She placed the power over the engine, focusing to get it centered. Acceleration.

“This would be easier if we had Fortuna,” she said.

“She gave her all to get us this far. It would be asking a lot, for her to give us the remainder of her years. We’ll see ourselves the rest of the way. She can live her life as she sees fit.”

Jeanne privately disagreed, but she didn’t make a point with it. Not with Kurt’s younger selves in the car.

There was one more resource, time aside, that they were critically short on. Not power, specifically; it looked as though she had a mostly uncontested path ahead of her to the leadership over Earth Gimel’s largest population.

Powers, though? Any authority over powers themselves would be dangerous in the wrong hands. That kind of authority threatened to wipe away any kind of meaning when it came to money, people, knowledge or time. She knew because she leveraged it.

It was an arm’s race to maintain that leverage and it was ruin to lose it.

Which led them to the thief, wheels barely maintaining the necessary traction on the road. They’d started forty-three minutes away and they took twenty minutes to get to their destination.

They came to a stop and the wheels of the car smoked.

“He’s still here?” she asked.

“He hasn’t owned a car in all the years we kept tabs on him, and I had systems set to freeze all transportation. Knowing his usual habits, he’ll know something is wrong and he’ll be running out into hills. More help is arriving. We’ll save time if we wait.”

“Who are we after?” one of the two boys asked.

Kurt rattled off a series of numbers, for facial measurements and metrics.

“We’ll go ahead?” the other boy asked.

“Don’t stray far. Go out that way,” Kurt said.

The two left.

“I never did that,” Kurt said.

Jeanne smiled.

“They’ve picked up other things. I don’t know if it’s because they copy me when they see me or if it’s because they’re getting it in other ways.”

“You should have studied more about powers,” Jeanne said. “I think it’s the latter.”

He frowned.

“You seem annoyed if they’re dissimilar to you and you’re annoyed if they’re similar.”

“I’m offended they exist,” Kurt said.

“I like them. I see them and I’m reminded of how I used to be. We traveled similar journeys, didn’t we? We were vicious once, and now we’re civilized.”

“We’re still vicious,” he said. “Good grooming doesn’t clean that slate, nor should it.”

“Fair,” she said. “Who are we waiting for?”

“A handsome fellow known as Barfbat.”

“I know Barfbat. He took us out to eat, remember? The restaurant had chickens in cages just outside the door.”