One.. two... three... doing back tucks had never been so simple before Valerie got superhuman strength. Whoever thought cheerleading was easy had never gone through hours of stretching, dancing, gymnastics, tumbling and core strengthening exercises five days a week from the age of eight. For more than half her life the goal of going pro at eighteen had existed side-by-side with the frustration of competing against shorter, daintier girls and having to put double the effort for similar results. And now...

"Excellent Grant, you've improved," Coach Bones said, making a mark on his ever-present clipboard. "Keep up the good work and don't get complacent. Jones, you're up!"

...and now it was so effortless she felt like a cheat. The tall blonde controlled her face into a mask of indifference and walked to the stands to let the next girl have her turn. She pretended to wipe away nonexistent sweat with an all too dry towel, hounded by the feeling of unseen eyes in her back. Had anyone noticed? What would they do if they did?

"Wow, V, you're kicking ass today," Mandy gasped more from effort than surprise. The redhead was panting and sweating heavily but didn't seem particularly bothered by it, her unused towel wrapped around her waist.

"She totally is," Lindy added and grunted, going through another series of stretches almost grudgingly. "Did you see the looks on everyone else's face?" Of the three of them she had always been the least excited about the sport and Valerie thought she came more for the gossip than anything else. To each her own, she supposed.

"Ugh, can we not do this here and now?" Valerie pleaded, sneaking a glance or two around them. Unfortunately that only confirmed her usual competitors were shooting nasty glares in their direction. "On second thought, let's just leave. I don't feel like tackling Jones' posse on top of Bones' thinly disguised torture session."

"Someone's in a bad mood. Still not over the museum thing?" Valerie just gave Mandy the finger and started walking. The redhead just laughed and stalked after her. "What's the point of surviving a supervillain up close and personal if you just mope about it? We should be celebrating - laughing it off, maybe throwing a party. I'll bring the boys if you bring the beers!"

The blonde considered Mandy's suggestion as the three of them walked through the main building and back to their lockers. They hadn't been able to use the changing rooms earlier in the morning and if the lingering stench - a combination of old, unwashed socks and rotting garbage - was any indication, whatever had been wrong with the plumbing had yet to be fixed. The resulting slog through the school in their exercise clothes was drawing even more stares, which annoyed Valerie further while the other two preened and winked their way through the crowd.

"Cheer up V," Lindy fake-whispered. "At least half of those stares were for your new grumpy self. Everyone loves a bad girl."

"If you don't shut up, this bad girl is going to tie you up into a pretzel and throw you out a window." She could actually do it, with her increased strength. It wasn't a comforting thought. "Why am I friends with you, again?"

"Because deep down you enjoy the squabbling," Mandy offered with a smirk. Clean clothes in hand, the three of them got to the second floor girls' bathroom to change. Unfortunately, with the recent plumbing issues a shower would have to wait until after school... so they'd have to change without really cleaning up.

"Come on, it's just a bit of sweat," Lindy muttered after five minutes of staring at the clothes they were about to defile with no signs of progress. "Boys forgo showering all the time. How bad can it be?"

Valerie would be eternally grateful for her superhuman stamina and lack of sweating even if it revealed her new secret then and there.

xxxx xxxx

Name: Valerie Grant

Bio: 17-year old female Aspect: Force ENHANCED ATTRIBUTES ENHANCED SKILLS POWERS Strength 1.13 none detected Deflection Field 1.03 Durability 1.92 Force Adjustment 1.06

Several days of tests, and she still didn't know why or how her attributes and powers grew - if they did at all and this wasn't the magic ring malfunctioning. There was no correlation of exercise and improvement that she had noticed beyond the first day and no attempt to get her Deflection Field or Force Adjustment had produced any results. The stupid deflection thing had even grown when she slept, for no apparent reason whatsoever. The only reason she'd even noticed was the ring being warm when she woke up.

Let's try this one more time, she thought, picking up the super-bouncy ball and throwing it at the wall. It bounced off with a dull thud from the amount of force she put into the swing then missed her off-hand on the way back and struck her face instead. Growling, Valerie waited for the subsequent bounces to end before stalking up to the rubbery pain in the ass, picking it up and starting from the beginning.

When the rubber ball literally split into pieces half an hour later, she had to admit defeat. Despite the ring's help, finding how her powers worked was simply not working. In the comics the hero would just do awesome things instinctively or find they could fly when they really needed it; the reality was rather different.

A researcher on how powers worked had given an interview the year before, a Doctor Marlow or Varlow or something similar-sounding. Valerie remembered it because how simple his theories had been. All of us, he'd said, were capable of some pretty awesome things. Talking, building a car engine, breaking seventeen bricks with one punch. Our bodies had the ability for that and more; they just didn't know how without being taught. Supers were the same; their bodies could do a few extra things, but without learning how to do them they might not as well have powers at all, except for passive benefits.

Not that the Doctor's theory had been proven or anything; it just seemed to fit Valerie's case well enough. Unless she stumbled into how her powers worked on her own, someone else would need to teach her.

It was time to meet some superheroes.

xxxx xxxx

People still talked about the supervillain attack that had levelled half the terminals of the old Chicago International Airport, and seeing the huge gouges and craters in the airfields with her own eyes Valerie could see why they would. It was as if a giant had taken bites out of the tarmac, if each bite had been large enough to swallow a bus whole. Speculation on how the damage had been dealt had never ended or reached a satisfactory conclusion, a fact that was not helped by the total absence of video evidence from the attack. Not that anyone complained about such gag orders too loudly - not after Doctor Meme got half a million people to claw their own eyes out through a YouTube video.

Of O'Hare's three air traffic control towers only one had survived the attack. Rebuilt and improved to house the State Guard, Illinois' government-backed hero team and associated groups such as the Powered Response Unit, it now stood over several square miles of defunct airport like a lone sentinel standing his long watch over a bloody battlefield at the end of the war. Of course, this war was far from over and done. With the steadily increasing numbers of both superheroes and supervillains, word on the street was it had only begun.

Valerie checked her costume one final time. Tank top over sports bra, knee-length jeans, knee-high boots, protective leather gloves, everything in variations of the classic red and blue. They didn't quite match; she'd gone for sturdiness over appearance and for less coverage than most local heroes usually did, but with her durability the lack of protection was not an issue. Every bit the costume did not cover was another area she could afford to be hit in without risking clothing damage. A domino mask was her concession to secrecy; the heroes either had ways to enforce secret identities with powers, or everyone important knew them anyway. Relieved no problems had cropped up in the last few minutes, the tall blonde walked into the converted airport terminal and State Guard's headquarters.

The silence and empty corridors she was met by were rather anticlimatic. Wasn't this place supposed to be bustling in activity?

"New prospect?" a guy in an insulated PRU suit asked her as he hurried out, his voice distorted by his shiny silvery helmet.

"Yeah," Valerie answered, a bit confused. "Where is everyone?"

"Most of the capes are up North in Milwaukee; left half an hour ago. Us PRU grunts are playing catch-up all over the city," the very talkative guy informed her, muffled voice tinted with annoyance. "Newbie greeter is straight ahead, can't miss it."

"Newbie?!" she shot back, voice rising in indignation, Yes, she was new, but that was no reason to "Wait, where are you going?"

"Sorry kid, I really have to dash." And with that, he ran out on her!

He probably has people to save, what with the emergency, the logical part of her brain argued. Not feeling like either agreeing or arguing with herself, Valerie followed the guy's directions and soon found herself into an enormous atrium with dozens of exits and stairs to the upper floors framing a long, broad tunnel under a glass roof. It must have been full of people back when the place had been an airfield, built to handle the traffic of tens, possibly hundreds of thousands. In the Heroic Age it had been reduced to mostly empty space with a single familiar face standing inside a kiosk helpfully labelled 'Information'.

"Crimson Countess?" Valerie asked, somewhat unnecessarily. The heroine's glowing red costume was unmistakeable.

"I was wondering when you'd show up," the older woman said in a tired voice. Then what she said registered and...

"Wait, you knew I'd come? You have a precognition power?!"

"No, I have eyes... and the perimeter fence has cameras," the Crimson Countess shot back, her arms and head flickering as she shifted from screen to screen rapidly, typing a mile a minute in the process. "You're lucky you don't have superspeed, kid. If you did you'd get to join immediately then spend most of your days in the office handling overwatch."

Valerie had nothing to say to that, so she chose to wait and see whether the heroine had more to say.

"There, everything handled for the next five minutes, barring emergencies," the red-clad woman finally said as she stopped typing. "We got some time so go ahead. I'm all ears."

"I... err... would like to join the State Guard?" Valerie tentatively pronounced. "As a hero, I mean, not a PRU member."

"As if you could." The Crimson Countess rolled her eyes. "How old are you, kid?"

"Aren't we supposed to keep our personal details, well, personal?" the younger woman asked. So far, things were not going at all as she had expected. Then again, nothing had been going as expected since she'd met her first supervillain.

"Too late!" the heroine cackled. "What, you thought I'd forget our last encounter?" Valerie's eyes went wide; she really hadn't thought about that. Her secret identity was already compromised, what was she going to do! "Relax! If revealing secret identities was that easy, none of us would have one. We'll clear this up afterwards but first, let me be frank; you're too young."

"...what?"

"The State Guard only takes in adults. We accept underage affiliates if they pass muster but you're brand new." The heroine shook a finger at Valeria. "That atrocity in spandex and denim would reveal as much even if we'd never met."

"What's wrong with my costume?" the blonde asked, trying to find what obvious mistakes the heroine had seen.

"Just about everything," the Crimson Countess told her. "A professional costume is power-enhanced in some way. It's also a requirement for joining the team, for reasons you'll find out in your first serious fight if you can't already guess - which brings us to the second issue. Do you know what your Aspect is yet?"

"What do you - oh right, that." Valerie was suddenly so grateful for her magic ring she took back everything bad she'd ever said about it. "Yeah, I know what it is."

"Really? You found out about Aspects in what, four days?" The other woman gave her a dubious frown that gave Valerie the sudden urge to punch her through a wall. "I'm going to explain anyway to avoid misunderstandings. An Aspect is the core theme of a power. All of its effects, whether active or passive, are associated with the Aspect as is the way the power grows.

The younger blonde grimaced at that and the Crimson Countess zeroes in on it instantly.

"You don't know how your power grows, then?"

"No." Valerie scowled. "Finding out how is why I came here."

"That is unfortunate." For a moment the red-clad heroine was about to say something, then shook her head, sat back, and looked at the girl in the amateurish costume critically. "It is best if you discover this yourself. If... no, sharing information about it is actually harmful, in more ways than one. Anyone who would tell you either have no idea what they're talking about or don't have your interests in mind."

"That's..." the blonde staggered as her hope for an easy solution was crashed. What was she going to do? Why was the heroine that had saved her life only days before refusing to help. "What am I supposed to do now?" She only realized she'd said the last bit out loud after falling down on her knees from the shock.

"Go back home and rethink your life?" said heroine asked back in lieu of replying. "You get into one fight with a supervillain as a civilian, narrowly survive, and now you want to do it again? Powers don't make you invincible; before you tackle more villains maybe learn to use your powers first? Try your hand in search and rescue, maybe some disaster relief under supervision. Even stopping common criminals would be better, but by no means safe."

"Is that all?" She was wrong to come here, Valerie thought. The conspiracies were right; the government-backed heroes didn't want to help people learn their powers. They didn't want the competition.

"Not quite," the red bitch told her. "Before you get back on the streets don't you want to get a secret identity?"

"How's that going to work? Don't you already know who I am? Aren't there records, and stuff?" Yet another reason she shouldn't have revealed herself to the so-called heroes.

"That's hardly an obstacle to the guy that handles secret identities." The Crimson Countess stopped, took a pesnive pose. "Or maybe they're a gal; nobody actually knows." She shrugged. "Just get a phone, any phone, and press seven times seven. It's Truth's number."

"YOU'RE JOKING!"

"Nope," the heroine told the gaping girl. "If you got powers and call them, they'll answer. The phone doesn't have to be charged or even functional."

Valerie was still gaping. Truth was handling superhero identities. This was big; really big. The guy - if they were a guy - was one of the biggest supervillains around.

"And he... they will just hide my identity? Just like they hid-" her words cut off and she gurgled, her mouth trying to force something out before her brain caught up. What had she just tried to say?

"Exactly like that. Everyone with powers gets one free personal obfuscation or revelation," Crimson Countess told her. "Most of us use it to hide our identities, heroes and villains alike."

"Could I ask for-"

"No," the older woman cut her off before she could finish. "If you ask for something stupid you won't get a secret identity... and anyone hurt by the stupid request will still want to hunt you down."