I nodded slowly. I clenched my fist and rubbed momentarily at the spot on my arm where the bullet had gone through. “Bonfire. Yeah, I like that analogy. If they want to burn us, let’s show them just how bright we can get.”

Beacon 8.10

Five minutes to fly to Ashley’s place—now my apartment—three or four minutes to get things. Six minutes to fly back against the headwind. I came back to the headquarters to find everything on fire.

Not literally on fire, but for all intents and purposes, everyone was in motion and being loud except the two people who weren’t really there. Costumes, hair, clothes, words. In making my proposal, I was throwing us to the wolves. I was trusting that we could do okay, come out the other side with the confidence of outside parties. The confidence of the city, who would be listening and rewatching things for days to come.

Everyone running around like they were on fire was… entirely fair. At least it wasn’t a grim silence, this time.

I had to be a pillar. I couldn’t get swept up in the chaos. I put my bag of the stuff I’d grabbed from Ashley’s place on a computer chair, and used a push of my foot to send it across the room, to the corner that was mine. I walked over, through the metaphorical fires that were igniting and being put out.

Natalie was hanging back, actually fairly near Chris’s usual nook. Looking stuff up on her phone, it seemed, or frantically communicating. Worry lines creased her forehead.

Ashley was with Chris, the two of them staring at a phone. Kenzie was beside them, facing the other direction as she typed away.

“I want you to wear the armor,” Tristan said, to nobody in particular, as he walked across the room.

An instant later, with some blurring and glowing eyes, he was Byron. “Your armor. I’m supposed to be you?”

Another shift. Tristan glanced at me. He drew in a breath, eyes unfocusing, one hand gesticulating as he paced toward his station in the headquarters, not even alongside words—he wasn’t speaking yet, but punctuating thoughts before he outlined them.

“Yeah. I can shift down, wearing my stripped-down costume, secondary armor and bodysuit, mask, present better for the cameras, it’s a bit of an effect, it’s almost like disarming, and it’s cool,” Tristan replied.

“It would be effective,” Ashley said.

“It would be scary people with powers using powers while at a public venue,” Sveta said.

“That’s a good point,” I said.

“It’s not even really using a power,” Tristan said, dismissive. He switched out.

“Natalie?” I asked.

She lifted her head, eyes wide, wider behind her glasses.

“Give us a civilian perspective? Someone does the transforming thing like Tristan and Byron do, in a tense but civil situation. How do you react?”