Chapter 136 - A Walk with the Laughing Man Part 2

(Marvel, DC, images, manhuas, and every anime that will be mentioned and used in this story are not mine. They all belong to their respective owners. The main character "Karito/Adriel Josue Valdez" and the story are mine)

3rd POV

Stars slid by like streetlights.

Peter hung in the black, a lean figure rimmed in the cold glow of his own HUD. The suit's faceplate read the Demacia Cluster in green hashes and soft tones: planetary mass, magnetosphere shape, lane traffic around the jump beacons. Below, the nearest planet turned like a coin between fingers—oceans cut with light, coastlines braided in rail and glass. Cities gleamed like spilled circuitry.

SILVERMERE CITY // ORBITAL PASS 1

His lenses kissed the name across his vision, then began pulling threads. He let the Guardian side of his brain open a little—just a little—enough to taste the narrative undercurrent.

Names surfaced the way constellations do when you stop trying to see them.

Seraphine.

Senna.

Orianna.

"Got you," he murmured. The suit caught the sound and pretended it mattered.

He felt the other doors line up—future-script, possible beats, cliff notes waiting like a trap—so he closed his hand, mentally, before he grabbed more than he meant to. No peeking ahead. Not with him in the water. The last thing he needed was Nyarlathotep feeling the tug of someone else turning pages. They both worked off the same shelves when it came to meta-awareness; the difference was appetite.

Peter took one more lazy loop over the night side, watching thunderstorms blink in the blue-black like sea creatures. The ward he'd left wrapped around Earth hummed in the back of his mind like a polite refrigerator a galaxy away. He'd promised "fast," promised "careful," promised to make boring their brand. The best way to keep a promise is to not trip it on the way out.

He cut burn with a thought. Vector thrusters whispered awake along his boots; the Iron-Spider chassis flexed, rebalancing mass as he tipped from orbit into atmosphere.

He didn't make a show of reentry. No comet tail. The symbiote skin distributed heat as neatly as a thought. From the street, if you happened to be looking up at precisely the right thread of sky, you might have seen a darker darkness pause against the stars and then fall.

The fall was the good part.

He came in on the city's blind side, skirting the transit lanes where the sky trams stitched neighborhoods together in glowing ribs. Silvermere had that clean, futuristic look the Star Guardian universe liked to pretend was effortless. Towers didn't spike so much as lean toward each other. Holo-panels wrapped corners in tides of ad and weather. Drone kiosks cruised like lazy bees, dispensing noodles, legal advice, and replacement socks. The night was full of sound, but none of it was angry—a whole metropolis on its indoor voice.

He flared speed at the last second.

For a heartbeat he was a meteor threaded onto a needle. Then he wasn't. He hung in the breath of the city, a centimeter above a corporate rooftop garden that thought it was a forest, palm fronds and ferns shivering in the artificial breeze. His HUD took a last, polite look around. No eyes up here but maintenance drones and a single pigeon that glared like he'd interrupted a meeting.

"Excuse me," Peter told it, because manners were free. He tipped forward off the edge.

The alley was a wind tunnel that smelled like rain and cutting boards. He fell through billboard light—Seraphine's face smiling mid-note, neon hair streaming—and let the symbiote peel back from armor to denim as the ground approached. The suit obeyed like a living tide. Matte plates nested into smooth black, then receded entirely. The spider on his chest folded into a t-shirt logo no one would look at twice. His boots forgot they were rockets and remembered rubber.

He hit the ground with a soft thud, knees bending just enough to tell the pavement they were friends. The alley spat him out at street level, where Silvermere's main thoroughfare walked itself. People here moved like they belonged to the place: kids with holo-pets that flickered between animal and star, couples arguing gently about noodles, a guy on a courier board skimming a foot off the ground with a glowing box balanced on one knee.

Peter blended without trying. The symbiote always did better work when it got to be clothing instead of weapon. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, mostly to keep them from waving. If anyone asked why he was here, he'd say "work" and mean it. If anyone asked follow-up questions, he'd keep it sciencey. The rules traveled with him: only he could touch a Dark unless it decided to reduce itself to something two-dimensional enough to be punched. If that conversation ever started, it would start with physics metaphors and end with moving people out of the way.

The city tugged at him the way new places do when you're pretending you're not a tourist. He let himself look.

Transit lines ran like veins along the ground, glowing soft blue where the magnetic trains would sleep until morning. Vending pylons offered solar umbrellas and biodegradable confetti. The crosswalks were smart; they felt you coming and cuffed your ankle with a soft white light so you didn't get lost in your phone and wander into a bus. He really liked that. Somewhere a street musician played with a drop-in orchestra of strangers—people set their bags down and played three notes and moved on. The song never finished. It kept breathing.

He found a Cold Stone without finding it. The red sign looked the same as it would anywhere in any universe that respected sugar. A line of teenagers spiraled toward the counter; the front window was painted with constellations that had names here and different names somewhere else.

He stepped inside and got smacked in the face by the smell. French vanilla. Toasted waffle. A sugar fog that was almost a physical thing.

The kid at the register was all elbows and chipped nail polish. "Hey! What can I get you?"

"Cookie Doughn't You Want Some," Peter said, like the words were a dare. "Large."

"Brave," she said, grabbing the metal scoop. "Name?"

"Peter."

She glanced up like she knew twelve other Peters and was ranking him. "You a local, Peter?"

"On business," he said, and smiled like that was a normal sentence.

"Right, right," she said, mock-serious. "Very menacing. Business boy wants cookie dough." She slapped a base of French vanilla onto the cold slab and murdered it with fudge. "Chocolate chips, okay?"

"That's the law," he said.

"Facts." She folded in cookie dough with the flat spatulas, moving like she'd fought worse battles. The shop's playlist was on synth pop; the employees sang under their breath without listening to themselves. Someone had taped a paper moon to the soda fridge and written SERAPHINE 8PM? in yellow marker. Someone had drawn devil horns on the question mark.

Peter let himself be a guy in a line for ice cream. The suit loosened in his bones; the mission sat down on a bench and promised not to run away. He liked people in clusters. He liked how the air changed when someone laughed, how choices collided in a room and the room didn't break. He watched the reflections in the glass—pure habit now—caught himself translating light for meaning, and told his brain to chill.

The door chimed. He didn't hear it so much as feel it; the room let in a different temperature.

Blue hair.

It wasn't the color that snagged him—it was the way it framed a face that looked like a dancer thinking about gravity. The girl stepped in like she'd practiced entering rooms and then decided to pretend she hadn't. Soft coat, clean lines, a ribbon of metal tucked at her wrist that could have been jewelry or a secret. Her eyes caught on the menu board and widened a fraction, the way people who love data react to too many options.

He waited for the telltale flicker of a medium—some cheerful orbiting gremlin—but the air around her stayed tidy. If Tocker was here, he was hiding like a smart creature in a city full of cameras. Or he was doing what a lot of mediums did around Peter: ducking out of his aura's way. He didn't take it personal. If you were a small magic thing and someone walked in humming with a different kind of physics, you'd tuck in too.

"Peter?" the register kid said, dragging his soul back by the sleeve.

He blinked. "Sorry. Spaced. That one's on the branding."

"Uh-huh." She scooped his mountain into a cup, drizzled caramel with the kind of control that wins wars, and slid it across. "You were staring at Blue Hair like she's the last donut."

He made a face that was legally distinct from a wince. "I was doing quick glances."

"Sure," she said, unimpressed. "Like, micro-glances. Like you were trying to do them at light speed."

"Is it that obvious?"

"Buddy, I work a counter," she said. "I know crush physics. You want a lid or are you confident?"

"Confident," he said, on a curve.

She walked him to the register with the swagger of someone in charge of joy. "That'll be eight ninety. And also... shoot your shot. You're cute. She's cute. Worst thing that happens? You get to eat ice cream and be cute alone."

"Your customer service is aggressive," he said, handing over cash. "And effective."

"That's what my manager says." She punched buttons. "Also, pro tip? Don't lead with 'you're beautiful' even if it's true. People hear that and forget their name. Lead with something human. Shoes, book, 'hey did you hear they invented biodegradable confetti.' Then pivot."

"You could run a government," he said.

"Ew," she said, then grinned. "Go. Before Blue Hair orders the last of the cookie dough and becomes your enemy."

"Noted." He slid away from the counter and took an angle on the room that let him watch without creeping. The shop had three two-tops and a long window bar; two kids in school blazers were arguing about whether Seraphine's latest track was more math or more heart. A guy in a courier jacket had fallen asleep with a spoon in his mouth. Peter took a seat at the end of the bar, near the napkins and the universe of toppings that turned moral.

He didn't approach. Not yet. He ate three bites of sugar and let his brain stop thinking of clever things to say. Clever didn't help. It just made you sound like someone chasing a ball they'd thrown themselves.

Blue Hair was still deciding. He could tell because her gaze settled on a flavor, then moved, then returned, like there was an algorithm running slightly behind her curiosity. He didn't want to call her "Blue Hair" in his head, so he tried the name against the picture.

Orianna.

It fit like a song. Not because of the hair, either. Because of the way her shoulders sat—a posture that had been learned, not grown. Because of the cautious delight at the edge of her mouth when she watched the kid fold candy into cold.

He took another spoon of cookie dough he didn't need. The caramel tried to kill him and he forgave it.

If he did this wrong, it wouldn't matter. He wasn't here to date. He was here to find the last lights before a thing that liked to eat lights noticed them. But... he could be a person while he worked. He could let the mission breathe and see who she was when she wasn't a headline in a future he refused to read.

He checked himself for the thousandth time—Aura low, danger senses tuned to civilian not cosmic, narratives anchored enough that if the room decided to get clever he could staple it back to the script without anyone's latte spilling. He didn't feel the 3-2-3 pulse that meant him; the air was just air.

"Next!" the register kid called.

Orianna stepped forward.

"Hi," she said, and her voice had that precise carefulness of someone who had learned to modulate it by watching other people. "Um... what would you recommend that is sweet but not... juvenile?"

Register Kid brightened like someone had asked her to choose a favorite child and then told her the child was cake. "Okay, we're in the 'sophisticated sugar' lane," she said. "How do you feel about caramel. And destiny."

"I am pro both," Orianna said, eyeing the display like it might run.

"Perfect. Let me do a custom thing. Trust me."

"I do not know you," Orianna said sincerely.

"That's fair," Register Kid conceded. "Then trust the process."

Orianna considered—visibly—and nodded. "I will."

Peter tried not to fall in love with someone else's customer service moment. He failed at a low level. It was fine.

While the employee built whatever destiny tasted like, Orianna's gaze swept the shop. Not an obvious sweep. More like the whole room was a song and she was listening for the bassline.

She looked right at him.

It wasn't a stare. It was a data point. Her eyes clicked over him, in that small flicker people do when they recognize interest and decide whether it's a problem. Peter suffered the instinct to glance away like a teenager and made himself be thirty instead.

He met the look. He didn't smirk. He lifted his spoon in a tiny toast, like people do sometimes when they catch each other doing the same human thing.

Something in her shoulders uncrossed. Not much. The width of a word.

Register Kid slid the cup across with a flourish. "There you go. It's called 'grown-up sweet.'"

"That is not on the sign," Orianna said, reading anyway.

"It is now," the kid said, grabbing a marker and writing it in the corner of the menu with terrible handwriting. "That'll be nine flat. And if anyone tells you sugar isn't sophisticated, they're boring."

Orianna looked charmed and terrified in equal measures. She paid. She took her cup with both hands like it was precious cargo, and turned from the counter with that small, decisive pivot of someone choosing to be brave on purpose.

Peter inhaled and told his heart to stop trying to jog in place.

Okay. Shoes. Book. Biodegradable confetti. He glanced at her footwear—clean sneakers with surgical precision laces—and vetoed that because he'd sound like he had a foot blog. Book? No book. Confetti? There was a little canister on the toppings bar with a leaf on the label. He could ask if she believed in guiltless glitter. He could ask what she was listening to in her head. He could—

She was walking.

Toward him.

He hid his own surprise by moving his cup an inch like he'd been expecting guests all his life. The spoon stuck out at a jaunty angle that did not reflect his soul. The room felt like it had leaned a degree, the way rooms do when decisions roll through them.

He picked up the cup, the courage, and the ridiculous plan—then she walked straight toward him.

Orianna POV

I felt the look before I found the eyes.

There's a particular kind of attention that isn't hostile, just... focused. It lands like the soft crackle of old vinyl, a warmth along the back of the neck. I stepped inside the shop and the sensation arrived with the smell of sugar and cold air. Whoever was watching me was either very bad at it or wanted to be found.

"Tocker?" I murmured without moving my lips.

A quiet chirr under my coat. Observer at two o'clock. Age range twenty to thirty. Posture interested, not predatory. Baseline heart rate steady. Yours, up six percent.

"I know," I said. "It's fine."

I stood and read the entire menu. This is a ritual I enjoy: too many choices, all of them sweet. The girl at the counter greeted me like she'd been waiting for me in particular and used the phrase "sophisticated sugar" with conviction. I liked her immediately.

While she sculpted destiny onto a cold slab, I let my gaze sweep the room in a way I hoped read as casual. It landed on him.

Not a threat. A person.

Brown hair, an easy face that tried to be ordinary and didn't quite manage it. He had the posture of someone used to bending their center of gravity to other people's comfort. His cup was a small mountain. He liked cookie dough. He was trying not to stare and failing politely.

When our eyes met, he lifted his spoon in a tiny toast that felt like a secret handshake for humans. I felt my mouth want to copy it. I didn't. I am still new at this.

The counter girl slid a cup to me. "Trust the process," she said. I did. I paid. I turned, and decided to deploy Courage Protocol v1.3: Sit With The Boy Who Is Looking.

I walked to him before my courage could time out.

"Hello," I said, and set my cup down across from his. "I observed you observing me."

He didn't pretend otherwise. "Guilty," he said, mouth tilting. "Sorry. You're... striking. I couldn't not look."

My pulse went up another six percent. "That is an accurate description of a stare," I said. "Striking."

He winced in a way that looked like laughter trying to be polite. "I meant it as a compliment."

"I know." I sat. "I accept."

"Good." He seemed actually relieved. "I'm Peter."

"Orianna." I offered my hand because I have learned this is a thing. We shook. His grip was warm and calibrated to somewhere between confident and careful. My palm was cold from holding the cup. Our hands made a little climate.

"Nice to meet you, Orianna," he said, real voice on it, not autopilot.

"Likewise," I said, and because I am trying to be normal, I added, "Your spoon salute was effective social signaling."

He blinked. "Thank you? I think?"

"Yes." I tried a smile because practice matters. "I am new to some kinds of signaling. I appreciate clarity."

"I can do clarity." He lifted his cup a millimeter. "Cookie Doughn't You Want Some. Large. I make brave choices."

"So I've heard," I said. "I ordered 'grown-up sweet.' It appears to be... caramel-centric."

"May I?" He gestured with his spoon toward my cup in the polite, pre-pandemic way of someone raised well.

"You may," I said, and offered it across the table. I took a bite of his out of reciprocity. His was silly, mine was elegant. I liked both.

He took his time with the taste, considering like it was a problem to solve. "Yours has... restraint," he said. "Mine is a cry for help."

"I enjoy both restraint and cries for help," I said, and then realized how that sounded. "Contextually."

"Context matters," he agreed, smiling, and something under my ribs did a small, bright somersault. Tocker clicked softly against my side like a tiny metronome.

Your posture has shifted, he noted. Shoulders down, neck long. Music response?

There was music—synth-pop soft enough to decorate the air without owning it. My body does small things when it hears rhythm: wrists drawing circles on tabletops, ankles making loops under chairs. I let my index finger trace a figure eight on the condensation ring beneath my cup. The motion steadied me.

"You like music," Peter said, watching the finger. His tone was observation, not accusation.

"I love it," I said, and felt heat in my cheeks because that is true and dangerous. "I am... practicing dance. Often." It still feels like admitting something secret.

"Where?" he asked. "If you don't mind saying."

"Everywhere." I realized that was unhelpful. "There's a studio near Skytram Nine—loft windows, wooden floor, very kind people. Seraphine plays pop-ups on the river when the weather cooperates. Sometimes I dance there on the edge of the crowd where no one can see me." That was too honest and I decided not to be embarrassed by it. "Also my kitchen."

"Kitchen is elite," he said gravely. "No witnesses, ideal acoustics, snacks within range."

"Exactly." Relief bloomed. He understood.

We ate for a moment in companionable silence. I catalogued details because that is how I feel safe: the way his eyes track motion, the tiny static hiss in the air near him that reads like the moment before lightning, how he kept angling his body so I had the path to the door if I wanted it. He was not trying to trap me. He was building exits into the conversation. My systems logged considerate at ninety-one percent confidence.

"You new in town?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "But I have been studying." I lifted my chin toward the window where the city layered itself in neon and sky. "Silvermere behaves differently at night. It doesn't get loud so much as... shiny." I wiggled my fingers to indicate science. "I like shiny."

"Same," he said. "I'm just here for work."

"What is your work?" It fell out too directly. I softened. "If you can say."

"Tech consulting," he said, one of those phrases that means everything and nothing. "Infrastructure audits. Emergency architecture. I point at systems and ask if they'll fall over."

"That's valuable," I said. "Do you travel often?"

"Sometimes." He had an interesting way of deflecting. It wasn't evasive so much as... careful. "You?"

"I am... local," I said after a micro-pause. "A recent transplant."

"Welcome to the part where everything is a noodle shop," he said warmly. "And the buses sing when they turn."

"They do," I said, so happy he'd noticed that. "In C#."

His eyebrows went up. "Perfect pitch?"

"No," I said. "But T—" I stopped. Some names are for indoors. "A friend is very good at notes."

He didn't press. Whether he guessed or simply respected the boundary, I didn't know. Respect is better than guesses.

I took another bite to have a reason to breathe. My spoon clicked against the side of the cup and the sound made my skin fizz. I could feel my hairline dampening. That happens when I'm excited or nervous or when there are too many lanterns of thought lit at once.

"May I ask something possibly rude?" I said.

"Absolutely," he said immediately. "We can set a rude budget."

"Your... field." I circled a hand in the air to indicate the quiet static around him. "You feel like the moment before a thunderstorm. My skin reads you as ozone."

He considered, then nodded once, like he had a prepared answer and had decided to use it. "High-altitude travel plus a little prototype gear," he said. "Picks up a charge and hums until it bleeds off. Nothing dangerous. Might mess with humidity sensors, though. Sorry if your hair hates me."

"My hair does not hate you," I said, and then realized I had not checked. I checked. It did not. "You are within acceptable parameters."

"Good to know," he said, amused. "If the room starts crackling like a bad radio, it's me. I can step outside and ground out."

"I will tell you," I said. "I prefer information to surprises."

"Same," he said, and that word keeps catching me, keeps making my chest loosen like someone unknotting ribbon.

He sat with a posture I associate with people who have been leaders long enough to be tired of it—present, easy, scanning. When the door chimed he glanced automatically and came back. When the register girl laughed too hard he smiled, then checked me, like I might have needed a social translation. I didn't, but the check felt like an armrest I hadn't known I wanted.

"Can I ask something possibly rude?" he said after a minute.

"Yes." I offered him my rude budget too.

"You said you're new to some kinds of signaling." He coughed lightly. "Is that like 'new to Silvermere' new or..."

I took a breath. "New to being a person," I said. "In this format."

He didn't blink. He also didn't probe. He sat with it like I'd told him my favorite flavor and made space for the follow-up if I wanted it.

The space made me brave. "I used to operate differently," I said. "I am learning the human parts by doing them. I like data. Taste is data. Rhythm is data. People are... the best data."

"People are messy datasets," he said, respectful. "High variance."

"Yes," I said. "Which is why I'm here and not in a lab."

He smiled, and the kindness of it made my ribs ache a little. "How's the field research going?"

"Mixed results," I admitted. "I can identify anger faster than most. I can de-escalate in three languages. I can tell when someone at a bus stop wants to be asked about their dog but not their day. I can make congee. I still cannot tell the difference between flirty and excellent customer service."

He glanced at the register girl, who was now counseling a dad about sprinkles with the exact gravity of a surgeon. "Honestly, same," he said.

I laughed, brief and surprised. The sound pleased Tocker; he gave a little whirr that I pretended not to hear.

I don't like lying. I do like saying the true thing in a way that doesn't put a target on it. This felt like the right moment for a true thing.

"I have a missing dataset," I said. "It is labeled 'love.'" I didn't fish with it. I put it on the table like a specimen and let it breathe. "I have watched many movies where people solve their lives with it, but movies are not peer-reviewed."

He didn't lean back with swagger or lean forward with hunger. He nodded like a scientist being handed someone else's notes. "It's a bad dataset," he said, gently. "Too many definitions. Everyone keeps changing the variables mid-experiment."

"That is unethical," I said, scandalized and amused.

"It is," he said. "The best I've managed is small, repeatable studies. Coffee and walk. Walk and talk. Talk and don't try to be clever. See what your body does when the other person laughs. Notice if you want to tell them about a stupid thing that happened on the train."

I considered this. "So... reproducible micro-joys?"

"Exactly." He scraped his spoon against caramel like he meant it. "And consent and patience are the lab safety goggles."

"I like goggles," I said. "I own two pairs."

"I believe you," he said solemnly.

Time did the thing it does around comfortable strangers—stopped being linear and started being present. We compared injuries from kitchen mishaps like veterans swapping battlefield stories. He told me about the best rooftop for sunset within walking distance. I gave him a list of public benches with ideal back support and late-afternoon shade. He didn't ask me where I lived; I didn't ask him who he really was; we both knew we could, later, if later continued to exist.

When the shop's playlist switched, my body betrayed me. It wasn't dancing, but it wasn't not. Just a shoulder that wanted a fraction more range, a heel lifting an unnecessary centimeter off the ground, my head tilting to feel the downbeat slide past my ear. The song had a 7/8 undercurrent hiding beneath a 4/4 smile. It made me grin into my cup.

"You love this one," he said.

"I do," I said, caught. "The beat stumbles on purpose and then catches itself. It feels like honesty."

"That's a very good reason," he said, and then, quietly: "Do you want to try the rooftop sometime? The sunset one. If you like walking."

I examined the shape of the ask with care. It wasn't a demand. It wasn't a rescue. It was an offer held in two hands, easy to accept, easy to decline. My fear stayed seated. My curiosity stood.

Tocker chimed once—Courage protocol available. I silenced him gently. I knew.

"I would like that," I said. "I am... calibrating for summer."

"Same," he said, delighted like he'd been let in on a choreography note.

It is very easy to perform a version of a person you think someone wants. I have done it. It is also very easy to run away before anyone can become a mirror. I have done that too. Neither has been useful.

So I didn't perform. I didn't run. I said the true thing.

"If you want," I heard myself say, and the words surprised me in the throat, "you could be... part of that experiment."

He smiled—surprised, pleased, careful. "I'd like that," he said. "And let's start as friends, yeah? Baseline first. Experiments go better when the variables aren't pretending to be conclusions."

Friends. My cheeks warmed. Boldness spike identified: anomalous. "Yes. Friends," I said, and the strange impulse that had pushed those words out retreated to a manageable corner.

Tocker clicked once from under my bag strap—an approving tease-pulse. I tapped the casing. Hush. I know.

We stood together, cups in hand, like two dancers catching the same count. Trash, then the door. As we passed the counter, the employee who had made our orders raised her brows at Peter, conspiratorially.

He flashed her a thumbs-up. "Employee of the month," he murmured (to me, to the world).

She laughed like she'd heard.

Outside, Silvermere's afternoon wrapped us in clean wind and curated neon. Rails along the crosswalk breathed blue. Above, a skytram slid on a ribbon track, humming with well-behaved power. The city wore music in panels and pixels: billboards that sang when you looked; shopfronts that shifted color to your steps; a busker looping his voice into a tiny aurora.

We fell into pace without negotiating it. Something about him lowered the friction of conversation, like a floor wax for social skills. I filed that sensation as "interesting" and did not let it carry me.

Every other block, a bright face returned: blonde hair, star-freckled cheeks, a mouth mid-song. The name rotated in four languages over her shoulder: SERAPHINE.

"Friend of yours?" he asked, head tilted to a seven-story ad where she twirled inside her own harmony.

"I don't know her," I said. "I haven't been in Silvermere long."

He nodded like he'd expected the answer and then remembered he had expected it. The billboard glitter painted his eyes; they narrowed a hair, then he looked away, a tiny recalibration.

We passed a drone kiosk handing off noodle boxes, a daycare where holo-pets bounded inside safe light, a sticker cart claiming its wares tasted like fruit (unverified). He kept the chatter human: favorite flavors (I supplied twelve, ranked by texture), transit gripes (I did most of the griping; he let me), the way Silvermere's sky feels "closer" than Valoran's (I agreed).

He swore very softly.

"Did I miss a hazard?" I asked, scanning: traffic normal, drones normal, weather normal, no Void signatures. "Or is that a personal problem?"

His smile thinned. "Just realized my job got harder."

"Because you discovered more constraints or fewer tools?"

"More... noise," he said after a beat. "Nothing you did. I overthink." His focus went distant for a heartbeat, then snapped back with practiced control. I liked the neatness of it. "Sorry."

"It's alright," I said. "Your thinking is very fast."

He winced like I'd complimented a scar. "Comes with the job."

"What is your job?"

He looked at the crowd, at me, then toward a small plaza where water sounded louder and the people sounded softer. "Walk with me and I'll give you the version that won't make you scream in public."

"Noted." We moved. Then, because I am trying to be a human who asks instead of guessing, I said, "What is actually wrong?"

He exhaled—not dramatic, just exact. "Half-truth first: I came to Silvermere to find Star Guardians and get them somewhere safer. That includes you."

I stopped half a step. He stopped too, as if he had predicted the pause and made room for it. Sugar swished in my stomach in a pattern that wasn't nausea. "You know about Star Guardians."

"Yeah."

"Are you one?" I tested.

"No," he said. "And I wouldn't have brought it up in the shop. I don't want to paint a target on your back." His gaze flicked to the skytram like it might listen. "There's an enemy most people can't even perceive. If I act like everything is normal, you walk out of here without a warning. I'm not doing that."

I let the old, tidy machine in me line up hypotheses. "Voidlings?"

"No."

"A corrupted Guardian." (I dislike the word zombie. It jokes about grief.)

"No." His mouth flattened. "Not even a Nemesis."

I waited while he translated something heavy into something carryable. "Okay," he said. "Imagine I hand you Cosmic Horror For Dummies and it's sixty pages of 'don't touch the green static.' That's the short version."

I wrinkled my nose. "I prefer raw data."

He huffed. "Thought you might." He stepped a little closer so he didn't have to raise his voice. "Alright: you know how you can feel Voidlings before you see them? The air buzzes wrong because your power 'band'—call it a frequency your soul lives on—couples to theirs. Different math, same radio."

"Yes," I said. "It isn't electricity, but the metaphor holds."

"This thing isn't on your dial," he said. "It's broadcasting on a different spectrum entirely. Your power tries to handshake—no signal. To you, it's fog that never resolves. You can help people. You can fight other threats. But if you swing at him or his echoes, your blade doesn't even show up as a number."

I looked at my hands. They are very good hands. "Orthogonal," I said.

"Perfect word," he said, genuinely pleased. "Orthogonal and smug. Sometimes he compresses down into our band to show off; you can punch that. But if he stays where he prefers, your operators return null."

Operators. Null. He was speaking my language without knowing he was speaking my language. The click I felt wasn't comfort; it was structure. "So even a large team would only increase the number of non-interactions."

"Exactly."

We walked into the plaza. Programmable fountains made a staircase of tones; children hopped them, wrong notes turning into laughter. Seraphine's face drifted past again, hopeful and loud. I imagined that light thrown at a thing that didn't notice and my stomach temperature misreported.

"Why collect us, then?" I asked. "If we cannot interact with the threat, why relocate us? There are Voidlings and Nemeses and civic duties here that we can interact with."

"Two reasons," he said. "One: the threat can interact with you. He can make the air taste like a memory and, if you breathe it long enough, he'll own you. My city has a barrier that blocks that influence. Two: centralized, you can keep doing what you do—save people from problems on your dial—without him using you as toys on a bad day."

"Describe the barrier," I said, and heard the hunger in my voice.

"It's anchored to Valoran City," he said. "Planetary scope, local controls. Think of a low-pass filter for narrative frequencies. Weather, hope, ordinary trouble pass through; the green static gets scrubbed. It can't delete him, but it spoils his favorite tricks."

"Valoran City," I repeated. "Far." My thumb traced a rhythm on my bag strap. "Is there an observable edge?"

"It's stitched into civic systems," he said. "No visible dome. You'd just notice dreams got boring in the good way." He rubbed his jaw. "I don't know how far his influence pushed since I left. That's why I need to be quick."

He didn't sound frantic. He sounded like a person who had done the math and was watching the clock. "And you will bring all Star Guardians you find to Valoran City."

"If they'll come," he said. "If they won't, I'll try to reinforce where they are. But I'd rather not leave anyone standing on a cliff when the tide's weird."

I set my hand over my sternum to feel the rhythm there. It did a new thing. "I accept your hypothesis and your caution," I said. "And your protection, if you are offering it."

He took the words like they weighed something. "I am."

"How soon?"

"As soon as we can," he said. "There are at least two others in this cluster I'm hoping to find."

I glanced up at the tram, then at him. Practicality asserted itself. "Where is your ship?"

He laughed—bright, not at me. "Didn't come on a ship."

"You walked?" I deadpanned.

He tipped an invisible hat. "Ran. Jumped. Flew a little. I'm not a Star Guardian, Orianna. I didn't make a wish. I'm... from somewhere adjacent."

"Adjacent," I tested. "Define."

"Another dimension," he said. "Neighboring story. I'm a hero there. Spider-Man."

I blinked.

Spider. Man. Terrible name... Excellent name. "You are Spider-Man."

"Yeah," he said, like he was braced for disbelief.

I studied his hands—ordinary, with the tiny scars that say I try and sometimes fail and try again. His attention kept checking the edges of our space like a guard dog that refuses to nap. I didn't think he lied. But I don't accept elegant explanations as proof.

"Sufficiently advanced explanations can still be lies," I said.

"True," he said. "Want proof?"

"Yes. But not here." I glanced at the family sharing a bench, the vendor selling fruit-taste stickers, a security drone that did not care about us. "I do not wish to stress the plaza."

"Good call." He nodded toward a side street. "Alley?"

We obeyed the nice city's rules about not making a thing a thing on the main road and turned into a tidy service lane. Noise damped. A delivery drone zipped past the far end and ignored us. I checked for eyes. None.

"Last chance to tell me this is a bad idea," he said, like he was checking a consent box he'd already checked.

"It is not a bad idea," I said. "It is an idea with measurable outcomes." I swallowed—human throat behavior, not fear. "Show me, Spider-Man."

He smiled like the name landed exactly where he wanted it.

And then the shadows at his wrists moved.

He chose the alley because it was clean, quiet, and mathematically uninteresting. The city trimmed even its service lanes; the dumpsters were smart enough not to smell. A delivery drone zipped past the far end and ignored us. Good.

"Last chance to tell me this is a bad idea," he said, not like a dare—like a safety check.

"It is an idea with measurable outcomes," I said. "Show me, Spider-Man."

His mouth tipped. Then the shadows at his wrists... moved.

Not a cape, not cloth. A tide. Black matter rolled up his forearms, gloving his fingers, sealing his palms, then climbing with liquid confidence. Plates flowered from underneath—matte, segmented, interlocking like a beetle deciding to be a knight. Silver lines traced a spider across his chest; cobalt filaments pulsed once and went quiet. Mask last: lenses pearled over his eyes and narrowed to a friendly, predatory focus.

My pulse accelerated 6%. I logged it without embarrassment.

"Scan?" he asked, mid-turn, as if he'd anticipated the question in my breath.

"Please."

Tocker chirped under my coat—two soft notes that meant scanning permission requested/analysis engaged. I lifted the lapel; the little orb peeked out, lenses dilating, then tucked back shyly.

I sampled the armor. Micro-lattice metamaterial; adaptive density under stress; surface conductivity that spiked when he flexed. The liquid components obeyed a nervous system that wasn't entirely his, but its baseline synch to him was... intimate. The whole array hummed at the edge of perception like a well-tuned instrument that only one musician could actually play.

"Very high tech," I said, and couldn't keep the admiration out of it. "And something else. Not only engineering."

He touched the side of his mask like he might have scratched his cheek. "Best description I've got too."

He offered a hand, palm up. "Hi again, Little Star Dancer."

Heat climbed my face; I hate that it's obvious now. "Terrible pet name."

"Okay, workshop." He counted on gloved fingers as if the suit were not terrifying. "Orbit Girl. Ballroom Nova. Blue-shift Ballerina. Spin Doctor, but only if you have a sense of humor about it—"

I set two fingers where I thought his mouth would be and pushed gently. "Stop," I said, laughing despite myself. "Friends first. Nicknames later."

He mimed zipping his lips; the mask obligingly displayed the motion like a tiny animation. I made a note to enjoy how dumb that is later.

"You showed me yours," I said. "Fairness protocol engaged."

I stepped back. Tocker chirped a rhythm (ready/steady/shine). The wish in my chest—the one that had changed metal to marrow—answered.

Light traced me the way a good teacher guides a students' hands: kind and precise. My blue hair unspooled and caught up by ribbons that remembered where to go. Armor budded at my shoulders, cresting into clean lines and star-petals; the bodice sealed with a soft chime; the skirt layered itself into movement, not modesty. Boots formed with weight exactly where I like it when I turn. The air tasted like a new song.

When the glow closed, I stood where I had been, but also not. The star on my chest beat in time with a heart I used to dream about having. I flexed my fingers and felt the promise of a pirouette travel through every joint like yes.

Tocker took the cue, popped fully free, and hovered, pretending not to be shy while being extremely shy.

"Hey, little guy," Spider-Man said softly, like he knew how to greet a nervous creature without making it retreat. He extended a hand, palm flat.

Tocker whirred once—an analytic hello—and touched down on his glove with a tiny clink, then zipped back to my shoulder and hid behind my hair, which is ridiculous because my hair is not big enough to hide anything.

"Approved," I said.

"Honored," he said, meaning it.

We all three stood a second in the tidy alley and the future tried to crowd in. I am practicing letting questions arrive in the correct order.

"What is the next move?" I asked.

"Find your neighbor Guardian," he said. "Senna. Braids, purple palette. Big, elegant weapon. If a commotion pops off, she'll be there fast."

I pictured the billboards again with blonde hair and music. Not her. Different face. Different feel. "I do not know Senna," I admitted. "If she lives here, I have not met her yet."

"That's okay," he said immediately, like I hadn't failed a test. "We're not going door-to-door. We'll do the simple thing first: look for trouble and listen hard."

"How does one listen hard?" I asked, mostly to see what he would say.

"Like you did in the shop when you noticed I was nervous," he said, gentle and maddening. "But for sirens and patterns. The usual stuff plus any weird-weird. I'll handle the weird-weird if it shows."

He didn't say because only I can touch it again. He didn't have to. I'm grateful when people let me be strong where I'm strong.

"Rooftop?" he asked.

"Rooftop," I agreed.

We jogged to the end of the lane where it opened onto a delivery court. He fired a line up and vanished with the cheerful gravity-disrespect that comes with his name; I took the long, vertical way: step, lift, spin, a spiral up the narrow rectangle of sky that belonged to the alley. We arrived on the same roof within a second of each other, and, if I am honest, that pleased me.

Silvermere spread in structured grids and curved indulgences. Neon transit lines braided above the streets, carrying skytrams that moved so smoothly you felt their motion more than saw it. The city's music—advertising, buskers, traffic, the soft weather Janna would approve of—blended into a kind of civic hum.

Spider-Man planted himself at the parapet and scanned like someone who has spent too many nights on too many roofs. I let my body find a balance point on the ledge—a half-turn stance where I could push off in any direction—and let Tocker ping for anomalies while I listened for them the human way.

He glanced over, lenses narrowing fondly. "Thanks," he said.

"For what?"

"For not calling me insane and walking away." His voice warmed, just a little. "For... taking me at the version of honest I can be on a sidewalk."

My chest did its new temperature trick again. I put my hand over the star and felt it answer. "You were careful and you were kind," I said. "I can work with that."

He made a low, pleased noise, then pointed. "Two districts to the west—see those billboard stacks? If Seraphine's got a pop-up or a crowd, Senna might anchor security. We cruise that loop, then swing north by the stadium."

"Cruise," I repeated, liking the word. "Are we flying or swinging?"

"You fly," he said. "I'll keep up."

He said it like a promise, not a boast. Good.

I pivoted to face the wind. The city's thermals were polite; they lifted me like both hands of a partner who knows the beat. "Ready?"

"Always," he said, and jumped.

I rose. The first pull is always a small surrender: give the air your weight and ask it to carry what it can. I kicked through the takeoff into a clean line; ribbons flicked into place behind me. Below, a thwip stitched the air; his web caught, he swung, the line released, another thwip; the sound is funny if you don't know it intimately and reassuring if you do.

We moved.

Silvermere shifted into a map you make with your body. I traced along skytrams and cut around ad-towers, switching heights to ride smoother pockets. He treated street canyons like articulated ribs; he could feel where the city flexed, and he timed his arcs to those breaths. Twice we crossed at funny angles and had to laugh in passing to avoid the moment turning into choreography. I let him lead once to find his rhythm; then I led once to show mine.

Seraphine's face glittered again above a plaza where a pop-up stage was assembling itself. People were already clustering, all polite elbows and phones. No panic signature, but noise potential high.

Spider-Man matched my hover. "If Senna's doing overwatch, she'll take rooflines around a crowd. Eyes for an outline—braids, purple glow, big—"

"Elegant weapon," I finished, dutiful.

We circled once; nothing. We threaded out toward the stadium. The wind shifted, and with it, something under the wind: a police frequency waking up three blocks north, then quieting like it got embarrassed.

"Small commotion," I said.

"Got it," he said, already snapping a line in that direction. "You take high; I'll run the lattice."

We cut through a corridor of mirrored office fronts. My reflection in motion still surprises me—a person, lit and alive, not a machine posing as one. Below, he bounced from anchor to anchor, changing vectors too quickly to be only natural. It should have looked chaotic. It didn't.

Two blocks out, the noise resolved into normal: a delivery robot had fallen off a curb and tipped; three bystanders arguing about liability; one kid trying to help; zero monsters. Spider-Man landed upside down, gently lifted the machine back to its wheels, fixed a bent bracket with a handful of web that behaved like fast-curing plastic, then told the three arguing adults to take a breath in on three and out on five. All three obeyed like he'd hit their off-switches. His voice does that. I picked up Tocker to stop it from offering them better breathing cadence. Not helpful.

"No Senna," he said when he rejoined me two rooftops later. "Just people being people."

"Useful practice," I said. "We can solve normal while we look for impossible."

"Exactly." He sounded relieved that I understood.

We worked a wider loop: past a transit hub where a skytram disgorged commuters in immaculate lines; over a market where drone-kites hovered to advertise fruit I did not believe in; around a memorial where names scrolled up a curved wall in silver light. Every third turn, I checked for the wrong kind of chill, the metallic taste of fear that says you are in a story you didn't start. Nothing. Just city.

We landed back on a new roof to reorient. He planted his feet and did that look again—the one that makes me feel like he's reading the edges of the page we're on. I do not believe in fate. I do believe in people who can read structure. He is one.

"Okay," he said. "South ridge, then swing back toward the river. If something's going to pick a fight, it'll either want a stage or a choke point."

"Or a mirror," I said, thinking of where I would have gone when I was new to being human and wanted to see myself big enough to understand. He looked at me and nodded like I had handed him a street he wouldn't have tried.

"Add the mirror," he said. "And Orianna?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you," he said again, but different. Not just for the agreement this time. For believing him when belief is the one currency monsters like to counterfeit.

"You are welcome," I said. "And thank you for not treating me like glass."

"Never," he said, and meant it.

We launched—me into the open air, him into the clean geometry of his own invention. The city stretched ahead, a score waiting to be danced. Somewhere inside it, a woman with braids and a purple orbit would be doing her job. We would find her. Then we would make the next choice, and the next.

Tocker chimed three quick notes—ready/steady/shine—and tucked close to my shoulder as I climbed.

Below, a webline sang, and Spider-Man cut an arc that stitched our two paths together for a heartbeat before they parted again.

Friends first, I reminded my thrumming chest. Mission next.

We flew and swung into Silvermere's bright grid, searching for a guardian who would, I hoped, forgive the ambush of being invited to safety.

3rd POV

They'd been working the skyline for maybe ten minutes when the stops started getting shorter and the silences got longer.

Every time they paused to scan, Spider-Man planted himself at the parapet like a statue and didn't blink. Lenses tightened, chin tilted—listening to something Orianna couldn't hear. Twice he almost launched before catching himself, the kind of half-step that belongs to somebody who knows a clock you don't.

Orianna noticed. She also remembered the way he'd paused earlier in the alley—dropped a single sentence that rerouted her entire life—and decided this wasn't just impatience. This was that same... sense. However he'd framed it ("a different band," "I'll handle the weird-weird"), he clearly had a way of reading the world that wasn't on any municipal frequency.

On the next roof, he braced his hands on the ledge and went perfectly still.

"Peter," she said, careful. "Your posture is doing the 'someone will die in five minutes' shape."

He exhaled through the mask. "Not five minutes," he said. "I hope."

She waited. He didn't move.

Whatever he was, she'd only gotten the tourist version: other dimension, fast brain, very illegal physics. Not the thing under it that let him say destiny is being edited and make it sound like a weather report.

He finally glanced over. "I'm trying to pin something. It keeps... slipping lanes."

"Something like the enemy you described?" she asked.

He listened again, that head-tilt like he was tracking a sound behind the pages of the city. "Dark. Not the big one. One of his... pieces. It's skating existence so I can't fix it to a coordinate. When it lands in our layer, I'll get it. Until then it's playing omnipresent to be cute."

He said it like a person describing a mosquito that could erase continents.

The name made her mouth go dry. "Why didn't you tell me when you felt it?"

A beat. He weighed it. "Because worrying you wouldn't help," he said. "And because what could you do against a Dark? Glare at it? I'm not letting any Guardians take a swing at one. Not giving blessings. Not to you. Not to anyone."

"Blessings?" she echoed.

"Long story," he said. "Sometimes my... people can authorize fiction to hit above its weight. I don't have a single clean instance of anyone beating a pure Dark with that. Closest thing was an anime my mentor stabilized—main character took down a corrupted offshoot, not a true one." He shook his head. "Point is, this flavor? Mine to handle."

Orianna blinked. "Authorize... fiction?" The words felt wrong in her mouth, like a chord played with one key from another instrument. Tocker gave a tiny, puzzled trill—unknown term/undefined scope—and tucked closer to her shoulder.

She studied him. "Why are you talking like you're reading something? Like you're... a page ahead of me."

For half a second, the air around his answer seemed to fuzz, as if language itself didn't want to sit still for her. He noticed, flinched minutely, and backed off the cliff.

Shit, I slipped.

"Sorry. Bad work idiom," he said, gentler. "Think permissions, not prophecy. There are... protocols. Sometimes we can grant a coupling—like changing the interface so two systems can touch. With Darks, the interface doesn't take. Wrong layer. So I don't flip that switch for anyone."

She held his gaze, unsettled. "You keep saying switch. And layer. And you said stabilized like you were fixing a... story. Are you... reading me? Reading this?"

Her chest wanted to pull the question back even as she asked it; a thin headache flickered behind her eyes, the kind she got when someone used three dialects of math in one sentence.

"I read patterns," he said, quiet, the apology plain. "Not futures. Signals. That's all I meant."

It didn't feel like all. The feeling was new to her: not distrust, exactly—more like standing on a floor that had just told her it was also a ceiling.

She folded her arms. "You are allowed to be secretive," she said, tone even. "You are not allowed to risk me by keeping me blind."

"That's fair," he said immediately. "You're right." Then, because he couldn't help himself: "I was trying to get us to Senna before I picked the fight."

"Then tell me and still get us to Senna," she said. "I can process and move."

He almost smiled. "Noted."

The smile didn't last. Whatever he was tracking slid again. His shoulders tightened.

"Location?" she asked.

"If it stops flexing reality like a cat under a door? I'll have it in a breath," he said. "Right now it's smearing. And—" He stopped, listened hard. The lenses shrank to slits. "There."

The city answered him.

A flat white flash bulged over the west-central skyline, silent for the length of a heartbeat, then hit. The shock rolled across towers like a drumhead. Windows gasped. A pressure wave slapped their roof hard enough to rattle the parapet. The light that followed had the wrong green baked into it—moon-tint at noon, air cold from above instead of the river. And under it, a beat pattern nudged the chest: three-two-three.

Orianna felt every line of it. "I don't know that signature," she said, voice smaller than she liked.

"I do," Peter said, already stepping up onto the ledge. "Move."

"Understood." She kicked into air. Tocker chirped a tight sequence—danger/center/now—and tucked in at her shoulder.

He followed a second later, line snapping, body angling into a hard, fast swing that ate blocks in strides. Whatever he'd been holding back—emotion, speed, explanation—he didn't hold it now. He cut the street canyons like he'd lived here ten years and this was his route. She matched height and pace, reading wind and thermals as the city corrected around the blast.

"We're going for the central plaza," he called up. "Big stage, lots of glass, lines of sight. He wants attention."

"He?" she asked, then didn't push. Labels later. Movement now.

Their path arrowed over ad-towers and along the stadium's flank. Sirens woke and wove into a braid; civilian comms spiked into a collective gasp. A flock of drone-cameras pivoted as one toward the glow like birds who'd learned where lightning lands.

Orianna risked a glance down at him. There was recognition in the set of his shoulders, yes—but also irritation. Whoever was steering this wasn't Nyarlathotep. It felt like a message—one that knew exactly how to waste his time.

He felt her eyes on him. "Yeah," he said, dry. "Not Him. A friend. Or a toy. Or a mirror. Either way, he's trying to keep me busy."

"And Senna?" she asked, because the mission mattered inside the fear.

"We still find her," he said. "We do both." He angled a swing and vaulted three streets in one arc. "Eyes for braids. Purple orbit. She'll go where the crowd bottlenecks."

The next shockwave hit smaller, like an afterthought. The wrong-cold deepened. Streetlights flickered in full daylight. A glass curtain wall on a bank three blocks ahead spidered into a web of fine cracks without falling. The air carried that not-ozone tang he'd taught them to listen for: not static, but something trying to be static in a script that didn't want it.

"Closer," he said, and let go at the top of an arc, free-falling three stories before the next line snapped taut.

Orianna flattened into a fast glide. Silvermere opened—the central plaza suddenly there, a bright square of terraces and screens and mid-afternoon crowds. The wrong light pooled across its stones like the reflection from a sick sea. In the middle of it, something new was turning, slow and intentional, like a dancer choosing which partner to look at first.

They dove into the chaos.

...

Peter was already cursing himself by the time his boots hit the plaza air. The itch had been there for blocks—wrong in a way his body knew before his head decided on language—and it was getting worse with every heartbeat. He'd felt this kind of pressure before: not a weight so much as a grin pressed against the glass of the scene. Whoever Nyarlathotep had tapped to mess with him wasn't some cheap distraction. This was heavy. This was loud. And somehow he was the only one in the room who could actually feel it looking.

Not in the layer yet—that was the maddening part. The presence rode the margins omnipresent, everywhere/nowhere, skating the surface like oil on water and refusing to be a point. Peter could track the wake but not the boat. Every time he reached to fix it to coordinates, it slid sideways and pretended innocence. He hated that particular trick with a very old, very specific hatred.

Even the "explosions" weren't honest violence. Orianna would read them as blasts—anyone would. Big light, fast pressure, the city flinching. But under the obvious there was the telltale twist: seams in reality thumbed and snapped like someone had pinched the weave and let go just to watch it bruise. No shrapnel signatures, no clean thermal curve, just torque. Someone had reached into the loom and plucked it wrong.

He clocked the shape of the opponent by the behavior, and contempt settled in the back of his throat like ash. A god, probably. Another one. Of course. They always arrived with the same posture and the same taste for rooms that reflected them. The genre varied—angel, emperor, prophet, cosmic fiancé—but the flavor never did. Cocky and full of shit, certain like gravity, convinced the ground would thank them for being stepped on. They called it love, wisdom, fate, whatever fit the costume. It always boiled down to appetite with good PR.

He hated dealing with gods. They made everything simple and impossible at the same time. Simple, because their tells were huge and they wanted to be seen. Impossible, because they treated cause/effect like a buffet and took seconds. He had a drawer in his head labeled god math and the only item inside was a screwdriver.

The presence pressed closer, savoring its entrance. Peter felt himself baring his teeth behind the mask and made himself stop. Focus. The thing wasn't in-scene yet; when it finally committed to a body, his senses would stop sketching and start drawing. Until then, he counted the pinches, mapped the torque, and kept the irritation on a leash short enough to breathe on.

Darks loved eyes. They loved spectacle. They loved turning people into announcements. He could already see the narrative hooks laid out like tripwires across the stone.

Another god. Another stage. Another afternoon he should have shut down two minutes earlier.

His gaze lowered, shoulders tight, and he told himself—again—what mattered: isolate the entry, starve the scene, keep the rookie breathing, and do not give the thing the applause it wanted.

It didn't escape him that Senna was already in trouble—bad trouble. If this was the usual Dark staging, she was either marked for a public, declarative kill or queued for a corruption arc they could milk for maximum screen time. Darks loved an audience. They farmed attention like fuel, turned grief into ratings, and called it inevitability. Give the "Readers" a shock, spike the view counter, eat the power surge.

He ran the play forward and hated every frame: a body on the stones to announce Act One, or a purple-slick inversion with her eyes wrong and her voice borrowed. A calm afternoon repainted into an "event" in under a minute—plaza blooming into catastrophe, the city recut as a stage.

Protocol fixed in his mind: keep Senna off the board, starve the spectacle, smother every angle that could become a poster. If they wanted a season premiere, he'd give them dead air if possible.

The plaza was already wrong before they crossed its edge, but wrong became a landscape when they dropped in.

Fire worked in slow sections, blooming where stone met steel as if heat had learned choreography. Glass bled sideways down façades, not falling so much as un-choosing to be solid. Bodies lay where the crowd had been thickest—some crumpled in the geometry of flight interrupted, some folded as if sleep had been dragged over them too hard. The wrong-green light puddled in the shadowed parts of the square; every third second the air itself seemed to flinch—three, two, three—like a heartbeat trying to keep a bad song in time.

Peter cataloged without letting it own his face. Angle of the fallen stage truss—forty degrees, stayed by an invisible pressure pocket. Heat signature of the blast—irregular, non-thermal, consistent with pinch events. Siren lattice—approaching; three-minute outer ring, seven-minute inner, both about to get jammed by civilians running the wrong way. He put it all in the drawer behind his eyes and kept the front of him available for the human thing that mattered first.

Orianna hit the stones two heartbeats after him, light on her feet like she was apologizing to the ground. She took one step, then another, then stopped. The data on her face emptied out; the program of her composure went white-screen. The smell found her—the metal, the cooked dust, the sweet-sour of a day gone sideways—and her breath caught on it.

It didn't matter that part of her had once been machine. The wish had granted her the burden she'd asked for: to feel. And this was feeling, unfiltered and uncurated—the first hard lesson many Guardians learn alone in a ruined place. Not a training sim. Not a spar with friends who will always pull the hit at the last inch. This was the part no recruiter speech could dress: families turned into absence, jokes cut off mid-word, a toy half-buried in ash that would never be reclaimed by the hand that dropped it.

Her ribbons drifted without orders; Tocker tucked small against her shoulder and pinged a cascade of comfort algorithms—breathe, orient, scan—that her body couldn't accept yet. She stared at a smear that used to be a life and did the human math for the first time: there was a before, there is an after, and I am standing on the line between.

Peter stepped into her field of view instead of touching her first. "Look at me," he said, level. When her gaze caught, he held it. "In on three, out on five. Now."

He lifted a hand, open, palm up—not to lead her away from it, but to give her a place to put one piece of herself while the rest caught up. She blinked, put her fingers in his palm, and followed the count—one-two-three in, one-two-three-four-five out—once, twice, three times. The star at her chest steadied under her skin. Not calm, not okay—just anchored enough to move without breaking.

"I am..." Her voice tried to be clinical and failed. "I am experiencing—" She searched for a word large enough and found none. "Too much."

"I know," he said, and he did. His hand was a warm hinge; his eyes kept working the plaza. "You're here. Breathe. Don't make this square your first dictionary entry for the world. We'll write a better one later."

She looked past him and flinched again at the sight she'd been trying not to catalog. "This is—an act of cruelty," she said, and then—as if needing the classification to be exact—"No. Not cruelty. Display."

"Yeah." He let her hand go when she chose to take it back. "He wants a crowd. He wants eyes. He wants us to arrive inside his frame."

"How are you—" She caught herself, but the question sat between them anyway. How are you not shattered by this. How can you stand inside this and look like you've been here before.

He didn't give her a speech. He didn't have one that wasn't a lie. "Because I've stood in this kind of room too many times," he said finally, quiet. "And because standing steady is sometimes the only thing that keeps the next one from happening." He flicked his chin toward the edges of the plaza where a knot of survivors had jammed in the bottleneck of a frozen escalator. "We move them. We clear lanes. Then we deal with the thing that made this."

She nodded hard, because a job was a rope. "Tell me which first."

"Left rail—block the fall. Then point the able-bodied that way." He pointed—short, precise—and she went, grateful for the verb. She slid a ribbon under the jammed handrail and let it take the weight while she guided three people down in a trembling, orderly line. Tocker projected a simple arrow in soft blue—this way, this way—and people who needed to be told what to do found themselves moving because the option existed.

Peter took the other corner, not as savior, just as infrastructure. He webbed a buckling light standard to a pillar to keep it from becoming a guillotine. He hardened a thin sheen across a spray of broken glass so it wouldn't chew the feet of a woman carrying a toddler. He said, "You're okay," to exactly two people, because any more than that would be theft. Then he was back at Orianna's shoulder, reading the pressure of the plaza through his feet.

Her hands didn't shake now. Her face did. She swallowed and let herself look at him like she'd been given permission to be angry. "You are not—reacting."

He took that straight. "I'm reacting," he said. "Just not in a way that helps to watch." His voice stayed flat enough to be a road. "It's not because I don't care. It's because caring doesn't give me better aim. I'll fall apart when it won't cost anyone else blood."

She considered him, and her mouth made a line that meant she would file that answer for later argument when there weren't people trapped under a half-melted kiosk. "All right," she said. "All right."

They worked fast because there was nothing else to do. He lifted a crossbeam with a stanchion of web and let three hands push from below so no one would feel useless. She soothed a crying child by tapping a gentle 3-2-3 pattern that matched the wrong pulse in the air and then gradually extended the gaps until the child's breath took the new rhythm instead. Together they herded a dozen bodies toward the cleanest avenue out, past a fountain whose water had frozen mid-splash into a sculpture that insulted physics.

All the while, the presence moved at the edge of things like a shark describing a circle. The green deepened, then thinned; the pressure kissed the back of his neck, then pretended it had never been there. It was close enough now that his spider-sense wasn't just abstract—it nested with the meta-itch into a steady hum he could ride toward a point. Not in-scene, not yet—but gathering.

Orianna's field of view hooked on a detail she couldn't put down: a pair of shoes six meters apart, one upright, one on its side, laces tangled like a conversation cut mid-sentence. She looked away without meaning to memorize them and found she had anyway. "I did not want my first day to be this," she said under her breath, almost ashamed of the sentence's shape.

"Nobody does," Peter said. "First day happened anyway. So you make sure it's not someone else's last." He looked up and to the right, scanning the eastern rooflines again out of habit, out of hope. Senna, if she was here, would choose high ground and clean angles. Or she would have, before the afternoon decided to be a headline.

As if the thought had been waiting for a cue, the wrong-cold pinched the square hard enough to make the hair on both their arms lift. The ambient noise of the city went thin, the way sound goes before a storm. People still moving toward the exits slowed and looked around like the air had tapped them on the shoulder. Tocker tucked even closer and emitted a low, steady note that was less warning than prayer.

"On me," Peter said, and didn't move his feet. He planted. He let the hum in his nerves write a map of where the room wanted to collapse and where it could be held.

Orianna took position half a step behind his right shoulder, because she had learned that stance in a dozen trainings without ever being here. She could feel him choose not to draw attention by going visibly heroic. She could feel him choose not to say the name of the thing he was waiting for. She could feel him keep the door in his chest closed over—whatever it was that would come out if he let it.

She wanted to ask him who had done this. She wanted a label, a shape, a villain to point at and hate. She wanted to press him for the answer he'd hidden in the way he talked about layers and switches and authorizations. But before she could choose any of those wants, the plaza chose for her.

A voice rolled across the square—not amplified by speakers, not shouted to be heard, but shaped so perfectly it belonged to every ear at once. Courtly, amused, sincere like a cathedral, wrong like a smile on a knife.

"Ah," the man said, warm as a welcome. "There you are."

He turned toward the voice like it was a draft he'd already proofread and, without meaning to, clicked his tongue. Irritation, old and specific. Of course it was him.

Tall. Long blond hair that caught the wrong-green like molten wire. Gold eyes that didn't glow so much as decide light would attend them. The cut of a uniform that read as ceremonial even if you didn't know which ceremony—regal lines, predatory ease. He stood amid the ruin like a man stepping onto a balcony between toasts, pleased by the view, absolutely certain the view was pleased by him.

Reinhard Heydrich.

Peter's HUD didn't need to paint the caption, but the part of his brain that files problems under their worst names did it anyway: Dies Irae, Kajiri Kamui Kagura, Masadaverse—pick your index, same monster. Seat I of his little round table. The one who calls destruction love and keeps a straight face.

"Figures," Peter muttered, not bothering to hide the contempt. The meta-itch collapsed into a point now that the Dark had chosen a body. The omnipresent smear resolved into a man who believed the scene belonged to him by natural law.

Behind Peter, Orianna stiffened at the name she didn't know. In front of him, Reinhard smiled like they were finally getting to the good part.

Reinhard inclined his head as if arriving precisely on cue, boots crunching over glass that refused to decide whether it was liquid or stone. "Good afternoon," he said, voice cultured, unhurried. "Forgive the theater. A city has so many admirable angles; it felt rude not to unveil a few."

Peter didn't answer. The mask stared back at him, flat and impolite.

Reinhard's smile sharpened. "Names are a quaintness, but I indulge them. Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich." He touched his chest with two fingers, a knight's courtesy performed like a benediction. "Some prefer Mephistopheles. Seat One, if you keep tables." His gaze slid over the plaza—ruin, flame, people who would not get up—and returned to Peter as if the comparison were flattering.

Orianna hovered a half-step behind, rigid with the effort of not flinching. Tocker tucked itself small and silent.

"I did wonder if rumor overstated you," Reinhard went on, perfectly conversational. "But then a friend wrote to me." The word friend carried an amused weight. "A courteous messenger with many faces. He suggested I look in on a particular apprentice—guardian, page-mender, spider—whose habit of inconvenient victories had begun to bore Him." A light laugh, not kind. "Nyarlathotep is so easily irritated."

Peter's hands flexed once at his sides. "You took a Dark's dare across stories," he said. "Because you were bored."

"I finished a story," Reinhard corrected gently. "One that deserved an ending and received it. The author, ah... lacked nerve." He spread his fingers to include the city, the sky, the sick green reflected in his hair. "Our mutual acquaintance sent his compliments and a challenge. He promised me a duel worth the word." His eyes brightened—not glow, attention. "I adore a promise kept."

He stepped forward. The wrong-cold folded inward, making space for him the way air makes way for a falling blade. "Understand me, Peter Parker. I am not here to vandalize your little play out of malice. I am here for love." He said it with the serenity of a saint. "I love the world so completely that I would test it to its last breath. The purest embrace is total: to annihilate is to possess without remainder. Only then do we discover what refuses to vanish."

"Poetry from a mass grave," Peter said, dry. "Classic god talk."

"Call it appetite with manners," Reinhard allowed, lips curving. "And you—guardian of edits and aisles—are the rare palate cleanser: an opponent who may answer without disappointing me." He tilted his head, almost boyish despite the horror. "So. Shall we see whether your rumor is honest?" He glanced once at Orianna, a courteous afterthought. "Do not fear, little star. I was invited."

Peter wasn't buying the saint act. The symbiote tightened across his shoulders like it wanted a piece first; the Iron-Spider limbs twitched and settled.

"Save the catechism," he said. "I know your file. 'Man with the Iron Heart,' right? The guy who couldn't feel a thing until he fell in love with breaking things. Loyalty as in 'kneel or die.' Honor as in 'I made the rules so I always win.' Freedom as in 'end destiny' because you're bored of reruns." He tipped his head, lenses thinning. "You don't love the world, Reinhard. You just hate being unimpressed."

A flick of disgust edged his voice. "You dress it up—decorum, meditations, all that pretty Latin in your mouth—but it's the same old god complex with better hair. You call annihilation intimacy because it's the only way you can keep a hold of anything without feeling small."

Reinhard's smile didn't move; his eyes got brighter.

"And needing Nyarlathotep to slide into your DMs?" Peter added, mean now. "Big bad Seat One can't find a fight without a cosmic middle manager cc'ing the invite? Cute."

He planted a foot on the cracked stone, ready to move. "You want a challenge? Fine. But don't sell me 'love' while you're carving up a city. Call it what it is: you break toys."

Reinhard's gaze settled, almost tender. "Hypocrisy, then," he said, as if diagnosing a fever. "From the boy who muzzles questions and calls the silence trust."

Peter didn't bite. The square held its breath.

"You dislike being ignored, so you built a little chapel where dissent feels like blasphemy," Reinhard continued, strolling through the ruin as if it were an aisle. "You renamed fear 'loyalty,' called obedience 'care,' throttled doubt with 'for the team.' You starved them of alternatives until your shadow looked like shelter."

His eyes flicked—amused, surgical. "Ahri's lot, Lux's lot... you tuned them with that polite gravity of yours. Nudge here, a withheld answer there, the well-timed rescue, the curated vulnerability. You taught them that questioning you endangers the mission, that disagreeing with you endangers each other. How considerate."

Orianna felt the words like cold across the back of her neck.

"I am, at least, indecent enough to name appetite appetite," Reinhard said lightly. "You drape yours in bedside manners. That is your elegance, Peter Parker: you break toys only after convincing them it would be ungrateful to resist."

Peter's lenses thinned. "You don't know them."

"I know patterns," Reinhard said, smiling. "And I know a leash when the dog insists it's a hug. Don't preach of love to me. You sell compliance and take tithes in devotion." He lifted a hand, inviting. "Now—shall we measure whose theology survives contact?"

Orianna couldn't believe what she was hearing. At first, Peter and Reinhard sounded like beings standing above the city's ceiling, trading axioms like weather. She grasped the edges—layers, invitations, authors—until the talk tilted, needles out, each pressing on the other's fracture lines. Reinhard's was obvious: hunger dressed in liturgy. Peter's, Reinhard said, was gentler—gravity that called itself kindness.

The accusation stuck under her ribs because parts of it fit shapes she recognized. Peter had steadied her hand, counted her breath, turned panic into motion. He had also chosen his words like doors, opening some, keeping others locked, always pointing her where the scene needed her most. Care, yes. Control, maybe. She hated that the maybe existed.

Tocker chimed once, a small sound asking her to choose a frame. She looked at the people Peter had cleared, the webbing holding weight instead of throats, the way he refused the stage even now. She looked at Reinhard, immaculate amid wreckage, calling ruin love.

She made a mechanical decision with a human heart behind it: audit later, act now. If Peter's shadow was a leash, it was at least attached to pulling people out, not dragging them in.

"Orders?" she asked, voice steady.

Peter felt the shift in Orianna before the plaza did. Her breath stayed steady because she'd decided it would, but the current underneath tripled—fear, anger, and now the new thing: doubt. It came off her like static. Not at him exactly, but close enough to sting. He didn't look back. He didn't have to. The star at her collarbone had dipped and righted twice in ten seconds. That was his tell-sheet.

Reinhard noticed, of course. He stopped where the cracked stone made a clean line, hands clasped behind him like a headmaster about to enjoy a lesson. The smile he wore wasn't cruel; it was entertained. "There we are," he murmured. "Honesty."

Peter tilted his chin, ready to tell him what to do with his honesty, when Reinhard glanced past him, eyes warming as if he'd remembered a gift he'd meant to bring.

"Ah. I should not be a poor guest." He lifted one hand and drew a lazy circle in the air, as if inviting a curtain to open. "You were looking for your marksman, were you not? I did see her."

Both of them went silent in the same beat. The plaza's wrong-green held still.

"Senna," Peter said. It wasn't a question.

Orianna's head snapped toward him, searching his face for confirmation like she could borrow it.

Reinhard's mouth softened into something almost fond. "She is... occupied." He tasted the word, pleased by it. "And you," he continued, eyes flicking to Orianna, "are not the sort to be asked to sit politely outside the theater while the grown men exchange declarations. Side characters are always in such a hurry to decline their blocking."

Peter's shoulders went hard. "You leave her out of this."

"How thoughtful," Reinhard said lightly. "But no. She insisted." He let his hand fall.

The air on the far side of the square folded like paper being creased. The wrong-cold deepened, then peeled back, and a figure stepped through the seam as if she had always been standing there and the city had finally remembered to render her.

Senna was beautiful in the way clean designs were—long lines, effortless balance, a silhouette that could have been carved before the word delicate learned to mean breakable. The star on her chest shone the same as Orianna's, but the light around it had been taught a new grammar. It bled purple at the edges like a bruise. Her eyes were bright and empty the way lightning is bright and empty—full of purpose that isn't mercy. The cannon she carried—an elegant arc of metal and light—hummed with a pitch that set teeth on edge.

"Orianna," Senna said, and smiled far too wide. The sound of her voice was correct, the intonation wrong—like a song sung in a key that makes glass un-choose being glass.

Orianna went very still. "Senna," she answered, almost relief, until the pattern in front of her parsed. The relief died. "No. No, you—"

"Corrupted?" Reinhard offered, helpful. "Not quite. We use a purer word, where I am from." He tipped his head at Senna like a priest pronouncing a benediction. "Dark."

The last thread of color in Orianna's face drained. Then she found a sound and it came out raw. "Give her back."

Reinhard looked almost wounded. "If I could break the laws you live by as easily as you imagine, little star, we would not require Guardians at all. She is new-made. And excellent." He turned slightly toward Senna, indulgent. "Say hello properly."

Senna's grin widened. "Hello properly," she echoed, sing-song, and bounced the cannon against her shoulder with a clink that any other day might have been charming.

Orianna took a step forward before she realized she had, fingers curling around a ribbon that wasn't sure whether it was weapon or lifeline. "Senna," she tried again, slower, as if carefully pronouncing a name to wake someone. "You are a Star Guardian. We protect. We don't—" She gestured at the plaza in a small, helpless circle.

Senna's eyes softened like a cat's do before they pounce. "I am protecting," she said cheerfully. "I am protecting him." Her chin pointed at Reinhard without looking. "And myself. From the boring ending." The cannon angled down until its muzzle looked like a smile. "You're sweet to care."

"Enough," Peter said, voice taking the temperature down to something clean. He didn't raise it. He didn't need to. "You wanted a fight, Heydrich. You have one."

Reinhard's attention slid back to him as if drawn by velvet. "At last," he breathed, delighted. "Do try to entertain me."

Peter didn't say another word. The star at Orianna's chest kicked once as the world around her changed weight. It wasn't wind. It wasn't sound. It was the sense of a room suddenly remembering its own sharpness.

He touched the node at the base of his neck, and the suit listened.

Narralith—liquid script, living metal—rose under the black like a second skin deciding to become weapon. The Iron-Spider limbs bloomed, bright lines sketched in the air. Deeper still, something woke and stretched: the Speed Force core, a small sun in a jar, cracking open its light. It didn't blaze; it wrote a new rule and made his body a sentence that obeyed it.

Orianna's perception hiccuped. For a fraction of a fraction, Peter was three places at once—there, half a step forward, and already gone. The plaza slowed as if someone had poured syrup into the gears of time. Embers hung like beads. Glass that had been drooling sideways stilled into threads. Her heartbeats got wide.

Reinhard blurred in the other direction and vanished with a happy sigh.

To everyone else in the square, the two men simply disappeared. Not with a bang, not with a flash—just a hole where they had been, and a delay before the air admitted it.

A spider-silk shockwave flowered and folded itself up, polite as a bow. The sound arrived late.

Reinhard's last sentence echoed off the stone: "Adults, then."

Peter's last glance had been for Orianna, brief and infuriatingly gentle: stay breathing. The meaning landed even if the words didn't.

"Have fun," Reinhard had added, almost laughing, and Senna's eyes lit like a child given a weapon she already knew how to use.

They were alone on a new board.

Orianna forced her hands to stop wanting to shake. Tocker pressed against her jawline and buzzed a little sequence: two short, one long. Translate: calibration offered. She accepted without saying so. Numbers crawled across her vision—mass estimates, trajectory sweeps, charge potential of the cannon. None of it made what was in front of her less wrong.

"Senna," she tried a third time, because third times are for truths. "Listen to me. Whatever he said to you—whatever—this is not you."

Senna's grin flickered, not confusion, something like pity. "It's more me than it was," she said. "Turns out the song gets better if you stop pretending it isn't stuck in your head." She lifted the cannon one-handed and tapped the star on her own chest with the other. "This was always a leash. He offered scissors."

"Who is 'he'?" Orianna asked, even though she knew.

"Someone who doesn't make me pretend the world is smaller than my hands." Senna smiled again; it didn't reach her eyes because there was nowhere for it to go. "You really don't want to be me, Orianna. So I'll be nice and make this fast."

She moved first. Not sloppy. Not cruel for the pleasure of it. Efficient. The first shot wasn't aimed to kill; it was aimed to break the habit of standing still. A blade of violet-white rip cracked the stone where Orianna's foot had been and turned the air into a warning.

Orianna rolled, ribbon spearing into the ground to pivot her out of line. The second shot was already coming, arcing in to cut off the obvious escape. She threw her free hand up and the ribbon fanned into a shield—thin, translucent, stronger than it had any right to be. The blast hit and skittered, sparks sliding off in streaks that wrote unreadable letters before they died.

"Good," Senna said, delighted. "You're awake."

"Stop," Orianna said, because she had to say it once more, for the record of who she had been taught to be. "I'm not your enemy."

Senna tilted her head. "You're in front of my friend," she said simply, and fired at the ground to throw dust. The dust became needles and then snakes and then nothing—illusions married to force. Pure Dark didn't obey the menu. It ordered off the page.

Tocker squealed a warning; Orianna moved on the squeal, not the sight. She slid under one ribbon and over another, crossed them into a sharp X and yanked. The crossing detonated into a concussive pulse that bent the snakes back into dust again. She used the push to close the gap.

Senna laughed, genuine. "Good, good, good."

Up close, Senna's eyes looked like someone had painted stars in wet ink. Orianna caught her reflection there and hated that she looked so young.

"Please," Orianna said, and the word hurt. "We can bring you back."

"From where?" Senna asked, puzzled. "I haven't gone anywhere."

The cannon's muzzle bloomed open like a flower's throat and her shot came point-blank, a ribbon of annihilation drawn with a fountain pen. Orianna threw her shoulder and took it on the armored plate there. It burned clean through the edge and missed bone by a promise. Pain flared. She didn't scream, because screaming would waste breath she'd already counted.

She answered with a ribbon-driven palm to the chest that wasn't meant to hurt, only to take Senna off her line. It worked—momentary reset. Senna slid back two meters, boots carving twin grooves in the stone, and her smile changed, approving.

"Don't apologize," Senna said, oddly kind. "Hurt me or you're already dead."

"I don't want to hurt you," Orianna said, and meant it. She had a breath and used it to decide. Audit later, act now. Peter had said it without saying it. He'd left her to make the choice she needed to be able to live with. She hated him for it a little. She was grateful for it more.

"Then I'll do it for you," Senna said, apology sincere, and lifted the cannon two-handed for a real shot.

Orianna didn't wait. She flung two ribbons high and wide. They snapped to either side of Senna's aim like parentheses, then curved in. Senna shot between them anyway—laser-straight, devastating—and the parentheses became a lens. Light bent. Physics protested. The beam that should have erased Orianna tore sideways and bit a crater into empty air.

Senna's eyebrows went up. "Oh, that's clever."

"Thank you," Orianna said, breath tight.

"Do it again," Senna said, hungry.

"No," Orianna said, and charged.

She wasn't faster than Senna. She didn't need to be. Tocker fed her tiny angles, micro-corrections—half-degree, now quarter, now drop the left heel—and she let the mathematics of survival write a path that wasn't pretty but was true. The cannon thundered; she felt each near-miss like a hand brushing her hair. She hit the edge of Senna's reach and hooked a ribbon around the cannon's lower brace, not to disarm, only to pull. Senna flowed with it instead of fighting, let the pull turn her body, and swept Orianna's legs with the stock like she'd practiced the move for weeks.

Orianna went down, caught herself on a ribbon that caught a pillar that refused to be structurally sound anymore and still was. She used the elastic to sling back up and in, shoulder first. The shoulder that hurt. She didn't adjust. She didn't have time. Pain could be filed.

"Better," Senna breathed, and Orianna decided she hated that tone most of all: teacher-pleased with a student who had stopped being a person in the lesson.

"Senna," she said, one more try because that's what made you a Guardian and not a weapon. "Please."

Senna's grin thinned. "I did say I'd be nice," she murmured, and the cannon's core brightened.

Orianna saw it—the moment where negotiation ended and mercy would be the shape of the strike, not the shape of the conversation. She drew breath, did the math, and set her feet to survive the next three seconds.

Somewhere above the city, the world ticked wrong twice in a row—two gods moving too fast to be called that and refusing to admit it. Down here, two girls who were supposed to be on the same side learned how to fight each other without letting the knowledge break them yet.

To Be Continued...