My hands remained on the laptop, even after it was closed, while a sick feeling crept over me. There wasn’t a way to deal with this that didn’t dig me in deeper. My outburst and the use of my aura on Jessica hadn’t helped, but I wasn’t upset I’d done it, because I was pretty sure she wouldn’t have told me what I needed to know without it.

But I’d forced her hand and if she was going to take any action, it was going to happen soon. If this was a trap or a master effect, then I’d forced the enemy’s hand. If there was anything intended to follow up on this, then it might happen soon.

Why? How?

I didn’t know.

We were at our HQ, and Kenzie was sorting through the things she’d left here. Technically she was renting the space from us. Less technically, she was moving regularly between here, her new workshop with her team, and her ‘home’ workshop, which was a space in the building where she lived with the orphans and institutionalized kids, provided by the staff.

I’d asked them to provide the space, because staff members had clued in that Kenzie had powers and there was a danger that the kids at the facility would too. By the diary, I’d done it for reasons of strategy and cape-centric bias.

To Jessica, every conversation and friendly debate I’d had with her over things like cape names and what a healthy life for a parahuman looked like had to have taken on a darker tone, after all of this. The diary struck close to the real, but with a consistent tone throughout that had to be anathema to someone like Jessica, who wanted to heal, find a more human balance, and who had trusted me to help.

Tristan was taking a break from lifting stuff and carting it around for Kenzie to take to her other workshop, making lunch with Rain. He was talking cooking, while Sveta hovered, quite literally, clinging to the nearby door and looming over, looking over their heads.

“This… or this?” Kenzie asked. Her outfit changed. An update of her costume, a little more fashion-focused. It looked like she was hitting the randomize button, for textures and color schemes.

“The second one,” Ashley said.

“Then…” Kenzie tapped on her phone. “This… or this?”

From a vaguely Vista-ish costume with a skirt built into it over textured leggings to a costume with more of a bodysuit look, overalls over a skintight top.

Ashley’s going to pick the first, because it’s got a skirt.

“The first one.”

“Then… this or this?”

The first outfit had an abbreviated jacket, the skirt, and textured leggings, the second was more of a combination bodysuit and dress, skintight up until the fabric formed the dress at the lower body, the shoulders built up with techy paraphernalia.

“The second one.”