A burst of building shards announced a wire lodging itself above their heads and gave them all of ten seconds warning before a figure swung down in an extravagantly layered supersuit, hood included, and a face covering. A villain. Heroes had to be identifiable, held accountable, their ID cards on their bodies always when on duty. They made as if to land right in front of Elsie and her partner and flung out another wire to launch themselves past, snatching for them.

Elsie dodged, her partner was caught and thrown, crashing through the bright orange barricades of a patch of roadworks. Elsie took off after the villain, calling to her partner as she passed to call in the incident. Using the bounce of her not-quite-flight she traversed the block of flats that the covered-up criminal was leaping across the top of. She couldn’t close the gap entirely when they had their wiry offshoots to catch a ride on, but she had to at least try to give chase. At the edge of the roof, just as it seemed they were about to take another cable descent, they turned, kicking Elsie back with a thick-heeled boot. On the back-foot, but upright, Elsie lurched forward again, this time throwing out her hands to grapple them closer. She snatched at the armour-like suit’s shoulders and black gloves grabbed her back. A thin strip of metal shot up towards her face, narrowly missing out on giving her a pierced nose when she jerked back, kicking a foot up to their hip and rolling them back to the centre of the roof, head over arse until she was atop the villain.

Elsie batted away a barrage of streamer-like metal pieces shooting up at her and shuffled her knees up their torso until she could use them to pin the villain’s biceps. If this was all they had to fight with… she might just be about to apprehend her first ever villain – alone!

Is there such thing as thinking too soon? Or just speaking? Because no sooner had she thought it had she been punched in the face by a much heftier projectile. The villain’s body was no longer beneath her, neither was the roof. She hit the street. The coarse concrete caught her bare skin when she tried to dispel the impact by rolling away, scraping her face, hands and midriff. She felt it, but it didn’t pierce her invulnerability.

“Back-up is coming!” her partner yelled. She huddled behind a mini excavator, phone to her ear.

Elsie almost wished it wasn’t, she’d been doing quite well until she took a metal pole to the jaw. She dragged herself up from the ground and staggered back to one knee. Her ankle was pulsating angrily. She eyeballed the distance from the roof to the ground… okay, it was a few more floors than she usually liked to fall from. As she mapped out a route to climb back in her mind, the villain generously swooped back down towards them, flinging silvery strings in every direction. Cars were flipped, post boxes shot clean through, pavement potholed. Elsie threw herself to the ground and yelled for her partner to do the same. An explosion of wire filled the sky above them, distracting them long enough for the villain to make their decision as to who to target first. The odds should have been fifty-fifty, only they would already know her partner was praying on back-up since she was hiding with an operator in her ear. Elsie would be the problem, and Elsie was injured. Elsie forced herself upright on shaking legs. They turned on her, how predicable, and launched another battery of metal strings that Elsie swiped away back-handed, prioritising protection of her face. What she couldn’t work out was what this incognito villain actually wanted. They didn’t carry valuables on patrol, so they weren’t being robbed. There were no landmarks directly around them, so they weren’t trying to get access anyway. Were they simply looking to cause a bit of havoc?

Elsie put on her best serious expression and called out. “Turn yourself over, this game won’t end well for you.”

The villain tilted their head. Elsie couldn’t see enough of them to work out if it was a genuine reaction, or a sarcastic one. The knocked-aside metallic ribbon limp around her feet leapt up to snag at her legs, squeezing her busted ankle cruelly, failing to split her skin. She refused to wince, glaring down the hooded figure.

“What do you want?” she shouted.

The villain ventured closer. Brave. Elsie had already shown she had no abilities for distance. They didn’t answer her. Just over an arms-length away, they commanded the wiring to drag Elsie, puppeteering her. Elsie flexed and struggled against the binds, snapping them against her muscles, only to be reattached elsewhere. She forced a foot up and forward, then the other, desperate to close the gap. The closer she was, the better her advantage. The villain didn’t appear rattled as they coiled her limbs again and again. Elsie was gaining on them, though, even if only in inches. Losing her patience, she swung a hard right hook, hoping she’d judged herself close enough to connect. The cables around her arm snapped, fresh ones punched straight through, but she didn’t quite have the reach to rock the villain with her hit.

Luckily, someone else could benefit from their lurching backwards: Brightlyn collided with the villain, leaping through the wall beside them and clamping her arms around their head as they fell to the ground. Elsie ripped off the rest of her strings and joined her on the floor, ignoring the bursts of pain from her ankle, pinning various body parts while Brightlyn decided on a safe (and legal) hold to put them in.

More back-up arrived on the scene from all around. Webs strung between upturned cars and lampposts threatened to catch the calves of the heroes trawling the wreckage. With the villain secured, Elsie called out that there had been no civilians on scene when they arrived. What the villain had been up to before they crossed paths… she couldn’t say.

Pink and puffy, Brightlyn was sweet to look at. When she handed over their captive to police officers cleared to enter the scene, her saccharine smile was almost comical compared to the situation. Elsie took a heavy breath before rising up again, bracing herself against the pain of her ankle without adrenaline to dull it. The threat was neutralised, and she couldn’t convince her body otherwise.

“You’re relieved,” declared a stocky man in full combat gear. “Thanks for your work, Emerald Eclipse.”

Elsie shook his hand and tried not to look as battered as she felt. Her partner was told the same and Brightlyn gave them both a thumbs up with a beam. Elsie smiled back. She hadn’t made a complete fool of herself. She’d fought a real villain! And other heroes had seen her doing it! She gave her partner a high five and silently hoped she never got paired with them again.

Limping back into the training centre, she caught the tail end of an afternoon news recap on the TV.

“-war criminal Zev, ranked Grade 1 by the International Hero Commission, anonymous sources have revealed. Whether the mob wanted this information released to incite fear has been debated by our war correspondents-”

None of the cadets twitched, entirely absorbed by the screen. Elsie continued towards medical.

“It’s not broken.” The doctor pointed a pinky to the x-ray on his screen. “You said mild invulnerability?”

Elsie confirmed.

“You might be teetering into moderate if no bones snapped from that high of a fall.”

“Hm. I guess that’s one upside to getting whooped.” She couldn’t inject any real energy into her words. She’d been up before the sun.

“Invulnerability is difficult to determine without good ol’ fashioned trial-and-error,” he said over the clacking of his keyboard. His words became gap-filled and distracted. “And... it’s not wise... to attempt... your own experiments…”

“I can promise that I won’t,” Elsie said on a sigh. She had no inclination to chase pain.

“Good. Unfortunately, there isn’t much we can offer you aside from some pain killers and an order to rest until it feels better. Completely better, that is. Not even a twinge. Let your body do the work and don’t get in its way.” The printer sat beside the monitor whirred and spat out a slip of paper. “Take that to the desk outside and they’ll give you something nice to take when it hurts. No more than four a day and I recommend pacing them so you take one right before bed.”

Elsie accepted the prescription and slid down from the cot, testing her weight on her ankle. It was a shock after having it raised and relaxed for a bit. “Thank you, Doctor.”

She got a short nap in, assisted by a nice pill, until her SupAssign app alerted that she had a training class booked in as her last activity of the day. Elsie scrubbed her face with her hands and then pulled a face at the make-up residue left on her palms. She’d forgotten about the powdering they’d all received before the photoshoots. She wanted so badly to shower and go to bed, to end the day, finally. When she checked her app, though, she knew she couldn’t. Training sessions with her mentor were not to be missed. She had chosen Jules’ training centre in order to learn from him, there would be no knowledge offered going to waste.

And with Zev arriving in the city...

At the mats, Jules’ gaze lingered on her a tad too long, sizing up her condition. Elsie blew out through her nose, admitting her determination may be weary… but it was there. Jules nodded her into the huddle and began breaking down the first drill step-by-step.

∞

“Happy birthday to you.”

Elsie groaned.

“Happy birthday to you.”

She rolled over and hid her head with her pillow, wincing at the twist of her still-aching ankle. Despite Tam’s singing being barely more than a whisper, it felt like she’d been awoken by a loud speaker.

“Happy birthday, dear Elsie.”

Elsie cracked an eye and realised the little light in the room was flickering.

“Happy birthday to you.” Tam drew out the ‘ooh’ until her lungs wheezed. Elsie relented, turning back to her best friend and the cupcake balanced across her palms. A pair of candles in the shape of a two and a zero were lit and fast melting. Elsie grinned sleepily and puffed them out in one go. “What did you wish for?” Tam breathed.

“To go back to sleep.”

Tam shoved her shoulder. “Get up and eat the damn cake and be grateful I didn’t put you in the spotlight.”

Elsie propped herself up on her elbow. “And I know you were desperate to.”

“I was.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She plucked out the disfigured candles and retrieved a blunt knife from her bag to halve the small cake. “You have the side with the frosting rose on.”

Elsie accepted her piece. “Don’t have to tell me twice.” The quicker she shoved it into her mouth, the less possibility there was for crumbs to splatter her bed sheets. Tasty logic. They returned to slumber with sugary lips, neither had it in them to get up and brush their teeth again.

She got a few more hours of sleep before her job demanded her (her dream job, she reminded herself as she wearily dressed) and was back on duty by ten. Her birthday over before it had really begun. With the mass hysteria plaguing the general public, gaining another rotation of the sun seemed a silly thing to even recognise.

Blackout. The mob. Zev. The people were scared for their lives, their loved ones, their world as they knew it.