The wind was picking up outside, but the rain hadn’t reached Auburn yet. Penny was at her computer, mindlessly caught up in a game. She was a little sore from not moving all day, but this was her day off of work and she was going to enjoy it.

Penny took a deep, relaxed breath. She’d gotten a lot less jumpy over the past few days. Michael just wasn’t around, for whatever reason. Sure, she knew that he had to be busy with that hate group of his, but she had been worried that he’d be hiding behind every corner waiting for her.

It was unfortunate that there didn’t seem to be anything she could do. Penny had played her hand and told Michael that she’d filmed them. They’d be on guard for her; maybe they even moved their meeting place to hide from her. She had considered sending the footage she did have to the local news, but wasn’t sure if they would run it. She wished she had something more implicating.

“Dammit,” Penny mumbled as her character died again. “Who designed this part of the game?”

A ringing came from inside her desk drawer. Penny took a break and pulled her burner phone out. She’d gotten a message from Transvection.

Turn on your communicator, it read. Isabelle needs you.

Penny blinked in confusion and set the phone back in the drawer. What was this about? Isabelle shouldn’t be contacting her. But Penny pulled out her communicator—she hadn’t been charging it, but hopefully it had enough power—and placed it in her ear. She tapped it a few times and it came to life.

“Finally!” Isabelle cried. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you forever.”

“What’s wrong?”

“The hurricane that’s coming? It’s going to be a bad one. The county has a flood warning. The news is telling people in the lower valley to evacuate, but we need someone who can go door to door in those neighborhoods and make sure that they’re following through.”

“What? Why? Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Not everyone will see the news, and for some people having a hero tell them in person will sway them more than a news anchor telling them. Transvection and Snap-trap are already out there. Since you can fly, you won’t need a car.”

“Isabelle,” Penny said. “I’m suspended.”

“It’s been rescinded, Mirage.”

Penny didn’t answer right away. What if she didn’t go? To be honest, her mood was so dour lately that she just didn’t have energy anymore. And Penny would be lying if she said she wasn’t still a little angry at the mayor for suspending her.

But people needed her. She couldn’t turn her back on them, not while their safety was at risk. This was bigger than playing cleanup after a car crash or collecting donations for the needy.

“Thank you for alerting me,” Penny said, shaking her head to get her bad mood out. “Give me a moment, please.”

Penny shut off her communicator and clenched her fists. Her outfit sprang into existence. She smirked and stretched. It had been too long. Thank God it was time to get back in the field.

She darted to the living room. Her father was there, watching TV. When he saw her, her father blinked in surprise and opened his mouth to say something.

“Dad,” Mirage said, holding up a hand to stop him, “the hurricane is coming and the valley is going to flood. The town needs me to help round people up and get them to safety. I don’t know if the flooding will reach our house, but when Mom gets home you need to take her and go to the community center. I’m taking my car; don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. Tell Mom I’m hanging out with my friends.”

Her father took a moment to process all of this, then he nodded.

“Alright, son,” he said, standing up. “But stay safe. If you have to choose between yourself and them, put your own safety first.”

Mirage nodded, but broke eye contact. She didn’t know if she could live up to that promise. Not while people’s lives were at stake.

There was a light drizzle outside. Mirage got into the car and booted it up. As the engine roared to life, she turned the communicator back on.

“Isabelle,” she said, “which neighborhoods do I have to hit?”

Isabelle gave her the area she was supposed to be working in and Mirage took off. She drove a little faster than necessary, but she wasn’t really worried about the police stopping her. When she got to the first neighborhood, she parked the car on the side of the street and got out, then flew to the first house she could find.

Fortunately, people had already started evacuating. Penny was only going to the houses where there was a car still in the driveway or the lights were on. She only waited about a minute for each door to open before heading to the next door. There were a lot of houses to hit, after all, and she ended up relaying the message to quite a few people. At one point, she even had to help an elderly woman get into the car with the rest of her family. It was all good work.

She went from one neighborhood to the next, slick with rainwater, telling families to get out of there as fast as they could. Then she knocked on one door and got a surprise. Gabriela, her favorite customer from the store, opened the door to greet her.

As soon as she saw Mirage, Gabriela’s eyes widened and she started to stammer. It was cute, but Mirage had a mission. She raised a hand to stop her from talking.

“There’s a flood warning for this part of the county,” she said sternly. “You and your family need to evacuate. Head to the community center.” She turned to look at the empty driveway. “Do you have a car in the garage?”

“No, my parents have the cars,” Gabriela said quietly. “Don’t worry. We’ll get a ride with the neighbors.”

“Just hurry,” Mirage said. But she didn’t leave just yet. Mirage knew Gabriela, even if Gabriela wasn’t aware of that. She couldn’t just leave someone she knew like this. “Can I… help you grab the things you need?”

“No, it’s fine,” Gabriela insisted, moving to take up as much of the doorway as possible and block Mirage from coming in. “I’ll take care of it. You go help everyone else. Seriously: don’t worry about us.”

Mirage nodded, then turned and took to the air. She touched down at the next house and knocked on the door. But she still glanced back at Gabriela’s house. She’d be okay, right?

She went door to door, but every time she took a few moments to watch Gabriela’s house. Other people were leaving, but she didn’t see Gabriela and her siblings emerge from the house. Soon there wouldn’t be any neighbors left to hitch a ride with. Mirage had to do something.

So she flew back to the house and pounded on the door again. There was no answer for a solid minute. Mirage knocked again, a little softer this time. Still no response. Mirage was getting fidgety. Had they just left when she wasn’t looking? But she’d been watching so carefully. Mirage would have seen them, if only briefly.

“Gabriela?!” she called. There was no reason for Mirage the hero to know Gabriela’s name. If Gabriela was still here, she’d be suspicious and demand to know why Mirage knew it. But, at the moment, Mirage didn’t care. She needed to know that Gabriela and her siblings were safe. “Gabriela? Are you in there?”

Getting no answer, Mirage took a deep breath and turned the doorknob. It opened without resistance; Gabriela hadn’t locked the door. She walked inside, calling out and asking if anyone was still here. The house was silent in response.

She walked around, peeking into several rooms. This was a somewhat run-down house. Mirage felt bad being in there, like she was invading someone’s private space.

“I must have missed—”

A sound in one of the rooms caught her attention. Mirage walked over and saw movement through an ajar door. She pushed the door open a little bit to reveal a child’s bedroom, along with a black, shadowy human form standing over the bed. Her breath caught in her throat as Mirage saw it grab a teddy bear off of the bed and absorb it into an inky black mass.

“Shadow Pirate!” Mirage cried out, swinging the door open.

Her adversary jumped in surprise and fell back against the wall.

“What are you doing here?” Mirage demanded, creating a small shield with her powers. “Why did you take a teddy bear of all things? Why this house? How… No… There’s no way. Gabriela?”

The figure slouched and, slowly, the inky blackness receded, revealing Gabriela standing there.

“Hello, Penny,” she said.

“What?” Mirage asked, letting her shield dissipate. “What’s going on?”

“My sister forgot her teddy bear. I had to come back to get it.”

Mirage blinked in confusion.

Gabriela sighed and asked, “Don’t you have more houses to take care of?”

“Yeah… yeah I do,” Mirage muttered. “So that… absorbing power. That’s how you steal stuff from those trucks?”

Gabriela nodded.

Mirage took a deep breath and replied, “Alright. Just… go to the community center with your siblings. And stay there, alright?”

The shadows stretched around Gabriela, cloaking her in an inky black mass. Before Mirage’s eyes, she started to recede into the shadows of the room, then disappeared. Mirage took one last moment to shake her head, then bounded out of the house to continue her work.

Mirage was done before the rain got bad, but she was caught in a downpour on her way to the community center. She was shaking the entire time, absolutely certain that she was going to get into a wreck. It was a relief to finally get  there, even if she had to park a few blocks down the street and run through the rain.

Before she entered, Mirage dispelled all of her illusions. She didn’t need people crowding her and putting her at the center of attention. It was crowded inside, though. A bunch of people had been gathered in the athletic room, like students crowded in a gym. Penny had a bit of a difficult time finding her parents.

“Hi Mom, Dad,” she said, giving her mother a sopping wet hug.

“There you are,” she replied. “I was so worried about you. You should have come straight here as soon as you knew what was happening. I can’t believe you were driving in that rain.”

“I was safe, Mom,” she insisted. Once her mother looked away, Penny shared a knowing nod with her father.

The community center was crowded, but Penny managed to weave her way through the crowd with her eyes peeled. It took a while to spot her, but Gabriela was standing with her siblings and an older couple Penny thought might be their parents. She started walking over, but when Gabriela turned and spotted her, Penny stopped. Gabriella made a gesture for Penny to follow her and started walking away.

Penny followed Gabriela out of one of the side doors. They stood beneath the canopy that ran the outside of the building, safe from the pouring rain. Gabriela leaned up against the brick wall while Penny tried to wring her hair dry. Things were silent for a while except for the pounding of the rain.

“I was really surprised,” Gabriela finally said, “when I saw you without your illusion. I didn’t expect the girl who I’d been hearing so much about was actually the same girl who worked at Raquel’s.”

“And I didn’t expect you to be Shadow Pirate,” Penny replied. “Why?”

Gabriela shrugged and replied, “When you have superpowers, it’s tempting to use them. You understand that.”

“Why as a criminal, though?”

After a long pause, Gabriela sighed and explained, “I majored in business when I went to college. I thought it would be a boon to my family. But it’s hard for a Hispanic woman to get ahead in business and I’m just not bringing in the money that I need to take care of my family. My parents are strained trying to take care of all of us and I… I have to be the golden child who makes everything better.”

She stopped to wipe the tears out of her eyes.

“Why not move away and become a licensed hero?”

“Not enough money. Even if I only did it part time, what self-respecting corporation would hire someone who’s a part-time hero? I don’t have any choice but to work under the table.”

“You can teleport using shadows?” Penny asked. “That’s how you got your siblings here so quickly, right? So if your family knows about your powers, but do they know that you’re Shadow Pirate?”

“No. God no. It would break their hearts. They trust me too much to make the connection. I’m careful with how I use the extra money I make, so they all think I’m making more money from my job than I actually do.”

Penny nodded, then leaned up against the wall herself.

“So you never think about becoming a hero instead?”

“It’s not an option for everyone, Penny,” Gabriela replied. “First off, nobody trusts an inky black mass. And I simply don’t have time to volunteer when I could be taking up extra hours at work to help my family.”

Nobody said anything for a moment.

“So are you going to rat me out to the authorities?”

Penny didn’t answer right away.

“To be honest,” she said, “I’m not supposed to fight supervillains. I’d probably just get into more trouble if I got myself involved.”

“…Thank you.”

“But Gabriela, someone is going to get you sooner or later. You need to quit while you’re ahead.”

“I’ll give it up as soon as I can afford to,” Gabriela promised.

“I hope you’re telling the truth.”

There was nothing else to be said. Penny and Gabriela walked back inside and parted ways. It took a short while for Penny to find her parents again.

“There you are,” her mother said. “What have you been up to?”

“I saw a friend I wanted to talk to,” Penny replied with a shrug. “So did you hear that the heroes helped evacuate a bunch of people?”

Her mother scoffed, “Those people should have taken the evacuation seriously to begin with. I hate that everyone relies on these heroes to do everything.”

Penny rolled her eyes and gestured for her father to step aside with her.

Once they were out of earshot of Penny’s mother, she told him, “I got a message from my handler. Once the rain subsides a little, they want me to fly around the flooded neighborhoods and look for people who need rescue.”

“Alright,” her father said. “I’ll cover for you. Just stay safe, okay, son?”

Penny nodded.