“If you can make stuff stay when we change, we could really use that,” Tristan said. “That’s what’s really impressing me here.”

“It was an experiment, and it worked, so awesome,” Kenzie said, excited. “And I like the visual effect.”

“I do too, thank you, but—”

She was already leaving the hallway, running over to Rain. He broke from his meditation to take the token.

“—but I guess I’ll bug you about it later,” Tristan said, to the spot she’d just occupied.

Rain’s thing worked. It didn’t exaggerate the silver cracks that spread along the dark metal portions of his costume and tinkerings, but did make the white fabric portions of his hood and general costume brighter in the dark.

She bounced twice on the spot before turning, excited, to me.

“Thank you,” I said, as I took the device. It matched the spiked crest at the top of my armor.

“I always get anxious when my appearance isn’t perfect before I go out. I’m working on it, but you know. Natalie knows.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. Kenzie wasn’t the kind of kid who could throw on any clothes off the floor of her room and go out for a quick breakfast. Shower, clothes crisp, not a hair out of place, and then the projection, which removed anything she’d missed and provided a second layer of ‘defense’.

I’d coaxed her into not stressing about it a few times when she’d stayed overnight this past week, but it was hard. Especially because I did a very similar thing with my wardrobe choices. I didn’t insist on having my shirts ironed or fuss about a single stray thread, but I did go to darker places than Kenzie did when I got too self-conscious.

My device gave the gold parts of my costume an intermittent glow, like sunlight from an out-of-sight source was falling on it. There were a few parts where the armor was damaged, like the broken tine at the shoulder, that the light bled out, but that almost made it better.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You already said that.”

“Did you make one for yourself?” Sveta asked.

“I did, but I need a backpack for it to work. And I made a few others. This is mostly stuff I already had. The rest of my tech is done enough. I could work on it more, but that’s like, it’s one step back, two steps forward, I gotta take it apart, I might break stuff in the short term, and what if we get that call that needs us now? I don’t want it broken. So I worked on stuff that didn’t matter much.”

“It’s cool,” I said.