The meeting with my sister went… alright? Well, she’d shouted angrily in my face at some point, but I felt like things had turned out well in the end.

“Do you think they would let Ann join the heroes under probation or something? Like us?” I asked into the air as we made our way out of the prison area.

“Maybe. We would have to ask. But considering she’s the sister of our secret weapon, I think there’s a good chance,” Fern grinned at me.

“Alright, that’s…”

…

“Wait, there it is again! What’s up with people calling me a secret weapon?!”

“Oh, you didn’t know? They were planning to load you into a cannon and shoot you at our enemies’ base as a last resort,” Miranda happily explained.

“What?! Why would they do that?!”

“Well, your power would protect you somehow, and you would cause a lot of chaos among the enemies… it’s a win-win situation.”

“I don’t consent to be fired from a cannon at our enemies!”

“Hey, don’t shout at me! I didn’t come up with it!” Miranda tried to act innocent but the grin on her face betrayed her words. “And like I said, it would be a last resort. A secret weapon.”

I shot her an angry eye before crossing my arms and grumbling.

“You know, I think they were trying to test your power, actually,” Kelly suggested.

“What? Test whether it will save me from being obliterated?!”

“No. Save you from ever getting into that situation in the first place.”

“... huh.”

That was totally what my power would do, wasn’t it?

“Just a theory! Maybe they are planning on loading you into a cannon if everything fails.”

“Great. Thanks.”

“Don’t worry,” Fern said whilst giving me a half-hug. “I won’t let you become a cannonball!” She grinned. “Unless you want to, of course.”

I grunted in affirmation.

As we continued to talk, we made our way to Fractal’s workshop for his big important announcement.

Once we entered, I naturally looked around at all the various devices lying around. My eye caught on an elongated barrel thing… A cannon. It reminded me of the conversation we’d just had with the others.

I shook my head and ignored it. If I focused on it too much, it would become a flag.

We made it through Fractal’s workshop and found him studying something on his table.

“Oh, you’re here. Perfect timing, I was just about to finish this,” Fractal greeted us and put aside the sheet of metal along with a stack of papers.

“Hi, we’re here. So, you had some kind of announcement or something?”

“Right,” he said with a nod a motioned to the door to his workshop. The last one to come through, Kelly, went ahead and closed it. Fractal then looked around as if checking for something, before continuing to speak. “It’s pretty sensitive and the other heroes might not be too comfortable with it, but…” He cut himself off with a sigh.

The armored man then walked to a device placed on another table, pressed some buttons on it and it lit up, revealing a hologram above it. A hologram of a stylized helmet.

“Oh, hey, isn’t that…” Miranda began.

“Neutra. The biggest villain mastermind in the city after the Brimscythe family and Mama’s cult,” Fractal finished for her.

“Sooo, why are you showing her to us?”

Fractal sighed again and turned to me.

“Aster, do you remember a while back in our villain days when I sent you into this city to negotiate with her?”

Oh yeah, that had happened at some point. But I barely remembered it since I had been too busy being tied up in an abandoned warehouse by my future girlfriend at the time.

I nodded.

“You came back with a letter from her. I didn’t get to it for a while because of all the chaos with the heroes at that time, but about two weeks ago, I finally remembered…”

He pulled out the letter from a pocket in his armor – wait, since when did those have pockets? – and showed it to us.

“Uh, so…?” We leaned in to look at it.

“It was a love letter,” Fractal said.

“Wait, what?!”

“Oooh! So, Neutra was your secret girlfriend all along? I was right! Romeo and Juliet action!” I exclaimed.

Fractal sighed again.

“No, she’s not. As I said, it’s complicated.”

I nodded sagely. “Ah yes, love is a complicated matter.”

“That’s not what I mean,” he deflected with a frown. “This letter was just an excuse to meet up with me.”

“Wait what? A fake love letter?” I looked at my former boss, bewildered.

Kelly leaned to me and whispered, “Not actually fake, he just doesn’t realize it.”

What? Now I was completely confused.

“When I met up with her, she initially confessed to me… But when I declined, she got to the real business,” Fractal explained. “According to her research and the findings of Shadeskip she hired as a mercenary, the Brimscythes might pose much more of a threat than we initially thought.”

Oh, Shadeskip. I’d completely forgotten about that ninja guy.

“There’s a lot more to it, but the short story is that the Brimscythes are planning on assassinating all powers in the world except for theirs.”

“Wait, assassinating powers? The hell?”

Fractal nodded. “As you might have already known, powers are sentient. There are still too many things we don’t understand about them, but as I said, the Brimscythes might have found a way to not only interact with them directly but to even kill them.”

“What… does that even mean? Would we all lose our powers? Would we die as well?” Fern asked.

“I do not know. As I said, there’s too much we don’t know. I have been working with Neutra in secret to discover more.”

“But why keep it secret? Why not tell the other heroes as well?”

Once again, the armor tinkerer couldn’t help but sigh.

“That’s the other thing.” He looked straight at us. “I don’t know who it is, but it seems like there’s a spy among the heroes. One that… according to Neutra’s intel, can fool even Lyre.”

We stood there in shock. What the heck?

“We’re pretty sure this spy can turn the narrative around if we were to ever tell the rest of the heroes. And while we sit in jail as the suspects, they might destroy any and all evidence, as well as all our research. We can’t risk that.”

Damn… Wait, wasn’t I also a triple agent? This was going to get really confusing, wasn’t it?

“We also suspect that this spy was the actual source of information on your family, Aster. Cutting off a branch that was no longer useful to them.”

Huh… So mother hadn’t been trying to trick me back then…?

“Okaaay, that’s uh, terrible. But what are we supposed to do now?” Troy asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” I asked, appalled.

“Nothing,” Fractal confirmed. “For now, just keep this in mind. I’ll try to find out more, and hopefully, form a plan.”

Although uneasy, everyone nodded in affirmation.

Damn Fractal, why had he even told us if he didn’t want us doing anything about it?

BottledChaos