“That leaves me with two ideas, just going off of usual shard stuff,” I said. I had Kenzie’s full attention, the other kids arranged around her, helping. Rain was nearby too. Everyone else was getting ready, strapping in like they expected a fight, even though there was no guarantee we could put up any. “Idea one: it goes off of self image. Love Lost and Snag changed to wearing costumes because they quickly dove into the mercenary villain thing. Precipice keeps the Fallen mask because it takes him a while to let go of the guilt, self-image, how he was raised, whatever else. Did it go away when you fought Christine Mathers?”

“A bit before.”

“Okay,” I said. I looked down. “Well, that doesn’t disprove idea one. With this idea, Colt keeps her civilian clothes because her being in prison hasn’t fully sunk in. If this idea applies, it might be worth meditating before trying this. Solidify a self image in the mind. Works for breakers and some changers, where their form changes every time.”

“Okay,” Rain said.

Kenzie groaned a little. “I can’t do anything with that.”

“Idea two is that it’s the agent’s concept of us. This might sound a bit more woo-woo, but I think there’s some foundation to it. They build up their own picture of us, and costume factors in. Breakers who wear a mask will have the mask become part of their breaker form. Valkyrie’s flock seems to incorporate minor details into their physiology.”

“So my losing the mask is… what?” Rain asked.

“I don’t know, Precipice,” I said. “Maybe the agent was sitting latent inside you for a long time, it recorded a lot of impressions of your time with the Fallen, while the others had comparatively less time, so the time they spent in costume got more traction.”

“Maybe the agents like masks,” Darlene said. She’d been pretty subdued since the incident earlier and her car trip with Tattletale. Tattletale had kept her back for a little while as part of a continued time-out from her time with the Tenders, but Lookout had needed to scan her again, and Tattletale was too busy to call her away again.

I smiled, taking the effort to give Darlene one because it seemed like she was dejected enough to need one. She stopped fidgeting and clasped her hands together. I told her, “Could be. You definitely see that in Valkyrie’s flock of warriors. It’s never civilian clothes that got absorbed into their appearance. There are a lot of theories around how agents work with twins, similar or identical powers, uh, how to phrase it? They’re bad at telling one of us apart from the next, twins especially, so maybe masks make us easier to tell apart?”

She nodded pretty vigorously at that, looking over at Capricorn. He was on his phone, looking pretty wrapped up in his conversation.