“And then she looked at me in this really weird kind of way, you know, like she wanted to see all of me, and that was weird, and no, I didn’t like it. I guess it was the new costume. Eye-catching. Someone else designed it and I think it’s not that bad after I got used to it. Anyway, she gave me her number, but it’s been three days—I am not calling her. It’s a hotline, not a personal line, you know. I think I should start printing posters, but someone’s probs gonna copy them and make a fake Olympia Hotline, too. Screw it, I’ll keep going with the same phone number.” I shoved strips of bacon into my mouth, chewed, swallowed, then said, “What’s wrong? Haven’t even eaten yet.”

  Emelia stared at me from across the booth, her cold coffee and toast in front of her. We were in an Upper West cafe in a part of the city that hadn’t been touched one bit by the attack. She’d offered to buy my breakfast since the last time I ate was the hotdog right before I caught a burglar trying to steal someone’s beat up van. Since then, it’s been problem after problem, but good problems—not the kind of problems that I’d had to deal with for the past few months. Normal problems that normal superheroes deal with, and I think that’s pretty good for myself. Becky even left me another document to read this morning, nothing except one sheet of paper that said, Closer.

  Maybe that was why I was in such a great mood today. She’d actually been keeping her word.

  I was still scared, sure, and a very big part of me didn’t want to give her all my trust just yet, but document after document, tape recording after tape recording, I was slowly starting to believe that she was going to get them.

  Christmas was creeping closer and closer, and Rebecca Freeman was doing her part.

  “Ry,” Emelia said. “It’s great that you found someone that makes you blush—”

  I pointed my fork at her. “Never said anything about blushing.”

  “But you’re gonna have to stop soon, you know that, right?”

  “Why?” I asked, cutting through the stack of pancakes. People were looking at us strangely, maybe because I was chewing with my mouth open, or because I was wearing nothing except my old varsity jacket and sweatpants over my Olympia costume. But this was also the fancy kind of restaurant. The kind where you scanned a code to grab a menu and had a robot on wheels deliver your food straight to your table. Mellow melodic music. Soft lighting. On the twentieth floor of a skyscraper with windows bigger than my house. “I’m on a freaking role, dude.”

  “No, Rylee, you’re not. You’re purposefully forgetting about your other half.”

  I drank hot chocolate and spoke after I swallowed. “Am not.”

  “Could you pay attention to me? Please?”

  I sighed and put down my knife and fork. I’d finished anyway. “All ears, sarge.”

  Em pinched her nose, then said, “You need to pump the brakes a little bit, alright? You need to give yourself some time to process what’s going on inside of you for once. I mean, you bailed on me at the Gates’.”

  “Yeah, because there was stuff to do.”

  “Stuff more important than talking to them about what you’re going through?” she asked me. “They were willing to give you a chance, you know. But now they don’t want to even watch the news if you’re on it, too.”

  I sipped some more. This stuff is great. Ice cream inside the hot chocolate? Gods, I hope I’m rich enough to one day come back here. “Did you see me on the news last night? Saved someone from falling out of a chopper.”

  “Rylee,” she said, hissing my name. I paused and looked at her. “You’re killing yourself.”

  “I’m bulletproof,” I said to her.

  “But Rylee’s not.”

  “Yeah, and that sucks for her,” I said. “Hey, you mind if I order some more? Haven’t eaten in days.”

  Emelia sighed and waved her hand. “Yeah, go ahead.”

  I called the robo-waiter back to our table for another round. Once it was gone, Emelia leaned forward on the table, elbows either side of her plate as she looked me dead in the eyes. Serious much? “You need some help.”

  “Oh my Gods,” I said. “What do you want from me? I save the city—Rylee, you need to stop. I don’t save the city—Rylee, you need to get off your butt and save the city. What do you want from me, dude? Pick again.”

  Because I was pretty sure we’d had this conversation before.

  “I keep meaning that you need to find a balance,” she said. “You need to save Rylee, too.”

  I waved my hand through the air. “She’s not dead.”

  “But she’s rotting away in there,” Em said softly. “You’re not letting yourself breathe. You haven’t even given yourself time to think yet, have you? Saving the city is fine. Honestly, you’re doing great.” The waiter came back with more bacon, pancakes, and omelets. I patted his head and sent him on his way. “But you need to find some time to live both of your lives. When I was a superhero, I struggled with that, but I had help. I had Grant, I had Selina, and I had you. I cared about our normal lives just as much as I cared about saving the world, because that’s what matters when the lights are off and so is the costume. The person you are everyday isn’t Olympia, and you know that.” I’d stopped eating. I was staring at her, knife and fork in hand, tightly held—so much so they were beginning to give a little. “One day you’re going to need Rylee more than you need her, so save Rylee, too.”

  I was silent for a moment, staring at her. Then I put down the cutlery. “Listen,” I said, leaning forward. “When we were at the Gates’ house, I couldn’t sleep, no matter how much I tried. I figured that hey, I’m gonna be three hundred years old in the blink of an eye. Like that.” I snapped my fingers. “The worst part about my problems is that they’re temporary, Em. You think I’m not scared of losing Bianca and my mom? Of course I am, but there’s nothing I can do about it except feel depressed about it, and a depressed Rylee is a useless and distracted Olympia.”

  She leaned forward. “That’s not how it works, Ry. What, you’ll wait it all out? Outlive your problems?”

  I shrugged one shoulder. “There’s dozens of people that make my life hell that won’t be alive by the time I even start to look twenty-five, Sparky. It’s all kinda meaningless in a way, you know? I’ve had the longest year I can remember, and what’s it all boiled down to, huh? Can’t even show a single thing for it. My cousin got butchered but nobody ever knew her. I tried to stop a criminal organization that’s seemingly gone dead silent in the past few months. The Kaiju are back to being back page news headlines, and…so what?” I picked up my cutlery. “If there’s one thing I’ve learnt so far, Em, it’s that my life doesn’t make sense, and the more sense I try to give it, the less sense it starts to make. I’m gonna keep saving lives, because at least I’m making a difference like that. So what if Rylee dies in the end? She was a pretty shitty friend, and last I checked, her own parents didn’t even want her either.”

  Emelia frowned. “You’re talking about her in third person again.”

  “She might as well be someone else now.”

  “That’s not healthy. You’re dissociating to hide from your own feelings, Ry.”

  “And?”

  “And I don’t want to talk to you one day and not recognize you anymore,” she said quietly. “Olympia isn’t who you are, I know that. The Rylee I grew up with was scared of asking her mom to chaperone her to prom night.”

  “You never grew up with Olympia,” I said around a mouthful. I swallowed. “Or with a dad like mine.”

  Emelia sighed and sat back in her chair. “You’re creating a shell, Ry, and the more you do, the harder it’s gonna become to one day try to get out of it. Try all you want, but you’re a girl in a costume, pretending to be a superhero, just like I was, and just like everyone else did.” Em lowered her voice. “It’s always been an act, but for the sake of everyone else, you act brave, but you’ve also got to look at yourself and say the truth once in a while.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “You sound like my guidance counselor back in high school.”

  “That’s because I was, Rylee. You paid me with your mom’s sandwiches.”

  Forgot about that.

  “Well,” I said, my second plate now empty. “I’ll sort that out when I’m a hundred or so.”

  “Are you even gonna remember who you are by then?”

  “Don’t know,” I said, finishing my hot cocoa. “Guess we’ll find out.”

  “I won’t be there with you, Ry. None of us will.”

  I set the mug down on the table and looked out of the window. This wasn’t the kind of conversation I liked having, and that’s because it was gonna happen whether any of us liked it or not. Fifty years from now, when I look twenty and Emelia was brushing against her seventies, most of my problems now, all this angst and hate, it’ll be a memory. Something that happened, just like that time when we were in high school, and that time when I got sent to an alternate reality. Then time will just keep turning, and life will just keep rolling—and I’ll still be Olympia.

  At the end of the day, it’s the one thing I’ve had this entire time. I’ve lost people I thought I’d be around for a long time and fucked up situations that I thought I could fix or benefit from. Olympia, really, is all I’ve got left.

  If Bianca and mom end up both dying, then…well, that’s it. And I didn’t want to think about that.

  Not in the decades I’m going to be alive for either. Not even when I’m dead and gone.

  Blind hope, a hell of a drug.

  “Thanks for breakfast,” I told her. “We should do this more often.”

  “On the condition that I get to sit with Rylee.”

  “Best I can do is a cardboard cutout of her.”

  Emelia sighed. “There’s no changing you, is there?”

  “There is,” I said, smiling. “But I’ll be fine. Cry all I want, but people need actual help, and a crying Olympia isn’t as good at saving people as an Olympia that can save someone from getting murdered in an alley.”

  “One day,” she said. “The world is gonna be quiet and safe, and that’s the day I’ll eat with you again.”

  “Just gives me more motivation to clean this planet up,” I said, picking at my teeth.

  The skyscraper shuddered. Glassware fell on tables and spilled onto laps. The lights swayed above us and the human waiters near the kitchen came out to the sounds of swearing and complaining, quickly handing out towels and refreshments. Em glanced at me. I looked at her, then stood up slowly the moment the building shook again, this time more violently, more sudden. The lights flickered. The music warped then died. The restaurant filled with racing heartbeats in a thudding tandem. Food was spilled and plates smashed against the floor. People stood up and grabbed their spouses or onto the heavy, bolted down tables. The building was stiff, though. Strong. People on this side of the city had the money to make sure their billion dollar concrete investment wouldn’t go down without a fight if something big happened in the city. That didn’t stop me from turning toward the windows and watching, like everyone else as they gathered near the glass, as something dark swam deep inside the bay.

  Something very, very, very big.

  “Oh shit,” I muttered. I backed into a guy in a three piece and tripped over a woman’s gown. These guys would be safe here until whatever the hell that thing was got onto the mainland. If it got up here in the first place.

  Unless I put an Olympia-sized hole through it.

  By the time I stumbled out of the restaurant, despite the patrons telling me to stay in doors because if anything went wrong, Adam would come save them (yuck, I know), Emelia was in the gilded red and golden hallway with me. We stopped beside the elevators, where more people were hustling each other trying to get into them. Some were rushing down the stairs. Most stood around confused and chattering amongst themselves, a slow panic slowly starting to build as the building shook again, sending people stumbling and hitting both the floor and the walls hard enough to leave them swearing and bruised. Then I heard a building collapse. I spun around and stared down the hallway. Nothing to see. Everything to hear. Screaming. Bodies getting crushed by fallen debris.

  “I’ll get everyone out,” Em said. “You go and deal with that thing.”

  I stepped toward the hallway, my brows slowly furrowing. “Something’s wrong.” A torrent of people were rushing out of the restaurant now, shoving against me—none of them moved me as I kept walking, then I stopped.

  “Rylee,” Em said sharply. “What’s wrong?”

  I didn’t answer her. I left in a heartbeat, up the stairs and through the door that opened onto the top of the building. I hovered above the satellite dishes and the ariels, the large flickering billboard that had lost connection and the machines they kept up here. The sun was out and the sky was blue, but there was a bite in the air. A bitterness that stung my cheeks as I slid out of my jacket and sweatpants and let them get caught on the aerials below me. Screaming from below. The shriek of Damage Control sirens echoed through the streets, mingling with the police and ambulances and a loud speaker’s call for people to move through the streets as orderly as they could. But there was a rush. A stampede of civilians as the ground shook again and the waters in the bay slowly swelled.

  The Kaiju underneath the ferocious black waves wasn’t what was wrong—it was something else.

  Something that felt so…familiar.

  The creature’s head erupted through the water, sprouting a geyser of icy waves high through the air and sending them crashing onto the waterfront like a fist, smashing buildings and swallowing entire city blocks. I swallowed, letting saliva slide down my tongue. It was big. Bigger than most buildings. A shade of dark green with a mouth that was bright yellow. Its saliva spilled out of its jowls, making foam out of the ocean. Too many eyes to count. Slithering limbs snaked from its back, protruding like grotesque warts that had grown and grown like boils of cancer. They whipped and lashed around, and then it shrieked—a wail so terrible that glass shattered and buildings quaked. I winced and covered my ears, shut my eyes, and waited for the confusion in my head to leave.

  It raised its arm to climb onto the waterfront, and I was there, right underneath it, a moment later.

  I collided with its skin and got the wind knocked out of my lungs. I buckled and fell like a fly that’s been smacked out of the sky. I hit the pavement and got rushed by a sudden wave of water that snapped and bit with a chilling cold. I breathed hard as the shadow of its arm loomed over me. I got on one knee, spat, then pounced upward, fists in front of me that forced its hand away from the waterfront and its arm reeling backward from me.

  I spun through the air, upside down, and shot right toward one of its dozens of eyes.

  Easy way into its skull, easier way to make mush out of its brains.

  Then a tentacle lashed out for me, wrapping around my body and slamming me very, very fucking hard through a building. My ears rang. Concrete dust filled my mouth. I choked and gasped and rolled to my side, surrounded by bodies and rubble and a kid whose face had been smeared across the broken tiles of a bathroom floor. I shut my eyes and got onto my stomach, shoving the Earth off my face as a sudden pain lanced through my side. I bit down on my tongue and held my rib. Broken. Couldn’t breathe without spitting a little bit of blood out.

  Its shadow loomed over me, so large, so expansive, it’s as if the sun had vanished entirely.

  I looked up, and it looked down.

  I knuckled away the blood and the saliva, glowered, and got to my feet. Everything hurt. Hurt to a degree I’d forgotten I could hurt. I held my side and watched its tentacles rise above it, shaking with tense energy, flaying around with ferocity, for a need to kill the thing that had inconvenienced it for barely half a minute. Round two.

  That sudden feeling I got down my spine when I’d first sensed Adam paused me.

  It wasn’t him. He wasn’t even in New Olympus right now according to the news.

  Like last time, everything slowed down. Like last time, I watched.

  A golden light blitzed through the sky like a bullet sent from the heavens straight through its skull.

  It stood motionless. Then it swayed, collapsed, and fell backward into the bay with a thunderous whumph. Waves taller than the few buildings still standing rose high into the sky. I swore. Too many people still on the roads, still trying to get away. The Kaiju might be dead, but the water would paint half of the city a deep shade of red.

  That golden light again, so sudden and fast, stopped in the air right in front of me. They raised their arms, then smacked their palms together so viscously the water was blown backward, and hell, I was too. Mist, that’s what had happened to the water. A shower of mist drizzled onto the streets, dragging a sheet of silence back into the air.

  I hovered, and so did they, above the several city blocks worth of destruction. My gut was in knots. My breathing was harsh and slow, painful and bloody. But my skin couldn’t settle and neither could my mind. It was a girl. Short blonde hair around her neck, her back still turned to me. Squared shoulders and hands on her hips as she looked at the ground below. She was panting a little, trying to get her breathing under control, then she swore.

  And I heard my own voice.

  “Gods above,” she muttered, running a hand through her hair. “That was a close one. Coulda been worse.” She turned around, and my heart stopped. The eyes. The smile. The freckles of someone young and the gap between their teeth that I had when I was younger right there for the taking. She tilted her head when she grinned, and I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to rip the head off my own reflection so badly before, and yet there she was, saving the city.

  “Thanks for the help.” Her eyes shifted from gold to blue. “But be a little stronger next time, ‘kay?”

  My hand slipped from my side as my mouth dried. “Why do you look like me?” I whispered.

  “You might have a concussion, silly,” she said. “That’s because I am you, just a lot better.”