Breathing slightly more raggedly and faster than usual, I shakily turn my face to my right, then to my left...

I am either floating or... Lying on a layer of blue energy?

And I'm alive.

Completely unharmed as things stand.

"I knew you could do it! Woo-hoo! Oh, man, look at you! You're phenomenal, Esperanza!" Foul Play's joyful and technologically distorted shouts make my heart skip a beat.

The thought of having scarcely escaped a terrible collision or death itself had made me forget the full situation, notably that I have an audience. And that the spectator in question, who is flying down to meet me, is also the cause of my aforementioned near-death experience.

I hesitantly push my torso up with my arms against the undetermined glowing blue substance. It is... Solid, but confusing. It is intangible and does not possess any texture at all, however the smooth and even surface exists or else I would be touching the asphalt underneath it. If it were invisible, I would compare it to an imperceptible force, similar to Cheryl's telekinesis when she used it on me. The fact that it appears like a colorful field and emits light is considerably bizarre for an ignorant human mind to grasp. No offence to myself, I simply cannot comprehend whatever this is, yet. I suspect this to be the kryptonite energy the vigilante told me I would be able to control, actually. Disappointingly, I have no further indications than that.

Exhaling softly, I slowly rise, expecting the mysterious material to burst under my knees or flatten under the weight of my feet. On the contrary, it supports me, even standing up. And my friend, settling next to me against the peculiar apparition.

"Quick question," I more or less snap, surprised to hear my voice in the same electronically modified tones as hers. I anxiously demand, chuckling in stupor, "What..? The hell?! You could've killed me, Cher..!" My lips are forcefully sealed shut, I mumble the last syllable of her name inside my cheeks.

Did she use her telekinesis to do that? I did not see her move any part of her body...

"Tsk, tsk, tsk..." she playfully chides. "It's Foul Play, honey."

I feel my mouth recovering its mobility.

I distractedly agree, "Right." I swiftly focus back on what is truly important, pointing at the slab of blue light. "Is that kryptonite energy?"

/In its solid form, yes. Do you like the color?/

I smile behind my new mask, the nearly cerulean sky blue tint is definitely to my taste.

/Yes... Did you need to push me off the roof for my powers to activate or..? Is there an easier way to ignite them?/

/Of  course!/ She replies, amused. /But this was the fast way. And... I had to teach you the only thing that matters./

"Don't stand too close to the edge of a roof?" I taunt her, slowly forgiving her for attempting to murder me.

/Never let your guard down./

Her voice twists menacingly between my thoughts, and I wonder if she did that on purpose or if my mind is playing tricks on me.

The vigilante unexpectedly grabs my left forearm, only as long as she walks around my person.

/You are lucky this place is abandoned enough to make Ozum's Circus seem lively..! 'Cause leaving traces of your handiwork.../

She drags one of her black high heel boots into the shimmering blue substance, etching a long scratch in it. As though that is not surprising enough, the damaging gliding of her shoe emits the sound of fingernails against a blackboard. Cheryl abruptly ceases cutting into the kryptonite energy, promptly lifting her leg behind her in a way that ressembles a ballet movement.

/Is extremely risky./

Indeed, the lack of sentient activity that I had noticed when we drove into the industrial park is fortunate, if I have to learn a new skill from scratch. The discarded warehouses that go on for miles, shaping a woeful labyrinth, have the countenance of a cemetery. A bare, freezing, vermin invaded land with metallic rectangular graves and probably a few bodies buried underneath them. The smoke of nearby factories, escaping elongated chimneys, gigantic cigarettes that fill the Earth's lungs with illness, shields us from the remaining sunlight.

There is not much sunlight that beams onto Gotham City to begin with, especially not on an evening in December, if that is any consolation. I have grown accustomed to the dreary, gloomy, dark and biting weather of this... Special city. Even if I grew up in a sunny and warm state of this equally special country, the horrors of Gotham do not include its temperature in my book. I never minded the rain.

Memories from my childhood are blossoming at the edges of my consciousness, I can see them rising from the dead, hazy in the distance. Now is not the time for that, for those... For sentimentality.

Foul Play's voice slips inside my head.

/How do you feel about killing a bunch of birds with one stone?/

I am tempted to correct her, since the saying mentions two innocent birds and not a flock of them, but I reason against it.

Intrigued, I ask her, /What do you have in mind?/

She begins pacing in front of me.

/Well... You know how I can copy people's abilities with a mere telepathic glance and all that? If you had access to that power, you could just watch me manipulate kryptonite, absorb my knowledge and whatnot, then BAM!/

I jump, startled by her louder cry and her teleportation to my right side. Cheryl casually props her elbow onto my taller shoulder.

"You'd know exactly how to do it." Her corrupted voice contains excitement, which is remarkably contagious.

/Okay, that seems great, but how would it even work? Reproducing others' powers is not telepathy or creating kryptonite energy, and that is what you so generously gifted me./

/Aw... You're forgetting the best part..!/

A dramatic opera chorus echoes inside my brain, disembodied, and only augmenting in intensity as the gash in my mind's borders makes itself increasingly present. It feels so heavy that my eardrums are pounding and my sense of sight is fading into oblivion... I taste blood on my tongue, although I cannot feel any liquid in my mouth, and a vivid shower of green light spreads in the right lower back area of my psyche, shining from the inside of a kryptonite green gulf.

With a full body shudder, rough and precise, I am back to my normal state. Exhaling hurriedly, twice in less than a few seconds, I prepare my query.

/Our bond? Can I replicate your powers thanks to it?/

My friend giggles ecstatically, she is presently back to striding at a distance from me.

/Not only mine... You see, Esperanza, whenever our minds are in fusion, you can gain and use any of my powers. And if you're already inside of here, teaching yourself to make 'em work is a piece of cake./

/If I'm getting what you're saying, I have to go inside your mind to fuse ours together?/

/More or less... The fabric of our psyches is already one, hence the openings in both of our mind barriers. To fuse our brains completely, you need to extend your consciousness into the tunnel that binds us, of course, but it's not just about reading my thoughts or entering my mind. You have to extend your own mind's border and mold it around my own, until our borders also become one. Then, the fusion is complete. Obviously, it can be done and undone without problem, as we wish./

The young woman promptly raises her right arm and, with a crackling sound, a large crystal of kryptonite sprouts from the ground behind her, reaching her shoulders in height. She whisks her wrist, and the top half crumbles to flatten itself around the height of her thighs, before shards of it violently emerge to create a back and arms to what I now understand is a seat. Cheryl plops down on her hard kryptonite throne, crossing one leg over the other delicately.

/Is that the only explanation I get?/ I chuckle. /Foul Play, what about the downside of fusing them? I mean, I don't see how different fusing our minds can be from just leaving them connected. There's a disadvantage of some sort, or else we'd just have fused them and kept them like that all along, right?/

My partner drums her slender fingers on the jagged tips of her armrests.

/It's pretty simple, really! Right now, each mind has a body of its own. Our minds are separate. In fusion, they transform into one mind that controls two bodies. Our psyches will not merge into one different consciousness, but we will be linked, like the right and left arms of a single person./

"Now, get to work, Peanut. Ya know I can't do it for you." Her warbled voice disconcerts me, once more.

If standing still for a half-hour is straining, the real difficulty is doing that while painstakingly attempting to fuse one's mind with another. According to the masterful telepath, our established bond makes this possible, however I am still failing to get a grip on her borders. Even if I am just trying to interlace mine with hers, they are too strong, vibrant and they. Keep. Moving.

Her mind borders are a tsunami of telepathic strength.

"I want to help you, Foul Play, but this..." I sigh. "I'm wasting time we could be spending catching crooks!"

I lift my right hand to scratch my nose, banging my fingers against the metallic plate of my mask. I grunt, slapping my hands into place around my hips and staring up at the sky. I realize I am panting aggressively.

/Just wiggle it./

I scrunch my nose a few times, but that relief is short-lived.

I huff loudly, briskly closing my eyes.

Okay.

I can do this. Feel the borders. Locate the breach. Spread your mind into it... Find her mind...

I hear a roaring rumble in the distance, muffled screams... They are not real, though. Echoes? That's it..! I need to take a step back, I am moving away from her mind, still gripping onto what I am encompassing.

I feel it, now. A wildly pulsing orb of sheer power.

I wrap my mind around it, pulling to tighten my hold... Bringing the two pieces together...

A soft click.

With a spasm, my eyes open.

Woah.

I am flooded in sensory information... A loud cacophony of thoughts is whirling in the back of my head, too hurriedly and somehow too faint for me to comprehend. When I look at my surroundings, the edges are blurred. If I focus on it, the blur fills everything in my vision and...

AH!

That's... I'm staring at myself, I... From Cheryl's point of...

I look down, I am sitting in a kryptonite armchair and I have thin legs in a purple, black and green suit... No, no... I shake my head, I feel myself doing it, yet I am still observing from... Blinking might...

God, finally. I am back to looking at my own perception. The chatter is incessant, but it is growing softer...

I exhale shakily, attempting to send a message to Foul Play.

I... I cannot. Because our minds are one... Lord, please, help me.

Don't freak out, you're doing great. And I can help.

Foul Play..?!

My inner voice could be heard repeating every word she spoke, like the voice-over in a badly translated ad.

That sounds so weird, why are you..?

Calm down, Esperanza. What do you want me to do?

Can my corner of our fused mind be silent, please? I do not know how to manage that much stimuli.

Working on it already... I was fragmenting our bodies to assign them to each mind completely... You won't slip and get my vision or my sense of touch, or something, by accident again.

Thank you...

Indeed, my mind is quiet, now.

I move my palms off my hips, breathing steadily. That was enough messing around. Let's do this thing.