“I’m not all that smart,” Lookout said. “I just researched it a lot recently.”

“Oh. Lookout, this is Fume Hood and Tempera. They were at the community center attack.”

“I know. I looked everything up and I found some of the surveillance camera footage, so I got glimpses of stuff.”

I wasn’t really sure what to say to that, so I put it in my back pocket for later. I’d digest it and talk to her when we weren’t in front of others, if needed.

“That thing about it being cool to get shot—don’t take that as an actual example,” I told her.

“Ha ha,” she said. “Give me some credit.”

That was part of the general problem—I had no idea how much credit to give her.

“It seems you’ve found your team,” Tempera observed.

My knee-jerk reaction was to say no. That the team was breaking up, even though it wasn’t. That it wasn’t my team, even though it clearly was, now.

“Guess so,” I said. “You?”

“Seeing where I’m needed. I was with the Wardens on a trial basis until things—” Tempera stopped herself. “It was probably for the best.”

“For the best?” I asked.

“I mean the Wardens and what they needed from me—the rest of it was definitely not for the best. The work I was doing was heavy. Tensions between worlds. It’s not me. I prefer community level things. Hands on work where improvements are tangible. After I moved on, I was checking in with Fume Hood before and after doing low-level cape stuff. Mostly refereeing riots.”

“It went so well last time,” Fume Hood said. “I ended up going with Tempe for a bunch more.”

“Wise,” I said.

“Oh yeah. That’s me. I exude common sense,” Fume Hood said.

Tempera looked back in the direction of the other members of Breakthrough. “In an email a bit ago, you mentioned what you were doing at Cedar Point.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It didn’t go great.”

“Well, um,” Lookout cut in. “We did scare off the villains there. We more or less handled it.”

“It was messy.”

“When powers get involved, it’s always messy,” Lookout said.

“It’s true,” Tempera said. She produced a glob of paint in her hands, then dropped it. It splattered on the ground to her right. A moment later, it reversed course, leaping up to her waiting hand. “Messy.”

“Neat,” Lookout said.

“I asked, after your email. People were positive about it,” Tempera said. “Cedar Point, and what you were doing. It got me thinking, we wanted to be community heroes, but—there wasn’t opposition.”

“So they created opposition,” I murmured. I glanced at Fume Hood. “Sorry.”

“The timing was wrong.”

“You guys are thinking about this stuff?” I asked.