“Sure? Think so.”

“I’m thinking a lot about what’s next to what, how it all maps together. I had glimpses last night and I’m still digesting that. I don’t know if it’s like looking at a lot of fine art or listening to a lot of music and getting an intuitive sense of things… but I leaned pretty heavily into intuition when I became…”

I trailed off, not quite sure about the words I was grasping for.

“The greater connection to your power?” he guessed.

“More like I became Victoria-adjacent. Twice. I was horribly burned, I found a different facet of me inside that vast program of alien biology, and then I was fine. I threw myself off of a cliff, and I just about died on landing, except I shifted to another facet of me.”

“You might be more experienced with this stuff than I am,” Kid Win said.

“Might be,” I said. “But Valkyrie’s been training you guys in this? Talking to you about it?”

“Having us meditate, having us pay close attention to our powers and what they’re telling us. Easier for some than others.”

“I don’t know how long you’ve been back, but I’ve been more or less wrestling with this for the last… four hours, it seems. I’m pretty sure you’ve had more time to digest it.”

Dennis and Vista had stopped chatting and gravitated closer. I was aware they were listening now.

“You said you became Victoria-adjacent.”

“Which isn’t even the right way of putting it. It’s like if Victoria lives at three-four-three Tower Crescent Avenue, and Glory Girl lives at three-four-two, and Antares lives at three-four-five, and there are connections tying one to the other. I’m still me, but the center of who I am is living at a different address.”

“Antares went to that place you describe,” Kid Win said. “You said you changed twice, using the language of that place.”

“Language?”

“How would you put it?”

“Physics, superpositioning, reflections, facets.”

“I’m so glad I missed the first half of this conversation,” Dennis commented.

“Shhh,” Vista shushed him.

Kid Win barely seemed to notice them, as he thought about what I’d said. “Sure. Works. Question is… is the Victoria who went in the same Victoria who left?”

I had to think about it, considering who I was, and the various aspects of that place. Did I feel different?

Yes, but not because of that.

“Up until I entered that room, I didn’t have control, and a huge aspect of this world… felt massive, untouchable, out of reach. I saw a broken trigger where a man described being a small figure at the mouth of a volcano. You can’t beat the volcano. It swallows you up and you have no chance. And sometimes, it’s the next person’s volcano.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t visit you,” Vista said. “After…”