I was done with everything by three pm, so I took a nap and flew south at six. Thankfully, the most expensive part of my suit was my battery. I could fly around in this thing for fifty hours straight and I still wouldn’t go past half my battery reserves.

  But flying around was boring. I saw some criminals, some guying trying to mug a woman, and some dude selling hard drugs. Those didn’t pay, they were local crimes, but I stopped and reported the mugging and called the cops on the drug dealer, watching them arrest him, just in case he was a wisher and busted out with something.

  “I think that drug dealer is working for the local villain of this area. Whimshiemer, he’s a chemist tinker who fabricates addictive substance for cheap.”

  “Is he dangerous?”

  “No,” Mochi replied. “He’s actually a bit of a coward. Always manages to hide his location and has only been seen masked a handful of times.”

  “What’s his crew like?”

  “A few pyros, one strongman, and an animal communicator.”

  “An animal communicator?”

  “Yeah, they use the local wildlife as recon and hideout when things get crazy.”

  “Sort of like drones?”

  “Exactly like drones, except with much more of them and no way to tell if they’re drones!”

  I flew around for a good while longer.

  Every area had a local hero and villain. They changed and migrated over the years but all the locals generally knew and kept up with their local hero politics. Some of the safer areas only had some small time guy, like this one. There were drugs, but little violence and the hero rarely had to do anything to keep the area safe.

  “How much do you think he gets paid to protect this place? Five thousand a week? Ten thousand?”

  “That is the going rate for Major F rank heroes, no?”

  “Just seems like a lot for someplace so quiet. Does that whimsy guy have and bounty?”

  “No. He doesn’t make much locally. I think he just ships stuff out of the area for other places.”

  “Does he do rocket fuel?”

  “Yeah, but basic primitive stuff. He mostly manufactures drugs.”

  “Sounds dangerous Why hasn’t the union put out a bounty on him? He not only produces drugs but weapons as well?”

  “They don’t know his buyers. The local heroes haven’t even seen him face to face.”

  That was smart. Can’t come after you if you weren’t known in the first place.

  There were many types of villains, some violent, others less so. But suppliers were a weary bunch, often hiding and sneaking around to make their sales. And the Union took a particularly hard stance against them depending on what they made and to who they sold to.

  Eventually, I perched on top of an old church and turned my camo on. It didn’t make me invisible, but the coating on my suit would change to match the general color of my surroundings.

  The world of wishers was very different from the normal world. Cops didn’t deal with wishers. Powered individuals could go through tens, if not hundreds of regular people easily, so fighting and governing them was left up to the Hero’s Union. The cops would deal with the normal criminals and heroes would deal with the supernatural ones.

  And as ridiculous as that sounded, it worked. Wishers, on average, weren’t suicidal. We could be greedy, or needy, but we tended to be much less self-destructive than normal folk. Maybe that was because we had more to lose. Or maybe it was because our one wish had been granted by whatever supernatural force governed this universe.

  Either way, we had a somewhat different psychological profile than the rest of humanity. So most wishers, including villains, valued life and freedom. That meant most villains were less ‘world-ending nuclear bombs’ and more ‘secret underworld bosses.’

  They wanted longivety and profitability. And if one of their own threatened that stability, they’d go after them like Cobra had last night.

  Eventually, midnight came close.

  “Mochi, I’m going to disconnect, just in case he hacks me and traces the call somehow.”

  “Aww come on!”

  “Sorry, I gotta take precautions.”

  Though if the Hound wanted to find me, I doubted I’d be able to stop him. I doubted anyone could.

  My wings spread open and I flew back, passing over my home and circling the area of last night’s debacuale for a few minutes. I ran my sensors trying to see if I could spot anyone, but got nothing back aside from late night warehouse workers and the usual henchmen lurking about.

  “You gonna come down?” A voice spoke, almost as if it was next to my ear.

  I looked down and saw him.

  The Wolf. The Hound.

  Nobody really knew what he looked like. You got half pictures here and there but he rarely made any official media visits, that was mostly left to the Lioness and Paragon. I’d seen a lot of internet pictures of him, most of them old and degraded but I recognized the outfit he wore from some of them.

  He was tall, easily over six feet and his face was covered by a strange wolf-like mask. His cape was long, almost tarp-like and it floated about ten feet behind him. It floated gently behind him, making him look like a half-manifest wolf monster or something.

  If you had told me this was some type of beastly grower or fucked up giant monster wolf, I probably would have believed you.

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  I slowly descended to the rooftop, making sure to keep my eyes on the man, even though that wouldn’t do much.

  “You’re the Crow.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “I am,” my voice cracked. “And you're the Wolf.”

  “I am.”

  “Uhm. Great. What can I uh do for you?”

  They sounded pretentious.

  “Not that you need anything from me. It was just you were the one who wanted to talk, at least according to Mike.”

  “You were on site yesterday when you discovered this place, right?”

  I nodded.

  “I need any extra footage you have of the incident, including before and after the fight.”

  “Yeah, sure. I have it all right here,” I answered, pulling out the flash drive and tossing it to him.

  “Is that all?”

  “No,” The Wolf replied. “How many years have you worked this area.”

  “About five,” I answered.

  “And Cobra? How long has she been running things here?”

  “Almost ten years I think, why?”

  “She normally runs light stuff, right?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “She stores a lot of weed and advanced tech, no weaponry though, and no hard drugs.”

  “You buy from her?”

  “Ugh… yeah? Batteries and software mostly.”

  I gulped and hoped he didn’t hear it. Then he just kept staring at me

  “People?” The Wolf growled.

  “What? No. She has a very firm policy of walking that grey line between full-on villain and vig. She’s the type to value her freedom over money anyway. And she sounded super freaked out when I called her about-”

  “You called her?”

  “Yeah, about Dia-”

  “Did you record it?”

  “Uh… yeah. Do you want that to?”

  The wolf nodded, which was terrifying.

  I plugged in the stick to a port on my suit and manually transfered over the recording of the call, the one with Mike as well.

  Then I threw the stick at the Wolf, who seemed to catch in so fast the stick disappeared.

  The Wolf nodded.

  “Tell no one,” he growled. “I’ll know if you do.”

  And just with that, before I could reply, he disappeared.

  “What the hell was that?”

  I wasn’t invincible. I knew that. I wasn’t stupid, at least not anymore. I could be tracked and hunted. The Wolf could probably have my identity within the hour he was willing to worm his way around some privacy laws.

  So I kept a low profile. Recon work was half my money. Figure out where the crime is, and if I wasn’t able to handle it, call in the guys who could.

  I was smart about it. I tried to be smart about everything nowadays. But there wasn’t much I could do about the Wolf.

  But maybe there was something else.

  Every area had its heros and villians, even rural ones. Supers had wormed their way into the very heart of most cultures nowadays.

  From neighborhood to neighborhood, you’d see certain villains, vigs, and heroes. The way they were treated was based on their crimes. An invisible drug dealer who only sells weed to local high schoolers? No one would probably know he existed.

  An invisible guy who got too touchy with women? He’d be dead within a few days. Sexual crimes were the highway to getting a Kill Order set on you by the Hero’s Union.

  But for the Wolf to start asking about the area? For Cobra, who loved her personal freedom more than anything else to call in heroes?

  That hinted at something far greater. Human trafficking was what the Wolf had implied but those crates weren’t designed for humans.

  Animals maybe?

  I leaned back into my chair, my mind still racing in thought. It was now Thanksgiving Day and I’d been going over the problem over and over again for the past week.

  Mostly because whatever it was might mean money. But it also served as a distraction from this day, the day that I had been dreading.

  “Let’s go!” Mochi yelled with her leash on her in her mouth.

  “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!”

  She started spinning in circles and sending her leash spiraling around her.

  “Okay, okay,” I grumbled, pushing myself up with my cane.

  I hadn’t seen my family in over five years. When the whole debacle with Mochi had happened, I hadn’t reached out even then.

  I’d seen my grandma a few times a year since the cancer diagnosis but everyone else was basically dead to me.

  I walked out to the garage giving Kimber a goodbye pet as I left. Mochi was coming with me, for emotional support. She wore a collar that prevented her from speaking, one she’d designed for the times she was out in public.

  I had a translator in my ear and a fat frown on my face as I strapped on the leash and took my time petting her down.

  “Come on, it won’t be that bad!” Mochi mumbled

  I slowly pat her head.

  I loved this dog, this beautiful smart innocent creature. But all she knew of family was Hallmark movies and cartoons.

  It was said that people project, accusing others of the worst qualities they carried. Mochi’s worst quality was snagging some food off my plate when I wasn’t looking. I don’t think she could understand something like this.

  She was smart and comforting, but she was still a kid, or a puppy I suppose. Actually, I didn’t know if dogs ever emotionally matured.

  “Let’s just get this over with,” I replied.

  I opened the old car door and Mochi hoped on through to the passenger side. I put myself in and put my cane between us.

  Mochi whined one of those sad dog whines.

  I reached over and petted her down.

  “We don’t have to go ya know. We can stay home,” she whispered.

  “Nah, we have to go. Grandma’s dying. We don’t really have a choice.”

  And with that, I turned on the old car and slowly put it in reverse. The garage door automatically opened and I watched it close as I drove out o the street.

  The drive there was as anxious as could be. I was seeing streets I hadn’t seen in years, passing through neighborhoods I partially recognized.

  It was all familiar but all new at the same time. When I say I’d been stupid, that hadn’t been in the lightest terms.

  I was a straight C’s student at best, and that was while taking the easiest classes in school and studying a decent amount. College was never an option and my plans for the future consisted of anything that didn’t require me to use my head too much.

  I'm exaggerating a little. The point is that I was a little dumber than the rest of the people around me.

  And intelligence affected the way you saw things.

  I’d put it together a while back but driving past all these pretty built houses and architectural buildings, it really hit me. My family was rich.

  This was the type of suburb that sitcoms would record for an outside house. The type of neighborhood you’d see in movies and wonder, ‘I wonder how those kids' parents can afford all of that?’

  My dad was a doctor in one of the most prestigious hospitals within the city. My mom owned a small chain restaurant, one that had been given to her by my grandma after my grandpa’s death.

  They were millionaires, easily.

  Being a vig meant you saw all types of settings. Criminals existed everywhere. Having seen and fought in some crack dens and lived in a shady warehouse district, I couldn’t help but feel envy.

  This place just screamed money.

  I drove down the streets and parked my car on the curb.

  I saw something buzzing by in the distance, but I pretended not to notice it.

  I guess he was the lookout. I sighed and pushed open the door.

  Mochi followed right behind me. And with that, I closed the door and walked over to Grandma’s house.