It started simply enough. Sarai was supposed to greet a colleague, that was all. Nothing outstanding or noteworthy. Just head to one of the stations coming from the north, pick up the guy she'd video chatted with, head back.

Dolen was even with her to portal them back to headquarters as soon as they found a remote location to disappear from.

Given that they were out of costume, they were just faces in the crowd, doing a meetup or reunion in the holiday season with the new arrivals or whatever sentimental bullshit people thought she was here for.

When the train arrived, she leaned against a pillar in view of the exiting passengers. Better to make herself visible, so they could be done sooner and she could get another patrol run in later.

As expected, Bartosz stepped out, the massive boy's short black hair gelled forward. Suitcase trailing after, his eyes found her after a moment, and they exchanged waves. Only for her body to freeze.

Someone else appeared.

The traitor.

Sarai's blood boiled. Blood sounded in her ears, drowning out the rest of the world. She couldn't believe it, and yet the proof was right there. Horrific and Irrefutable.

Behind her newest colleague, she saw him. Obviously, he had aged six years. His hair was longer, his features had matured, his height had increased, his muscles had bulked up, but the reality was undeniable.

In no world would Sarai mistake a stranger for Finneas Allister. He was, after all, the person she hated the most.

He hadn't looked in her direction yet, instead talking to some blonde girl, saying things she couldn't make out. Too far away to hear.

Probably whispering sweet words to that new bitch, she figured. A new victim of his deception before he inevitably showed her his true colors. Yuck, look at them, walking there together like everything was fine.

Her fingernails dug into the upper sleeves of her shirt, pulling the fabric taut against her shoulders. She inhaled through her nose, stoking the flames in her gut. It would fuel the burning rage she was feeling. Sarai focused on that sensation, reveling in it so she didn't blow up in public.

"Sarai." A hand landed on her shoulder.

She looked around to see Dolen giving her a questioning look, reminding her that she was supposed to be his captain, not some angry schoolgirl. She was off to college next year, for god's sake.

Opening her mouth, she closed it again when she saw something in the corner of her eye. Her head turned again. That look the blonde was giving the person she once called best friend.

Her blood ran cold, embers sputtering out. Freezing claws squeezed her lungs, threading ice through veins that had burned molten just seconds before. That look—the one the blonde girl gave him—wasn't casual. It wasn't fleeting. It was deep. Warm. Soft with something close to adoration, covered up by pride and bravado.

She knew that expression. Sarai had worn it once too, long before she'd learned how much it could cost her.

The girl said something Sarai could hear and stepped slightly closer to him, her gaze fixed on his face like he was the only person in the world. Her hand hovered for a moment, then reached for his arm, pulling on it jokingly. He turned toward her, calm and unreadable, and said something. The words didn't reach Sarai. Just the demeanor: patient. Detached. Like he was used to being looked at that way.

Then, casually, almost instinctively, he rested a hand on the girl's shoulder. Not tight. Not intimate, exactly. But familiar. As if it wasn't the first time he'd done it. As if she belonged there, right under his hand, and the world agreed.

Sarai's mouth dried. Her fists clenched at her sides, not in rage this time, but in quiet devastation. Something cracked deep inside, soft and unseen, like a thread snapping under strain. Her knees didn't buckle, but they wanted to.

He hadn't kissed her. Hadn't held her or looked at her the way the girl looked at him. But that almost made it worse. He hadn't done anything—but he hadn't stopped her either. He just let it happen. Like it didn't matter. Like nothing mattered.

There he went, living his life without a care in the world, barging into her district like he had forgotten her already! Even if he had seen her face, he would have forgotten it.

Except, no.

…Finneas stopped at the end of the platform.

And turned his eyes straight on her. Not a second of searching, no stilted sweeps, just dead accurate eye contact with her, and only her.

He knew.

Dolen's finger tapped her back. The junior hero captain startled slightly and turned to face him, blinking as if surfacing from underwater.

"You okay?" he asked, concern cutting through his usually dry tone.

But before she could say anything, the new team member arrived.

"Hello!" Bartosz greeted, sounding as upbeat as he had over their last call. His brows had a slight furrow to them when she looked at him. "Is something wrong with my new friends over there? You seem irritated with them."

Irritated was an understatement. No doubt intentional, downplaying her pitiful overreaction to give her an out. A blow to her dignity, but she really couldn't refuse.

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She shook her head. "Apologies. You shouldn't have had to see that. I just saw someone I thought I knew," she said, nodding to her teammates. "Let's go."

Overall, she was fairly sure she managed the introduction well enough aside from that moment of distraction at the beginning. Her mind stayed on it, though she hadn't let it show. They had some light conversation, mostly her asking questions about the larger boy's trip and telling him general information he needed to know about Central.

Yet in her head, that stare kept replaying itself over and over. Indifferent? Bored? Despite having once been able to read Finneas like a book, she had no idea how to interpret him now.

Bartosz—Rozek to the general public—said something, and she consulted her short-term memory to remember what it was in order to respond. Her voice felt like it belonged to someone else, as if another entity was controlling her body.

Not really the case, but that degree of mental separation was probably for the best. More than anything, she didn't want to make an unprofessional impression on their latest addition.

Even when they reached an empty room with no onlookers, and Dolen opened three wormholes, swirling distortions in space that she was normally fascinated by but barely spared a glance right now, she wondered what she had done to deserve this. To receive such a nasty surprise on a day that was supposed to be calm and relaxed.

She absolutely wasn't feeling calm or relaxed now, though she still hid it with all her image department training in full effect. Just show them the front.

If there were any concerned glances aimed at her back, she didn't wait to see them, stepping through Warp's shortcut to headquarters.

The day wasn't over, and Lahar Sioc wouldn't let one small hiccup stop her from doing what needed to be done.

*******

"Lahar! Lahar! Make a heart!"

Sarai fought to keep the scowl off her face, even though she logically knew it didn't matter one bit how much her facial muscles contorted since she wore a full mask in her hero identity.

Briefly, she considered ignoring the kid's request, until the crowd started echoing him and added suggestions of their own.

"Make it glow!"

"Metal!"

"Rock!"

She didn't need to look at the overseer to know she was expected to oblige them. So with a final gnashing of her teeth, she got to work.

Currently, she was doing a PR event in the main plaza, so she couldn't go overboard with her power, but as long as it stayed in her mental grasp, she wouldn't lose her hold over it.

She was the only minor present at the event, a couple of heroes from the non-Unbound adult teams standing below signing autographs while she stood up here entertaining an audience of so many people.

Not that it was anything she hadn't done before, but still. She was not in a good mood at the moment, and would very much rather spend the evening processing things at home. Unfortunately that was not an option. She was scheduled for a show today, and a show she would deliver.

Dolen and Bartosz had stayed with the rest of their team when she had gotten called away for the next thing in her schedule. Hence, her presence here.

Focusing on the atmospheric shifts in her range, Sarai raised her hands and concentrated on the comparatively smaller area where she could actively use her power. It took the form of a sphere, no bigger than 125 centimeters in radius, and offered her a few options in terms of what she could make happen inside.

One was the creation of rock, either as a solid or a loose sand. She chose the former, materializing the requested shape in midair, plain for all to see. The crowd watched with rapt attention, but her eyes lingered on the construct for a moment.

It erased itself, disappearing back into nothing within that small ball where she was in control. In its place, steel appeared, rigid and clean. Hesitating for a second, Sarai let it take the form of a heart. Then she looked at it, really looked. It felt wrong, still, albeit better than before.

The second aspect of her power came in the form of temperature manipulation. Just in general. Not even limited to the matter she brought into existence, just anything within her sphere. Cold was one option. Heat was another, one she preferred at the moment.

Channeling her frustration and anger into the sphere, she pushed her ability to its limits. Who cared if some guy from her past was back? Who cared what he was doing when she wasn't there? There were better, more important things out there.

Like this right here. The heart of steel started to glow as promised, melting to a degree it started looking like lava. Fitting, given her name, and also the reason she picked it.

None of the hazardous hot metal dripped down into the audience, of course. Her power had been rigorously tested for collateral damage and public safety, and getting to this level of control had required years of hard work. But she was here, where others couldn't reach her.

Especially not some boy.

After some pictures and applause, Lahar eliminated the heart before parting her hands, like a professional swimmer doing breaststroke. Concentration would now have to be maintained on two fronts, which was fine. Nothing she hadn't practiced before. She needed to push herself into exhaustion if she wanted to get any sleep tonight, she knew.

The sphere split down the middle, two identical rounds of influence, each half the size of the original. Rock and heat flowed, creating intricate patterns that were supported by her telekinetically controlled material. She took risks, making her constructs bigger than her spheres and thereby leaving areas where they were subjected to gravity, but she never let anything touch the civilians.

She pushed further.

Twin pillars of molten metal twisted upward, braiding into double helices. Between them, spires of obsidian emerged from the air, connected by delicate bridges of sandstone, each one so impossibly thin they looked like they'd snap under a whisper of wind. But they didn't. They hovered. Hung in place like a spider's web spun from fire and stone.

The crowd gasped. She didn't hear it.

She layered heat atop heat, manipulated flow, density, refraction. Created an archway of burning copper, then split it open with a rising burst of crystalline basalt. Shapes folded, expanded, looped. None of it planned. All of it perfect. It was control as art. Destruction as beauty. A refined fury.

This was her world.

Finneas Allister would never touch it.

He had no powers. No enhancements. No contribution to the work they did here. She hadn't forgotten—he'd been a regular kid. One who ran away. Hid. Disappeared without a single word while she poured every drop of herself into rising higher.

Whatever he was now, however mature or put-together he looked, he was still a civilian. A nobody. A face in the crowd. Nothing more.

Maybe he made the blonde laugh. Maybe he found a way to act like the center of her world. But that didn't mean anything.

Sarai had actual impact. Real responsibility. She saved people, lifted houses, redirected collapsing buildings.

She was Lahar Sioc, and soon people would mention her in the same breath as Nar. When she graduated out of the junior division, the district would test her mettle. There would be less restrictions on her, more room to prove herself. Room that she intended to take full advantage of.

There were a few villains she had in mind whose defeat would help get her name out there.

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