“It’s time to face reality.”

Tam’s words prodded at her and still Elsie stared up at the slats of the bunk above.

“You have a nemesis.”

Elsie snapped her gaze to her friend, eyes wide and teeth half-bared in warning. This was not something to be discussing loudly, even in the privacy of their dorm.

Tam completely ignored the silent threat. Her hands on her hips rolled with them as she shifted her weight to one leg, leaning in to scrutinise Elsie even more closely. “And it’s time we start taking some action,” she declared. Her tough love act was pretty convincing, there were just a few problems...

“We?” And what action? There was nothing Elsie could do to defeat Blackout, there was nothing she could do to so much as slow down the greatest supervillain of their time.

“Of course.” Not a hint of uncertainty to be found in her pose or her polished face. Against the utter terror that was even the idea of Blackout, Tam popped her hip and cocked a brow. Her best friend was the bestest. “We’re in this together whether you like it or not. And we’re going to get our butts in gear whether you like it or not. And we’re going to find out everything there is to know and be as prepared as two puny Grade 4’s can be-”

Elsie grinned, rolling out of her bed. “Whether I like it or not?”

“Exactly!” Tam shoved her by the shoulder towards the bathroom. “Get yourself together and we’ll find a spot in the research lab to hunker down with snacks.”

Elsie repeated, “Research lab?” through a crack in the bathroom door as she stripped down. She felt grungy and icky from sleeping in her sweat. She’d been too paranoid to shower last night. Too paranoid to sleep. Too paranoid to take her supersuit off. Tam had given up trying to force her, she needed sleep, too.

“We’re going to watch every shittily recorded video clip, read every incident report, crawl through the interviews of anyone who has so much as stood near her.” After Elsie tossed out the stinky supersuit, Tam kneed the door shut. “And,” she called through it, “become the country’s top experts in her and her powers.”

Elsie considered letting that statement stand, and the room fill with fog, but she couldn’t help herself. “There’s no expert in Blackout,” she corrected, peeling the door back open a tiny bit to keep her voice low. “No one knows shit about her.”

“We will,” Tam argued. “If it takes all day, all night, all week. Now close the damn door before the alarms go off.”

Relenting to the shower, Elsie tried to let Tam’s positivity infect her with the same delusions her best friend was enjoying. She couldn’t pretend that Tam’s enthusiasm, the notion of a plan to action, hadn’t been what roused her from bed. Wallowing seemed like the only option to her after yesterday. Blackout was back and Elsie was fucking doomed. She scrubbed her fingers through her hair, lathering all the way down to her waist. Her dream of being a beloved hero had only been a possibility as long as her nemesis didn’t return. Now she couldn’t bring too much attention to herself or risk catching Blackout’s, and she also couldn’t shirk her work or risk getting found out by the Hero Commission. If they discovered her secret, and particularly that she had kept it a secret, she’d be in some deep shit. She rubbed soap over the mark beneath her collar bone, extra hard as though she might be able to rid herself of it and save her skin. The assignment of them to each other made no sense to Elsie; she was, in very simple terms, no match for Blackout. Was it meant to be a joke from the universe? A snub to Blackout from karma? Do bad things, get a crap nemesis? She shook her head and then wiped away the spray that hit her in the face. Tam was right, all she could do was try and figure Blackout out. It might not end very well for her, but at least she wouldn’t be lying in her bunk for who-knows-how-long waiting to have her butt kicked.

There was so little truly known about her, despite being the country’s most well-known villainess. At least, in modern times. Exactly five minutes after her theory exams Elsie’s brain had immediately dumped all her knowledge of last century’s heroes and villains and what their progress meant for contemporary laws and procedure in favour of filling it with some nice, relaxing TV to celebrate finishing such a stressful test. Now, none of them seemed as vital to understand as Blackout anyway. They didn’t have their names branded to her chest, for a start. Even Blackout’s powers weren’t properly understood. Sure, wiping out light was obvious. But how did the cameras so often lose their footage? Why did the witnesses always have a lack of detail in their recounting? Was the smoke her? Could she fly or did she balance on pure darkness? They studied The Art of War in basic and she could certainly say she didn’t know her enemy. Unfortunately, she did know herself – and the extent of her powers.

A thumping on the door was followed by Tam demanding that she hurry up. They had a hard day’s work ahead of them.

In the research lab (which made it sound way fancier than ‘room with books and some computers that made rumbling noises when they started up’) every table was empty, not even a cadet memorising patrol regulation subsections. They took a corner, best to hide themselves in, and raided first the vending machine, then the bookshelves, then the archive filing cabinets, and finally they snatched up an old laptop for the centre of their fort.

“Put that clip back, like, ten seconds,” Tam demanded, a candy tube hanging from the corner of her mouth.

Elsie obliged and they watched a heavily pixelated figure swarmed by black smoke crash through what was hopefully an empty office at the edge of a ten-floor building. The footage was too grainy to see the shards of glass pouring to the pavement below, but the crater taken out of the windows made it clear enough what had happened.

“What am I looking for?”

“I was just trying to work out if she bashed that building up with her body or if she conjured some kind of shadow fist.”

Elsie peered across at Tam’s super-focused pout. “Shadow fist?” she repeated without restraining her scepticism.

“I don’t hear any theories coming from your side of the table!” Tam accused, chewing through the sweet in her mouth as she did. She was quick to replace it before scribbling some notes. Elsie didn’t have anything written down. Maybe Tam was right, she needed to just start throwing stuff out there and seeing if any of it made sense…

She watched the clip again. And again.

“I think it’s a shield,” she said slowly. “I think she coats herself in the smoke or shadows or whatever and uses it to turn herself into a battering ram.”

Tam hummed. “I like that idea.” They replayed the video once more before moving on to the next.

The less well-known hero bloggers actually had the best collection of Blackout sightings. A lot of them weren’t great shots, but anything was better than nothing. Even with a lack of light to film or photograph with, even from a distance, Elsie was starting to gain a familiarity for her. She could pick her out easier in the chaos, in the clouds, in the dark. Ink black hair that swooped around behind her as though it were one perfect piece, a bodysuit that covered little and a sash-like skirt that hung from her hips to hide little more.

“She’s kinda…”

“Don’t.” Elsie had already had the thought and shoved it away furiously.

“I’m just saying-”

“I know.”

“You know she’s hot?”

“You can barely see her, not really, in any of these pictures,” Elsie grumbled instead of answering the question.

“But what you can see-”

Elsie stood. “I think we need coffees.” She didn’t take Tam’s order, she didn’t need to, before she fled the research lab.