ALTHOUGH THE COMPETITION at Canary High was meant to be friendly, the teams still gave each other the stink eye. Canary High's team was especially insufferable. They clearly thought that because their school hosted a majority of the competitions, they were the best. Their supporters always made up most of the audience, too, and that only boosted their ego.

I barely said a word during the entire thing and instead made a very, very long mental list of all the subjects I needed to study. I only knew the answers to twenty-seven out of the fifty questions, and that was okay for a friendly competition but not for a real one. I'd been around this team for so long, but only now did I understand their competitive streak; I was turning into Ben.

The judges didn't dare declare winners, since this was friendly, but they were willing to declare the scores after the last round. We were ten points behind Canary, who was ten points behind Hargrave, who had the most points. Hargrave looked happy, Canary looked miffed, and we were just amused that Canary was upset.

On the bus ride back to our school, I was sitting by a window, slumped down with my knees against the seat in front of me. "World War II," I said. "European theater."

Ben, who was sitting next to me, wrote it on a Post-It. "Anything else?"

I twisted my lips in thought. "FDR and the New Deal. That's all for history."

Ben wrote that down and capped his pen, holding up the Post-It full of random topics from all different subjects. The writing was cramped and barely readable at the bottom. "This is a long list. You're sure you want to study it all?"

I nodded.

"You're turning into me."

I scrunched up my nose. "Ew. I'm turning into an Irrelevant Goose."

"I'm serious, Peter." He lowered his voice. "Between everything you're doing, are you sure you want to be studying extra? The practices we have together should be good enough."

"If they are, then I'll drop it," I replied, rubbing my eyes. "But just because I'm running around in a costume doesn't mean I don't have other responsibilities to stick to. I joined this team, and I want to be good for it."

"Running around in a costume?" He shook his head. "That's a crude way to put it, but okay. It's up to you. If you need help, let me know."

"Of course."

☆

When Ben told me that I was putting too much on my plate, I thought he'd been exaggerating. Then I got home, went on my one-hour day patrol, went back home, and realized I had only two hours to do my homework before I had to go on night-patrol. After two months of summer freedom, I now sadly remembered the massive amount of time that school took out of my day.

The patrols were choices, made only by me. I was responsible for making my schedule, and I was stubborn when it came to altering it. Making changes as necessary and doing things on the fly would mean that I had no idea what I was doing, and how could I consider myself responsible if I couldn't even manage my time properly? I was going to stick to the schedule that I had set, even if it meant doing homework after the night patrol and going to school looking like a zombie.

I stretched a little and then stared at my computer screen, about to start my English essay on our summer reading book, Brave New World. My fingers hovered over the keys. They say the first words are the hardest to write. I knew that was true because it took me half an hour to write the first sentence.

And after that first sentence, I leaned back in my chair and stared up at the ceiling for ten minutes.

Mom came in holding an apple. She set it down on my desk, put a hand on my shoulder, and leaned down to look at my screen. I shrunk in embarrassment as she said, "One sentence, huh? Didn't you start this an hour ago?"

"Half an hour ago." I mumbled. "But yeah, I need to try harder."

"Are you stuck?"

"Not really. I know what I'm writing about, it's just..." I trailed off. "I don't know. I'll get it done, don't worry."

Mom nodded, patting my shoulder in support. "I'll be at the bakery until nine tonight, and dinner is in the fridge." On her way out, she paused by my door. "If you're stressed, just step away and relax for a bit."

I nodded, picking up the apple. I stared at it until I heard the apartment door open and close as she left, and then I bit into it, pushing my chair out to the center of my room so I had enough space to swivel around. Was I stressed? I was upset over my time crunch, but I wasn't that upset. My homework wasn't hard and the patrols were never nerve-wracking. There was nothing worrying me.

I stopped spinning in my chair when I noticed a firefly outside my window. It blinked twice before it was out of view, and I realized that it was Manhattan's freaky light show that was still bugging me. I hadn't thought about it all day, but it was in the back of my mind, stressing me out.

Today's newspaper was sitting on the kitchen table. I not-so-reluctantly stepped away from my homework to skim through it, and sure enough, the mayor had addressed last night's flickering. It was most likely a malfunction, he said, though they were still looking into it.

Most likely a malfunction. Not definitely a malfunction, but most likely.

I frowned. There was no way I'd be productive with that little thought hanging over my head.

☆

I'll let you in on a little secret: not everyone likes me.

I expected as much, but what I hadn't expected was a little kid kicking me in the shin after I pushed him out of the way of a car. He said nothing, but he stuck his tongue out at me and ran away, his backpack bouncing as he went.

"You're welcome!" I called after him.

He yelled something back, but I was already going the other way, ignoring it. No one hated me, as far as I knew, but not everyone liked me. A few months isn't enough to get used to something like a superhero in your city, and I didn't blame them. Sometimes even I would wake up and think, what the heck am I doing?

I looked up to watch an airplane passing over. It was a few minutes to ten, and I planned on getting home earlier tonight since I still had half an English essay to write, a rough draft of a history essay due tomorrow, twenty-three math textbook problems, and for art, which I suck at and will always suck at, I had to come up with a self-portrait project idea that I hopefully wouldn't butcher. I'd give myself twenty minutes more for the patrol, and then I'd go home.

I made my way toward a quiet part of town, an area occupied by a park that held only one woman sitting on a swing, a few closed restaurants, and an extremely empty intersection. It was drizzling, and I held out my hand, unable to feel the light raindrops pelting my glove. I could hear a faint whistling noise, the kind of sound a distant airplane might make, but I looked up into the sky and saw nothing.

Then a car came sailing out from behind a tree.

And, like an idiot, I put my arms up defensively instead of getting out of the way. I was too surprised and too slow—the car hit me in full force and sent us both tumbling away. I inhaled sharply, barely aware that the woman had screamed and ran away, and scrambled to my feet as fast as I could, every bone in my body on fire. My heart was pounding, and I was honestly surprised that I was able to stand. That was the first time I'd taken an impact like that.

I rushed over to the car and found it completely empty. There weren't even any keys in there. No one had driven it into the air—it had been thrown.

Someone cleared their throat behind me. I turned around, expecting a wide-eyed bystander, but there was someone standing there silently, his hands clasped behind his back, dressed head to toe in black in what kind of looked like thin, kevlar armor and combat boots. His face was covered by a mask, and his head was tilted.

But it was the lit-up, sleek logo on his arm that scared me, because it was the same L in a hexagon from Chicago.

"Who are you?" I asked.

His mask pixelated, looking like it was dissolving, and it disappeared behind his ear. I tried not to look shocked that he'd revealed his face so quickly, but I pushed a tiny button on my palm that made my mask start recording. Even though I could look at the video of this later, I studied his face now. Mid twenties, maybe. There was a little scar cutting through his right eyebrow.

"You can call me Lex," he said, smiling calmly. "I'm sure you've never heard of me, but I've heard a lot about you, even in Illinois. You've made national headlines."

"And throwing a car at me is your way of saying hello?" I asked, unsure how he even did that, or if that was him at all.

"That was a warning, since no one noticed my hello last night."

My blood ran cold. "The flickering in Manhattan? That was you?"

His mouth twisted in disgust. "It was more than flickering," he snapped. "I thought someone would be smart enough to notice, but I guess I expected too much."

Without warning, something materialized in his hand, and he threw it at me. I caught it easily, but as soon as I noticed it blinking, I tossed it as far into the air as I could.

A grenade—that was what I thought it was, but Lex had laughed when I'd thrown it. I watched it sail high into the air and looked down just in time to see Lex running at me with a spear. It happened so fast that I just barely caught the spear, and I stared down at the pointy tip that was just a centimeter away from me. He'd tried to stab me, and he almost succeeded.

By distracting me with a beeping rock that did not detonate in the air and instead landed harmlessly on the ground. A fake grenade.

That was smart, I had to give him that.

I drew back my hand to punch him in the eye, but his mask flooded over his face, and my fist made contact with what felt like a hard metal wall. I hadn't been holding on hard enough, and he pulled himself and the spear away before I could hit him somewhere else, and I watched as he dropped the spear, and it folded in on itself and attached to his left boot, practically unnoticeable.

"What are you doing in New York?" I asked, stretching my fingers to make sure they weren't broken.

"You seriously screwed up my plans in Chicago, Red," he said, his mask disappearing again to reveal a very cutthroat expression. "You stepped foot in my playground, so I thought it only fair that I come to yours."

"You came here to get revenge on me, is that it?."

"I came here because you unknowingly picked a fight, and I'd like to see it through." He winked, and his mask reappeared. "Consider me New York's next challenge. Let's see how well you do protecting this city."

And with that, he vanished.

I stared at the spot where he'd been standing just a second ago. He'd blinked out of existence the way the lights had blinked on and off last night, an occurrence that he claimed to have caused, which was not a flickering but a hello.

An uneasy feeling crept up my spine.

I ran home and climbed up the fire escape ladder to my room so that I wouldn't have to see Mom. I could hear her watching Cupcake Wars in the family room, which, thankfully, did not have a view into my room. I closed my door quietly before turning on the lights and taking my mask off. My hands were shaking.

A quick search on Google brought up a grainy cellphone video of the flickering lights, taken by someone standing on the Brooklyn Bridge. I nervously chewed on my thumbnail as I watched, looking for the message Lex claimed he'd sent. The flickering was a loop; it was a specific pattern that repeated itself three times throughout the video, a pattern that I recognized as letters.

It was morse code.

I grabbed a pencil and a Post-it, mad at myself for not realizing it earlier, though it wasn't my fault. The only reason I knew now was because Lex had told me it was a message. Everyone had been panicking over the massive malfunction that left an island in the dark; nobody would look at the flickering itself and expect it to mean anything unless they were told that it did.

I'd been a boy scout for one month, and in that month I'd earned only one badge, and that was for morse code. I still knew the code by heart and wrote down the letters one by one until I got to the second repeat of the pattern, with which I made sure my translation was correct. After I'd double checked twice, I paused the video and read the message in its entirety.

Hello NYC. Let the game begin.

I closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair, holding my hands over my face. By stopping a robbery in Chicago, I'd brought a supervillain to New York.

Author's Note

      New villain, hooray 😛 I couldn't get his logo quite right, but the chapter image is Lex's logo.

      I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and as always, thanks for reading!