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Chapter 20
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“Isn’t that—?”

“Yes.”

“Shouldn’t we call—?”

“No.”

Jeff stood in the kitchen with Mary and Kyra while the new guest was taken upstairs and treated by Wyatt. Mortar Mage and Walter were up there with them in case she woke up during Wyatt’s treatment. Jackie walked in, in full costume.

Diamond Grace was unhappy with everyone else’s decision not to call the cops, but they assured her that their new guest was far less of a villain than the media and the law enforcement made her out to be.

“Walter told me to tell everyone to suit up,” Diamond Grace said.

“I figured he might,” Jeff said. “Did that include Tatiana?”

The young heroine only nodded slowly. Kyra and Mary had wandered off, probably to change into their costumes. This would only leave Peter, who wasn’t known to ever have a costume because he didn’t involve himself in these matters, and Judy, who hadn’t worn or even been sized for a costume in half a decade.

Tatiana teleported into the kitchen with an altered version of her costume that she’d once said she wanted to try out. That was before her decision to give being a heroine a break, on account that she didn’t want her unborn baby to break her back when Princess Undercut was able to deflect bullets with ease.

“This thing doesn’t feel like it fits right,” she said.

“It doesn’t look so bad,” said Jeff.

“Right. You try thinking that when carrying another human inside of you, and enough hormones for a bus full of hot chicas.”

“You look pretty, and the costume looks like it fits you nicely,” he insisted. Meanwhile, he was thinking something along the lines of, “Please don’t kill me.”

“I can’t wait until I can go around in my regular costume and start kicking some ass again. When my kid’s old enough for it, I’m grounding them for every small thing just to get back at them. With my luck, he or she will do the same with their kids after I’m old and gray.”

“Suddenly, a lot of kids’ woes growing up have been explained.”

“I’d ask about your costume, but that’s pretty obvious, huh?”

Jeff took a step back and drew in all of the shadows around him. Splotches of black circled around him from his feet upward. The shadows returned to normal, and War Lagoon’s costume replaced his work clothes from earlier in the day.

The look on Tatiana’s face seemed to call him a showoff, but he didn’t see Adamast Cross walking in.

Adamast said, “I imagine that has some effect on your laundry.”

“Nope,” War Lagoon said.

Footsteps hurried down the stairs closest to the kitchen, and War heard one set of steps head off into the downstairs observation room. Walter popped his head into the kitchen the next moment. Without a word, he moved his head to indicate for everyone to follow.

The Dallevan League gathered by Mortar, who was tinkering with three smaller computers. Mortar said, “That one there, this from here, and oh gods damn it. Here, though . . .”

War Lagoon asked, “How’s our guest?”

“Sleeping and recovering,” Psi Wizard said. “We left her a letter for when she wakes up. ‘One, you are safe and among allies. Two, you are not a prisoner. Three, please read on, because it’s complicated.’ And four through a hundred or so sums up everything that’s relevant and has happened so far while including a guess as to what happened to her. She can prove us wrong when she’s ready to do so.”

“That sounds reasonable, assuming she bothers reading the letter and doesn’t storm out of here the second that one eye cracks open.”

Mortar Mage said, “OK, I’m ready. Here we go.” Some holographic projections appeared above the computers. They showed maps of the city. “This one, as some of you remember, is from The Event when Maryann and Ohm Wire shared parts of a succubus. Here are a couple shots of our guest flying in and out of town. The Vanquishiri are outside of our field of detection at the moment, as well. However, they were in the library last night as you can see here. Judging from this, the three of them with powers can ward off the effects of power suppression.”

Jackie said, “You can seriously track everyone with superpowers with this thing? Why not keep it up at all times? Use it to prevent powerful villains from doing too much harm?”

“There are two reasons we don’t do that. One, it would take up a lot of electricity to maintain, even with equipment that should be efficient and on the market in another two or three years. Secondly, there is a line most of us prefer not to cross when it comes to spying on people. If that wasn’t the case, we could give up a lot of heroes’ secret identities in a flash. Which reminds me!”

He pulled out a remote with a single, covered button on it. Mortar said, “It should be fully charged by now. Psi, you might want to brace yourself.”

“How come?” Psi Wizard asked.

Mortar pressed the button. Instantly, something felt different about the air around them. “That. Sorry.”

“Dude, holy shit. I thought it was just you recently, but now everyone . . . augh! Suddenly you’ve all gone from a masterful renaissance painting to a five-year-old’s attempt at abstract art. What did you do?”

“While we’re all here inside of this house, our thoughts cannot be read, our possible futures cannot be seen, and the ability to feel our emotions or powers will be difficult.”

“Why would you do this?”

“Because, for the last few months, I’ve felt like we’ve been watched by more forces than I care to count. An acquaintance of mine is helping me work on something similar, should we ever need it, but this will give us the ability to plan without anyone knowing what we’re up to unless they’re already here in the flesh. I know it sounds paranoid, but I didn’t have much choice.”

Walter said, “Very good. Now let’s discuss how we’re going to locate and beat the Vanquishiri while getting our friend’s body back for her.”

Mortar held up a vile with a shard of the pearly white crystal they encountered the day before. “I suggest looking up a few leads tied to this. It’s a crystal from another plane, and only a select number of people or companies handle anything transdimensional like this. Investigate them, and we might get closer to finding the Vanquishiri or thwarting whatever it is that they’re planning.”

War Lagoon said, “I think it’s time I had a chat with the Sillunisu. One or two of you are welcome to come with me. They might know something about the Vanquishiri Bahitians that we don’t.”

“We can do that?”

“I think so. There’s a chance I might need some help making it work since it requires using my mind to visit their plane of our reality.”

They looked over to Psi Wizard, who pursed his lips for a moment. Psi Wizard then nodded and gave a thumb up.

Judy said, “Awesome. So who do I go with?”

“We need you to stay here,” Mortar said.

“What? But I can kick butt again. I can do so much.”

“Yes, but you aren’t ready yet. We don’t know what will happen once you meet your doppleganger, especially since she has the original body. You have another important task of watching over the house while our guest is asleep. If she wakes while we’re all out investigating, and beating up the random bad guys, then try to be a good host.”

“I can do that.” Disappointment dripped from her voice. Mortar had to have noticed, because he was patting her on the shoulder.

Adamast said, “Not to sound impatient, but who’s going with whom?”

Devon read alone amidst a view, Paragon City basking in the daylight in the distance. He tried to put out of his mind what he saw these so-called gods do to a number of heroes. He tried to put out of his mind the likelihood that he, and the rest of the world, could die any day, any moment.

They had let him take a few more volumes of this record before they left the city. How had he not heard of such a thing before? It chronicled Paragon City possibly from the day it was first built. That was one volume he couldn’t carry.

He hoped that, just maybe, there was an answer in these books as to what he could do. Where was this Hobbs family that worked in the shadows? What was this “Frozen Pendulum” event spoken of in the start of one volume, but contained hopefully in the previous book? Why was there such a long gap before the next writer came along? And, who was this W-M that appeared again in the last volume?

He heard strange whispers and echoes coming out of the ground along this hillside. Normally, it wasn’t so distracting, but this was one of the few instances where the sounds ripped his eyes from whatever page he was on.

Vidnyanta and the others never told him what exactly they were doing, and he decided that it was for the best if he didn’t ask. So, he looked at the two masked, zombie-like guards watching him from the same trees and rocks that hid most of the rest of the hill, and he went back to the current volume with a acquiescing sigh.