"One step closer and I'll consider myself under attack," I remarked to the empty rooftop behind me.

It didn't reply.

Alright then. I turned my attention back to the building on the opposite side of the street, to the conversations within, marginally more interesting now than five seconds ago. Recalling capes from other parts of the city, just in case. Didn't seem like I'd be welcomed inside anytime soon.

I sighed. I'd never been good with stakeouts, or things like them, and still wasn't. Even when I had a whole life instead of a third, I'd wanted to use my time efficiently, get things done. No matter how much information I let in, just standing around somewhere felt like inaction, and inaction meant room for thoughts to wander. Not something the past me had been able to afford.

Behind my mask, I allowed myself to grimace. Even now, it was still unintuitive to drop my guard. One apocalyptic fight didn't erase a year and a half of killing my emotions with discipline and disconnection. Of repressing what I wanted to do in favor of what needed to be done. Of sacrificing my time, my friends, my people, my identity, all for a single-digit percent chance at stopping the end of the world, which I failed, and to reconnect with my dad, who had been among the earliest casualties.

So stupid.

I tugged at my cloak with my good arm, drawing it closer around me. As much as the memories hurt, as much as my thoughts inevitably veered to guilt and regret, I needed them. They kept me from sliding back into older mindsets, especially in familiar situations, working toward familiar goals. My meeting today was like that. Or maybe confrontation was more accurate. I'd tried making an appointment, but I hadn't exactly been invited.

Behind me, a body that didn't exist lifted its foot.

I moved the same instant, already forming my fields – one just past the edge of the rooftop, its pair inside the building ahead. It took a few seconds before they connected and became portals, but I reached them an instant after they did.

A step off the rooftop dropped me into the front hall of Accord's mansion.

The Victorian-style mansion was very Accord, within and without, even if it wasn't his main headquarters. On the surface, it was dignified, oozing old world charm – the exterior maintained to perfection, the interior timelessly elegant. Beneath the surface, behind wallpaper, under the flooring, and inside hand-crafted furniture, I felt intricate mechanisms operating dart launchers, spears, spike pits, pendulum blades, guillotines, explosives, nerve gas, even a room where the walls could close in and crush you, accompanied by an incinerator to minimize the mess. Completely impractical, some of it, but then this was Accord's idea of a hobby.

I'd gotten the basic picture as soon as I got inside two thousand feet of the estate, but I was getting into the habit of looking with my own eyes too, if only to make my powers a little less obvious. I studied the hallway in front of me, then glanced at the silver tray near the door. My costume didn't have shoes to take off. Would Accord take offense... of course he would.

Did I care?

If I was Skitter, I would've seen courtesy as a display of weakness, harming my position in the negotiations to come. A rationalization, maybe, to protect a confidence built on fear and intimidation. If I was Weaver... I still couldn't see myself humoring a villain's neuroses. In a lot of ways, my time as a hero had been an extension of my time as a warlord. A foundation of pride, upholding the heartless pursuit of a greater goal. Similar pattern, different color.

But me?

Screw it. I wouldn't give a fuck. I'd resolved to be Taylor again, and I was tired of making enemies. His house, his rules. I can be me without being weak.

A portal into a closet six blocks south got me a pair of unused slippers. With courtesy wrapped snugly around my feet, I strode forward.

I navigated through hallways, passing libraries and sitting rooms, meandering left and right to avoid traps that might get past my costume. The rooms I passed weren't all empty – I was aware of a man and two women, all in masks and formal wear. Citrine was one, with her yellow gown and gemstones. Lizardtail was another, though not the Lizardtail I'd met – the reptilian mask was different, and so was the person underneath. The third was a woman in a gray dress with a snake motif. Serpentine.

Not a concern. I had no illusions I could outmaneuver a Thinker like Accord forever – especially not in a place designed for confrontation, with eight Ambassadors in the building alone – but considering he didn't know my powers, one of which let me spy on the office he was giving instructions from? I'd manage.

I turned a corner into an almost empty room, centered around a staircase leading up to the second floor. One of the Ambassadors stood guard in front of it, wearing a green gown, adorned with a bronze brooch shaped like an ornate key. If it was a reference, I didn't get it – didn't fit her power. Two swords hung off her hip, one larger than the other. Those did fit her power.

"You've not been invited," she told me, politely indifferent. "For the sake of formality, will you state your business before we proceed?" With one finger resting on her smaller sword, it rose from its sheath. Straight and slender, no guard.

Morglay, Accord called her. She had a power that reminded me of Rune's, though more compact. She stored telekinesis in objects, reinforcing them, manipulating them, and could choose how that telekinesis interacted with whatever she struck. In her hands, her sword could carve through stone, slap aside cars, pulverize, all without chipping the blade in the slightest. Her reinforcement didn't reach an inviolable level, but to anything without an exotic brute rating, she might as well be swinging a sword-shaped Siberian.

I sighed. If everyone would just cooperate, I'd never fight another human in my life – just the monsters, in human skin or not. But there was only so far this world would let me go with that. "Your boss refuses meeting me until he knows who he's dealing with. I'd rather not wait until he discovers there's nothing to find."

I would've been less forceful, maybe, if Taylor hadn't accelerated my schedule. An inconvenience I couldn't feel too annoyed about – it was a relief to know I wasn't walking all over her. Bad memories of my Wards aside, we needed Taylor to keep wanting to be involved. Capes who avoided conflict got rusty, and speaking as her power, I wasn't ready to find out what that would do to me.

"I see. I hope you weren't expecting Accord to invite you to his office."

"No." I calmly shook my head. With my good left hand, I drew a knife from a pocket. Like my coat, it had a spark of Caster's power inside it – not enough to do anything, but it bridged a gap, letting me bring it when my body became incorporeal. Its weight in my hand alleviated the nagging feeling I was still missing things, incomplete, just a little.

Maybe because it was a butter knife. It was just something Caster grabbed from a drawer while experimenting.

"Like I said, he won't meet me until he has more information. I expect him to investigate."

In his office, Accord spoke two words. Mechanisms moved, muscles tensed. My knife snaked into the path of two poisoned darts, the motion twisting my body out of the curving path of Morglay's telekinetically launched sword. A third dart embedded itself harmlessly in my armor.

I'd come selling information, and Accord was in the market. It just happened that the transaction was shaped like violence. Capes.

Three in the basement, four on the ground floor, Morglay followseither way. Othello with Accord, mirror body unaccounted for. No traps in the basement.

When the floor dropped out from beneath my feet, I let myself fall.

Just as my portals weren't Doormaker's, my clairvoyance wasn't that of his partner. At the fringe of my range, they were comparable. Sight, sound. But the closer to my body, the more detail it gave me. Vibrations in the air, temperature, texture, scent, then taste. Like having bugs in every available space, on every surface, inside every object.

Still falling, I lowered all of the walls between me and that storm of information, subsuming the pale senses of my body. People, place, powers, me – now elements of data, weaving a hurricane. There was a tune to it, steady while I stayed in the eye.

I formed fields, pulled the dart from my armor, then flung it at an incoming anomaly in gravity. One of the Ambassadors, a haze visible only through the light he distorted. Tempest. Flight and protection in his breaker form, with a gravity slam when it expired, stronger the longer he'd been in it. Powerful, but it had a hair trigger – a small dart could set it off, and did.

Even at a distance, the gravity discharge accelerated my fall. No matter. Accord's basement was a massive space, larger than the house itself, with supporting pillars placed at exacting intervals. It was tall enough, and I'd been quick enough.

I fell into my portal, exiting another I'd placed at a ninety degree angle. One moment I was crashing down, the next I was skidding over the ground, on my feet and sprinting at an Ambassador in a black gown. The spatial awareness my power gave me prevented any disorientation.

The woman – Darkstar – threw up a barrage of black lights, moving slowly in my direction. Two other Ambassadors made their moves at the same time. Sand and stone.

Shut-eye, a suited man in a beige dress shirt, could manifest a depression of sand anywhere in his sight, a great swirling whirlpool, with the ability to imprison anything it trapped inside a pocket dimension. Serpentine grew pillars out of existing stone, fast enough to break bone, and she could aim it through a long-range Thinker power.

I traced the projectiles, felt the concrete floor sink and granulate, saw distortions take hold on one of the structural pillars. My opponents were moving, which changed the storm, which shifted the eye. Just had to stay inside. Keep the tune steady.

Fields. Not enough time for them to connect and become portals. So platforms.

I slid under a stone spear, onto a gold hexagon. Two steps per platform, dismissing and creating new pairs for more distance, weaving through a field of black stars. I landed when I passed the whirlpool, turned, ran at my original target. Shut-eye couldn't manifest a new sinkhole immediately. While I didn't need them, I assigned a fraction of my attention to placing fields as obstructions.

In Accord's strategy, Darkstar fit with both the shakers who slowed and restricted, and the decisive powers that ended fights. She could riddle the air with hundreds of lights, technically projectiles, though slow enough I wouldn't call her a blaster. One hit would leave anyone crawling, gasping for air. If she hit someone who was already like that, they didn't get back up.

I didn't know if her power would count weapons as part of the body. So I got closer.

The smallest bubble of my clairvoyance was unlike the others. It didn't report clear, intelligible information. It gave me fragments, vague impressions, shards of images that didn't translate correctly, because even as I was now, I was too human. It didn't reach very far, and unlike the other senses, the range it had didn't fluctuate. Not an inch.

Fifteen point nine-eight feet.

Darkstar's power would not, in fact, treat weapons as part of the body. I carved through her two-hit-kill field with my butter knife, parried her strikes, found her stomach with a slipper-clad foot. The kick knocked her onto one of my fields. She didn't manage to roll off before it became a portal.

One down. Or removed long enough she shouldn't be a factor, stuck in a locked room elsewhere in Accord's mansion.

As I sidestepped another stone spear, I turned my attention to the Ambassadors who'd been trying to get to me – Tempest, Morglay, Lizardtail. They were quickly learning that however fast they ran was also the speed with which they'd headbutt my forcefields. In Tempest's case, wasting his gravity charge. It was slowing down the fight, made it harder for them to make their numbers count.

I had plenty of complaints about my fields. Always six foot across, always hexagons. They took some time to become proper portals, and as forcefields, they weren't sharp, couldn't move, didn't bisect anything living or lifeless. Hated the color. Still, I'd admit you could do a lot with instant forcefields anywhere.

I placed a field in front of me, its pair an inch in front of Shut-eye, and drew my fist back for a punch. Movement in hair on skin over muscle – he'd retreat. I dismissed my fields and recreated them horizontally, tripping both him and Lizardtail upstairs. More than one Ambassador would be nursing bruised shins tonight.

Morglay had made it down to the basement floor, hanging from her floating greatsword. She'd been careful so far, keenly aware she was the weak point to the nigh-invulnerable weapon she wielded. A caution she abandoned when her feet were planted firmly on the ground. Her weapon propelled her at me, faster than I could run. I created a field an inch from her stomach.

She'd been prepared to take the hit. Even with a field knocking the wind out of her, she managed to launch her sword at me, spinning it in a wild tumble. Two gold shields reformed, layered in front of me.

Morglay's greatsword crashed into my fields hilt-first and still shattered the first into a thousand golden crumbs. The second held. A leftover scrap of telekinesis sent the sword skidding across the ground, back to its owner.

Fuck. I didn't let myself react, but I felt it when my field broke. The hollow feeling of a skipped heartbeat, a sting in my head, wetness inside my nose. Pain, when my body was such a minuscule part of my perception? I sharply inhaled and swallowed – my power tasted the blood more than my tongue did. Some kind of backlash. I checked my connection to Taylor. No distress. I could tell she noticed something, though.

Would need to avoid breaking fields. With that condition, that new information and uncertainty, the eye of the storm shrunk. It wasn't any form of precog, just processing, but I could foresee myself struggling down the line. Needed to simplify.

One field in front of me. Tempest and Shut-eye looked around, searching for the other side; Accord had informed them I only made pairs. A second's worth of distraction.

Looking in the wrong place. The other side was in a storeroom five blocks east, facing a weapon rack. I pocketed my knife, reached through, withdrew a small but loaded handgun. Dismiss fields, replace.

One shot at nothing to get a feel for the bullet, map the trajectory. A second to knock Tempest out of his breaker state, sending him tumbling into a field that just turned portal, joining Darkstar. A third shot to take out one of the surveillance cameras near the ceiling, just to make a point. Not a fluke, even firing with just one hand.

I aimed the gun at Shut-eye, Morglay, then tossed it aside and drew my knife again. It sent the better message.

A mental step back let me take in the whole situation. Shut-eye, seconds away from creating a new whirlpool, not an issue. Morglay, still catching her breath, recharging her weapon. Dangerous, but she knew I could both dodge and block her. Darkstar and Tempest, removed from the field. Citrine was upstairs – the other shakers weren't slowing me down enough, so Accord hadn't even tried sending her in. Serpentine was with her, and while her stone snakes hadn't let up, I barely needed to pay attention to them at this point. Othello's mirror body was the one power I couldn't anticipate at range, but I'd shown I could detect it back on the rooftop.

Accord bought good powers. He gave them to decent enough fighters. All the same, I could see why the Nine had torn through them with ease.

I kicked off one of my slippers, noted how it tumbled. Lizardtail finally made it to the basement, swinging open the door at the top of the stairs, great arcs of electricity surging around his hands. He aimed down toward me, the crackles of his lightning intensifying.

Wasted intimidation. Sixteen feet of power sense wasn't much, but like the rest, it was a range that ignored obstructions and reached through portals. I hadn't gone into this blind.

Lizardtail turned away from me at the last second, hurling balls of lightning at his teammates. I was already moving, already deploying fields. A kick sent my remaining slipper into one of the blasts. I caught the other with a portal, redirecting it into my body.

The Lizardtail I'd met had been a healer. His predecessor was less one-dimensional, but still a support cape at his core. Minor boosted strength and stamina, strikes imbued with a weak electric shock, and he could fire balls of lightning that granted that same package to others, with a more powerful effect on dead bodies. Revival so long as the body was still warm.

It tingled. I opened and closed my fist, sparks of electricity running between my fingers. In his office, Accord grit his teeth.

Fields around the stairs blocked Lizardtail from another attempt at aid. I calmly walked toward Shut-eye and Morglay. Their teammate had arrived, but the one reinforced was me. Instead of sidestepping, I decapitated one of Serpentine's concrete snakes with an electrified kick. Attacking morale.

Drive the point home. I waggled my butter knife. I had been playing the cape game, respecting the code. They had come at me no holds barred, because not only was my death an acceptable outcome, Lizardtail's power let them kill first and ask questions later.

In his office, Accord pushed a button and dropped his chair into an evacuation slide. What?

I released Lizardtail to throw up a field at the bottom of the slide. This whole thing was pointless if Accord just left. Nothing should've given him the impression he was in danger.

When the portal deposited him back into his office, he didn't seem surprised. Testing me? Thinking on it, the slide wasn't one of his serious getaways. Maybe he just wanted to see if I'd place him in an infinite slide loop. Would it mean anything to him that I didn't?

Accord spoke two words again, different ones.

The Ambassadors stood down.

Height translated to presence. If people like Defiant and Narwhal affirmed that statement, Accord proved it wrong. He wasn't much taller than the average twelve-year-old, the metal of his mask was complicated rather than intimidating, he wasn't armored in anything but formal dignity, and still my power heard the room revolve around him.

He didn't offer refreshments.

We sat in his office for a while, on opposite sides of his desk, sharing silent contemplation. I imagined he thought it'd make me nervous, or maybe he just wanted to see how I'd react, if I would. I didn't fidget. I had my power, my distractions, my cloak, and not knowing what to do with my hands was half the issue it had ever been.

I waited for him to speak, because I honestly wasn't sure how this would go. I had information, some experience, but not to the point I could call Accord predictable. We met once. As an ally to the Undersiders, he hadn't lasted a month.

He'd once told me we were very similar people. I hadn't agreed as Skitter and didn't agree now, but on a level, I could see why he believed it, and it gave me a way to frame this situation. Outwardly calm, collected, a leader who balanced fear with fairness, ruthless with reasonable. Highly personal ideas of fair and reasonable, no doubt. Him and me both.

It came down to that balance. Would he be ruthless, or had I done enough to make him reasonable? Insults on one side of the scale – inviting myself, winning. On the other side, the little courtesies, and me. The fight had given me value, had made me dangerous, and I was throwing those coins on the scale. I'd come here needing something. He could make leverage his price.

As with fighting, this world wasn't so kind I could stop spending myself.

Altogether, I was fairly confident Accord would at least hear me out. He was sitting within sixteen feet of me, and unlike the Ambassadors, his connection to his passenger was strong. What passed through it didn't feel like anger. Incessant ticking, though quiet, like putting a watch to your ear.

When Accord finally spoke, his voice was strained nonetheless. "I've decided to do you the exceptional courtesy of letting you explain yourself."

More adversarial than I was expecting. I dialed back my expectations; this wasn't the Accord I'd met. Here and now, he was in his own domain, at the height of his power. His reputation was essential, his unyielding nature integral to it. "I imposed on you prematurely due to... circumstances that restrict me. I regret not being able to be more specific than I was in my message."

The ticking replaced itself with deafening church bells. A muscle twitched toward a button.

With self-control visible in the shifting layers of his mask, Accord took a deep breath. "In the same message you request an invitation, you name yourself Assassin. You know who I am, even though I received no word of anyone asking. You intrude on a place that isn't yours to be in, you take my time in hopes of being given more, you flout manners for the opportunity to flaunt them. It's that dissonance I'm asking about, understand?"

I violently restrained my first instinct for dealing with condescending villains – pushing back, going on the offensive somehow. As Skitter or Weaver, I would've had options. As 'Assassin', all I had right now was threat, and I'd lose if I used it, or win in a way that wasn't worth winning. I'd had enough of that last time.

I had to remind myself Accord wasn't an enemy. He was someone who wasn't an ally yet. This conversation, it wasn't something I needed to win. The goal was to go home tonight feeling like I'd won. Completely different things.

Me and not weak.

"I accepted this name with an intention to make it mine, craft it into something that isn't just associated with death and threat. I realize I'm not there yet." I pressed on when Accord didn't respond, "To this world, I'm not who I think I am, and to me, I'm not yet the person I intend to become. Call it liminality. There's dissonance because I'm dissonant, and I need a foundation to start fixing that. It's a large part of why I approached you."

"Presumptuous."

"I won't deny there's an arrogance to it." Let him imagine that was my particular brand of madness. Self-aware arrogance was tame as far as cape quirks went.

Long seconds passed. "Liminality, was it? You would argue your... problematic state is transitory. Something you're attempting to correct."

I nodded.

A longer pause, then, with a click, the clockwork shifted. Ticking slower. "Within the next twenty-four hours, I expect fifty thousand dollars delivered to this location, as restitution."

"Okay." Had Accord deduced something about my resources to arrive at that sum, or did he just base it on how trivial theft was with my powers?

Accord raised a finger. "I'd be remiss if I led you to believe my forgiveness can be purchased, Assassin. The money is for damages and my time. For the insult, you will perform one task for me."

Pushing for more because I accepted his fine too easily? No, didn't matter. Owing him a favor wasn't a bad thing. He'd want to spend it before any betrayal.

"I have conditions," I said. Had to push back some, or it'd set a tone, lose any chance of respect. "Short term work only, twelve hours or less. Nothing public. My powers aren't associated with crime or villainy, and I intend to keep it that way. No harming innocents. No drugs. No murder."

"Despite the name?" Accord leaned forward on his desk. Testing me.

"Despite it. I have the resolve, but if a cape with my powers starts killing regularly... in the long term, it would cause more problems than it solves."

"Indeed. Hm." Approval? "I can assume your demonstration against my Ambassadors was not some limited period of heightened power?"

"It wasn't."

"Then I accede to your conditions." Accord took a fountain pen from his desk and wrote my conditions on a pad of paper, in flowing handwriting neat enough to call calligraphy. "Before you leave today, you will provide me with two different ways of contacting you."

"I intended to."

"Good." Accord stood from his chair and held out his hand. "I'm pleased we were able to balance matters."

I looked at his hand. His right. With my left arm, I lifted up my cloak.

Accord's mask reconfigured into a grimace. "Ah. I suspected, but... a shame. Your efforts to hide it from my sight are appreciated."

That... wasn't actually intended. Had I kept my stump hidden throughout the fight? Fuck. Apparently hiding signs of weakness was so ingrained I didn't even think about it anymore. It was a happy accident here and now, but I wasn't sure about what it implied about my ability to change.

"Is healing one of the things you were hoping to request from me?" Accord continued, surprising me a little. I'd half expected him to suggest balancing me by taking a saw to the other side. "Old injuries are often an issue for such powers."

The idea was tempting – I did share a city with Panacea – but I needed to know more about how my body functioned first. I could make do with fields in the meantime. "No, though I appreciate the offer. I'm pursuing some options myself."

"Very well," Accord said, clearly reluctant he had to leave a flaw uncorrected. "Then tell me, what can I do for you?"

I drew a note from a pocket. He gave it a glance over and immediately began transcribing – writing with my left wasn't anything I'd willingly write home about, or anywhere.

The items listed on the note were... not unimportant, but not the full breadth of what I'd gone to Accord for. As a group, we had power, were building reputation. We had money and ways to get more. What we lacked were connections. I had plenty of doubts about going to Accord for them, but in terms of connections, he was the biggest nearby fish that wasn't Coil. The ties to Cauldron were worrying, but Accord had no reason to volunteer me to them, and if Cauldron was already interested, it wasn't like they really needed to go through Accord.

All complicated considerations aside, I needed someone competent, and Accord was a Thinker whose work had earned Tattletale's – probably grudging – respect. I couldn't think of higher praise.

Accord finished transcribing my list, wiped his pen, then tapped it on his desk. "Regarding the last requirement of the first item... I cannot guarantee anything, you understand. It wouldn't be feasible to account for every eventuality. Impossible, in this case."

"It's enough if you can get me reasonable doubt. I have some minor talent at concealment myself."

"Would that be the reason you've not listed a discreet plastic surgeon?"

"I'll leave it to your imagination."

He made an additional note. "And what forms of payment did you envision, should I arrange these items for you?"

"Cash or work. I can also offer silk clothing." I waved my hand over my costume. "Black widow silk, though more durable than that due to a quirk of the manufacturing. You'll understand if I don't share the specifics of a teammate's power. I can tell you it wouldn't need special maintenance."

Accord eyed the silk, mild interest in body and mind. "Eighty thousand dollars and one suit of quality equal to yours, to my exact specifications." Eighty thousand? It wasn't a sum I couldn't pay, but combined with the fifty he already expected, it'd wipe out most of the funds Caster had collected. "As an alternate offer, the suit, twenty thousand dollars, and one hour and fifty minutes of your service, performing two tasks under my instruction immediately after this meeting."

"What tasks?"

Accord slid open a drawer, smooth enough human hearing wouldn't hear it. From it he withdrew two folders and put them on the desk, taking a moment to ensure even spacing and right angles. He indicated each in turn. "Combat, theft."

The first contained familiar faces – masks. An obvious test, probably to see how I fared against more resilient opponents, or ones shaped less human. I'd actually forgotten they were in Boston at this point. No real objections.

The second folder was more interesting. A file I'd read more than once as Weaver. Considering the grief caused by his power in the wrong hands last time, I'd been meaning to address him anyways.

I looked at Accord and nodded. "Let's talk details."

An hour and fifty-five minutes later, I left Boston behind me, running through portal after portal, feeling strangely light. I'd picked up some additional worries, but today had been a step forward. Progression.

While I still felt the weight of too many things to do, I'd dealt with not enough things before, and that had been worse. Every day preparing, every day feeling less prepared. It was arrogant, it was selfish, but I felt reassured to have a role in the things to come. A direction. Part of me was tired of it all, but I still wanted to help, was still a proud person at heart, and I was capable of being monstrous. Three very different parts of me that all thought I was better than sitting on the sidelines.

But maybe this time, knowing what was coming, I wouldn't lose sight of the little things. To be a teammate and not a taskmaster. To do the good guy thing right, or as right as I could without betraying who I was and wanted to be. Caster might say I was prioritizing poorly, but frankly, that was another thing I would allow myself to not give a fuck about. If I was going to be me again, I was going to be selfish. A more human selfish, now.

I was going to do this in a way that would let me live with myself afterward. Other selves included.

It shouldn't be too much to ask.