The men and women in the class began getting out of their seats. Pamphlets jammed into bags, or rolled up and held in hand. There seemed to be a good hum to the murmur of conversation.

Missy walked down the aisle, in the opposite direction of the people departing. At least here, her instinct to use her power wasn’t as bad. It never worked quite as well even when people were close to the area she was working on.

“Look at you. I love the dress,” Victoria said. “You’re usually wearing scrubs.”

Missy looked down, hand going to her stomach. She wore a short dress that was green except where the light caught it, where it became gold. She wore a heavy army coat with it, with a keen awareness of the contrast. She’d also done her eyeliner, and her hair was shaggy with texturing clay, to help differentiate it from her cleaner-cut hero persona.

“I’ll ditch the jacket when we get where we’re going.”

“I need to change too,” Victoria said. “Sorry, I know you want to get going.”

“Nah. They’re all going to take a while,” Missy said. “It’s why I came here, first. We can take our time.”

“I’m not even your first choice? I’m stung.”

“Rachel has dibs, if she wants it, but she’s not taking any roads to get there, and my mom offered to drop me off.”

“Oh, fun.”

“It was nice, actually. We had a good chat. Some of the usual, but… good. And your lecture was good! People seemed interested. Nobody was falling asleep.”

“The first part was better. I talked about the dreaming death, and where we’re going after that. The last part was more bullet points I couldn’t stick anywhere else.”

“You’re giving adults homework, though. That can’t go over well.”

“It was Captain Gaile’s suggestion. People are bored and we can’t give all the references they want, for some of the positions. Mostly I wanted an excuse to make other people print out the old case files and power testing reports. Defray the costs of getting my office stocked up…”

⊙

They were at the edge of the city, where the roads had stopped and the grass resumed. Much of the tall grass had either been cut, to give the ticks less room to maneuver, or they had been pushed close to the ground by the passage of trucks and vehicles. The effect was something of a clearing, bounded in on two sides by buildings, which served to limit the wind. There was an expanse of hilly ground to one side, which Vista had flattened out to improve the view, and sparse trees on the other side.

“I’m shit at this,” Victoria muttered, kneeling by the fire site she’d just finished building. “I’d die a cold death in the wilderness.”

“It’s fine,” Missy said. “I see the others.”