"So yeah," Lisa said as she took another bite of cereal. "That was basically it."

Dad let out a sigh as he played idly with his food. "When I asked about everything you two did yesterday, that wasn't exactly what I was expecting… that."

Lisa shrugged in response.

"Hey, Lisa," I asked, taking a bite of my own breakfast. "When do you think Amy is going to come out of the dome in our backyard?"

"She'll leave now if you go and talk to her," Lisa answered.

"Speaking of Amy and other things," My dad began. "Do you two know what you're going to be doing when you get home from school?"

Lisa and I shared a look.

"Well," I began. "Lisa and I decided that if we started pushing The Workers, we'll either get rid of them or they'll retaliate and we can fight back."

"And exactly how dangerous are these Workers?" The question was directed at Lisa.

"Oh, not that dangerous," Lisa said, then paused. "For the most part anyway. At least, I doubt they have anything that can quite stop God's Hammer over there." She pointed a spoon at me and I shot a look back at her. I was about to say something when there was a knock on the door.

Dad got up to answer it out of instinct when I saw Lisa's eyes narrow in its direction, a frown growing on her face. That usually wasn't a good sign. I watched carefully as my dad pulled open the door and reveal a short man with curly red hair, nerdy glasses, and a tight fitting business suit.

"Good morning," the man said with a nod of his head. "My name is Tom Monta, and I'm here to discuss some extracurricular activities your daughter has been a part of recently."

I straightened up in alarm, but Lisa didn't make a move. Just watched him with the same narrowed eyed expression. Dad shot us a quizzical look, but upon hearing no objects he stood aside and let the man in.

He approached the table with no reservations, not even pausing at the look Lisa was giving him.

"Just you two?" He asked casually. "I was under the impression there was a third," He spoke with a slight British accent and stood completely straight.

"She's indisposed at the moment," Lisa answered. "Why are you here?"

"I've come to deliver a message from my employer," Tom answered, pulling a letter out of his suit pocket. "He sends this in conjunction with the message that all the villains in the city are moving against the conspiracist group you brought to light just yesterday. Even the Merchants have come to an agreement with the others on how to approach." He handed the letter to me, which I took and then shifted so Lisa could see it along with me.

'Nova and Cheshire," it read, "You may know me as the villain Coil. And because of that, I understand any reservations you might in regards to assisting me, but know that I offer some valuable compensation if you do. Today, the villains will be out enforce, and we neither want to get in your way nor do we want you to get in ours. So I propose a truce of sorts, an alliance, even. We won't bother each other as we take down the four conspiracy groups and you will hit some of their harder targets. Enclosed in this envelope is a list of secret locations of bases The Four use that would be optimal for you to target.

'As incentive, I offer one hundred thousand dollars, hidden in a location known only to Mr. Monta. And secondly, I offer you the name of the man that pulled the trigger on Rune. Also information Mt. Monta has. I ask that you kindly consider my offer.'

When I finished I let Lisa pull it out of my hand to look it over as the words tumbled around in my mind. That was a good amount to process at one time. The cities villains had apparently entered a brief alliance with each other to fight The Four. One of these villains was attempting to hire me, knew my secret identity, and knew Rune's killer. I didn't know if I wanted to demand information or run out the door to go help in the fight.

"I was told to give you this as a sign of goodwill," Tom stated as he pulled a second envelope from his coat pocket. He held it out to me showing that it was unsealed and a lot of money was contained inside. All one hundred dollar bills. "Just to show Coil will make good on his word," Tom assured me. Gingerly, I took the package and set it on the table as if I was afraid to touch it. Which, to be fair, I was in a certain sense. I was being led into something I was completely unsure how to handle and I could very quickly get in over my head.

"So, to clarify," I began. "Coil wants me to take this payment, go after these locations he wants me to, and not attack the other villains?"

"In essence, yes."

I resisted telling him exactly how suspicious that was and just turned to Lisa to see how she was gauging it. She was wearing a look I had come to associate with her being on the fence about something as she continued to scan through the letter.

"It's not a lie," she said slowly. "But we're missing something." She looked up at Tom and shot him a look. He held up his hands passively and said,

"I'm just a messenger, I'm not aware of such things."

"But you're not just a messenger, are you?" Lisa accused. Tom's expression didn't even twitch.

"I have no idea what you mean. I'm just another person he has hired to do a job." Lisa made a face at him but turned away. She faced me and took a deep breath before sighing.

"It's up to you Nova," she said. "No one is lying, as far as I can tell."

"But we would be working with villains," I stated plainly. Lisa shrugged.

"In a way, yes, but has siding with the heroes really helped us out at all yet?"

"Now hold on," Dad said, coming up to the table. "It was one thing when you girls were going out to fight these dangerous gangs on your own, but working with villains? Taking money from Coil? Isn't that going a little too far?"

I bit my lip as I considered that. He was wrong, this was very different from what we normally do. Not to mention the possible connotations of accepting money from a known supervillain. But I wasn't just being offered money, I was going to learn who it was that killed Rune. Somewhere there was a part of me that knew that whoever did it was just a guy taking orders from someone else far, far up the command chain. But at the same time, I didn't care. I wanted to know, I needed to. Besides, if all goes well, then we could be a few steps closer to this 'Max Clay' we've learned about. Not to mention, the villains uniting like this could possibly mean running these gangs out of the city entirely. I couldn't pass up that chance.

"Maybe," I answered him. "But we're all after the same things in the end, to get rid of these gangs."

I turned and looked at Tom, who had been standing passively the entire time. "Will do it."

"Good," he answered with a nod before retrieving yet another envelope from his coat. "You'll find all the promised information in here, I wish you the best of luck." He placed the envelope on the table and turned around on his heels, heading for the door.

"Taylor," Dad asked seriously. "Are you sure about this? Associating with supervillains?"

"It's actually not that uncommon," Lisa cut in. "When a threat like this pops up it isn't that strange that villains make nonaggression pacts with the heroes and other villains to deal with the threat. What was odd was how they came here, to your house, and made the deal."

I nodded in agreement. "Because that either means they're really afraid of what I might do-"

"-or it was a power play." Lisa finished. "Showing you that he knows things without tipping his hand. Like really subtle blackmail."

"So our house is no longer safe," Dad concluded with a frown.

"To be fair," Lisa said. "He probably knew for a while so we aren't any less safe, so to speak."

"Not reassuring," Dad said dryly. Lisa shrugged.

"Is there any way we can lose him?" I asked Lisa. "If we bought a new house? Moved across town?"

"Well," Lisa said slowly. I could see her working things out in her head. "Not publically. If any of us bought a house, we would be noticed. And we still got a few weeks before the companies we gave the potions to announce the new product and we can get the money to purchase a new house, given the hundred thousand Coil just gave us probably won't buy a decent house."

"But…?" I prompted as I sensed she was going somewhere with this. Lisa grinned at me.

"But if a supervillain were to use the accounts where I'm holding all my illegal money to make a massive withdraw, then used E88 business to clean it for a small fee, then said supervillain purchased a house under the radar, then a particular Alicorn teleported all your belongings to said house, we might be able to shake him for a while. But that doesn't exactly solve a lot of problems."

"Because he still knows who we are," I said with a nod. Even if we did all that, Coil would still know who my Dad was and who I was. So while even if we managed to relocate to a place he didn't know about, it would only be a matter of time until he did simply because we would go back and forth to school and work a lot. It was almost not even worth the effort because of that.

"I think you two are going at this the wrong way," Dad stated, causing both me and Lisa to look at him with a small amount of surprise. Dad gave a small smile with just a hint of smugness and said,

"Look, the biggest threat of this villain knowing who we are is that they might attack our civilian identity. But even since Taylor has been going out to fight villains, I've been looking into all of this cape stuff. And apparently, there are things called unwritten rules that so you can't do that."

"It isn't as simple as that," Lisa answered him. "They're more like guidelines, but for it to be enforced everyone would have to know he attacked our civilian identities. Kind of defeating the point."

"But that is what I'm saying," Dad pressed. "We join New Wave as a third family, because you kind of are living with us Lisa, reveal our identities so that they can't be attacked without everyone knowing and we'd have New Wave to back us up."

Lisa opened her mouth to contradict him then stopped herself. She closed her mouth and started considering it. It would be a little harder and more complicated than my dad described, but it wasn't impossible. The idea of going against the norm like that felt weird, but I could see it working. But even more oddly, I felt my mind drift towards school and the reaction people would have to me. Right now, my identity was protected by the sheer fact everyone thought Nova was some sort of Case 53. Could I throw that away after spending the effort to keep it concealed? Maybe, if it meant making father safer. And who knows, maybe have a popular cape as a daughter would give him more leverage at work?

"It could work, if done right." Lisa finally said. "But I think we should wait."

"Right," Dad said with a nod. "But I think I'll give Carol a call and talk to her about, I got her number when the three of you did that deal with the companies."

"Alright," I said rising from the table. "I think we all sort of agreed that school isn't going to be a thing today."

"Yup," Lisa said, standing up to join me. "I'll get my costume on real quick." I nodded to her and start striding for my room. I heard my dad sigh as we left.

"Be careful you two."

***

Amy sat nervously on the edge of the bed thing she had made as she considered things. She had never used her power like this before, creating a dome and then hardening the outside of it. Making edible fruit out of some of the plants so she wouldn't have to face the embarrassment of going inside to get breakfast. Crafting a bed out of a soft moss-like material. It wasn't perfect but it had worked for last night.

Every time she thought about going back inside she felt a flutter of anxiety at how they would react to her, at the awkwardness of it all. In the end, she decided she would just stay in her little hut until she was sure everyone had gone to school or work. Then she would turn this thing back into plants, head inside, and hoped no one mentioned it when they came home.

And then there was a knock on the dome.

Her breath caught in her throat as she thought what to do and how to respond, what she would do if it was Victoria. And then she heard,

"Amy? I just wanted to check on you. Are you doing okay?"

She let out a sigh of relief, it was just Danny. After a moment of hesitation, she touched the walls of the dome and opened up a little doorway for him. Danny came into the room looking mildly amazed at it all. He turned around and looked at the door for a moment before spinning and looking at her.

"This is pretty incredible," Danny stated as he touched one of the dripping moss plants she had made to produce water.

"Um, thanks?" Amy responded weakly, unsure of where to go from here. Danny turned to her and let out a sigh. He didn't look all that great. He still had dark circles under his eyes and a general defeated look about him. Not all of the time, Amy had notice. He didn't have it when Taylor was in the room, but he couldn't quite get rid of it completely.

"Taylor and Lisa have already headed out," he said. "I'm leaving for work here in a few minutes, but I wanted to talk to you about something."

Amy held her breath as she prepared for whatever commentary he had. She had replayed hypothetical conversations with Lisa and Taylor about this more than once, but she was unprepared when it came to Danny.

"Taylor is doing some dangerous work," Danny said. "Fighting some gangs that have killed other capes, capes that have been around for a very long time. And now she accepted money from a supervillain to help fight them. I know her reasons, but it doesn't change the facts." Danny raised his gaze to look at her. "It makes me feel better to know you're out there with her, able to heal and help her if she needs it."

"I'm not sure how I'm, um…." Amy trailed off as she searched for the words she was looking for only to find she didn't even know where she was going with that. Danny walked forward and put a hand on her shoulder.

"What I'm trying to say Amy is that I'm glad my daughter is friends with you, I'm glad she has your help with things. And whatever issues you are having at home, we're all here to assist you with them. You're welcome to come back inside whenever you want. And if you want to talk about things, we'll all be here. And if you don't that's fine too. I won't make you go home if you don't want to."

"Thanks, Mr. Hebert," Amy said quietly. Danny smiled a little and said,

"Don't mention it kiddo, but I got to get to work now. See you after while." Danny turned around and start to walk out. Amy watched him leave, thoughts flying through her mind as she considered his words. Then slowly, she reached out to touch the dome and began to break down the walls she had made around herself.