The Weatherman's Journal: Book Two

Back to The Weatherman.

The second book of the Weatherman's journal, corresponding to the events of Season 3.5 and the first part of Season 4. Primarily entries in Ernest’s diary, with the occasional scene, letter, or dream sequence.

See also The Weatherman's Journal for Season 3 and The Weather Channel for the later part of Season 4.

## Aurora Borealis

*OVA: Frozen Souls*

December 21, 2019
Hey, so I actually managed to fill up my first journal, which means I get to start writing in this new one instead!
I guess that means my hypothetical mystery reader might start reading here, if my journals got separated somehow? Should introduce myself and explain what’s going on? I don’t think I really did that with the first entry in my original journal. Also, it’s probably just future-me reading back through these anyway, and I know what’s up.
But yeah, it’s me. Ernest. The Weatherman. Cool? Cool.
It’s kind of appropriate that I’d be starting a new journal today, since it’s the winter solstice. Longest night, some people consider it the end of one year and the beginning of the next and all that. Personally, I’m ready for a new year. This one hasn’t been the best, and I could use a fresh start.
Today was one of those missions that wasn’t officially a mission, but we just kinda got wrapped up in some villain’s plans and had to stop them. I’m not sure when we’ll start getting assigned missions again, actually. With the base all messed up and Godspeed in the hospital, plus most of the League of Heroes still missing, things haven’t exactly been the most organized.
At first, Verve, Challenge, Manaline, and I were just hanging out, having fun with all the snow and warming up with drinks afterwards. It was nice to get out of the house and take my mind off of everything that’s been going on with Timothy. I would have been happy to hang out until I ran out of marshmallows to sneak into everyone else's drinks, but someone walked in with their arm frozen in a block of ice. Challenge helped him out, but we figured something strange was up, so we decided to put a stop to it.
We figured that it probably had something to do with the really dense aurora we could see in the sky. Plus it was really gathered together near one spot, and I don’t think auroras really do that? I tried to mess with the aurora, because I remember auroras involve the atmosphere somehow, so I thought I might be able to do something about it with my powers. I guess it was too far away for me to pull on it because I didn’t seem to affect it at all. Or maybe it didn’t work because it was a magic aurora, not a regular one?
I wonder if I could make an aurora with my powers. It would probably have to be closer to the ground than a real aurora. Although I think they have something to do with radiation? So maybe that wouldn’t be the best idea to try? Not like something being a bad idea has stopped me from trying before. It might be like rainbows though - I can only make those when the sun is in a good spot, cause the light has to come from somewhere. So maybe it would only work near the poles or something.
Anyway, since we couldn’t fight the aurora itself, we kept following it to see where it was coming from. We ran into some more snow-zombied people on the way who attacked us, but they calmed down once I raised the temperature around them. Eventually, we made it to the hill where the aurora was coming from, and fought this wizard guy and his friend. Apparently, they had made a magic machine thing to make the aurora steal everyone’s warm holiday feelings, so that's why they were turning into snow zombies.
They seemed to realize that this was a bad idea, actually, after we fought them for a while. It was kind of nice to hear someone we fought admit they were wrong about what they were trying to do. And even if they do try to pull the same stunt again next year, I’m sure we’d be able to stop them. Verve did a really cool thing of pulling all the electricity out of the machine to make it stop, then pushing it back in when they’d agreed to reverse it. I wish I could do something like that. Generally I can only summon electricity near machines when I’m pretty sure I want them to never work again.
After the machine was taken care of, I remembered that I’d been meaning to show Verve how I’ve been learning ASL! Atlanta told me about how her costume was designed really well for signing, so I figured she must be an expert. And yeah, she's got a sign name and everything, which is cool. I wonder who gave it to her, since Atlanta said they have to be given to you by someone who’s deaf? I bet she swooped in and rescued someone from a burning building or something dramatic like that. I wonder what mine will be like when I get it.
Verve still seemed a bit upset about the whole Gambite plot from last week. I tried to cheer her up by pointing out how we’d definitely won, but I don’t know that it really helped. I hope she felt better after we sent all of the holiday cheer back out into the city. I know I could use some myself.
-Ernest

## Fool Me Twice...

*OVA: One Flew Over the Falcon’s Nest*

December 27, 2019
Hey there, mystery reader, hope you’re having a good day. Unless you happen to be the Red Falcon, having decided this journal was worth stealing for some reason. If that’s the case, I hope you’re trying to read this while walking and end up running directly into a pole.
Today’s mission was basically a complete failure. Although at least I got to meet Lily though, she’s awesome. Former Big Team member, now part of some organization of knights that helps defend Halcyon. Cool to see the kind of things that Big Team members do after they’ve moved on from the team. And I guess it was good to get out of the apartment. I’d never thought I’d complain about something being too quiet, but with only me and mom around, it gets silent really fast.
Anyway, Seth and Melody and I got called in by Mystic Madge (who I swear is related to Rescue somehow but probably not actually his mom?) to help out the Consortium with something. ~~Zandrin~~ ~~Xandren~~ This shifty guy from the Consortium told us that the Red Falcon had stolen this magical ember and they needed us to steal it back from them. But I guess they accidentally used their divination magic to see into the future? Since when we got to where the ember was, the Red Falcon was actually in the process of stealing it.
They were disguised as the Silencer again, but since we’d been told the Red Falcon might be around, I was instantly suspicious. I remembered Rescue talking about how he should have realized the Silencer on the train was fake because of how they blocked his attack, when the Silencer doesn’t really know how to fight. So I ran up to punch “the Silencer” and when they managed to block it I knew they were actually the Red Falcon. I’ll have to do that every time “the Silencer” shows up, just to make sure they aren’t someone else in disguise.
Since we weren’t stealing from the Silencer, we had to be stealing from someone else. And that someone else turned out to be the Pharaoh. I didn’t recognize the name, but Melody and Seth filled me in afterwards, and he’s apparently really bad news. And also powerful enough to turn his museum/vault of stolen artifacts into a funhouse of magical traps, since that’s what we had to deal with after setting off the security.
Melody and I ended up separated from Seth and Lily for a bit, and I had to blast a hole through the wall to prevent us from getting crushed. And the Red Falcon was making everything more difficult by not helping with the traps at all and trying to steal the ember at every opportunity. I managed to steal it back once, but when we were distracted by fighting the giant Sphinx statues, they got it away from me again.
As we were chasing after the Red Falcon, Melody got caught up in one of the traps. I was running right behind her, so when she suddenly let loose all these shadow chains, I got wrapped up in them. I’d never seen anything like that from Melody before, so I kind of panicked and just unleashed a bunch of lightning to get them off of me. I don’t think I hurt Melody, but I’d been using my powers so much to blast through the other traps and fight off the Sphinxes that I ended up just passing out. The rest of the team managed to get me out, but we missed our chance to go after the Red Falcon, so they got away with the ember.
We weren’t really sure why the Consortium had decided to send a bunch of teens to try to steal something from a master thief, and none of us really trusted ~~Zandren~~ that shifty guy who sent us anyway, so we didn’t bother reporting back. I assume they’ll figure out eventually that we didn’t manage to retrieve the ember. They also might have found out that we also let the Red Falcon get away with the False Grail back during that magic train auction, because I forgot that Rescue and Altus might have been trying to hide that? So yeah, might be a while before the Consortium asks Big Team for help again.
Later on, I asked Melody what was up with the shadow chains. Apparently they’re a new power she got recently from some ghosts or something, and she doesn’t completely know how to control them yet. So I offered to try and help her train to use them. I can’t perfectly control my own powers yet, but I’ve gotten a lot better at it since they first appeared. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to help, since her powers probably work completely different from mine, but if anything I’ve learned might work for her, it’s worth a try. Besides, with all the time she’s spent teaching me how to fight, it would be nice if I could teach her something too.
-Ernest

## Winter Storm Warning

*OVA: Plays Like Team Spirit*

January 3rd, 2020
Well, this one’s apparently going to take some explaining. I keep telling people that yes, the blizzard was due to my powers, but no it wasn’t really my fault, and they generally don’t have to worry about me losing control of my powers that badly. But I guess by that point they’re already confused enough that my explanation of the whole bodyswapping thing doesn’t make sense. So maybe it’s better if I start with that.
Aman, Ophanim, and I had a karaoke night at the base that just kind turned into a sleepover because it went too late and Aman and I didn’t feel like going home. Plus then we got to hang out with Ophanim longer! E has a great singing voice.
But when I woke up, I wasn’t at the base. I was in someone else’s room, full of wrestling posters and stuff. The first thing I noticed was that I didn’t have my synesthesia, which made me think I might have ended up in the dataverse somehow. But when I tried to see if I could transform into my digital butterfly form, it didn’t work. I realized that my phone was a regular phone, not a datavice, but also that my phone wasn't my phone. Which was about when I realized I had swapped into someone else’s body.
I figured it must have been some sort of accident. I mean as far as things go in Halcyon, it’s not that unexpected. I didn’t want to freak out the family of whoever I had swapped with, so I tried to just slip out the window and fix the problem without them noticing. But turns out Greta (the girl that I swapped with) has an older brother Hanz who saw me leaving, so I ended up telling him about the bodyswapping thing. He didn’t really seem to understand though.
Greta had this meeting in her calendar at a house at the outskirts for last night, so I figured that was my best chance to figure out what was going on. Turns out I wasn’t the only one who got swapped either, since Tachyon in this girl Misery’s body and Boon in the body of a pangolin Transformed named Dorothy. We poked around in the basement and found a bunch of stuff for a magic ritual, but then we realized someone was watching us through a camera.
This guy named Vic was apparently responsible for the bodyswapping. I tried to explain that we needed to be swapped back, because I was worried about Greta having to deal with my powers when she’s not used to having them. But turns out the whole bodyswapping thing wasn’t as much of a mistake as I’d thought, and he wanted to use our powers for some terrible stuff instead of helping.
I called Hanz, since I figured he’d want to help out his sister, but there was some confusion because he and his friends started fighting Boon and Tachyon when they showed up. I really didn’t want Greta to get hurt from me fighting in her body, so I just tried to talk them down. We kind of convinced them to help us figure out how to get our own bodies back? Although they were still pretty mean to Boon and Tachyon.
We started driving towards Shady Glen, since that’s where Boon’s body had been last, but Greta must have been having a really hard time with my powers about then because a huge blizzard started and the van ended up rolling off the road. We had to leave Hanz and his friends behind, which I was really worried about, but I heard later from Nursemaster and Liminal that they got picked up okay after I sorted out the blizzard situation.
Once we got to Shady Glen, we had to get past Misery-in-Tachyon’s body to get to Dorothy-in-Boon’s body. Who was in the process of being taken over by Sapphomet, like when Boon accidentally dragged us to that hell-prison in Molecyon. And she was saying some stuff about taking Dorothy’s soul instead of Boon’s? I knew that Boon’s whole powers coming from a demon situation wasn’t great, but I hadn’t really thought about exactly what that might mean for Boon? Boon managed to convince Sapphomet to switch us all back, which fixed the immediate problem, but I’m even more worried about Boon’s demon situation than I had been.
At least once I was back in my own body, I could call off the blizzard pretty fast. Aside from causing a giant blizzard, apparently Greta had messed up stuff all over the Base. At least I was able to explain things to Dr. Watson and GAIA well enough that it doesn’t seem like I’m in trouble about the things that went missing from the vault.
But I guess Greta didn’t have the same courtesy of trying to be careful with my body, because I have all sorts of bruises. And they aren’t even the kind of bruises you’d get from a fight, more like if you just stood there and let someone punch you? Plus she tore off one of the sleeves of my pajamas. I can probably get GAIA to help me fix that, but who even does that?
I should probably ask Boon if she can make some kind of anti-bodyswapping charm to make sure we don’t get another storm of the century situation again from someone not knowing how to control my powers. Or maybe not Boon, since after hearing the whole soul contract thing I’m not sure she should really be doing any magic if she doesn’t have to? Maybe someone like Samantha would be better to ask.
Also, note to self: add Vic to my list of people who should be punched whenever I see them.
-Ernest

## Everything’s Better with Backflips

*OVA: HHTTW Season's Beatings!*

*January 12, 2020*
**To:** timwelles@bmail.com**From:** ernwelles@bmail.com
Did you get a chance to watch the wrestling match? I can find a link to the highlights if you missed it. This one was a ton of fun. I got to tag team with Rescue against Ellen (and some other girl I guess but Ellen never actually tagged her in?). Oh, by the way, don’t be fooled by the Ellen with black hair acting mean, she’s totally great. It’s all the other Ellens with the blonde and pink hair that you have to watch out for. Although I guess probably not that much now that you’re in New York, they seem to be sticking around in Halcyon.
Melody got to have that great setup of defending her title from Boon right before they both pulled off turns in the final match. My favorite part was probably when Melody did her heel turn and got me and Boon with those shadow chains. She did such a good job with controlling them, it wasn’t scary at all! Okay, maybe it was a little scary. But like, scary the way a roller coaster is, not real scary.
I bet you’d like wrestling if you tried it! It’s kind of like theater, if theater had a way higher proportion of stage fighting.
-Ernest
**To:** ernwelles@bmail.com**From:** timwelles@bmail.com
Yeah I watched the stream with some of my friends! A couple of them said they thought Stormbreaker was cool just from your introduction, before I pointed out that it was you. I still can’t believe they let you use those kind of pyrotechnics, they’d never approve that for any show I’ve been in.
If there’s ever a match going on while I’m visiting Halcyon it would be great to see you wrestle in person! You’ll need a better pitch than “theater but mostly stage fighting” if you want me to hop in the ring, though.
My friend CJ (you know, the one who asked you for feedback on their songs back in like third grade and got offended when you said they were “too green”) said that they’re thinking of writing a wrestling musical now. If anything actually comes of it, maybe there’ll be parts for both of us.
Timothy
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**To:** ernwelles@bmail.com**From:** tere5934@bmail.com
Hey Ern, I know I told you that you could keep wearing your superhero costume that’s practically my design, but I didn’t realize you had also made it into a wrestling outfit.
I’m just saying, you’re selling merch, I feel like I should be getting royalties.
Teresa
**To:** tere5934@bmail.com**From:** ernwelles@bmail.com
Look, not all of us can be amazing artists who can come up with new designs any time we want. They just asked me what I wanted for my costume, and I kind of panicked?
I’m not sure if they’re selling Stormbreaker merch, but even if they are, I’m definitely not making money from it, since they don’t pay me. There’s been merch for the Weatherman, though. But Dr. Watson said all the money had to go towards repairing the Base, so it’s not like I’m getting anything from that either.
Also I may have gotten GAIA to put the design on pajamas, for Base sleepovers. In case you wanted a full count.
-Ernest
**To:** ernwelles@bmail.com**From:** tere5934@bmail.com
That seems illegal? I know I’m in art school not law school but I feel like you should be getting paid something for at least one of those things.
Next time you or anyone else needs help with costume design, though, hit me up. Sometimes my school prompts get boring and I want something else to work on.
And pajamas are fine, since presumably you’re not making television appearances in them.
Teresa
**To:** tere5934@bmail.com**From:** ernwelles@bmail.com
I mean, Timothy doesn’t get paid for the shows he’s in, and no one on the school sports teams gets paid. And wrestling is sort of like those? I don’t really know, I’ve just been doing it for fun.
There’s a chance that the pajamas appeared on TV, but the blizzard was bad enough that probably no one saw them? But that’s another story...

## A Hero by Any Other Name

*Character Creation: Artifact Thievery 101*

January 24, 2020
I think GAIA’s mission-giving software might need an update. When Melody and I were out on patrol today, they told us they’d found some people who “could use some friends.” Which turned out to mean that the people were actually under attack, and needed backup. I guess those aren’t completely different from each other, but the imminent danger part should probably be mentioned first.
Anyway, we took the Jackal van over (someday when we aren’t in the middle of a mission I swear I’ll find a time to fix the cassette player or the radio so we can listen to anything other than The Bangles Greatest Hits while driving it), and found the people GAIA had been directing us towards. They were being attacked by a bunch of people with logos like Bishop’s, which made sense after I found out one of the people was Cardinal. He must be getting close to something if they want to stop him so badly.
I’d met Cardinal before, he warned me about how Bishop is up to all kinds of shady stuff after he found out about dad’s project with them involving me. Which just added another reason to the list of why continuing that project would be a bad idea. But I’d never met anyone quite like Renata, the other person he was with. When I first saw her, she was in the form of a bird, so I thought she might be one of the Zodiac Transformed people. Although she was also on fire, which was unusual. But later on she changed into a much more human form without wings or anything, so seems like a different situation entirely.
After we fought off the Bishop dudes (and tried to put out the fires… between my lightning and Renata’s fire, we really did a number on that block), we headed back to the base and did introductions. Once we had the chance to talk without an immediate threat around, I realized how strange Renata’s voice looked. I’m having a hard time thinking about how to describe the color? It’s seems like it should be between blue and red, but the other way around from purple. Not like green on the opposite side of the color wheel or anything. More like if you mixed blue and red but it went reversed? Or maybe sideways? Anyway, aside from the color, her voice is also very sparkly, which is slightly distracting.
*[in the margins of the page, there are several patches shaded in with colored pencil, all crossed out]*
I tried asking her if it had anything to do with magic, since the other times I’d seen really weird colors like that all had to do with magic, but the question just seemed to confuse her. To be fair, her ability to summon fire does seem to work more like how I can summon storms than like Rescue casting spells. But I’m still not quite sure why her voice is so different.
Since we introduced ourselves with our hero names, Renata decided she should have a hero name like the rest of us. I suggested Firebird, but she didn’t like that one very much. I thought it was a good idea, since it sums up her powers and plus it’s like the name of that symphony. Renata ended up going with Phoenix, which also matches her powers pretty well, I guess. If I got to decide, everyone’s hero names would make it really obvious the kind of stuff that they can do. Like Cardinal, do any of his powers have anything to do with birds? He can’t fly, as far as I know. I think Chameleon would be a good one for him because of that thing he does to blend into the background. As for Melody, I’m not quite sure what Jackals are. Some kind of dog I think? I’m pretty sure they don’t have hands, and Melody does a lot of punching, so there’s probably something else that fits better. Kangaroos punch things, right? Although I guess she also has those shadow chain powers now…
On second thought, maybe it’s better that I’m not in charge of coming up with all the hero names.
Anyway, once we got back to the base, we got Renata and Cardinal set up with GAIA to join the team! I hadn’t realized that Cardinal was interested in joining, or I would have invited him sooner. When I first met him, it seemed like he was on this solo quest to take down Bishop, and he’s so serious all the time. But hey, if he’s willing to let us help him out, I’m happy to have him around.
Oh, also I got shot during the fight. Sorry, that makes it sound so dramatic. Not with like an actual bullet, the Bishop goons had these dart things and one got me in the shoulder. My arm started getting all numb and flaky, but GAIA gave me something that healed most of it. There’s still a weird spot right where the dart hit, but if it starts spreading again I’m sure I can just as GAIA for more whatever-it-was they gave me to reverse it. I’m sure it’s fine.
-Ernest

## History Repeats

*OVA: Pix’s Pretty Passionate Parade*

February 2, 2020
You cause a city-wide blizzard \*one time\* and suddenly everyone thinks every major storm is your fault.
For the record, this particular blizzard wasn’t due to my powers. And while I helped stop it, I didn’t directly use my powers to do that either. It was nice that people were giving me credit for clearing it up, but I don’t want everyone to get the wrong impression that I can just wish bad weather away. Yeah, I cleared up the blizzard that Greta summoned with my powers, but that was a lot easier because it was a storm caused by my own powers. Whenever I mess with natural storms, I’m more likely to make them worse than clear them up. Although I’m not really sure that this storm was entirely natural? It definitely seemed to be tied to Pix somehow, since it seemed to be searching for her and cleared up once we got her whole television spot sorted out.
I also can’t talk to storms, whatever Shade might think about that. I almost wish that I could, since it would probably be a lot easier to control them that way. I could just ask what they want directly, or tell them what I wanted them to do. Instead it’s more like they reflect how I feel, and I can sense a little of what they feel. Which can start to spiral out of control really quickly if I’m not careful.
All I’m saying is, Boon singing Let It Go might have been funnier if I hadn’t heard the joke a million times before. Mostly from Timothy. It doesn’t actually annoy me anymore, but it did make me miss Timothy. I don’t hear him sing nearly as much these days. I mean, he sings all the time when we do video calls, I don’t think you could pay him not to. But it’s not quite the same as hearing him practicing for his shows all the time in his room.
Also, I guess Boon and Verve are really close now? I wonder when that happened, I don’t remember them hanging out a lot recently.
Okay, fine, I’ll admit I’ve just been writing about all this other stuff to avoid writing about what happened with Verve. I think I messed up. At least, she’s never going to think of me as a cool hero like herself after I freaked out about her new power. I don’t know. It’s not something I can think straight about yet. I feel bad because I know how much it sucks to be told your powers are dangerous and that you shouldn’t use them, but I did it anyway. Maybe it was the bad vibes of that timepiece getting to me, since I made Verve give it to me to hold instead of leaving it in a her pocket.
Because apparently ever since the big Gambite attack, Verve has had the power to store things in a dimensional pocket. Which is exactly the power that Hero One had. The one that lead to the reaper possessing them and disappearing Montreal along with several states.
I don’t like thinking about what happened in Montreal. I haven’t really talked about it with anyone before, because it was just all so awful. And part of how bad it got was my fault. I keep wondering if it always happened that way, or if I somehow made it worse when we went back to the past. And neither option is really good? Either we could never have stopped it from happening because the past couldn’t be changed, or we had the chance to stop it and we messed it up really badly. Or maybe there are other possibilities, I don’t really know how time travel works. Maybe Seb would be able to tell me. I haven’t been able to talk with him recently for some reason, though.
I was never really good at history, so I don’t remember what they taught us about the bay at school, except that it suddenly appeared. I don’t know what happened to all the other people who got pocketed after Aquarius set us back to the present. I could probably look it up and find out, but I haven’t. It’s not like it’ll be anything good. The best case scenario is that everyone made it back to their right time, only to find that all of their homes had been destroyed. And there are way worse possibilities that I don’t want to think about.
So it was really hard to explain to Verve why I was so worried. I managed to tell her a little about what happened at Montreal, but I didn’t get into the details. Maybe that’s why she didn’t take me seriously. She insisted that she could only put one thing in her pocket at a time, and no living things, so it couldn’t be dangerous. But I think she could probably do more with the power and just hadn’t realized.
I keep thinking back to after I told Hero One to absorb the energy of my storm, and they disappeared a bunch of security guards. They seemed surprised by that? Like maybe they hadn’t meant to do it? I don’t know if Hero One had ever pocketed something living before that, but it’s possible that they hadn’t. And shortly after, they pocketed a lot of living things. So I can’t help but imagine Verve’s “only one thing, no living things” pocketing power becoming more dangerous really quickly. I’ll have to ask Melody and Rescue to help me keep an eye on it, since they’re probably the only ones who’d understand why I’m so worried.
Between what happened in Montreal, and when Greta was using my powers, I’ve really got to be careful about who can control my powers. There’s just too much risk of something going wrong. What if when I generated some lightning for Verve to help her charge Pix’s phone, it had supercharged her pocketing powers instead?
Speaking of which, I wonder what Bishop’s done with that battery I charged with lightning for dad’s project. Since it’s Bishop, probably nothing good. Maybe I can ask Cardinal to help me get it back before it does too much damage.
I just need to make sure what happened at Montreal never happens again.
-Ernest

## Bootstrap Paradox

*S4E3: A Second Chance for All*

February 15, 2020
Hey there, it’s me,
Seb is back!?!?!
Which on the one hand is great, since he’s not stuck in a time void or whatever anymore. But on the other hand it means Seb has actually been missing for months and I hadn’t realized, which is terrible. I guess it explains why I had such a hard time trying to talk with him, though. I’d keep seeing him around, but he’d somehow always be gone by the time I made my way over to him. Sounds like those might have been side effects from him trying to get back. I’d just assumed he was just busy, or maybe that I’d weirded him out by talking about my nightmares and he didn’t walk to talk to me anymore. But it turns out he was actually stuck outside the universe and I didn’t do anything to try to help him for months!
I was basically an accident I even ended up helping him today. GAIA sent me and Jawbreaker to investigate some sort of time anomaly at a TV station. There was this weird electricity all over the roof, so I pulled it off into a ball of lightning. Then that opened up some kind of portal to wherever Seb was and he was able to come back through into Halcyon. He wasn’t in great shape (he said it felt more like a year than months to him?), so we were going to head back to the base. But then we ran into Gambite instead.
I mean I guess it wasn’t actually Gambite. It turns out that Kieran and adult Ellen are part of some Villain Rehabilitation Program thing. But Big Team never got the memo about that, and I definitely thought they were still supposed to be in jail. So we might have overreacted a little.
Punching Kieran when we had him stuck to the wall by one of Jawbreaker’s gum bombs probably wasn't the most heroic thing to do. I just couldn’t think of another way to get him to shut up about how dangerous my powers could be. And trying to imply that accidentally hurting people with my powers is as bad as intentionally trying to level a city, why is he just doing community service for that?? That’s the kind of thing that I’d have to do after getting caught doing graffiti.
Adult Ellen at least tried to be more convincing about the whole situation. Although I probably would have punched her in the face too if Jawbreaker hadn’t called for a truce right when she showed up. She gave me this card for the Drummond Home for Disadvantaged Teens after I said I didn’t trust that they weren’t planning something terrible again. I’d never heard about it before, but from what I can tell, it does actually seem to be helping a bunch of teens?
It made me wonder if there are kids who see Ellen the same way that Teresa sees Tina and Avery. And the thing is, I know that our Ellen is a good person. So if adult Ellen used to be our Ellen, or even someone like our Ellen (I still don’t understand how the whole time travel thing works), maybe she could be a good person again if she had the chance?
So I guess maybe they do deserve another chance. But does it really have to be here? In the middle of the city that they tried to blow up? And I still don’t get why anyone let Anaya and Kurt join Big Team. Sure they might have changed their minds about being supervillains and all, but how are we supposed to trust them after seeing the kind of decisions they’ve made before? You know, the ones that nearly led to a bunch of us being killed, and made Seb use desperate measures that got him booted out of the space-time continuum, among other things?
*[the margin of the page is scorched in the shape of branched lightning]*
Whoops. Okay. Didn’t really mean to get mad about it all over again.
After we got back to the base and Seb had a chance to rest for a bit, I finally had the chance to ask him some about time travel stuff. I didn’t really want to get into the details about past Montreal and everything, so I just asked hypothetically about not stopping something bad from happening in the past. And he said that changing the past wasn’t a great idea, since even small things can have big impacts later on in the timeline. So I guess even though we didn’t stop the horrible thing from happening, at least we didn’t break time?
Seb asked me about how my nightmares were, and he mostly sounded concerned, not weirded out, so I was definitely worried about that for nothing. And it made me realize that I haven’t had nearly as many in the past month or so? Maybe seeing our old apartment again helped me get it out of my head or something. Or maybe I don’t feel as guilty about hurting Timothy now that I don’t see him every day. I don’t know. I’m just glad to be getting some decent sleep for once.
-Ernest
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
*He’s floating somewhere, a featureless darkness spreading in every direction. At first, there doesn’t seem to be much difference between opening and closing his eyes. But slowly, a glow begins gathering around him as lightning dances off his skin. It’s all he can do to keep it nearby and not hurtling into the distance.*
*A figure appears, seeming to form out of the darkness. They approach, somehow able to stride forward while he can only float motionlessly. As the figure draws closer, he realizes he recognizes him – no, them? her? His father, wearing a business suit. Hero One, costumed in white and yellow. Verve, masked in pink and black. The form flows between each appearance seamlessly as he watches.*
*They extend a hand when they reach him, their voices overlapping as each of them says simultaneously:*
*“I just need a little more energy.”*
*As he reaches his hand out in return, flowing black robes suddenly envelop the figure, a skull hiding their face. They grab his wrist, and the lightning begins to drain out of him. He struggles to pull away, but can’t gain any leverage against their grip. In desperation, he tries to overload the connection with a surge of lightning.*
*KRA-KOW*
The room is still shaking with the force of the blast as Ernest jolts awake. The smell of melting plastic radiates from the middle of the room, where a patch of embers smolders in the carpet.
Ernest hurries over to stamp it out, but freezes as his door swings open. His mom stands in the doorway, eyes wide and hair sticking out at odd angles. “Ernest! Are you alright?”
The heat of the burning carpet stings against the bare sole of his foot, but he keeps it in place, hiding the scorch mark. “I’m fine,” he mumbles.
His mom hesitates, watching him for a few moments, but he doesn’t budge. “Okay,” she says finally. “Just let me know if you need anything.” She closes the door with a coral click.
Ernest waits a few more seconds to make sure she doesn’t decide to return. When he finally picks up his foot, he can see that the spot underneath has stopped glowing.
He doesn’t attempt to sleep for the rest of the night.

## Two Sides of the Same Coin

*S4E6: Big Enough*

February 16, 2020
Hi again ~~mystery reader,~~ never mind it better just be future me reading these
Well, I’m grounded. Again. Actually, I’m not sure if I was ever formally un-grounded? That kind of thing should reset when you move thought, right? Like a statue of limitations thing or whatever?
I wasn’t even doing anything bad! Sledge called in for help during a bank robbery, so me, Renata, Libra, and Cypher went to go help. Since the others were all pretty new to the team, it kind of felt like I was supposed to be in charge or something? Not that I really did much to help them during the fight, since I immediately got distracted by the fact that my mom was one of the people at the bank.
I immediately focused on putting up a barrier of lightning to keep the ghosts away from her. Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to do. I let Renata get attacked while I was working on that, since I figured she’d be able to keep herself safe with her own powers. But it turned out she was in a worse spot than I’d thought. I was eventually able to fight off the ghosts pinning her down with one of my lightning clones, but she seemed pretty upset about the whole thing later. And there were plenty of other civilians in danger besides my mom. But I don’t know if I would have been able to concentrate on the fight if I was worried about mom? Maybe that’s selfish or something, I don’t know.
But yeah, mom was really upset after we managed to get all the ghosts to leave. She said that it was too dangerous, and something that only adult heroes should be doing. Although I don’t think this fight was that much more dangerous than our usual missions? I guess I’d kind of been downplaying that side of things when I told her about them before. Timothy likes to hear all the dramatic details and scary moments, so I’d been telling him everything, but they just make mom worried so I’d gloss over the more risky spots.
So I’m supposed to be grounded from missions involving ghosts for six months. Even if I was going to try and follow that, I don’t even know how it would work. It’s not like we knew there were going to be ghosts at the bank robbery ahead of time. I can't go on a mission, realize that there are ghosts and be like “whoops, never mind, I’ve gotta sit this one out.” And sometimes you might think it’s ghosts but then it turns out to be a hologram that someone was pretending was a ghost?
Maybe I should try to be properly grounded for once, like how I actually went to detention even though the reason I missed class was because of time shenanigans and trying to do hero stuff, not just randomly skipping. Although I guess we did kind of cheat a little with Aman’s illusions anyway. I get that mom's worried about me. But getting involved in dangerous situations is kind of the whole point of being a hero, and she was the one who came up with the idea for me to try it in the first place.
Mom also doesn’t want me to hang out with Libra because they punched one of the police robot suit Rubicon things. Even though it was actively flamethrowering the whole bank at the time. So I kinda hope she doesn’t find out about what happened later today. Since we basically picked up Overgrowth at the community center and then went to fight a magic version of one of the Rubicons that also summoned a ghost shadow warrior thing. And I’d bet she’d be even more upset if she knew that Libra was actually…
Ughhhhhhh. I’ve tried to avoid writing about other people’s secrets in my journal, especially since I’ve kind of assumed someone might read it at some point? But I have to get these thoughts out somewhere, and I said I’d keep it secret so I can’t talk about it with anyone. I can just keep this book safer than I kept my old journal, lock it in my desk or whatever. Then I’ll be the only one who reads it, and I already know, so that’s fine, right?
Okay, so. I found out after we fought off the souped up magic Rubicon armor and the shadow boar it summoned that Libra is actually Kurt. You know, Kurt Woods, who was part of Gambite and who I wasn’t thrilled about joining Big Team? Turns out they’re actually on it twice. And I can’t say I blame them? I mean, I definitely thought Libra could be a much better hero than Kurt, and I didn’t even know anything about Libra. Clearly.
It kind of makes me wonder if I know any of the identities of other people who’ve been hiding them from the Big Team? I’d always assumed they were all people I’d never met. Halcyon’s a pretty big city after all. And I don’t see why someone would want to hide their identity from someone who they knew? I mean, Kurt makes sense, cause of all the Gambite stuff, but that’s got to be a special case.
The only reason they even told me was because they were angry about how I’d fought them when they were part of Gambite, so they punched me. And something about ancient angry shadow boar energy but like, I’m pretty sure that just pushed things over the edge. Honestly, after finding out that Kurt had been blackmailed into joining Gambite, I think I deserved it. I probably could have done more to help them when we fought before. But at some point I stopped thinking about them as that kid from class who might need help and just saw them as an enemy.
So given all that I was pretty surprised when they said they wanted to be friends. I said I’d have to think about it, because I’m still mad about everything that happened with Gambite. Even though now I know it wasn’t as much of Kurt’s choice to be involved in that as I thought? And also that punching probably isn’t the best way to deal with those feelings, since it didn’t really help with Kieran anyway. Besides, it wasn’t that long ago when I wouldn’t have been in a position to turn down anyone asking to be friends with me.
Oh, wait. I don’t think I actually apologized for beating up Kurt those times I fought them as part of Gambite? They apologized for punching me, but I got so far into my own head thinking I didn’t think to say sorry for blasting them through the wall of the gym before we realized they were merged with their future self that time. Oops. Well, if they don’t think I’m a complete asshole after that, maybe we could try to be friends.
-Ernest

## New Kids on the Block

*Character Creation*

*February 20, 2020*
**To:** timwelles@bmail.com**From:** ernwelles@bmail.com
Hey so I ended up falling into hero stuff with some non-Big Team members in the past couple of days. Well, formerly non-Big Team members? They weren’t on Big Team when we were first fighting stuff together, but then I asked them to join so now they are.
Anyway, I’ll probably be teaming up with them on other missions in the future, so I figured I should describe them for you.
Do you remember Frankie? I feel like I told you about her. Possum girl, we did some graffiti together before I decided to stop doing that. She’s apparently picked up ghost powers since then, which are super cool. Just don’t tell mom, I’m still technically grounded from ghost stuff. I don’t know whether it counts when it’s a teammate’s ghost stuff instead of villain ghost stuff but I don’t really want to ask.
Mel is… I think he does something with technology? At first I thought that he just liked talking to himself, but stuff actually happens when he talks to computers instead of them just not caring about you yelling at them like they usually do. I also initially thought he was a villain because of his creepy robot bird. It turns out the robot bird was just made by a villain, though, and Mel jailbroke her or whatever. He might want to do something about her looking like a looming omen of death, though. A more colorful paint job would go a long way.
Taxon’s an alien. Like full on from outer space and all. But they’re infinitely more chill than the other aliens I’ve run into, so that’s good. And they seemed pretty interested in Big Team too, even though I’m not sure if they totally understand what they’re getting themself into given that we had to explain McDonald’s to them.
So yeah! Those are my new teammates. We got in a scuffle with the villain who made the robot bird at Mel’s apartment, then later we tracked him down to his hideout where he was building another robot bird but giant. And still evil. We stopped him without too much trouble, although I did kind of wreck the whole warehouse he was working in, since my powers got away from me a little bit.
How’s everything going out in New York? You said they were announcing the next show soon?
-Ernest
**To:** ernwelles@bmail.com**From:** timwelles@bmail.com
Oh yeah I think I remember Frankie. You two almost got arrested that one time, right? Do you think Mom would be more upset about that or the ghost thing? Don’t worry, she won’t hear about either from me.
Also brooding death omen is totally a valid hero aesthetic if that’s what this Mel guy wants to go for. You gotta have some contrast if you want people to be able to tell all of you apart.
So, guess what musical we’re doing for the spring show?
Okay I won’t actually make you guess. It’s Into the Woods! Again. I suppose that’s what I get for switching schools halfway through the year. I guess I’d have a leg up since I know all of Jack’s songs already, but I kinda want to see if I can land a different part this time. The Baker will probably go to a senior, but I might be able to play one of the Princes. Or the Mysterious Man! The Narrator’s kind of a fun acting role, but he doesn’t really get to sing...
Anyway, try not to wreck any more warehouses if you can? Even if it was a supervillain hideout, they probably could have used it for something else if it was still in one piece. You already knew that though.
Happy Heroing,
Timothy

## The Butterfly Effect

*S4E12: Dark Web, Darker Powers*

February 23, 2020
Hey, future me. Assuming I didn’t break time so badly that there still will be a future me. I just keep waiting to get kicked back into the past as punishment for messing with the time stream or something. It definitely feels like what I did shouldn’t be allowed.
It should have just been a simple mission. Sledge and Temperance needed help stopping a weapons smuggling operation in the Dataverse, figuring out who was behind it and intercepting the weapons, that sort of thing. Somehow it ended up completely off the rails.
Where we ended up in the Dataverse seemed pretty different than the other places I’d been. Usually we either got dumped into big beautiful grassy fields, or at the digital points there would be something similar to the real world but all pixellated and shuffled around like a puzzle box. This time there was a whole cityscape, all dark and neon and futuristic looking.
My data form seemed to change to match the aesthetic. I don’t know if accidentally flying into the digital point and letting off a bunch of lightning messed with up the process or something, but we immediately entered in our data forms instead of choosing whether to transform into them. Instead of my usual rainbow butterfly wings, I had mechanical purple wings that glowed red in places, and metal armor as well. It made me sturdier, but I think the extra weight threw off my flying, because I kept messing up when I tried to catch people who were falling.
Kurt transformed into a sort of humanoid mouse-person, with electricity powers. And Shade just straight up turned into a motorcycle. Not a motorcycle person (well, she kind of turned into one of those later, but only briefly), just a two-wheeled vehicle. She seemed to have a good time with it though, and it was fun challenging her to a race up until the point where we all managed to crash into each other.
Of course Verve was the only one of us who didn’t transform. Which meant she still had access to all of her usual powers, including the new pocketing ones.
An armored car full of magical weapons counting as “one thing” is bullshit. If that’s the case, she might as well pocket the entire Digital Point full of cars and buildings and people. And with the way the Dataverse makes powers go weird, maybe she would have if she wasn’t being careful. Which clearly she wasn’t since who knows what happens when you transfer digitized magic tridents from a place where the digital realm and reality intersect to an extradimensional space? And later on when she got hit by lightning, she ended up accidentally bringing the car back. Which just supports my idea that her pocket powers and my lightning should never mix.
Kurt said I should try to talk to Verve about why I’m so upset about her powers. And he isn't wrong, that would probably be better than throwing a fit like I did. I just wish what I’d said to her last time had been enough to make her be more careful. I don’t know how else to make her see how dangerous her powers could be. “Hey I’ve started having nightmares about you ending the world maybe” isn’t exactly a persuasive argument.
She apologized for it after but I still don't think she really understands. Besides, it's not like I can really talk about having dangerous powers with potentially unknown effects anyway.
We eventually managed to track down the head of the smuggling operation, some guy who calls himself the Wizard. When we got to his place, we saw all of these video feeds, spying on places I guess. The only one I really paid attention to was the one that had my mom on it.
She was in some kind of group meeting - like a support group I guess. I managed to turn the sound on, and she was talking about me. About how she feels like she can’t connect with me because I don’t listen, and my powers make me so different.
I always knew that dad thought my powers were weird. First he wanted to get rid of me because of them, then he wanted to study them himself. But mom always seemed to be okay with them. I guess she was just pretending.
I know I haven’t been great about being grounded and all. I mean, I was in the middle of a mission with Kurt even though she didn't want me hanging out with Libra anymore. And somehow the number of ghosts-related missions increased since she told me not to go on those. But I’ve been trying really hard to be better since we moved to Halcyon. I’ve barely missed school at all, and I haven’t snuck out of the apartment in ages. I guess that isn't enough, though.
Kurt shut off the screens so I’d stop watching, but I don’t know that hearing more could have made it worse anyway.
The Wizard walked in then, and saw through our attempt to disguise ourselves as the smugglers almost immediately, and started fighting us. He had this clock that could move time forward and backward, which really gave us a hard time. I tried taking control of it but ended up pitching us a few decades into the future. Then when Shade tried to send us back, she rolled it too far and we ended up standing in the foundations of the building since it hadn’t actually been built yet.
And the clock got stuck. On 1955. The year that Hero One was possessed by a reaper and disappeared a huge chunk of the northeast.
I was terrified. I don’t know if I’ve ever been that scared before. Usually things are happening so quickly I don’t have time to be scared until after the fact the fact. But the clock was broken and the Wizard was a baby and most of the buildings weren’t even there anymore and no one seemed to know what to do, so I started to panic.
My powers have always responded to my emotions. Most of the time it’s little things, like breezes or shifting the clouds around. When I get really upset I might summon a storm without meaning to. And I guess abject terror can lead to the kind of weather that manipulates spacetime.
I don’t even know how I did it. Which doesn’t really matter since I’m not planning to try it again anytime soon. It was just pure instinct of wanting to fix everything right then and there. I guess I managed to pull my weather powers into the Dataverse with me. Even though since the Dataverse started overlapping with the real world, people are able to use their regular powers there like Verve, I’d always used my Dataverse powers instead. So I'm not sure how much of the difference was from the Dataverse or just from my freaking out.
I started shifting? Between the mechanized Dataverse form I’d been in and the regular butterfly one, and my un-digitized self but with wings made out of lightning. And a huge storm started forming overhead. But when the lightning touched down, instead of exploding things like usual, it started building them up. And time started moving forward.
I thought I saw the others shifting too? But maybe I was just stressed out, because for a second I thought I saw Verve look like Hero One, and possessed Hero One. Or maybe a side effect of using my powers to warp the fabric of reality is that my nightmares start leaking into the real world! Real-data-merged world. Whatever.
I brought us all the way back to the present, except I stopped the Wizard before he got the jump on us. Is that going to cause a time paradox? Who knows! I wasn’t thinking about the possibility then, but I’m definitely thinking about it now!
I wish that Timothy was still here. He’d realize something was wrong and ask me about it and then maybe I could talk with someone. I don’t know how to bring it up over email or over a video call. “Hey Tim, it’s been great chatting but have I mentioned that apparently my powers can mess with time if I panic badly enough?”
Definitely not telling mom about it, though. She already thinks my powers make me too different without hearing the extra weird stuff they can do.
She’s not wrong.
-Ernest

## Till Death Do Us Part

*Time Passes*

February 28, 2020
Mom and dad are getting divorced.
It’s not like it’s a surprise. I mean, they haven’t lived in the same apartment for over half a year now. So things probably aren’t even going to change that much. It’s just paperwork or whatever.
I don't know. It still feels final, somehow. I thought that I didn’t believe things could ever go back to the way they were. Or at least not as much as Timothy did. But I guess part of me still hoped things might eventually be fixed? And now I know for sure that won’t ever happen.
Of course mom did the whole “it’s not your fault” thing that must be in every single article about how to tell your kid that you’re getting divorced. But even if it’s not 100% my fault I’m pretty sure I didn’t help anything. The whole reason mom moved to Halcyon was because she thought I’d have a better time with my powers here. And maybe she wouldn’t have wanted to move if me and dad hadn’t been fighting so much. Not to mention I told dad to stay in New York over Christmas even though he was planning to come back to Halcyon.
Dad’s getting custody of Timothy. Which yeah, I guess that makes sense since they’re the two of us still living in New York. Apparently I don’t have to worry about the custody thing since I’m technically an adult, so I can do whatever I want. I wonder if I could convince mom that means she can’t ground me anymore.
Maybe I should just go live at the Base like some of the other Big Team members do. Who’s going to stop me, GAIA? And then mom wouldn’t have to worry about my powers destroying the apartment. So far I’ve managed to hide all the nightmare lightning scorch marks in the carpet with strategically placed books, but she’s gonna make me clean my room someday.
Moving out would probably just stress mom out though, even if she doesn’t like my powers. And she’s the one getting divorced, after all. So I should probably avoid stressing her out if I can.
-Ernest

## Catalytic Reaction

*S4E16: Broken Chains; Tangled Vines*

February 29, 2020
Hey there,
Today’s mission went pretty well! No ghosts, no almost getting trapped in the past. Big Team even made a couple of friends I think? Allies, at least.
It started off pretty hectic when Melody’s mentor called me up while I was trying to help Anaya with her math homework (yeah I know I shouldn’t really be tutoring anyone in math, but I didn’t know how to tell Anaya that without making her mad, and she’s always carrying that trident around). She said something about Seth, Jaime, and Aman being in danger, so of course we rushed over to help.
Turns out they were in the middle of getting chased by a whole fleet of cars. Aman, Anaya, and I managed to hold them back while Jaime floored it and Seth was dealing with some kind of device that made this horrible green sound and cancelled out his powers. I think we were doing pretty well, until all of a sudden these fireworks started exploding around the cars chasing us and most of them crashed.
We were pretty far out from the city, so we decided to go back and make sure no one would get too hurt before the ambulances could arrive. And good thing we did, since one of the cars had caught on fire. While we were making sure everyone was okay, this dish on one of the cars started making that green sound again, but then this girl jumped up and messed with it to make an even worse sound. I’d had about enough of bad sounds at that point, so I shocked the dish with lightning and that put a stop to it.
So that was the great first impression I made Hyacinth and Denise, who are part of a group called DNace or something that’s trying to take down HELIX. I’m not sure I’d call them heroes exactly? They’ve got powers and they’re trying to take down an evil organization and rescue their friends, but they didn’t seem very interested in saving people generally. Which is kind of the point of the whole hero thing. I guess they’re kind of like Cardinal before he joined Big Team, when he was mainly focused on investigating Bishop? Although I’d like to think that Cardinal would help people out of a car wreck rather than turn their weapons against them when they’re already down. They did make some pretty cool hero costumes while we were preparing at the Base, though.
I guess I can kind of understand why they’re so focused on taking down HELIX after learning what it did to them and Seth. I hadn’t heard of HELIX at all before, but it seems like they mostly stay outside of Halcyon, so that’s probably why. And I get why Seth wouldn’t want to talk about it very much.
We drove out to the forest where Hyacinth and Denise were trying to rescue their friend, although it didn’t attack us like they had expected. That was probably because HELIX had gotten to her first. We started fighting them, but soon that noise started up and made Seth’s powers stop working.
I followed Densie to stop the horrible green noise so that Seth could get his powers back (and also because that noise was seriously annoying). But this lady was guarding it, and she had the weird suit with all these channels full of electricity and it felt familiar somehow? Which was when I realized that the suit was powered by that battery I’d charged with lightning for dad’s project.
I asked her if she was working with Bishop, but she made it sound like Bishop didn’t know she had the battery. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing though, since it seems like HELIX is even worse than Bishop, and she might be working with them instead. I managed to pull some of my lightning back from the battery, but she still had some to work with and tried to zap me. Luckily I was already focusing on gathering the lightning around myself, so it didn’t end up actually hitting me.
She went invisible all of a sudden, but I was still able to sense where the lightning in her suit was, so she didn’t get the drop on me. I guess she didn’t really appreciate being pelted with hail because she ran off after that, and I lost track of her once she got farther away. At least I kept her distracted enough for Denise to explode whatever was making the awful noise.
I wonder if she has her own powers to become invisible, or if it’s something that the suit can do? I’m pretty sure it’s not from my lightning directly, anyway. I did try it later, just in case, but wrapping myself in lightning just made me more visible, not less.
When we got back to the rest of the group, they’d managed to rescue Hyacinth and Denise’s friend, but Jaime had disappeared through a portal somewhere. Seth was really freaking out, but luckily Jaime called soon after to let him know they escaped. We didn’t really have a chance to catch the people responsible, but at least we saved Hyacinth and Denise's friend and all got out of there.
Also! Aman showed me and Seth his new costume when we got back to the Base! I know he had a rough time with losing his eye and his powers and all, so it’s great to see him getting back in the swing of things. And besides, Eclipse is an awesome hero name with a logo to match. Definitely worth pulling out the dramatic rolling fog.
-Ernest

## Clowns and Klaxons

*S4E18: Land of Fun and Ohoho!*

*March 1, 2020*
**To:** ernwelles@bmail.com**From:** timwelles@bmail.com
Hey, mom said I should try talk to you and it seems like your phone is disconnected or something, so hopefully you get this. I told her you were probably just sleeping over at the Big Team Base again and forgot to charge your phone, but she’s still really worried, so you should probably call her when you can.
Also you might be triple-grounded when you get back. But you didn’t hear that from me.
Timothy
**To:** ernwelles@bmail.com**From:** tere5934@bmail.com
Okay so apparently your mom was freaking out and Timothy was chill about it for a while, but then he started freaking out too, so now I’m being dragged into this. From what I can tell you’ve been missing for all of a day, and for some reason everyone thinks you might have run away or something?
I don’t even know why Tim thinks you’d be more likely to respond to me than him or your mom, when historically that hasn’t been the case, but hey, might as well give it a go. Plus hopefully Tim will stop nagging me after I send this because I think he’s forgotten that we don’t actually hang out in the middle of the night anymore now that we live in different cities.
Anyway, you better not have skipped town without telling me again. I don’t even care that I’m not in Halcyon, it would still be a dick move.
Teresa
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
*March 2, 2020*
**To:** ernwelles@bmail.com**From:** timwelles@bmail.com
Are you okay? Mom said you didn’t show up for school today, and she still hasn’t heard from you since yesterday. I started worrying that you might have gotten hurt on a mission or something but when I tried calling the Big Team about it, all I got was some kind of weird phone tree.
I hope you’re alright. Please let me know you are when you can.
Timothy
**To:** ernwelles@bmail.com**From:** tere5934@bmail.com
Hey, Ern, you didn’t like, actually run away, right? We talked about how that was a bad idea tons of times, and those points didn’t change after you moved to Halcyon. Besides, I thought things were going better for you up there?
Look, if you need someone to talk things over with, just call me. Your mom and Timothy don’t have to hear about it, I know how to keep my mouth shut.
Teresa
**To:** ernwelles@bmail.com**From:** haroldwelles@bmail.com
Ernest,
I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to discuss the news of our divorce in person. Your mother is concerned that you might not want to talk with her about it, so I hope you know that you can come to me with anything.
You’re always welcome at our apartment in New York if you need somewhere to stay. If you’d rather not stay with me and Timothy, your grandparents would be happy to have you as well.
Harold Welles
**To:** timwelles@bmail.com, tere5934@bmail.com, haroldwelles@bmail.com**From:** ernwelles@bmail.com
Hey everyone, I’m okay, I called mom, I’ll try to explain everything but if everyone could please stop freaking out that would be great.
-Ernest
**To:** timwelles@bmail.com, tere5934@bmail.com, haroldwelles@bmail.com**From:** ernwelles@bmail.com
Okay so long story short is that I was busy doing a mission in the Dataverse and I kinda forgot about the time dilation there since last time it didn’t really happen because of extra time shenanigans, and GAIA isn’t always the best at communicating.
Oh wait Teresa might not know about the Dataverse. I know Timothy does because we’ve talked about it before. And dad, you had to have seen all the digitized spots when you were in Halcyon, right? Anyway the Dataverse is like the internet or whatever, the digital world except for now it also overlaps with the real world sometimes.
Also there are like, data people who live in the Dataverse and some of them really don’t like the real world, so a while back one of them trapped a bunch of the League of Heroes in paintings in the Dataverse and they’d been stuck there for a while. But Omnimon - Omnimon is like a big data person made out of two smaller data people, except they’re way bigger than the two of them stacked on top of each other somehow - also they do like the real world so they’ve been helping us - Omnimon finally tracked down where the League of Heroes were trapped, so me, Bolt, Whisper, and Overgrowth went to go save them.
Timothy I hadn’t told you that I have a new Dataverse form now! Oh yeah for dad and Teresa the other thing about the Dataverse is that sometimes you get to transform to be more like one of the data people with different powers and stuff. Usually I’d get these neat rainbow butterfly wings and sound powers. And I guess I still get butterfly wings and sound powers with the new one, but it’s more… cyberpunk? The wings are mechanical, and purple with glowy red lines instead of rainbow. Plus I get metal armor.
Anyway, we ran away from some data slimes and then beat up the data clown who kidnapped the League of Heroes and saved them. It only felt like maybe an hour to me, so I didn’t realize I’d been gone so long until GAIA told us it was already the next day when they brought us back.
Sorry to worry everyone. I’d told Godspeed before to tell mom if I was away for a long time on a Dataverse mission, but he’s still in the hospital, and GAIA’s an AI so they aren’t always the best at telling people what’s going on. I’ll try to make sure they tell people where I actually am next time.
-Ernest
**To:** ernwelles@bmail.com**From:** timwelles@bmail.com
Wait, seriously, you saved the League of Heroes??? That’s amazing!! You’ve gotta tell me about all of your teammates data forms too. And how did you beat the clown? C'mon you gotta give me more details than that.
Timothy
**To:** ernwelles@bmail.com**From:** tere5934@bmail.com
So I didn’t understand most of that, but I’m glad you’re not dead in a ditch or absconded to Canada or something.
Next time maybe set up an away message or something? “Hey, I’m out on one of my superhero mission things, please wait at least three days before losing your shit.”
Well, at least one good thing came out of this (besides saving a bunch of adult heroes or whatever), which is reminding me that cyberpunk is an aesthetic that exists and I should draw more of it.
Catch you later,
Teresa

## Put Your Worst Foot Forward

*S4E20: Levolutionary Measures*

*March 7, 2020*
**To:** tere5934@bmail.com**From:** ernwelles@bmail.com
Hey so you know how I told you we didn’t bust people for vandalism? We maybe kind of ended up doing exactly that today.
*[A link to Kyle’s video of cleaning graffiti around the Base while wearing a maid outfit and summarily being chain-tossed into the sewer by Ernest, Carmilla, Melody, and Phalanx]*
In my defense, it wasn’t just somewhere random, it was *inside* our base. So I had to do *something* about it.
-Ernest
**To:** ernwelles@bmail.com**From:** tere5934@bmail.com
Wooooooooooow such a hypocrite, I can’t believe how much you’ve changed.
But nah, I get that, I wouldn’t let just anyone get away with tagging Tina and Avery’s place. Especially not with anything that ugly. Those lines look like they picked up a spray can for the first time yesterday.
Please tell me you at least took the chance to leave your own mark somewhere around the Base. I know you said you stopped tagging public stuff, but that’s your own place.
Teresa
**To:** tere5934@bmail.com**From:** ernwelles@bmail.com
Okay yeah, I did put up a little piece based on the W in my costume in one of the offices. I hid it behind a filing cabinet, so I’m hoping people don’t find it for a few years.
Speaking of changing, though, that got me thinking back to when we first met. You remember, right?
-Ernest
**To:** ernwelles@bmail.com**From:** tere5934@bmail.com
Oh wow, I definitely do. Talk about first impressions, huh?
I mean, not that they were wrong. But they weren’t exactly good.
Teresa
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
*February 11, 2019*
Hailstones ping against the metallic sides of the dumpster, showering his vision with ultramarine stars. Ernest forces the moisture in the air to crystallize, packing his anger into neat chunks of ice before tossing them into the whirlwind spinning in the dumpster.
“Hey, how long do you plan to keep doing that?”
He hadn’t heard anyone approaching over the noise of the miniature storm, so the sudden royal blue voice startles him. The hailstones clatter to the bottom of the dumpster in a cacophony of gold spirals as the wind falters.
Ernest looks over to the the end of the alley, where a girl wearing a jacket that seems too light to block out the February chill is standing. Her posture, arms crossed and foot tapping, suggests she’s been watching him for some time.
He’s surprised she hadn’t taken off running the moment she saw him using his powers. “Oh. You aren’t scared about the fact that I can do this?” He focuses for a moment and another hailstone grows in midair, falling to join the rest when it reaches the size of a golfball.
“You’re not the only one in the world with powers, bud.” She snaps, and a small flame dances on the end of her index finger. “Anyway, I’ve scouted this place for weeks. I’m not about to let someone getting into a fight with a dumpster push me out.” She walks down the alley and gestures for him of move out of the way. “Shouldn’t you be in school or something?”
She doesn’t look much older than him. “Shouldn’t you?” he shoots back, but steps aside to let her pass further into the alley.
The girl just shrugs, drops her backpack to the ground, and starts pulling cans of spray paint out of it.
“Can I watch?” he asks.
She raises a middle finger towards him without looking in his direction, and continues unpacking. Ernest sits against the opposite wall and waits.
The girl starts off outlining what Ernest assumes are meant to be letters, but abstracted enough that he can’t decipher what they spell. She fills them in with a deep purple base before going back to fill in shadows, highlights, and outlines in various colors.
Eventually, she stands back, placing the spray can she’s holding on the ground without picking another up. She lights the flame at the end of her finger again, holding it against the wall in the bottom right corner of her piece. When she’s finished tracing a shape, she holds her hand up to her mouth like a smoking gun and blows out the flame.
“That’s pretty.” Ernest says as she starts packing up her cans again.
This time, she looks over her shoulder at him. “You really think so?”
“Yeah. It looks the way an orchestra sounds when they’re all warming up before a concert.”
She squints and says, “You sound like a nutcase, I hope you know that.”
Ernest simply shrugs in response.
The girl finishes gathering her supplies and starts to leave. Before she reaches the end of the alley, she turns back. “I’m Teresa, by the way.” She extends a hand towards him.
He stands and shakes it. “Ernest.”
“Well, Ernest. I’ll see you around.”

## The Devil’s in the Details

*OVA: The Devil’s Due*

March 14, 2020
You know, at this point, I don’t even care who reads these. Probably no one. It’s not like anyone gives a fuck about what I think anyway.
We saved Boon from Sapphomet. I guess. I say “we” loosely because all I did was nearly destroy one building and actually destroy another, and one of them I was supposed to be defending. I hadn’t even realized that Sapphomet had been planning to do anything so soon, because I suck at knowing what’s going on with my friends. But at least Boon isn’t dead or soulless or whatever, even if she thinks I’m a terrible person.
Because apparently, I’m just supposed to be chill with the fact that Atlanta and Verve have actually been the same person this whole time and have been lying about it to me since basically the day we met. And I know that Boon is always going to take her side because she’s her girlfriend, but fuck that. Just because Boon’s willing to keep dating someone who lied to her like that doesn’t mean everyone else has to be okay with it.
Atlanta claims she was going to tell me, but I find that hard to believe given the fact that, you know, she didn’t for months. If there hadn’t been a good moment to tell me in the entire time we’ve known each other, when was there ever going to be one? Instead it took a literal demon forcing her hand for Verve to admit she was Atlanta.
It seems like it’s barely even a secret anymore with how many people know, but I guess I wasn’t worth telling. She told Ellen forever ago, and she told Boon after they started dating, and Carm found out one way or another. I bet Melody knows too, since she and Ellen and Atlanta hang out all the time. And probably another half a dozen other Big Team members I’m not thinking of right now. Apparently none of them took the time to say “hey, maybe it would be a good idea if our mutual friend and teammate Ernest also knew about this.” Probably because none of actually care about me as much as I thought they did. Of course Atlanta doesn’t care if I don’t talk to her anymore, she has enough friends without me. If she ever actually considered me a friend at all, or if that was just another lie.
So Verve gets to keep all her friends who she cares about enough to let them know who she actually is, and she gets to live with her little brother and her dad. She doesn’t even seem to have any problems with her dad going to those support group meetings for parents of people with powers, aside from having to lie about how Atlanta doesn’t have powers. Hell, maybe her dad told my mom about Verve being Atlanta and she didn’t bother to tell me either. It’s not like she’s ever mentioned going to the meetings before, so how would I know what they talk about there aside from how awful my powers are and how I just end up wrecking everything around me even when I’m specifically trying to prevent the place from being wrecked.
No wonder Sapphomet knew to offer to make my family and friends love me. Because I’m not getting that without demonic intervention. Not like I’d deserve it anyway. Maybe if I was less of a disaster of a person, other people would actually want to be around me.
Not that anyone else seems to be worried about how dangerous Verve is to be around. She pocketed Carm today and I have no idea if she didn’t notice or didn’t care, because she definitely wasn't freaking out about it. She’s always said she couldn’t pocket anything living, but maybe that was a lie too. I don’t know how to tell if anything she’s told me is true.
I never should have trusted Atlanta in the first place. GAIA always knew she was hiding something, even if they were wrong about her being on Gambite. I let my guard down because Timothy trusted her, but when has Timothy ever distrusted anyone? Maybe if I’d been paying more attention, I’d have noticed that Verve and Atlanta’s voices were the exact same shade of orange. Or been more suspicious about the fact that all of Atlanta’s friends just happen to be on Big Team. And that Verve just happens to be one of the few members of the team who knows sign language.
Lately it’s been even more obvious, if I stopped to think about it for a second. No wonder Boon seemed so close to Verve after she started dating Atlanta. And it explains why Carm would draw “not interested in hero stuff” Atlanta beating up villains with her. I might have picked up on what was going on if I hadn’t held on to the assumption that my friends wouldn’t lie to my face.
Or maybe my mistake was assuming any of them were my friends in the first place.
-Ernest
P.S.
Okay, it’s me again. Carm came and talked to me and I'm feeling a little less terrible. It’s kind of nice knowing I’m not the only one angry at Verve over all this. And Carm did care enough to check on me, which counts for a lot right now.
We talked about Atlanta not telling us about being Verve, and it sounds like Carm found out in the middle of a really bad situation too. I wish Atlanta could have learned from that mistake. Maybe she finally learned her lesson this time.
Because I do want good things for Atlanta. Even if that feels stupid when I’m still so mad at her.
We also talked about me being upset with Verve’s powers. I don’t think Carm really got it, but I think I’m just because I'm bad at explaining it. That got us talking about how Carm keeps herself under control when her vampire-ness starts to take over. Apparently something happened when she lost control while she was still part of her vampire clan that really upset her. She didn’t get into much detail, which, I don’t blame her. But she said that thinking about those horrible moments is what keeps her from totally losing control now.
When I thought about it more after she left, I realized I have something similar, from the time I hurt Timothy. My powers are still dangerous, and they can definitely still hurt people, but I don’t worry about hurting them with my lightning as badly as I hurt Timothy. I know that I won’t ever let my powers go that far, because I just can’t let something that terrible happen again.
Atlanta hasn’t had that kind of experience with her new power yet. And I don’t want that to be what it takes for her to be more careful with it.
I guess that means I’ll have to talk to her soon.

## Give up the Ghost

*S4E26: Hyper Dark*

< Messages
                         **Melody** 🤜🤛⛓️
                         *(Sun, Mar 15, 10:14 AM)*
yo! got here early, gonna hit the heavy bags
                         *(Sun, Mar 15, 10:48 AM)*
if you don't see me when you get in i'm at free weights now lol
                         *(Sun, Mar 15, 11:36 AM)*
gonna head to danger room and take off after. hope you're okay dude. let me know if shit came up or someone needs punched if you can. stay safe out there
                         *(Sun, Mar 15, 5:27 PM)*
                                 **hey sorry i didn’t make it**                                 **yeah something came up i guess**                                 **no one needs punching, it’s fine**
                         *(Mon, Mar 16, 3:24 PM)*
sorry got here little late traffic sucked. in the parking lot now
                         *(Mon, Mar 16, 3:35 PM)*
how have i never seen this dude outside the visitors center lol*[Attached is a picture of a spotted turtle basking on a sunny rock]*
                         *(Mon, Mar 16, 3:48 PM)*
gonna head out to the usual spot. reception probably still sucks there. everything okay Ernest?
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
March 16, 2020
Well, I had been planning to just hide in my room all afternoon like I did yesterday, but Carm showed up as a bat outside the apartment building with her Bitendo Verse and who could say no to that? I did feel guiltier about skipping training with Melody to play video games than I did when I was skipping just to sulk. And also the fact that she drove all the way out to the Nature Reserve only for me to not show.
If I’d remembered sooner I would have told her I wasn’t coming. Maybe. I still haven’t replied to her because I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know if I could bring up all the stuff about Atlanta, since I’ve been assuming she knows about Verve but I don’t actually know that for sure. I mean, there’s one person who could definitely tell me if Melody knows or not, but I don’t want to talk to her right now either.
Carm didn’t bring up anything about Atlanta while we were playing video games, which I appreciated. I kinda needed something to take my mind off it for a while. She did ask about how I was doing later, which was nice. Because she’s a good friend. A way better one than I am, anyway. Which is more than I deserve.
We didn’t end up playing video games the whole afternoon though, since Focus said she had a friend that needed help with stuff for the club fair. I figured it would be nice to get out of the house and that maybe helping someone else out would make me feel better, so Carm and I flew over to the school to see what we could do.
Focus’s friend Faith, who’s the Vice President of the Big Team Fanclub, was trying to help out the school’s Black Magic Club with recruitment. The Black Magic Club that Samantha and Frankie are on, not the evil one led by Vic that bodyswapped a bunch of people and stole stuff from the Base that one time. I don’t really know anything about magic, so I wasn’t great at coming up with ideas for how they could get more people to join, but eventually we decided to check out that antique store across from Philosotea to find some weird magic stuff to show off.
We found a cool mirror that didn’t show most people, but did show Carm. Which is apparently the reverse of most mirrors. I hadn’t realized she didn’t show up in regular ones, but it’s some kind of vampire thing. We also bought a creepy snake necklace that Frankie used to summon a ghost for us to fight so we could promote the Big Team Fanclub and the ~~Black Magic Club~~ ~~Thamaturgy~~ ~~Thamot~~ look they gave themselves some new magic name but I can’t spell it. Carm and I took down the ghost, then Frankie, Samantha, and Joy banished it with a ritual. The crowd seemed to really like it, so hopefully they get enough new members to keep the club.
I also kinda forgot that I’d been grounded specifically from fighting ghosts, so mom probably isn’t gonna be happy if she finds out. Maybe I could convince her that it was all just special effects for the club demonstration? I don’t really want to lie to her though. I just don’t want her to be mad at me.
Faith did a really good job with her part, even though she was pretending to be bad at fighting the ghost. It kind of reminded me of Timothy’s acting, and definitely made the show more interesting than if we’d just completely demolished the ghost. She invited me to join the Big Team Fanclub afterwards, but I turned her down because I think it’s kind of weird to be in a Fanclub for your own team? I mean, I know Kurt’s the President, but they were on the Fanclub before they joined the team so that seems different somehow. Faith is pretty cool though, so I wouldn’t mind hanging out with her more doing something other than Fanclub stuff.
Frankie also talked with me about her ghost powers. Like I said before, I don’t really know anything about magic, so even though I tried to give her some advice, I have no idea how helpful it was. She also wanted to know if I had been upset with her or something and that’s why we hadn’t really talked much since the whole gondola thing at the beginning of the school year. And it wasn’t that I was mad at her or anything, I just didn’t know what to say about it when I decided I didn’t want to do the whole graffiti thing anymore, and when I don’t know what to say to someone I just avoid saying anything until they get mad at me and they don’t want to hear what I have to say anymore so it doesn’t matter.
I’m doing it all over again, aren’t I?
Fuck.
-Ernest

## Step Zero

*Time Passes*

*(cw: musings about death)*

March 18, 2020
I finally talked with Atlanta today. And with Melody. It was hard and I definitely messed up some parts. But hopefully it’s better than the alternative of me just hiding in my room forever and never talking to anyone ever again.
I should probably check in with Boon too. I think she’ll probably be okay now that I’m not yelling at her girlfriend anymore, but knowing me there’s a chance I might have done something else wrong that I need to apologize for.
Finding out that Carm is planning to leave was kind of the wake up call I needed. It reminded me that I won’t necessarily have forever to fix my mistakes. And that I really should appreciate the time I’ll have with my friends, since it isn’t infinite and might end up being shorter than I expect.
Grim wasn’t sure we were friends when she had to leave to fulfill her reaper duty and embody Death, and I lost the chance to tell her we were.
Boon could have died or had her soul stolen or whatever and I hadn’t even known that was happening until right when it was. Sure, we didn’t start arguing until after Sapphomet was gone, but what if I’d been holding some other stupid grudge and we didn’t manage to save her?
And even outside of situations like that, it’s not like superheroing is exactly the safest thing in the world. I don’t usually like to think about it too much, but we spend a lot of time putting ourselves in the middle of some really dangerous stuff. It’s not impossible that we could lose someone during a mission. Or someone could just like, get into a really bad car accident or something. The universe isn’t going to care if I was waiting to apologize until I felt better about it.
Anyway. All that to say, I came close to messing stuff up really badly because I wanted to be angry and sorry for myself and not accept that people actually cared about me. I’m just glad my friends are willing to give me a second chance.
I might not be great at the whole friends thing yet, but I’m working on it. Just taking things one step at a time.
-Ernest

## Pressed Pages

*S4E28: The Library*

March 19, 2020
Hey hopefully future me and not some wizard trying to determine if I’m evil by reading books about me,
Went on a mission with Libra, Verve, and Whisper today. Which was weird now that I know Verve is really Atlanta and Libra is really Kurt, and I’m pretty sure they don’t know that about each other. At least Frankie and me don't really hide our identities. Mostly I tried not to think about it too hard.
GAIA sent us to check out this weird bridge that had suddenly appeared between two skyscrapers, which turned out to be due to a bunch of Bishop goons. They had those same dart guns as the time we had to rescue Renata and Cardinal, which turned out to be bad news for me because the leader held up some kind of device and the arm I’d gotten shot in before just suddenly went numb again. And when I tried to call on my powers it really hurt. At least when I blasted the leader off the roof with lightning it went back to normal. But I’ve still got that weird spot on my shoulder, so it could probably happen again.
Maybe I should have asked the Consortium people if they could help me heal the wound or something, but there was so much going on that I kind of forgot about until now. Besides, I really wanted to get back to Halcyon as quickly as possible. Since yeah, we didn’t stop the Bishop goons from doing what they wanted, which was apparently cutting a hole in reality to make a sort of portal. I was worried that it might snap shut at any second, so I just flew with my lightning wings and jumped through it as soon as I had the chance.
Oh right, I don’t think I mentioned it before since I was too busy being angry with all my friends last time it happened to really think about what it meant. But now when I feel like I really need to get somewhere, as fast as possible, I sprout these lightning wings and just go. The first time they showed up was when I pulled my powers into the Dataverse and accelerated time, so hopefully they aren’t like, messing with the timestream or something? They sure are quicker to get around on than boosting myself with wind, though.
When I passed by the big power sources that they’d been using to charge up their stuff, I could feel them reacting to my wings. It was the same kind of feeling I got from that lady with the suit powered by my lightning, when we fought HELIX. Bishop must have figured out a way to expand my lightning past the one battery I filled up. Which I guess explains why she thought could get away with taking one without Bishop noticing. They probably have dozens of them lying around, ready for their evil plans or whatever.
It kinda makes me want to yell at dad for setting up the experiment that let them get their hands on my lightning in the first place. If Bishop can just make more, I don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to stop them from using it. But like, even with the divorce and everything, me and dad have been pretty chill recently? I’m mad but I don’t really want to start fighting all over again. I’ve had enough of fighting with people for a while.
Anyway, I don’t know if it was connecting with my lightning again, or maybe going through the portal, or the fact that the place we ended up in was just brimming with magic that lit up my synesthesia like a impossible-colored Christmas tree, but something knocked me out of sync with everything for a little bit? And while I was trying to figure out what was going on, all of a sudden I just knew we were in the Madagascar Library of the Consortium. I have no idea how, it’s not a place I’d ever heard of before today. And even though Madagascar happens to be one of the countries I can find on a map, but it’s not like I recognized the shape of the coastline or something. Maybe they just have some kind of magical loudspeaker that tells you where you are or something. But it was a weird sensation.
Kurt immediately tried to teleport after the Bishop goons, which seemed like a bad idea, but I guess I can’t really talk since I dove through the portal before checking that everyone else could follow. The rest of us got stuck with a magical flying monkey, who was very helpful in explaining what the library was about but not as helpful at getting us where we needed to be to stop Bishop. Eventually we managed to convince them to let us use one of the teleporters, although not before we learned about that the library was also a prison for magical supervillains and that we definitely weren’t supposed to be there.
If I got sealed in a magical bookshelf, I wonder what books would appear. I didn’t really ask how they worked because what that monkey told us was creepy enough that I didn’t want to know more. But it sounded like the books would be related to the knowledge of the trapped person, or their memories or something? Do you think a copy of this journal would show up on my bookshelf prison?
Well, even though we kinda got found out as trespassing, we didn’t get in trouble for it or get added to the library’s collection, so I don’t really have to worry about that. Unless you like, happened to find this journal on a creepy magical bookshelf. Then maybe try to break me out? I’m sure it was an accident that I ended up stuck in there.
Once we teleported, we ran into Kurt again, who had gotten the help of this adorable flying familiar called Mr. Otter. He was a lot less talkative than the monkey, and also way more helpful for finding the Bishop goons. Unfortunately, they had split up into two groups, so we also had to split up to go after them.
I wanted to go with Verve to make sure nothing bad happened with her powers around all the magical stuff, but she said that we should go in different directions since we were the two most experienced members of the group. Her powers still make me nervous, but she’d promised she’d try to be more careful with them, so I’m trying to trust her on that. Frankie went along with her, and they did fine taking out the pair that they went after. Me and Kurt on the other hand…
We were having trouble finding the other pair, and saw this wizard sealing a necromancer in a bookshelf, so we decided to talk to them. They figured out pretty quickly that we didn’t belong there, but they also wanted to stop Bishop, so they weren’t upset about us being there. They said they were called Conmoro, which sounds like it's probably one of those fancy Consortium code names, but at least it’s easier to spell than most of them. Unless it’s actually got a silent z somewhere.
With Conmoro’s help we were able to track down the Bishop goons, who were in the process of stealing a bunch of books out of the bookcase prisons. I took a moment to call on my powers, but while I was doing that, Kurt teleported over and tried to fight them. One of them got him real good and sent him flying down the hallway, and he didn’t get up.
My powers were all ready to lash out and seeing Kurt like that made me start to panic, so I ended up summoning a huge storm. I wasn’t thinking about containing it at all, so it just started wrecking the entire hallway. Some of the bookshelves broke, and I could start to see the outlines of the people who’d been trapped in them reforming. Worst of all, even though I trapped the Bishop goons, they still managed to send the bag of books they’d stolen somewhere else, so I didn’t even keep Bishop from getting what they came for.
Conmoro said to grab Kurt and run. I didn't want to back down from a fight, but couldn’t just leave Kurt lying there with a bunch of magical supervillains about to attack. I did make a lightning clone to try to help Conmoro, but I’m not sure that actually did anything because they used a bunch of magic to clean up the mess I made.
I took Kurt back to where we had split up from Atlanta and Frankie, and he eventually woke up again. He seemed like he was okay. I was actually freaking out about the whole thing more than he was, and he had to help me calm down which was a little embarrassing. At least Conmoro wasn’t super mad about losing a bunch of magic books and nearly releasing a hallway’s worth of magical supervillains. They even said we did a good job trying to defend the library.
Frankie seemed kind of mad at me after the mission? She sort of blew up at Conmoro after they thanked us for helping, and she didn’t really seem to be in the mood to talk about it afterwards. Maybe she had more hard feelings about me not being in touch after the whole gondola incident than I realized. Or maybe she was just upset that we screwed up our half of the mission. I don’t know.
Conmoro sent me, Frankie and Atlanta back to Halcyon. Atlanta was going to get some more information from them. She didn’t want to say what, but she said she’d tell me if it turned out to be important. Conmoro also mentioned something about how we should run away from phoenixes as we left, which was weird. I assume there must be some other kind of phoenix, since only villains would have to worry about running away from Renata. Maybe one of those monsters she talks about is also called a phoenix.
Kurt stayed behind to talk to some other wizard he’d run into when he’d teleported away from the rest of us. He seemed pretty sure that the wizard was nice, but I’m still really worried he might end up stuck in Madagascar somehow and
*[the neat writing cuts off in the middle of the sentence, with a final note scrawled hastily across the bottom of the page]*
KURT WOODS ASKED ME OUT?!?!?!
AND I SAID YES!!!!

## Ends and Means

*S4E34: Catalyst*

March 27, 2020
Is it possible to feel like more of a hero after committing a crime? Not like I haven’t committed crimes before while doing hero stuff. Various forms of property damage are probably highest on that list. But I usually don’t feel good about it, you know?
I probably should feel worse about the fact that the crime was the specific one we were asked to prevent. Aman, Anaya, Phalanx and I were hanging out at the skate park when Aman’s uncle asked him for some help at his museum. Security stuff, since apparently there were some threats of it being attacked.
On the way over, we ran into Kieran Khan, and I really really wanted to punch him again, but everyone else seemed to think it was a bad idea. I still summoned a rainstorm over him, which was satisfying until Anaya started moving the rain out of the way. I don’t know what her deal is with Kieran – I guess they were both on Gambite together, but I can’t imagine he was nice to her or anything. I didn’t want to get into a fight with Anaya, though, (even if it’s not cursed or whatever anymore, her trident is pretty scary) so I just let it drop.
We met this kind of shady guy who Aman didn’t seem to like, who had lent his personal collection to the museum. That’s what we were supposed to be guarding. I figured that we’d probably end up just hanging out for most of the night, but then Hyacinth and Denise burned a hole through the side of the wall and said they wanted to steal the fancy snake bracelet.
It was kind of tense for a bit and we almost got into a fight, but after they explained that the snake bracelet was magic and they needed it to find one of their friends, we agreed to let them borrow it, on the condition that we go with them and they return the bracelet when they were done…
Anyway, we were about to try and use the bracelet when the woman with the suit powered by my lightning that I ran into last time we helped Hyacinth and Denise showed up. Turns out her name is Dez. She tried to attack Hyacinth and Denise with my lightning, but I managed to bend it away from Hyacinth and Phalanx absorbed the bolt meant for Denise. But some of the lightning hit the snake bracelet and it made a portal to a weird alternate dimension that we all fell through.
We did end up having to fight Hyacinth and Denise when they wanted to try and kill Dez when she said she’d work with us to get back out of the alternate dimension. And even though Dez is probably one of my least favorite people, and Hyacinth and Denise had every right to hate her, we couldn’t let that happen. I knew that they weren’t really interested in saving people, but it kind of surprised me that they’d go that far. Phalanx knocked out Hyacinth, which was maybe a bit more than necessary, but a least no one got permanently injured.
We tried to look for Hyacinth and Denise’s other friends, but instead we ended up finding these shadowy memories instead. Aman recognized some devices that looked like what HELIX had used to mess with Seth’s memories, so we decided to break them. Unfortunately touching them gave really bad headaches, and ended up making Hyacinth and Denise pass out. Which was the second time in the day for Hyacinth. Hopefully it at least helped with the memory stuff.
The building we were in started to fall apart so I channeled lightning into the bracelet again, which transported us all back. Dez immediately tried to kidnap Hyacinth and Denise. To be fair, she’d said that she’d do that as soon as we got back, so it’s not like we weren’t ready for it. Aman kind of freaked us all out when he said he’d let Dez take them, but it turned out to just be a ruse to let him catch her more off guard.
I tried to short out Dez’s suit, so she’d stop using my lightning to go after Hyacinth and Denise, and it took her out for a little bit, but the battery ended up absorbing most of it. Last time we met, I thought that if I could just take the battery away, she wouldn’t have anything to power the suit anymore, problem solved. But now that I know Bishop has made more batteries with my lightning, she could probably just steal another one. So that’s not going to work.
We took Hyacinth and Denise back to the base so they could recover. And… well, here’s the crime part. I kept the snake bracelet after we got back to the museum. I know we were supposed to guard it and all, but it really seems like it’ll do more good helping Hyacinth and Denise find their friends than sitting in a box for people to look at. Anyway, they’d probably just try to steal it again. When I gave it to them I did ask them to promise that they wouldn’t try to hurt anyone too badly like they were going to with Dez. I really hope they stick to that. They’ve been in a tough spot for a while now but I really think we can help them get out of it without them needing to kill anyone.
I didn’t tell Aman about taking the artifact. I wasn’t sure if he’d feel like he’d have to tell his uncle, and I didn’t want Hyacinth and Denise to have to worry about more people coming after them. I did feel bad about hiding it from him, though. So I guess maybe I feel like both a criminal and a hero at the same time.
I did tell Aman about something else though… between Dez showing up again and Bishop using my lightning for who knows what, I explained about how dad’s research project let Bishop get their hands on my lightning. It was the first time I’d told anyone what happened with that experiment. Cardinal knows about it already, since he’d been investigating Bishop, but that meant I didn’t have to explain it to him. Although I guess it would be good for him to know that they’ve been able to make more of the batteries. But yeah, it was hard to talk about it, but I’m glad that Aman knows now in case something happens.
Aman tried to say that it wasn’t my fault, but I don’t know. It’s not even the first time I’ve given away my powers to someone who ended up using them to do something terrible. I need to figure out a way to stop Bishop and Dez from using my lightning anymore, and make sure that no one else gets their hands on my powers again.
-Ernest
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*Hyacinth and Denise are standing across from him, glaring with pure hatred. When he reaches out a hand, he catches sight of the copper tubing of Dez’s suit running down his arm. Lightning arcs down the tubing and into Hyacinth and Denise, who crumple to the ground. He rushes over to them, but when he tries to pick them up, he realizes his arms are covered in flowing black robes…*

## We Didn't Start the Fire

*S4E43: Full Metal Rescue (Part 1)*

*April 4, 2020*
**To:** timwelles@bmail.com**From:** ernwelles@bmail.com
GAIA sent us to help out with an apartment building on fire up in Zodiac City. We never really figured out what started it, but based on what I’ve heard from the rest of the team, there was a whole lot going down in Zodiac City today, so it might have just been collateral damage from something else. Definitely seemed bigger than someone leaving their stove on though.
It was also my first time on a mission with Rewind! You know, the one with the time glove thing I told you about. Still not a huge fan of the time travel stuff, but they claim it doesn’t work on people. Not the first time I’ve heard that one, so I’m still going to keep an eye on it. They seem to have a pretty good handle on their powers though. Better than I do anyway, I’m the one who nearly blew the building down after giving myself a face full of burning smoke. At least Ellen and Seb were helping people from inside, so we managed to get everyone out before the fire trucks and ambulances even got there.
We also met this little girl who called herself Engineer Princess Tune-Up. She did some modifications to an old Rubicon armor, upgraded its AI or something, and now he’s her best friend named Scrap-Scrap. Which is pretty cool, except she decided to have him fly her into the middle of the burning building, which was terrifying.
And before you get on my case about being hypocrite, this girl was like 8 years old. I know I’m not the best example or anything, but that’s way too young to be involved in hero stuff.
Ugh, I sound like mom. But I think I kind of get how she feels now.
Anyway, Engineer Princess Tune-Up wanted to visit the base, so we’re going to meet up after school on Monday to show her around. And reiterate that she definitely shouldn’t fly into burning buildings until she’s older.
-Ernest
**To:** ernwelles@bmail.com**From:** timwelles@bmail.com
Sounds like you guys did great! Also, weren’t you saying something before about how Seb has powers now? Did you get to see those in action?
Oh, I forgot to mention it earlier, but I mailed you some stuff from your closet. Dad’s thinking about moving to a smaller apartment, so we’ve started cleaning stuff out. I think I sent most of what you might want, but if you’re super attached to your middle school spirit wear or whatever just let me know, I haven’t gotten rid of anything yet.
Timothy
**To:** timwelles@bmail.com**From:** ernwelles@bmail.com
Yeah Seb can like multiply himself? I didn’t really see that part since I was up on the roof most of the time but there were definitely more than one of him on the call at one point. A little bit concerning since it might be after effects from the time void or something but he said he was fine and he knows way more about the time stuff than I do. Between Rewind, Ellen, and him, I definitely had the least understanding about time nonsense.
Oops, I’d meant to take a look at my closet when I was there for Christmas, but… well, you know what happened. Hope it wasn’t too much of a disaster zone.
And yeah the stuff just got here! I can’t believe you found my old digital recorder, I thought I’d lost it somewhere years ago.
Have you started actually looking at new apartments? You’re not gonna move too far, right, the whole point of you going back to New York was so you could go back to our old school with your friends.
-Ernest

## Echoes of the Past

*Time Passes*

*A simple handheld digital recorder with a few buttons and a small screen. Clumsy written on a piece of masking tape stuck to the back: ‘Ernest’s Recorder Timothy DO NOT TOUCH!!!’*
**Track 1**
*[Ernest, lavender]* Wait, do it again, I forgot to hit the button!
*[Opa, indigo]* How do we ask nicely?
*[Ernest]* Please? Bitte?
*[Opa]* Alright.*[singing in rumblingly low deep navy]*Weißt du, wieviel Sternlein stehenAn dem blauen Himmelszelt?Weißt du, wieviel Wolken gehenWeithin über alle Welt?Gott der Herr hat, sie gezählet,Dass ihm auch nicht eines fehletAn der ganzen großen Zahl,An der ganzen großen Zahl.
*[Ernest, mimicking in teal]*Weißt du, wieviel Sternlein stehenAn dem blauen Himmelszelt?
*[Ernest]* How come it doesn’t look as good when I do it?
*[Opa]* I think it looks wonderful.
*[Ernest]* Really?
*[Opa]* Natürlich!
**Track 2**
*[Street noise, recorded from above. The rumble of traffic paints a background of mottled gray, with car horns adding splashes of fuchsia and raised voices drawing out blue-green lines]*
**Track 3**
*[A catchy jingle advertising a donut chain in the most neon yellow imaginable]*
**Track 4**
*[A series of discordant piano notes that form a perfectly circular mauve spot]*
**Track 5**
*[Ernest, lilac]* Stop grabbing, you’re gonna break it!
*[Timothy, lime green]* Just for a minute? Pleeeeeaaase?
*[Harold, distantly and fire-engine red]* Ernie, give your brother a turn.
*[Ernest]* But daaaaaaad it’s mine! Can’t you get him one of his own?
*[Timothy]* I don’t want one! I just want to try it once!
*[Harold]* Just let Tim try it, you can always delete the recording later if you don’t like it.
*[Timothy]* No, I want you to keep it!
*[Ernest]* Fine, you can try it. But I’m not keeping it unless it’s actually good.
*[some rustling noises and the emerald clearing of a throat]*
*[Timothy, hesitantly at first but becoming more enthusiastic as he goes]*I’m gonna be a mighty king, so enemies beware!*[with exaggerated seriousness]* Well, I’ve never seen a king of beasts with quite so little hairI’m gonna be the main event, like no king was beforeI’m brushing up on looking down, I’m working on my roar!Oh I just can’t wait to be king!No one saying do thisNo one saying be thereNo one saying stop thatNo one saying see hereFree to run around all dayFree to do it all my way!
*[a few moments of silence]*
*[Timothy]* What do you think?
*[Ernest]* Okay, that was pretty good.
*[Timothy]* So you’ll keep it? You promise?
*[Ernest]* Pinky promise.
**Track 6**
*[A dense chorus of birds chirping, building up a background of fluctuating polka dots in every color of the rainbow]*
**Track 7**
*[A cacophony of metallic clattering, showers of golden and navy sparks]*
*[Helen Welles, red-orange and tinged with exasperation]* Ernest! We’ve been over this! How many times do I have to tell that you can’t throw pans down the stairs?
*[Ernest, amethyst]* Yeah! This time I recorded it, so I don’t have to do it anymore to hear it again. See?
*[Helen]* Alright, give me that.
*[Ernest]* No, it’s mine!
*[Helen]* You can have it back after you’ve thought about what you’ve done and apologized to the neighbors again.
*[Ernest]* Hey!
*[Noises of protest become more distant until the recording abruptly ends]*
**Track 8**
*[Rapidly flowing water that dapples with silver, blue, and purple, reminiscent of an Impressionist painting]*
**Track 9**
*[Multiple pop songs playing simultaneously, lyrics barely distinguishable among the noise. The shapes hang together to form a lopsided letter E]*
**Track 10**
*[Ernest, voice deeper in both tone and hue than previous recordings]* Hey does this thing still work? Alright, neat, looks like it’s recording.
*[Harold, muffled cranberry]* Ernest, let’s go, everyone else is ready.
*[Ernest, shouting]* Okay, okay, just give me a sec!
*[Timothy, sing-song in sky blue]* We’re going to leave without you!
*[Ernest]* I said just a sec!
*[Helen, apricot]* We’ll wait for you outside.
*[The yellow-green slam of a door in the distance]*
*[Ernest]* Okay, gotta make this quick. Did I used to do intros for these things? I don’t remember, it’s been a while. Anyway, there’s been this cool thing going on lately and I don’t know if it's because of like the air being dry or whatever so I have no idea how long it’s gonna work, but it sounds really great so I dug this out to record it.
*[The mint green of a finger snap, followed by a sparkling teal electric crackle]*
*[Ernest]* Pretty cool, huh? Anyway, gotta run to Timothy’s talent show, bye!

## Seeing Double

*S4E41: Hashtag Cookie Jar*

April 5, 2020
Hey there future me, or maybe some kind of illusory double or lightning clone of me. (Could one of my lightning clones read? They don’t have eyes, but sometimes they kind of act like they can see?? You know, I’m just not going to think about it too hard.)
Today, Luna, Cardinal, Cypher, and I got called in to act as bodyguards during Mint Chocolate’s concert in Halcyon. I’m not that familiar with the band, but Luna’s a big fan, so they were really excited. The band was concerned because of something happening during all different types of performances where performers and audience members would start losing energy and even disappearing. They said they didn’t know why it was happening, but it turned out later that they pretty much knew exactly what was happening and just expected us to be able to help somehow without telling us about it? More on that later.
During the concert, I tried focusing on the colors of the music, and there was some kind of weird effect that made the colors of the audience go dull, but I couldn’t figure out what was causing it. Then all of a sudden some kind of app activated on our phones that yelled at us about not being able to see things, flashed a bright light, and suddenly we could see all these ghost figures that were stealing the audience’s energy. The band ran into some kind of mirror, and Cardinal and Cypher followed them, while I flew Luna up to this vortex in the sky so we could try and find where the ghost things were coming from.
We ended up on some kind of stage, although this one only had the vague idea of an audience in front of it, not actual people. A huge monster started attacking us, and since we didn’t seem to be in the real world anymore, I just blasted it with lightning. Luna made this duplicate of me, which looked really neat. Way more detailed than my lightning clones, although the face was a little off. Unfortunately, it didn’t stick around for long because Luna shifted to Solae in the middle of the fight. Cardinal and Cypher also managed to make it to us, along with the band, and we were able to defeat the monster.
I wondered whether Solae would know who I was, since I haven’t really talked with her before. It seemed like she was kind of generally aware of who I was, but not the same as having the interactions I’d had with Luna. She knew that I was Kurt’s boyfriend though, and said she thought Kurt was cool, which was really great to hear. I know he’s been struggling with how a lot of our teammates see him as Kurt versus as Libra, so I’m glad that there are teammates other than me who like him as Kurt.
The band was surprised that we were able to get to the alternate dimension, since we didn’t have these ‘mirage’ things that were like people but also weapons? And used to be like the ghost things but now they’re good? I had been showing Solae one of my lightning clones, so I tried to pretend that it was a mirage thing but I guess it wasn’t particularly convincing. It’s too bad that Luna wasn’t there to see the band with their mirages, I bet they would have loved it. Solae didn’t seem that interested in the band, but she did say that my lightning clone was cool.
Since the band had fought these ghost things before, they definitely could have warned us about the alternate dimension thing. They said something about thinking we wouldn’t believe them, but c’mon. We’re superheroes, and this is Halcyon. I’ve been to a weird magic dimension on a train, the Dataverse, a weird fighting colosseum in a reality bubble, a terrifying pocket dimension, and a shadow memory dimension. And I’ve heard about other Big Team members ending up in even weirder places. At this point, I’d be more likely to believe that there is some kind of alternate dimension involved than not.
This alternate dimension had some kind of time dilation going on, it felt like we’d been in that alternate dimension for a lot longer than the amount of time that passed in the real world. I’m not a fan of any kind of time weirdness, but at least it’s the reverse of the Dataverse so I didn’t go missing for a couple days.
I was worried about what Mint Chocolate would do about their other concerts, since they said whatever had been controlling the attack disappeared, so they’d have to try and track it down another time. It seems really risky to put their audience in danger when they know about the ghost things, even if the people get their energy back after the ghosts are defeated in the alternate dimension. They could at least warn people about it happening, they seem popular enough that I bet a lot of people would still go to their concerts anyway. Or maybe that would only work in Halcyon where everyone’s used to putting up with that kind of thing.
After we got back to the base, I told Cardinal about how Bishop was making more batteries out of my lightning, and asked if he knew anything about that process to make them stop. He said that he’d look into it and not to feel like it’s all my responsibility, but I don’t know. Bishop is doing a whole lot of bad stuff these days, I can’t just expect Cardinal to figure everything out on his own. I’ll have to do something to stop them myself.
-Ernest
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
*He’s standing in front of a version of himself. It isn’t a perfect copy. Something about the expression is dull and blank.*
*He reaches out and the double mirrors his motion. When they touch, lightning erupts around his clone, covering it with a shimmering blue layer of electricity.*
*He pulls back, but it continues to advance. As it grabs his wrist, he can feel power begin draining from himself and growing the field around his double. Every second he feels more lightheaded, and he can’t pull away. He sends a sudden rush of lightning to try and force it back–*
He snaps awake to the smell of ozone. Another nightmare, and probably another scorch mark to try and hide from his mom.
When he looks over to the door to see if the outburst woke her, he sees a figure wreathed in lightning standing in the middle of his room.
*He gasps awake again. The room is empty. He opens the window and crawls out onto the fire escape and leans against the railing, letting the cold metal bars dig into his back.*
*He stays there, watching the sky gradually lighten, until he hears the incessant violet beeping of his alarm.*

## Set Fire to the Rain

*S4E43: Full Metal Rescue (Part 2)*

April 6, 2020
Well, I entirely wrecked a Bishop facility today.
I don’t feel as good about it as I thought I would.
Engineer Princess Tune-Up came by the Base to meet up with me, Ellen, Ryan, and Seb like we’d planned. But she didn’t have Scrap-Scrap with her. She said that some gray Rubicon armors talked to Scrap-Scrap and took him away and she hadn’t been able to get in touch with him since. They didn’t sound like the Rubicons that the police have been using, so we immediately suspected Bishop and offered to help.
I did want to rescue Scrap-Scrap. But I also really wanted a chance to get back at Bishop. So when the fighting started going down, I didn’t bother reigning in my storm at all, just encouraged it to cause as much damage to the machinery as possible. I nearly hurt Scrap-Scrap in the process. At least Seb managed to keep him safe.
Usually when I destroy something with my powers, it’s either an accident, or I needed to destroy something to get people out of danger or clear an escape route. And I guess sometimes I just get caught up in the moment with all the energy and chaos from a storm that I end up pushing my powers too far. This was different. By the end, there wasn’t anyone in danger and I wasn’t losing control of my powers. I just wanted to bring the place down.
I also got seen by the people who were arriving to deal with the fire and all. I’m not sure if they’ll try to do something about me. I haven’t gotten in that much trouble for destroying things with my powers before. Yeah, they sometimes yell on the news about Big Team being a menace to the city and all, but since it’s generally happened while I was in the process of saving people, it’s usually just covered by hero insurance or whatever and I don’t hear much about it afterwards. I don’t think I really have that excuse this time.
The worst part is that I don’t think destroying the place really hurt Bishop at all in the long term. It was just some older factory set up to manufacture Mark II Rubicons, but they’re working on the magic ones powered by the evil magic books from the Consortium that I let them get away with. It didn’t have anything to do with making more batteries out of my lightning.
I could destroy a hundred Bishop facilities and it still might not stop them from using my lightning.
-Ernest
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
*He hovers high above Halcyon City, the buildings sprawling out below him and a storm brewing overhead. Certain locations call out to him, humming with stockpiles of his own lightning. When he passes by one, he sends a whirlwind down and obliterates it, releasing the lightning to join his growing storm.*
*Every time he destroys one, more seem to pop up across the city. His frustration builds and eventually, he’s had enough.*
*He claps his hands together.*
*The city skyline vanishes completely, and his vision is overwhelmed with a dull red as roaring water rushes to fill the empty space.*

## Don't Fear the Reaper

*OVA: Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt*

April 11, 2020
They’re gone.
Hopefully for good. But even if they do come back, they won’t have my lightning or Hero One's pockets anymore.
Honestly the details aren’t important. What matters is that we went toe to toe with the reaper who possessed Hero One back in 1955 and we won.
~~-Ernest~~
Nope never mind I never want to forget the details so here we go.
Melody’s family was having a cookout barbecue thing at her house. I brought what was originally supposed to be marshmallow brownies, but halfway through making them I started thinking about when Atlanta had taught us how to make cupcakes at the base and kind of mixed up what was supposed to be happening? But even if they looked weird, they still tasted great, and they weren’t even burnt or anything so mom couldn’t convince me to leave them at home. She still insisted on bringing boring regular pasta salad though.
Somehow even though I knew Atlanta’s family had been invited, I hadn’t expected to see Hero One there? Which was dumb because I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about how Hero One is actually Atlanta’s grandparent or how they and Atlanta’s mom had been stuck in Reaper One’s pockets for years. I was just looking forward to hanging out with Atlanta and Jasper, but when I saw Hero One I nearly ended up pulling up a storm then and there.
I’d been trying not to use my powers this past week after hearing about what happened to Hero One and Demeter from Atlanta. She didn’t think it was a good idea to stop using them, but I didn’t know what else I could do about the reaper or Bishop or Dez using my powers to hurt people. So I really didn’t want to summon a rainstorm. Plus, you know, also not wanting to ruin the cookout for everyone else. So I just hid behind Melody’s house and tried to keep my powers under control.
Melody noticed and came over to talk to me. She tried to say that Hero One was doing alright now, and they hadn’t felt like they were trapped for fifty-whatever years because of time shenanigans, but I don’t know. My family freaked out when I was missing for two days because of Dataverse time stuff. And I know that Atlanta really missed her mom. I could tell that Melody wanted me to feel better, but she ended up just making think about why Atlanta’s family should hate me all over again. She at least convinced me to go back to the party once I wasn’t worried about immediately raining it out. Even if it was more because I didn’t want her to feel bad about one of her guests just hiding the entire time.
When I got back to the cookout, I also remembered that I’d technically stolen a priceless magical artifact from Aman’s uncle’s museum a couple of weeks ago. Which he hopefully doesn’t know about, although he might blame me for not guarding the exhibit very well. But I was worried I might end up blurting something out if I talked to him, so I tried to avoid him too. And when I was trying to keep track of where he was, I ended up bumping directly into Hero One.
I don’t really remember what they told me then. I could just tell from how they were looking at me that they blamed me for everything. Demeter came over too and recognized me as one of Atlanta’s friends. I don’t know if she knew about me being involved in all the stuff with the reaper, but I’m sure Hero One told her after I left. I froze up and ended up dropping half a plate of cupcakes on the ground. At least Jasper managed to rescue me before things got too stormy, though.
I might have just spent the rest of the cookout hanging out with Jasper and Aman’s younger sister, Mishel, but all of a sudden these huge shadowy tendrils burst out over the skyline. Melody had gotten a call from her mentor and knew it was happening at her base. I was ready to head over immediately, but a bunch of the others have secret identities to maintain and all, so Aman’s uncle helped make up a story that we all needed to get groceries and instruments for the band or something.
We told Jasper and Mishel that they weren’t allowed to come along, then took the Jackal van over. Well, Melody, Aman’s uncle, Atlanta, and I did. Ellen and Aman went ahead on her motorcycle, which, looking back it probably would have been better if we’d stuck together in the first place. Not that I can really complain about anyone rushing ahead into a dangerous situation. Oh, and Atlanta apparently has a new costume now. I was kind of too distracted in the moment to say anything about it, but I told her later that it looked really great.
By the time the van got to the Jackal base, all we could see were the enormous shadow chains covering the entire building, no sign of Ellen, Aman, or the bike. I helped Melody go through some of the exercises we’d practiced to help her control her own shadow chains, and she managed to make them stop thrashing around as much so we could push through them. They did still felt terrible to touch and tried to wrap me up, but Atlanta dissipated them with her lightning, since I was still trying not to use my powers.
We made it to Old Jackal’s teleportal device thing, which was definitely part of the problem based on the way a bunch of the shadow chains were pouring through it. We ran through and ended up in a weird shadow dimension. I recognized it from Melody’s descriptions of the place where she’d met the ghost spirit things that gave her the shadow chains. Upside down gravity, everything covered in shadows. The air was so still there, the clouds didn’t move at all. There was so little wind that I could sense someone breathing in the building across from us.
Ellen had crashed her bike and gotten separated from Aman, so we tried to see if the person in the other building was him. Melody made a bridge out of her shadow chains, and we ran across them. Even knowing that I could use my powers to fly if I really had to, it was freaky to see the cloudy sky underneath us, like you could fall into it forever.
The person I’d sensed turned out to be Old Jackal, not Aman. She wasn’t in great shape, but Atlanta managed to patch her up a bit. Aman’s uncle was going to take her back through the portal, but all of a sudden Aman crashed through a wall and the reaper who had possessed Hero One floated through the opening.
I was so scared that I couldn’t even say anything when they started threatening Melody. We all tried to get between the reaper and Melody, but she jumped out to stop us from getting cut down by the reaper’s scythe. She ended up stabbed by the scythe herself, but it was kind of like Grim’s scythe where it hurts people when it passes through them without actually cutting them, because she was able to yank it out of herself and still stand strong.
Aman and Atlanta charged the reaper. Aman managed to get a hit in with his staff and get away, but when Atlanta rushed over, they turned into smoke and their robes wrapped around her.
I’d seen Atlanta possessed by the reaper so many times in my nightmares. And when I messed with time in the Dataverse, I guess maybe I really did see into the future when I saw Atlanta looking like Hero One and Reaper One. All of those times were terrifying. Seeing it actually happen in front of me was even worse.
I lost control of my lightning. I’d been trying to hold it all in since I didn’t want the reaper to be able to charge themself up with it, but I couldn’t manage it anymore and ended up just summoning a huge circle of it around me. I couldn’t do anything except panic while my friends were in danger.
I’m not exactly sure what happened while I was freaking out. Ellen managed to do something that pulled Atlanta back from the reaper. And Atlanta did our code word so I knew that she was okay. Yamato was there too all of a sudden, apparently she’d been hiding in Melody’s brain or something? I kind of ignored her. Once I managed to get my powers back under control, I went straight for the reaper.
I pulled a funnel cloud from the storm below us to attack the reaper and tried to grab their scythe. I ended up stabbed like Melody, which sucked almost as much as the time I got stabbed by the rose lady in the Dataverse, but I managed not to pass out and hold onto the scythe while the wind blew the reaper out of the building.
Unfortunately, the building wasn’t very stable at that point, so my windstorm dislodged it and it started falling into the sky. I was frantically trying to do something about that, and eventually managed to shape the storm underneath us to support the building from falling further, but while I was busy with that, I wasn’t able to do anything about Yamato.
She tried to attack Aman, and Melody managed to save him but ended up possessed by Yamato. Aman tried to reach out to Melody, but it definitely seemed like he was going to get stabbed by one of Yamato’s actually physically sharp shadow swords, when suddenly Melody regained control and kissed him instead.
Melody explained to me later that she used her shadow chains to lock Yamato inside her head again and regain control. It makes me a little nervous, but apparently Yamato had been hitchhiking her brain since we traveled back to 1955 and there weren’t any problems until now, so hopefully she’ll be fine until we figure out something to do about it.
Also everyone already knew that Melody and Aman were practically a thing already and if kissing in the middle of a battle against two terrifying supervillains doesn’t make that official, I don’t know what does.
With Yamato gone and the reaper being chased off by the Jackal spirits that project the upside-down shadow dimension, the rest of the team was ready to head back to Halcyon.
I couldn’t.
I couldn’t go back to that party and pretend like nothing had happened. Couldn’t face Hero One after letting their granddaughter get possessed by the same reaper that I let them get possessed by.
I knew that my friends would try to talk me out of it, so I didn’t tell them what I was planning, I just sprouted lightning wings and flew after the reaper. They were already leaving the shadow dimension, so I turned myself into lightning and chased them to the one place I thought I could find them. Their pockets.
I didn’t know if I’d be able to get back. Honestly, I wasn’t sure that getting back was something I’d be in a position to worry about after trying to fight the reaper on my own. But I was done with being scared. Done with feeling like I couldn’t do anything to stop them. And I still had their scythe.
I struck them with their scythe and pulled my lightning out of the reaper. It’s still got these red and blue colors in it, but it’s mine again now. They won’t be able to hurt anyone with it anymore.
They disappeared, but I doubt that I destroyed them completely. I don’t think it’s even possible to do that to something like a reaper. They probably went back to that place where reapers are supposed to be, like Grim did. Maybe she can put them in reaper jail or something. Although I guess that probably wouldn’t work since Grim said that reapers don’t really experience time the same way we do. But even if they do make it back to our side, they won’t have my lightning or Hero One’s pockets to do something as devastating as disappearing the bay. I made sure of that.
Atlanta managed to transport the rest of the team into the pockets, I guess using whatever method she’d used when they rescued Hero One and her mom from the pockets. It was a good thing she was there, since as soon as the reaper vanished, the pockets started collapsing. I don’t remember a whole lot after that because the spot where the reaper disappeared exploded with some kind of energy and knocked me out of the sky.
When I woke up again, we were back at Old Jackal’s base. Everyone was yelling at me for running off, but I was happy enough just to be back that I didn’t try to defend myself. I think they were happy too. There was a lot of hugging.
We went back to the party eventually. I finally worked up the courage to apologize to Hero One about what had happened in 1955. It was a lot easier to face them when I’d actually done something to try and stop it from happening again. The Coyote was there too, Melody had said I might recognize someone and not to freak out, so I figured that was probably who she meant, so I also apologized to her while I was at it. (I asked Melody about it later and apparently Old Jackal has actually been the Coyote this whole time?? I have no idea how she got here from 1955, but you know, there’s been so many time shenanigans involving people who were trapped in Reaper One’s pockets that I’m not even going to bother trying to figure that out.)
Hero One told me that they forgave me for what happened. I hadn’t really expected that. And maybe rained on the party some. But I’m not trying to hold back my powers anymore, so that’s just going to happen sometimes.
Carm and Boon showed up at the cookout later, when they’d gotten back from a trip, and played along with the band. I wish I could have invited Kurt over, but I still haven’t told mom about the fact that we’re dating. I need to figure out a time to tell her soon. She said that I looked like I was feeling better, and now that I don’t have all the reaper stuff hanging over my head, it’ll probably be easier to talk with her.
And I have been feeling better. I spent all this time feeling guilty about how people have been using my lightning for evil, but I was finally able do something about it. It feels great.
Watch out, Bishop. You’re next.
-Ernest

## Rain Check

*S4E51: How Bout It*

*April 19, 2020*
**To:** tere5934@bmail.com**From:** ernwelles@bmail.com
Okay okay so today was one month since Kurt asked me out. And we were going to kind of hang out, not like a formal date or anything, just like spending the day together. We’d volunteered to help out at Boon’s roller derby tournament which seemed like it was gonna be a fun time and also actually got me to show up to one of her games which I’d been promising to for months.
But then we got kidnapped by aliens and ended up playing roller derby ourselves.
This is Halcyon so honestly it wasn’t that surprising. I’ve heard about my teammates getting kidnapped by aliens before and Taxon, one of the other Big Team members volunteering at the tournament, is an alien themself. The aliens started going on about wanting to show humans what derby is really supposed to be or whatever, but we weren’t scared so we kind of just yelled at them until they admitted they just wanted a high stakes show to televise. Which I was down for, especially since they wanted us to use our powers unlike Boon’s regular derby games where she isn’t allowed to use hers.
Anyway, long story short we absolutely crushed them even though none of us had played derby before and supposedly it was this big deal for them. Box left the game halfway through (I think he got tired of tripping over his skates so he went to look for the kidnapped derby players) and must have done something because the spaceship suddenly started falling. I was… distracted and didn’t realize what was going on for a few minutes but once I did I managed to blow it out over the bay so it just crashed into the water and not anything important.
We tried to get off the ship ourselves but Kurt ended up in the water and when I flew over to pull them out all of a sudden there were sharks everywhere. So Ryan just jumped in and punched a shark?? I’m pretty sure their time glove doesn’t give them special shark punching abilities aside from being a hard thing to punch with, so that was pretty awesome. Halogen (not someone on Big Team but another hero who joined us when Box left the derby game) fished us out and then GAIA gave us a lift home in the Big Team submarine.
The aliens might be stranded in the bay for now, I guess. Maybe they can use that time to get better at the sport they claim to like so much.
-Ernest
**To:** ernwelles@bmail.com**From:** tere5934@bmail.com
Wait a second, you’re telling me that this was1) your first mission with your boyfriend since you started dating2) taking place on your one month anniversary3) just after you’d won this derby thingand you were “distracted” from the fact that the spaceship you were in was falling?
You two were definitely making out, weren’t you.
Teresa
**To:** tere5934@bmail.com**From:** ernwelles@bmail.com
shut up shut up shut up shut up
It wasn’t an actual real mission, we were just volunteering to help out Boon before we got *kidnapped* by *aliens* if we were actually doing Big Team stuff we would have taken it more seriously. Probably.
... We were definitely going to make out in the penalty box if the derby tournament had actually happened. But I’m never admitting that to Boon.
-Ernest
**To:** ernwelles@bmail.com**From:** tere5934@bmail.com
Part of Halcyon’s going to end up exploded because you two can’t take your eyes off each other. So tell me, are they as good a kisser as I am?
Also, I can’t believe you took your boyfriend to volunteer at a sporting event to celebrate your one month anniversary. I know you’re not really big on the formal date thing, but even if it hadn’t been interrupted by aliens, I’d suggest you try again on that one, Ern.
Teresa
**To:** tere5934@bmail.com**From:** ernwelles@bmail.com
uuuuugggghhhhhh I’m not answering that
… But we did also spend most of the submarine ride back to the Base making out. Take that as you will.
And people go on dates to sports! That’s a whole entire thing! I don’t know, maybe I should have asked if they wanted to do something special. But it made sense at the time, and they would have told me if they didn’t want to go.
I do remember Kurt mentioning some event that’s happening tomorrow at this bubble tea place where one of our friends works though…

## Winds of Change

*Hangout: Blazing Boba*

April 20, 2020
Hey there, future me. I was going to make a joke about the date but then I remembered that you probably wouldn’t be reading this on the same date I wrote it (but years later or whatever). And if future me is anything like current me, you’d definitely breeze through reading the dates and then the joke would just be confusing. So instead of a joke you get me rambling. Anyway.
Kurt and I got Faith to sneak us into the event Philosotea was having. I wasn’t really planning on getting anything, but I wanted to hang out with Kurt more after our kind-of-not-date yesterday got interrupted by roller derby aliens and plus Faith had invited me to hang out at Philosotea more since she works there, so it seemed like it would be a good time.
It wasn’t exactly. I mean, I guess it could have gone worse? But it definitely was stressful.
Kurt and Faith are friends, since they’ve been on the Big Team Fan Club together for months and all. And Kurt is getting along with Boon a lot better ever since they bonded in detention (Boon is really good at bonding with people in detention now that I think about it, that’s how we started to become friends too). But otherwise… everyone else kind didn’t get along well with Kurt, at least at first.
I’m not really sure what Frankie’s deal is when it comes to Kurt. I know that she’s mad at me because I stopped talking to her after the gondola incident months ago, but I tried to apologize for that before so I don’t know if there’s any way I can make that up to her at this point. I messed up, and if she doesn’t want to be friends with me because of that, I get it. So I’ve just been trying to give her space. I have no idea if she’s also mad at Kurt because he’s dating me or if something else happened between them, but either way they just weren’t getting along.
Then Kurt was awkward about Carm being a vampire, even though I’ve told them a million times that Carm is great. I guess she didn’t really seem to mind that part though. She’s always talking about how we should think of her as a monster, even though I’m pretty sure she has a smaller chance of hurting people by accident than I do. So she was more confused than upset about Kurt talking about watermelon vampires and all. But when Ellen showed up, she and Kurt started arguing and Kurt kind of took it out on Carm and I didn’t do anything because I didn’t know what to do about my boyfriend fighting with my friends who are going to leave for the past soon so I didn’t want to fight with them but also I promised Kurt I’d stand up for them about Gambite stuff and it was just a mess.
Kurt just walked out after that, so I followed to try and talk to him. I don’t know if anything I said really helped, though. Ellen still wanted to talk and Kurt wasn’t that interested, and normally I would have thought it’d be a better idea for both of them to wait a little longer than right after they had just fought, but also it keeps feeling like Carm and Ellen might just suddenly vanish at any minute, so I didn’t want them to miss the chance to work things out. So I told Ellen where we were and they had a chat. I was almost certain they were going to start a fistfight in the middle of the street but it seemed to go not-terribly. I doubt they’re going to actually become friends or anything before Ellen leaves, but hopefully they won’t fight anymore.
Me and Kurt walked around the block for a while and I thought we might just head home, but he wanted to apologize for lashing out at Carm, so eventually we circled back to Philosotea. I nearly exploded Bolt’s dinosaur robot that was parked outside because I keep forgetting that he has that now and I swear it constantly looks like it’s about to rip out someone’s throat. I know he says that he wants to keep a consistent aesthetic, but that aesthetic was literally started by a villain so I feel like he could change it if he wanted to. He said that he’d swapped Wingnut’s eyes from red to purple, but that only reduces her ominousness a tiny bit. Between Scrap-Scrap, Wingnut, Lugnut, and Metatron, I’m going to have to double check whether every evil-looking robot I come across is actually bad before I fight it.
Oh also Faith is Focus I guess?? Kurt accidentally let slip that Faith was on the Big Team, which I hadn’t known, and then tried to cover for her by saying she was Libra. Which clearly I knew wasn’t true, but I guess he was just trying to help. But then later on Boon mentioned that she’d almost called Faith Focus so… I’m pretty sure that’s her. Now I know why Focus didn’t show up to help her ‘friend’ Faith when she asked us for help at the Club Fair. Faith is pretty cool, but I guess if she doesn’t want me to know that she’s Focus, I can try and pretend I didn’t hear Boon.
Speaking of which, my mom and Boon’s mom are apparently dating now??? I almost couldn’t believe Boon when she told me, just because I didn’t expect to hear anything like that. But then when Boon called her mom to come pick her up, my mom showed up too, and there’s no way she would have known about where we were unless Boon’s mom told her. I didn’t want her to see me with Kurt, so we tried to hide underneath the tables but I’m not sure that it worked. So I guess I might have to talk with my mom about the fact that both of us are dating soon?
-Ernest

## Clearing the Air

*Time Passes*

*April 22, 2020*
Ernest pushes kernels of corn around with the tines of his fork, careful not to scrape against the bottom of the plate and produce a terrible ochre noise. He’s been trying to figure out a way to bring up the subject of dating with his mom for the past couple of days. The topic alone was awkward enough, but since he’s been hiding the fact that he’s dating Kurt for the past month, he’s also worried about walking away from the conversation grounded. Double grounded? He isn’t sure anymore if the grounding from two months ago still stands.
Helen looks over from her own plate and says, “The corn isn’t going to eat itself, Ernest. If you don’t want it right now, you can put it in the fridge for later.”
Ernest shakes his head, pointedly lifting a forkful of corn to his mouth and chewing it. If he leaves now, it’ll take him another week to work up the nerve. He needs a few more minutes to prepare, but he’s nearly ready to bring up the subject.
Helen opens her mouth like she wants to say something, but closes it again before she does.
They spend the rest of the meal in near silence, Ernest only managing a few more half-hearted bites of corn. He fiddles nervously with his fork as Helen begins to stand and gather her dishes. Before she leaves the table, he blurts out, “Is it true that you’re dating Boon’s mom?”
Helen hesitates for a moment before sitting back down in her chair. She pushes hair back from her face before replying, “Yes, Maggie Ostenberg and I have been seeing each other recently. Do you want to talk about it?”
She’s calmer in the face of his accusation than he expected, and he doesn’t know how to respond. “Yes? I don’t know. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Helen raises an eyebrow and the guilt in his stomach squirms. “I wasn’t sure that you’d want to know. I didn’t mean to keep it a secret, but you never seem to want to talk about your father and I’s divorce. I didn’t want to upset you.”
There’s another sharp twist in his gut. “I’ve been dating Kurt Woods,” Ernest says, louder than he intends to. He hadn’t really intended to at all, not at this point in the conversation at least.
Helen tips her head to the side and says quietly, “I know.”
Nothing about this is going as he expected. A turbulent gust of wind sweeps across the table, scattering napkins onto the floor. “What? How?”
“Vano, one of Kurt’s dads, told me.” Helen folds her hands on the table in front of her, ignoring the mess. A small smile plays on her face. “Although I like to think I would have figured out that you were dating someone on my own. You keep dressing up and getting nervous before leaving to hang out with a certain friend you never specify.”
“No I don’t,” Ernest says, flushing. The temperature in the kitchen starts to climb.
Helen smiles patiently at him. “It’s alright. I was waiting for you to tell me yourself, since I wasn’t sure why you felt you needed to hide it from me. I’m glad that you’ve found someone here in Halcyon. I know you had a hard time leaving Teresa in New York.”
Ernest can’t exactly explain that Kurt is Libra, the one person his mom had specifically grounded him from seeing before they were even friends. As far as he knows, Kurt’s dads aren’t aware of his identity as Libra, and clearly his mom wouldn’t keep it a secret from them.
Helen takes his silence as an indication to continue. “At least you two weren’t so obvious as to get yourself on the cover of a magazine before telling me. We still joke about that one in the support group sometimes.”
Lightning arcs from Ernest’s fingers into his fork, and from there to the ceiling light, causing the lights in the entire apartment to flicker. Maybe the entire building, judging by the shouts that can be heard from the neighboring apartments. Ernest winces and drops the fork, which hits his plate with a rose-gold clatter. When the lights stabilize, he stands and starts for the door.
“Ernest? What’s the matter?” Helen stands as well, alarm clear on her face.
“I should go.” He can feel the air starting to swirl in eddies nearby him. It won’t be long before some kind of storm breaks out.
“I’m sorry if I said something that upset you. Can you at least tell me what it was?” Helen tries to reach for Ernest’s hand, but he pulls it back, worried that he might have already built up enough lightning to shock her.
“I should leave before my powers that you hate wreck the apartment,” he says tersely, but doesn’t open the door yet.
“What are you talking about? When have I ever said that I hate your powers?”
Ernest can hear the concern in her voice, but it doesn’t prevent the anger from bleeding into his. “Not to my face, maybe. But that’s what you talk about in that support group, isn’t it? How my powers are awful and ruining your life?” Patches of clouds are beginning to pop in and out around his head.
The confusion on Helen’s face clears, and her expression hardens. “Ernest Welles, you are going to sit down and we are going to talk this out right now.” She points back towards his chair in the kitchen.
Her tone, strict and deep berry red, catches Ernest by surprise. For a moment, the air stills.
“If I summon a rainstorm in here, I’ll flood the kitchen,” he mumbles, staring at the ground.
“If you do, then you can clean it up afterwards,” Helen says, crossing her arms and looking expectantly at Ernest.
He takes a deep breath, holding it until the feeling of lightning simmering around him becomes more distant. When he returns to his chair, Helen follows him, sitting down across from him. Ernest avoids looking directly at her.
Helen also takes a slow breath, nearly starting to speak a few times before she manages to begin. “I’d like to know where you got the idea that I hate your powers. Which isn’t true, so I want to understand what I did to make you think that.”
Ernest closes his eyes, watching the maroon line of his voice trace shapes behind his eyelids instead of tracking his mom’s expression. “About two months ago, I was on a mission in the Dataverse.” With Libra, right after he’d been grounded from hanging out with them, but that detail isn’t as important. “And I saw this camera feed with you on it, in your support group, and you were talking about how my powers made me so different that you couldn’t connect with me and —“ His throat feels like it’s closing in, and water is welling in both his eyes and the clouds he’s sure have formed behind him.
Helen is quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry that you had to hear it that way. If I had known you were upset about it, I would have explained what I meant.” Ernest feels her take his hands, holding them clasped between her own. “I don’t hate your powers. They’re a part of who you are, and I love every single part of you. I just worry that I won’t be able to help you because I don’t know what it’s like to be going through what you are. I don’t go to the support group to complain about your powers, I go to try and understand how to help you with them.”
“I have been kind of destroying the apartment with my powers,” Ernest says, voice sounding small and distant even to his own ears. “Not on purpose, but sometimes I’d get nightmares and…”
“I’ve known about those too. Lightning strikes aren’t exactly the quietest thing in the world.” Helen sighs, sending out a bloom of burnt orange speckles from the corner of his eye. “I didn’t ask you about them because whenever I tried, you seemed like you’d rather pretend they didn’t happen. I should have realized something was wrong sooner. Do you want to talk about them now?”
Ernest shakes his head. “I don’t think I’ll be having them anymore?” He’s slept soundly since confronting the reaper, although he doesn’t want to explain that incident to his mom. His friends have yelled at him enough about that decision, he doesn’t want to hear what his mom would have to say about it. “I didn’t want to tell you about them before because I was worried that you’d try to stop me from being a hero if you knew. And also maybe ground me for life.”
“We both know I couldn’t really ground you from being a hero. But you can consider yourself officially ungrounded if you’d like.” Ernest can hear the smile returning to her voice. “I want you to be able to talk to me about these things. But I might not always be the best person for that,” she admits. “It might be good if you had something like my support group – meeting with people your age, to talk about how you’ve been handling powers. I know that you probably talk to your friends on the team, but it can be nice to set aside some time and space just for that kind of thing.”
“I’ll think about it.” Ernest feels Helen let go of his hands, and opens his eyes to see her walk around the table to wrap him in a hug. The tears in his eyes finally spill over, and rain starts showering the two of them. “Mom, I was trying not to wreck the apartment,” he says in between sobs.
“Shhhhh.” Helen smooths Ernest’s hair. “A little water isn’t going to hurt the kitchen. I’ll clean it up later.”
The clouds eventually clear, and Ernest begins mopping up the water from the floor while Helen wipes down the table and counter. Halfway through cleaning, both of their phones buzz. Ernest checks his and finds a text from Atlanta.
Helen looks up from her phone. “Maggie invited me to help with painting the James’s new house. I’m sure they could use your help too, if you’d like.”
“Yeah, Atlanta just told me the same thing,” Ernest says, holding up his phone.
“Do you want to go over? We can just stay home tonight if you’d rather rest,” Helen offers.
Ernest nods. “Painting is fun. Plus I’ll get to spend time with Atlanta and Jasper and Boon, and you can hang out with Maggie.”
Helen’s hands fly to her hair, still dripping wet from the indoor rainstorm. “I’ll just tell them that we’ll be over in a little while,” she says, doubling the pace of her cleaning.
“Now who needs to get dressed up before leaving to hang out?” Ernest grins.
“Don’t make me reconsider ungrounding you, young man,” Helen says, but there’s no threat in her words.
By the time the two of them leave the apartment, the kitchen is shining and spotless.

## Reflection

*S4E57: Mirrors Don't Lie*

April 25, 2020
Hey there, future me, or whoever ended up reading this journal. Don’t have a whole lot of pages left in this book, so this will probably be the last entry I end up writing here. I’ll probably write some more in another book, but I don’t know, they might get separated or something in the future? So this might be the last time my hypothetical mystery reader hears from me. I hope that you’re doing alright. Thanks for letting me vaguely yell at the idea of you without actually knowing who you are.
Anyway, before I fill up the rest of the pages writing about filling up the rest of the pages, I should talk about what actually happened today. Remember how after I took my lightning back from that reaper, I said that Bishop would be next? Well, today was Bishop’s turn.
Melody asked me to help out on a mission that her mentor gave her information about. (Is it weirder to call her Old Jackal or Coyote do you think? Not that I’d call her Old Jackal to her face, I get the impression I might disappear to Shadow Halcyon forever if I did that. I guess that’s why Melody calls her ma’am). She said that Mirror had teamed up with Bishop and were planning something in the Drops district of Zodiac City. Bolt and Cypher were really excited to fight this Mirror person, sounds like they’ve had some run-ins with her before. I mainly wanted to stop Bishop from getting up to anything terrible.
We were waiting to take one of the gondolas up to the top of the Zodiac tree when all of a sudden it started shaking really badly. I’d heard about the treequakes before but these ones seemed a lot stronger, and I was worried the whole tree might come down. There was a lot of evacuation stuff going on and they turned off the gondolas, but we really needed to get to the city. Melody’s dad noticed us (Melody’s parents did eventually find out about Melody’s powers, even after Aman’s uncle’s whole “Teenage Juice Party” ruse worked) and said he didn’t want us running into danger, but eventually said he would let us go do our hero thing. Bolt and I pointed out that he couldn’t really stop us anyway, but I think it was nice for Melody to hear him give us permission. I know I’ve felt a lot better since I got ungrounded from supernatural missions, even if I never actually stopped going on them.
Since the cable cars were stopped, we had Lugnut run up the gondola cables instead, which actually worked out way better than I thought it would. I didn’t even have to save anyone from falling off! Lugnut was actually really great this mission, I feel bad for calling him evil-looking before (even if it is true). Bolt challenged me to a race to the Drops, which of course I was going to win (it wasn’t exactly fair since Lugnut was also carrying Melody and Cypher), but we ended up needing to keep people safe from all the damage from the treequakes, so we didn’t race the whole way there.
There were a lot of Bishop operatives and Rubicon armors around the area helping with evacuation, but no sign of Mirror at first. I noticed that the new Rubicons were powered by my lightning, but they weren’t attacking people and I’d learned my lesson that just destroying a few robot armors wouldn’t actually stop Bishop from using my lightning, so I just let them go. Bolt and I went to run around to try and find the place we were looking for while Melody and Cypher used their tech stuff and their magic to try and track it down.
Eventually Bolt and I ran into a security guard that told us he was supposed to keep Big Team specifically out of an area, so of course we immediately wanted to check it out. We also told him that he couldn’t stop us, which was fun until he realized that I was the person who leveled that Rubicon Mk II facility a few weeks ago and he started begging me not to hurt him. I’d meant that he couldn’t stop us because Bolt has a super speedy robot dinosaur and I can fly, not that we’d beat him up, so it kind of surprised me. Not that I haven’t fought Bishop people before, but it was always because they were attacking me or about to do something really bad. I wouldn’t just zap someone who was getting out of our way like this guy seemed worried I might do. I guess I should be more careful about how destructively I use my powers if I don’t want people to be scared of me.
We kept going in the direction that the Bishop guard didn’t want us to and ended up crashing into a room full of tied-up unconscious AEGIS agents. We freed them, but we weren’t sure how to evacuate them to the other side of the tree, and Melody and Cypher signaled us that they’d found the spot, so we decided to focus on the stopping Bishop problem first. Misery tried to stop us using this gauntlet made from what seemed to be Zodiac tree bark, but I made a lightning clone to hold her off so we could get to Melody and Cypher.
By the time we got there, there was a huge fight going on already. Bolt recognized this time machine device that was hooked up to the Zodiac tree, along with a bunch of batteries powered by my lightning. My lightning did weird stuff with time back in the Dataverse that one time, so I really didn’t want to find out what would happen if Bishop powered up the machine, but Bolt knew more about it than me, so he went to deal with the time machine while I tried to help Melody and Cypher with the fighting.
That’s when everything got hectic. Mirror was mimicking Melody’s appearance and powers, so I figured the best way to tell which was the real Melody would be to run into the shadow chains. Melody’s been practicing using them with me a lot, so I knew she wouldn’t hurt me with them. But they turned out to be Mirror’s shadow chains, and I got wrapped up in them. Mirror started mimicking my powers and used them to shock me. Lightning started going everywhere, and Bolt and Melody and even Lugnut got hurt kind of bad. When I got free of the chains I knew what I had to do.
I’ve always been able to tell the difference between storms that I summon with my powers and regular weather. It’s like there’s a part of me in them, or at least a reflection. I could feel my lightning in the batteries on the Rubcion’s backs and the ones connected to the time machine. And farther away in Halcyon too, in whatever warehouses or research centers that Bishop was storing them in. I knew that it was mine, and that I wasn’t going to let them keep using it anymore. So I took it back.
The lightning started arcing to me from all over the city, and I wrapped it around myself. It was in all different colors for some reason, maybe whatever experiments Bishop was doing on it? I kept building the lightning up around me like I do to make my lightning clones, but there was so much of it that the clone ended up being several stories tall. I destroyed the time machine, which I think helped the Zodiac tree feel a bit better, and dissolved Melody’s shadow chains that she’d lost control of when she’d gotten zapped my Mirror-me’s lightning.
So now Bishop doesn’t have my lightning anymore. I think I probably took it back from Dez too, since she’d been using one of Bishop’s batteries. So I don’t have to worry about that reaper or Bishop or Dez hurting people with my powers anymore. They’re mine, and I'm the only one who can control them. And I'm going to use them to help people, not trap them in other dimensions or power evil time machines or kidnap kids. I'll use them to be a hero.
I helped with the evacuation for a while, until the lightning dissipated. My phone has kind of been going nuts ever since. Every time I think I figured out how to stop it from giving me notifications, some other type starts popping up. I’m not entirely sure what happened but I think a news helicopter caught me doing the whole giant-rainbow-lightning-clone thing on camera and I guess people really liked that? I hope they don’t expect me to do it again, I don’t think I could have generated that much lightning at once without Bishop storing it in those batteries and I’m not letting something like that happen again.
Oh good thing I checked my phone, looks like Kurt is calling me. Hope I didn’t miss something from him earlier. Well, I’m almost out of room and that’s basically everything that happened, so I think that’s as good a place to leave off this journal. See you in the next one, maybe? If not, thanks for reading anyway. It’s been great having you along for the ride.
-Ernest