I stood outside my apartment, scrolling through my news feed and listening to music while I waited for Victoria to show up. It was late afternoon, but we still had a few hours of daylight left. She’d either gotten permission to cut loose from her other responsibilities or finished them already—I wasn’t entirely sure.

  The Underdogs hit Ruby Dreams casino outside Brockton Bay.

  I clicked the headline. A few grainy surveillance stills came with it: a guy in biker gear and a tacky skull-faced helmet, a woman I recognized—Hellhound—and her giant mutants, a foppishly dressed man, and a blonde woman in vintage-style spandex with a black-and-purple mask.

  Hellhound’s been on and off the radar for about a year. I thought she was solo. New team? The Wards will be buzzing—competition and potential rivals.

  I skimmed for relevant details, but the article had clearly been rushed out to beat the wire. Light on facts, heavy on speculation. I backed out and kept scrolling.

  Phoenix Strike Graduates from Wards Program.

  Nope.

  Browbeat to transfer to Brockton Bay Wards.

  Huh.

  I looked up as Victoria descended from above and landed lightly in front of me.

  “Hey!” she called out, heading toward the entrance.

  I closed my news app, paused my music, and pocketed my earbuds. I smiled at her. “Hey. Come around the back with me?”

  “Sure.”

  Once we were behind the building, in the empty parking area, I lowered my voice.

  “So... I really want to get out of here and, you know, try things out. As other-me. Somewhere private and quiet?”

  Victoria grinned, positively radiating mischief. “You want to take Big Blue for a test drive? I figured that’s what you meant at school. I’ve got a couple of spots in mind. There’s the abandoned railyards north of town—or, if you’re up for flying a bit, we could hit one of the nature reserves outside the city.”

  I twisted my lips, weighing it. Remote meant privacy, but less to interact with. More time in transit, too.

  “Maybe... both?” I offered.

  She tilted her head, unsure.

  “I mean, the reserve now while it’s still light, then the rail yards after dark? I’m just...” I sighed. “I’m paranoid.”

  She placed a hand on my shoulder, meeting my eyes. “One hundred percent get you. Want to grab some stuff before we head out? We might be gone a while.”

  “Oh—yeah. Good call. Snacks, drinks. Anything else?”

  I unlocked the back door, and we stepped inside to pack. I grabbed my gym duffel from downstairs.

  “I’ve got decent wind and weather protection,” she said. “It’s nice now, but it’ll get colder up high with the wind chill. Dress like it’s twenty or thirty degrees colder than it is.”

  “Good call. Let me grab a jacket and an extra layer.”

  A few minutes later, we were out the back door, and Victoria scooped me up in a princess carry. Seconds later, we were airborne over the city. A blush crept into my cheeks—and not just from the chill.

  The view and the sensation took my breath away.

  Victoria grinned, all mischief. “See what I was trying to tell you about flying? And this is just as a passenger. It’s even better when you’re in control, when you can go wherever you want. It’s… incredible.”

  An idea popped into my head, but I dismissed it. Not the time. Probably.

  She went on. “I’m really interested in seeing if those wings of yours work. I mean, they have to, right? But you weigh literal tons, and they look too small. No way they’re just for decoration.”

  I nibbled my lower lip. “I’ve wondered the same. I want to fly, and the thought is really exciting—but it’s also scary. If I do weigh what you think I do, I’ll have to be really careful.”

  I glanced out at the landscape slipping past beneath us. “I haven’t even moved around yet. Not really. I’ve only sat and kind of… slid around in my apartment. I haven’t walked. Haven’t stood upright for long. I’m scared I’ll lose control—stumble, crush something. Or someone.”

  Victoria nodded, thoughtful. “That makes sense. And it’s good you’re bracing yourself for a learning curve. You’re dealing with a whole new body: new instincts, strengths, weaknesses. Powers don’t usually leave people completely high and dry, but they do take practice. Like when you ate for the first time. You might have to rethink how you approach almost everything.”

  She smiled. “I know I did. I still mess up sometimes.”

  I blinked. “You do? But you’re Glory Girl. The city loves you. And it’s mostly not even in a creepy way. Mostly.”

  She laughed. “Don’t remind me. I get wild comments and messages on PHO. Thank god for the mods.”

  She shifted gears. “But yeah. I do mess up. It’s hard not to break things. Or use too much force, especially when I’m emotional. My mom yells at me at least once a week for wrecking something in the house. And…”

  “And?” I pressed.

  Her voice dropped. “I’ve hurt people. Sometimes really badly. Sometimes by accident. Sometimes… when I’m angry and I mean it, but I regret it afterward. Amy helps me fix things when they happen. Between that and Mom threatening me with legal action, we’ve kept it quiet.”

  She looked out at the horizon. “I think a lot of people like us have issues like that. Maybe that’s why some of them go villain. Accidents, lack of support, or just… getting tired of pretending to be okay. I’m lucky. I have New Wave.”

  Dragon proves herself right again.

  “I talked to Dragon last night. We actually had a long conversation. She knows now.”

  Victoria turned back to me, raising an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

  “Mhm. We talked about this kind of thing. About appearances not matching who you are. About how I want to come out and be me, but I’m scared to actually do it.”

  I took one arm from around her neck and gestured out at the vast forest below.

  “That’s why I wanted to do this. So that when I finally step out in the open, I’m somewhat prepared.”

  I brought my arm back around her neck.

  I wasn’t scared she’d drop me.

  Once we were far enough from the city that it was just a silhouette on the horizon, Victoria brought us down into a wild field. It looked like a storm had rolled through here once.

  The ground was soft with topsoil and early spring grasses. There were fallen trees, bare rocky faces, and stony little outcroppings breaking up the terrain. Plenty of space. Remote. Perfect.

  When she set me down, I jogged in place and did a few jumping jacks to get my blood flowing. Victoria laughed.

  “If you got that cold flying, you should’ve said something.”

  “Sooo…” I trailed off, suddenly a bit more nervous than I’d normally be. Locker room stuff stopped being giggle and blush material a ways back. I cleared my throat: “So yeah. I need to get butt-naked before I change, and I wanted to warm up a little before stripping. You know, the whole not totally destroying my clothing thing?”

  Vicky gave me an indeterminable look, and it was her turn to have her cheeks color. “Right, of course, that makes perfect sense. I can leave you for a…”

  I waved a hand, interrupting her. “I’m really not concerned about it? We were both jocks, it’s just skin or whatever, no big deal. It takes me a few minutes to change, but please, hang around?”

  She rubbed the back of her head and then agreed. “Sure. I’ll just look away. No big deal.” I nodded.

  I was glad I’d gotten my blood flowing as I stripped down. It was another nice day outside, sunny, bright, and warm, but not summer on the beach warm. I debated where I wanted to sit. I didn’t want my butt on a mossy, dirty rock, and I also didn’t want to sit bare-assed on dirt and grass.

  Time to experiment, I guess. Fuck it. Let’s do a two-for-one package deal.

  Standing there, I released my hold on human Morgan while remaining upright, and I kept my eyes open for the first time to see this for myself. I felt my chest warm, and there was a steady pushing sensation. Looking down at myself, the first indication of change was a growing fractal bloom of blue square in the middle of my cleavage and spreading outwards at a decent clip.

  My chest shrank and flattened as the blue spread, the only thing about me that shrank. A slight sensation of vertigo washed through my mind as more structural changes started to take place. The ground receded as the blue overtook my skin, rapid and branching like frost spreading on glass.

  Things took a turn for the weird as my change, or rather, reversion, started to deviate away from the humanoid figure template.

  My arms were swelling and lengthening disproportionately, my forearms taking on their far bulkier shape, and I assumed they’d harden into the carapace as they approached their final dimensions. With my hands, my pinky and ring fingers merging, my fingers were blowing up from the feminine and calloused ones I was used to, to the massive things that wouldn’t look out of place on a piece of industrial equipment, my fingernails gone when the blue overtook them, and huge, thick claws growing out of my fingertips in their place.

  My tail uncoiled from my lower spine and thudded into the grass with weight and length—at least twenty feet of it, not counting the articulated claws on the end. Insectile wings bulged and shifted against my back, unfolding with quiet rustling. Six anchor points, thick and dense.

  My stance shifted with a bit of a jerk, a series of pops, and a fair few crunches as I adopted what I now knew was a digitigrade stance.

  My toes had merged down to four, just as my hands had, and were flexing as my feet spread into enormous, clawed paws with not one, but two large backward-facing dewclaw things. All of me was now near my final size, but my feet, like my upper arms, I felt, were disproportionately large. They’d block manholes with room to spare, and the claws on my feet, which were retractable, looked like wicked, killing things in my eyes.

  Wait, so, with the back ones included, do I have six toes instead of four? This is- I am so alien and weird.

  The last two things that changed–at least as far as I was aware– were my lower arms and my head and ‘hair.’ My lower arms had grown in under my skin against my sides and ribcage, and only seemingly pulled away from my torso with the skin tightening and defining the arm-shaped bulges into recognizably human arms and hands before pinching and separating from my chest. It was a clean separation; there wasn’t any blood or guts or anything, but I still felt it looked kind of gross in the way they came out.

  My face changed, but not a ton, when I was like this. I’d spent no small amount of time studying it with the aid of a hand mirror at home. It was recognizably human in structure, and I mostly still looked like me, but there were some obvious changes, like maybe I was a relative of myself.

  My nose was wider and flatter throughout the bridge to the tip, with bigger nostrils. It was a bit more like a boxer’s or a fighter’s nose. My lips were quite a bit fuller, and jet black, and my jaw was heavier and wider, which suited my far thicker and heavier, rather masculine bodybuilder-type neck. I had eyebrows, but not hairy ones; there wasn’t a single hair to be found on my body. Instead, they pigment on or in my skin, like they’d been penciled in. They looked nice? Fitting my brow line and different nose shape, at least.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  My hair was a mass of aqua-colored tentacles of pretty random thicknesses and lengths since both were actively variable. I’d taken to styling them sort of like dreads, and it worked. I could move them to imitate a hairstyle, and I’d been bunching them up into a heavy ponytail with dreads looped around the bunching point, and some left loose in front for fringes.

  That brought me to my eyes and my cheek decorations. My eyes were a touch larger relative to the rest of my face, and entirely, pure, utter black, with a highly reflective gloss. Alien and inhuman in contrast to my face. Like shark eyes, or something. They were ringed by black gemstones on the outer and lower sides. In a way, it sort of looked like a domino mask.

  My cheeks had two aqua-colored inward-pointing arrow or narrow wedge shapes whose tips terminated at the corners of my lips.

  I had discovered, much to my own horror, that, much like the rest of my body, there was a blend of humanity and monstrosity present there. I could talk and move my mouth and lips exactly like normal. But I could also open my mouth wider, and the corners of my lips would sort of unseal, or unzip, or something, and a much, much larger mouth would open.

  And god, the teeth. The teeth. In the middle were my normal teeth, where my lips were, and then outside that, there were rows of cutting, tearing, ripping, and grinding teeth. It was absolutely horrific, and I tried like hell not to yawn or something and wind up letting mouth 2.0 open.

  I left myself behind as my change concluded, and settled into what I was being continually reminded was the real me. Everything, every single thing about the real me was better, and I resented that cold, hard fact. But for the first time, I wasn’t just terrified, I was curious. My vision was phenomenal; I was pretty sure I could see a wider spectrum of colors, and I could hear fine details at ranges I couldn’t dream of otherwise.

  I was bigger, I was assuredly tougher, and I suspected vastly faster and stronger. That was what today was all about. Finding out. On one hand, a scary reminder that I wasn’t human any longer, on the other, a slowly growing sense of curiosity, and maybe a touch of hope.

  I took a deep breath in through my nose, and the wealth of information it brought with it delighted my expanded senses. “I’m all done now,” I called out to Victoria, somewhere behind me. She hovered along the ground, circling around to my front and looking up at me, a little grin on her face.

  “That was faster than I expected. Have you been practicing… or?” She let the question linger.

  She’s so tiny.

  “I have been, but there are some things I still don’t understand. There seem to be changes in pace sometimes, and I don’t quite get it. It’s not always the most pleasant. This was… really easy.”

  The other thing I’d been practicing, virtually non-stop since the first night, was differentiating my limbs. Amy’s guidance on using tactile sensations and sort of tricking my brain into a guessing game helped immensely. My tail still felt like a leg to me, but it was a really big, really heavy, muscular, and bendy leg. I didn’t get them confused anymore.

  I was doing far better with my arms. I was able to move all four independently, and with Victoria’s guidance on not overthinking things, and was getting pretty solid with all four. I wasn’t sure I’d want to try a juggling competition, but I was getting my upper-body coordination back.

  Oftentimes, I’d wind up using one set or the other, simply because of the difference in reach and scale between them. The biggest issue was just that I had 18 years of experience with two arms, so I didn’t really know what to do with having an extra pair. I’d been working on using my arms more and my hair less in the back half of the week. That was a learning experience in more ways than one. My lower arms had wicked rending claws; they were razor sharp and fixed in place, like my upper arms. I’d popped holes in more than one water bottle with them.

  My upper arms, surprisingly, didn’t lack for fine control, despite their XL size and bulk. The claws on those hands were blunt, but bigger proportionally relative to my other hands, both in length and girth. They were shockingly powerful. I’d been practicing opening twist-off bottle caps with them, and even a hair’s breadth of extra force shattered the plastic caps.

  I stretched my lower arms out wide, then flexed the massive hands on my upper arms, forming loose fists. I couldn’t form a tight fist, a proper fist with them, because of the claws contacting my palm. I’d been thinking about them in relation to punching, with the sheer size, weight, and power I had in them. There were issues, but not unworkable ones, as far as I knew. I’d made a list in a notebook like a dork.

  Pros:

  Insane mass

  Probably a stupid amount of strength

  Carapace forearms, perfect for arm blocks

  No wrists

  Heavy armor protruding carapace knuckle things

  Cons:

  Insane mass

  Size gives reach, and also leaves gaps in defense

  Not sure what, if any, techniques are applicable

  Open or closed fist, no in-between

  I rolled my neck and considered what it was that I wanted to do first. Probably best to walk before running.

  “I’m going to um, try and move around some, see how it goes.” My voice was a little hesitant.

  Vicky was encouraging, excited: “Go on, cut loose! I want to see what you can do too, you know!?”

  I took a step forward, then two more.

  Left foot forward on the ball of the foot…

  I stumbled when my ankle didn’t move the way it was supposed to because my foot was shaped differently. I felt top-heavy for a fraction of a moment, then my tail flicked out and balanced for me, and I was good.

  “What happened there?” asked Victoria.

  “I was trying to think about how I was going to put my foot down with everything different like it is.”

  She clicked her tongue at me and chastised me: “Overthinking it! Stop!”

  Maybe I really am. I need a distraction.

  I looked across the field; it was probably a good hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty yards to the treeline. Rocks, some fallen trees, a few dips, and gulleys.

  “Hey, Victoria?” I asked.

  “Yes?”

  I looked over at her, a toothy grin on my face. “Race you to the treeline!”

  I took off, and the wind whipped in my face. I was insanely fast. Turns out that being this big gave you some runner’s stride advantages. I lightly hopped over a downed tree and cleared it with feet to spare. I could feel my toes splaying wide on those big paws of mine and really digging into the ground with each impact and pump of my legs. I crossed the distance to the treeline in seconds. Low single digits, by my reckoning. I didn’t overthink the sudden stop, and I slid with both feet and a tail to a stop.

  Victoria was right with me the entire time, laughing like a maniac. I realized I was, too. I looked back at the distance we’d covered. It looked like artillery shells had hit the ground, or something. There were gouges and craters where I’d run. My feet and tail had torn foot-deep trenches where I’d skidded to a stop. I took a breath and realized I wasn’t winded in the slightest.

  “Holy shit, Morgan. You are pretty quick!” Vicky said with a laugh.

  “Yeah, I want- I really want to run!” I blurted quickly.

  “Do it! Go wild, girl!” she exclaimed.

  I lapped the clearing multiple times. I parkoured over and through ravines, trees, rocks, and boulders. I experimented, it was exhilarating, certainly, but I was also getting a feel for my mass, inertia, strength, and the way my body handled dynamic forces and shifts. The answer was: really well. The mass meant appreciable inertia, like trying to stop when running downhill. I found out, though, that my body had downright dirty tricks to go about maneuvering around, things I wouldn’t have considered on my own.

  My tail was like a gigantic counterbalance, shock absorber, and lever all rolled up into one. It offset my heavy upper body flawlessly, it swayed and slithered around when I was turning corners or trying to change directions quickly, and it nearly had a mind of its own at times. I’d been trying to see how I’d handle situations like a relay race, where I’d have to get to one end, immediately flip around, and reverse direction.

  I had options. My tail could lash out and, using the articulated claws on the end, latch onto heavy objects and pull hard to dump and transfer energy. Two times it had sent tree trunks flying, and I flipped around and used the force of throwing the tree seamlessly to power off in the opposite direction. It could also just plunge into the ground like an anchor.

  I practiced jumping, both standing, leaping, and running leaps. If I leaped off a hard, stable surface like a rocky mass that wouldn’t shift under my mass, I could clear fifty or sixty feet in a leap. Landing those was less a track and field affair, and more like a predatory pounce affair, that involved my big arms, feet, and tail all crashing down and digging in.

  Victoria hovered in the air, holding out branches and smaller tree trunks like hurdles for me. We made a game of it, of most of the things. She’d push me harder, and I’d try and compensate and compete.

  After running around, jumping, leaping, diving, and pouncing for a good thirty or more minutes, we took a break. I wasn’t really winded, but I was feeling pretty toasty and wanted a break. Plopping down on my knees and tail, I took a few deep breaths to try and cool off.

  “That was a lot of fun! What’s next? You need a little break first?” She asked me.

  I fanned my face with a lower arm hand and said: “I’m not really tired or out of breath, but I am feeling warm.”

  She leaned in closer to me from where our height wasn’t as oppressively distant and looked closely at me. “Hmm, you’re not sweating at all, not as far as I can tell.”

  I patted my face, hairline, and armpits with my lower hands. Bone dry. Just that same slick, slightly bumpy blue skin I was becoming used to as the new norm. “Huh,” I said, continuing, “I’m not sure I can sweat. I feel like I should be sweating, you know, normally, feeling like this.”

  She leaned to the side and glanced around behind me. “I wonder if that’s what’s up with that?”

  I frowned and glanced over my shoulder. My wings were partially extended behind me and were sort of vibrating in place, maybe moving a couple of inches at the tips. There was a low hum I could feel, but couldn’t hear, that I was just now aware of.

  “Can I touch them?” Victoria asked.

  “Sure? I don’t really do anything with them, and they’re seemingly not terribly sensitive.”

  She reached out and touched her hand to one of the thin, translucent membranes near the base of the wing, where it wasn’t flapping as much. I was momentarily aware of her touch, and she yanked her hand back and waved it.

  “Oh! Sorry, did you get slapped? Are you okay?!” I was worried I’d hurt her.

  “No, I’m fine, more startled than anything.” She looked at me, then reached a hand out towards the shoulder of my upper arm. “May I?”

  “Of course,” I nodded. Using her other hand, she tepidly tapped her fingertips against my arm, then placed her full palm against me. “That’s, wow. Huh.”

  I tilted my head.

  “Your skin is cool, and slippery, feels like it’s maybe a bit below body temperature. But your wings are hot. Really hot, if I hadn’t pulled my hand back, I would have gotten burned.”

  I blinked rapidly as I processed that. “What, really?”

  She nodded in response. I took stock of my situation. I could feel myself cooling off, quite rapidly, at that, and I glanced back at my wings, vibrating away.

  Interesting. Oh no. Now I’m doing it too. Ugh. They look too small to fly, are they just… radiators or something?

  I nibbled my lower lip. That curiosity was welling back up again, and I wanted to do stuff and experiment more.

  “Victoria?” I asked her, sounding her name out as I sounded out the idea in my head.

  “What is it, Morgan?”

  I hesitated. “I think I want to try flying.”

  She parted her hair with her hands and gave me a considerate look, then nodded. “I was the same way. I wanted to try flying right away. Unlike you, though, I discovered my power through floating, so I knew I could from the start.”

  “How do you think I should go about this?” I asked her, uncertain myself.

  “Well, you have sort of dragonfly wings. Or maybe we could just say, insect-like, generally? They don’t fly like planes; they fly like helicopters, right? You should be able to take off and land, maybe a running start or a jump might help, but you could also just try taking off from a stand, too. That would be the slow approach. Just keep in mind what I said. Don’t overthink it, and be careful of getting emotional and getting distracted.”

  I looked up at the sky. It was coloring into oranges as the sun was steadily dropping over the horizon. We had maybe an hour of daylight left.

  “I’m going to try. If I get off the ground, will you fly with me?” I asked a touch nervously.

  “Are you kidding? Wouldn’t miss it for the world. I go flying with my cousin every chance I can get. I need to introduce you to her; you’d probably get along really well.” She smiled, and I returned it.

  I stood up, and she said: “Hey, Morgan? Landing is the scary part, but don’t let it get to you if you botch it or crash. Happens to the best of us at least a handful of times.”

  I gave her an enormous, clawed thumbs-up.

  I had a little bit of jitters as I climbed on top of one of the bigger bald-faced rocks and stood on top. I took a moment to clear my head, steel my nerves, and thought about flying. Then I started to will it while holding that thought and felt my wings move. Rotating up from their usual position of lying down, my back like a cape, I felt a curious sensation, like a mix between a stretch and a flex.

  I looked over my shoulder, and my eyes widened. My wings were unfurling, the sort of elongated teardrop shape of them straightening out from the wide end. The hard, stiff edge that ringed the wings extended outwards until it was only a leading edge.

  My wings were huge. Twice the size they were when resting, maybe more. Fully stretched out and stiffened along their leading spine, they started to flap at a much faster rate than they’d been vibrating at. All six were at different angles and positions, symmetrical from side to side. Each pair seemed to flap independently of the one below it, at different angles and frequencies.

  Let’s go.

  A sound that I can best describe as a deep, thrumming rotor-blade kind of sound formed and grew in loudness and intensity. The wind was absolutely blasting under me, branches, small rocks, and hunks of grass and soil flying outwards. And with that, I was airborne and felt virtually weightless. I soared up to a low altitude, well above the treetops, and came to a stop, hovering in the air.

  Victoria flew up in front of me, trying to be mindful of the airspace my wings occupied, which was large, much like a helicopter. She was grinning wickedly and clapping her hands, and I flashed a smile back. She motioned for me to follow her, and we took off.

  Slow at first, and increasingly faster, more nimble, and more acrobatic. Slow and fast, starting and stopping. Hovering. Taking off from a hover in a direction going flat-out. Loops, barrel-rolls, banks, some kind of roller-coaster or jet-fighter stuff I wasn’t familiar with. I was able to keep up with her well.

  I didn’t have the ability to start and stop virtually on a dime as she had, but my ability to take off and stop was still extremely impressive to me.

  Truth be told, following her advice and focusing on the result and not the minutiae was honestly very easy. I did find I was very briefly disoriented when we first started flying around after that initial hover because some kind of hard, transparent eyelid slid over my eyes and protected them. But beyond that? No issues at all.

  And she was right in what she’d been trying to tell me weeks ago. Flying was… An entirely different experience. Thrilling, enjoyable, but also relaxing and meditative. Freeing and liberating like music for the soul. The sun was setting, and the stars were starting to peek out, and we came to a stop over the field we’d spent the afternoon and evening in.

  I thought about landing, and the pitch of my wings shifted, and the ground started coming up fast. My heart leaped in my chest, but I clenched my jaw and did my best to steady my nerves. About ten to fifteen feet off the spot we were landing in, my wings gave a final flap, then cut out, and I dropped to the ground. It was akin to jumping down the last two steps of a staircase.

  I felt my wings rotate up over my head and fold with a few rustles before rotating back down to the resting position I was used to. Victoria ran up to me, giddy, and I scooped her up and hugged her tightly with my lower arms, being careful with my claws. She hugged me back slightly awkwardly since she couldn’t get her arms around my chest.

  “Have fun?” She asked with a wide grin.

  “I feel like I have a way better understanding of what you were talking about now. You’re right, it’s hard to put into words, but, yes. That was amazing, and I loved it. Thank you.”

  She squeezed me and said, “You’re welcome, Morgan, and it’s good to see you happy again and not as gloomy. You’re also really damn good at maneuvering around! I thought for sure I had you on some of the fancier stuff, but you were darting around and rolling with it, no problem!”

  A bit shyly, I said: “Well, I do have six wings, you know. That’s got to help with the handling.”

  She replied easily: “No doubt about that! You gotta watch that air blast when you’re taking off, but, you know…” She trailed off for a moment.

  “What?” I asked, curious as to where her mind was going.

  “Well, I was thinking. It might be tricky because you’d need a lot of room for your wings, but if you like, hunkered down and braced, and directed that away from you, instead of down? You could probably do a shaker-style effect with your wing buffeting.”

  I blinked rapidly. “Okay. Now that would be a cool as hell idea.”

  If I can fly like this, run like this, fight like this, maybe I can do all the things I want to do. Maybe I could be terrifying and still be a hero.