Aubrie was, against perhaps her better judgement, warming up to Soporifick. Not every workspace was coloured red. Some spaces were vivid green, some bright orange, some deep blue… And the sky, where the purple had previously been uncomfortable and alien in her eyes, now just looked… breath-takingly beautiful. It helped, she thought, that the tiredness supposedly caused by Soporifick had entirely cleared up after she drank her leftover coffee-to-go.

They had finished their patrol and were now sitting at the edge of Tower Three, the tallest skyscraper in Orthank City. Geno had a leg dangling over the edge, one hand wrapped around his knee, the other holding his energy drink.

“It’s real quiet tonight,” Geno mused. “Which is good. Just unfortunate, since I wanted to show you the ropes.”

“I can’t deny how pretty it is here,” Aubrie softly spoke, brushing a loose strand out of her face. “You can really appreciate its beauty when you’re not exhausted.”

“You’re not exhausted?” he asked.

“I had some of my leftover coffee earlier. Woke me right up,” she cheerfully replied.

“Huh, weird,” Geno muttered. “Nothing I eat or drink can entirely get rid of the tiredness…”

“Really? Maybe I’m different,” Aubrie suggested jokingly. Geno just shook his head and looked back out at the purple skies of Soporifick. “So… here’s a question,” Aubrie spoke up. “You don’t really fight andahts, right? You kind of just… zap in and out, right?”

“Right.”

“If you just teleport everywhere… How in the world- or I guess how in Soporifick, do you find people you’re consciously looking for?”

“Oh, well, if I know the name and face, I can sense where they are and teleport to them. So, if say… Elynn Flint were to end up here… You know who Elynn Flint is, right?”

Aubrie shook her head. Geno just laughed.

“Maybe I oughta start calling you bumpkin as a nickname,” he teased. “Elynn Flint is this gorgeous actress. She started working in film as a kid, she’s now… I think eighteen? So, not much older than me. Anyway, if she were to show up here, and I think about her…” He closed his eyes demonstratively. “… I would be able to know where in Soporifick she is.” He opened his eyes again. “Of course, she’s not here, so…”

“Does it work on andahts too?” Aubrie wondered.

“Of course not-” he started dismissing, then paused. With his eyes open, she could see colours flitting through his irises, much as colours would surround them when he was teleporting. “Oh. It does,” he said.

“It does?”

“Yeah. I found Glitched Lover. He’s in the underground, by the way. Just kinda sitting there,” Geno explained, still looking into space, rather than her.

“Do you know your eyes change colour when you’re sensing locations?”

“They do?” Geno asked, surprised.

“Geno, I’m starting to think you don’t know much about Soporifick,” she told him. The colours in his eyes subsided, leaving behind his usual hazel greens.

“Everything I know, I had to figure out by myself,” he said defensively. “Sorry if I don’t know everything.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you… But that means there’s still a lot to learn, right?” Aubrie pointed out. She smiled. “I think I want to find out more about Soporifick. Maybe find a way to stop people accidentally ending up in here. What do you think?”

“What’s wrong with the way I’ve been doing things?” he demanded.

“Geno, you haven’t done anything wrong,” she sternly said, “but there must be something more to this than just saving people individually. Like you said, there should be super villains. Maybe we need to find them and defeat them? And to find them, we need to find out more about Soporifick.” It was cheap, to use the concept of super villains against him, but Geno did not seem to inherently want to research and learn about Soporifick. She needed to bribe him somehow.

Geno looked at her surprised. “You’re taking me seriously?” he asked. The super villains? Not really, but there was no reason to claim it was an impossibility. Just improbable.

“Well, sure. We’re partners, right?” It was her job to stand by his outlandish side. She held out her hand.

He grinned widely. “Right,” he agreed and gave her hand a firm shake. “You’ll get a costume?”

“Of course! It’s a high priority,” she said seriously. “And I look good in red, so…”

Geno grinned, then looked back up at the purple skies. His eyes flickered with colours once more. “I guess before we leave, I’ll just see what the andahts are up to and then-” He cut himself off, frowning. His eyes returned to hazel green and he turned to her once more. “Looks like we’ve got a rescue mission after all.” He held out his hand to her. “Let’s go.”

She held it and he pulled her to her feet, the colourful swirls surrounding them like leaves on an autumn day. When they subsided, they were standing in a DIY shop. A middle-aged man stood not too far from them, and on the counter, next to the register, sat White Noise, blaring out its static at full volume. And yet, the middle-aged man did nothing, but slowly step forward, towards White Noise, as if in a trance.

Neither Aubrie nor Geno spoke a word to each other, both reacting to the sight instinctively. Geno grabbed the man and teleported away. Aubrie engulfed White Noise in a bubble and silence fell. The silence was so deafening, it shocked her out of maintaining the shield and it popped pathetically.

White Noise stared at her, tilting its head. Then one of its long extended arms reached out for her, fast enough that she couldn’t tell if it intended on grabbing or hitting her. She engulfed herself in her shield and while she felt each hit, the delicate-looking bubble held.

“This is such a pain!” she heard Geno yell, as he came out from above, wielding a sledgehammer he must have picked up, swinging it straight into White Noise’s screen. At contact, shards flew and it screeched. He reacted to the screaming, collapsing to his knees, covering his ears-

She stupidly threw her shield up around Geno, subjecting herself to the screaming of the writhing creature. Even as she held her head in pain, unable to stand, pain eating away at her focus, she kept the shield up around Geno.

Geno, recovering quickly, picked up his sledgehammer and teleported close enough to smash in White Noise’s screen once more. The sound of squished flesh and shattered glass filled the room, long enough to tune out White Noise’s racket.

Apparently fed up with the onslaught, White Noise hit the ground with its fists and out of its back sprang more arms, latching onto Geno and throwing him towards Aubrie. The white noise started again, but this time, Aubrie had the wherewithal to surround herself and Geno with her bubble.

“Where’s the man?” she asked Geno.

“Outside, we gotta go,” he told her, grabbing her hand and the colours started again. They were standing outside, White Noise was still inside.

Through the shop window, Aubrie could see that White Noise was rapidly losing its already barely human shape and filling the shop. Geno grabbed the man they’d found and teleported them both away, to the nearest mirror he could find – a barbershop across the street.

“Quick, climb through!” he ordered at the still terrified man. He quickly did so, Aubrie following after him. On the other side was the closed barbershop. She could still hear White Noise’s buzzing, loud and shrill, despite now being back in reality. Her heart sank. Was it going to follow them through the mirror?

Geno came out, still wielding the sledgehammer he’d picked up and slammed it into the mirror. It shattered and White Noise’s sounds abruptly stopped. Aubrie and Geno stood in silence, the man collapsed on the floor.

“Ok, travelling with three people is way more complicated than I thought,” Geno said after a long pause. Aubrie came back to her senses.

“That’s not what’s important right now – how do we get out of here? What do we do now?” she demanded, as she got the man to his feet, wrapping one of his arms around her shoulders. The man was barely conscious.

“We ask our poor guy where he lives and take him home,” Geno answered, as if it were obvious.

“How? We’re locked inside a shop!” Aubrie angrily argued.

Geno offered her an embarrassed smile. “You’re not gonna like this.”

From his inside coat pocket, he took out a lockpick-set. She frowned.

“You’re right. I don’t like this,” she told him.

“I’ve done this loads of times. Never triggered an alarm once!” he boldly claimed as he walked over to the front door’s lock.

“I know you’ve already broken into school but are there any other places I should know about?” she asked.

“Do you really want to know?” he quietly replied.

“… Maybe not right now,” she admitted. They had other, more pressing matters. Such as the victim they’d saved. The man was stirring again. “How are you?” she asked, hoping he wouldn’t see the very illegal thing that Geno was doing.

“Headache…” the man slurred. Still not terribly conscious then.

“Do you have a name? What were you doing outside of working hours?” Aubrie continued.

“Billy… Westend. Was picking up… spare tool…” he slowly explained.

“You were stealing?” she asked.

“Own… shop,” Mr Westend mumbled, gathering enough strength to sound defensive, before fading out again.

“Oh, he must be Mr Westend of Westend’s Workshop,” Geno commented. “I get some of my best tools from there.”

“Does that include lockpicking tools?” Aubrie snidely asked.

“Ha, like I’d give you that kinda intel that easily,” Geno rebutted. The door clicked open. “Told ya. Expert. Let’s go.”

Aubrie hauled the man through the door and Geno locked the shop back up again. He looked at Mr Westend.

“Hey, can you hear me? Think you could give us a home address? We gotta take you home,” Geno told the man, snapping his fingers in front of his face. The man mumbled an answer, giving them a – thankfully – nearby address. Nearby enough that they could simply walk there.

They entered the apartment block, but of course got to their next hurdle – the front door.

“Got any keys on ya, big guy?” Geno asked.

“Missus home…” Mr Westend murmured.

“Then let’s ring the doorbell and run,” Aubrie suggested. Geno nodded, gently propping Mr Westend down by the door, then doing just that. The two hid near the apartment block, watching from afar. Sure enough, the lights in the hallway flicked on and two people came running down the stairs. Mrs Westend opened the door, a young man sat down by Mr Westend’s side.

She recognized the young man. Wasn’t he Ms Ridgeway’s assistant…?

“Is he? I don’t remember some kid helping her,” Geno muttered. Aubrie realized she’d been thinking out loud.

“You were asleep for most of the lesson,” Aubrie reminded him. That was definitely Ms Ridgeway’s assistant though. She hadn’t expected her first rescued party to be connected to someone she tangentially knew. She smiled.

With Mr Westend finally safe at home, Aubrie let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. If they hadn’t arrived when they had, Mrs Westend would have unknowingly become a widow overnight. And Ms Ridgeway’s assistant would not have turned up for the rest of the week.

She very much preferred the happy ending.

“We should call it a night,” Geno told her. “Rule of thumb is, no more than one victim at a time. Makes my life easier.”

“Another proven fact?”

“I’m certain,” Geno argued. “It’s never more than one person at a time.”

“I see.” Aubrie would still need to test that theory.

“We should go to Westend’s Workshop and lock up for Mr Westend,” Geno spoke. “We can use his mirror to get back into Soporifick.”

“Back into Soporifick?” Aubrie asked. “I thought we’re calling it a night.”

“We are. But my rucksack’s still in Soporifick, Aubrie,” Geno reminded her.

“Right. Sounds like a plan then,” Aubrie muttered. “Let’s go.”