My hands shook as I grasped onto the teacup like a lifeline. Charlotte and I were sitting in her house's living room.

"Your powers…" Charlotte tried to ask.

"January." I replied. "That day." I didn't want to think about that day. Walking into the school after winter break, seeing the smug look on Julia's face as I realized that yet another friend was going to betray me. The smell of my locker after winter break. The feeling of my hair being pulled as somebody grabbed it. The sound of everybody in the hallway ignoring my pleas for help.

"Hey, you okay?" Charlotte asked me, snapping me out of things.

"Yeah. Sorry," I said. "Had a flashback."

"You don't need to apologize for having trauma," said Charlotte, pulling me into a hug.

"So, the other night, was that your first time?" Charlotte asked me.

I nearly choked on my tea from how she worded that..

"Yeah," I said, coughing on the tea.

Charlotte started slapping on my back to help with the cough. "Don't worry, it happens to everyone," she said, wryly.

"Thanks." I said.

"Well, for what it's worth, you looked like a pro out there," Charlotte said.

"Glory Girl said the same thing," I said.

"Glory Girl huh?" Charlotte remarked. "Don't forget about all of us little people when you become a famous superhero."

"Don't exactly feel like a superhero." I muttered.

I nearly jumped as Charlotte's mom walked into the house, her hand trembling as she was carrying a note.

"Mom?" Charlotte asked, "what's wrong?"

"It's another Empire 88 rally." Charlotte's mom said. "Robertson Square this time."

My heart started racing. Robertson Square was one of the working class neighborhoods in the docks, an area that was not part of the Empire 88's usual turf of downtown, and one of the few remaining neighborhoods in Brockton Bay that still had a sizable Jewish community. 'Was this an expansion move for them or were they just showing the flag?'

That was one of the downsides of living in a city that was considered the Mecca for white supremacists. Every so often, a bunch of Neo-Nazis would come in from all over the country and hold rallies in the city so they could beat their chests and act self-important while everybody else ignored them.

Because of that, areas of the city that, according to mom and dad, were once vibrant working class neighborhoods became ghost towns as nobody felt safe to go out after dark.

"That's… not right." I said. "Is there some kind of counter protest planned?"

"There is." Mrs. Raimi said, "Why? Are you planning on going?"

"I am, yeah." I said. "Also I was gonna talk to my dad since he's the shop steward for the ILA Local 795. You know, show some solidarity."

"That's…" Mrs. Raimi started, "actually not a bad idea."

I wasn't sure what to say for a second before we were interrupted by Charlotte's phone going off.

"Aaaaaand Ferguson sent me another oven picture." Charlotte remarked, looking at her phone.

"Seriously?" I asked.

"Yup." She added.

"Why does he even have your number?" I asked.

"Emma Barnes gave it to him." Charlotte said. "Back in freshman year I tried to get them to back off of you, and Emma threatened to give my cell phone number to the empire kids at school. I assumed that since she was friends with Sophia that it was a bluff. It wasn't"

That gave me pause for a second. I knew that Emma had turned on me for reasons I never understood, but I didn't think that she'd go that far to keep people from being friends with me.

As I walked back home from Charlotte's house, I was idly turning the burner phone Vicki had insisted I buy over and over in my hand. I knew I was going to talk to dad about this, see if the dockworkers would be interested in counter-protesting. Was bringing in Glory Girl going to cross a line?

I thought I had known how bad it was to live in a city with a gang like Empire 88, but hearing Charlotte talk about the kind of day to day reality that exists when you're Jewish in a city that neo-nazis loved to flock to. According to Charlotte, every Jewish person in the Bay could tell you about a synagogue they used to go to that had been burned down.

I hadn't bothered asking Charlotte why her family hadn't moved out of Brockton Bay. I suspected that the answer would be the same as my dad's for not moving to greener pastures with the dockworkers. The ILA had been in Brockton Bay long before the Empire 88, and so had the Raimi family.

Suddenly I felt like the biggest idiot, of course I should call in Glory Girl.

My thumb hit the call button on the phone.

I held the phone up to my ear and waited for her to pick up. While I waited I used my bugs to make sure that nobody was in earshot of me. The coast was clear.

"Smello, this is Glory Girl." Came the superheroine's voice on the phone.

"Glory Girl, this is Weaver." I said, keeping my voice low. I knew there was nobody around me within earshot, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

"Weaver! It's good to hear from you." the bubbly teen replied over the phone. "Hey Crystal, it's that bug girl I was telling you about, Weaver" She seemed to say to somebody else over the phone, Laserdream, if I remembered New Wave's cape roster correctly.

"I just got word about the Empire." I said. "They're planning a rally in Robertson Square on the 20th."

"Fuck." Swore Glory Girl on the other end of the line. "That's well outside of their regular territory."

"There's a counter-protest planned by some of the members of the community, but I was hoping that if we got enough people to outnumber them then we could remind the Empire that they're not welcome in Brockton Bay."

"Yeah I'd love to help with that." Glory Girl said. "Do you mind if some of the other members of New Wave tag along?"

"Yeah that sounds fine." I said, tentatively. Truthfully I doubted anybody else besides Vicki would be there, but it didn't hurt to ask.

When I got home I saw Dad's car in the driveway; good, he was home.

"Hey Dad!" I said.

"In the kitchen Taylor!" Dad replied.

Well, it was now or never.

"Hey Dad. Can I ask you for a favor?" I asked, nervousness creeping into my voice.

"Taylor, are you alright?" He asked.

"Yeah I'm fine." I replied, reflexively. "Anyway, uh… I was hanging out with Charlotte after school today and I heard from her mom that the Empire 88 was going to have a rally in Robertson Square, and that the people there were going to be holding a counter protest to drown them out. So I was wondering if the Dockworkers would be interested in showing up to the counter-protest."

"Slow down Taylor." Dad said.

"The Empire 88 is holding a rally in Robertson Square." He said.

"And the people who live there are staging a counter protest against them."

I nodded.

"And you wanted the dockworkers to come to the counter-protest as well, as a show of solidarity."

"Yeah." I said, gulping. Why was this so hard. I didn't get nervous using my bugs to scare gangsters, but asking my dad for this favor made me freeze up.

"I don't see why not." He said. "When is it?"

"The twentieth." I answered, kicking myself for not mentioning the date earlier.

I just hoped that I wouldn't look like a naive idiot when nobody showed up.