t having any of this and clung to me desperately as she gave hopefully the most adorable pouty eye towards Amelia because even if I didn’t do anything getting Amelia to stop her warpath once she found out who did mess with Bianca’s calm might be more trouble than I can manage.

  “Jason. What happened?”

  “Caleb was there and watching us. When I tried to disengage and go somewhere else, he continued to follow until I told him to buzz off.” I say going for the simple version of events. “By talk to, no, I did not walk up to him and tell him to buzz off. I texted him. Yes, I have his number. I’m too lazy to delete his number from my phone, and no, you deleting it won’t help because I have his number memorized. No, I don’t know if he did anything to B besides stare at the two of us and follow. I had been looking for survivors for you to help at the time.”

  Amelia seems to process all of that for a long moment before sighing dramatically and pulling us all in a large hug.

  “Sorry for getting mad at you. I just hate feeling like I barely did anything. Maybe I should have let you go since you actually have a search and rescue power.” Amelia mumbles quivering.

  “You’re a superhero. You made them feel safe. Tonight I’ll go and find out what happened. And for the he who’s a dickhead, I can handle him so you don’t need to worry.”

  “Do you know why he was following us?”

  “No, but I remember someone looping around the apartment complex several times today, so I’m wondering if that’s the source of our problems.”

  “If he’s actually stalking us, what do you think he’s going to do?”

  “No idea, but I’ll deal with it somehow.”

  “You sound like you’re going to have to beat him up to stop him.”

  “You can always check to see if he’s gone full tilt crazy by internet stalking him when we get home?”

  “Ooo, internet stalking is like my twenty-third favorite thing to do in life.”

  “Do you have a list?”

  “No, but I’m sure I can come up with one or at least twenty-two things I like doing more, so now how are you going to cheer me up and make it up to Bianca for scaring her?”

  “We were going to go out for ice cream, but if you want to do something else, we can go and do that instead?” I snort, shoving her armor into the trunk and collapsed seats of the van.

  Amelia takes the sleeping Bianca out of my arms and holds her close. “I don’t think I want to do more family outings on days where we’re supposed to be heroes,” she says quietly.

  “Yeah, it doesn’t seem easy.” I agree. Finally, there’s nothing more I can say. I don’t know what Amelia went through in trying to hero with us there.

  “It’s easy to not worry about you when you’re also in costume or when you’re off skulking through the night. But I didn’t know how to handle having both of you nearby and able to be put into danger,” Amelia admits.

  “We were safe, I promise. I made sure nothing could happen to us,” I say quietly, kissing her on the cheek.

  The two of us stay like that for a long time before Amelia pushes me away slowly, a somber expression across her face.

  “I got her now. Go.” Amelia orders.

  “You sure?”

  “Someone decided to use a bomb in our city, and we couldn’t find anyone to punch in the face. Sure, if you find someone to punch in the face, let me know. I’ll find a sitter, probably, and be right over. But I’m not going to help with the search.” Amelia grumbles, kicking up snow.

  “Yeah.” I agree quietly, already working on taking off my jacket. “When I’m done for the day, I’ll take the suits back to the tower.”

  “That’s going to be a lot of driving or extra walking.”

  “I don’t mind.” I say, phasing into the back and begin putting on my suit. “Besides, like you said, I’m irritated as well. I can understand wanting money. I like money; it’s very useful. Just bombing folks pisses me off.”

  “The fact that you’re just phasing it onto yourself is not fair at all, nope.” Amelia complains as she watches me put it all on.

  “Next time you get the chance to get super powers, we can bury you alive and see if you get it?” I offer before slipping on the helmet. The whole suit won’t be able to turn on until I’m unphased fully, and with me standing in the car at the moment, it’s not available.

  “Well, that sounds not exactly fun, but I’m sure we can come up with an exciting variant to get me to phase.”

  With that note, I finally leave the car, dropping into the tunnels beneath the city as I let my power expand out fully.

  From everything I saw on the news so far with my internet searching, this is so far a one and done incident, though there could be more. I just want to be able to find some kind of place a person could go to manufacture giant tech-magic bombs.

  Picking a non-random direction, I tear off towards the lab where I got my powers. If someone was using it, shit would suck, but it’s the first mad scientist lair I can think of.

  Upon reaching the lab, all I can tell is that it’s been picked clean. There’s nothing in there of use, and it doesn’t even look like they have guards posted anymore, which doesn’t make sense.

  Multiple people expressed interest in the place, most importantly to me being Asher saying he was going to commandeer it the moment it was available to have a basement base where he doesn’t have to ride an elevator or stairs.

  So why would there be nothing in here at the moment?

  Unless it’s the kind of stuff that I can’t make out with my powers? More than once I’ve found things that I can’t exactly ascertain the nature of with my abilities, color and texture of things being the really big ones.

  At the idea of colors, I drift towards the stains, and I shudder on where that thought process leaves me. It’s like everything of potential value was removed, but what if the removal of all of that wasn’t by the suits and folks guarding it?

  If I were an evil mastermind, wouldn’t taking all the tech from a lab be the easiest way to build my own?

  It’s almost too easy to slip inside the lab, but I suppose everything has been easy to get into at this point.

  Once inside the lab I fiddle with the helmet turning on the lights on the side that Asher had forced in there despite my best attempts to get rid of them but the fact that he would now have the power to say I told you so was not lost on me.

  Now able to see, I could begin my sleuthing properly.

  While there’s all sorts of signs of fighting and the grooves of scratches of things being quickly dragged without care, unlike what I had been afraid of, there wasn’t any blood anywhere.

  The place almost seemed sterilized.

  At the thought of that, I tentatively try to sniff the air to see if there’s anything unique, but I forgot that I am wearing a helmet and the only thing I could smell was the filtered air.

  Just to check I phase the helmet and once again sniff the air and almost recoil at the smell of industrial cleaners.

  Holding my breath to fight back the smell, or maybe lack thereof, I turn my helmet back to normal and wait for the filters to help clear everything before finally breathing again.

  Though it really takes no effort to hold my breath for an extended period of time. One day I really need to try anything and everything I can do to see how my powers have affected my capacity to do various tasks.

  It would be incredible if there were some hidden, unique ability I had that I wasn’t even slightly aware of that made it so I could solve a crisis if only I knew about it.

  Entering the largest room of the facility, I finally find the first signs of a fight. While it’s mostly clean, I think those brownish stains on the floor would be most likely blood.

  Though I don’t know why they would put so much effort into cleaning only to leave bloodstains in this one room unless they wanted someone to pause and search this room for something.

  Yet I don’t feel any cameras, bombs or anything else that would indicate that there is something wrong.

  Pulling my focus in, I don’t feel any blank or blurred spots either, which makes me think that everything is going on normally.

  Think, how would a normal person look around the room? Well, dumbass, they would look around the room manually instead of just standing in the center like a dolt.

  Jerking my head around, I begin to visually sweep the room until I see crimson letters emblazoned on the wall with paint.

  “You gotta be kidding me.” I say, reading the words on the wall.

  Is the neon red paint supposed to make me think that it’s blood on the wall? Blood changes color while drying.

  Regardless the message of “we’re coming for you” in an abandoned lab, it really only makes me think that someone is in fact coming for myself, Smoulder, and Fractal.

  I really don’t want a nemesis.

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