Alis had no answer.

“No, I wasn’t. No one's tailed me all day.”

Evalyn strode over to the other side of the windowsill and concealed herself behind the wall.

“Point them out.”

“There, down the street. Two grey cars just pulled up. I’ve never seen them before.”

Two grey cars of the same make arriving at the same place at the same time was nothing but suspicious. Through traffic was not unheard of on the street, but such a sight was nonetheless rare. Over the ten years Evalyn had rented the flat, she had taken note of every local car, even going so far as to memorise the number plates of identical models.

These cars were foreign. An all-too-common civilian model, sure, but the circumstances were too ideal to forego caution.

Six men in mismatched clothing exited the vehicles. Nary a uniform in sight, but Evalyn could sense faint points of Aether absorption on each of their bodies. It was always somewhere specific; around their hip or tucked in their coat.

“Iris? I need you to take Alis and run home, fast as you can.”

“Home? I can’t take a stranger there!”

“Trust me. It’ll be okay. I’ll lead them away while you run. Got it?”

Iris nodded, helpless to do anything but agree when Evalyn so confidently gave an order. A smile, small but reassuring, and eyes glowering with absolute sureness.

“I need to you, Iris. And Alis? No questions, and no fighting anyone either. Right now, that isn’t your job.”

“I still ask for permission to take precautions,” he said, grabbing the knuckles from the desk and fitting them to his hands. The lights overhead gave the brass a muted sparkle, and the colourless crystals converted the lacking luminance into flickering rainbows.

But the Aether they slowly tore from their surroundings interested Iris more. Beautiful in their patterns, detailed in their eight distinct focal points.

Alluring.

“Alluring…Alis? Is there a chance they’re tracking the brass knuckles?”

“A chance? I don’t know, I’ve never considered it. These have been mine for as long as I can remember.”

“And they’re the property of Vesmos before they’re yours. That’s what the damn passive Aether pull was, fuck!”

Vesmos was taking precautions, like serial numbers on firearms. It was a miracle that Alis had survived so long at all.

“Give one to me,” Evalyn said. “They’re likely tracking them as a pair, so splitting them will at least give you some cover. I'd like to take both, but we can't leave you defenceless either."

Evalyn held out a hand, and Alis reluctantly stripped his right hand of its weapon, passing it to her. “We could fight them here.”

“No, of course not,” Evalyn said. “The property value would go down, and I don’t want to do that to my landlord.”

Evalyn gripped the brass weapon in one hand and walked to the office door where her rifle lay propped up against the adjacent wall.

“They’ve tracked you here, so they know there’s a relation between us now. I can’t have that.” She pulled the bolt backwards, revealing the empty magazine well—absent of dust but also bullets. “It’s unfortunate, but I can’t have any witnesses tonight. Let’s just hope they haven’t contacted anyone yet.”

She walked to her office desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a stripper clip of five rounds. She fished around for anything else, finding a stray bullet hidden underneath a newspaper clipping.

Six assailants, six bullets. Six lives that would not hesitate to end hers if given the chance. Especially if they knew who she was, or rather if their superiors did. Her handgun was already loaded on her shoulder, as she always kept it.

“Iris, you ready?”

“Yeah.”

Evalyn ushered Iris nearer, meeting her halfway and kneeling to her level.

“If you need to, use your power, okay?” she whispered. “It’s scary, but getting hurt is scarier.”

The little girl nodded, understanding the situation and her unfortunately instrumental role in it. Her first errand alone, and now this. Evalyn had hoped the world would give her more time, more options to prepare the fledgling Witch for life on her own two legs.

But it was not her place to complain. She was partly responsible, after all.

She caressed Iris’s cheek and kissed her forehead.

“You’ll be okay. Go.”

Iris nodded. Evalyn and Alis locked gazes, meeting in a wordless, mutual understanding. They knew their tasks now, and business would continue later. A level of maturity Evalyn would never expect of someone his age.

He was the real deal, what the world demanded of Iris.

They sprinted for the door as Evalyn creaked the office window open. She watched for a moment as the party’s attention strayed from its original heading. One looked up, directly toward Evalyn, and that’s when she jumped.

Flying through the autumnal chill with her silhouette to a shadowy sky, Evalyn sped towards the hapless figure of the first man, setting upon him before he could even make out what was coming.

“Act I: Setting,” she whispered, ordering her imagination to fashion her armour with renewed vigour, strength, and accuracy.

The pouncing lioness, wreathed in golden aureole landed on the first man, eliciting a deafening crunch as the sole of her feet pressed flesh into concrete. She raised her rifle to an unhuman eye and shot him, racking a round right before a bolt of white light caught her arms. Ethereal cuffs wrapped themselves around her limbs like chains on a prisoner. She struggled to break free, let alone realign her rifle. With the wave of a different wand, a miniature shockwave caught Evalyn off balance, flinging her backwards.

Before she completely lost control, she gripped the ground with her toes and sent golden spikes into the concrete from the soles of her Sabatons. She let go of her rifle, catching it with two abstract limbs protruding from her armour. Their form did not matter as much as their function. One held the rifle as the other pulled the trigger.

The round found its target with ease, striking him in the chest and freeing Evalyn of her cuffs. Mobility restored, she began to flee, drawing their attention as far away as she could from Iris and Alis. She raised her hand and aimed towards the rooftops as another blast knocked her off balance.

“Dicks,” she muttered as she stumbled forward, doing her best to regain her footing. She released the grapple hook from her gauntlet, drawing the trajectory in her imagination until the real thing landed at the arc’s terminus.

She wasted no time double-checking the line and instead trusted its infallibility as she flew once more. The rooftops would be safer, and the added difficulty of the chase would buy her—and Iris—much-needed time.

 

Iris kept her legs moving, preserving the consistency of her circulation through steady breathing. Two in two out, two in two out. Her eyes had quickly adjusted to the umbral backstreets, lit only by the occasional streetlamp. The Aether they pulled muddled with her senses, but she could tell the coast was clear.

Alis ran by her side, running with a far more leisurely form. He must have been used to running by now, and only god knew how much training he had endured in his life. Iris’s status as the navigator was the only thing that held him back.

Iris kept watch over the surrounding buildings, noting their windows and rooftops as best she could. Her experiences against S.H.I.A. had given her an acute sense of where enemies could be, even if that was the most unpredictable aspect of combat.

Uncurtained windows could act as burrows, darkened rooftops as nests. The only certainty was her way forward. Only five minutes now. Five minutes, and she would be home safe.

Or so Evalyn had told her.

“Left or right?” Alis asked between laboured breaths.

“Right,” Iris said. Her job as guide had been made immeasurably harder by the darkness, yet she had travelled these same streets for months now. If only by muscle memory, she knew what she was doing. She reserved her brainpower for variables unaccounted for.

Variable one.

Headlights. Angular beams blazed the streets, eating up shadow and casting their silhouettes across the pavement like actors in spotlight. Iris dared a look back and instantly regretted it. The lanterns singed her retinas and sent impressions flying across her eyelids. No doubt now, it was a car speeding right for them.

The bend was close, but the vehicle was moving too fast, and the street was too narrow to avoid it. Any attempt to dodge would be met with the same fate.

“Run, Iris!”

Alis turned, beckoning the car towards him as he veered right. Like the eyes of a predator, the car’s lights changed course toward the easier target.

His confidence bewildered Iris, taking on the brunt of a vehicular assault himself. She had seen such stunts pulled before, but by people leagues stronger and more experienced. He would not leave unscathed.

No. Iris was given a task, and she was not the one to be protected.

Iris swivelled, planting her feet firm into the cobblestone. She painted over the reality she saw with her own. A wall from one end of the alley to the other, head height and no more. Yes, she could see it. It was there. All she had to do was pull it from the ground and erect it herself.

She grabbed the air with two balled fists and shifted one foot forward, just as she had learnt. Her body would assist her mind, and her mind would build the bulwark.

Shavings of her hair atomised and followed her instruction, completing her command in a heartbeat. She heard the car skid from the far side of the new wall and almost felt the crash's impact as it happened. Metal crunched against the superior material and mangled the hunters caged inside.

“Now, go!” Iris shouted as she turned to run, only catching a glimpse of Alis’s astonishment. The revealing of her identity made her endlessly nervous for her safety and his. But now was not the time.

They picked up the pace once more, rounding the corner now with the knowledge that they were being tracked. Iris understood how unreliable her capabilities were, but cursed herself for being unable to compensate for both of Alis’s weapons. Variable two.

The brass knuckles on his left hand were their safety net, one that left a trail of blood in the water wherever they ran.

Blood that once again caught up to them, much too soon.

Her surveillance of the rooftops became no longer a matter of caution but one of life and death. Figures ran alongside them, the crash no doubt eliminating the uncertainty of their position.

“We’ve got no chance here,” Alis said, “we need to get up to the rooftops.”

Iris nodded, preparing her hair to dematerialise once more.

“Hold on to me.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Alis brought his left fist to his face, the gems reflecting a light that did not exist. Rainbows shining, Aether pulling. Something was starting. The process shrouded in mystery was starting.

“Replicate.”

Variable three.

The four jewels flashed purple, Iris purple—the kind of purple that shifted with the angle it was viewed from. Her purple.

Iris’s power.

As he ran, his head began to twitch, and the veins in his arm began to pop. He let out grunts of pain as his fingers jittered, suffocated by the force escaping the gems' containment. His teeth ground against each other as his voice stifled a scream. Still tense, he inhaled through his nose.

The ends of his hair began to vaporise into thin mist, forming around his arm and spindling outwards—a process Iris was all too familiar with.

She focused herself, copying his movements all the same. Both released their new realities upon the dark alleyway, Alis releasing a grappling rope and Iris supplementing her four flesh limbs with four more.

They scaled the buildings in their own ways and leapt onto the rooftop with unrivalled ease.

Iris was with someone like her. It made her confident in a way she could not explain.

Aware of the enemy across the alleyway from her, she covered their flank with another wall, dividing the playing field to their advantage. From the corner of her eye, Iris caught the flash of an Aether pull and raised another wall. Pressing her body against it, she could hear crackles on the other side like gunpowder igniting, yet nothing got through. She disassembled the wall just as Alis sent a clump of half-formed purple the assaulter’s way, hitting him square in the chest. Iris spotted the wand fly out of the man’s grasp, and she caught it with an appendage she had not even realised she had created. With another manufactured hand, she snapped the stick in two, watching the Aether pull die along with it.

With one target neutralised, she lowered the wall. Something else was driving her now. Something that made her take the first step in battle and force failure out of her opponent rather than worry about her own. She felt that something strongest when she saw Alis manipulate her shapes so expertly, a fledgling that could fly on the first day. He commanded an arm like Iris’s to bridge the gap across the alley. It grabbed the second man by the entire body and reeled him into their reach. The arm disappeared, throwing him face-first into Alis’s punch, reinforced by a layer of purple matter. The force of it knocked him out cold.

He stood no chance against two full-blown Aether-infused. Well, one and a half.

The night once again fell to peace, and Iris took a moment to breathe. Below her were nothing but shadows, and above was nothing but night sky. No sound, no smell, no Aether. Suddenly, Alis doubled over, his hacking interrupting the silence.

“What’s wrong?” Iris asked, coming to his side.

“Whatever magic you have, that stuff is way too strong. How do you use it so easily?”

Iris had no answer. Not one that she could give, at least. Alis seemed to understand, flashing a brief and pained smile. He looked out toward the inner city, lungs still heaving from the violent coughing. Excala City's airspace, like most nights, was littered with floating orange lanterns. The many domed temples and ancient stone spires contrasted against the orange haze. They were utterly untainted by reality in such a way only abstract paintings could be.

“What are those towers there? The ones always in groups of three,” Alis asked, lazily pointing into the distance. Iris followed his fingers and found what he was referring to. Trios of thin spindles taller than anything else in the city.

“Power stations. These Spirits called Blue Stormers sit up there and make electricity from the wind. I didn’t pay attention to how, though. Something about static electricity and…friction…maybe.”

“That really big dome with the four spires?”

“The Capitol building. Where the government meets and stuff. I’ve never been there before, but apparently, Evalyn goes there a lot.”

“Evalyn, so that’s her name.”

“Oops.”

“Don’t worry. I didn’t hear it from you. What about over there? Those orange lumps.”

“The Royal Parklands. Anything fancy happens, it happens over there. I like it. Now that it’s autumn, the really big trees are all orange. The ducks are mean, though.”

They sat in silence for a moment, almost forgetting their situation. The city was soothing, no matter what context, what lighting, or what angle one viewed it from. By way of some deep enchantment, every facet seemed to ease one’s soul, especially seen from such rooftops.

“I hope I’ll get to see it up close,” Alis muttered. Iris looked toward him, his attention still firmly on the city. The wind caught his hair for a fleeting moment, the wiry strands riding in the wind. There was an unusual glint in his eyes, as though they were lapping up the image that lay before him. A fire. Inspiration. Admiration. Something existed there that Iris had never seen before. Some sort of untamed blazethat the adults in her life had long since stomped into submission.

Iris found herself watching him, wondering who he was, this person of such similar age. What did he have that she didn’t? What was she missing that he evidently had in spades? Iris wanted to know.

Variable four.

Something rustled behind them. Light footsteps, those of an expert. The Aether pull, its origin too precise to be a Wizard or Witch. Iris felt the hair on the back of her neck stand as the magic materialised. She covered as best she could, but her best was not fast enough.