“Skye! Can you hear me?” Alice curses, drilling her fingers over the surface of her keyboard. Outside of the coffeehouse she’s holed up in, she can see the top of a giant robot over the trees surrounding the park; clearly Marco had some kind of last trick up his sleeve. More importantly, though, out of nowhere she was booted from her connection with Skye, which almost certainly means someone more tech-savvy than Marco is interfering.

With a last click, she resets her connection, hopefully now able to get back in touch with Skye. In the meantime, though, all she can do is wait while the system connects – she passes the time by watching the rain, ordering a muffin, and praying the worst hasn’t already happened. At long last, the red lock on her screen flicks to green, and her audio turns on, greeting Alice with the sound of Skye’s pained, heavy breathing.

Someone else speaks up as Alice joins the call. “Oh, you made it back in.” Pamela. Of course she’s involved. She sounds almost bored as she keeps talking. “Galling, isn’t it? Yet again, we’re on the sidelines watching as the big brave heroes solve their problems with violence. Yet again, we’re boxed into a supporting role, covering for our masters.”

“Shut your mouth,” Alice snaps reflexively. “I’m taking care of my friend.” Carefully, she pores over the vitals of Skye’s suit, finding nothing out of place from a cursory scan. “What are you doing to her?” Finally, out of options, Alice pulls out the full power consumption listing, and what she sees makes her eyes nearly boggle out of her head. One percent of the suit’s power is devoted to maintaining suit cohesion, air filtering, and radio – the other ninety-nine percent is entirely put towards mental stabilization.

“The jamming signal,” Pamela yawns, “In its perfected version. You and I can’t hear it right now, mere civilians that we are, but trust that it’s doing its job within Sky Horizon’s head.” Immediately, Alice bends over her laptop and starts scanning through the airwaves to isolate the signal, only half-aware of Pamela’s continued speech. “Yet another weapon handed to us by your combined naivete.”

Bingo. The jamming signal is being beamed in from a different frequency than Pamela, so time spent kicking her out would be wasted. Now to keep Pamela talking so she doesn’t realize Alice has caught on. “What’s that supposed to mean? Did you work this out from Skye telling you not to mess with body shape?”

“You do catch on quick. I was right in my assumption that your talents are wasted.” From across the internet, Alice can hear the sound of Pamela’s keyboard loudly clicking. “And as it so happens, knowing how to fix a bug in your own system tells all you need to know to implant it in another. Works well, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yeah, yeah, you like the sound of your own voice, we get it.” Raising her voice, Alice turns her attention elsewhere. “Skye. Pamela’s trying to give you super-mega-dysphoria and a migraine to go with.” According to the suit’s camera feed, Skye is curled up shivering in a fountain. “Just… do your best to hang on, okay?”

Skye responds with what could be a groan of pain, but sounds something like an “mhm”.

Pamela clicks her tongue. “Listen, miss… I don’t believe your name ever mattered enough to come up, actually. How does “sidekick” sound?” In between attempts to crack the signal’s encryption, Alice is faintly aware Pamela forcibly switched her username to ‘sidekick’ as well. Whatever. “You have to understand this is the easier option, the kinder option. The last time your poor Sky Horizon got in a fight with Marco, she ended up in the hospital. At least this way, she won’t have any lasting scars.”

“She?” Alice scoffs. “What, you’re not interested in playing Marco’s games?” This isn’t looking good – it would take Alice upwards of an hour to crack this code. If Skye could just reach her hand up to her ear to turn the radio off, that’d be enough. It’d cut her off from Kit and Alice, but she could handle it from there on her own.

“I don’t really know nor care what you mean.” Pamela’s tone snaps back from acid to disinterest. “The person beneath Sky Horizon’s mask is of no consequence to me, save as a potential obstacle.”

“Oh, right, your plans for conquest. Let me guess…” Alice digs through her data banks for anything that could buy time. “You’re going to use Marco as a puppet, but you’ll be the real brains behind how Quorium gets used, and that’ll make you a world superpower?”

Pamela laughs, breezy and cold. “You seem to be the only one capable of putting two and two together here. Are you certain I couldn’t offer you to work with me behind the scenes? Society needs people like us in power.”

Alice recoils from her computer. “What, so I can spend all my time lying to people and worrying about some master plan? I’ve had enough of that already.” Bile rises in her throat, and she tries to ignore her reflection in the laptop’s screen. “Society needs you like it needs a meteor strike – you’ve been nothing but vindictive, manipulative, and cruel to me and the ones I care about.”

“Spare me, sidekick. The world is cruel.” Alice can practically hear Pamela rolling her eyes.

“No, it’s not,” Alice retorts fervently, borrowing Skye’s conviction. “People are cruel, and they get away with it by convincing everyone else that the world is cruel.”

Over the radio, Alice can hear Pamela grinding her teeth. “How cute. You sound like one of those Saturday morning shows that the boss is so obsessed with.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Alice snaps the words without thinking. “Maybe those shows are right! Maybe friendship and fairness are real and important, you ever think about that? Maybe being kind and honest makes life easier, asshole.”

The airwaves crackle with the sound of Skye’s weak, faint laughter. “You… tell her.”

A lightbulb goes off in Alice’s head. She doesn’t need to block out the signal, just to distract Skye for long enough that she can switch comms off. Immediately, she dives into the audio editing software she uses for the podcast.

“Isn’t that a lovely idea,” Pamela all but snarls. “That people are fundamentally good, and if everyone merely talked about their feelings we’d have world peace. Please. We both know that the average person on the street wouldn’t lift a finger to help those around them. Unless, of course, they stood to profit from the arrangement.”

“Was that supposed to get under my skin?” Alice half-laughs, drawing odd looks from the others in the coffeehouse. “Not only do you sound like a B-movie, not only are you dead wrong, but you’re so wrong that I have proof you’re full of it.” With that, her stitching complete, Alice uploads her audio file to the comms channel and hits play.

Immediately, the airspace is flooded, Pamela’s taunts drowned out by dozens of voices suddenly shouting and chanting. When Alice posted the video of Skye transforming to Sky Horizon’s social media, she expected to get nine, ten warm responses by the end of the day. Instead, she was flooded with donations, emails, and most of all, voice messages. Now, in cacophonous harmony, no fewer than forty-eight human beings – some local to Portland, some from other continents, some longtime followers, some curious newcomers – lift their voices and cheer.

“Don’t give up!” “We believe in you, Sky Horizon!” “Clear Skies Ahead!” “Kick his teeth in!” “You’re our hero!” “Hell yeah, trans rights!” “You can’t let Omni win!” “Do it for my grandpa!” “Clear Skies Ahead!” “You can win this!” “Don’t stop just yet!” “We love you!” “Clear Skies Ahead!” “Good luck out there.” “I want to be like you!” “You’ve got this, yeah?” “Sky Horizon, now and forever!” “Clear Skies Ahead!”

Pamela’s growl cuts through the chorus. “What, you’re trying to make your sweetheart feel better? This doesn’t mean anything.”

“It… means enough.” Skye forces her way to her feet, having found her bearing after a moment of shock. “Alice?”

“Yeah?” One last time, her breath catches at the sound of her name in Sky Horizon’s voice, hoarse though it may be.

“I’m going to… close the call now.”

“What? No, hold on, that should be impossible, you can’t just tune me out!” Pamela breathes in, most certainly about to launch into a tirade.

Alice nods to herself. “Sounds good. See you soon, Skye.”

“Thank you for everything.” With that, the connection goes blank, and Alice is left sitting in the middle of a coffee shop on a rainy day, staring at her reflection in the dark computer screen.

After a second, she offers herself a tearful smile.

With the call closed, Skye affords herself a deep breath. Though the headache will be a few minutes in fading, her brain is instantly, mercifully quiet. Even after Alice and so many others’ words of encouragement, the pain didn’t dissipate so much as give her something else to direct her attention to. Skye shudders briefly, doing her best to refocus.

With her suit no longer strained to its breaking point, main systems boot up rapidly and in quick succession, starting with optics. As she guessed, she lies in the middle of the square’s fountain, sunken a bit below ground level. Surprising nobody, Portland is blanketed by a grim cloud of rain, each drop faintly tangible on her suit as touch sensors come back online. Most notably, however, a yard or two away from the fountain crouches a hulking robot, straightening up into a battle-ready posture as it realizes she’s rising to her feet once more.

Right. Almost had forgotten about that part, really.

Marco clearly didn’t get any sudden burst of originality when designing Omni Robo or whatever he called it – its form is best described as, in a word, chunky, with thick box shapes making up its shoulders, legs, head and chest. In one hand, it clutches an outsize copy of his sword, though Skye can’t really tell if the fingers are articulate enough to actually drop the sword if he wanted. Even through the rain, the mech’s bright red paint job is visible – no doubt it’d be blindingly garish to behold on a sunny day.

“Good, you’re up,” Marco’s voice rumbles from high above. “Everything hurts like this, so I’m gonna finish you off lickety-split. Get ready, Oliver.” With that, it settles into a fighting stance, swinging a titanic iron fist down at Skye’s body.

“That’s not my name,” Skye says automatically as she darts through his legs, tucking into a clean roll. “Why do you say that everything – oh.” She’d almost forgotten – Marco isn’t piloting this robot, his body is the robot. No doubt he’s dealing with his own bout of violent dysmorphia at the moment.

“What did you – hold still, you turd!” Marco whirls around blindly, nearly falling over from the simple act of turning. “I am the good guy here! Me!” He leans in, swinging his bookshelf-sized sword at Skye.

As she hits the deck, Skye quickly runs the numbers – both the laws of physics and the limitations of Quorium are working against his massive size. She only has one trick left up her sleeve, but in all dealing with this giant foe should be even easier than handling Marco hand-to-hand.

Righting himself and charging once more, Marco keeps on ranting. “We’ll use Quorium safely – better than you ever could!”

Skye remains silent as she weaves between the jaw-rattling stomps of the machine’s feet. Idly, between impacts, she wonders if Marco sees the irony in saying that while his own gear is giving him a panic attack. Probably not, but a girl can hope.

“That’s right, don’t think I’ve forgotten.” Marco pants the words before raising his sword high, trying to stab it into the brickwork of the park and skewer Skye along with. “You never meant to use your technology to help anyone. You did it just for your own sake – and then you realized you’d feel better if you did volunteering.”

“Yes?” Skye grabs onto the fridge-size sword as Marco lifts it, hitching a ride up to the robot’s shoulder. “That’s not the zinger you seem to consider it as.” Carefully, she clings to Marco’s outer plating, wary of any sudden movement. “Something can be both entertaining and meaningful – there’s room for nuance!” Finally, she strikes, the Skyline blaring “Jet Kick!” as she lands a ringing blow on the side of Marco’s head. Those same jets give her a safe landing as she falls to the ground.

Marco groans, nearly dropping to one knee. A massive fist cradles his horned head. “But if you really built the thing with the goal to help people, you wouldn’t have been so small-time as to just worry about local volunteering.”

“Any kind of community service, large or small, is never a waste of time, and certainly better than doing nothing at all,” Skye retorts, dipping around his blind spot before landing a punch to the back of a knee. “You’re grasping for contradictions where none exist – trust me, I’ve looked.” And looked, and looked, until ultimately, Skye was forced to face the mortifying conclusion that she might be doing an okay job of things.

“That’s – That’s wrong! You’re wrong!” Marco drops to one knee, pounding the pavement with his fists in an effort to squish Skye. It’s almost sad, now, to see him reduced to this just a few short days after he was so viciously sneering down at her. Would he have broken down in the same way during the fight at the quarry, were Skye just a bit firmer in her convictions? Marco keeps on shouting. “You’re greedy, and a bad person, and don’t deserve to stop me!”

“Even if I am, that doesn’t really matter, does it?” Skye picks up speed as she drifts around a turn, Alice’s scarf trailing behind her. “Let me break it down.” Put it in a nutshell. Paint you a picture. “You’ve proven, both now and in the past, that you’ll use experimental technology recklessly in a way that endangers lives. I have the power to stop you, so I will! Everything else-” Skye lands a leaping kick to Marco’s leg, sending him stumbling. “Is irrelevant!”

Marco grips his sword with both hands, his metal shell clicking as he tries to lurch back to his feet. “Oliver-”

“And another thing!” Skye skids to a halt before taking off again at a sharp angle. “I’ve told you many times now not to call me that!” As she jets, she clicks a complex series of buttons and knobs on the Skyline, finally sliding its casing aside to reveal a blinking red button that she slams with fervor. Immediately, the hum of her suit’s operation reaches a fever pitch, the Skyline calling “Jet Stream!!”

“My!”

Every thruster on Sky Horizon’s body activates at once, launching her at the robot as a human torpedo. At the last moment, every thruster not in her arms gutters out, letting her drive a fist into his robotic chest with enough force to dent concrete.

“Name!”

Even as Omni Robo stumbles back from the force of the first blow, Sky Horizon takes off once more, soaring sideways in a wide arc before slamming the robot in its other side.

“Is!”

The smell of exhaust is thick in her sensors. Her world narrows to a single point as she takes off yet again, landing a knee strike to Marco’s shoulder as she shoots past him into the air. Immediately, her rockets are firing, spinning her back around to face her foe. This is it. She locks her arms in a tucked position, sticks her leg clean out, and shouts.

“Skye!”

One moment, Sky Horizon is twenty feet high in the air. The next, she’s right up against Marco’s robotic chest, driving her dropkick home with every muscle in her synthetic and real bodies both. Finally, she pushes off, landing gracelessly before stumbling to her feet. Glaring down at the sparking remains of Omni Robo, Skye points and finishes her thought.

“With an E at the end!”

Marco’s suit explodes.

When watching an explosion on TV, it’s easy to think of it as just a massive ball of flame, a campfire that someone made the mistake of leaving gasoline near. Anyone with a bit more knowledge would say that the most notable part of an explosion is the shockwave, more than enough to knock anyone unprepared over. However, it’s important not to discount the heat itself – oftentimes able to outright hurt if you’re too close. All of these factors are compounded by the storm, and Marco’s abuse, overheating the already-volatile Quorium far past its breaking point.

It’s no surprise, then, that the next thing Skye knows, she’s flat on her butt, staring at a smoldering crater, her helmet gone and the rest of her suit barely holding on. Scrambling to her feet, she picks Alice’s scarf back up from where it fell and sidles closer to the wreckage.

At the epicenter of the damage, lying atop a pile of rubble, soaked and sooty but not seriously wounded, lies Marco Domini, the inert fragments of his Quorium samples scattered in every direction around him. When Skye reaches down and grabs his hand (after all, what else could she do) he gasps but doesn’t resist, letting her carry him over and set him down on the nearby steps. By the time they’re settled, the rain has slowed to a meager drizzle.

After a few moments of breathing in clean air, he finally speaks up. “I’m – I am so, so sorry about the whole name thing. I super misread the whole secret identity situation.” He gestures to Skye, up and down. “Huge dick move on my part. Shoulda asked. Sorry.” He slumps over, looking somehow smaller without his fancy hat.

Skye snorts gently, forcibly stopping herself before she can automatically say “It’s fine.” It’s not fine, after all, it’s been something of a big deal to her. “Apology… acknowledged,” she finally says. “I’m sorry for kicking you so hard you exploded.”

Marco just waves her off. “Nah, nah, don’t be, it was cool.” He groans, stretching out his doubtless achy shoulders. “So… what happens now?”

“Now?” Skye leans over, carefully watching the movements of Marco’s pupils. “I check if you’re at risk for a concussion. After that?” She shrugs, no longer able to access comms without her helmet. “I don’t know. If I had to guess, the cops will show up, at which point they will let you off for your crimes with little more than a slap on the wrist, Quorium will become banned permanently, and I’ll go home and sleep for twelve hours.”

“Crimes?” Marco doesn’t have the energy to be more than gently quizzical. “What crimes?”

“Endangerment of passerby, aggravated assault, and likely as not all of this, too.” Skye waves her hands in the direction of the broader pavilion, now covered in pockmarks and gashes from a giant sword. “On the bright side, you shouldn’t have to go to a hospital,” she snarks.

“Oh.” Marco goes pale in the face. “That’s nice.” Gently, he scratches at his soaked and burnt cufflinks. “But, but I didn’t endanger any passerby, did I?”

“You did, right at the start. Barreled straight over them right after you judo-threw me.”

“Oh. I – I did. Right.”

The silence stretches on, going from peaceful to awkward to comical back to awkward.

Marco clears his throat. “If-” He stops, shaking his head. “No. Never mind.”

“Is there something on your mind?” Skye turns to face him, her curly hair swinging gently, weighed down by the rain. All of her hatred towards him, she realizes, has been more or less excised, burnt out of her all at once in that cathartic finisher. The man sitting next to her is… just some guy. Not imposing, not even really hateable – merely kind of pathetic.

“No, it’s just – with the things you said, and all of this, it’s just hard to – I can’t…” Marco sighs, his shoulders drooping. “It was so simple. It was so easy. It was a bright red line from “get the schematics off you” to “save the world”, and no matter what, all I had to do was follow that line, as long as I kept going everything would work out, so I just kept going and going and…” He trails off, shaking his head. “Can I ask you a weird question?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Was I ever, like, actually a good person?”

“I don’t know.” Skye takes a moment to think, gloved hand tapping at her chin. “I mean it, I genuinely don’t. I’ve been grappling with that same question for a while now, and I don’t know if I’m willing to commit to the answer I found.” Even if her trepidation is simply born out of a tendency to be harsh on herself… old habits die hard. “At the very least, I know trying to force yourself into the mold of ‘a good person’ isn’t emotionally sustainable.”

“That’s… gotcha. Yeah, that’s fine.” Marco winces as he adjusts his seating. “Ow. What’s the answer you found?”

“It’s…” Skye shakes her head. “Well, there’s nuance, like I said earlier. I don’t think there are really good and bad people, I just think people do good and bad things – everyone, I mean.”

“So you’re saying I’m not a bad person, just that I’m a person who does more bad than good,” Marco responds flatly. “Well, thanks for being honest.”

“I don’t quite know if that’s right either.” Skye combs through her vocabulary, searching to find the words. “I’m unsure if this will make sense, but let me think out loud here.” Marco nods, prompting her to keep going. “I don’t think good and bad actions cancel each other out, necessarily – doing good doesn’t directly diminish the impact of your bad actions, and vice versa.”

“So you’re saying no matter what I do, I can’t make up for this.” Marco lies down at the foot of the stairs. “You’re really beefing the heroic speech, here.”

“I said I was still figuring it out myself. It’s not as though it’s my responsibility to coddle your feelings,” Skye snaps. “Besides, I’m also saying that no matter what you’ve already done, you can still do meaningful good going forward. Does that make sense?”

“Kind of? Not really.” Marco, still prone, lifts an arm and wiggles his hand back and forth. “I dunno. I do want to be better, I mean it – or at least stop screwing up. I just can’t follow your logic.”

“I don’t know, then.” At the sound of a car horn, Skye rises to her feet, stretching out her arms. “Think about it for a little while. Turn it over in your head.”

Marco starts. “You’re not gonna stay and keep an eye on me?”

“I’d rather not,” Skye shrugs, already turning to leave. On the nearest curb sits an illegally-parked truck, its driver waving in Skye’s direction. Skye returns the wave before looking back to Marco. “I’m tired and would like to go home. Besides, if you got off scot-free and didn’t have to change at all, would that make you happy?”

“Man.” Marco looks genuinely put out at that. “Do you have to put it that way?”

“I have my moments. I’ll be seeing you, Marco.”

“Take care, Skye Horizon.”

“Good morning, true believers, we’re Super-1 News, your favorite webcast for all things heroic! I’m Bic and we’ll be covering the latest MCU news in just a sec, but first today we’ve got Judith on the scene, showing off the aftermath of an honest-to-god superhero brawl in Portland, Oregon! Over to you, Jude.”

“Yes, this is Judith, here at Pioneer Court park, where just yesterday a court dispute turned violent. Look at these gashes in the ground, look at the exploded bricks here and there. We can follow the path of the fight, starting up here at the court… moving over this way, ‘scuse me, selfie stick comin’ through… and ending over here by the fountain, with this big explosion.”

“Incredible forensic work. Do we have any footage of the actual fight itself?”

“As a matter of fact, we do! Thanks to recording from an anonymous source, we’re able to see Marco Domini, R&D Head of Omni Tech, and Skye Campbell, a young local, transforming into some of our most well-documented heroes before brawling it out. Now, Bic, what are your thoughts on this?”

“Well, Judith, I think this is a symptom of the times. If you’ve been following this story, you might know that local superhero Sky Horizon has been seen helping people around the city of Portland. Just the other week she carried a bunch of lumber three blocks to help with some construction, we covered that on the 18th.”

“Great story, that was.”

“Sure was, Judith. A link to that vid is in the description. Now, if you slow down the footage here, you can see Marco taking the first swing at Sky Horizon. My guess is, Sky Horizon was originally a part of Omni Tech but broke off and went rogue. Today’s events, then, were an attempt to get their spokeswoman back in line.”

“I see! Thanks, Bic. Now, here at the scene we have a couple of people milling about, let’s see if we can get a comment. Hi, I’m Judith Milward with Super-1 news, can I get your thoughts on Sky Horizon?”

“Uh, yeah, actually. She’s pretty cool. She helped change my wife’s tire a few months back in the middle of winter. I think that it’s stuff like her that makes me really happy to live on the west coast.”

“I see, I see. And what’s your take on her knock-down drag-out brawl with Omni Red here yesterday?”

“Oh, is that why the park was closed off? Huh. I don’t really know who Omni Red is, but I know Sky Horizon came out as trans, and that’s pretty neat. I hope people don’t start acting stupid about her.”

“Ah, Omni Red was Marco Domini, a leader of the tech industry. Popular rumor is, he was forced to resign in shame after Sky Horizon beat him up.”

“Good for her. Anyways, I just came over to tell you that your fly’s down. If this is goin’ on Youtube, blur me out of it or whatever.”

“...Well! Bic, what’s your thoughts on that?”

“Well, Judith, my thoughts are this. By defeating him on the field of battle, Sky Horizon has won Mr. Domini over to her cause. I predict that in the coming weeks, they’ll form an alliance to patrol the streets, and maybe even find – ah, it seems we have a live caller. Hello?”

“Hey, this is Kit Nehra. Could you maybe stop speculating about my girlfriend’s private life?”

Kit grumbles as they hang up the phone. “The nerve of some people, seriously.”

“What was all that about?” Skye looks up from her position slumped across the couch.

“Ah, nothing serious,” Kit replies, turning their eyes back to the oven. “Though, uh, word of warning, don’t be shocked if people try to interview you soon.”

“If and when that happens, I can do the talking,” Alice chimes in, halfway through a crossword puzzle. “I’ve actually been thinking about quitting my office job, and being a media consultant might be neat.” Skye’s legs, splayed across Alice’s lap, make for a makeshift clipboard to brace against as she fills in answers.

“Oh, congratulations,” Skye says sleepily. “That’s a major step forward.”

“Yep, claps all around,” Kit enthuses. “Now, let’s get down to business. Does anyone have any plans for tonight?”

“Nope.”

“Heavens, no. It’ll be a week before I have that kind of energy.”

“Perfect. See, I was talking to Bianca, and-”

Skye’s eyes snap open, and she sits upright from her reclining position. “Wait, wait. That Bianca?”

Kit waves their good arm noncommittally. “Long story. Tell you later. The point is, she told me that back in the seventies they made a toku show outta Spider-Man.”

Skye frowns. “Oh, right. That.”

Kit sputters, nearly spilling their paprika. “You knew about it? And didn’t tell me? Spider-fan numero uno? You wound me, Skye.”

“It’s not exactly…” Skye trails off with a grimace, sampling her lukewarm cocoa. “What’s the word I’m looking for here. Good?”

Alice chuckles. “You think we mind? It’s an excuse to pile onto the couch together.”

“See?” Kit sweeps their cast in Alice’s direction, careful to keep their eyes on the bubbling sauce. “She gets it. Hope you two are ready, ‘cause the moment this spag bol is ready, we are on full lockdown for a belated victory party. I got another cake lined up, I got booze, it’s gonna be amazing.”

“Alright, alright,” Skye says warmly, looking out the window and watching the city outside. “Who knows? Perhaps it’ll have more good qualities than I gave it credit for.” Her eyes flutter, and with a mighty yawn, Skye Campbell drifts off to a hard-earned rest.

Spoiler

Sophibeans

This isn't quite the end- there's an epilogue coming very soon, and maybe I'll do a sequel someday- but I want to restate the obvious. If you followed this story as I was publishing it, thank you. If you helped me during the beta reading process, thank you. If you stumbled across this story a year after I posted it and decided to give it a try, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

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