Ember woke up from her horrid nightmares with a whimper, her entire body aching, feeling incredibly tense as if she managed to strain every single muscle in her body. This was an unbearable feeling. She wanted for the pain to stop, to adjust her own muscles into a relaxed state with one of her own avatars. She tried to summon an avatar into being and nothing happened. Argh. She rolled over and looked down at herself. She was covered in dirt, dust and black grime as if she was crawling through post-apocalyptic ruins for hours. She tried to summon an avatar to clean herself up. It didn’t work.

Oh. She suddenly remembered the horrible hell-world of the future and paled, nearly throwing up. It all happened to her. Receiving a report about Alexa and Martin from local retired super Mr. Canard and then another anonymous report about the gym teacher being mind-controlled by an alien monster. Getting her academy friends together, combining her own and their powers to erase 4 years from her own body, to become a fake student in Saint Mary middle-school. Going to Martin’s school as an undercover agent. Handcuffing Alexa after Mr. Canard ran away for some reason. Getting thrown 400 years into the future, fighting unkillable abominations up to the point of fainting.

Ember looked up at the quite-normal looking sky and saw rain cloud formation there, coming above the trees, tinting the world in blue tones. Leaves fluttered in the wind above her. Tiniest raindrops started to fall on her. She was back to the present. She was alive. She didn’t die in the apocalyptic future.

“There will come soft rains…” She whispered, hugged herself, and started to whimper. She had seen the end of humanity in person, the end of the all-mighty SCA, the fall of Titanomachy. How could all of the prognosticators fail to prevent such a horrific disaster? How could somebody like Nonpareil be stopped? How could humanity be extinguished? How could everything she believed in fall to ruin? She didn’t understand and it hurt her immensely. The things she had considered immutable - the Superstate, Titanomachy, her own power had all failed, betrayed her expectations.

“Hey.” Martin’s voice brought her back into the present.

She turned her head towards him, remembering how he was in cahoots with a villain now, having betrayed her for a girl.

“Why? Why did you do it?” She croaked. [Why did you kiss that monster?]

“Um. We didn’t kiss.”

“Wait. What is happening?” Ember blinked. [Did I say that out loud? What the fuck?! Am I going crazy?!]

“No Ember, you’re not going crazy.” Martin rubbed his head.

“Break it to her gently!” Alexa yelled from somewhere nearby. Ember ground her teeth at that voice. She tried to form an avatar to attack Alexa and failed.

“I don’t know how to put this… uhhh… I don’t know if you remember. I’m… uhhh.. Awake.”

Ember remembered Martin’s silver-sparkling eyes. She blinked at him in an understanding. “You’re awake! You can read my thoughts, of course! Oh thank G....” Then she remembered something else and her face paled even further. “Brain spiders. You gave me brain spiders?”

Martin nodded. He looked incredibly guilty.

“Jesus fucking Christ Martin, why?!” She cried. She tried to make an avatar to smack him and failed. “Where’s my power, Martin?!”

“Uhhh… how can I put this.” Martin rubbed the back of his head.

“Out with it!” Alexa yelled. “Confess everything!”

[Shut up! You’re not helping!] Martin shot back at her.

[What is happening. What is this?!] Ember thought. [Wait. Puppeteer protocol. Mind control. Brain spiders. Oh, God Damn you all to hell! Get out of my head, Martin!] She slammed her fists into the ground.

“Yeah, about that. I have no idea how to stop reading the thoughts you’re directing at me or how to take the spider out of your head without killing you. Sorry,” Martin apologised.

“What the fuck kind of superpower is brain spiders?!” Ember yelped. [Oh god there’s spiders in my brain. Get them out, get them out! Oh God, I’m going to be sick! Why?!]

“One spider. It’s kind of integrated itself into your neural network, stretched its tendrils all over your brain,” her brother said, unhelpfully.

“That’s still one more than the number of spiders than I want in my brain, damn it!”

"Okay... Anyways, you can't do super stuff anymore because you burned out while you were trying to protect us from the skinwalkers. You are no longer awake, Ember. I'm really sorry." Martin said.

"No. No. No. This isn't happening. These sort of things don't happen to young heroes!" Ember sat up, and covered her face, wobbling back and forth like a roly-poly toy. For the first time in her life she was having a panic attack. She didn’t like it one bit.

[Equality shall prevail and no cottages shall burn upon the distant shores of Yore.] A calm voice spoke in her head. Ember saw a golden ocean of wheat in her mind, gently swaying back and forth played by currents of wind. White clouds rolled above the wheat fields, casting large shadows down onto the serene countryside. English cottages stood in the distance between rows of wild cherry trees. The grasses smelled of autumn rains, seagulls called from the ocean. It all looked so real that Ember forgot how to breathe, her panic attack subsiding, replaced by the vision of the British countryside.

She shook her head, getting rid of the image. "Puppeteer protocol, damn it! Focus."

[Ember Kilborne, please remain calm. Now that you are Hero Resonance no longer, I can tell you about your part in the prophecy.] The voice of the Equalizer spoke in Ember's head.

"I, uh. I…" Ember muttered.

[You were one of my targets to observe. The Super who was going to wipe England off the map.] Cottie walked to Ember.

"I couldn't have! I wouldn't have!" Ember cried.

The Equalizer had reached the ex-hero, armor clinking and placed a hand on her head.

[Observe what I had been given by her Eminence Equality. This was your part in the prophecy. My Equalizer name, Verse Twenty-four Nineteen, is part of the greater story about the future of a mighty hero called Resonance.]

An image of Ember formed out of uneven sparks. She stood on the captain's deck of Titanomachy clad in red and gold of her Resonance costume, looking much older. There was an eight pointed star on her chest. Her rank was an Admiral! She was destined to become the defence administrator of the entire station!

"I know that you are down there, villain! This is for the greater good of the Superstate. You will not bring down Titanomachy!" Admiral Resonance spoke, a hundred of her off-color copies sitting at the controls of the station. The image zoomed outwards showing the entire ring superstructure spinning around the earth. Beneath the behemoth station, Ember could make out the outline of the coast of France and England. A brilliant ray struck down from Titanomachy down to the beaches of Yorkshire and the coast of Britain ignited, clouds parting away to reveal the devastation beneath. A wall of fire a hundred meters tall rolled out from the center of the enormous explosion, devouring England. On the other side, an enormous tidal wave rushed out towards Netherlands and Denmark.

The vision ended, breaking up into sparks.

Ember looked up at the Equalizer, her lips trembling.

[Nobody does anything without purpose. Fear not, this shall not come to pass. No cottages shall burn. Hero Resonance is no more.] Cottie put her black railgun on Ember's shoulder.

[Hooooley sheet. Well this was a fun orbital visual, thanks! Seventeen thumbs up.] Alexa's mental voice interjected. She clapped her hands.

Cottie sternly looked at Alexa.

[Okki, okki. I promise not to hide in England from the Superstate. Cross my heart and hope to die.]

Ember simply kneeled on the grass, facing the Saint Mary's cathedral, feeling the weight of the Equalizer's gun on her shoulder. She cried softly in the rain. She was going to become an Admiral. It was unbelievable!

[This would not happen anyway, because I would have killed you with Eva long before this.] Cottie said without moving her lips. [The Equalizers are the hand of humanity. We stop all Supers who go too far, be it hero or villain. Eminence Equality does not simply command us. She also shows each of us what is to come if we do nothing.]

Ember closed her eyes. Humanity had judged her future performance and found her unworthy. She had no power, and would not become Resonance even if she managed to wake up again. She had a spider in her brain that let her brother read her thoughts. Her brother was in…

Wait. Ember looked at Alexa.

"Are you planning to destroy Titanomachy?"

"Why would I?" Alexa blinked her silver eyelashes back at her. "She's a pretty sky princess that's hugging the Earth. I'd never hurt our precious ring-chan."

"You're lying! You have to be the one I was after! Equalizer! Why don't you depower her instead of me!" Ember pointed at Alexa.

[Void weapons cannot take powers away permanently. They can only temporarily turn off a power to execute the wielder with a headshot.] Cottie shook her head. [You've done this to yourself, because you love your family. Because you still cared for your brother. Your power made you the best response hero. You graduated with 100% at the academy and had 100% mission success rate. You could hurt, kill people with impunity and then just undo their deaths. You became more and more disconnected from humanity.

With each day they would only grow stronger, until you could run the entire defense grid of Titanomachy all by yourself. Your response time to an attack and the ability to coordinate as a one person team of analytics made you the best Officer of the SCA. Unfortunately, your power was also erasing your empathy, turning you into a butcher.]

"She's right." Martin sighed. "You were kinda turning into an asshole, Em."

Ember looked up at the ring in the sky with sorrow. Her dreams of greatness laid in ruins, broken by the world of tomorrow. She had been outdone by a 14 year old supervillain.

[Alexa had done my job for me. It seems that she figured out a way to break Resonance long before you even rose to prominence. It seems that she's the only villain who figured out how to end you without killing you.] Cottie concluded.

"Hum. The Equalizers should pay me for my excellent services. You guys get salaries, right?" Alexa winked at Cottie.

Cottie raised an eyebrow at her.

"You're welcome!" Alexa grinned. "Hey can I at least wear your shiny pin if I do your job for you? The pin comes with the invisibility cloak, right? I could do twice the crimes if I was invisible!"

Ember stopped crying. It was useless. Nobody seemed to care for her sorrow.

She looked at the only person who seemed to display the slightest bit of concern, tried to reach out to her brother. "Do you not hear the words coming outta her mouth? She's not a good person! She needs to be stopped!"

“I don’t think that heroes are necessarily good people either, Ember.” Martin sighed. “I now know why the Equalizers exist and why they do the things they do. Cottie lost her family and her home because of a hero who was too eager to defeat a villain. The prognosticators can’t account for everything everywhere. They make preferences and allowances towards citizens of the Superstate. The SCA isn’t perfect. You’ve seen it yourself. We have failed humanity. Titanomachy has fallen. I’m afraid I’m with Cottie on this one. I’m going to be Alexa’s friend because that’s the only way to stop her.”

“Mwa ha ha ha!” Alexa stood over Ember, stepping into the shoes of a gloating supervillain. The rain intensified, thunder rumbling in the distance. A dark storm cloud became visible behind the cathedral of Saint Mary. Ember saw flashes of eerie silver lights dancing behind the stained glass rose window as the world darkened.

“You’ve lost, hero. I’ve taken your powers away. Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer. What could be closer than [mental communion]? Your brother is bound to me by brain-spiders and he no longer believes in the SCA. This lovely Equalizer is bound to me by brain-spiders and she can’t kill me because I’m doing the job of the Equalizers better than they are. You’re bound to me by… well you get the picture. You were the only one in the world who could have stopped me by obliterating the British Isles off the map with the power of Titanomachy. You were a threat to my world dominion and now you’re just a human girl! Nobody can stop me now!”

Ember flapped her mouth open and closed. Alexa had somehow brought together and destroyed all of her future enemies before they could even grow up.

“Hero Resonance doesn’t exist anymore, except on record. Your own dedication to immersion was your downfall. You erased four years of your own life to blend into the 8th grade, bent the rules of the universe by combining your own and your friends' powers. You no longer have your powers. What you’ve done to yourself cannot be reversed. You can never go back to Titanomachy as Resonance. The space elevator won’t even recognize you as the same person - the door scanner reads the power imprint fractal hexagram. Your unique power signature imprint is gone forever, you no longer have the key to open that door.”

“No.” Ember whispered in dismay.

“I warned you, did I not? I told you that there was no way to come back, that you were going to lose everything if you didn’t let go of me.” Alexa looked down at Ember.

“Here is what’s going to happen, Admiral. You’re going to be my minion numero trium and I’m going to call you…” Alexa tapped her face. “Dimmy or D if it's an emergency. You know, as a respectful reminder to your future as Admiral of Titanomachy and on the account that your powers and dashing looks have been dimmed. Here, enjoy the new you!” The supervillain made a fake gesture of a salute to Ember, pulled out a small hand-held mirror out of her vest pocket and presented it to Ember.

Ember looked in the tiny mirror at her own reflection and did not recognize herself. Her hair was no longer orange, nor was it floating. It was an auburn shade with streaks of red. Her eyes were not glowing or gold. They were hazel. It was the last straw. Ember dropped the mirror, wailing beneath torrents of rain, screaming at the sky that no longer belonged to her. Lightning flashed overhead.

“I know what’ll cheer you up! A tasty yum! Hope you don’t mind that the box is wet. I can’t control the weather, yet.” Alexa slid a bento box towards Ember.