Vidya crossed her fingers on both hands, hoping for a miracle. It hadn't worked for the last few chapters, and she had no reason to believe it would work now, but she did it anyway. The teacher was returning the latest calculus test, and when Vidya's finally came, face-down on her desk, she found herself paralyzed with fear, unable to reach for it. One more C, and she would never recover. A B, and she might be fine.

The end-of-day bell rang. She held the test against her chest as she left, refusing to look at it. The school's front steps were scorching hot after absorbing so much sunlight, but she sat on them anyway, waiting, and also regretting wearing black pants. Her cryokinesis did not make her insusceptible to heat, and man, was it hot. She set her pager to vibrate and put it in her backpack just as Amber came trotting out the door.

"I can't do it." Vidya practically threw the test at her. "You look."

Amber took it like she'd been bestowed a trophy, looked, and whistled.

Vidya's heart sank. "It's that bad?"

"That was my happy whistle, not my yikes whistle." Amber flipped it around.

It was an eighty. A B.

Maybe Khan Academy was getting through to her, after all.

Vidya let out a sigh so big, she must've been holding her breath all day. It had been a while since she'd been proud of anything in this class, and she broke into a cheesy grin and kissed the test, right on the big red eighty.

"By the way," Amber said, raising both eyebrows. "I think Jonah wants to talk to you."

The whiplash from the extreme topic change left Vidya confused. "Wait, what?"

"He's walking here right now."

Vidya turned around. Jonah was standing there, frozen like a deer in headlights. He'd definitely noticed Amber pointing him out—her suggestive eyebrows were too obvious to miss.

"Hi," Vidya said. Her voice came out squeaky.

He blinked. "Uh, hi."

Then came the awkward silence. Amber stood between them like an interested child, shorter than them both, watching curiously as Vidya waited for something to happen and as Jonah tried to remember why he was even here. She grew bored quickly and said, "I'll see you tomorrow."

Vidya's eyes widened—not in surprise, because she knew exactly where this was going, but in alarm, because she knew exactly where this was going. "But I thought we were—"

"We'll just hang out tomorrow." Amber shrugged, turning around. "Later."

"Amber..."

But it was too late. Vidya's so-called best friend was already walking away. It wasn't often that Amber got to play wing-woman, and any chance she got, she took it.

Miraculously, the awkwardness hadn't driven Jonah away. He was still there, nervously rubbing his hands up and down the straps of his backpack. "I'm sorry about the swing," he blurted out. "I forgot all about it until you came to the party."

"I forgot it, too," Vidya said, lying through her teeth. "But it's fine. No bad blood." That part was true.

Jonah cleared his throat. Or maybe it was a stifled laugh; it was hard to tell when they were both being so socially inept. "We were friends in kindergarten," he said. "Do you remember that?"

Kindergarten, aka twelve years ago, aka too many years back for Vidya to remember anything. She tried anyway, bringing up kindergarten memories—show and tell, story time, lunch buddies—and trying to remember if Jonah was in any of them, but nothing came to mind. "That's—"

Vidya froze mid-sentence as something in her backpack buzzed. It took her a few seconds to figure it out, since this was the first time her pager was ever going off.

"Sorry," she exclaimed, backing away. "I have to go."

"Oh. Okay." Was that disappointment on his face? "I'll see you around."

Whether the pager saved her from a terrible conversation or ruined what could've been the start of a new friendship, she had no idea. Vidya walked away, reaching an arm around her backpack to take out her pager and read it. She didn't know if she was relieved or upset that she had to leave, but it didn't matter right now—she had superhero business to take care of.

_________________

Vidya braided her hair as she flew up Celestro's building, staying close to the windows. No one on the other side of the glass flinched; they were already used to someone flying up and down the building.

Juggernaut was waiting for her on the roof, leaning over the edge, watching something below. Vidya was nervous. All the Marvels worked with each other at some point, but she'd been hoping that for her first duo mission, she'd be paired up with someone easy...aka Phase, the only one who was genuinely friendly and not intimidating.

Vidya finished off her braid and tied it. "What's going on?" she asked. There weren't any details on the message beyond a request to meet up here.

Juggernaut turned away from whatever he'd been watching. "How do you feel about long-distance flying?"

"How long?"

"Anaheim. Around thirty miles."

Which was about thirty miles more than she'd ever flown during a single flight, since the only time she was in the air was for training or short trips around the city. Still, she was determined to prove she was worth something. "That should be fine. What are we doing?"

"I'll tell you on the way."

They took off, finding a comfortable altitude that was just around helicopter-high. Vidya kept herself steady and calm, somehow unafraid of dropping out of the sky out of exhaustion. She didn't know her limits, and that should scare her, but it only motivated her to become a good flyer.

Thirty miles to Anaheim...for her, it was new. For him, it was nothing. Juggernaut could fly across the continental United States in less than a minute. Vidya doubted she would ever be that fast, and she appreciated how slow he was going so she didn't have to overexert herself.

"Have you ever flown across the ocean?" she asked, eyeing the big blue Pacific.

"The Atlantic, yes."

"Were you worried about dropping in the water or getting lost?"

"No."

She hesitated before asking, "Do you worry about anything?"

He smiled. "Do I have a reason to?"

When nothing can kill you, there's nothing to worry about. Except for loved ones, of course, but she didn't expect him to talk about that with her. She shrugged. "I guess not."

Vidya twirled around in the air so that she faced the sky. Now, instead of roads and cars and buildings, her view comprised of blue. No clouds, no airplanes, just a giant swatch of baby blue as far as the eye could see. Beautiful.

"That's a good way to get lost."

Vidya laughed and spun back around. "How do you even know where you're going?"

"Practice."

"And how does someone without fifteen years of practice get around?"

"Planning on any cross-country trips soon?"

"No." Vidya meant it: flying was cool and all, but she had no plans to go further than a city or two away.

The rest of the flight passed in comfortable silence. Vidya realized she didn't know what Anaheim looked like, or how long a thirty-minute flight actually felt like. She would've kept going, thinking that Los Angeles was still right behind them, if Juggernaut hadn't angled down. He still hadn't told her what they were doing. As far as she could guess, it might not be a mission at all. Maybe it was just an errand.

They landed in front of a six-story building. Vidya craned her neck, eyeing it from ground to roof. There was nothing suspicious about it, but there was no sign near the entrance, either, so she had no idea what was happening. Then sirens were wailing in her ears, and a couple of police cars came barreling down the street.

"How does that happen?" Vidya asked, genuinely curious. "How do the heroes get places before the cops sometimes?"

"Private tips, distrust that goes either way, and speed," Juggernaut said, not really explaining at all but at least acknowledging her question, which was more than she could've hoped for. "Hm. There's supposed to be—"

Just as the police were starting to get out of their cars, a few windows on the third floor slid open, and out came barrels of rifles. The cops, Vidya, and Juggernaut were standing too close to the entrance, and the people inside didn't seem to be able to awkwardly angle their rifles downward enough, so the bullets missed the group and assaulted the area just behind them instead. Car alarms went off, and tree branches splintered apart, sending flocks of birds into the air.

"There it is." Juggernaut glanced over his shoulder and gave one of the cops a nod. "Alright, Frostbite, here's the situation: holed up in there are some highly dangerous individuals. Somewhere, there's a control panel that's in the middle of sending information to their associates, who will promptly blow up the city once the order goes through."

Vidya's jaw dropped.

Juggernaut smiled. "I'm just kidding—about the blow-up-the-city part. There really is a control panel in the middle of sending sensitive information, and we're going to stop it before it gets through. Probably by destroying the panel."

"Got it."

"The building's also about to collapse. Be careful with the floors."

Vidya looked up and down the building, realizing now that it looked a little...tilted. "Okay."

"There are guns on the lower levels, so I'll take those. You enter on the fourth. Good?"

Vidya nodded. Juggernaut patted her shoulder encouragingly, threw open the entrance doors like a cowboy in an old Western, and walked right into the darkness. Vidya waited until there was a pause in the gunfire to fly up to a fourth-floor window. She lay her hand against it and watched as cold spread from her fingers, frosting the glass. Soon it was encased in brittle ice, and with a careful kick, the window shattered.

She flew inside and landed, testing her weight first. The floor felt stable enough to hold her, but she could feel it cracking. What did they do—blow up the foundation? Remove the load-bearing walls? She wondered how important, how sensitive the information must be to warrant such extreme action.

It was darker than she'd expected. Every lamp was off; they must've cut the power. The tinted windows didn't let in much light, but it was enough to let her move forward without waiting too long for her eyes to adjust to the dark. She walked carefully, testing her weight with every other step, listening. The gunfire downstairs drowned out every other noise. The only way to tell if there were assailants nearby was to see them.

And see them she did not, until there was one right in front of her face. If he had a gun, he wasn't using it, so after her initial yelp of surprise, she ducked to the side and froze his feet to the floor. Then she pushed him over so that he couldn't get up, not with half of his lower legs frozen. It looked like he was trying to limbo and got stuck. She left him there, knowing he wouldn't tell her where the control panel was if she asked.

The rest of the fourth floor was empty. She found a hole in the ceiling and flew up to the fifth, and once she realized that was empty, too, except for another person who also got stuck in limbo mode, she found another hole in the ceiling and flew up to the sixth and highest floor.

This one was somewhat lit up, because the entire floor comprised of only one room. One side was dark where it looked like an elevator shaft had been blown open, and through the vertical tunnel, she could hear voices. The light came from a single computer monitor that stood behind a fancy-looking keyboard—the control panel.

Vidya walked up to it carefully. The entire desk was tilted a few degrees to the right, and she tilted her head the same way to see it better. Every movie and TV show had taught her that saving the day happened exactly a few seconds before everything went wrong. Well...not in this case. The information transfer was only at 43% done. The time in the corner of the screen changed, but the percentage didn't. The transfer was frozen.

She laughed and put one hand on the control panel, another on the computer box beneath the desk, where the important-looking hard drive was. At first, there was swirly, pretty frost, and then there was ice.

And then there was a scream, a ridiculous sounding battle cry.

Vidya turned her head just fast enough to see a guy running toward her at full speed. With her hands occupied with destroying the panel, all she did was kick out her leg. It worked; Kelly, Soo-jin, and Hannah's self-defense training was paying off. Her foot caught the guy in the stomach, and he wheezed, backing up before running away. A little underwhelming compared to the fellas downstairs, who'd tried much harder than that. Maybe seeing that a superhero was here had drained all their confidence.

But then came a different guy, one who didn't run at her or make any noise at all. He was smiling and holding up what was clearly some sort of detonator, his fingers slowly pushing the trigger in. Because, of course, they'd want to blow up the building.

Everything from then on felt like slow motion. The floor crumbled under her feet, and Vidya had to float to stay with the desk, which started tilting even more. She broke her hand from the control panel, quickly forming a sharp icicle to throw. Her movement was sluggish, way too slow. The trigger was almost pushed all the way.

And then, two thin beams of red light passed just by her head and hit the guy in the wrist. His eyes widened in alarm, and he let go of the detonator immediately, cradling his wrist as he fell halfway through the floor. The detonator fell unceremoniously to the ground, and nothing happened.

Vidya turned around in panic, still gripping the icicle. There were two red circles glowing in the darkness of the open elevator shaft, and they were the right size and right width apart to be eyes. The scene looked like something that crawled straight out of a nightmare.

Vidya immediately threw the icicle in that direction without thinking it through.

The newcomer jumped out of the shadows as the icicle shattered against his shoulder. "It's just me!" Juggernaut exclaimed, holding up his hands when he saw that Vidya had another icicle ready to throw. His eyes stopped glowing red.

"You have laser eyes," she stated, dumbfounded.

"It's another one of our secrets," he said with a wink, going around her to pick up the detonator.

"But that seems like a pretty useful power," she said, taking her hands off the destroyed panel. "Why don't you use it in public?"

"Because it looks terrifying. The last thing Celestro wants is for people to be afraid of someone who's trying to help, so they're working on a procedure to change my lasers to a color that's less scary than red. I think their exact words were, 'make him look less demonic'." He shook his head, laughing. "Until then, I'm not allowed to use lasers in public. It stays a secret."

"But this guy saw it," she pointed out. The guy with the detonator was still halfway in the rapidly deteriorating floor, hands up in surrender.

Juggernaut forced him onto his feet. "And who's going to believe him?"

True.

Vidya took the destroyed hard drive with her outside. She gave the ice-block-encased drive to a cop, who didn't look like he knew what to do with it. Vidya had thought they might want it, and apparently she was wrong. But the cop took it anyway, zipping it into an evidence bag.

The building was definitely on its last legs; it was precariously leaning over now, and the firemen had already brought out every guy that Frostbite and Juggernaut had taken care of right after they'd finished. The criminals were lined up on their knees, eyes glued to the ground, hands tied behind their backs as they waited to be taken to jail.

"Congratulations," Juggernaut said when the two of them were standing far from the group, looking up at the building.

"On what?" she asked, brushing leftover chips of ice off her hands.

"On your first real mission."

Vidya froze, realizing he was right. Heat had been a publicity stunt, but this was real. The overwhelming sense of accomplishment that had left her disappointed last time now rushed in all at once, and her face grew warm.

She smiled, more confident than she'd ever felt. "Thanks."

____________________

Lady Marvel was curled up on the couch that faced the kitchen, its back to the window. She was alone in the common room, reading and absentmindedly sipping from a mug of coffee. It was bitter because they'd run out of creamer, but she drank it anyway to waste time. There was a question she needed answered, so she waited patiently for the person who could answer it to come home.

It was two minutes to midnight when she heard the window slide open, and then slide closed. She didn't bother to turn her head and look.

"Why did you do that?" she asked calmly, keeping her eyes on her book.

Juggernaut walked around the couch to see her. "Do what?"

"Take Frostbite with you on that mission earlier today."

"The building was falling apart," he said. "I needed someone who could fly. Why?"

Lady Marvel lowered her book slowly and closed it. "Collapsing building, mafia, shootout," she listed, looking up at him. "It sure sounds like something the most powerful hero in the world can handle by himself."

"I can do everything by myself." He sat on the coffee table in front of her, smiling. "But if I did, where would be the point in having a team?"

Lady Marvel swung her legs off the couch so she could plant her feet firmly on the ground and lean forward. "Are you sure you didn't bring her because you felt bad about Heat and wanted to make it up to her?" she asked.

He blinked, surprised. "I brought her because I need her to trust me. Frostbite lost her faith in Fox after I told her about Heat, and I'm guessing she hated me, too, for not doing anything about it, or even for telling her when I didn't have to. After today, I'm hoping she'll trust me."

"So it was just about keeping her in line?"

"Of course."

Lady Marvel leaned back against the couch with a sigh, crossing her arms over her chest. "And here I was, thinking you did something nice."

"Stop trying to humanize me," he said, standing up. "It'll never work. Are you going to sleep now?"

Lady Marvel gestured to her mug of coffee, still more than halfway full. "That's not going to drink itself."

He laughed. "See you tomorrow."

_________________

After two thirty-mile flights, a successful superhero mission, a rushed dinner of ravioli, and several painstaking hours of homework and studying, Vidya was finally free. It was almost one in the morning, but she had enough energy left to let out a relieved sigh and pump up her arms in victory.

She rubbed her sore eyes and remembered what had happened earlier in the day. She opened her closet and stood on her tiptoes, feeling around the top shelf until she found her stack of old yearbooks. She sat on the floor with them and took out the bottom one, the elementary school book from the year she was in kindergarten.

She flipped through the old, dusty pages, unsure if she would find what she was looking for. The kindergarten section was at the end, and she stared, embarrassed, at her school photo: the gap-toothed smile, the two messy pigtails. She grabbed her phone, snapped a picture of the photo, and sent it to Amber so she could laugh at it when she woke up in the morning.

Vidya turned to the kindergarten memories section, full of more gap-toothed kids doing things like making pasta necklaces and messing around with glitter. Her eyes went up and down, left and right across the pages. There weren't many photos of her—so far, she'd only found one, and it was from Halloween, when she'd dressed up as lettuce to complete the group effort of a BLT.

She flipped to the next page, eyes settling on the upper corner. There was a picture of herself and a boy giving each other bunny ears, and on their wrists were what looked to be matching bracelets. She leaned closer to get a better look, but she was already sure. She'd recognize those bright green eyes and that dimpled smile anywhere.

The boy was Jonah. The picture was of her and Jonah, smiling at the camera together. He was right: sometime so long ago, they had been friends.

Vidya smiled and delicately ran her fingers over the photo, mourning the loss of childhood memories long gone.