Cass soared through the streets of Boston, the red streak left behind in her wake a colorful contrast against the gray rain clouds that choked the sky. She knew, objectively, that flying in the rain was risky, was a bad idea, but she wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight if she didn’t check the city for survivors and help get people to the hospital. The military prison complex loomed in the distance, a wreckage of smoke and debris. She flew towards it, Matt clinging to her back while co-riding her broom and Gabriel following along as a golden line on the street below. 

“Are you sure about this?” Matt asked in Spanish.

“More or less,” Cass answered. “Still not entirely sold on Gabriel, but we need to present a united front right now.”

“I’m not crazy about all this,” Matt said, the scene on the ground becoming more and more hectic as they drew closer to the complex. Soldiers marched up and down the street, while buildings were knocked over and cars were on fire. Some of the nearby homes and stores looked like they’d been looted- windows bashed in, fire alarms going off, trails of phones and televisions and clothes coming out of people’s doors. 

“Neither am I, but you heard what Debbi said: we need to smooth all this over.”

Cass heard a high-pitched cry coming from beneath the wreckage of an imploded house. She lowered herself towards it and reached with her powers to lift up the wreckage. She split her focus into five sections, fastening them each to the largest chunks of wood and foundation. She lifted them high into the air. The pit revealed a young mother and two children, each younger than ten. Matt climbed off the broom, and Gabriel appeared next to him with a whoosh. They both climbed into the pit and retrieved the survivors, Gabriel carrying the two kids in his arms and Matt letting the mother rest on his shoulders while he helped her up. 

When it was clear, Cass dropped the wrecked home back down, her muscles throbbing and her chest filling up with air from fresh breaths. 

Next door was a tall building in a similar state of affairs. Gabriel ran through the wreckage at full speed to comb it for survivors, and when he couldn’t find any, Cass lifted it once again and found an old man trapped under remnants of the building. He was bloody and haggard, but a stretcher and an ambulance were waiting for him once Gabriel pulled him free. 

Cass did this again and again and again, all afternoon, until the ten block radius around the complex was completely clear. 

When it was over, the soldiers and the paramedics and the firefighters and the civilians all gathered around their makeshift trio. Cass flinched- she didn’t usually stick around to deal with the public. Ever since she’d started at this superhero gig, she’d always made herself scarce the second the fight was over. She braced herself for outraged cries, demands to know why any of this had happened, screeches about how they should go back where they came from. 

She closed her eyes. 

All she heard was applause. Applause and cheering, from everybody. 

Cass opened her eyes and saw Gabriel giving a series of overly dramatic bows, while Matt waved at the crowd with that dorky smile of his. 

Maybe it was Matt’s powers at work, bringing people’s relief and gratitude to the surface. Maybe this would have happened even if he weren’t here. It was impossible to say, but… Either way, this was how people felt.

And that felt wicked good to Cass. On a day like today, she needed that. 

***

Father Gonzalez, soon to be Bishop Gonzalez, paced up and down the hall of Saint Joseph’s. The team was scattered right now, and the city was in chaos once again. He needed to be ready for when they returned, to provide support and comfort, advice when it was called for. He didn’t know if he’d have this kind of time to spare going forward, with a plethora of new responsibilities soon to be thrust upon him. He still wanted to be there for the team, but he would no longer be a simple Priest anymore. 

That worried him. 

His replacement worried him as well. 

He needed Sister Quinn and Abe to return soon- their journey had been long and tiring for them, and he worried for their safety as well. And with a new face in the Parish, it would do everyone good to have some guaranteed allies still around. Besides, with everything going on with Nicole lately… 

“Hello, Max,” a voice Father Gonzalez had not heard in years reached across the interior of the chapel and crashed into him. 

Father Gonzalez turned around and saw Victor Kwan standing in the doorway. He marched forward, his uniform crisp and clean as he closed the door behind him. “Victor…”

“That’s Major Kwan now, thank you very much, Lieutenant.”

“I’m not in the Corps any longer… Major,” Father Gonzalez said. “It’s Father Gonzalez, now.”

“I heard it was Bishop Gonzalez.”

“Not yet. Not officially.”

“Fair enough,” Victor said, continuing his march towards him until he stood directly before the good Father. 

Father Gonzalez stood in front of the altar, his back to the crucifix. “Aren’t you going to cross yourself?”

“I’m not a religious man, Max, you know that.”

“I still find that odd, given the things that you’ve seen, Vic” Father Gonzalez said. 

“I find it far odder that you’re a priest, given the things you’ve done.”

“We all have our own ways of atoning for our sins,” Gonzalez said. “Mind if I ask what you’ve done since Kabul?”

“What have I done since Kabul?” Vic said, turning and walking in circles around Gonzalez. “Well, for starters, I’ve done everything in my power to ensure the safety and prosperity of this country. What have you done?”

“Everything to keep the souls of the human race safe from Damnation,” Gonzalez said. 

“Right, of course,” Vic said. “Look, Max, I’ll level with you- I’m here right now because I consider you a friend-”

“You have a very strange definition of friendship, Major,” Gonzalez glared as he kept his eyes locked on Vic.

“So I’m told,” Vic shrugged. “But that’s not important right now. What is important is those girls you’re in charge of.”

“‘In charge’ might be overstating it.”

“Fine, those girls you babysit. The ones who fly around on broomsticks and punch shark monsters.”

“Very well. What about them?”

“I’ve been letting them do what they’ve been doing since I arrived in this city, because it felt like the right thing to do- or at least, the pragmatic thing to do. But that’s only because heretofore I’ve been given a wide berth in terms of housing and rehabilitating the prisoners they have brought in. The only reason Winona White and Aidan DiLorenzo have been receiving counseling and comfortable accommodations instead of padded cells and daily interrogation is because of me-”

“And not because they could blow the roof off your facility if they truly wanted to,” Gonzalez said. “You’re putting the cart before the horse, Vic, same as always- they’re model prisoners because they want to reform, not because of anything you’re doing.”

“It can be both, and we both know that,” Vic said. 

“Yeah, you’re right,” Gonzalez said. A sickness flowed through his stomach as old memories threatened to bubble up. Of Kabul, of the old man they’d found surrounded by sulfurous black smoke, of the blood pouring out from underneath his fingernails and rising up from the Earth below. A geyser of Damnation, threatening to explode. 

Of Vic holding him back, wanting to observe the phenomenon. 

Of Gonzalez’s fist connecting with Vic’s face. 

Of the old man wreathed in black flames, a feral growling escaping his throat as he charged the two Marines. 

Of the trigger Gonzalez had pulled. 

Gonzalez had saved both himself and Vic that day. He’d killed a demon that day. 

He’d also killed a civilian that day. Committed a war crime. 

It could be both. 

Sure, it hadn’t been labeled one. Sure, his CO had helped sweep the whole thing under the rug, letting Gonzalez walk away with nothing but a vaguely defined Dishonorable Discharge wrapped up in so much red tape most people would never be able to know about it. Sure, the old man had no family, nobody who would mourn him, and sure, he’d been seen talking with the enemy every night for a week. Sure, the Imam and the Priest that Gonzalez and Kwan had been working with were hours away, while the demon had been charging Gonzalez and his comrade in that very moment. Sure, it hadn’t been much of a choice at the time. Sure, he didn’t know if he’d have done it differently if he could go back and do it again. 

Either way, he’d left the whole thing vowing never to let something like that happen again. The Clergy had welcomed their new brother with opened arms, and he’d risen up the ranks rapidly. 

Vic, however… 

Well, Major Victor Kwan stood before him as a decorated officer in the United States Marine Corps. “Now,” Vic said, “Are you going to interrupt me again, or are you going to let me finish?”

Gonzalez breathed in and out his nose. “Go ahead.”

“My commanding officer, Colonel Garth Smith, will be arriving in the city at twenty-two hundred hours tonight. He’s going to be a lot more hands-on then I’ve been up until now. If you have any way of warning your girls of this, I highly recommend doing so.”

“And what kind of warning should I give them, Major?”

“Whatever you see fit, Bishop,” Vic said, finally stopping in place and looking up at the crucifix. “Just know that Smith has fairly strict ideas about who’s allowed to do what on American soil. And those girls don’t have any official clearance from anybody, last I checked.”

“The Pope,” Gonzalez rebutted.

“That’s not somebody whose opinion Smith much respects,” Vic said. 

“Yes, I recall that much, from the ten words he spoke at my tribunal,” Gonzalez said. “If that will be all, Major?”

“It will be, Bishop. But I’ll be around.”

And with that, he left, and Gonzalez stood in his shadow as he watched him leave.

***

 “I’m sorry, you did WHAT?!” Amy screamed. 

Nicole flinched as she flew on Amy’s starboard side as her girlfriend flew at the center of their pack. Debbi was on Amy’s left, while Heather formed the opposite end of their fleet. Nicole had been reluctant to leave Manchester, but her parents had assured her they would be close behind. It was clear to them that the demon attacks would keep happening, and after a certain point, it made more sense to be closer to the superheroes, closer to the people who would keep them all safe, then further away. They were to get to Boston as soon as possible, to Saint Joseph’s, where the soon to be Archbishop Roberts would help secure them a place to live. 

Iris promised she would keep them all safe until then. 

The only one who hadn’t seemed on board with the plan was Monica. Nicole was worried about her, about how she was taking all this, but before she could give her the care she needed, whatever was going on with Winona needed to be resolved. 

Nicole had been the one to put Winona in jail, or at the very least she and Cass shared responsibility. If anyone else died, if Winona was relapsing, then it was on Nicole’s conscience. She would have to… Have to… 

Have to seriously consider the dark thoughts running through her head, tumbling out of The Box and baying for blood and justice. It scared her, how easily those thoughts were coming now. How many times she’d seriously considered… No, no, she shook her head, there has to be another way.

Not that Amy was liable to listen to it at this point. She’d been practically foaming at the mouth the entire flight. Once they’d gotten into the air, Debbi had let it slip about her meetings with Astra while catching them up on what had happened, and… 

“Unbelievable,” Amy said. “Unbe-fucking-lievable. I cannot believe-”

“Well, it’s done. I did it,” Debbi said. “So, it doesn’t really matter if you believe it or not-”

“I was not finished talking, Deborah!” Amy said. “You could have died! Heather could have died! Our parents, our brothers, could have died! I know Jason is real proud of his black belt and Damian thinks his aim with those darts is more than enough to take care of anything and everything, but they are children! Unpowered children, at that! And you let that monster near them, near our home-”

“She already knew where we lived, I didn’t tell her anything,” Debbi said. “In fact, I was pretty clear about-”

“You should have told me,” Amy cut her off again. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

“BECAUSE I KNEW YOU’D REACT LIKE THIS!” Debbi screamed. 

Nicole dialed back her speed, and Heather did the same as they both let the Donahue sisters fly a few feet ahead of them. She and Heather locked eyes and shared an expression of mutual awkward discomfort.

“You are the one who pushed me into becoming a leader,” Debbi said, “And all of the sudden you don’t like it when I make executive decisions?”

“Don’t you turn this around on me, dammit! You should have told me- we could have planned something, gotten the drop on Astra and put her in a damn cage or… Or…”

“Or what?” Debbi asked. 

“Or killed her, dammit!” Amy said. 

“Amy!” Nicole said, practically gasping. It was one thing to think that, but…

“What?” Amy said, looking back, a glare on her face that quickly softened as soon as they made eye contact. 

“She’s your mother,” Nicole said. 

“No, she’s not!” Amy snapped. 

“Okay, fine, but murder is wrong!”

“She’s a demon!” Amy said. 

Everyone was silent for a moment as they stared at Amy. The implications sunk in like cement overshoes into a river. 

“What?” Amy said. “What?!”

“Amy,” Nicole said, “You-”

“I’m not a demon!” she snapped. “I’M NOT LIKE HER!”

“I didn’t say you were,” Nicole said, her brow creased and her eyes wide and her lips trembling. 

“I just…,” Amy said, “I… I can’t let her hurt any of you. Not her, not Winona… They’ve both been trying to ruin everything for me for so long and I… I can’t let them have any power over me. Not anymore.”

“Okay, but what if Lilith is telling the truth?” Nicole said. “What if Astra is powerless now? What then?”

“Then… Then we don’t have to worry, I guess,” Amy said. “At least not about her. Look, I… I’m sorry for yelling at you. At both of you. I’m just so damn tired of all this.”

Nicole flew forward, riding next to Amy, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I almost killed Moloch. That demon we were fighting. My blood was pumping, and all I could see was a monster who was attacking my family, my hometown. It… It feels like there’s this rot inside my soul right now, trying to make me worse. I don’t want that to happen to you. Please. You’re better than her. Better than both of them. You can’t give in, can’t play the game according to their rules. Please.”

Amy’s head dropped. “I… I just don’t know. I don’t wanna be like her. And I don’t know how much longer I can keep her at bay without… I’m just tired of feeling like a victim, but I don’t want to be a monster.”

Debbi trailed back and flew next to Heather, her own tears in her eyes needing to be wiped away by her girlfriend. She nodded at Nicole, a simple, approving tilt of the head that said everything it needed to: I trust you with her. Take care of her. 

Nicole said, “You’re not a victim, and you’re not a monster. You’re the woman I love.”

Amy looked up, eyes wet with tears and a face looking taken aback and yet… Not entirely surprised. She choked out a faint squeak, then gripped Nicole’s hand tightly but said nothing. 

They flew and flew and flew until they cleared the city skyline, and Nicole saw a pillar of smoke rising from downtown. She veered towards it, and said, “We should help.”

The others didn’t protest.

They flew towards a skyscraper engulfed in flames, a crowd of onlookers gathered around it alongside two fire trucks and an ambulance. As she drew closer, Nicole, saw a golden streak rush out and deposit two children on the ground. Gabriel was the source, decked out in his golden armor, chest heaving as he gave a wave to the crowd and then rushed back into the burning building. 

As soon as it was done, Cass flew out of a window with an old lady resting on the back of her broom, and Matt helped carry a middle-aged man with a bloody stump where his left leg was supposed to be through the front door. 

Nicole flew down and deposited herself on the ground and readied her Pink Healing Light. Matt smiled as he saw her, and she looked the old man in the eyes and said, “May I touch you?” 

He nodded weakly, but then the light returned to him as he realized his leg was growing back and his vitality was restored. Heather, Amy, and Debbi all flew in without hesitation and helped get more and more people out, while Nicole healed them on the spot. 

They did this for over an hour while the sun set and the moon rose high in the sky, peering out from behind thin layers of clouds. Soon thereafter, Nicole heard footsteps behind her, where she saw Iris standing there, fully transformed. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Nicole said. “What are you doing here?”

“Mom saw a news reports and told me to go help,” Iris said. 

“Are you sure you’re ready?”

“I’m never gonna be if you don’t let me try,” Iris said. She walked past Nicole, hands glowing, and pressed them to the ground. 

Watching a building restore itself, emptied of flames and glass repaired and concrete stitched back together, hot pink light bathing it all and flickering out as the building was completely healed, was like nothing Nicole had ever seen. There was no sound to it, no struggle, just the reversal of entropy as if it were the simplest, most straightforward thing in existence. 

“How did you know where we were?” Nicole asked.

“Like I said it, it was on the news,” Iris said as she pulled her hands from the ground. She nearly fell over while trying to stand up, and Nicole rushed over and helped her up. “I, uh, used Google Maps to figure out where I was going. They told me I was going too fast a lot, it was kinda funny…”

She fainted, and Nicole kept her propped up. 

The others rushed out of the building, the flames now extinguished, the civilians all healed, the crowd cheering and the press rushing towards them. “Alright, that’s everyone,” Cass said. She did a double-take as she registered Nicole supporting Iris. “When did Tiny Pink get here?”

“Just now,” Nicole said, pushing a microphone out of her face. “Come on, let’s regroup.”

Nicole put Iris on the back of her broom, while Matt climbed onto the back of Cass’ and they all took flight, Gabriel running after them as a golden streak. 

***

Iris dreamt of a fiery inferno calling out to her in honeyed tones, a vision of her sisters falling into the pit of damnation and burning in the Lake of Fire screaming inside her skull. At the other end of the lake was a frozen landscape shelled with horrible missiles, exploding and launching chunks of ice and stone shrapnel in every which direction. Nicole stood atop a sheet of ice, her fingers bleeding as she tried to free someone trapped below. Cass floated in the sky above, trying to fly down but being sucked back up into world of the living, while the voice, equal parts masculine and feminine, echoed through the air over the sounds of screams and explosions and pain and death and rang every molecule of Iris’ being like a bell. 

Iris’ eyes shot open, her back aching and her skull throbbing. She laid flat on a wooden church pew, inside the chapel at Nicole’s college. The crucifix above the altar loomed over her on her right-hand side, and she instinctively crossed herself as she sat up. What right have I to be here right now? She wondered. 

“What do you mean ‘he warned you’?” Debbi asked. She stood next to the priest, Father Gonzalez, in front of the pulpit, Heather standing next to her and Amy and Cass. 

“I mean, he implied things are going to get a lot more complicated for us in the coming days,” the priest said. 

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Nicole said, holding Amy’s hand. 

“He better not get in the way,” Cass said. “We saved a lot of people today- I actually feel good about my job for the first time in like… Ever. Some five-star clown doesn’t get to just show up and start telling me I’m not allowed to help people right as I’m really starting to.”

“He’s a colonel, he doesn’t have any stars,” Gonzalez said. 

“That’s not what I meant,” Cass said, “But fair enough.”

“Oh hey, you’re awake,” a low, rich vibrato sang out behind her. 

Iris jumped, then went red all over as her eyes bulged at the sight of two comically hot young men staring down at her. She recognized Matt- hard to forget the guy who’d finally called her on her shit and then slapped her in the face- but the other one, with the long, gorgeous black hair must have Gabriel, the newest guy. 

You have a boyfriend, you have a boyfriend, you have a boyfriend, Iris repeated inside her pounding skull continually. A wistful sigh escaped her lips in spite of it all- she didn’t want to be here. She knew she had to be here, had to make up for being a horrible fucking person and had to do the right thing at every opportunity now forever, but she wanted, desperately, not to be here. She wanted to go back to Manchester and fall asleep in Mark’s arms on her couch. She wanted to have another beer with her dad, wanted to watch some dumb romcom she was rapidly finding herself enjoying more and more frequently with Monica while helping the poor girl pick up the pieces of herself. 

But Mom had pointed out she had a responsibility, and that was that. 

“Hey, y’all, the new girl’s awake!” Gabriel said. 

“Iris!” Nicole said, running over to her and hugging her very tightly. “Are you okay? How do you feel right now? Are you in pain?”

“Can’t… Breathe…”

“Oh! Sorry!” her sister said, releasing her. 

A breath flooded into Iris. 

“Hey there, Gringa, glad you’re awake,” Cass said, walking over with her hands jammed into the front-pockets of her hoodie. “Love the hair, b-t-dubs: the whole ‘Barbie’ aesthetic looks good on you.”

Iris went, somehow, even redder. Cass just gave her a compliment, and the more sapphically inclined parts of her brain practically exploded. “Th-th-th-thank you.”

She tussled Iris’ hair, and Iris nearly melted. 

“Seriously though, are you okay?” Debbi asked. 

“A little sore, but otherwise fine,” Iris said. “Did I miss something?”

“The Man wants to come to town and tell us how to do our jobs,” Cass grumbled. 

“It’s a little more complicated than that, Mija,” Gonzalez said. 

“I know, I just… Getting flashbacks,” she said. 

“Look,” Nicole said, “The important part is that we’re all here together. No matter what comes next- Lilith, the Dark Prophet, the Coven, the Marines- it’s all a lot, and we all… Have a lot of different emotions wrapped up in all this, but we can face it together. As a team. There’s nothing we can’t accomplish together.”

“Well put, blondie,” Debbi said, clapping her on the back. “We’ll need to go back to the drawing board as well- group training sessions for all eight of us. We’ve got some new power sets to work with. Plus, Iris, no offense, but you’re TINY now. Like, you’re shorter than Cass, which I didn’t think was possible. You’re gonna need to learn how to fight.”

“I know how to fight!” Iris protested, not realizing she was putting her hands on her hips until she’d already done so. It had to be a subconscious thing- she’d seen Mom do it so many times she defaulted to using it as a feminine means of expressing frustration. But it was still weird how quickly she slid into it. 

“Then you need to relearn,” Debbi said. “Trust me, taking down larger opponents when you’re under five foot five is difficult, but we can work with this.”

“We’ve all got a lot to work on, I’d say,” Amy muttered under her breath, shooting Debbi a side-eyed glare. 

What’s that about?

“If it helps, I’m gonna need to do some more work too,” Nicole said. “Whatever this… Connection I have to my demon is, I don’t think it’s going away. It’s also probably the only source of leverage we have with Lilith, so I’m going to need to lean into it.”

“Aaaannnnddd if that ain’t a well-timed entry line, I don’t know what on God’s Green Earth is,” a new voice reached across the Church from the front entrance. A nun flanked by a tall individual in a trench coat sauntered towards them. 

“Sister Quinn!” Nicole said. Because apparently that’s who this was. 

“Hello, Nicole,” the nun said. “Bishop Gonzalez has been updating me on your situation- I think it’s time you and I did some one-on-one training together.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Nicole nodded. 

Iris breathed in deep. She’d thought that the hard part would be transforming for the first time, fighting her first monster. But she knew then that that was the easy part. The hard part was making herself ready for whatever came next, and whatever came after that, and after that, and after that. 

***

Cass was silent during the flight back to the Donahue house. Debbi had told her about the meetings with Astra, told all of them, and said she would tell the rest of the family about it soon. For now, though, Cass just wanted to sleep. And seeing as her dorm room had a gaping hole in the wall, that meant the couch in her adoptive parents’ living room. Cass… Wasn’t crazy about what Debbi had done, but she could understand the reasoning for it. 

Amy, though… 

She wasn’t talking. That rarely happened. 

The three sisters flew over the water until their family’s house came into view. Midnight had struck recently. Nicole and Iris had to wait for their family to make it to Boston so they could figure out their living situation, Heather had needed to check on her family, and Matt had simply fallen asleep in the rectory again. Gabriel ran off to… Wherever it was he went. She still wasn’t sure about that, about him. 

The only thing she was sure of was that she had a job to do. She had… She had a family now. Brothers and sisters and parents who she loved, whom she wanted more than anything to keep safe. Part of her was exhausted that it never ended, but there were more friends and allies now to help her share the load. 

She flew in between Amy and Debbi, the silence between them strangulating as the beach house came into view. This was all going to be a lot to deal with- she’d seen Amy and Debbi fight before, and it could get ugly. For now, though, she was tired. Today had been very, very long, and very, VERY emotional. She just wanted to fall asleep for a week. 

They landed on the sand and de-transformed. Amy and Debbi silently led the trek back into the house. The lights were off as Amy unlocked the door. 

“SURPRISE!”  

Patrick and Victoria and Richard and Jason and Timothy and Damian all stood in the kitchen as the lights flickered on. Balloons filled the room, a cake sat on the table, and a wrapped-up present sat next to it. 

Cass blinked, expecting the sight before her eyes to vanish. But there it remained, and she gulped as she realized what was happening. 

“Heather told us,” Debbi said, patting Cass on the head while Amy put an arm around her shoulder. 

“Happy birthday, Cass,” Victoria said as she walked forward and handed her the present. “Why don’t you go ahead and open this now, and then we can all have some cake.”

Cass nodded and hurriedly unwrapped the gift, where she found a series of papers, requesting a… 

Requesting a legal name change to Cassandra Donahue. 

Cass gulped again. 

“Only if you want it,” Patrick said, putting a hand on Cass’ other shoulder. “But if you do-”

“I do,” Cass choked out as the tears started coming. They flowed freely out her eyes as her parents and her sisters and her brothers surrounded her for a group hug. 

It was a lot, and there was always more, but with her family and friends at her side, she knew she was ready for whatever came next.