Emily didn’t know what to do, but cold logic kicked in, and she found herself running to the bathroom, picking a cloth towelette from her supplies, and running it under cold water. A moment later she was next to Teddy and scrubbing the girl’s face clean.

“Boss! What’re you doing?” Teddy protested.

“Just keeping you clean?” Emily said. “Can-can you go wash your hands, please?”

Teddy grumbled as she stomped off to wash up. Emily ignored her and set the wraps on the desk, then she pulled her laptop out and set it up. She had a lot of things to look up.

Teddy returned, and soon they were both eating with only the occasional clack of the laptop’s keyboard to break the silence.

Emily had a lot of things to learn. So many that she decided that a second list was in order.

Pulling out her notebook, she found the list she’d made that morning and “tsked” to herself as only half the things on it were complete.

Her new list was a bit different:

1. Find out what happens to people with powers

2. Learn how to get rid of Villain status

3. Find a way to take care of Teddy

4. Call Mom

That was a good list, she figured.

Nodding, she set the notepad to the side and pulled her laptop closer.

“Is that a dog?” Teddy asked as she looked at Emily’s background photo. It was, in fact, a big smiling puppy.

“It is,” she said.

“You should get a bear. They’re better.”

Emily nodded. She didn’t think that bears were cuter, but she also didn’t want to hurt Teddy’s feelings. Her first step was opening her IreWolf browser, and then ignoring the eighteen tabs set to cute animal sites.

She started to Oogle a few things, weeding out the searches that led back to government-owned sites, and then focusing on those from older forums where normal people asked questions.

It was surprisingly hard to get straight answers. Most of the people were talking about hypotheticals, and the few who claimed to have powers themselves were supersketchy, or, if they had any sort of verified account, all they did was redirect people to the same government sites that basically just told people to contact some official channel.

“Done!”

Emily looked to the side to find a nearly empty box of doughnuts next to the torn remains of a chicken wrap’s wrapper. There was half a doughnut left in the box. More like a third and a bit.

“I left you a piece, Boss,” Teddy said with another honey-covered smile.

“That’s . . . thank you?” Emily said.

“Cool. I’m going to bed now.”

The girl started to make her way toward Emily’s bed, but Emily was faster and managed to place a hand atop her head. “Sh-shower. You need to shower first.”

Teddy slumped. “But I don’t want to get wet,” she said.