The Hero’s Guild had field offices set up in most major cities in the United States, each one serving as a communal hub for the local heroes to share information and resources. While many heroes operated solo or in teams of their own creation, the Guild was the umbrella organization that most of them worked with.

  Particularly when something unpredictable happened, and the local heroes needed some advice. That had been what drove Trailblazer and Visionary to the Argent office after their unfortunate brush with the Devils.

  So there they were, in one of the media rooms, staring at the carious recordings that the Vision Spheres had caught during the scuffle. To one side of the room sat Pugilist, a tall and stocky hero with short dark hair, a white domino mask, and ivory clothes that looked like something out of a Hong Kong martial arts movie.

  “They look like a bunch of high schoolers,” he said bluntly. “You got your asses beat by high schoolers.”

  “High schoolers with Apex powers!” Trailblazer snapped, grinding his teeth.

  Pugilist shrugged. “You have powers too. And experience on your side... allegedly,” he said.

  “Yeah well let’s see how well you’d do if ya had a bunch of super-punks jumping you. AND their giant pet freak!”

  The only woman in the room, Constellation, cocked her head as she stared at one still image of the black and white creature. She was a woman of a modest height but strongly built. She tucked one hand into her trench coat pocket, the other stroking her masked chin. “Looks like one of Doc Biohazard’s old flesh golems. But if it’s a STING creation, odds are they just stole or plagiarized his gear. Say, how sure are we these kids are criminals anyway? By all accounts they just smashed up a STING outfit, and that ain’t a crime.”

  “Connie, come on, if they were innocent they wouldn’t have come out swinging like that.” Trailblazer grimaced as he felt a flicker of phantom pain in his chest. A damned yo-yo... the only thing worse than losing was losing to something so stupid.

  “Moreover, several of these kids have been recorded committing theft and assault. Near as I can tell, they’re villains for pay,” Visionary said, calmer and more measured than his partner. But Trailblazer knew Clyde well enough to know he was fuming deep down. He’d been damn near shaking with anger when he first found the wreckage of his spheres.

  Well, losing was one thing. Getting punked by another Artisan was something else entirely.

  “That’s how a lot of them start out, I guess,” Constellation said, running a hand through the golden cornrows in her scalp. “Well, shit. They might be tricky owing to their mix of powers, especially that one invulnerable girl. But they’re still kids, rookies. You might have just underestimated them.”

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  “They got lucky,” Trailblazer insisted.

  Pugilist snorted and rose slowly from his chair. “Lucky. Seems that’s always the case whenever you’ve gotten your ass beat. It’s never your fault.”

  Trailblazer glared at him, watching as Pugilist dug a calloused hand into a fruit bowl and plucked up a fresh apple. He zoomed forward, set to snatch it, but Pugilist sidestepped at the last second as if his body was on autopilot. Then, in that same movement, he had caught two of Trailblazer’s fingers and bent them back. Not enough to break them, but enough to make him hiss in pain and recoil.

  “Sorry,” Pugilist said smugly, releasing his grip. “Was that just luck on my end?”

  “Stop fucking around. Christ, you’re even bigger teenagers than the dumb kids on the screen.” She focused on the images again, narrowing her eyes behind the golden lenses of her mask. In particular she was focused on the girl in the armoured jester uniform. “That girl with the toys... she seems kind of familiar.”

  Visionary shrugged. “The teleporting girl called her Toymaker.”

  The name made Constellation grow tense, eyes widening. Her mind drifted back to many years in the past, well before her powers had properly manifested. Of her body, trapped in the twisted wreckage of a car crash.

  Of the teddy bears.

  “Oh. Not a good choice of name. Toymaker was one of the idiots who caused Bonfire Night, wasn’t he?” Pugilist asked, alternating between taking bites of his apple and tossing it in his grasp.

  “So they say,” Constellation mumbled.

  “Could be a coincidence, although... two unrelated people having the exact same strain of Artisan powers feels astronomically unlikely,” said Visionary. “Still, as Dauntless likes to say, nothing is really impossible.”

  Trailblazer snorted. “Dauntless can blow up planets with his bare hands, he’s not exactly a fair judge of what’s possible,” he said. “But, sure, maybe this is a successor or a totally random girl. What difference does it make? Being a Z-lister’s kid means nothing.”

  “Oh honestly, have you learned nothing?” Pugilist sighed and pitched his apple-core clean across the room, where it thudded noisily into the trash can in the corner. “Stop underestimating them, genius.”

  Constellation sighed, shelving the thoughts bubbling in the back of her mind. “Keep an eye out for these kids in the future. They could be a problem, might require larger numbers to bring them in if it comes to it. But I’m not gonna suggest we make a priority out of them. There are a lot of sharks swimming around Argent, and these are a bunch of minnows.”

  That evening, well after Trailblazer and Visionary had left, Constellation had gone for a flight to clear her head. Thus far it wasn’t working.

  She floated through the cold night air on a current of controlled gravity, the lights of Argent unfurling far below her like a sea of glinting stars, her body wreathed in a shimmering halo of golden light. The logo on her chest was a collection of rings within rings, like the model of a solar system. The rings shone from her aura.

  “Toymaker.” Constellation repeated the name with some measure of disbelief in her tone. After all these years, was it really possible he had a successor?

  Slowly, carefully, she floated down until her heels gently perched themselves on the spire of a skyscraper. Chilly wind whipped and lashed around her, but the warmth and pressure of her shimmering aura kept the worst of it from touching her.

  It could have been a coincidence, she supposed, some random girl having a similar power to his. But Constellation was a woman who had long come to believe that there were no coincidences in life.

  Well if she was related to the last Toymaker, it didn’t matter how. She had to try and make contact. And, ideally, lead the girl off the crooked path she’d found herself on. After all, she couldn’t let history repeat itself.

  Constellation let out an aggrieved sigh.

  “What a fuckin’ pain.”