“And you wear no mask,” Lynn said. “You use your name freely? That’s interesting.”

“No mask,” I said. “I never had the benefit of a secret identity.”

Lookout was removing her own helmet. When she lowered it, I saw that her face wasn’t her usual.

“I’m Lookout,” she said. “I do have a secret identity, so I’m camouflaging my face a bit.”

“That’s perfectly fine,” Lynn said. “Thank you for coming on, Lookout. I know this must all be intimidating.”

“It’s funny, lights and cameras don’t bother me much,” Lookout said.

Lynn tittered. “Cameras being your power, of course.”

Lookout smiled. “Yep.”

“And your fourth member would be—”

“Swansong,” Swansong said. She sat comfortably in her seat, one leg folded over the other. “I’m only here in spirit.”

“Only here in spirit? That’s odd,” Hamza said, with an inflection on ‘odd’.

Swansong smiled.

“She’s sort of like a teddy bear I brought with me for security, except I’m too grown up for that,” Lookout said. “So I brought someone cooler than a stuffed animal.”

“I’m glad I’m cooler than a stuffed animal,” Swansong said.

Lookout nodded.

“I’m surprised you came in costumes,” John told us. “I imagined suits and masks.”

Not an angle of attack or criticism I’d anticipated. It made sense, in a way. Delegitimize, disarm, call reasonable and natural things into question.

“That would have bad implications,” I said. “The aesthetic you’re talking about is a popular villain thing. Ambassadors in Boston, Dark Society down the East coast, there was a group of weapons dealers called the Brokers… And of course the Elite who were the biggest American villain gang. The exception on the hero side would be the Suits, and even they had costumes for serious events where they needed the extra pockets, armor, and everything else.”

“So interesting,” Lynn said. “This is all the sort of thing you have to consider.”

“We wouldn’t want to borrow from the Suits’ look either,” Tristan added. “The members of their team who weren’t the first casualties of Gold Morning were some of the bravest fighters. We respect them too much to plagiarize.”

Good. Gold Morning. We’d get there sooner or later, and making it something we were talking about would make it feel less like a cold splash of water in the audience’s faces.

It didn’t change that we had to manage Lookout’s situation and her family.

I was alright with Capricorn taking the lead on this thus far. He’d been following the opening segment of the show while we’d been facing down Gary.

“I’m sure our guests are wondering who you are,” Lynn said, leaning onto the table. “Breakthrough is relatively new to the scene.”

“As a team, yes,” Tristan said. “As individuals? All of us here have a few years under our belts.”

“Tell us about that,” Lynn said.