“It’s a little pessimistic,” I said. I glanced back. I spotted Sveta making her way up the steps from the sidewalk to the raised bit of ground in front of the building. “Hey!”

She wore a black dress that gathered together as a halter neck, with tights covering the legs. She’d redone some of the paint on her arms and shoulders, the paint around the ball joint and along the shell that encased each arm fresh and glossy.

“You guys dressed up a bit,” I said.

“We exchanged some texts,” Tristan said. “I think we psyched each other up some.”

“I was redoing my paint after all the running around and tree climbing yesterday,” Sveta said. “I started overthinking things.”

“You look good,” I said.

“Thank you. You too.” I was wearing a very similar outfit to when I’d been job hunting.

Kenzie was last to catch up to us, running up the stairs. Knee-high socks, a skirt with overlapping stripes, and a blue sweater in a light material, worn over a shirt with the collar poking up through the neckhole. The pin in her hair looked like a bow, but it was two-dimensional and metal.

“Did you go home to change?” Tristan asked.

“No,” Kenzie said.

“You actually wore that to school?” he asked.

“It looks nice, thank you very much,” she said.

“I agree,” I said. “I might have worn something similar when I was around Kenzie’s age.”

“I can understand you not getting bullied,” Tristan told me. “Your parents are superheroes.”

“I don’t get bullied either,” Kenzie said. “I wouldn’t mind if I did. It would at least mean my classmates would pay attention to me.”

“They don’t?” Sveta asked.

“Feels like everyone’s busy with their own thing,” Kenzie said. She looked up at the statue that stood in relief from the front of the Wardens’ headquarters. “Still hurting from recent losses.”

“We’ll see what we can do to keep future losses from happening,” I said.

“Absolutely,” Kenzie said.

Inside the building, statues of key members stood off to either side of the lobby. Chevalier, Narwhal, Valkyrie, Legend, Cinereal, Stonewall, Topflight and Miss Militia. The building was set up so the people on the second, third, and fourth floors could stand at the glass railings and look down at the lobby, and vice versa. People in business clothes were walking every which way, upstairs, and people on the ground floor were free to peruse the gift shop or wait for tours.