Mask led the way with the graceful movements of a dancer. Vidya would know: she'd tagged along to Amber's recitals for years, wishing she were half as elegant as the girls on stage, half as confident as Mask seemed to be as she ran, rolled, and jumped from one building to another. Vidya stuck to flying.

What am I doing?

Nothing wrong, she hoped. She promised Mom she'd be home before midnight, and it was only ten. No harm done there. Fox might have noticed her absence by now, but there were dozens of other important people to pay attention to. No harm done there, either.

So where was the harm at all? What was the reason for her to feel weird about accepting Mask's invitation? But...maybe that was what bothered her and made her question herself: she didn't feel weird.

She was excited.

Vidya watched as Mask took a fire escape ladder to the ground, and then she floated down herself. It was a small area surrounded by buildings on all sides, two of which were marked off by yellow hazard tape. In the middle sat a short, dome-shaped, greenhouse-esque structure. Beneath the glass panes was a spread of black tarp, obscuring the inside.

Mask slipped a key out of her pocket and stuck it in the lock. Vidya looked around, admiring the place. It was nice and quiet and protected. Perfect for a hideout, if that was what it was.

Mask stepped away from the open door to let Vidya walk in first. The greenhouse looked bigger on the inside. It was a spacious atrium, the arched ceiling covered entirely in tarp as dark as the night sky. A few lights hung from an overhead grid of thin metal support beams, casting a warm glow around the place. The guy who'd taken down the spider was standing at a lab table, holding a lighter to a Bunsen Burner.

"I'm back," Mask announced.

The guy flinched, the lighter flying out of his hand. They all watched as it landed on a rug, which burst into flames quicker than any well-made rug had the right to. Mask ran for the fire extinguisher, but before she even got near it, Vidya held out her hand and smothered the fire with a blanket of snow.

The guy shoved his lab goggles up onto his head. They left red marks on his face that stretched as he smiled. "Thanks."

"Be more careful," Mask snapped.

"Don't scare me," he snapped back, turning off the Bunsen Burner. "Would it kill you to use your inside voice?"

As they went back and forth about her inside voice, which she claimed didn't exist, Vidya turned in a circle. The space was so simple, just one large dome of a room and a few doors that led elsewhere, but she loved it. There were shelves of dusty books, two tables holding scraps of tech and tools, a couch, a small kitchenette, and a mattress in one corner with its covers all messed up.

"Do you live here?" she asked.

"He does." Mask snorted. "I have standards."

He shook his head. "What you have is no taste."

He was less flustered than he had been that night with the spider, now that he was in his own territory. It was Vidya's turn to be flustered. Why am I here? she thought. And now that I am, what do I do?

"I'm David, by the way," he said. "David Yang."

Vidya was surprised by how easily he'd given his last name. Was she the only hero who was always thinking about protecting her identity?

"What's your alias?" she asked.

"I don't have one."

"What's your superpower?"

"Don't have one of those, either." He gestured to the tables, spreading his hands like a magician presenting his trick. "I'm just a techie. I rely on gadgets and things."

Vidya blinked. "Wow. That's..."

"Stupid, I know." He shoved his hands into his pockets and sighed. "Dangerous, risky—"

"Actually, I was going to say awesome. A hero without powers?" Vidya grinned, genuinely impressed. "That's amazing!"

It wasn't the reaction he was used to getting, and it showed. He stared at her, his mouth opening and closing, but no words managed to come out.

"Uh, hello?" Mask interrupted. She lounged on the couch with her knees drawn up, a bowl of popcorn nestled on her stomach. "Can we move it over here? I'm tired."

Vidya was too awkward to stay standing but too awkward to sit down, so she perched on the armrest. David shoved the covers aside and sat on the corner of the mattress. The goggles kept slipping off his head and down onto his face, but he kept pushing them back up instead of taking them off. Whatever he'd been doing, he wasn't done.

Vidya stood. "You're busy. I should go."

Mask grabbed her hand, lightly enough to be shaken off. "You just got here!"

"Come on," David implored, apparently in no hurry to get back to his experiment. "We don't get guests often."

Vidya hesitantly lowered herself back onto the armrest. "Why did you invite me here?"

"The bigger question is..." David leaned forward on his knees, smiling. "Why did you come?"

They both watched her expectantly. Vidya fidgeted with the end of her braid, ultimately choosing complete and utter honesty. "I don't know."

"That's the best answer there is!" Mask clapped only once, but it was so enthusiastic that the popcorn almost spilled. "Try to explain everything, and you'll lose your mind. Sometimes it's just easier to say I don't know."

It was an admirable philosophy. Vidya nodded to show that she had respect for it. "Seriously, though. Why did you invite me here?"

Mask shrugged. "You're a hero, and you're our age. I just thought..." She shrugged again, eyes downcast. For the first time, she looked nervous. "I just thought we could be friends."

Vidya froze. These two strangers, who she'd never heard of, were trying to extend their friendship? That was crazy. Even the Marvels, her coworkers, were hardly her friends. She was so used to casual hostility that this unexpected, genuine kindness from heroes caught her off guard.

Vidya cleared her throat. She had nothing to say about it, so she wouldn't say anything about it at all, at least not yet. Instead she asked, "What do you guys do?"

"Nothing compared to what your people do." David laughed. "We're boring."

"That's not true. You took care of that spider, didn't you?"

"So maybe we get one good adventure every once in a while," Mask said with a dismissive eye roll. "But there's something you gotta learn: heroism is a hierarchy."

"There are the A-listers," David continued, "like the Marvels and other notable heroes, like Fade or the Golden Four."

"And then there's the B-listers." Mask threw popcorn into her mouth. "The other heroes that Celestro employs, and a few solo heroes who get enough attention."

"And then there's the C-listers," David finished. "The freelancers like us, who are lucky to get a mission that doesn't involve getting a cat out of a tree. We have no corporate backing."

"Or corporate rules," Mask added. She sounded proud. "We may not have the global platform or adoring crowds, but at least we're not obligated to smile for the camera."

"Not that there's anything wrong with that," David mumbled.

Vidya laughed awkwardly because she was one of those heroes. Just this morning, her Celestro-issued Instagram account hit one million followers. Emika recommended that she do a live Q & A soon to keep up the hype, and she'd agreed.

Mask shook her head. "Don't get me wrong—I have nothing against the A-listers. I'm even friends with Talia Roberts."

David raised an eyebrow. "You're friends with Fade?"

"Pretty good friends, actually. I should bring her here sometime."

"You still haven't answered my question," Vidya interrupted. "What do you guys do?"

Mask and David glanced at each other with the same type of grin, the one that said, see, I told you. It didn't seem like they were making fun of her, it seemed more like she was living up to their expectations perfectly. Vidya wasn't threatened—she was kind of thrilled to be having a conversation with heroes her own age.

"I can remove senses," Mask said finally. "It's not powerful enough to mean much, but it does make me a damn good spy."

It was a power Vidya had never heard of before. "What do you mean, remove senses?"

Mask held up the bowl of popcorn. "Smell it."

Vidya leaned forward and took a sniff. It smelled buttery, salty, and warm, just as she'd expected. "So?"

Mask narrowed her eyes. "Smell again."

Vidya inhaled...but there was no scent. She couldn't even feel the heat wafting up from the bowl. She could still smell the minty air of the former greenhouse, and even the vanilla perfume Mask was wearing, but there was nothing coming from the popcorn bowl. "That's incredible!"

"It's only temporary, but it helps me sneak around since I can mask my sound and smell and even other people's vision of me, if the subject's weak."

"And what do you do with all that sneaking around?" Vidya asked.

"Learn things. Distribute information to other freelancers, the police sometimes, if they need it. Sometimes we do the saving ourselves."

"Sometimes," David repeated for emphasis. "It all depends on the circumstances."

It didn't sound like a bad way to spend the time, considering they didn't have pagers that buzzed them for help. Vidya felt like a traitor for thinking it, but this girl who sat on the couch with her knees up, balancing a bowl of popcorn, and this boy with the goggle marks were already more interesting than the jerks that kept Celestro company.

That's harsh, she thought, holding back a smirk. But true.

Vidya took her phone out of her pocket to check the time. Still nowhere near midnight, but her Mom had texted, asking if the party was over.

"I have to go," she said, standing up.

No one tried to stop her this time. Mask handed David the bowl and jumped to her feet, stretching. "I'll walk you out."

It was deathly quiet outside, and the air was cool. Vidya wasn't sure any of this was real. There was something strange, something euphoric about meeting new people in the middle of the night. Come morning, would any of it matter?

Did she want it to?

Mask rubbed her hands up and down her arms, shivering. "I meant what I said about being friends. This isn't some trap, I swear."

"I believe you." Vidya smiled. "Thanks, Mask."

"Aisha Hadid," the girl said, taking a short, introductory bow. "But you can call me whatever you like."

Vidya went still. The world held its breath, waiting. She knew what she wanted to do, but she hesitated. A decision like this shouldn't be taken lightly. Slowly, she reached for her face and took off her mask. "I'm Vidya."

Mask was surprised, but she grinned. "See you around?"

"Sure."

Vidya put her mask back on and took off into the sky, relishing the feeling of the wind against her face. She was almost able to ignore how twisted it was that two strangers had made her feel more welcome in the hero world than her own team had.

__________________

The museum had put up a Frostbite portrait in the Marvels exhibit, and Frostbite had been invited to show it off. Emika stood in the corner, taking note of the attendance, while Vidya stood right next to her picture. She tried to duplicate the smile as the guests snapped photos, her lips almost quivering with the effort. If it was this hard to match a facial expression, she couldn't imagine trying to match and hold an entire pose like she would attempt to do when Madame Tussauds finished their wax statue of her.

When they'd taken enough pictures, she sat down at the table to start signing autographs. There were more people here than she'd ever seen in the museum, and they had all come specifically for her. She liked to think of herself as an unselfish person, but the excessive love felt good.

A little girl ran up to the table, practically throwing herself onto it. She wasn't holding anything to get signed; she simply stared up at Vidya with large, sort-of-familiar green eyes.

"Emma!" A boy ran forward and wrenched her away.

It was Jonah.

Vidya's grip on her pen went deathly tight. She looked at him calmly, but she was panicking inside. He was standing so close. If he looked hard enough, could he figure out her identity? She held onto the impossibility clause: in his mind, Vidya Khan was a classmate, and Frostbite was a hero. They couldn't possibly have anything to do with each other, so he'd gloss over any similarities he managed to notice. At least, she hoped it worked that way.

"Sorry, my sister doesn't have anything to sign," Jonah said through closed teeth, putting a lot of effort into keeping her from lunging at the table again. "She's just a big fan."

"You're my favorite!" Emma declared.

She was wearing an Elsa costume.

"No problem," Vidya said, making her voice just a little bit deeper to sound unlike herself. "Would you like a picture?"

"YES!"

As Vidya went around the table and crouched, Emma ran into her arms. Jonah sighed and took a few steps back to get a better angle. He waited for his hands to steady before taking the picture, smiling as he did so. It was a gorgeous smile, and Vidya's knees went weak.

The girl was out of Vidya's arms as quickly as she had run into them. "Thanks!" she hollered, taking her brother's hand and dragging him away.

Jonah glanced over his shoulder. "Thank you!"

"You're welcome," Vidya whispered.

They left the exhibit, and Vidya just stood there until Emika nudged her shoulder. Vidya went back to her table, feeling tingly, but she didn't want to admit why.

As if being a high school senior and a part-time superhero wasn't hard enough, now she had a crush to deal with.

___________________

As the elevator rose to her floor, Talia set her pager to silent. She didn't feel bad for doing so—hey, if she wasn't a Marvel, no need to work like one. No one would bother reprimanding her. She knew so many dirty secrets about Celestro that she could even blackmail them and still get away with it, so blowing off work-time was nothing.

But she would never blackmail, even if she could. She held too much respect—and fear—for the people she worked for.

Talia rubbed her eyes with a tired sigh. It was only eight, but she was long overdue for a good night's sleep. She opened her apartment door, closed it behind her, and turned on the lights.

She blinked. The entire floor was covered in a layer of fine white powder. Sitting in the trash was a huge, empty sack of flour.

"Why the fuck..."

She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled, wondering which one of her asshat friends would pull this prank. It was tempting to just go to bed and deal with it in the morning.

Talia turned and stopped short. A figure was standing in the hall that led to the rooms, perfectly still and silent. It looked like a man, and he was dressed head to toe in black, his face covered by a ski mask.

He held up a gun.

Talia immediately went invisible and ran to the side. She realized what the flour was for at the exact moment it became too late, when he fired his gun.

The bullet tore into her chest, ripping through flesh and bone and organs. Her whole body seized, and she slammed to the floor, involuntarily becoming visible again. Gasping for breath, she twisted around to look at the disturbed flour. It wasn't a prank, it was a trap. He couldn't see her, but her footprints had given her location away.

Damn. That was smart.

She pressed both hands over the wound, lifting her head. The guy lowered his gun and pulled his mask off.

Talia gasped in recognition. "It's you?" Holy shit. "What...are..."

She went quiet, deciding not to ask. If he'd been silent this long, then he wasn't going to reply, and she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of leaving her question unanswered.

There was blood rising in her throat, and she gathered what she could and spit in his direction. The pathetic glob of blood and saliva splattered against the tip of his shoe. He didn't say anything, didn't back away in disgust. He simply crouched down and smashed his gun into the side of her head, and Talia's world went dark.

Poor Talia :(

I've got three questions to see how you feel about the story so far:

1) Favorite character? Least favorite?

2) I switch POVs a lot to move the plot forward and characterize the side characters. What do you think about it, is there someone else's chapters who you tend to enjoy more/less?

3) 😏 Any theories???

I appreciate any and all feedback ❤︎ and thanks for reading!