They arrived in style again, and with only a bare camera crew. Noel and some guys.

  The Hero Association’s entire area was already decked out with one of the world’s most advanced surveillance systems, seeing as it was a hub of power in Memphi, and it got used in HVP programs all the time. There were no trailers to park here and there, to use for temporary measures. There were rooms, in the building itself, for Noel and his people to use. There was no anti-villain stuff, either. The building had a whole wing dedicated to the Villains In Memphi, right when you came in the front door. All you had to do was go to the right, and there it was.

  Maybe Mark would visit that place later.

  For now, Mark and his team dropped out of Blackthorn’s invisible ship, into the empty training yards behind the main building, right into a welcoming party.

  Sentinel in his golden tech-based armor, Kraigen Steele in his jeans and a torn shirt, and also Credenza and Grey Phantom, both of them wearing normal clothes for them. Two superheroes, and two supervillains. The building itself was lit up behind them like several towers all rising together. The architecture of it all reminded Mark of one of those step-pond-farming setups that they did over in some rural cities in China, where they farmed rice on mountainsides. Mark couldn’t wait to go inside. To ‘infiltrate’ the place.

  But Episode 3 wasn’t going to be an ‘event’ at all.

  Not like the bank robbery, and not like the villain party.

  Episode 3 was just going to be good, clean spars, and now that Mark was here, he believed that. Mark was looking forward to it a lot. And yeah, like he had suspected when he saw Tartu and Sentinel ‘fight’ on this very same field in Episode 2, the spotlights were on, and the place looked as bright as day.

  Sentinel stepped forward, saying, “Welcome to the Hero’s Association!”

  Mark was maybe smiling a bit too much as he said, “Thanks for having us.” And then he tried to be less excited about the moment, to talk about some actual business. “Is, uh, Team Tartu okay?”

  Sentinel said, “Not at all, but they needed that beatdown.”

  Mark winced.

  Sentinel was serious as he said, “None of you should be fighting like you are. You know that, right? You skipped years of training to be a villain because of international concerns.”

  “You brutalized them,” Kraigen said.

  Mark felt a little bad for that, but… Mark said, “He started it, and so I will end it.”

  Sentinel held up a placating hand, saying, “It’s the duty of an HVP villain to teach. Not to harm. And you did some real harm, though Tartu’s team is also to blame, a lot. Normally, like I was saying, none of you would be qualified to be villains. They wouldn’t be qualified to be heroes, either. Sure, we have young teams on both sides all the time, but you’re too young and too unsteady, so that’s why I want to do this spar thing. I’m glad you all agreed. I think your writer, Noel, has you scheduled to infiltrate eventually and steal something, but I want to spar with all of you, to try and temper down your worst impulses.”

  Mark felt instantly comfortable with Sentinel because Mark had seen him on the screen so many times before now. The guy was a real superhero. A real good person. His vector felt like that, too; completely genuine. Even his ‘harsh words’ were meant to help, not to put a guy down.

  Mark was pretty sure he was experiencing a bit of hero worship.

  He tried not to let it affect him too much.

  But if Glorious Man was here? Mark would probably fanboy himself into a whimpering mess. It would not be pretty, and Mark wanted to avoid that at most costs.

  Sentinel said, “So in the spirit of sparring—” He looked to Eliot. “Wanna fight?”

  Mark felt a little crushed—

  But then Eliot was all, “Yes, please! And if you have any tips on how to make workable power armor then I’d like to… uh… hear about it, please.”

  Sentinel grinned under his power armor, that just looked like normal armor. And then he flashed a hand over his open mouthpiece and closed his system, though his voice was still easy to hear as he said, “That’s a pretty big secret! I might have to ask you to build us a nice compound like you did for the villains, for the answer. Or, you could win a bout fair and square.”

  “It’s a deal!” Eliot said.

  Mark was reminded of his first fight with Tartu, with his absolute beat down and all of that shit and the theft of his adamantium, but also of nicer things, like how personal bets on bouts between heroes and villains were all rather common. Usually it was pretty informal, but stakes on fights made them actually mean things, so usually people upheld those bets when they won or lost. It was a whole big subculture that Mark had never really gotten into, and he didn’t really want to get into, either.

  But Mark had participated in a lot of that culture these last few days. Cutting Frozenfire out of his jailbird outfit and thus securing his non-involvement in protecting the gate for Episode 4 was a big ‘bet’. Credenza threatening Mark with expulsion from Villians in Memphi if he didn’t win the fight with Tartu and his team was another bet that happened that night, too.

  Mark securing 160k goldleaf from the bank robbery and not being stopped on the way out was another sort of ‘bet’.

  Mark wondered what he wanted to win today, and from whom—

  Kraigen said, “Mark! I challenge you!”

  Mark paused. And then he asked, “What are we betting?”

  To the side, Grey Phantom told Sally, “We’re fighting.”

  Sally’s eyes lit up as she said, “Okay!”

  Credenza looked at Isoko, grinning as she said, “And you’re for me, but we girls gotta walk and talk before we fight.” Credenza gestured to another battlefield. “Over there.”

  Isoko bowed a little. It was a distinctly xerkonan gesture.

  Kraigen Steele, the leader of the Hero’s Association of Memphi, and who certainly seemed like the baddest motherfucker around, walked to the side, telling Mark, “No bets. Just a good clean fight. I want you to be more defensive and less offensive. Offense is great. It’s how you win fights. But you know who lives the longest? It’s not the winners, Mark. It’s the survivors.”

  Mark walked beside him, saying, “I agree.”

  Kraigen raised an eyebrow. “You do, huh. It certainly didn’t look like it last night.”

  “I might have gotten a bit emotional there. Watching it from the cameras made it look… really bad.” Mark felt sick to his stomach again. “I did not mean for that to happen.”

  “No one expects alchemical silver Lucky bullets to the eyes when you’re in an HVP matchup, either. Believe me, that Kardi girl is getting a very firm talking to, and Tartu has already been taken to task for not noticing that his team was fucked up. Tartu is a zealot and he doesn’t know it, and Kardi is just about as fame-hungry as Credenza was, but with a lot fewer compunctions about how she gets there. The only good ones in that group right now are Shawn and Lenny.” Kraigen looked at Mark. “But none of them should be heroes and none of you should be villains. Not yet.”

  Mark felt vindicated to hear someone else in a big position of power to say the things that Kraigen had just said, to speak of disqualifying Tartu and Kardi, at least. It was much better than Eliot’s plan to get them exiled from the settlement. But Kraigen’s stance against Mark being a villain would run into problems of the draconic variety, so Mark was pretty sure Kraigen was just saying these things because he wouldn’t actually advance that sort of plan, at all.

  Mark said, “Of course we shouldn’t be villains and they shouldn’t be heroes, but the Solaris are big in Daihoon, Domainer is strong and Tartu knows how to use it, and Kardi has depths to her Luck that we haven’t seen yet, so they’re able to do whatever they want. And Addavein is Addavein.”

  Kraigen didn’t break his stride at all, but he did reevaluate Mark, again. “… You’re surprisingly mature for your age.”

  Mark snorted. “Not really.”

  “True enough. You are rather violent out there.” Kraigen walked them to a side field where he stopped and turned. “Let’s see how defensive you can be. You know my Powers?”

  Mark was worried. “I know the public name of your Powers.”

  The man’s last name was a mage name, and so what he could really do was hidden behind Mage Secrecy, but Kraigen Steele was a public figure, with mostly known quantities. He was a kaiju killer and he always killed them in the same way. The guy turned his flesh to steel, and when the kaiju tried to eat him he broke them from the inside out. Every punch cracked some sort of foundational lines in every monster he punched, and great swaths of flesh and bone shattered away from every strike.

  Kraigen grinned, and then he made a fist. Mark expected him to turn to steel, but he remained flesh and blood. The muscles of his forearm corded underneath unblemished skin, and his arm bulged. He was wearing rough and tumble clothes, and his shirt would probably break, because it always did, but his pants usually stayed on. He wore specialty pants, or at least underwear, though that stuff sometimes broke in battle, too.

  “Don’t get worried on me now, Mark! We haven’t even started yet,” Kraigen said, “And you haven’t given me your guess about my Powers.”

  A thrum of joy vibrated alongside Mark’s heart as he loosened up, as he squared up. This was going to be a difficult fight, and Mark would probably lose hard, but he was still going to try.

  Oh fuck yeah he was going to try.

  Mark raised one hand gently, making a loose fist with his right hand as he angled his left side toward Kraigen, left hand open, as he guessed, “Breaker Body, some sort of Battle Mind, and then there’s your magic, which could be anything.”

  Kraigen was practically the perfect warrior, able to move and kill kaiju with just his fingers. He walked into beams of fire and cracked the fire in half. He stood in a hurricane and broke the storm.

  “Correct, correct, and the magic is nothing special. Just a few basic spells that I heard you wanted to learn, too. Fly and Protect. Protect was pretty easy for me to learn because it was simply inverting what I already do. Learning that spell helped me to learn my original, largest Power better, too. I suspect the same might happen for you, but for entirely different reasons.” Kraigen continued, “But for now, try not to break too easily. I want you to learn how to be more defensive, and that is what we’re doing here.”

  Mark floated a little off of the ground, his loose hand forming a fist, his helmet of adamantium closing up around his mouth and jaw—

  Kraigen tapped off of the ground and it was like a lightning flash of vectors filling the soil. He launched at Mark, and Mark raised his arm, adamantium forming a linear shield as his caltrops grabbed the ground and prepared to hold him strong.

  Kraigen could have aimed elsewhere. The straight punch could have become a quick uppercut, actually striking Mark where Mark was vulnerable. Flowing around his shield. He aimed right at Mark’s shield, though. Straight on.

  Being a punching bag was not something that Mark would have gone along with in a real fight. He would have moved out of the way. But this wasn’t a real fight. It was a spar.

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  Fist struck adamantium shield, and Mark’s adamantium shattered away, his control over the adamantium disrupted almost explosively. Black dust exploded outward and Mark felt half of his astral body practically disintegrate as all of the space in front of him practically vanished to his Unionsense.

  Adamantium scattered.

  Kraigen Steele tapped the ground with his foot and sailed backward. He landed softly and invisible to Mark’s Unionsense.

  Mark’s heart beat hard as he floated backward, stabilizing himself on two bits of adamantium and then on his feet, because his entire front half felt cold. Black veins pulsed out from his black webweave, hardly visible against the similar color, but he watched, for a moment, as the veins disintegrated when they left him. It was like his front half was exposed to the elements. He was fucking cold.

  It was a cold February night!

  It was like he was a baseline… But no. No. The warmth of his astral body was already coming back.

  Mark didn’t know exactly what Kraigen had done, but he was pretty sure he had broken the space in front of Mark, cracking and fracturing the frontal third, or quarter of his astral body. Just like that! Broken and fractured…

  But as Mark breathed in a Union of adamant and weakness, as he felt his astral body grow back, repairing with every beat of his heart, he had an idea of what had really happened.

  Mark asked, “It’s like a strong weakness-effect? Concentrated weakness. You directly Break the astral body, and you probably could have cracked my entire body in half if you wanted.”

  Kraigen grinned. “Somewhat correct. Let me know when you’re ready for the next lesson.”

  Mark furiously thought, trying to understand several things at once. Kraigen had mentioned the Protect spell and how it was the opposite of his ‘concentrated weakness’ magic. Protect was the spell that people like Julie imbued into spellbreakers, to protect the wearer from a single Power for about 2 or 3 seconds. Mark’s own spellbreaker lay under his webweave and inert. Its Protective magics were dissipated, used up, and they weren’t coming back while Mark was still on Earth, or at least outside of concentrated ambient magic.

  So what was Breaker in relation to Protect?

  A direct astral body attack… no. Something more than that.

  As Mark stood on his feet, Union restoring him, his Unionsense sort of… healed, sort of. He could sense Kraigen again, but weaker. Mark’s astral body was closer to him, too. It was sort of like Mark had had 100 gallons of astral body, but Kraigen had broken away 33 gallons of it, and what Mark had left over was lesser than before.

  It was the same sort of thing that happened when people overworked their astral body and they lost the ability to use their Power for a while, until they rested some. Mark’s astral body strength and presence was coming back quickly, because Union healed the astral body as well as the user…

  But Kraigen had directly attacked his astral body, and that is why Mark’s adamantium… broke out of his control.

  And yet?

  Mark looked at the ground ahead of him. Grains and twisted shards of adamantium were scattered in the sands. Mark reached out and grabbed all that he had lost. It was like a magnet running over the beach, pulling black gold out of tan sands and then reconstructing it all into a shield, once again.

  Mark raised his remade shield, standing ready for a second attack. This time he would know what to see, what to expect. But first, a question.

  Mark asked, “Are you cracking my astral body along fault lines, or… directly introducing fault lines?”

  Kraigen’s eyebrows went up as his eyes went wide. He grinned. “I absolutely love it when we get battle smart kids in the program. So how about this: you tell me how it works.”

  And then Kraigen proceeded to break Mark and his Powers for the next two hours, both of them going long, long after everyone else had already finished their bouts.

  Eliot chatted with Sentinel about power armor as they sat on the benches, watching Mark and Kraigen. Sally gained some lessons on controlling the environment to mess up slippery people, like Grey Phantom, which should extend to all other brawnies who tried to control the land, too, and people who flew through objects, like Lenny. Isoko had a private conversation with Credenza, and when the two of them came back Isoko was excitedly talking merch with the supervillain.

  Mark fought Kraigen… Well. More like ‘survived’ Kraigen.

  Mark’s shield shattered into a dozen pieces instead of thousands because he was getting better about not letting Kraigen ‘break’ his adamantiumkinesis. Mark regathered the pieces instantly, compensating for the loss of astral body in his front as he flew backward, fast and wild to escape the follow up punch. His astral body practically hurt after every survived attack, but Mark was compensating and he was on the verge of figuring something out, for sure. Whatever that thing was, it seemed important, at least for now.

  Kraigen’s punch went wide and he landed on the ground, saying, “How’s your arm feeling, kid!”

  Mark spun up and around Kraigen, dodging the guy, even as he tried to tap the guy’s shoulder with a spike of adamantium. That spike dug into Kraigen’s flesh —his shirt was long gone— and then the spike shattered up and away. Mark caught most of the shards. His arm was already healed, though, so why was that even a concern.

  Mark called out, “I healed my arm ten seconds ago, old man! Get with the program!”

  Kraigen was not fighting seriously. He was having fun, moving at a sedate pace and trying to tag Mark any way he could tag Mark. Most of the time he hit an adamantium shield that Mark was able to keep together sometimes. Mark could make a shield that survived Breaker a few times, but he had no idea why Breaker actually broke his shield so well. But sometimes Kraigen struck flesh, and Mark’s left leg and both of his arms had been broken in compound fractures multiple times already.

  But Mark healed to full.

  He couldn’t use Kraigen to heal himself, though. Not very well, anyway. Right now his Union was sunk into the guy, adamant and weakness making Mark stronger and Kraigen weaker, but Kraigen had called out the paladins earlier to keep him topped off, and so wasn’t flagging at all, and also, whenever Kraigen actually noticed Mark’s Union—

  Kraigen paused. “Holy fuck, kid, I thought I had shook that off again.”

  Kraigen buzzed. Mark wasn’t sure exactly what he was doing, but he saw the effect. Mark’s Union shattered around Kraigen. Mark remained connected to the world, but not to his sparring partner.

  Kraigen grinned. “You’re getting better at being insidious.”

  “Thank you.”

  Kraigen dangerously asked, “Want me to speed up?”

  “No thank you! This is more than enough.”

  “Thanks for keeping my ego intact, kid.” Kraigen stood, and said, “You’re getting better about healing faster, too. Have you figured out what Breaker actually is?”

  “I could use a hint!” Mark said, flowing across the ground, ready for another punch or attack.

  Kraigen looked like he was just standing there, but he was working out angles and directions and he was absolutely figuring out how to take down Mark right now. Fighting this mental battle, moving his caltrops just a little, changing direction a lot, all of that was worth just as much as the actual spar. The mental battle could not be ignored.

  Mark was pretty sure that Kraigen was enjoying the mental part of this spar a whole lot more than the actual fighting, too. Mark imagined it wasn’t often that he fought someone who could read everything he was thinking as fast as Mark was reading it.

  Kraigen grinned. “You’re already getting better at avoiding the worst of my Breaking, so tell me your guess.”

  Mark rapidly said, “Protect is about insulating Power and the body. Breaker is the opposite. To survive Breaker I need to be more fluid, less solid. Trying to combat you directly or survive you directly is the exact opposite of how to win against you, because you take those frontal assaults and you fracture them along fault lines that lead straight to my core.” There was a gaping hole in the ab area of Mark’s suit from where he had learned that lesson the hard way. Kraigen could break him in half if he wanted. Mark continued, “Mostly, though, I have learned that if you weren’t supported by those paladins then I think I already would have won, but you are, so I have no idea how to actually fight to win, but I’m getting there, and it involves being more fluidly defensive.”

  Kraigen smiled, and then he pulled back, his vector changing. He was not looking for an opening anymore, he was done.

  Mark stopped floating around. Was Kraigen actually done? … Yeah. Seemed like.

  Kraigen said, “Good fight, kid. Good lessons, too. Those lessons will go far when you’re dealing with Powers that try to shut you down, because the best way to avoid being broken is to bend instead.”

  Mark bowed, saying, “Thank you, sir!”

  Kraigen huffed a tiny laugh, then said, “Go on and get. Noel probably has a whole trap gauntlet ready for you kids to run through to get to the center of the HA, and you and Eliot are doing that, as far as I know.” He looked to the bleachers, where Mark’s team and their teachers watched the fight, but also mostly talked amongst themselves. “Isoko is trying to learn Protect too, yeah?”

  “She is… And uh, pardon me, sir,” Mark started, wondering if Kraigen was even going to answer this next question, “But how do you know what goes on in private conversations between us and our teacher?”

  Spies! Spies everywhere!

  Kraigen grinned. “The usual ways.” He called out, “Cybersong! You’re up for an infiltration!”

  Eliot was poking and prodding at a bunch of floating and stabilized electronics and other gizmos while Sentinel poked and prodded at the same stuff. Mark was pretty sure what they were doing was highly complicated, but he had no idea what it was, really. All he could tell was that both of them were focused and with their minds also headed in tens of other directions. They weren’t all here, in this space. They were in the tinkerer space, inside the machines.

  Kraigen muttered, “Looks like Jeff made a friend.” He called out, “Eliot! Jeff! Pay attention!”

  Eliot and Sentinel snapped toward Kraigen and Mark.

  Eliot leapt to his feet—

  “Infiltration time!” Kraigen said.

  What followed was Mark and Eliot approaching the side of the Hero’s Association where a great big vent, easily a meter across, was blocked off from access by a simple grate that Eliot easily turned into a door. He opened the door and gave a line about ‘after you’, and Mark went inside.

  Mark carved up traps while Eliot ‘did something’ to the cameras.

  Finally, there was a drop into a big room with some shiny fake-ass crystal sitting under a laser grid on a pedestal in the center. Also, there were some guards. Mark ‘dropped’ the guards while Eliot ‘disabled’ the security system, and then Mark grabbed the crystal.

  The alarm went off and Eliot proclaimed ‘it’s not my fault!’.

  Mark found a big X on the wall that he was supposed to drill through (that they would remove in post), and he carved right through it, through a room filled with old computer parts, through a hallway that was empty of people except for actors well outside of Mark’s blendering, and then out through a few meters of dirt. Cameras caught it all, and Eliot turned the wreckage into a crappy staircase before putting the rooms and the trash back like he had found them, before Mark had led the way through the grounds. Eliot could have made a very fancy escalator and redesigned the whole place to better facilitate an exit, but that would have been beyond the scale of power Eliot wanted to display for public consumption, and Noel agreed with that decision.

  And then the night’s shoot was done.

  Mark, Eliot, Isoko, and Sally bade farewell to the superheroes and got back into the ship with Archmage Blackthorn.

  A short while later they were in Blackthorn’s tower, eating a late pasta dinner, before each of them fell into their beds, to fall asleep to the rising sun.