Orchid Bramble grunted while she tried to get her face lower to the ground. Beneath the bookcase, something shiny glittered in the light of her phone. She blew her hair out of her face.

It was just a hair clip.

“Nooo,” Orchid cried while she let herself fall over onto her side. She pulled her knees to her chest, curling up on the floor amidst the debris of her desperate search. “What if I really lost it in the escape? What am I gonna do?”

“If I go back now to look for it, would it still be there? What if ACE found it and left someone on watch to see who comes back for it?” Orchid sat up straight with a jolt. “What if they are keeping track of which students aren’t opening their lockers today!?”

“How long do I have?” Running one frenzied hand through her hair, she pulled up her phone’s clock. Only to find the screen obscured by a sticky note. “What?”

Hey there, Orchid!

I found your key. Want it back?

I’ll trade you. But first just tell me:

How did a supervillain end up here?

Roommate to a hero, I mean. Bad luck?

Also, what did you do with the loot?

Answer by writing on the back.

Or, I guess I could ask Ruth.

-00:00:01

Wide-eyed, Orchid stared at the note in absolute silence while she read it another three times. She looked around but couldn’t find anyone who could have left it on her phone.

“You have it?” She asked quietly, her voice hoarse. “W-who are you?”

No response.

“…I must be crazy.” Orchid sighed and flipped to the blank side after she found a pen. She wrote: {Like this?}

Yes. Just like that. :)

Orchid gasped. She’d barely lifted her pen, and the sentence was just there in full. Even if she’d immediately written it herself, it would have taken at least a second.

Orchid looked the sticky note over once again. It was just an ordinary piece of paper, but when powers were involved, anything was possible.

{I’m not a supervillain.} Orchid wrote. {And I traded rooms last year. The previous girl couldn’t take it anymore. I only found out what I had agreed to afterwards and I couldn’t find anyone who would trade.}

This time, it took a few seconds before anything happened. The words on the note she was holding blinked out of existence and were replaced.

Okay, whatever you wanna call it.

Your nightly enthusiastic strolls outside.

The ones where you use those plant powers.

And take people’s stuff without them knowing.

What’s up with those if you aren’t a villain?

Sorry you got stuck with her like that.

What’s that been like?

-00:00:01

Orchid rubbed the back of her head. The other side of the note was blank again. She wrote: {It’s fine as long as I keep my head down. Okay, I feel like I’m having two different conversations at the same time. Are you trying to bring me to the dark side or just gossip?}

I guess that would be weird for you.

Let’s focus on last night. What happened?

Why were you out there?

{I was just trying to get something back that was mine.} Orchid wrote with a sigh.

A tree near the window bent closer. It almost could have been explained by a stiff breeze, if it wasn’t for the branch extended toward the windowsill.

Orchid noticed and quietly stared at the potential escape route for a long moment before she shooed it away. “I’m not that stressed, am I?” While the tree creaked back into its normal pose, Orchid took pen to paper.

{I can ask plants to do me favors, but they aren’t very smart. They just took random stuff from people. ACE caught them. I asked all the plants on the street to overgrown, so they couldn’t see who I was. They chased me half the night. It was a whole thing just getting back to bed before Ruth did.}

What were you trying to get back?

Maybe ACE could have helped you out.

Shaking her head, Orchid tapped the back of the pen against the paper anxiously.

Finally she wrote: {My life.}

————————————

“Oh, come on! Did you have to be cryptic?!” Milly shouted. She waved the note in Orchid’s frozen face. “Do you have any idea how long I’m gonna have to wait to see what this meant? Ugh!”

Milly stuck the note into her pocket with the rest. She has read them dozens of times by now just to remind herself of what was on them. From Milly’s perspective, the first ‘Like this?’ was almost a day old by now.

Not that Orchid could know. It would have been barely five minutes for her. Some of which she had wasted by staring off out the window every time Milly came up to check on her progress.

Infuriating!

Milly paced around the room while she jotted down a reply on her pad of sticky notes, then placed the top one in Orchid’s hand in the same position. {I’ll make you a deal. Tell me what is going on, and I will go get it for you. But only if you hurry up!}

Hopefully, that would spur Orchid into action, but it would not surprise Milly if she came back to a message like ‘Are you serious?’ or something. In fact, maybe she should preempt that, and save them both the time.

“Mhm. Something to show her that I’m serious and can actually do it…” Milly pondered her options.

Milly could return the key as a sign of good faith, but that didn’t give Orchid much of a demonstration of her ability. What if Milly moved her to the roof? No, that would probably freak her out for ages… or worse.

“Huh. That's right. I don’t actually know what happens when I move a person. I ought to test that out somehow.” Milly had a brief but horrid thought. It was said that it wasn’t the fall that killed people but the sudden stop. “…Yeah, no moving anyone until I figure that one out.”

Objects were fine. Milly knew that much. Weirdly fine. Most of the things she had interacted with functioned as normal. When she set a glass down, it didn’t shatter into a billion pieces. Despite the fact that it should be hitting a table at over a hundred miles an hour, even if she was careful.

Even stranger, Milly had learned she could move a glass of water without spilling it. She hadn’t even realized that was abnormal at first since all she was doing was having a drink, but that was insane.

“So, a demonstration with objects then.” Milly decided, then observed the room. It was a mess. “Mhm, well, I suppose if I’m going to help her anyway, this would be a good display.”

There was the chance that Orchid was just selling her a sob story. Milly had plenty of time to consider that possibility, but a post-it note wasn’t a binding contract by any means. Milly could always change her mind about helping.

But first, she had a statement to make.

————————————

Orchid blinked, and the message once again changed entirely.

I’ll make you a deal.

Tell me what is going on,

and I will go get it for you.

But only if you hurry up!

“Are they se—”

Before Orchid could even finish her sentence, her room was swept through by a blur of pink lightning.

Strangely, nothing was destroyed in its wake. Instead, her room had been entirely tidied up. It took three seconds, tops.

Orchid hadn’t even really seen anything move! Everything just vanished from one spot and reappeared in another in rapid succession.

“…I guess that’s a yes.”

Orchid grabbed her pen. {Kasper’s phone.}

{Last year, a lady on the subway asked if I could watch her bag for her while she quickly got some snacks on the next platform. She didn’t make it back in time and the train left. I didn’t know what to do but after a few minutes then I heard a phone ring inside the bag.}

{That lady was so glad when I picked up. She’d borrowed a phone to call herself. She told me to just go to MoleMunchies on the next platform and a friend would pick it up for her. As a reward, I could have anything from the menu, their treat, while I waited.}

{So, I did. Then a police officer showed up and asked to see my bag. I thought he must’ve been her friend, but then he looked through it and pulled out some pill bottles. I had to show him my ID. He wouldn’t listen when I said it wasn’t mine and started asking all kinds of questions.}

{I was scared. He said I was in big trouble and to come to the police station with him.} Orchid’s hand became unsteady as she wrote. {That’s when Kasper showed up. He defended me. He made the cop go away by promising information on a bigger catch.}

{But he was bluffing. He needed my help to get that information. Money would do. Or the cop would be back and I’d be in even more trouble for lying!} Tears began welling up in her eyes and Orchid quickly rubbed them away. {I didn’t have any money! I panicked! But he promised he could sell stuff I could easily get, like:}

Trembling, Orchid paused. “I really hope you’re not the same.”

{Information on ACE.}

The reply was instant.

You’ve been a mole for a year!?

Okay. A deal’s a deal. I’ll look into this.

I’ve now added my contact to your phone.

Text me where I’ll find this Kasper guy.

Plus whatever else comes to mind.

How is his phone gonna help?

————————————

While Milly waited for a reply from Orchid, she went back downstairs to continue with ‘Project B.O.R.E.D.’ also known as ‘Binge Offline Recreational Entertainment Dummy!’ as Niki had so eloquently put it.

With the custodian’s keys, Milly let herself into the art classroom again. Nobody needed to be in there during the first two periods, so it made for a perfect spot to entertain herself.

“Is it weird to go relax after a bombshell like that?” Milly asked herself while she locked the door behind her. “If what she wrote is true, that’s a huge problem, but I can’t know for sure without getting a look at this Kasper guy myself.”

Half the tables were taken up by attempts at art.

On the first, there was the now finished drawing of Meatcrawl’s attack on the pizzeria. As well as three others depicting the sky, the campus from the roof, and a roughly sketched series of costume ideas.

The second had hunks of clay that just refused to become pottery of any kind, but with a couple of toothpicks they had become passable horses. She even made them a meadow with a canvas and green paint. A few of them even had little knitted blankets.

Milly was honestly pretty proud of those.

Aside from the meadow, she’d made a couple of frustrating attempts at actual paintings. It turned out to be really hard to paint if you couldn’t tell how runny your paint was. The original painting she made of a forest ended up looking more like a swamp, but her half-finished attempts afterwards fared a little better.

Milly sat down at her current project, opening a big folder that housed the art projects of the other students in the class. Okay, maybe it was more snooping than artistry, but whatever kept her busy counted!

The one she had now belonged to Terra Porter, the school’s blonde sandstorm. Milly didn’t actually know a lot about her other than that she was the third member of ACE and apparently Stella’s twin. Even that was a little hard to tell since the girl’s skin was made of sand. That had to be a drag.

“Huh, I kinda was expecting her to be painting beaches or deserts,” Milly said while spreading out the drawings on the table. Instead, she found a cabin lake with a tire-swing, a portrait of what looked like Stella, and… a cactus in a desert. “Hah, I knew it.”

A blip of motion on her phone drew Milly’s attention. A new text message had come in! Finally!

Niki had come up with the idea to give the phone another shot a couple of Milly-hours into the day. Apparently, all Milly had to do to get the phone to register her touch was to press for three seconds.

It worked, but it was still annoying.

Milly grabbed the phone, hoping for another text from Niki. No such luck. She found it was Ruth instead.

Between Niki, Orchid, and Ruth, Milly had three conversations running simultaneously all morning, and still she had hours of free time.

“What was this about again? Uhm, I texted her with a fake account and…” Milly scrolled through the previous messages for a refresher.

One nice thing about using a phone. The chat history really made it much easier to keep track.

@ Ruth

00:00:01:

Hey, ACE. I’m ready for that talk.

Thanks for being cool about the broken wall.

Sorry but I can't speak face-to-face atm.

Ruth:

Nice! You’re still here!

First, do you need help?

You came to the nurse.

00:00:01:

I’m good, thanks.

Ruth:

Great! I’ll get straight to the point:

Are you affiliated with anyone yet?

We are interested and offering a spot.

The team has resources aplenty.

00:00:01:

Woah! Just like that? o.O

You don’t even know my powers.

What if I’m from another school district?

Or I could be an old man for all you know.

Or, I dunno, I could be evil.

Ruth:

Are you any of those?

00:00:01:

Well, no.

Ruth:

No problem then! How about an interview?

Nothing too intense, don’t worry.

Just gotta check nothing is off.

Like make sure you aren’t evil. :p

Or old. Which would be worse.

What do you say?

“Ohhh, right!” Milly slapped her forehead. “She was trying to recruit me! Again!”

Ruth had no idea that she’d invited the same person twice.

Funny how that worked out. Milly would have jumped at the chance before. Heck, just a few days ago, Ruth had offered her to join even without superpowers. As a supporting member to help investigate, but that still counted.

Together with Niki, Milly had solved the S13 case that had ACE stumped and stopped the rampage of Meatcrawl, who had turned out to be Vanna. Milly would have thought that would seal the deal.

But nobody from ACE came to see her while she was stuck at the nurse’s office over the weekend. Not to ask her to the team, or to keep her in the loop, they didn’t even check on her to see if she was okay.

Like they didn’t care.

After nearly dying, Milly had already decided not to join the team, but she would have at least expected one of them to show up to offer if they ever had a serious intention of letting her join.

“If.” Milly gripped the phone tighter in her hand till her knuckles turned white. “That’s a big ‘if’ right there. Seems more like they just let us flush out a baddie and then suddenly lost interest.”

How many others were given ‘opportunities’ like that?

An invitation to a super team was awesome, but there were reasons that ACE had a recruiting problem. Heck, Milly was talking to one of them.

Ruth had been nothing but nice to Milly, but Ruth had also wanted something each time. Was that really a coincidence? Ruth’s own roommate didn’t even trust her enough to go to her for help.

“Neither one of our roommates, come to think of it.” Milly sighed and paced through the classroom. “Maybe I’m being too harsh? Still… I reckon I’ll just do my own thing, for now at least.”

As if to remind Milly she wasn’t on her own, her phone lit up with a text from Niki. {If that’s true, then this Orchid girl has put many people at risk. Anyone that knows when ACE is busy has a tremendous advantage. But that’s not the worst part. I doubt that was a real cop, and I doubt Orchid was the only one.}

“Well, aren’t you clever? I hadn’t thought about that.” Though it was bad news, Milly still smiled. It was nice to see Niki in her element. Leaning back in her chair, Milly gazed at the ceiling as she thought it over. “Then this is an even bigger problem than Orchid thought. The phone will be a good start, but if these guys get tipped off, it’ll be harder to help anyone in the same boat.”

What she needed was some more information. This Kasper was a good lead, but if he was selling information, who was buying it? The best way to figure that out would be to identify people that were just a little too ahead of the curve lately.

Milly held up her phone. “Well, lucky that I know just who to ask.”

@ Ruth

00:00:01:

How about a bit of freelance work instead?

Anyone given you trouble for the past year?