Amanda calls me as soon as Adam is out the door, but when I pick up, she hangs up immediately. I call her back and she picks up before hanging up again. I frown as the dull, abrasive noise of the phone blares through the other side, and I put it down and decide to message her instead. Karen and Garrett are fighting about the merits of an obscure indie band, which floods our group chat, so I text her on the side chat.

Hey. What time's the Naval Brigade party?

Now.

I frown. This would have been nice to know a few hours ago, but I haven't had a handle on Amanda all day. Okay. I'll be right over.

Take your time.

I click the phone closed.

"Mom? I'm heading out." I yell up the stairs.

 My mom races to the main floor so quickly her feet sound like one continuous motion- like listening to someone fall down the stairs, thump, thump, thump. She's wearing a reasonably generic witch costume, and she smiles, when she sees me. "Alright, we'll be down the block! Will Adam be with you?"

"Adam went out with some friends." I tell her. "You and dad have fun at your block party."

"You have fun at yours, too, sweet thing. I'm so proud of you two." she says, "Making friends, joining clubs- Adam's been much happier lately, too, and so polite. High school is really working wonders for the both of you."

"Definitely." I say.

"Do you need a costume for the party?" she asks.

"I think I'll be fine." I say, opening the door, and I step out into the late afternoon. A canned laugh leaves my mouth, completely in spite of myself. Adam's great when he's there (not often) and when he's not sleeping or about to fall asleep (never). I try to suppress the bitterness rising in me, sharp and hard as a knife to the stomach.

This is your night. Don't think about him.

We went to our last Halloween party together- I even convinced him to match costumes once or twice, maybe even caught a smile-

Don't.

My phone buzzes and I pick it up, eager for the distraction. Meet you in the Veins. Amanda says.

Let me guess, you don't have a costume either.

I notice her typing but no message comes. I duck behind the church, which is vacant, and slip into the Veins.

The lair is even cozier than usual, and the air smells of pumpkin spice. Shiloh has a plate of pumpkin bread on his back, which tilts over as I bend down to get a piece. The aroma is enticing, but the first bite is even better. The bread is the perfect combination of moist and flavorful, along with being warm enough to heat up my whole body without burning my tongue. It's gone too fast, and as I look around I see that Karen, Garrett, and Amanda are already there, sitting in a circle on the ground where we usually do our sparring. There are various Halloween-themed pillows littered about, and I fall onto a pumpkin. "What's up?" I ask.

"We're just chilling out here, thinking of superhero names." sighs Karen. "Are we sure he'd be able to narrow it down given just our names?"

"And our appearance." Garrett corrects her. "Even if he can't recognize our faces, he'll probably be able to remember vaguely what we looked like. Pair that up with two high schools, maybe three, and he should be able to make some accurate guesses, or worse, be certain enough to pluck some poor innocent kid off."
"Fair. Do any of you have any ideas?" Karen asks. "I was thinking Thunderclap, but it's a little cheesy."

"Most superhero names are cheesy, we've just been desensitized to them." Garrett says, "That said, yeah, Thunderclap is pretty stupid."

"Thanks," Karen glares through her mask.

"I can think of maybe eight art puns off the top of my head that are sufficiently bad enough to do the trick." suggests Amanda.

"Okay, what's good with a lunar theme?" I ask.

"Moon Moon." Amanda smiles.

"Not in a thousand years, Amanda, but nice try."

"Goddamnit, Moon Moon."

"Throw some phases of the moon at me."

"Waning gibbous. Waxing crescent. New moon." Garrett suggests.

"Never mind. Moon phases are actually really lame." I say, "Okay. I might actually go with Luna."

"Really?" Garrett asks. "Will, I don't want to be an asshole, but-"

"Then don't be an asshole, Garrett." Karen smacks him upside the head with her pillow. Garrett yelps like a hit puppy, and Amanda snorts.

I blush, running a hand through my hair. My heart's picking up again, beating not safe not safe like it does anytime my body gets under the impression I'm in a tricky social situation. "O-okay. I'll think of something better. Later. No mission tonight, right?"

"Halloween is supposed to be a fun night. The last thing I need is frickin' Ignatius ruining my holiday like he's ruined every other part of my life." Amanda puts her hands on her hips. "Come on, Will, we've got a party to go to. You two want to tag along with?"

"My family wants me to dish out the candy." Garrett says. He gestures towards the exit with one accusatory jab of his thumb. "I'll be around. Peace."

"Don't eat all of it, then. I have younger siblings to go out with." Karen says, getting to her feet. "See you nerds later."

"We'll bring the costumes out with us, then. Don't worry, Shiloh, we'll be back before midnight." Amanda says, ruffling the cherub's fur.

Shiloh drops the last few slices of pumpkin bread. "You'll what? No one's going to recognize you, for one thing, and for another, that's so dangerous I don't even know where to start."

Amanda rips the mask off, then winks to Shiloh. "That's the magic of alteration. I've already planned what I'm going to do, Will, when we step through, imagine your shield is made out of plastic and uh, maybe add a few seams. Fuck up the color scheme a little bit, drop the mask. Can you do that?"

I nod, although the idea of doing anything to my shield makes me feel uneasy. "We can alter them?"

"Yes?" Amanda says. "Next you'll tell me you haven't noticed we can sense Ignatius's Diosite with our own." She looks at my agape face and smiles. On anyone else's face, it would look condescending, but when she grins like that, I just want to laugh along with her. "Alright, alright, so maybe I've been practicing a little. Don't sweat it."

Shiloh leers. "I am going to be in contact with you both all night. The second anything goes wrong, you two are getting back here at once."

"It's a high school party. Full of nerds! It's nothing but things going wrong, Shiloh!"

"Thaaaat's the wrong thing to say." I tell her, then add, "We'll be fine. Forget you heard that. Please."

Shiloh's stare only intensifies. "In my thousand-year lifespan, I have not forgotten a single iota of data. Forgetting is not a cherub thing, Will Rosenbloom. Tread carefully."

Amanda is gone.

"Seriously. We're not idiots," I tell Shiloh.

"As you insist, Luna."

I feel goosebumps up my arms as I emerge on the other side, but the costume does look... significantly faker. The shield is still pure metal, cold and bright as the moon overhead, but the rest has been messed up to a level where I could claim it was homemade and no one would blink twice. Amanda's in her smock over her regular clothes, with her regular clothes almost showing underneath, and an insignia on the front. Her paintbrush is more ornate, giving it the appearance of a weapon from some cartoon. "We look awful," she announces. "Nice work."

I flash her a thumbs up, but it's half-hearted. "No one is going to buy this. I have no idea what franchise we're supposed to be from."

"Just say we're from some obscure back of the Internet webcomic you've forgotten the name of." Amanda says. "Two years ago, Megan and I dressed up as our original characters and someone gave me this whole rant on my terrible design choices, soooo I told everyone else it was from a webcomic." She laughs, but it's no more genuine than my earlier outburst.

"People," I say. "Hey, not everyone appreciates genius."

"I love you, Will."

We stumble through the streets together, following a trail of golden lampposts through a sea of roads, decorations, and half-seen children to a humble house with an excessive amount of orange lights on the outside. Sally waves to us through a window. She has a bow and white-and-black attire on, which I recognize from a web-animated series I used to watch when I was sure Adam wasn't in the house.

Amanda and I stride in together, and she practically kicks the door down and yells, "The party has arrived!"

The next few hours are a blur of sugar consumption, rumors about spiked punch that we all know aren't true (it's a nerd party), long arguments about which fictional character would win in a fight from various franchises, and of course, long, stilted segments of me trying to explain just how much of an impact of this webcomic left on me without revealing any details that Amanda could contradict later.

"Hey, AMANDA!" I shout across the dimly lit room, over the dull roar of "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah" (no, I didn't think it was a real thing until I heard it either). "Why don't you come explain the WEBCOMIC to Rya?"

Amanda hustles over with a new glass of punch in hand. "It's about five warriors who need to save the world from this botanokinetic mad scientist-"

I make a quiet cutting motion across my neck. Way too close.

"-aaaaand his laboratory of super-powered mutants. A lot of them turn about halfway through the series, some even get their own more magick-y powers, personally my favorite is the bird kid. You know, the bird kid?"

"Every good lab needs a bird kid." I agree. "My favorite's the lizard guy, with the fire breath. He lives through the whole comic, right? I haven't caught up."

"I don't know. It's really ambiguous." she says.

"Wow. Okay, don't spoil anything else," I laugh. "Sorry, we're really invested." I muster a smile.

We're selling this.

Rya tilts her wide-framed glasses, which have no rims on the inside. She's got a massive pink sword swung over her back, which is stuck in a cardboard scabbard, coated in rose-colored tissue paper. It rustles around her back as she moves, but it doesn't seem to bother her. "That's cool," she says, "I'm actually part of a team cosplay too, from this show I watch. Say, Em's super into webcomics. She might know what you're talking about. Em?"

"That's fine," Amanda says. "I'll, uh, try to send you the link later?" She pushes me aside, and the two of us bolt for it. Amanda loses herself in the crowd again, leaving me alone in a group of people I half-know.

"I've never heard of a webcomic like that before in my life," I hear from not far away, and I slap a hand against my face. This was a terrible alibi.

You two are an endangerment to our entire operation, Shiloh's voice rings in my head.

If worst comes to worst, we can pretend like it was actually a project of ours and we just didn't want 'more criticism'. No one is going to figure this out. I tell him. Now let me find Amanda.

"Amanda?" I yell into the crowd, and I feel a hand fall on my shoulder.

I turn around slowly to see Rebekka standing still as a ghost, which she so happens to be dressed as, albeit with a cloak rather than the traditional over-the-head sheet. "She's outside." Rebekka moves some hair behind her ear. "She's been a little off all night, to be honest. Probably because Megan's not here."

"Oh." I say. "Oh. OH." I gently remove Rebekka's hand. "I've got this."

I walk out onto the front patio, where sure enough, Amanda is sitting on an old rocking chair, watching children ebb and flow on the streets. "You okay?" I ask, sitting down beside her. We look like a pair of old geezers.

Amanda shrugs.

"Lots of noise in there."

"Yep."

"This... this isn't about Megan, is it?"

"I just needed to be out of the chaos for a little bit. Especially after that scare." she says.

We sit in silence. I fidget with my shield, watching the errant sparks of moonlight reflect off its surface, nearly overwhelmed by the orange glow of the house's lighting.

"Megan used to say that Halloween was the one day we nerds could cosplay in public without fear of judgement." Amanda jokes. "Okay. Look. I'm totally lying. I know this is stupid, especially because we're the ones risking our lives right now, but I'm worried about her."

"It's okay." I say. "I know how you feel. My brother doesn't really talk to me either, anymore. This new life- this is the best thing that's ever happened to me. It's like I've lept into this whole new world... but I can't help but feel like I've left some part of me behind."

Her hand creeps across her chair to mine, and then she clenches my right hand so hard I think I'm going to lose circulation.

Instinctively, or maybe with the most deliberate movement I've ever made, I lean in to kiss her.

Amanda falls out of her chair. We break hand contact and she's standing there, looking at me like I slapped her across the face, and then she breaks out laughing. "Will!"

"What?" I bleat like a startled baby goat. If my heart wasn't going before, it is now.

"Girls!" she yells.

"What?"

"I'm sorry for leading you on, but I'm really gay."

"Oh." I say. "And you and Megan..."

"I've totally mentioned we're exes before. Don't worry, it was a mutual thing. We agreed we'd stay friends, it was just stressful- ugh, this is so stupid! I'm sorry! This night is such a catastrophe." She tries to get up and bangs her head on the arm of the chair. "Damnit. Would you mind throwing the towel in? I'll walk you home. Together, I think we can take about eighty percent of the third graders still outside."

"You take seventy, I'll take ten." I say, "Or, you know, we could not fight people."

Amanda ruffles my hair like she did for Shiloh. I'm not sure if I'm being degraded or not, here. Regardless, we set out into the night together, hand in hand, and I think I could get used to this even though I don't know where 'this' goes from here.

We take the portal home, notable for being one of the safest, fastest, and most reliable modes of transportation, and emerge in our regular clothes at the church down the block. Amanda looks out at my neighborhood and squeezes my hand again.

"By the way?" she says, "I think Luna's a cute name. I know Karen and Garrett, even if they're teammates, they're probably going to give us both shit at some point for being us. Don't ever sacrifice anything because 'they told you to'."

"Thanks," I tell her, "Good night."

"Good night." she disappears into the Veins, and my heart leaps again. This time, I'm about ninety percent sure it's not just anxiety.