WE STARTED CIRCLING each other like sharks, never breaking eye contact. When he stood with the trucks behind him, I let my gaze shift a little to the three vehicles. I didn't doubt what he'd said; the weapons were definitely in there. He clearly expected to win, and judging by the small, taunting smile on his face, he wasn't expecting much of a fight, either.

I supposed that his confidence had skyrocketed when he had successfully thrown me off the Myer Building; and the public, like Ms. Henderson, must have lost some faith in me, too. That was okay. I didn't need them to support me, and I didn't need Remote Man to fear me, I just needed to beat him.

We stopped moving, and I watched as he pulled a glove out of his pocket and put it on. This glove was way more sleek than what I'd seen his henchmen wearing, and I knew it was probably more powerful, too.

"Bring out your worst," I said encouragingly. All or nothing. This was endgame.

"Oh, I will," he said, nodding. "Believe me, I will."

And then he ran at me. I noticed too late that the soles of his shoes were not normal soles, they were made of something else that allowed him to jump into the air and come crashing down toward me with his fist ready to smash into my face. Had I acted a second slower, he would have succeeded, but I jumped to the side and out of his way, and he landed in a crouch, denting the ground where I had just been standing.

"I've been thinking," he said, but before he could continue, I ran at him.

Punches were thrown and blocked, and because he was at least six-foot-four and I was five-foot-seven, I found it enjoyably easy to duck under his arm. The third time he tried to punch me, I ducked under, grabbed his glove with both hands, and tugged.

It didn't work.

He flung me away.

Ms. Henderson's words crossed my mind as I rolled to a stop on the ground. He had superpowers too, but because the syringe I had been injected with was the newer, improved formula, I should be stronger. I should have been able to tug off the glove before he flung me away, but because I hadn't, I knew that the glove was even more powerful than I thought.

I also realized that it wasn't a just glove. There were thin metal extensions that went up his arm, providing extra force and power. Stupid airpark lighting. I could barely see the slim details.

"I've been thinking," he said again. "Why don't you join me?"

Before responding, I shot out my little wrist string—the one I had used to attach myself to the side of the Myer Building—and the three metal prongs jabbed into his shoulder. The string pulled taut and then I was flying toward him, and we both crashed to the ground, and I held him down. "Because I care about people," I said, pulling the prongs out of his shoulder and letting the string retreat back into my costume. "Because, unlike you, I don't want to trade weapons of mass destruction."

He rolled his eyes. "Mass destruction," he repeated cynically. "As if humans aren't destroying each other already."

I was ready to punch the side of his head and knock him out, but then his hand formed a fist. He made it look like he was about to punch my face, so I leaned back, but instead he stuck his fist in the air.

And that was when I realized that the glove was the new remote.

I heard a hiss behind me and didn't even get to turn around before something slammed into my back, throwing me off of him and sending me flying forward. I felt pain shoot up my spine as I tumbled onto the concrete landing strip, and gravel scraped my face.

I was lying face-down on the strip, and I could hear him laughing. I raised my head to see him standing there smugly. The shapeless metal demon thing was no longer shapeless; he had finally turned it from Henderson's prototype into his own personal machine. Now it looked like a creature, a creature a little taller than him with glowing red camera-eyes and sharp edges. But as I stared at it, as I stood up slowly, I realized that it was flowing. It was a bunch of moving parts, commanded by Remote Man, somehow through his glove. Brain wave technology? Whatever it was, it was impressive, and it was dangerous.

"Fetch," he said.

The machine was far from a dog, but it obeyed like one as it turned into a mass of floating sharp edges and flew at me. I turned on my heel and ran as fast as I could, going down the landing strip, away from the trucks and the hangar and the man.

If I didn't run fast enough, I would get skewered. He was going to kill me, and then wait for a plane to transport his goods. I couldn't let that happen.

I could hear the hissing behind me, I could feel the proximity, and without losing any speed, I turned on my heel, ducked as low as I could possibly go, and ran underneath all of the sharp edges that were hoping to kill me.

Remote Man was surprised as I went barrelling toward him and the hangar, and it took him a few seconds to get the machine to start following me again. I spared it a glance over my shoulder; I had left it behind, but it was slowly gaining speed. I looked forward again. His eyes widened as I ran even closer to him, and I saw the realization dawn on his face that I wasn't going to stop.

Because if I made it close to him, not only would I get killed—he would, too.

As I had planned, he called the thing off and instead prepared for an up-close fight with me. I guessed that he hadn't mastered the machine to have enough precision—if two things were close, it wouldn't be able to only damage one, it would damage both. If he wanted to use it against me, then he had to make sure he wasn't near me.

I grabbed his arm, the one without the glove, and flipped him over my shoulder. He kicked my ankle and I almost went down, but I forced myself to stay up. While we fought, while he tried to kill me and I tried to defend myself, I kept stealing glances at the machine. It was still in its floating, sharp-edges form, but I was looking for its center. It had to have a core, it had to have something.

Finally I found it: I saw a light purple glow right between the camera eyes.

Remote Man flipped me over his shoulder, and I felt as if everything went into slow-motion. I was in mid-air above him, and I reached for the little boomerang stick in my sleeve. I took it out and stared at it for a millisecond. This was the weapon I thought I'd never use, but this was the one that might fix everything. It was small, thin, and its job was lodge itself into something.

I threw it, aiming for the core.

I watched it travel across the air as I slowly got closer and closer to the ground; I watched as it lodged itself into the glowing purple core; I watched as the machine shuddered, as the metal fell to pieces on the ground.

My feet finally connected with the ground. I stared at the mess, at the purple core that had been broken by a stick that had extended its little arms into a boomerang. It was a surprise that the core didn't blow up, but I knew that lodged stick was keeping it intact.

I turned to face Remote Man. His face was clouded with frustration and irritation, and, for the first time, he looked afraid.

Good.

He turned around, swinging at me, but this time he was sloppy, and I dodged it very, very easily, and I punched the side of his head. He crumpled to the ground, unconscious, and for a second, I just stood there. I was in an airpark, surrounded by an unconscious villain, three trucks full of stolen weapons and tech, and a pile of metal that used to be a machine.

I shut my eyes tight and carefully scraped all of the little bits of gravel off my face. When I opened my eyes, I took a deep breath and raised my hands to the sky, stretching. I couldn't believe that I had succeeded. After everything, after every doubt, after every lost fight, I had won.

I smiled.

I grabbed the man and put him in one of the trucks after I made sure that every one of the three was, in fact, full of tech and weapons. Then I sat down criss-cross-applesauce on the landing strip and called Kavanagh.

"Doesn't your school have a dance tonight?" he asked as soon as he picked up.

Oh, right. "Listen," I said. "I think you should come down to the Miller airpark on Long Island. I got Remote Man. And Henderson Tech's stuff."

Silence. And then, "You did this by yourself?"

I shrugged, and when I remembered that he couldn't see me, I said, "Hey, you and Jenny told me to try again. So I did. And I succeeded."

He sighed. "Are you okay?"

"Yes."

"Wait there. I'll bring the cops to check it out."

"Bring them," I said, "but I gotta go somewhere."

"Peter—"

"I'll meet with you later some other day," I said. "Please?"

Another sigh. "Fine." A pause. "Thank you, Peter. For everything."

I looked down at the ground. "Thank you, too, Kavanagh. For everything."

☆

When Ms. Henderson walked into her office and saw me standing in front of her desk, she was surprised and nearly screamed. Then she composed herself, shut the door behind me, and looked at me sternly. I was still in costume, and she clearly wasn't happy.

"How did you get in here?" she asked.

"Jenny let me in," I replied.

She rolled her eyes, like this was expected behavior from Jenny. She was standing close to the door, and I ventured a step closer. "I suppose Kavanagh already told you what I did?" I asked.

"He did," she said rigidly, shaking her head at me. "I told you to that you can't be a superhero anymore."

I sighed. "I know you did. And for a short while, I obeyed, but it didn't feel right. You're right that these powers were never meant for me, that I got them by pure coincidence, that I don't have to use them. I know I have a choice, and I want to use them. For good."

She stared at me icily, not responding.

I didn't give up, instead taking a deep breath and letting my thoughts tumble forward. "Super by chance, hero by choice," I said. "I want to do this. Please understand."

She stared at me for a few seconds longer, her expression completely blank. "First thing tomorrow morning," she said, "I want you to pack everything inside the box and seal it with duct tape."

My breath caught in my throat.

"I want you to send it to this Henderson Tech Building." She paused, her expression still blank. "We'll fix your things and send them back so you can get back to being a hero."

I blinked, surprised. "Are you joking?"

She sighed. "No, Peter, I'm not joking. I guess if you really do want to do this, then I can't stop you. I may as well help you."

I breathed a sigh of relief and then gave her a hug. She returned the embrace only for a second before pushing me off.

She raised an eyebrow. "Don't you have a school dance or something?"

☆

Fifteen minutes later, I was sitting in the passenger side of Mom's car. We were parked in front of the school. After meeting Ms. Henderson at the Henderson Tech Building, I had run home and grabbed my clothes from the back alley. I was fully aware that the dance was more than halfway over, but hey, I may as well enjoy the time that's left.

I straightened my suit's sleeves as Mom tied my tie. When she was done, I looked at myself in the side mirror. The gravel had left miniscule, barely noticeable scratches on my face, but I looked good enough. No one would suspect anything.

"Have fun," Mom said, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek.

I smiled at her and stepped out of the car, waving goodbye as she turned the corner and headed for home. I walked up the steps and entered the school, making a beeline for the gymnasium. Even though the principal was surprised that I'd shown up so late, I was still let into the dance. I found my friends pretty quickly, and although they were wondering where I had been, none of them pressed the issue.

Ben's special dance move was not catastrophic like it was last year. It was just a moonwalk, and he pulled it off incredibly well. Dana rolled her eyes at him, made a snappy remark about his move, and then walked away after calling me a dork. Typical, typical. She was still every bit a bear-bee, but at least she sounded more teasing than mean.

During the last few minutes of the dance, Ben and I found ourselves standing next to each other against a wall. I was sipping my punch, having just finished telling him what had went down at the airpark. He was still mumbling his reactions.

"I can't believe you threw a stick at a possibly explosive core," he said, shaking his head.

"Hey, it didn't explode," I pointed out.

"It could've."

"But it didn't."

"Whatever," he said, waving it off. "So, I was considering something."

I drank the last of my punch. "What?"

He ran his finger along the rim of his cup. "I know you don't want to be part of the team, but...why don't you come to Boston with us? For...I don't know, support? I thought it might be fun, all of us hanging out together."

All of us. My gaze drifted over to where Fei, Ayomikun, and Kevin were horribly doing the whip and the nae nae. I stared at them for a second, and then I threw an arm around Ben's shoulders and leaned against him.

I smiled happily. "You know what? I would love to go to Boston."

Author's Note -

     Well, that's it. The journey has come to an end. Thank you for all of your support, and for sticking with me as I wrote this book.

     XOXO, Kelsea Dove.

      Time Span of Writing This Book: March 15 - September 13, 2018