I jumped up onto the roof of the car and let out a growl. It got the attention of the Empire cape immediately and he whirled around to face me. I'd expected many potential reactions. Maybe he would be worried by the larger-than-average dog holding a knife covered in futuristic armour. Maybe he would feel confident and launch straight into an attack. I wasn't expecting him to start laughing.

"Well, you clearly aren't one of Bitch's dogs, are yah Pup," The cape snorted.

"Never even heard the name," I growled back, before clenching my teeth around my blade.

I wasn't going to give him the opportunity to wax lyrical about racial purity, I wasn't going to give him the chance to catch me off guard with whatever his power was. Something deep inside me, like a whisper on the wind, was telling me that attacking hard and fast before he got a chance to retaliate would be the best possible move.

As I was growing accustomed to with Wingal Brave's abilities, time slowed as I poured on the speed. I lashed out with my blade, intending to cripple the armour joints on his dominant hand's elbow so that he would drop the imposing spear.

The cape flickered and energy rippled out of his body. My blade glanced off his arm in a shower of sparks, but no damage landed. I skidded to a halt and turned just in time to see a pale, ghostly duplicate peel itself away from the Cape, complete with the armour and the spear. With a small nod of his head, the ghostly duplicate launched itself into the air and flew toward me. It was only thanks to my enhanced reflexes that I was able to parry the blow with my knife, barely deflecting the attack to the side. Clearly, I hadn't been fast enough.

Two new cards had appeared in my hand, neither of them Grade 0, and another had slipped over onto the left of my vision. That had been caused by my clash with the ghostly opponent, something told me if I took a few more clashes like that it wouldn't end well for me, even if I hadn't exactly been hurt by the interaction.

A blur of pink rocketed past my shoulder. Flogal was on the attack, using her superior speed to keep the ghostly opponent on the defensive. She didn't seem to be doing any damage with her bites or scratches, but as long as she was keeping him tied up he wouldn't be able to launch another attack at me.

I rocketed toward the original cape again, pouring on the speed once more. This time I planned to go for his leg. If I could knock him off balance, maybe there was a chance Llew and his mecha dog could keep up the offensive pressure. All it would take is one decisive strike, and this fight would be over. But just like before, as I struck, a flicker of energy emerged. A ghostly grey leg lashed out at me as I drew close, and it was all I could do to twist out of the way of the booted foot before it struck me.

Llew engaged this second spectre in combat. He drew a glowing pink sword that hummed sightly as he swished it through the air, almost like a light sabre from the Aleph Star Wars movies. Despite the sword and the attacks from his dog, this shade wasn't taking any damage either. It was as if they were completely immune to any form of physical attack, whether that be from Flogal's continued attempts to latch on to the first ghost with her teeth, or from Llew's bladed strikes. I needed a new strategy.

Another card drew itself from my deck and landed in my usable slots. This one was Stardust Trumpeter, one of the Grade 0's I had used against Dragon… and her abilities hadn't been physical at all. The issue was I could feel that I couldn't summon another unit in an attacking position, not without allowing either Flogal or Llew to be retired, and that would mean leaving myself open to attack from either one of the shades that the Cape had spawned.

The Cape in question didn't look like he was going to give me much of a choice. The flickering had increased, and ghostly spectral hands, heads and legs had started to emerge from his body at all sorts of strange angles. I had been counting on him only being able to summon a couple, with similar restrictions to my own ability, but it looked as if his power was functionally unlimited in its generation as long as he had the time to do it. I wasn't going to give him that time.

I dismissed Flogal, and she vanished in a shower of silvery motes. The spear of the shade she had been fighting pierced straight through a car now that there was no resistance holding it back while doing no damage to the vehicle itself. That gave me information to work with, they worked just like ghosts, able to pass through things like cars or walls at will.

In a flash of light, Stardust Trumpeter was at my side, and she sprang into action immediately. A blast of sound struck the Empire cape dead on and sent him careening through the air, shedding spectral clones as he went. I wanted to revel in the victory of landing a direct hit, but with more and more shades crawling their way out of the cape I needed to wrap this up quickly. Time slowed, and I poured on the speed for the third time.

I used everything I could to catch up with the Empire cape as he rocketed toward a wall, seemingly unable to stop himself. I used my speed to rocket off a car and into the air, and sprung from shade to shade as they were spawned. With one final kick, I was above the cape. It was now or never. I wanted to end this fight while remaining in my base breaker form, I didn't want to give away that I was able to ascend through different forms, each more powerful than the last. But this was a cape fight. It was life or death. This guy wasn't holding anything back, and if I did there was a very real chance that my body might end up hanging off the end of one of those spears.

"I Ride, Little Sage, Marron!" I growled out. The change was instant.

In one moment I was a slightly larger than average dog, red scarf billowing out behind me, blade pointed down toward my enemy, at least 20 feet above the ground. In the next, I was consumed by the largest, brightest light yet, and was suddenly standing tall above it all. Brown hair rested over one of my eyes, and I was dressed in what felt to be a thin yet incredibly protective coating of futuristic armour.

I saw the look of surprise on the capes face as he realised, all of a sudden, exactly what he was dealing with. Before he could react and entomb himself in a protective ball of writhing spectres I plunged my gigantic hand down and simply swatted him out of the air. It was as if a switch had been turned off. The moment he hit the ground the spectres flickered out of existence, clearly he had to be conscious to keep his army going.

I looked down and suppressed a wince. One thing I hadn't been thinking about when I had thought up the plan to transform into a unit that had "giant" written on its card was the damage I might do just by existing in the area. I had crushed a few cars underfoot by riding Marron, and I had to hope that this sort of damage was covered by some kind of legal precedent for hero work when fighting against a villainous cape.

I had no idea how I was going to explain any of this to the PRT squad that had been sent out to collect my defeated gangsters.

xXx

Miss Militia hadn't expected to be brought back into Director Piggot's office so quickly, nor did she expect Armsmaster to be there. Her meetings with Director Piggot were usually far and few between, she tended to be relatively hands-off in the day to day operations of the Protectorate. There was only one reason that she could come up with that she would be back here so quickly.

"The situation with the cape we had dubbed Tile, though who has now decided to name herself Vanguard, has escalated rapidly," Director Piggot began as Miss Militia took a seat. "Take a look at this mobile phone footage, taken from the scene of a cape fight today from the PHO boards."

The Director clicked a button and a screen in the corner of the room lit up with some shaky, vertical footage.

Crusader of the Empire Eighty-Eight was battling against what looked to be Tile, now Vanguard. The teenage cape was giving as good as she could, lashing out at speeds that the phone camera could barely pick up, but they weren't fast enough to get through the impenetrable defence of Crusader's shadowy clones.

A third summon appeared from Vanguard, and it was able to blow Crusader away across the street. Vanguard swept into action again, she leapt from a car to run up the steadily spawning clones of Crusader as if they were nothing but a set of stairs. Miss Militia had no idea what Vanguard's plan was when she got above Crusader, but turning into a giant and swatting him out of the air like he was nothing but an annoying fly was certainly not on the list. The video ended there, the fight over as suddenly as it began.

"Clearly," Armsmaster said, "We have vastly underestimated Vanguard's already versatile power set."

"Indeed," Director Piggot responded, "From this point on Vanguard will be considered a Trump Eight, clearly their breaker form can be altered."

"With all due respect, Director, why did you call both myself and Armsmaster in if this was just an update to Vanguard's classifications, this could have been sent in a memo, could it not?" Miss Militia asked.

"Quite right, that's not the only Vanguard related issue I've asked you to come in for," Director Piggot responded. "After her confrontation with the Empire, Vanguard got in touch with the PRT Switchboard. When asked if she would like to be forwarded to myself or Deputy Director Renick she claimed that it wouldn't be necessary."

She let that hang in the air before continuing, "On this basis, we must judge that Vanguard is going the independent route. At this point in time, it seems that she has decidedly heroic tendencies, so current advice would be to cooperate with her as if she were a member of any other hero team."

"That's a shame," Armsmaster said, "She would have been a more than adequate replacement for Shadow Stalker."

xXx

Dealing with the PRT squad had been easier than I had expected. They didn't ask questions, and I assumed that they had somehow already been updated about the situation they were going to find. I figured that someone had taken a video and uploaded it to the PHO, there were plenty of cape heads who were crazy enough to hang around when a full-blown cape fight was happening just to score some internet points. I'd never understood it. Either way, they had secured the bad guys and made sure that the women they were harassing got home safe. That was all that mattered, even if I had been forced to reveal one of my trump cards- pun not intended.

When the PRT had disappeared I let go of my power and allowed myself to reduce back in size back to my normal bog-standard human Taylor form, my summons disintegrated into motes of silver. My heart was pounding, my adrenaline was through the roof, and I could barely keep myself from bouncing up and down as I walked.

I'd defeated another cape in combat, and all things considered, it hadn't even been that difficult. Sure I'd had to go up to Grade One, but I still had another two grades above that to explore, Marron was comparatively one of the much weaker units that I could turn into when compared to something like the Soul Saver Dragon that I knew was lurking in the depths of my deck. That felt like something that would only ever come out if I had to fight something like an Endbringer, which definitely wasn't something I was eager to think about right now.

I'd made it back up to my bench, my burger and fries were still there but now they were completely stone-cold. I tossed them into a nearby trash can, I was far too wired to eat anyway.

I knew now that I had made the right choice when I turned the PRT down. Being an independent cape was riskier, yes. I didn't have the backing of some national organisation, I wasn't being paid for my troubles, but I was allowed to fight the fights that I wanted to fight. If I had decided to join up with the Wards tonight, what would have happened to those two women? Everything the gross gangsters had been planning, that's what. There hadn't been any other capes in the area who were willing to help, because they would have gotten involved. I had saved them from their fate. That was me, on my own, helping people as a hero.

I shivered against a cold ocean breeze. I didn't want to head back so early, not after I had already done so much good. The night was young, who knew what else I could pull off if I had the chance? But at the same time, I'd left things with my Dad even worse than they had been at the hospital. With the adrenaline of the fight starting to wane, the guilt was settling nicely in its place. I needed to apologise to him… again.

The walk back to my house was as uneventful as the walk to the bench had been in the first place. I walked through the door, kicked off my shoes, and hung my coat. The TV was off now, which meant Dad was probably in bed and my apology would have to wait until the morning. I stretched and let out a satisfied sigh as my shoulder popped. Heroing was tiring work. Anything else could wait until the morning.

xXx

The Plan was not a fragile thing. It twisted and bent and worked around issues as they emerged. As long as she followed its steps exactly, they had a chance. The plan was also in complete and total disarray. The steps were jumping all over the place, and the woman in the suit couldn't help but feel the same way she did when she had first received her powers. Lost in the churn.

Five had become three.