Challenge's Journal - Season 2

Back to Challenge.

## September 25, 2018 - The Monochrome Dock Stakeout

We kept the toxic stuff from getting into the water.  We kept the city safe and we chased off that squid person.  Plus nobody got too badly hurt (although, come to think of it, I don’t think I saw those GREY guys again after the dock exploded?)  I think that means we won, but tonight sure didn’t feel like winning.

I should start by saying that I don’t always snoop on the jobs that we get at Legitimate Color Print Shop, but sometimes when it’s glossy 8 by 10s of biohazardous waste teetering precariously on a shipping dock it gets your attention.  Come to think of it, it seems like almost every glossy 8 by 10 that we print has something in it that implicates GREY in wrongdoing.  I almost feel like someone knows I’m interning at Legitimate and is trying to drop me hints?  Could someone have figured out that I’m Challenge?  That’s probably just paranoia.  After all, it would be hard to take a picture anywhere in this city and not have evidence of a GREY crime in it somewhere.

It’s good to have a team.  On my own, my only option would been to run right up to those guys and they probably would have been able to just pitch the waste into the water and we’d all be boned.  With a team I can play my position and create distractions and draw fire instead.

Although I’m still not super down with getting shot at.

I told Morrígan that her powers terrify me.  I wish I hadn’t.  Not because I wasn’t terrified when that fairy tree launched me into the air or when I ended up in the heart of a tornado, but because it’s not her powers that terrify me.  I’m terrified that I’m not good enough.

I’m scared that I’ll go out there enough times, get tossed around and get my face bashed in with crates and find out that I am exactly what my parents and coaches always told me I am—fast and strong but not a superhero.

Steel Spirit Gamma ended up saving us all with a blowtorch, though, so it’s not like this is something I can’t handle.  Maybe I just need to be on the lookout for things to stock my utility belt with?

I’m stronger than a blowtorch.

I’m better than some squid monster.

I’m going to push myself until I’m faster than a tornado too.

## September 30, 2018- All About that Base

PRO: We have a base.  OMG we have a base!  And it’s really cool and it has this gym where there’s a hyena-man who hits baseballs and a swimming pool and an elevator and…

CON: It seems to have been compromised by an evil that wants to cause harm to all of our families.

PRO: We got the power back going.  At least I think it was something that we did?

CON: That seemed to activate the evil AI called Elzinga who started to hack all of our personal information.

PRO: I got to try crawling through an air vent for the first time.

CON: I got shot in the face by a miniature laser for the first time.

PRO: I ripped a laser turret right out of the ceiling!

CON: I think that’s actually one of the base’s turrets?  I hope Mr. Crisp isn’t mad at me.

PRO: We stopped Elzinga from downloading all of our personal information.  It’s just like my dad taught me about computers, you should always try unplugging them first!

CON: Elzinga definitely knows who I am and started using my real name in front of Gwen.  But I think I played it off so that she doesn’t suspect a thing.

PRO: Gwen is super cool to talk to.  She knows a lot of things about like, really old languages and stuff and she’s got these bitching sword powers and she can fly!  Yeah, today is the first time I got to fly too.  That was awesome.

CON: I kinda sorta biffed on prying open an elevator door in front of her.  Some superior superhero I am.  Either that or these doors have to be really tough.  Yeah, I mean, Golden Tiger couldn’t get that one open either.  Maybe they’re only vulnerable to magic and that’s why Rescue and Gwen got through.

PRO: We made a new friend!  Her name is Temperance and she’s really good with computers.

CON: There are tomatoes everywhere.  How did this happen?

PRO: At the end we needed to hit a big glowing button that was in the middle of a bunch of spinning rings and I flipped through them and hit the button to drive Elzinga away!  It felt like I was on Ninja Warrior!

CON: I think Elzinga was telling Gwen some really important stuff about someone named Lance Ottersby and judging by her reaction when I cut it off maybe I did a bad thing?  I hope not.

Can I be honest?  The more I hero the more I miss the cut and dry nature of sports.  You know if you won or lost.  You know what your stats are.  Today we definitely won and I got to be a big part of that.  But what information did that machine steal from the base?  I didn’t know I had any information in the base.  I didn’t know there was a base!  Sure I got to see a mystical sword and punch robots and fly and save the flippin’ day, but if it means that someone’s going to go after my family that’s… well, that’s bad.

My rule in getting into this was to make sure that no one knew who I was and that I could get out of it at any time that I wanted.  The more I look around me that doesn’t seem to be an option, though.  Some people live their whole lives in that base.  Some people get turned into hyenas doing this.  For every bit that I’ve always wanted to be able to put the mask on, I need to know that I can take the mask off at the end.  Today was a very scary day from that angle.

But I know that I stuck that landing.  I belong there.  I just want to be able to go home again when it’s all over.

## October 8, 2018- So Many Despacitos

It was all I ever wanted—hanging out at the team base at night, getting the call to action, chasing down the bad guys, fighting off hordes of baddies with a stick—the superhero stuff that young Tilly always dreamed about instead of Halcyon Scouts or middle school softball or whatever.

But sometimes the heroes get it wrong.

Wild Thang and Parrot and I were the three at the base when the news broke in about a magic shop robbery.  I was excited, because, you know, magic!  I was expecting I’d be doing flips through interdimensional portals and get a chance to shoot purple lightning bolts or something.  At the very least there’d be rabbits and hats and saws or something like that.  But nope, necromancers and bodily mutilation.  Why are some people so gosh darned effed up?

I told Aenon that I wanted him to read my future.  Parrot and Wild Thang thought it was silly and that he was a fraud, but Wild Thang has psychic wrist bands and Parrot can turn her body into anything she touches, why couldn’t someone else tell the future.  If everyone else has a power why ~~don't I~~ couldn’t he?

He told me that he saw great tragedy coming in my future.  Parrot and Wild Thang told me to ignore it.

But sometimes the heroes get it wrong.

I did get to ride on the back of a condor.  That was pretty cool, I guess.  All this time flying and I haven’t been able to appreciate any of it.  You’re always trying to defeat an evil AI or get to a creepy graveyard.  I didn’t feel comfortable going into the cemetery so the thought of what we saw and touched while we were in there makes me want to throw up in my mask a little bit. Or maybe that’s just the wine.  We may have overdone it at Parrot’s parents’ house.

I also wasn’t too comfortable with the psychic bands.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool and all and Thriller’s my jam, but… I was really nervous that someone would hear my thoughts.  At first because I was afraid that I’d call myself my name or something, but that pretty quickly became the least of my worries.

I’m afraid that they heard me choosing to back down and let Wild Thang fight Silencio on his own.

I’m afraid that they know I squirmed every time I touched a dead body.

I’m afraid that they felt me enjoy fighting off a massive horde, that they knew what a rush I was getting bouncing from body to body and feeling my kicks crack across their faces.

Parrot tells me I shouldn’t feel badly and I keep telling myself that she’s right.  I fought people who were committing terrible crimes.  Maybe they were being forced into it, but that was Silencio’s fault.  I was forced into it too.  And I certainly didn’t kill anybody.  Silencio was the one who killed them, who mutilated them, who forced them into doing terrible things… forced us into doing terrible things.  We are going to find him and I’m going to be there when we do.  And next time I’m not going to be on shovel duty.  I’m coming right for him.  I don’t care if he can throw an elephant, I’m going to kick his ass and bring him to justice.

I would have thought that spending all night in a graveyard and reburying defiled bodies would have desensitized me to my earlier squeamishness about them, but really it has only made it stronger.  When you spend an entire night trying to match remains to their descriptions it becomes more real to you that each and every stone doesn’t represent an icky body… it represents some family’s tragedy and worst fears come to pass.  Every single grave is a monument not just to a person, but to someone else’s darkest moments.  Every one of them.  I know the people that Silencio killed tonight are not my fault and everyone else agrees.  But sometimes heroes get it wrong.

Wine tastes better when you’re drinking it through a spandex mask.  Maybe that or Parrot’s parents just have better wine than we have at church.  Either way, I guess I’m glad that I have the Big Team because there’s no way I would be masking up again after tonight if they weren’t here to help me through it.  They don’t seem as rocked by this as I do, but that might be experience?  I hope I never grow callous to it, though.

And most importantly, I am masking up again.  Silencio is still out there, and so help me, I will break the silence.

## October 22, 2018- Bullets are Bad for You

I haven’t spent a lot of time with the Big Team lately.  I guess I’ve just been busy with other things.  I mean, it’s championship season for all of the fall sports and there are deadlines for yearbook and midterms for classes and homecoming was just last week and I’ve had to put in some extra hours at Legit recently.

Okay, and I’m still having a hard time getting over that whole “stay up until dawn reburying a bunch of strangers” thing.  I don’t know if it helped that Parrot was there today because at least she went through the same thing, and if she can fight through it, so can I.

But being away from the team sometimes means that you don’t really know what’s going on.  Like why Lavender punched that chick.  Or why we were all trying to get on the roof so that we could teleport in.  I was a bit out of the loop, so I just did what I do best.  And you know what, it went well.

It was just a few weeks ago that I saw a gun for the first time in real life.  It was being fired at me.  Thankfully, Morrigan helped to keep it from hitting me, even though I’m still pretty sure I can dodge a bullet.  And sure, I got a little antsy when I saw one today, but when it was time to get down to business and jump the guys with guns I did it.  Twice.

I hate guns.  I hate that any disgruntled sociopath can spend a couple hundred bucks and now they have a killing machine.  One person shouldn’t be able to choose whether or not ~~dozens of people~~ a person dies.  How crazy do you even have to be to think that you should be allowed to make that decision? But I also hate what they mean for a fight.  I can win a fight one-on-one.  I can keep someone safe from a group of attackers.  I can use my strength and speed for good things, but as soon as you add a gun into the equation everyone’s a tragedy waiting to happen. Especially some klutz who has no idea what they’re doing.  I disarmed two tonight.  There’s a lot more out there.

So, Riley.  She didn’t want to turn the hostage-taking-individuals over to the police. I get it.  Good people can be forced into doing bad things.  I don’t need any reminders of that this month. But superheroes exist to neutralize super threats and keep others safe when ordinary law enforcement can’t. We’re not here so that we can make choices about criminal justice.  No single person gets to make the call of who deserves life and who deserves freedom. I don’t get to make that choice any more than Silencio does.  Leave it to the courts.  I hope they do the right thing, but I shouldn’t get a say just because a kick like a goddamned tornado.

Which I do.

I should have said more about it at the time, but it really seemed like she and Lavender and Gwen were dealing with some stuff.  And I just wanted to get everyone out of there safely because of what happened last time.  So I dragged off the dudes while she was off doing whatever that was.  I wish I knew more, but we all are entitled to our secrets.  I totally hate that smug Canadian chick out of general principle, though.

It’s really hard to get excited about the triple jump when you’ve been jumping off of fire escapes in your spare time.  Flying with Gwen or Wild Thang makes it hard to get into homecom… Nah, homecoming was still fun. But still, once you jump kick someone it’s hard to get a rush from the everyday.  But I’m only ever Challenge in small doses.  The rest of the time I go back to being Tilly, and I have to make sure that that life is the one that comes first.  No matter how exhilarating it is to dive off buildings and stare down danger.

I want to know how the others deal with it.  How they can be super one minute and whatever else they are the next.  I’d like to talk to them about it, but they’ve all gone off to the hardware store for something?  They seem excited, but it sounds really boring to me.  So that’s it for the night.  Mask off, time to go home, mission accomplished.

## October 26, 2018- Time Passes. Am I a Superhero? A Longitudinal Study

Superhero.  Noun.  so͞opər hiro.

A benevolent ~~fictional~~ character with superhuman powers.

Does being pretty good at gymnastics, stronger than everyone in your grade, and not as afraid of guns as you used to be count as superhuman powers?  I’ve been hanging around with the Big Team for a bit over a month now.  I haven’t died yet, so I think I belong here, but I’m not always sure I’m one of them.  But I’m a rational person, right?  I can set up an experiment to find this out.  So, I did what I do best—pretended I’m someone else.  I can do most things I see done, so maybe my teammates powers are another thing I can fake my way through.  Here are the results.

Ambush.  I managed to hide in the team base kitchen above the cabinets for a long time and nobody saw me.  I’ve always been pretty good at finding places to hide.  Conclusion: I do have stealth superpowers.

Dominik.  I don’t really get what some of his powers are?  But super strong and can take a punch?  Yeah, I can do that.  Conclusion: I have these super powers.

Gwen.  I like watching Gwen use her sword.  It’s different than it is in the movies.  Not as much blocky and flourishy and a lot more broad powerful gestures.  I tried it out in the training room and I think it looked pretty good.  Right up until I tried the thing she does where she gets the sword to fly to her.  Maybe it has to be the right sword because I did it perfectly, just like she does, and nothing happened.  I was using a broom handle, though, so maybe that had something to do with it.  Conclusion: Inconclusive.  Definitely a no on the flight thing, though.

Hesperus.  Some people say that I’m a little ray of sunshine.  I think they’re making fun of me, though.  I just smile and pretend it’s a compliment.  Either way, I don’t think I have these powers.

Lavender.  I squatted and squatted and I did not create *any* portals.  Conclusion: Maybe I’m not a superhero.

Morrígan.  I… I don’t really want to have these powers.  I’ve seen her lose control of these before and I’m fine not knowing if I have the potential to do that.  I’ll stay clear of magic for now, please and thanks.  Same for Rescue, although if Search is a power I TOTALLY NEED THAT POWER!

Parrot.  I followed her around the team base for hours (again, I definitely have stealth powers) and touched everything that she touched.  I definitely don’t have these powers because I did it exactly the same way and I didn’t turn into anything.  Bummer, those would be cool powers to have.

Riley. I don't think Riley has superpowers, but I tried skating again and I've totally still got it. Plus she's pretty good with spray paint, but I tried it out for myself and it wasn't bad at all. (Attached: a photo of a brick wall graffitied in bright letters reading "Be Kind To Each Other and Try Your Best. Sorry about your wall.") Conclusion: I have these powers.

Rekken.  Ow.  Ow.  Oh geez.  I am pretty limber but my body does NOT bend that way.  This is definitely not one of my powers.  These shouldn’t be anyone’s powers.

Sherman.  I guess that soldier powers are running, jumping, and shooting guns, that kinda thing.  I know I can do all of those except for the guns but I’d really rather not go shooting.  My father always wants me to learn to shoot a gun and is like “You need to be able to protect yourself in this crazy world, Matilda.”  I think I’ve got it, dad, I’m practically a damned ninja.  Anyway, I may not have really gotten the whole laser tag thing down because they kicked me out for climbing on the obstacles, but I mimicked everything Sherman did and I think I looked pretty cool.  I can handle these powers.

Squire.  Eww, more guns.  I think I’ll be happy enough to stick with laser tag, thanks.

Tatum.  I’m pretty sure I could pilot Steel Spirit Gamma just as well as anyone else can.  But I hid behind Tatum so I could try to have a go when he got up, but he never left.  Lame.  Will investigate later.  I’ve always wanted to pilot a fantastical vehicle!

Wild Thang.  Okay, let me be real, I have no idea how Wild Thang does his transformation… thang.  Like, I’ve always been able to pick out how magicians do their tricks (can’t everyone?) and things like that, but his is different?  I stood on the roof and I thought \*really\* hard about condors, but nothing happened.  And then I went to the pool and thought about dolphins, but…

Okay, yeah, this is stupid.  I don’t have superpowers.  Well, I mean, I might.  But if I do they’re my boring powers.  I wonder what would happen if Freedo or someone turned them off.  Would I be any different?

I wish I could be like Redstreak.  I want to be able to do everything.  Some days it feels like I already do everything—4.8 GPA, editor of the yearbook, president of French Book Club, the state championship meet for cross country, memorizing printer service manuals, and resolving hostage situations.  But living in Halcyon City and being surrounded by tights and flights makes me feel like I can’t do anything sometimes.

It all just makes me want to go out there and punch bad guys.

Scientific Conclusion: 5.5/11. I'm exactly 50% super.

## October 28, 2018 - This is the Life of Illusion, Wrapped up in Trouble, Laced with Confusion

Alright, let’s start with what I know.

That wasn’t just a dream.  That was at least a little bit real.  I have a poodle skirt and a bitchin’ neckerchief to show for it.

But it wasn’t entirely real either.  We woke up back at base and everything was back to normal, so unless I slept for 60 years (I wish.  School has been kicking my butt lately!) there has to be something else at play.  Magic?  Freedo’s powers gone nuts?  Stress-induced hallucination brought on because I haven’t slept for three nights because no one in my Advanced Chemistry group project is doing anything and I can’t even start my work until after swim practice AND work and then by the time the whole thing is done I’m so mad that I can’t sleep so I just bake cookies and watch bad action movies for any move I can learn?

Alright, calm down, Tilly.

I guess I’m just worked up because I don’t know what to make of the experience we just had.  I mean, I’m still pretty freaked out that someone who seemed and awful lot like Mr. Crisp tried to shoot us.  That’s a hard thing to get out of your mind and I’m afraid it’s going to be a little tense around the base.  Plus I threatened to bludgeon him with an ice cream scoop.  Is that… is anyone else going to remember that?  Does he remember that?  Fortunately, he doesn’t wear suits that often so hopefully I’ll be able to push it out of my mind.  And maybe he didn’t recognize me because of my cost… nah, never mind.

If I’m being honest, escaping from graveyards and robberies and Chemistry class to spend a little time in some wacky hijinks was probably pretty good for me.  Sock hopping with Rescue, playing Scooby Doo with Search, chasing around little green men, it was all a lot of good fun.  It’s all fun and games until you get laser-blasted and butt-probed, though.

I feel the need to make a redaction, journal.  Last time I wrote about how I wish I had powers.  I think I’m learning how to be okay with my own powers.  Everyone else kept losing control of their powers ~~today~~ ~~sixty years ago~~ whenever and I can’t imagine needing to deal with that.  It’s hard enough to worry about keeping people safe from danger without needing to worry about keeping them safe from you too.  Rescue nearly blasted himself over the top of that movie screen trying to fly.  Freedo’s weird powers made us all black out and might have been the whole reason we had this bizarre trip.  And Dominik apparently has a freaking dragon living inside of him?!  That was probably just part of the fantasy world, though, right?

And don’t get me wrong, I’ve got a dragon living inside of me too, but I’m happy that mine’s mostly figurative.

At the same time, my powers didn’t feel really useful.  Flying after spaceships isn’t really in my wheelhouse.  I need to get better at doing superhero things that aren’t acrobatics and fighting.  Maybe I can audit a night class at the community college?  Forensic science?  Computer systems?  Do they have classes in hostage negotiation?  Who am I kidding, where would I find the time?  I’d just like to find a way to be useful at times like those.  I did use that laser turret thing, although I still don’t feel that great about shooting at a bunch of aliens.  Even if they probably were fuckers.  I aimed low.  Although, for all I know, that might be where their vital organs are because, you know, aliens.

I won’t beat myself up about it too much because it probably wasn’t really all that real.  Is it possible that I was the only one who experienced this?  No because Dom was still wearing that jacket when we got back and there’s no way that he would have put that on himself.  Even though I don’t think it’s that bad of a look for him.  But something real just happened to all of us.  I’d talk to the others about it and try to figure out what, but… well, I’m kind of embarrassed to.  Everyone on the team thinks I’m gullible and naïve because I get excited and believe in things like fortune telling and spy movies and whatever.  I don’t need them teasing me for believing in little green alien men too.

But why not believe?  This is Halcyon City, the most fantastical place on Earth.  It’s not so crazy to think that there might be amazing mystical soothsayers or that the little green men might be the friendly kind of aliens.  You might close your eyes and wake up in an alternate universe.  Anything can happen here, so you really don’t have any choice but to believe what you see and get excited for the adventure.

And I want to say this whole ordeal meant nothing.  I want to just go back to trusting Cyclone even though I now have pretty clear memories of him shooting at us.  I want to just forget about my mistake with the umbrella just like you’d forget any other absurd part of a fever dream.  I want to not be terrified that my teammates are going to trip out or turn into monsters whenever they take a big hit.  But in Halcyon City where you’re going to see something new every day, you have to trust your eyes.

I kept the skirt.  I know it’s too silly to ever wear, even for Halloween or spirit week or ever… but… and God, I know this is silly… it’s my first superhero trophy.  It’s not the Supreme Negator or the Middle Spirit Projector or anything like that, but it’s something better; it’s mine.

I was there.  I saw it.

## November 2, 2018 - Vamos a Golpear Pijos

It wasn’t the cemetery that I was afraid to go back to.  Megalo Cemetery can be creepy as hell and I’ll do my best to avoid it, thankyouverymuch, but I’m a big girl and I can go back to a place where something bad happened.  Even the place where the worst thing that’s ever happened to me happened.

I didn’t want to go back to *that* place, though.

The “place” where you feel like everyone else can handle things and you can’t.  The “place” where you start to think this whole thing was a bad idea.  I haven’t really felt that way too often since joining the Big Team—really I thought the transition into this whole superhero thing was going to be a lot rougher than it has been—but damn was that a low point.

Plus, I wasn’t really down with the whole skull paint thing.  Ever since that night I’ve been a little squeamish about dead bodies.  A lot squeamish.  I’ve got Parrot, though, and she’s good at making me feel like I can do anything.

(On the topic of Parrot, she turned into Sailor freaking Moon when she grabbed Gwen’s sword.  Is that part of her powers to take on the properties of things she touches?  In which case Gwen’s sword is made out of anime?  Or does anyone who uses Gwen’s sword become Cardcaptor Sakura?  In which case… I know I just said I didn’t need superpowers, I know… but in that case I need to ~~steal~~ borrow Gwen’s sword at least once.)

But… Silencio.  El Olvidado.  We did it.

They were there again doing whatever messed up thing they were going to do with those crystals and those body parts.  ~~Part of me wishes I knew what they were planning o~~ I’m sorry, I don’t even know why I started writing that.  No part of me wants to know what that monster was planning.  I’m just glad we stopped it.

It did mean throwing a homeless kid.  I don’t necessarily feel great about that, but I’m already learning that you can’t be too absolutist as a hero.  You’re going to need to punch some people who are being mind controlled every once in a while.  I tried to kick them like a kilogramme of feathers instead of a kilogramme of steel, though.

Rhiannon seemed to have solid control over her powers.  That’s good to see because they’re pretty darn useful.  In fact the whole team seemed to have pretty good control today.  Gwen and Jake did their special thing.  Gwen and Parrot did their special thing.  It’s amazing what the team can do when they’re all working together.

That’s kind of the thing, though, it feels like *they*’re all working together.  Sometimes I still feel like they’re the team and I’m this weird guest star who does a few flips, kicks somebody and that’s it.  I know how to play on a team—it’s all I’ve done since I was old enough to kick a ball.  I’d like to think that I fit in with people pretty well.  I need to get better at letting myself be part of this team.  I need to think along with them, not just about proving myself.  I’d also like to spend more time with some of them, but when am I going to find the time to do that?  I missed a play rehearsal and was late to a scouting meeting just so I could save the ~~world~~ ~~city~~ whatever today.

Silencio is taken care of.  Parrot stabbed him once and then Elle stabbed him right into the gosh danged ground.  I’m worried about what his cultists are going to do.  I mean, they were definitely involved in doing some terrible things, but it doesn’t seem like they were really responsible for it.  And given they’re mutilated state I worry about them getting turned into pawns for someone else.  The blessing and the curse of Halcyon is that we have wonderful services and charities for dealing with people who have had horrible things happen to them, though.

Cultures are an interesting thing.  I never really think about mine because that’s part of being in the “in group” in society.  I don’t think Grandpa ever thought that much about his either because he was even moreso.  So, a Dia de los Muertos festival was not really where I expected to see him.  I don’t really know what was going on with that ritual, so maybe he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.  But maybe death expands your culture a little bit beyond things like nationality and race.

I wanted to take my mask off so that he could see me.  And quite honestly I didn’t even care if people saw—some of them like Gwen might know already and most of them probably don’t even know who I am under the mask—but I think it was nice for him to see me with the mask on.  He’s seen Matilda before and he spent a lifetime letting me know that he loves and supports me like that.  I’m glad to know that he’s seen Challenge too and he loves and supports her.

We got Mr. Crisp a lot of cool stuff for his birthday tomorrow.  I helped by running off a photo book at Legitimate of some of the team’s greatest victories.  Gwen put it together so I’m sure he’ll like it.  I really am grateful for what he gives us the opportunity to do.  He’s a good man, even though he tried to shoot us that one time.  In looking through the book I really did start to feel like this group of people that I never would have hung out with otherwise is starting to become a part of my ~~“group”~~ “family.”  Today made me think a lot about culture, and I think that superheroes and The Team might be a culture unto themselves.

Everyone has a culture.  Even white girls from the suburbs.  Halloween is a part of our culture (I mean, it's a part of a lot of people's cultures, I'm not claiming it or anything.)  At the change of the seasons we put on masks and pretend that we’re something that we’re not so that we can scare away evil.  And I’m happy to share my culture with my friends too.

## November 9, 2018 - The Toast of Croydon

Camping is a good way to leave your worries behind for a while.  To unplug from constant notifications and forget about that Advanced Modern European History test coming up next week.  Just you, some friends, the lake air to clear your head, and perfectly melted s’mores.

Or, when the Big Team’s involved, it’s a good way to run into a dude with a demon sword.  I swear, I like being part of this team, but sometimes I miss having a spat with Gabbie count as “a bad day.”

I was kinda hoping that we’d be roughing it in tents, but it turns out that Mr. Crisp’s family has a nice cabin up here.  It would have been nice to sleep under the stars, miles away from swim practice or the print shop, but the cabin was nice too.  And I definitely want a locked door between me and Freedo at all times when I’m sleeping.

But most importantly the cabin is where we found Trevor.  Everyone chased him around at first, but I could tell that he was a good boy.  Then again, I thought the same thing about Pot and he turned out to be a fucker.  But Trevor’s good.  Elle and Gwen decided that he hunts vampires or something, which seems farfetched to me, but certainly not impossible.  It would only be the seventh strangest thing I’ve heard since moving into Halcyon City.

Fishing is not the sport for me.  I hate to be mean journal, but I don’t think it’s even a sport.  It’s like auto racing or golf.  Maybe noodling would be a fun challenge, but just throwing a hook into the water and sitting around sounds like torture to me.  Plus Freedo kept on giving poor Elle a hard time for being confused about fish and making her fish with a peanut.  Elle has been through a lot since she came through that mirror or whatever, and we should help introduce her to new things, not bully her!  It was a little funny, though.  Still, I was looking for an excuse to get off the boat when Hesperus dropped those binoculars.  Water wasn’t all that bad for November.  And it wasn’t all bad… Trevor was a real trooper about the life jacket.

The campfire was nice.  I really liked these patches that Gwen made for us.  I mean, I’ve gotten plenty of patches through Halcyon Gold Scouts, but I haven’t ever had one that’s made personally like this.  She’s a good person and I’m glad I’ve gotten to know her—even though we play basketball together I’m not sure I would have gotten to know her that well as Tilly.  I tried to repay the favor by introducing her and Elle to s’mores, but someone mixed their fireworks in with the skewers thinking it would be funny.  I swear, Freedo can be such a fucking Gremlin sometimes.

So at that point I was afraid that we were going to burn the entire forest down, but apparently someone else kicked out the fire and threw a rock at us.  Well, at least I’m good for something.  I don’t fish, I can’t fly, and I’m apparently no good at telling sticks from sparklers, but I can catch rocks real good.

And that’s when Mr. Crisp left and the power went out.  I swear, every time I go somewhere with Mr. Crisp and the team he just drops us off and peaces out.  I love Team Dad but I’m starting to wonder if he doesn’t need some help managing the team.  We can take care of ourselves, obviously, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a few more adults around, maybe?  As long as they’re somewhat cool.

So we split up the house and searched.  I felt kinda bad taking the upstairs instead of the basement, but a) going into the basement with Freedo while the power is out is just asking to be pranked, b) freaking Gwen and Elle were going down there, it’s not like there was going to be anything that they couldn’t handle, and c) Hesperus is Team Hot Guys.

And that’s where we found Henry.

Alright, journal, here we go.  I feel badly for the guy.  I really hope that Cyclone and the team can help him!  He’s hungry and just needed food.  We should welcome him.  That said…

-As a matter of policy when we find someone snooping around the Captain’s room in the dark, we should beat their ass.  It’s not about hurting them—and I feel badly that he hurt himself as badly as he did on that nail—but he was hiding out in one of our bedrooms and we were pretty quick to just accept that.  He seems cool, but this also seems like a good way to get creeps in your midst.

-Oh my God, they let him keep the demon bloodsword.  I will never understand the rest of the world’s obsession with weapons!  As soon as I see a person with a gun or a sword or whatever that thing Sherman has been using is, my first thought is that no one is safe until that thing gets put down.  Granted, I feel a bit different when it’s Gwen or Elle, but… maybe if we just put all the swords and fireworks away fewer people would get hurt.

Maybe I’m just selfish.  Maybe I just don’t like weapons because I want to be the strongest and quickest on the field.

But Henry’s good.  I hope that we can help him because GREY has done a lot of terrible things to too many of my new friends.  Freedo really seemed to open up to him which surprised me.  He’s mean to Elle sometimes, but maybe it is all in good fun.

I kinda hoped to spend the night doing girl stuff with the other girls, but Elle and Gwen seemed to want to be together.  I get that.  They’ve been through a lot of things that I could never understand.  Everyone else on the team has.

I feel the mask more on nights like this than other nights.  I thought I was wearing it so that I’d look like a superhero, so that people… and the team… would think that I could do amazing things too.  As time goes on, though, I don’t wear it to look like a superhero, I wear it to hide that I don’t fit in.  I don’t have cursed ancestry or villainous trauma.  I’m really glad that I don’t.  But it makes me wonder if I’ll ever really understand my teammates.  Would we ever be able to connect if I weren’t Flippy McFacepuncher?  I’m worried that the only thing we have to bond over is a layer of spandex.

I snuck down to the kitchen to make some s’mores over the stove.  They’re not the same, but Trevor seems to like the little bit that I gave him.  So maybe it is easy to bond with some teammates.

## November 10, 2018 - Three Little Words

“There is a force in the earth which causes the moon to move.”

My father has always been really interested in Johannes Kepler.  Not space or astronomy, just Kepler.  It’s probably because of our last name, but I think it comes from Grandpa too—some of the books that he has are super old and were probably his.  I can kind of see where they are coming from.  I read one of the books and he lived a very interesting, complicated life.  His mother was executed for alleged witchcraft because of religious persecution.  It’s a good thing that we don’t do that anymore or else we’d be out half of the Big Team.  But I like Kepler.  He showed that it’s possible for someone to stay rational and logical and faithful even when all sorts of weird and awful shit is going on all around them.

So, to the Muse concert.  I was surprised that more people from the team didn’t want to go.  I mean, Muse is a pretty big deal!  I have that history test on Tuesday and I still went.  Plus I have to work all day at Legitimate tomorrow—everyone else has some sort of weird emergency training session that they need to go to?

I have no idea how we got Sherman to come with us, though.  I tried a few different things like telling him it was his duty to better understand civilians, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Freedo tricked him into it in some way.

If I can be honest, journal, it wasn’t the best night to introduce someone to Muse.  There was something off about their performance all night.  I wouldn’t have assumed it was that they were summoning a freaking meteor but now that I know that it kinda almost makes sense?

So, what do you do when you’re at a concert and a giant chunk of moon is heading right into the crowd?  Sherman wanted to disperse the crowd by firing shots off into the air.  That didn’t really seem like it was going to lead to the orderly clearing that we wanted.  So I did what I did best—parkour and flips—and worked my way up to the stage.  And then I did what I do worst, apparently, which is command people to do things.

I swear, every time I tell a soccer teammate to pass, they shoot.  Every time I tell a bad guy to spill the beans on their plan, they ignore me.  Every time I tell the team that we should chain up the demon bloodsword in a chest and let it sink to the bottom of the lake, we take it back to the base with us.  And when I tell a group of people to calmly leave the concert area before they get crushed by the moon, they all trample Sherman.  I may need to reconfigure the mask because it seems to be distorting my speech.

And then this giant moon ball crashes to the ground and suddenly Muse turns into a gosh danged Jack O Lantern and is obsessed with it.  It’s kinda cool to get to see one of your heroes up close and to do a duet with them, but I have to be honest—I like Muse because of their stimulating beats for late night study sessions—it’s a little off-putting to see them as a maniac obsessed with bringing about a hail of space rocks.  To be honest, if that’s what inspired their music I don’t think I want to listen anymore.

Then the freaking alien in the devil mask showed up.  Journal, I was a little excited when I saw an alien for the first time back when we fought off Ambush’s …friend?... but let me tell you that by this point I’m pretty well through with them.  Every alien we meet turns out to be a bastard and this one wasn’t much of an exception.

And there we were, the three stooges, trying to chase around a massive moon ball that Muse kept calling “the Sonata.”  I call us stooges, but really I wasn’t any better.  It was Freedo who got in one of the better tackles tonight while I let the alien jerk slip right past me.  Overshadowed by Freedo when it comes to something athletic.  I’m glad that no one else saw it.

And then Freedo did this really weird thing where he made a whole bunch of clones of me.  I was a little shocked at first but it was kind of a cool thing to see.  But it wasn’t enough to scare this demon-masked thing away from its space ship.  Do I need to become scarier?

I felt lousy.  I mean, I guess between us and the adult heroes who were nearby we kept it so that no one got too badly hurt.  Sherman will be fine, he’s tough.  And not because I let down Muse because they can fuck straight off, summoning a meteor into the middle of a damned concert.  I don’t care what possessed them.

I felt lousy because our little team got run right over and I should have been able to stop it.

I apologized to Sherman for bringing him out at all.  He really got the worst end of it and he didn’t want to be there.  I promised him that we’ll do something that he likes the next time we do something together.  He and I will probably never agree on much in terms of how to go about a mission, but he’s a good guy to have on your team.

And then there’s Freedo.

He was really shaken by something and all of this seemed to trigger it.  I know that he can be a bit of a pest sometimes, but no one should feel like that.  And he went to bat for Henry the other night, so I figured, you know, might as well…

And like, on the volleyball team we say stuff like that to each other all the time.  “You should have had that one, you fucking gremlin.”  “Nice spike, you fucking gremlin.”  It’s just a way that some people talk to each other.  ~~It’s how you show someone you’re clos~~

It’s not.  It’s how you run away and hide yourself when you’re scared.  Either scared of opening up yourself or scared of whatever they’re going to share, or scared that there’s absolutely nothing you can do to help.

I’m worried, journal.  I became Challenge because I wanted to help people.  When that means doing flips or punching dicks or dodging bullets I can do it without fear.  I know my body is quick enough to deal with that.  But when it means just listening to a friend for a little bit I run away.

Challenge is ready to help people, but Tilly isn’t yet.  And I’m furious with her.

It must have been lonely being an astronomer back then.  Always wanting to add on to what has been done in the past, but in the end always discovering more about how tiny and isolated we really are.  Insignificantly small and borne through the stars.

## November 17, 2018 - Not About Me

This was all my fault.  If I hadn’t been spending so much time with the Big Team lately, going to concerts and going on camping trips and keeping the moon from falling, I would have noticed that Gabbie had been hanging around with some new guy and I would have been able to have stopped her getting kidnapped.

Although, I don’t think that would have stopped Whitelight from kidnapping the other ten people.  Or from trying to capture Morrigan.  And really it’s not like I would have been on the “jog” where Gabbie got kidnapped because, let’s be real, we have very different workout routines.

So maybe it’s only a little bit my fault.  But it feels like it’s all my fault.

Yeah, I’m thinking like this might not have been about me.

To take it back to the beginning, I really wish that Mr. Crisp would stop calling me into his office every time that he needs to talk to us about controlling our powers and preventing collateral damage.  I don’t have real powers.  I can’t cause collateral damage.  I’m lucky if I cause any damage.  Reminding me that the people around me are capable of leveling buildings doesn’t really help my anxiety, y’know?

But then he gave us the list. Now, as soon as I saw Gabbie’s name on the list I was terrified for her and knew we had to get her back… but, and I hate myself for admitting it, my second thought was about making sure that I kept my identity safe from her.  Can you imagine what she (or her mom, ugh, her mom) would say if they knew that I was putting on a costume and doing this?  What kind of a hero am I that it comes time to rescue my best friend and I am thinking about myself?  And it’s not like I was a lot of use in getting us any information or leads either.

I know that Gabbie is better than I make her sound some times.  She’s a good friend, and I mean that, but sometimes being a good friend means being selective and having your own little tribe.  For all of the mean things that she says about Challenge, I need to remember that she wouldn’t say those things about me.  She’s good to the people who are her people.  And that’s admirable in a way, I guess?  Friendship is weird.

So we tracked them down to Poderosa where we got brought on to a sham of a talk show with Maria Rodriguez Martinez.  If we were being smart about it we probably would have realized that this was some sort of a trap but to be honest we were a bit distracted.  Distracted by the fact that we thought we had the jump on them because of Rhiannon’s magic and Search’s tracking.  Distracted by how good Dom looks in a suit.  Distracted by the fact that there was obviously something wrong with Rekken.  So we walked right into a trap.  Except me.  I danced right into a trap.  I probably looked like an idiot, but if you need a distraction you can always count on Flippy Girl.

So I embarrassed myself a little bit, but Morrigan got absolutely ambushed.  I don’t really get what Whitelight’s endgame was given that he ultimately wanted Morrigan to help him, but he certainly didn’t feel any shame in trying to manipulate her.  But, hey, even after al of that, the media circus is going to be entirely about Rescue.  So that’s… something.

Oof, so this whole thing was a disaster.  Rhiannon was humiliated and abused, Rescue had his identity outed, Rekken started shooting lasers, and the walls were made of demons.  And I feel bad saying it, but… I kinda loved it.

I got to save people!  I got to save people that I know!  I carried Rekken out like a hero!  It’s so stupid and selfish, but… tracking down missing people and getting them away from the bad guys is what I signed up for.  I’d rather my friends not get kidnapped, but when they do, I’m ready to lug their butts out of there like a kilogramme of steel.

I can’t begin to imagine what Rescue’s going through.  He seems really nervous that we’re not going to want him any more, but that’s obviously not the case.  He’s proven himself to me and the team plenty and he’s one of us.  We love him even if he’s keeping us from punching his dad in the face.  It’s just that his dad should probably be punched in the face.

I want to support him but, like, how?   Sorry you got outed, glad that I still have my secret identity?  That sucks that your dad’s a notable supervillain, mine works in IT management for the bank?  He just had one of the worst things I can imagine happen to him and I still have my precious little double life.  What could I ever say to help?

C’mon Tilly, this is the same thing you’ve been focusing on.  Being a hero is about more than helping bodies.

## November 18, 2018 - Selfie Game

It’s weird how quickly friendships actually develop when you actually look at them.  I haven’t known Jake for much more than a month and now we’re getting together for tea so that we don’t lose touch?  I’m still brand spanking new to the team, right?  How is it that I already feel like I’ve grown closer to and away from different teammates?

I probably should have trusted Morrigan’s magic a little bit.  I mean, I just saw her kick tail yesterday.  She does glamor magic on the regular.  She probably could have made me a fake mask without turning my face into a tree or something horrific like that.  I’m still a little antsy around her.  Plus, wouldn’t she see my real face then?  I mean, I guess it wouldn’t be that bad since I trust her pretty well and her cousin already knows and I’m sure they tell each other stuff…

And, ugh, how awkward was it that Freedo was there.  I didn’t want to hurt him with my words, but it’s clear that I did.  So what am I supposed to say?  “I’m sorry?”

Crap, that’s exactly what I’m supposed to say.  Why didn’t I say “I’m sorry?”  Why did I just say “well everyone else says it?”  Yeah, he’s a bit of a jerk sometimes, but I’ve been a total bitch to him and I can’t even make myself apologize for it.  Crud.

Besides, you know who’s a real gremlin?  Councilman Benoit.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that arson is going to get the Zodiac what they want and I definitely, definitely think we should stop Rooster from burning down anything else, but the city owes its support to the transformed.  The park is theirs as much as it is any of ours and they need it right now.

Suffragettes used to burn down unoccupied buildings too.  I was surprised when we learned that in history class because people usually only tell you about marches and poetry and Gandhi making a difference.  I kinda think that the people who write textbooks want you to think that anyone who asks nicely enough for their rights gets them and that anyone who doesn’t must have not played by the right rules.  Like these “no transformed” signs?  What is that?  They’re people.  You can’t have “no people” signs.

I feel a little bit badly about redirecting those protesting maniacs to City Hall, but at least if they’re there they’re less likely to be screaming in the faces of the people in Zodiac City.  A part of me wants to tell them to go protest at the bottom of ~~Lake Erie~~ ~~Superior~~ ~~Whale~~ a nearby major body of water, but I try to remind myself that they’re probably not evil, they’re probably just scared and dealing with it very poorly.

So, was it stupid to run off on my own when I had a hunch that Rooster and the lizard folk were up to something?  Yes.  But just like friendships forming more quickly your instincts and reactions develop much more quickly than you think.  I knew something was wrong so I pursued it.  Gwen told me she wants me to act more like a leader, so I’m leading.  With, uhhh, without followers or telling anybody.

But, look, we tracked them down and Lavender talked some sense into them.  And that dude has a spine.  I can’t confront someone like that without either trying to physically threaten them (when I’m Challenge, obv) or apologizing for being too blunt (when I’m ~~Tilly~~ me) but he didn’t back down an inch.  I don’t want the protest to provoke Rodriguez and Shitlord Benoit to show an even darker side of themselves, I honestly hope that we can find some humanity in them.  Or at least bring people around the common sense that this issue should have already been settled.  But I’m a little afraid that if it doesn’t get immediate results we’ll have Rooster and Lavender and Freedo looting a thrift store together.

But you know what, thrift stores are super icky when you think about it.  And I don’t just mean the fact that those used to be someone else’s clothes and you have no idea how many times they wore it or what they did.  I mean the idea.  You donate your old stuff and then they charge someone else for them?  It’s not like it’s a lot of money… why not just give it to someone who needs it?  Do they need to give you a dollar to show that they really need it?  And are we as people that desperate to make a buck?  The whole thing is messed up to me.  Although, I like the one that my church runs, but that’s different, right?

I think about the suffragettes.  Even if I was around then, I don’t think I would be burning down buildings.  I just don’t think that’s how I express frustration.  I might have stayed up all night making signs and baking cupcakes for the people who were burning down buildings, though.

I’ve started a clothing drive at school.  Anything that people donate goes straight to Zodiac City… I’ll drop it off with Derek personally.  I cleaned out my closet a little and I got Gabbie to clean out hers (although I didn’t see anyone in Zodiac City that had been transformed into a tramp, so that might have been a waste) and I’ll see if I can’t do some good.  There’s a lot of facepunching going on around that park right now and maybe I can do some good that Challenge can’t.

*There is a page missing from the journal here.  It was removed from this book and placed in the belongings that Gwen left when she went to space.*

Gwen,

I don’t know that I have earned the right to add to this, but I thought you should know about this group.  I’m proud of them.

~~Team Empa~~

~~Team Diplom~~

~~Team Peacem~~

This Team is Full of Good People Who Understand Right and Good and Mercy.  They Might Be Key to Changing this World and I Love Them

Wild Thang

Lavender

The Morrigan

…Freedo.

I miss you, Cap.  Come home soon.

## November 21, 2018- Time Passes: A Tarot Reading

I really hope nobody saw me. I turned sixteen like five frickin’months ago and I’m still riding my bike around like a little girl. My parents even got me a car for my birthday but I haven’t been able to get enough practice hours in so I can get my license.  I know, it’s a lame excuse, but it’s kinda hard to find time to squeeze in 30 hours of driving with your folks between two-a-day practices, recitals, and catching the damned moon when it falls.  It turns out that when I’m finally done with all of my homework around 2 in the morning that they’re usually not in the mood to go for a drive. Go figure.

You know what feels ridiculous at this point?  The helmet. I’ve been spending my weekends diving off of buildings and taunting bad guys to try to shoot at me, but let’s make sure I don’t brain myself on the sidewalk.  I mean, I know it’s important but it’s like…I really hope nobody saw me.

I could have just worn the darn costume, but I needed to get out of it for a little while.  With the space team being gone it has felt like we’ve all needed to pick up the slack.  Or maybe I’ve just been putting more pressure on myself because of those things that Gwen left me.  Am I supposed to be doing more?  Am I supposed to be leading or something?  I’m still the new girl who nobody knows and who has no idea what she’s doing.  But ever since they’ve left for space I’ve felt like it’s my job to be there for the team.  More than usual.

When I made it to the magic shop, I just leaned my bike against a lamppost.  If someone stole it I’d either get to kick their ass (which would have been a ton of fun because it’s been a while since I’ve gotten to really haul off on someone) or I could have used it as an excuse for why my parents need to let me finish my practice hours.  But no luck. After all, who wants a bike?

Adding to the total dork factor, I was carrying my full school backpack, all 47 glorious pounds of it. Sure, I could have only carried what I needed, but I kinda needed some diversion items in case I ran into anyone else. If you’re carrying 4 textbooks, 3 binders, and a change of gym clothes you can get away with hiding some arcane crystals in there.  If you’re just riding to the magic store with crystals that you stole from a bizarre cult ritual in your pocket you come off as a total freakshow.

And I don’t want anyone to know that I’m a total freakshow now.

This might be strange to say, but the magic shop seemed more…prestigious right after it had been robbed. Maybe that’s because it was nighttime and everything seems more mystical at night than it does on a Wednesday mid-morning when you’re off of school for Thanksgiving.  Maybe it’s because all I knew about the magic shop then was that they had mystical artifacts that spooky bad dudes wanted.  Maybe it’s because when I walked in I could hear the clerk mute the daytime talkshow that was playing in the back room.

If we’re being honest, it was probably pretty irresponsible to give Aenon those crystals back.  He doesn’t seem to be that concerned with who his clientele is.  But what were we going to do after taking them back from El Olvidado?  Yeah, I’m sure Mr. Crisp (or even Morrigan or Hesperus) knows someone who can handle them safely, but it can’t hurt to trade a few of them for a tarot reading, right?

Okay, so not the most superheroic thing I’ve ever done, but I’ve been putting in a lot of superhero hours lately.  Here’s what I learned from the reading:

I did a little bit of research online before coming because I was curious.  I couldn’t learn all of it, just the major cards and some of the face cards.  I asked about a celtic cross spread because the Internet made it seem like that was pretty common and like I wouldn’t look like an idiot.

The card at the center is the “cover”card, the card that represents you at this moment in time.  Mine was the 7 of Wands.  Great, so we already start off with something that I know nothing about.  That feels like how things are going lately.  Aenon asked me what I saw on the card.  I saw a girl, standing alone, on top of a hill, fighting off sticks coming at her from every direction.  She was holding her own, but she was clearly outnumbered. Exactly, he told me.

“This is the card that signifies Challenge.”

I hope that my eyes didn’t panic as much as my heart did while I put together what he really meant.  This card represents someone who is going through a challenge.  And me.  Tilly.

The second card at the center was the Queen of Cups.  Oh good, I know this one!  It’s a face card.  The pinnacle of femininity, love, compassion, intuition, and emotional balance!  He placed it sideways across the 7 of Wands. It turns out that the second card is what crosses you, the thing that you’re currently struggling with.  Well, shit.

Then we get to the immediate past.  The card shows three ladies dancing together with cups in the air.  The 3 of cups.  Aenon tells me that, in my past, getting along with others and working together has been easy and fun for me.  “You must be very popular.”He jokes.

I hate that word, popular. Does anyone ever use it in a good way? Since middle school everyone has described my group of friends as “popular”like they’re throwing a kilogramme of bricks at us.  Especially with girls.  People say “popular”when they mean “mean.”  People say “popular”when they mean “dumb.”  People say “popular”when they mean “rich.”  No one ever says “popular”when they mean “treats others well and has a lot of friends as a result.”

I giggled and told him “yeah, I guess.”

Underneath the central pair of crossed cards is the card that determines “the root”of the situation.  It seems a little on the nose to me, but I’m just a high schooler, not a centuries old mystic art, so whatever. It’s the two of “pentacles”(coins), and it apparently means that I have been trying to find balance for a long time.  No shit, magic man, welcome to the human condition.

The card above the crossed cards is symbolic of goals and aspirations.  Mine’s the 8 of coins, which apparently means that I want to be good at everything.  I desperately considered kicking his ass and taking the crystals back to Rescue or Search or anyone else, because I’m now thinking that this is a pretty easy art to fake.  “Oooh, you want to be better at everything!”  Yeah, thanks for imitating every voice I’ve ever heard in my head ever, you magical bastard.

But then came the card to the right: the future card.  A cloaked figure walking away from eight cups stacked along the water’s edge.  Aenon told me that this card means abandonment or walking away from something familiar.  While I didn’t really need to be told what abandonment meant, I started to get that uncomfortable sense that maybe there was something to the story I was being told.

There are four additional cards off to the side.

How you see yourself: a girl with her arm just full of sticks.  Aenon says that they’re still wands even though they just look like sticks.  He also says that when the card is upside down, like this one was, it tends to mean somebody who has bitten off more than they can chew and is overwhelmed by their obligations.

How others see you: The King of Wands.  Talent. Moral clarity.  Leadership.  I was familiar with this card and it felt out of place.  I asked him to go to the next one.

Your hopes and fears: Temperance.  Finally one of the major cards that I spent all night studying.  The angel on this card has one foot on land and one foot in the water.  She balances perfectly between two cups.  Yeah, no kidding this is my hope and fear.  Isn’t it everybody’s?  I just want to know how to get there.  I’m beginning to think that, whatever value Johannes Kepler saw in tarot and astrology has been lost over the centuries.  After all, Aenon, clearly unsure of what he was doing, went to shuffle once more and dropped the next card to the floor before picking it up and putting it in the final spot, the spot reserved for the resolution.

Judgment.  Another one I had studied.  It means the fulfillment of you inner calling when right side up. It means self doubt and second guessing when upside down.

“Well which way was it before you dropped it?”I asked.  He didn’t remember.

This was a waste of my very limited time. I'm sticking to fortune cookies and horoscopes from now on.

## November 22, 2018- Cyclone Ruined (a) Thanksgiving

So I like savory autumnal foods, assorted pies, being pleasant around people I barely know, and showing gratitude.  Is that a crime?  So why is everyone all like “Tilly, you can’t have six Thanksgivings?”  Like fun I can’t.

Everyone tried to tell me I was overdoing it by going to both of my family’s Thanksgiving dinners, plus Swim Team friendsgiving, plus the church soup kitchen Thanksgiving and Big Team thanksgiving (well, I guess just my parents knew about Big Team Thanksgiving, but whatever), but if you can bake a dish for all of them, why not?

It was weird that Big Team Thanksgiving wasn’t at the base but was instead just at some random house that I had to have my dad drop me off at.  I mean, I guess it’s cool that my parents are okay with dropping me off in a costume with a tray of stuffing and saying “have fun,” but it’s still embarrassing any time I need to have them drive me anywhere.  I should really get on wrapping up those driving practice hours, but with exams coming up and basketball tournaments on the regular where am I going to find the time?

Oh yeah, in the time that I had been spending with Water Polo Club and the Competitive Spirit Squad. I swear to God, Gabbie Monroe is a backstabbing little weasel and I will pee on the things she eats.  Maybe I deserve this for not paying enough attention to Tilly’s life while I’ve been off doing flips off of buildings or whatever. Like, I get it if I choose to be Challenge that maybe I’ll need to be Student Council historian rather than Student Council president and I’m ~~okay with it~~ trying to be okay with it.  But like, Challenge saved Gabbie’s skank ass from Whitelight and whatever those things were, so, really it should be anyone but her.  Maybe I should tell everyone that ((what follows is a collection of embarrassing anecdotes about Gabbie that have been saved up for the past three years, each one crossed out so heavily that the paper tears.))

But that’s not the spirit of Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving should be about coming together and it definitely didn’t feel like we came together.  I tried to pep up Rescue since he’s been a freaking grouch since this stuff about his father came out.  I tried my best because no one deserves to have their dirty laundry put out there like that.  I guess I just didn’t know what to say though, because, like, whose dad is a frickin’ supervillain?  That’s messed up.  What do I even say about that?  Oh, my dad works late too sometimes?  I mean, I’d take a punch for my dad but there’s a reason why Rekken’s not punching my dad, right?

Thanksgiving should be about coming together.  Like Zip and Lavender did when they were playing with Gallahad.  Or like Rescue and I going back to Christmas in like the 70s or something to get a gift for Magic Midge.  I know that I told Rhiannon that the turkey was the most important part of Thanksgiving, but I do really know that it’s about the people and gratitude.

But that said, Thorne?! Really?!

St. Francis taught us to sow pardon where there is injury and love where there is hatred, but a smug brat is the exact opposite of thankfulness.  Yeah, yeah, we should love everyone with no exceptions, but that doesn’t mean we should start with the crocodileiest bitch we could find, Team Dad?

So, yeah, I tried to punch her at the Thanksgiving table.  Twice. And while I apologized to Cyclone about it, I’m not all that sorry if we’re being honest.  I’m actually more mad at him for putting us in that situation. “Surprise, I brought that cactus-hearted snake that’s always trying to kill you.”  What a rotten idea.  I’ll make sure I tell him the next time I see him.

I’m not proud about how I acted either, though.  I really do wish that I had Rhiannon’s judgment to handle it appropriately at the time, even if she did end up summoning a demonic poultry tree.  That’s the thing: if I had Rhiannon’s decision making with my “powers,” I could really help in those situations.  If Rhiannon had my judgment with her powers, people would die.  A lot.

So I don’t think this really brought the team together like it was supposed to.  Most people stormed off.  Some of them hungry.  If we’re being honest, the folks at the soup kitchen Thanksgiving were much happier than a lot of us were.  Which, I mean, is good, I guess, but, like, you know…

Everyone should have a place where they can go on Thanksgiving.  It just happens that for Thorne, that place is hell.

## December 2, 2018- The Big Things and the Little Things

When I was a little girl I used to be really afraid of elevators.  Most of my friends were all scared of escalators, afraid that they’d time their step wrong and fall and get chewed up by the stairs or whatever.  I didn’t get it then.  It’s like, just look down and step you freaking klutz.  But an elevator you don’t have any control over.  If something goes wrong you’re kinda sorta really screwed.  I’ll always trust myself more than I’ll trust any number of cables.

So, yeah, there I was with Redshift when the elevator broke and we started falling to our ~~deaths~~ likely injuries.  I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t really know what their powers were before that moment and I kinda wondered why the team needed a stoner ghost, but boy were they really useful in that moment.  And then I saved us by riding an elevator cable to safety.  Except it chewed up my hands real good.  Coach isn’t going to be too happy about that.  Coach won’t be either.  Nor will coach.

It turns out that the people who have been causing mob fronts to disappear entirely (you know, that thing on the news where the gangsters were caught in their underdoos and the whole building was gone?) are a pair of supers called Magna and Atomica.  I’m not sure if they’re heroes or villains because it sure looks like they used to be teammates with Cyclone and Arthur, but that like, also means that they were teammates with Lancelot.  I guess it all depends on what’s happening to these people and places when they disappear, right?  But based on the way Atomica was talking about it, I’m assuming it’s nothing good.  It also seems like they’re a couple maybe?  Which, if they are, Atomica needs to up her standards because she’s like a flying glowing goddess and Magna’s just some schlub with a ray gun.  Is it getting old that makes people settle like that?

I feel a little bad about piling on Magna and threatening him while he was down, especially now that I know he’s one of Cyclone’s friends.  But I wanted to get some real answers out of Atomica about what she knows about these fronts and how she knows it.  It’d also be nice to know what she plans on doing.  After all, it sounds like Redshift’s practically ready to join her and I’m sure others would be tempted too.  I’m skeptical, though.  One of the golden rules that seems to apply whether I’m Tilly or Challenge is that nothing good is ever that easy.  So, yeah, I threatened to throw her man off a building.  It’s not like I was going to do it.  And she probably knew that too.

And technically it was Freedo who made that threat.  Even though I don’t think he would have done it either.

Speaking of Freedo, I pulled him out of trouble twice today.  I hope that freaking gremlin knows that I don’t actually dislike him.  Maybe this will show him.  Saved him from some sort of funny blast from Atomica and then rescued him from coffee burns while he was stuck in the pot and we were all three inches tall and riding around on Trevo…

Oh my God, how much weed did we smoke?

I just wanted to get rid of a little bit of stress and feel like a normal teenager for a bit!  It’s been so stressful lately with finals and tournaments and saving the universe and Gabbie’s stupid ho rear end ruining the school.  I just wanted to do something silly and irresponsible, but clearly it has completely altered my memories.

I remember being tiny and riding around on a raccoon and Gwen’s sword being huge and Redshift flying around like the Red Baron and…

Oh no, did I talk to the cops while high?!  I can’t believe I did that.  I thought I played the whole thing off really cool but clearly I didn’t.  When I got home, I apparently decided that writing good night notes to my parents and slipping them under their door would be a perfectly normal, not-high things to do.  Then I slept under the bed so that the monsters couldn’t steal my face.  I don’t think I should hang out with Redshift again.

I gave Gwen all of her things back.  Plus all of the records that I kept while she and the girls were off in space doing the big important universe saving stuff.  It felt good to finally be able to talk to her openly about both identities.  I’ve only been able to do that with my parents and that’s… not really the same thing.  They just say “that’s nice” and “be careful” and “Lavender sounds like trouble, you should stay away from boys like that.”

But it didn’t feel good telling Gwen how badly things got messed up here while she was off saving the universe.  They took care of the Apocalypse Hyundai Sonata or whatever and we fucked up Thanksgiving so badly that two people might be dead.  And we blew up so very many things.  I have no idea how the rest of the team keeps doing that.  How hard is it to go on a mission and not cause massive amounts of property damage?  Just learn some martial arts you freaking clods.

I feel responsible for it in some way.  When you’re on a team everyone’s accountable.  That’s what a team is.  And it feels like we’ve just been making a mess of things lately.  And Gwen left me with all of these things, so she must think that I have an important role to play on the team, but I have no idea what that role is.  Was I supposed to take charge?  It’s not like anyone would have listened to me.  Was there something in Gwen’s notes that I missed that could have helped us avoid some of the mistakes we made?  Should I have looked at them more closely?

With everyone fighting and wanting to join the bad guys I wonder how good of a team we are some times.  I still believe what I told Gwen that we need a Big Team so that we can take care of all these little things, but there are times where we feel more Big and less Team.

Why haven’t we heard of “the Great Team” before this?  I need to ask Cyclone about it.

## December 8, 2018- Sincerity and Hunger

Rhiannon is back and safe.  Cyclone’s going to be alright.  It seems like it had a pretty step cost for Rescue, but I can’t even begin to figure out what’s going on there.  We can take care of ourselves.  I should be feeling a lot better.

I don’t.

I’ve been pouring a lot of hours into being Challenge lately.  I’ve skipped out on shifts at Legitimate.  I know that responsibility and reliability are important and that’s why the school gives course credit for completing internships but it feels irresponsible to be double checking to make sure business proposals are on the right kind of cardstock when there’s a bank getting robbed somewhere.  I’m not wrong about this, I just can’t tell them “sorry, I can’t come in because the forces of justice require backflips somewhere.”

The basketball team demoted me to alternate captain.  Which… is stupid, but also fair.  I haven’t been pulling my weight because I haven’t been showing up to practices.  But it’s not like I was going to be a lot of good showing up to practice with bandages all over my hands from elevator cable burn.  And I can hide it during the day by wearing super cute gloves and telling everyone it’s cold out.  If I showed up to practice with my hands all cut up and nasty it would be a bigger distraction.  So I’m just going to need to work twice as hard now to get back what I’ve lost.

Again, I’m not wrong.  The things that Challenge needs to do should come first.  But on a day like today, what does Challenge even do?

We got our marching orders from ~~Shady Writer~~ ~~Shade Rider~~ ~~Shari Lewis~~ the Red Baron to take out whatever was powering Whitelight’s barriers.  Surprise, surprise it was Blacklight.  I mean, I’m a bit surprised to find out that Jack Niccals is really a supervillain, but, like… okay that’s definitely not the weirdest thing I’ve found out as a member of the Big Team.  There’s a prison in Hell.  Seemingly 90% of the city is clones.  It’s getting to the point where I’ll believe whatever I’m told.

But it’s Gabe who drives us there while I just futz around with a map.

We got stopped at a GREY checkpoint and I thought I could be useful by making a distraction.  You know, do some flips and “look over here, teen superhero mischief” kinda thing.  But Zip’s powers can make cars move so, I guess that’s a better way to do it.

Hesperus started to go all supernova so I tried to be the brave one who dove in and saved the day, but nah, turns out everyone else has it under control.

And then we chase down Blacklight and I go to beat the tar out of her, I turn around and they’re all fighting each other for some reason?  Thanks, team.  While you’re shooting light blasts at each other I’ll be over here fighting the bad guy.

Then it’s time to destroy the evil altar, and I’m the one who’s right there, but, nah, it’s cool, Gwen’s got this.  That’s what being on a team is.  Everyone has to play their position.  Her position is swinging a bitching sword and saving the day from evil.  I do cartwheels and distract the baddies.

Not everyone gets to be captain.  Not everyone can be the MVP but everyone can be the best at their job.  It’s just hard to give up on so many of the things where I am the best to do something like this where I can only help around the edges.  But I think it’s probably right.

This earring that Parrot brought me from space keeps on telling me weird things.  Things like “You’re Great Hero number one!” and “The bravery is your biggest attribute.”  It’s been nice to hear because it sure isn’t how I have felt lately.  I’ve felt like a clod in my social life and like I’m barely hanging on at school all so that I can kinda fake my way around belonging on the Big Team.

Maybe I’d feel better if I just went solo and didn’t spend so much time around robots and exploding suns and pan-dimensional witches.  Then I could fight crime on my own time and still be able to pour myself into all of Tilly’s responsibilities.  Cyclone told me that there are a lot of different ways to be a hero at Thanksgiving.  Maybe this isn’t mine.

Rekken told me tonight that when her system rebooted during our fight with Whitelight when we were at Poderosa that she forgot everything about her relationship with Gwen.  This was weird to me because really I’ve never known that much about Rekken other than that she was canoodling with Gwen.  I mean, the first time I saw her was when I took that picture of the two of them at the dance, and I probably learned more about her from Gwen’s journal than I ever have from talking to her.

Journal, I don’t know what the right thing to do was.  I mean, I don’t feel like I should make choices for other people and by telling Olivia all of the things that I know Gwen thinks about her maybe I was doing that.  Is that any different than going back and planting a love for Gwen in her past?  And that would be creepy and wrong.  But I did it.  There’s enough drama and hurt going on around this place without the two of them being all cold to each other.  I did it because Gwen needs someone and I don’t know Olivia all that well, but I’m pretty sure she needs someone too.

The Big Team doesn’t need me, but it needs to stay together.  And maybe that’s where I can help right now.

“Be sincerity and hungry for peace.”

Thanks, earring.  I needed that.

## December 16, 2018- Moment of Truth: Big Time

My dad always says that there are 24 usable hours in every day.  You just need to be smart about how you use them.  People keep telling me that I don’t have time to play Water Polo and do traveling gymnastics and go on the competitive spirit squad leadership retreat, but, like, I never tell them that they don’t have the time to eat those extra fries or sit around gossiping, Gabbie you tubby clod.

And I’ve just about lost my patience for sitting around the base and fighting about what we’re supposed to be doing.  Yeah, sure, stuff’s bad now.  Martial law and missing robots and something about the Horrorterrors or the Spirit Realm and whatever the hell Crimea is.  You know what isn’t going to make that better?  Fighting about who’s the worst enemy.  Fighting about what villains deserve what punishments.  When the whole damn world is on fire you grab the hose first and worry about the details later.  Lately it has felt like we’ve spent a lot of time arguing over how to deal with our situation and not a lot of time dealing with our situation.  I don’t care if Chimera’s the worst thing in the world or Whitelight or Greylight, I just want to get to solving problems and while I’d wear tights all day every day if I could, they kinda chafe if you wear them on your face too long, so let’s get a move on.

So we went to investigate some of the leads that we found on that Hard Drive that Freedo and I stole from Magna a few weeks ago.  Gwen and Morrígan and Domink were there to help investigate and I guess that it’s a good thing that they were because it turns out that between GREY and Crimera there were some pretty big guns there.  And it seemed like they were well underway in fighting each other by the time we showed up.  Rescue was there too, but I’m not really sure he’s really doing much at this point?  It seems like he’s a real mess even when you can get him out of the music room.  I feel bad for Search being cooped up in there all day too.  It’s one thing if you choose to do that to yourself, but at least let your dog out, y’know?

Now, I’m not going to say that the Big Team is perfect, but we did a better job neutralizing GREY and Crimera than Atomica and Magna were doing and we did it without destroying that building.  Gwen did her whirlwind and I did my whirlwind.  Gwen helped me to hit those mobsters with a flying elbow drop.  Dom took out those walls and I…

… I negotiated a deal with their terrified accountant while Gwen flew after Atomica.  Alright, I know my powers don’t let me do everything that other supers can, but I can help, dammit.  And right now we could use a person inside Crimera who owes us.

I’ve learned some things about fighting crime.  I wish that Gwen wouldn’t just leave me on a roof when I have an idea just because she can fly and I can’t.  I’m not just a pretty little punching and flipping tool for the team to use.  I know things too.

And then the fight comes again.  What do we do when the police show up?  What do we do when GREY shows up?  Who cares?  By the time they show up we should be well gone to the next fire.  There’s only like seventeen of them in any given part of the damn city at any point.  Nevertheless, there I am explaining to Officer Pine how it is that superheroes are supposed to work.  Let’s not waste Sunday hours, people, I’ve got a school dance to set up for in a few hours.

But it turns out that Atomica left there to go to the other side of the city to break out her schlub boyfriend.  It’s kinda hard to claim the higher ground on crime prevention while you’re trying to burn down a police station, but that’s Generation X for you.  So we followed her there and thank merciful something that Dom and Rhiannon were there, because someone needed to keep that building from falling down and they were freaking champs there.

I’m never going to be able to hold up a building.  Period.  Not everyone can be an all-star, but everyone can be an all-star at their position.  I rescue whoever I can from the rubble outside and then I go charging in to see if there’s anyone else that can be saved.  Sure, it’s dangerous, and no, I don’t have a plan for how I’m going to bust open a detention center with my bare hands.  It was reckless and stupid and the walls came crashing down around me.  But that’s the other part of playing a position on your team, you trust everyone else to do their jobs too.  Morrígan saved all of us in that building and I had to trust that she was going to if it came to it.

And, I’m going to admit, as the rubble came down and cut around my face I did have some moments of doubt.  But while the Morrígan loses control some times, Rhiannon doesn’t.  I told her at fifth Thanksgiving that it was something that I admired about her.  And sure enough, she cleared enough of the rubble with her powers for me to get out.  It helps to know the person behind the mask sometimes.

After all of that, getting buried in bricks and rubble and getting a few nasty scrapes on my face, it turns out that it was Officer Burch and Magna on the other side of the door.  But that kinda proves what I’m trying to say about superheroing: it’s not about who you save, it’s about saving something.  Morrígan pushed herself to save me, I can push to save these two.

I don’t know that I really thought it out at the time, but I guess it made sense.  The last time we saw Magna the police seized his super-size-changey gun.  There was an evidence locker blocking the door to the interrogation room.  I guess I just figured that 1+1 would equal 2 and sure enough when I kicked that thing open there was Magna’s shrink ray.

If I can be honest, journal, I had no idea that Atomica was about to go all Hesperus outside.  That part wasn’t even a lucky guess.  I just… I wanted to make her feel small.  Because sometimes you see the world through the complicated weave of your mask and other times it’s perfectly clear.

I’m so sick and tired of everyone lording over us with these big solutions of “here’s how you’re supposed to be doing things.”  Cyclone, Atomica, Rodriguez, whoever.  I’m tired of being told.  I knew what I wanted to do with that gun.  I wanted to shrink her one size past small.  And, yeah, you know what, in the moment it was helpful, but it sure helped that I wanted to do it anyway.

Freedo wasn’t there.  I only mention it because he could have helped to scare off those GREY goons in a way that I couldn’t, or he could have made multiple versions of me again.  And it’s probably good that he wasn’t because my face got cut up by those bricks and he probably would have made fun of me or something.

While I hope no one else got a good look at my face while the mask was off, I hope Atomica did from her tiny little vantage point, because I want her to see that we’re the Big Team.  We’re the Big Team and that’s our biggest strength.  We don’t need to prioritize.  We don’t need to spend a whole lot of time fighting about who the biggest bad is, when there’s a fire to put out we can put that em effer out.

And if the Big Team can’t, I will.  Because that’s what my dad was trying to say.  There’s 24 hours every day.

There aren’t sleep hours and homework hours.

There aren’t basketball hours and swim hours.

There aren’t Matilda hours and Challenge hours.

There are 24 hours.  And they’re all Big.

## December 21, 2018- Video\_01

The shot is filled entirely with an out-of-focus light grey t-shirt and a blonde ponytail that keeps wagging in and out of frame.  As the subject backs up, the text on the t-shirt becomes clear, simple blue block letters reading “FHBHS Junior Varsity Girls Lacrosse” and the rest of the room becomes clear.  The subject sits, legs pretzeled beneath her, at the foot of her bed which is perfectly made and hasn’t been used for several days.  The windows let in no light; it’s dark outside and has been for some time.  Her fingernails and toenails shine with a fresh new polish job, inexplicably applied at this late hour, in a teal to match the glyph of her costume.  Her right arm is wrapped in a compression bandage.

“Okay, it’s working?” She asks, before steeling herself and looking confidently into the camera.  “Hi, my name’s Matilda Kepler, and I want to help you reimagine your printing experience!”  She outstretched her hand to the camera, before she started to giggle at her hammed up delivery.  “Oh my God, can you believe I actually did that?!  I am such a dork!”  She suddenly drops the giggle, though, and raises a threatening finger to the camera.  “But you don’t get to call me that!  Only I get to call me that.  Me and other dorks.  Got it, you dork?”

“But so, like, I did that.  And I talked to Crimea!  All by myself, no mask, no team, just Tilly and the scariest fucking crime boss in the city.  And he had a knife!  I mean it was for steak, but it’s still like a knife and everything.”  She’s talking a mile a minute and starting to lose her composure.  She pulls her ponytail over her left shoulder and starts stroking her hair to give herself something to focus on and slow herself down.  Her speech teacher tells her it’s a bad habit, but he slouches on his podium so what does he know about anything?

“I don’t even know if what I found out was all that useful.  Sherman found out all of that stuff about GREY and, I mean, it was Shadow X who found the vault.  Speaking of which, when did she join the team?  Did you know about that?  I mean, she’s like big big!  And she says she knows me, which is really surprising, but I’ll talk about that later.  It’s like, when did the team get this important, though?  I thought we were just the team that investigates weird haunted houses and saves prisoners from GREY, but then all of this stuff with space and now fighting Chimera himself… itself?  I guess we didn’t real ask how it, you know, but that and having a celebrity and… it’s all happening kind of quick now, don’t you think?”

“And so, I don’t know about you, but I was pretty pissed when Cyclone was telling us that this was out of our league.  Parrot and Elle and Gwen just saved the fuggin’ multiverse or whatever and I just smacked down two of his best buds so what does he mean it’s out of our league?  He should trust us more, especially because that was a pretty good team we had there.  It’s not like we had… well, you know…”  She rolls her eyes and makes a silly face at the camera before laughing.

“I think we showed him by getting all of that information, but you know that the next time something important comes up again he’s going to be all…” she straightens her back and lowers her voice, speaking with a sternly raised finger “Now children, you’ve shown your worth but part of learning to be a hero is knowing when you need the help of other heroes.”  She breaks character.  “Was that any good?  I’ve been practicing and it feels like him.  I dunno, I’ll need to watch the tape and see.  I’ll cut it out if it’s not good, so you won’t be seeing this I guess.  I talked to Jessalyn a little bit about acting and being funny.”

“So, that’s really one of the reasons why I’m videoing this.  I mean, it’s totally the reason because she gave me this camera setup which is super nice and I really don’t know how I can repay her for that.  But she also said a lot of really sweet things that helped me to feel confident in front of her.  She really thinks I’m a hero.  And so, I showed her, well…” She pauses and gestures with both hands to her face and then waves her hands up and down her body.  She suddenly blushes and stops moving.  “I mean, not the…” she gestures back to her body, “just my, you know, face.  Oh God, this is so embarrassing I’m going to need to cut all of this out.”  She buries her face in her hands, which are still singed from contact with Chimera (but like, when are her hands not burnt nowadays?) and now radiate with the warmth of her face.  She regains her composure as she takes her hair tie out and lets her blonde hair work its way out of its ponytail shape.  She leans forward and gives her head a good shake to even her hair out as her fingers start to play with the hair tie.  Give yourself something else to focus on and the talking becomes easier.

“But I figure if I keep taking my mask off for everyone else, I should probably let you know too.  I mean, it seems like we’re working together a lot.  And I might not always say it, but I think we work pretty well together sometimes.  I mean, maybe not today when you accidentally turned off your powers and I needed to save you again!” She laughs and smiles into the camera.  “And that’s three times now, ya fucking g… goofball.  And don’t think that I’m not counting!  Oh my God, the look on all of those lizard dudes’ faces when they saw it was just you.  The look on YOUR face!  Don’t worry, though, I’ve got your back.”  She mimes a kick and a karate chop before entering another laughing fit in what has to be one of the least intimidating displays ever put on by a martial arts expert.

Her laughing didn’t really subside as she attempted to continue “And, oh my God, Freedo, I don’t know anything about computers!  Like, why the hell am I the one going into that vault?  We need like, Zip or Tatum or… how are we so bad at computers as a team?  Aren’t we like the new generation or whatever?!  How is it that we’re only good at stabbing things with spears?”

“But holy shit, how bad ass was Elle?” She got wide-eyed, “Just freaking speaking a five headed monster like that?  God, I wish I could be like her.  But without all of the creepy evil future thing?  But I can’t ever see her becoming like that, can you?  And you!  You were clutch with that glass thing!  And… well, you saved me.  So I guess I’m only up by two now?”  She smiles softly, before remembering.

“Oh, yeah, my arm.  It’s… I mean it’s pretty torn up, but it doesn’t look as bad as I would have thought a mythical lion bite might.”  She holds her bandaged arm up to the camera and starts to unwrap the bandage before stopping.  “Eww, I’m sorry, you probably don’t want to see that, I don’t know what I was thinking.  But it shouldn’t be too hard to hide.  I mean, it’s Christmas Break so I don’t need to worry about going into school and my parents already know so I don’t need to hide it around the house.  And maybe I can just wear one of those tacky Christmas sweaters to all of the parties.  Ick, can you imagine?  But I’ll figure something out.  Hmmmm.”

“So, Jessalyn says I should wear a camera while I’m doing hero stuff like she does.  She thinks people would watch, but who would really spend their time watching a dork do flips and save the world?  And I’d probably just make everyone vomit from motion sickness!  Eww, sorry!”

“Well, I guess that’s all I wanted to say.  I don’t even know when or how I’m going to send this to you, but I figure that if some of the team know that you should know because it seems like we’re working together a lot and it might be, I dunno, useful for you to know, I guess?  Plus, I know we go to school together, but we don’t really run in the same crowds, so maybe at some point if you had to, you know, tell me something there, you could.  Something about the Big Team.”

The video comes to an end.  At her laptop, Matilda Kepler cringes.  She also has no idea how to actually go in and delete parts so that might have been an empty threat.  And how would she even share it if she wanted to.  Can’t just upload it to HeroTube now, can she?

She saves the file.  “Freedo.mov”

She edits it.  “Freedo\_01.mov”

## December 24, 2018- Do Androids Dream of Satin Briefs?

I don’t think I’ve ever been cautious.  My parents say that one of the scariest things about me as a little kid.  I didn’t have any fear of getting hurt or falling so I would just take off on a new bike or run headlong into stuff. Sometimes I’d crash but I’d pop up and deal with it.  But what’s the big deal?  Let’s get to the action.  The constant debates on the team of “who should we go to” or “how does this person deserve to be punished” have always bored me.  Someone’s putting citizens in danger?  Let’s get them to safety.  Someone’s missing?  Let’s find ‘em.

And I certainly don’t want to spend time sitting around negotiating with Rooster.  My heart aches for the transformed and the people of Zodiac City for everything that they’ve been through and the way that this city treats them.  But I get a feeling that Rooster was a real cock long before T-Day.  We’ve been trying to help his feathered butt accomplish his goals in a better way every time we go in there and he’s always talking down to us.  We’re allies and we get the job done better than you can, so be grateful when we’re on the same side.  If I’m being totally honest I knew that the Chicken Dance wasn’t a diplomatic ritual. I just don’t like the guy.  Next time I’m bringing a special recipe of 11 herbs and spices with me.  We’ll keep getting results and he can keep pissing off.

But then we make it to the facility and well, there was some really weird stuff going on there.  It seemed like some of it might have been actual medical help for people who needed it.  I wish we could have gotten more information about what was going on there before things went all punchy punchy flamey flamey, but it’s not like GREY gave us a ton of time to work.  People think I’m a perfectionist because I want to be good at everything, but it’s a bit of the opposite.  If you want to get more things done you need to know when good enough is good enough. GREY’s operations in this city are mostly bad, so let’s shut down as many of them as we can now.  It might mean tossing out some good with the bad, but we can’t let them hide behind the smoke and mirrors of their few good deeds. If we tried to make perfect choices, we’d never make choices at all.

So, choices. Gwen.  I don’t blame her, this was obviously personal for her beyond all of the ways it was personal for us.  But she totally locked up when it came time to face down Olivia and all those mind controlled junkies.  I had to take the lead and, well… it went alright.  Tactically we got the job done and we had the right people in the right places.  We won, and that’s everything.

But I hesitated in some key places.  I should have just told Freedo to make an illusion instead of starting a fucking conversation about it.  I should have been more aggressive in holding Olivia down once we had her down.  I should have… done something to keep Gwen from trying to drown all of us?  Maybe I should have made sure that Rekken didn’t even get to her.

And, yeah, Freedo had to help me out with some of those zombiefolk.  So, I’ve saved him three times, he’s saved me twice.  I’m still one up on that gremlin, but I don’t want him to feel like we’re even.  He’s got to owe me

So, while I was shoving Rekken into the ground and Gwen was trying to waterboard everybody Dominik took on an entire floor worth of goons on his own.  You can lose sight of your goals in the chaos of superheroics from time to time and I think I’ve forgotten what I want to be.  I want to be Dom.  I want to be able to do it on my own.  I joined the team so that I could find out more about how to go about fighting crime, but I feel like I’ve grown dependent on the team.  I’ve always been a team player but, like… I want to be the one who clears an entire floor of an evil research facility on my own.  I’m glad that Dom’s on the team because I still have a lot I can learn from him.

Because, hey, he won the day for us.  He helped get Olivia back, he helped clear the base, he was the big hero we all know he is today.

Which brings me to what I’m thinking about.  I’m thinking about being a little bit more cautious with our strategy, journal. Rekken goes off missing, turns out she’s under GREY control, God knows what information she has given them, and then as soon as she’s all kissy kissy with Gwen we welcome her back.  Should we worry about GREY knowing her secrets? Where our base is?  We protected Grandma Mann for a hot second there, but now we’re just assuming it’s all over because we torched a GREY building? We’ve been compromised like four times since I joined last week or whatever and yet we don’t seem to be getting any smarter about our security.  If nothing else it’s making me rethink showing my face to as many teammates as I have. Although, maybe I’ll still show Freedo?

I’m happy for Gwen.  I’m happy for Olivia.  It’s good to feel like more of the team is back together.  It feels like family and it feels like home. But the Big Team comes with Big Questions and Big Liabilities.  And my parents will tell you I’ve always been one to throw caution to the wind and try to do it on my own.

## January 5, 2019- The Alpha Crisis

Her face isn’t made up.  Normally she would have done her makeup after her second morning run on a Saturday, but since she was going directly to meet with 5p7ynt3r and some of her teammates she figured she’d put it off until after the heroing for the day was done.  And then after that she didn’t really see much of a point.

Not that she usually wore a lot of makeup.  Not like in middle school when her eyes looked like Trevor’s some days.  It was just helpful to put some foundation and concealer and a little bit of color on every once in a while when she was running on two and a half hours of sleep per night.  Something she had read on a teen study tips blog had told her that a full sleep cycle took about three hours and that sleeping in multiples of three hours at a time would leave you feeling the most rested, but she could never find those extra thirty minutes in her schedule.

Her eyelids were probably a little bit baggy.  Her pajama t-shirt was baggy, hanging onto the edge of one of her shoulders.  Not the one that got shot. The other one. Thank God it’s still winter so she can keep on covering up and avoiding questions about her wounds, but swim practice was going to be interesting this week.  Or maybe for the rest of the season. She wasn’t really sure how long glancing gunshot wounds took to heal, but this was the worst one she’d had yet.

The teal backpack slung over the back of her chair was exceptionally baggy.  On her desk was an Advanced Statistics textbook, piled underneath a pair of “How To Ace the Advanced Statistics Exam” study books, piled under a pair of spiral notebooks, one from class and the other from supplemental videos she had found online.  And on top of that a baggy full of highlighted notecards where she had recopied the notes from the spirals. They all stacked into a tower that would be liable to become a pillow if her mind weren’t so troubled.

She adjusted her “Nap Club President” t-shirt to make sure it wasn’t showing too much shoulder… and then shook it a bit to make sure it was showing a little bit more than that… and started the camera.  She barely spoke above a whisper not wanting to wake anyone in the house.

“Hey, it’s me.  It’s… well, it’s tonight and I just need something to distract me because I’m having a really hard time focusing on Stats right now.  And I just need to talk about it a little bit and I figured maybe I could talk to you since you’d probably understand. And I’m starting to realize that there’s no way I’m ever going to show you these things anyway.”

“We were in such a hurry to do anything we could to get GREY out of power that we didn’t really consider who we were working with.  I mean, in hindsight it should seem obvious that you don’t trust people you meet on the Internet, especially not faceless hackers or whatever 5p7ynt3r ended up being.  But it wasn’t that hard to believe that he wanted to take down GREY too. And I guess he or it or whatever did. But the enemy of your enemy isn’t always your friend. Every once in a while the enemy of your enemy is an omnicidal asshole.”

“So it all got started at Philosotea.  If the idea was to be covert, we failed miserably.  I mean, superheroes come into Philosotea all the time, so they’re used to seeing people like me and even like Zip with all of her…” she rubs up and down her arms “...ugh, so cool.  But I think Sherman kinda makes people nervous with the whole gasmasked soldier thing. I mean, once you know him you get to know that he’s a pretty good guy, but if I’m in a restaurant and a guy walks in with that gear, I’m cartwheeling right the heck out.  He pulled me aside for a bit and started asking me all of these weird questions about my job at the print shop. Maybe I’ve been mentioning it more than normal lately, but like, why should he care so much that he’d even notice?”

“Anyway, I guess that we were all inspired by that speech that Brites Ramirez gave.  I mean, yeah, in a perfect world you investigate the flash drive that some nutjob gave you, but once people are taking to the streets you don’t really have that kind of time..  Besides, Zip seemed to think it checked out. And it was Tatum who created…” She starts to get angry and pauses to collect herself. “No, I can’t just blame them. We’re all a team, we’re all responsible.  We should have been more careful, but taking a risk to shut down GREY’s defenses seemed like a pretty good idea at the time. Shit, hold on, I think I hear my parents.” She stands up obscuring the camera. “No, I’m still studying… I’m just talking to myself because it’s stats and it doesn’t make any sense and they expect us to just teach ourselves everything.”

The video cuts out and jumps back.  It’s the same bedroom in the same dark light, but she is now hanging upside down from her knees on an exercise bar on the wall that her parents reluctantly installed for her 15th birthday.  Shirt tucked into her pajama bottoms, arms folded across her chest, she effortlessly continues a set of sit ups as she continues to relive the events of the day.

“You know, it actually isn’t all that hard to break into City Hall.  Although, I probably shouldn’t be telling you that because you’d probably use it for some sort of delinquent gremlin prank shit.  But even with GREY there, not all that hard. I broke in through a skylight superhero style, landed in the whole three-point stance.  Kapow! Even once the guards found us they weren’t as tough and elite as Sherman’s boss made it seem like they’d b…” She stops talking suddenly.  She pushes off of the bar and flips, landing in a crouch her face mere inches from the camera.

“And holy shit, did you know that Zip can fight?!  Like, fucking take out GREY guards with her danged fists kind of fight.  It was awesome! So yeah, they weren’t that tough. I did get shot, though.  I don’t think it’s that bad though? I don’t know, you’ve been doing this for longer, so I’m sure you’ve been shot before, maybe you can tell me.”  She stretches her shirt collar just off the shoulder, showing some gauze at the top of the wound’s dressing. She scurries to her feet in a panic, though as there’s a knock at the door.

“No, Dad, I didn’t jump off of the bar that was just me putting down my backpack.  I already told you that I wouldn’t. God.”

The video comes back to her, curled up on her bed, the sun starting to peek through in the windows behind her.  At her feet a copy of The Sun Also Rises lays propped open.

“God, I shouldn’t have done it.  Like, maybe we could have just beaten up a bunch of GREY dudes and then Tatum could have done something to the system manually.  But I was the one who did it. I uploaded Steel Spirit Alpha into the GREY system, I’m the one that allowed it to take control of all those guns and…  all those people.” She sniffles and strains to hold back what would not be her first cry of the night. “I didn’t *cause* it to happen. I know it’s not my fault and I’m not going to let myself think that it was.  But I played a role in allowing it to happen. I don’t know who’s fault it is. Alpha’s? Can you blame an artificial intelligence for the things it does? Is it Tatum’s fault then? He actually asked me if I thought we could have done this without him.  At the scene where it happened. Where all of those people got shot by the thing he made! How can you be so full of yourself? He’s a teammate but…” She breathes deeply, composing herself. “He’s a teammate.”

“I want to just blame GREY, but then where are we?  Back to the beginning where we’re just angry at GREY and so damn anxious to take them out that we’re making mistakes.  I’ve been impatient lately, I’ve been wanting to do more to take the offensive against GREY and… well, look at where that gets me.  And there are so many things out there that I just can’t fight.” A tear finally does roll down her face and she snorts a bit as she keeps her voice from cracking.  “Ugh, I’m definitely never showing you this now. But, what the hell am I going to do against an evil computer?! I tried making up this whole thing about a Steel Spirit Delta coming to get him, but all I was able to do was sit around and twiddle my thumbs waiting for Tatum and Zip to get there and do something for me.  And poor Zip, whatever happened to her hit her pretty bad. And all I could do was watch!”

“I’ve been telling everyone... telling myself… that I want us to be more aggressive in attacking these problems.  I think that’s just masking what I really want though. I just don’t want us to get into these problems in the first place.  I don’t want us to be creating evil computer programs, I don’t want the government to be sponsoring kidnapping paramilitary squads like GREY, because once that happens there’s nothing that I can do to help.  Why can’t we just have some purse-snatchers or fish monsters? Or like, a bad dude with spandex and a twirly mustache? Something that I can fight off with backflips and a clever bluff.”

She wipes at her eyes a bit and recollects herself.  “Maybe that’s why we fight with each other sometimes.  You and I, I mean. I thought it was because we’re different, but now I’m starting to think it’s because we do the same thing on the team.  When things get really dangerous all we can do is put up an illusion and make everyone think we’re something that we’re not.” She gives the camera a glum smirk.

“Anyway, it’s morning now, so I’ll see you at school.  I guess you just don’t know that yet. Thanks for listening.  Maybe it gets better from here now that GREY’s on the run.”

After the camera cuts out she saves the movie and adds it to the flash drive with the rest of them. "Freedo\_04.mov."

## January 11, 2019- Furrymandering (or, alternately, Uncle Tommy's Little Assholes Live from the Flamingo)

Alright, so mom is pissed.  The news apparently showed a clip of me holding up a roof to save that bird family in Zodiac City and now she’s worried that I’m putting myself in danger.  First of all, you’d think she’d be proud of me because I was saving people and I didn’t even get hurt.  Second, she’s not even paying that close of attention to what’s going on in my life.  I mean, I got shot and saw a whole bunch of blood last week and she didn’t even know.  I tried to tell her that, but she just doesn’t understand that I can take care of myself.  I’m 16 years old now and I kind of have superpowers.

Parrot’s mom is fine with her being a superhero!  Lavender’s grandma is fine with him being a superhero!  Rescue’s dad is… you know, maybe that’s not the point.   The point is I can do this, mom.

We went up to Zodiac City to help with some of the relief stuff.  Clear out some of the debris, help with the construction to turn some of those awful GREY facilities into something that they can use.  It’s been a rough few weeks… months… for everyone there so I’m happy to help and help however they want it.  At the same time, I’m not sure that I like the idea of them setting up a permanent city in the sky?  It seems like right now the plan is to rebuild up there, but given that there’s a very real chance that the whole island comes crashing back down in some horrific disaster I kinda wish they’d evacuate.  Maybe try to reintegrate the Transformed back into where they were in society and get everyone to stop being assholes to them?  I know that’s too idealistic and I know that I don’t know what it’s like to be a part of a group like that… but as it stands right now this whole thing seems like it’s headed for catastrophe.  But it’s my job to help, not to judge.

So we went up there.  Lavender, Search and Rescue, Parrot and me.  They have this bird taxi program that flies you up there now which is ~~slightly less degrading than Uber~~ great, but again, really highlights how unstable this whole situation is.  We were asked to help rebuild this ballet studio called the Peacock.  Everyone seemed to get made at me because I was trying to teach the kids some ballet instead of just swinging a hammer and turning some screws.  There’s a lot that needs to be rebuilt in Zodiac.  People and relationships need to be rebuilt too.

Parrot came out publicly.  Apparently she’s Alex from swim team.  Councilor Ramirez’s daughter.  That’s cool.  I’m happy for her.  I mean, I guess she’s pretty cool as Alex too.  I guess I just didn’t realize that other people at school were superheroes.  Well, I know Tommy and Gwen and everyone else are.  But like, she’s a superhero and she gets to go to space and her mom’s like the cool good city councilor and she’s on swim team.  It’s great.  I like ~~Alex~~ Parrot.

Who I don’t like, though, is Rooster.  Fuck Rooster eight times over and I don’t know why it is that everyone else doesn’t see it.  He’s calling for Zodiac independence now.  Listen, chicken shit, there’s no way that Zodiac City stays separated from everything else forever and even if it did… maybe especially if it did… it would still be a horrible idea.  I know that it’s easy for me to think that way when I’m not part of the Transformed and I certainly don’t hate him in the same way that I hate GREY and all of the people who made the problem.  But could he just sit back for like five seconds and let Monkey help the situation?

But of course there’s never five seconds.  Nope, that’s about when the snipers started trying to take out Rescue.  I swear, that boy.  He can’t seem to decide if he wants to be off vaping or if he needs to be at the center of all the drama.  And while that was going on Tommy decides it’s time to go hang out with his BFF Rooster so, yeah, Mom, I was the one who had to keep the building from squishing the bird people.  Sorry.

We got Rescue bailed out of ~~zoo~~ jail and met up with Councilor Ramirez and Monkey.  They were staging a public debate and the Good News is that Monkey wants to run for city council.  Finally, someone’s trying to do something sensible and legitimate to try to get Benoit and Rodriguez out of power.  I know I was the one who tried to help hack into GREY’s computers last week, but that’s because that’s how we were going about it as a team.  And besides, now that some of the GREY presence has been lifted maybe something like beating Rodriguez in an election can work.  Bad News, apparently Zodiac City is in Councilor Ramirez’s district.

So… we… moved the city?

I didn’t think it was going to work.  I have no idea what Lavender did to get it to work.  Whatever changes are going on with him and the Orixa and the spirit realm that he talks to—I swear, everyone on this team gets to have cool powers but me—he seems to be taking everything a lot more seriously now.  So he coaxed the Mortem into moving Zodiac City right above Rodriguez’s district and Parrot and I teamed up to keep people from getting hurt by the inevitable earthquakes and shifts.

But that’s just the thing—the earthquakes are inevitable.  There are going to be more problems with Zodiac City.  This isn’t a solution and we shouldn’t pretend like it is.  Geez, I don’t even know if that’s how districts work.  Don’t they need to do a census or something?  There's always another crisis to deal with tomorrow. For today we made some progress and kept everyone safe. But the fight against GREY isn’t over and the Transformed’s problems aren’t over and there are going to be more days like last week where something terrible happens in this city.

Mom’s afraid I’ll be there.

I hope she's right.