"Okay, so," Vega said, turning to face me in the alley, "there's a few ways we can do this."

"What?"

"People usually freak out if I just go for it, so I got into the habit of asking first. So I can run you through them, or you can take dealer's choice."

I hesitated. She wasn't making any sense right now. Do what? Run me through huh? My mind raced at the possibilities. I started to wonder if this had been some kind of set-up, for whatever reason, which only made my muted panicking intensify.

Apparently my silence translated to 'dealer's choice' to her. She shrugged, and then the next thing I knew I'd been scooped up in her arms in a princess carry and we were rising into the air. She barked a laugh at my undignified squeak. "Don't worry," she said, as we rose past the rooftops, twenty feet in the air now, "you're actually in the safest-" thirty feet "-place in the city right now. Vega Airlines-" forty feet and moving forward "-has yet to drop a passenger. I mean, first time for everything, but-"

She lurched down and to one side, and I damn near lost form in her arms, then she straightened back out. I swatted her on the shoulder for snickering and almost hurt my hand doing it. "See? Short of a guided missile or two you're gonna be just fine. Now let's get some potatoes in us."

"H-hold on," I sputtered, barely hanging on to my stomach by the rope of my esophagus, "what part of town is this place in? I left- guh -left my stuff just west of here."

"Oh, it's in that strip between downtown and the Boardwalk, near all the brownstone houses. We can go grab your stuff first, if you want."

"Please." I didn't trust my throat to let anything more out.

She followed where I pointed, and when she was taking my directions, once I wasn't just at her mercy, my insides settled down some. Now that I could bear to look around the view was stellar: I could see the general curve of the bay from this high, the points where dour concrete and brick gave way to moonlit waves, where the arches and spires of the Rig bore the brunt of the sea winds. It wasn't the glowing beacon it'd been before they'd stopped running the shields, but I'd never gotten to see it from this angle. There was something weirdly intimate about that, and about seeing dirty rooftops normally hidden from sight, like catching your cousin smoking weed, or hearing a teacher cry behind a locked door. Things I wasn't meant to be privy to but which uncovered a new layer of depth. My conceptualization of the city felt a little richer for it.

She let me down at the mouth of the alley I'd first changed in and waited outside, though she continued to speak to me even as I ducked behind the dumpster. "You can change into civvies if you want, but you don't have to. They don't mind serving capes. Well, they more than 'don't mind' but I'll let you see for yourself."

I crouched there, backpack in hand, knotted in indecision. I was starting to recognize I'd asked her to bring me here in part because now that I had my things I could just run off. I doubted even she could make me stay if I so decided, and there was a tugging in my chest like a compass needle pulled toward the safety of my room, my bed. It would be such an easy thing, to just go.

"Hey, does- you can take your gunk out of things, right? Like, clothes? I only have one of this jacket and I don't want it to stain if I turn off my- oh, I think some of it just dissolved. Still damp, though. Weird."

It was stupid, that I was still struggling so much with this. It wasn't uncharted territory anymore, it shouldn't be so hard. I'd come out to Charlotte already, and we'd been friends for months by then. I'd known Vega for all of a half hour. If it went bad I'd be losing next to nothing, in that regard. The logical thing to do would be to tell her now, to walk out in my usual clothes and rip the band-aid off quick.

"I just realized I never asked you your cape name! Sorry, rude of me, I know, but we were caught up in the whole getting away thing. And the… me almost beating you up thing. Again, my bad."

I exited the alley in costume, backpack held in front. "Well, I haven't come up with one yet, actually. I'm… not great with names." That was true; even with Charlotte's help I had yet to find something I liked better than Taylor, but as a girl's name. Maybe it was because Mom had chosen it, but all the alternatives I'd come up with had fallen short.

"Really?" She picked me up again, and this time experience softened the impact of takeoff on my insides. "You'd better think of one soon, then. Capes without names always get stuck with the worst ones. All it takes is one villain talking shit to a crowd, or a half-assed temp designation and a press release, and then you're something like 'Dumbell' forever."

"There's not a lot of oil-related names that don't sound absurdly villainous."

She shifted her gaze from the cityscape to me. "Ooh, I didn't know it was oil. I can see it now, but I kind of thought it was… well, a bunch of different colors of paint or something. That shimmer it's got is really cool." She went quiet for a beat. "You're right though, that does make it harder. You could go with something besides oil names maybe? One that's more about the colors, or the general liquid aspect."

I frowned under my facemask. "Not much better. It's pitch black half the time. And the liquid- I mean, most of the good ones have to be taken already. What's left, Melter? Puddle?"

"Puddle's taken, actually. Hero in… Alabama, I think." She shook her head. "Southerners choose the weirdest cape names."

"Huh."

"Anyways," she said, beginning to descend, "let's shelve that. Right now we need to teach you our roots."

Surprised, I looked around. We were passing over the brownstone neighborhoods already, on course to drop into the shops and restaurants trapped on the cultural fringe. It hadn't seemed like we were flying that fast. Maybe being above all the little points of reference had skewed that perception, though.

Vega landed us in front of a hole in the wall sort of place, one where the owner clearly lived in the small apartment above it. The door was a ruddy shade of brown that didn't quite match the faded bricks, and a sign overhead read "Hash-It-Out Diner" in blocky lettering. That felt like a miscategorization; the impression I got was closer to what I'd seen of dive bars deep in the Docks, at least in terms of atmosphere.

Going inside only emphasized the likeness, and I found myself at one end of a long rectangular stretch of wood panelling, red seat cushions and stools, and low, moody lighting. A counter took up the left wall while cramped booths and framed photos cluttered the right. Bathrooms capped both just before the corners and the far wall boasted a big set of double doors.

Of the scant few others inside, only one was bobbing his head to the old-school rock playing over the speakers, a stocky bearded man with hair more salt than pepper standing behind the counter, wiping it down. Mounted above his head on hooks in the wall was the biggest, meanest shotgun I'd ever seen. For a reason I couldn't put my finger on it seemed more a reimagined sword of Damocles than a goad for Chekov.

He nodded at Vega as we entered, gave me an appraising look, and asked her, in a scratchy Boston accent, "You bring trouble this time?"

Vega waved him off. "C'mon Hash, she's a new face but she's no screwball. You don't have anything to worry about."

He eyed my hair and arms. "Is that stuff gonna stain my seats?"

I shook my head.

He shrugged and went back to his work. "Room's free. I'll have two skillets of browns going in a minute. Anything else?"

Vega turned to me.

"How are the eggs?" I asked her.

"Dunno, I'm not big on eggs. Everything else is good, though."

"They're fine," Hash huffed, frowning at a stubborn grease stain.

"Two over easy, then."

"And some sausage and bacon, too," Vega added.

Instead of writing our orders down or getting started on them just yet, Hash simply nodded. "Picture?"

I looked to Vega, who directed my attention to the photos on the wall. Looking closer, they were pictures of various capes taken in the diner, more than half of whom I recognized, though nearly as many eluded me. Miss Militia and Armsmaster, looking far younger than in recent photos. Sere after his swearing in, in his updated costume. Prism after her transfer to Brockton. A woman in a welding mask talking to a boy made of metal.

"Oh," I said. "Maybe on our way out?"

"Mm."

Vega seemed to take that as confirmation enough and dragged me over to the double doors. They led to a room maybe a third the size of the rest of the place, most of which was taken up by a polished wood table and matching chairs. The lights here were a little brighter and when Vega locked and closed the doors I couldn't hear any of the sounds from the rest of the diner.

The main feature of the room, though, was the picture hanging across from the door. Significantly bigger than the others, this one captured a somber, still moment between two capes that should never have been able to sit together and face each other peaceably. On the left, Challenger, before his disappearance, done up in his full knight-errant suit of armor, all shining silver and forest green accents and tabard. On the right, Marquis, former major crime lord and one of the first villains to be sent to Tartarus instead of the Birdcage, wearing black and white finery, an intricate mask of bone, and a passive smile. Neither looked particularly happy to be there but the subtle tensions in their postures weren't quite the hostile sort.

"This was in the nineties," Vega explained, "when the Teeth hired the Slaughterhouse Nine to kill heroes. This meeting happened after the Nine got bored and went on a killing spree. Had to figure a way to drive them out together."

I nodded, knowing what she was talking about. I may not have been old enough to remember myself but a city never forgot its run-ins with the Slaughterhouse.

"So, yeah," she said, taking a seat. "Welcome to cape history. This place is one of the longest-standing neutral territories in the area. One of the last ones left, too."

I sat across from her and placed my backpack in the seat adjacent, not ready to tackle the implications of the picture just yet. Instead I asked, "What happened to the others?" I wasn't actually that curious but I needed to keep the conversation going, keep it from veering towards talk of unmasking to each other as long as possible. If I was lucky, the food would burn and we could leave hungry but still amicable, or perhaps she'd get an urgent call and have to leave before we reached the point of no return. I wasn't one to bank on longshots but I was rather literally backed into a corner.

She sighed. "Part of it is that, these places are most important for when there's a threat that calls for all hands, and ever since… you know."

I did.

"So there hasn't been as much need for them. Or there has, but it's come in different forms, and when they're sporadic and variable like that it's harder to get people to accept they might have to eat near a dangerous supervillain, especially civilians. You can usually get them to put up with that for the sake of contingencies against known quantities, but hypothetical eventual A- and S-class threats don't have the same 'umph'.

"The other part of it is, everyone's starting to get anxious about what's going to happen now that the grace period is coming to a close. Capes are worried either the PRT or other capes will start going too far, targeting civ identities or breaking other rules, and places like these would be easy targets. Capes stop dropping by after patrols or jobs or whatever, customers leave because there's no one to gawk at, the places sink."

"I never got the identity part in the first place," I interjected, tilting my head. "As in, if they've arrested a villain, why don't they release their names? I'd think it'd make it harder for them to pick up where they left off, if they escaped."

Her body language became animated and I could tell I'd touched on something important to her. "That's part of why I asked you here to talk, actually."

"Not for the food?"

"Both," she said, gesturing dismissively. "I'm hitting all sorts of birds with this stone. Point is, you're new, and I'm assuming you don't have any other cape friends yet, so you need someone to teach you about the unwritten rules."

Under the table my hands were clasped, transferring oil between them in a nervous fidget. If there was a code of conduct for parahumans and I'd kept going out not knowing about it, I might've eventually gotten myself into trouble. Maybe I already had, though I figured my night would be going a lot worse if that had been the case. More than anything though I was angry with myself for not doing more research. It wasn't a very rational anger but that didn't help to lessen it.

"There's a lot if you list out specifics, but it breaks down to three things." She rattled them off on her fingers. "One, no fucking around with or in neutral ground or truce periods, i.e. places like this or fights against the biggest bads. Two, no going too far, meaning no huge attacks on civilians, no really heinous stuff like sexual assault or mind control, and, if you can help it, no killing. And three-" and here she leaned in, voice lowering just enough to be noticeable "-you don't ever go after the civ identity or family of other capes. It's different if they've already broken the rules themselves; in those cases everyone else is supposed to come down on them like a ton of bricks, but otherwise? Off. Limits."

I had a follow-up question about the lattermost rule ready but thought better of it.

She straightened up and continued. "I know some of this sounds like it puts unfair limits on the heroes but it goes both ways. If every cape had to worry about getting attacked out of costume twenty-four/seven, at best we'd all quietly go nuts and at worst we'd end up destroying half the country in pre-emptive war. The rules keep us steady enough to live day-to-day and to buckle down together when we have to."

I looked to the picture.

"Yeah. Like that."

I stared at Challenger's captured image. For a moment I wished his helmet didn't hide so much of his expression, that I could glean some insight as to how it felt for him to sit at that table. I wondered how much the gravity of the situation was stifling the animosity, if there were still things simmering under the surface he couldn't get rid of. The interest faded but my gaze lingered.

"You've got something on your mind," Vega said. "Don't worry, there's no dumb questions."

I considered the concerns on my tongue a moment before voicing them. "You're being awfully forthcoming with all of this. I get that it's important, and that I'm part of the not-team thing now, but… it just seems like a lot of lengths to go to for someone you just met. You don't know anything about me."

"It's really not a lot at all," she said. "Trust me, I'd be here right now even if you weren't. And besides, I know enough to do this much."

I stiffened. "Like what?"

"Like that you helped Rachel out and got her closer to trusting you in minutes than I managed in the first few days." At my tilt of the head she added, "Bitch, that is. Don't worry, her identity's public. Not well known, since she doesn't cause much trouble, but still. Something we relate on. So there's that, and then… well, even after I used my aura on you, you stuck around." She shrugged. "Says enough for me."

Just as I opened my mouth to speak again a hard one, two knock on the doors interrupted. My heart leapt into my throat.

"Ugh, finally. I'm so hungry." Vega rose to open them with a bit more haste than necessary, accepted a pair of plates and called, "You're a lifesaver, Hash!" to his back. She set one at her seat and one in front of me, closed and locked the door, and reseated herself.

She flipped her hood back, revealing a tight, intricate-looking platinum blonde bun, and had both hands on her mask when she stopped. "Oh, wait, shit." Her arms lowered to the table, tapping on the wood. "I knew I was forgetting something." She took a breath. "So, listen. I've kind of been assuming you'd already figured out who I am."

Fuck, I thought. Here we go. "Er, the aura sort of gave it away."

"Thought so." She held up her hands. "And I'm fine with you knowing, I am, but you have to hear something first. Remember how I'm not supposed to cape again yet, not until I'm eighteen?"

"I assumed you'd worked something out." My voice nearly broke at the end but I passed it off with a small cough. It would probably go over well. She's been nice enough so far. A little overwhelming, but.

"If by that you mean I found a way around it, then yeah." She sighed. "There's a bunch of variations on the Alexandria package out there, but the differences between each can be totally obvious or something more subtle. For me the big one is my aura, and I spent a while learning to repress that. So when I'm Vega, as long as I keep a lid on that, I can be just another flying brute."

"And that works?" It would probably go over terribly. Disgust, distrust, maybe even spite. Disappointment comes in many packages.

She made a vague gesticulation. "Sort of. There are some people that know and more that don't, but the thing is as long as I'm wearing the mask, the rules say they can't call me out on it. Which brings me to this." A pause. "I could just pull my mask halfway up to eat, hold on to plausible deniability, but I want to unmask to you, if that's okay. It's…"

She trailed off, struggling for the words, and I found it striking that she was doubting herself at all. She'd seemed so unerringly self-assured until just then.

"...I haven't made many friends, these days. There's Rachel, and she's… fine, but I know she likes her dogs more than me, and she has a lot of dogs. You're quiet and shy, but you did right when it counted, and hanging out like this has been nice. I think that's worth going out on a bit of a limb for."

I didn't know what to say.

She brought her hands back to her mask, held them there for a moment, then pulled it up and off her head and set it down on the table, off to the side.

The first detail that stood out to me was in her eyes; they were a paler blue than they appeared in photos on cape sites. Most of those had been from old shoots with New Wave, so I'd only ever seen her smile in static, big and brash, her pearly teeth on display. To watch her lips curl up without parting almost made me think there was someone else sitting across from me, though it carried the same undercurrent of bright sincerity.

"Victoria Dallon. Nice to meet you."

I hesitated.

Her brows rose. "Oh, you don't have to reciprocate if you don't want to. I can look away if you want to eat, or head out when I'm done with mine, so-"

"No, I just-" My teeth ground my lip, breath thick and wet in my chest. A twitch of thought retracted the oil on my arms and head, and I pressed my hands to my hairline and dragged them back, retrieving most of the oil in my curls through my palms and scalp. I then reached over to my backpack, pulled out my glasses, and started to turn them over in nervous fingers, restless, before setting them in front of me. "I have to tell you something."

The goggles came off first, leaving my vision blurry. The facemask came second. I could have just pulled it down instead of taking it off all the way, but I was already on edge and without my face stretching the fabric it'd be too tight around my neck, feel too much like hands, squeezing. Only after I replaced my glasses did I meet her eyes.

"I'm Taylor Hebert, and… I'm trans."

"Oh."

"...Yeah."

Her eyes flickered, probably unconsciously, over my features. My face, a little long. My jaw, a bit angular. My chest, flat. My throat. I didn't yet blame her for it, it was something most did without thinking, but I went rigid regardless. "If that's a problem…"

She startled, and rushed to say, "No! I mean, no, it's not a problem, I just, I've never known anyone who was, um, yeah, and so…" Her lips pressed together. "I might mess things up, sometimes. I probably will, once or twice, but if you're willing to put up with that?"

After a beat, I nodded.

Her smile widened, just a fraction crooked. Human. "Then I'm willing to learn."

A quiet spanned between us. My eyes searched her expression. Hers met mine. I smiled back.

She cleared her throat and picked up her fork. "Well, let's get at all this before it's cold, yeah?"

I mirrored her, happy to move on, and started in on the eggs.

"Actually, hold up."

My fork hovered in front of my mouth. A shot of worry ran through me.

"Before you fill up on those, try the hash browns. Seriously, they're mind-blowing."

My heart sagged in relief. I laughed a little. "Fine." I scooped up a forkful and sent it down the hatch. It was bolder than I'd been ready for, with a healthy amount of spice and maybe a hint of garlic, too, but the surprise was a pleasant one. I swallowed. "Hm. Not bad."

Victoria rolled her eyes. "'Not bad,' she says." There was good humor in them.

Yeah, I thought, trying a bite of both browns and egg. Not bad.