“I hear you. Yeah. I think they’ve got something going on right now. Rumors of war on the horizon. Earth C. If you used them in the next week, I don’t think they’d pick up on hints.”

“We’d need to figure out who we want Auzure to call, so that the person called might tip off the villains. It might be tight to get that information in a week, but yeah.”

“You’ve got Kenzie. I think you’ll do just fine on that front.”

I looked at Kenzie, expecting her to perk up. She smiled, but she didn’t really show much more enthusiasm at the praise.

“We’ll have that face-to-face meeting,” Tristan said. “We can hammer out particulars then.”

“Yes. I’ll call you after I’ve raised the idea with my team, and we’ll figure out a time to meet. I’ll keep quiet on it being Cedar Point until they’re on board.”

“Great,” Tristan said. “I’ll let you go now.”

“Alright. Another day, Capricorn.”

The phone call ended.

“I like him,” I said. I looked at Kenzie. “Good recommendation.”

“Yup,” she said. “He’s going to want to dish out all the super embarrassing dirt on me from two years ago. Uggh.”

“We know the dirt,” Rain said. “Most of us.”

“Uugh,” Kenzie groaned. “It’s like having friends over and your parents bringing out the photo album. Except way, way worse, because I wasn’t a baby when I messed up with Houndstooth around, and it’s so much worse than being in the tub or having food on my face.”

“We know your history, we know you’ve made great strides,” Sveta said. “I can’t speak for the others, but to me, you’re about those strides and those successes. You’re not defined by your worst days.”

“Uuuuuuggh,” Kenzie said.

“Right?” Sveta pressed.

“Yeah,” Kenzie said.

“It didn’t sound like that call was easy to make. If Houndstooth is on the up-and-up, then it was a really, really good recommendation,” I said.

“He is. He’s one of the best true-blue heroes I know,” Kenzie said, smiling a little.

“Two teams we can use to apply some pressure and get Cedar Point to reach out to Tattletale,” Tristan said.

“Even if they catch on, they’ll be left wondering. Heroes on your turf aren’t something you can ignore. Ignoring that makes you look weak,” Ashley said.

I nodded.

And one way or another, we would strain the relationship with this group and Tattletale, and make them less likely or able to call on her when we made our play.

This worked.

Kenzie stood from her seat, walking over to her board. She began copying down a redacted version of the scribbled-down tinker notes from before.