"I think we need to talk," Akane said. "About Nicky."

"I like to think the two of us have more-or-less come to terms with one another," I said. "We're not friends, and we likely never will be. All that matters is we can work together without turning our claws on each other. You, however, are about to try to tell me something that will recontextualize the month I've known Veronica Vega and make me feel like an asshole for alienating a potential friend. So... lay it on me. Hit me with your best shot."

"Veronica is her deadname," Akane said. "She wants to be called Nicky, but doesn't feel like she's allowed to say that."

I blinked, then turned to face Akane, as did Lisa.

"You're gonna have to explain that one," I said.

"She's cis, isn't she?" Lisa added.

"Yes, but..." Akane sighed. "The Royal House of Vega- you know, Nicky's family, the people who raised her- have a thing for alliteration in names. Her mom is named Valerie, her siblings are named Vance, Vanessa, and Victor, and her dad is named Randall Rhodes. So, yes, her name is Veronica, but, when we first started rooming together in college, and I called her Nicky... she really, really liked that, and started to come out of the shell of all the other expectations and behaviors her family imprinted on her. She started being more... normal, and open, and happy. Little by little, bit by bit."

"And me calling her Veronica has ruined that progress?" I asked.

"A little, yeah," Akane said, nodding. "And this is tricky for me to address, because, well. I know Nicky isn't a perfect innocent uwu bean. She can be mean, elitist, and exclusionary. She's talked to me about you, and even when she knows I like you, it's very... Mmn. I can't imagine how she talks to you when she's in a bad mood."

"So, why are you friends with someone you know is an elitist asshole?" Lisa asked. "Because she's nice to you and has big tits?"

"Would you believe me if I said I think I can fix her?" Akane asked. "I mean, also, she's a victim of her family and how she was raised, and I feel bad for her. So, like... I don't just think I can fix her, I feel obligated to fix her."

"Haven't you had four years to try?" I asked.

"...Yeah," Akane admitted. "But... Well, honestly, Roxy, I think you might succeed where I... haven't."

"...You think I can fix her," I said.

"We're pretty different, you and I," Akane said. "As far as any of us know, you have no real heritage to speak of, born as common as they come, and yet you're such a good bounty hunter you've run out of villains to hunt. Plus, you've got your own perspective on hero work that's not very common here. And, well, then there's the bet."

"She told you about that, huh?" I asked.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Akane asked.

"It had nothing to do with you," I said. "I'm not naturally inclined to small-talk; when I'm around people I feel comfortable with, I let the mask drop, and... I end up not talking about my day, or what's going on in my life, unless I particularly want to talk about something specific."

"That makes sense," Akane said, nodding. "Which is inconvenient, because I genuinely do want to hear about your day, but..."

"Honestly, my disinclination to small talk is probably at least 60% my parents' fault," I said. "Nobody in my family gave much of a shit about me, or knew anything about my interests, and so their attempts at talking to me were all either small talk or their own interests that I couldn't bring myself to care about. Football, home renovations, longwinded stories about nothing happening..."

"Vacation plans to places you don't care about," Lisa added, reminding me that she was sprawled across my lap and that I was still scratching behind her ears.

"Anyhow," Akane said. "You and Nicky do get along sometimes, right? I've seen it."

Veronica finally finished typing out her Factorio mod list on her phone and hit enter, and besides just a list of mods, she also had commentary explaining why she picked each mod.

"When the subject isn't work, yes," I said, nodding. "The two of us are currently talking about Factorio via text message."

"Wait, really?" Akane asked. "How- ohhhh, right. The Virtual Machine is going to take a lot of getting used to."

"Of course, I only have one brain with one language processing center," I added. "I can't read her message and carry on this conversation at the same time. Thankfully, I have ADHD, and there's little pauses between what we say to each other."

Akane obligingly nodded, sitting there in silence as I read Veronica's message and parsed all the commentary. Apparently she had a laptop dock on her desk connected to three monitors, enabling her to play Factorio on her laptop's main screen while she had three extra screens worth of wiki, spreadsheet, and flowchart always up for her to glance at.

At the moment, she was testing and refining a modpack that she was hoping to share with others, as a more gentle introduction to the complex logistical chains of modded Factorio. I personally didn't overmuch care for Factorio- I liked the idea of it, but every time I actually played it, I ended up losing interest and stopping. But... Akane wanted me to play nice with Veronica, and actually put in some effort to be friends, instead of just constantly dunking on her for her shitty worldview.

So instead I said that I wanted to like Factorio but didn't have the attention span to finish a game, but I heard Factorio had a multiplayer mode, and hey, a second set of hands would probably keep my attention for longer.

"Ah, crap, that's Valiant," I said, as my internal phone started ringing. "Hang on." I put my finger to my ear and answered. "What's up?"

"Earlier today I offered to pay you an exorbitant sum to handle a crisis," Valiant said. "Congratulations, the crisis has happened. There's been a jailbreak, and we can't find all the villains you've arrested."

I blinked. "Okay, I'm on it. Probably gonna need extra muscle to handle this."

"Liquid Courage is on the phone with Veronica. If the need is truly dire, I can show up as well, but..."

"But it's past sunset on a Friday," I said. "Ugh. I have a pet on my lap. I'm still going to get up and earn my paycheck, but I'm going to complain about it."

"Excuse me?" Lisa said, sounding surprisingly offended for someone who was very much acting like a pet on my lap.

I hung up, and groaned. "Lisa, get up, we've got a jailbreak to deal with and villains to hunt." Upstairs, Veronica's door opened.

"Roxy-" she began, loudly.

"Valiant called," I said, as Lisa got up and started stretching. "I know. Give me a minute. Gear up, yourself."

"I'm coming too," Akane said, standing up, still geared up.

"You absolutely are not," I said, staring flatly at her. "Go down into the basement, take that suit off, and then go to bed."

"Do you trust me?" Akane asked, bringing me up short. I'd been expecting something about her gear- how she's tested her armor, how she's got a ray gun that turns people into aluminum- but this... this was unexpected.

"...I suppose I kinda have to," I said. "Do you trust me?"

"I do," Akane said, nodding.

"Then please tell me why you're insisting on this," I said.

"I have a... hypothesis," Akane said carefully. "I need to test it, if I want to grow as a mad scientist. And I can't tell you what it is, because that might foul the experiment."

I sighed. "Well. I suppose I can respect that. How fast can you fly?"

"Fast enough," Akane said. "I can carry you, too."

"No," I said. "Grab a backpack, you're carrying Lisa as a fox, because I do not trust your arms to hold onto a person for a long period of time."

"I'm not a purse dog," Lisa protested.

"You will be soon enough," I said. "Go grab your gear, too."

Valiant kept his promises; whatever it was Liquid Courage said to Veronica, the effects were clear. She was clearly uneasy about my decision to bring Akane with us on the mission, but because I was her new commanding officer, or she knew for a fact that I knew for a fact Akane was as green as they come and chose to bring her anyways, or possibly both, Veronica did not at all undercut my authority.

"What's the plan?" Veronica- well, Lady Venus in costume- asked.

"Track them and capture them," I said, hanging onto her with a tentacle. The inconvenient thing about the tentacles was that they were all-or-nothing, length-wise. They could either be wholly retracted, or wholly extended. And while sometimes I do need fifteen feet of reach, other times it just gets in the way. At least Veron- Venus- was stoically tolerating the multiple wraps of tentacles around her abdomen. "For some reason, they're more-or-less sticking together."

"Maybe they're working together," Akane said.

"Possible, but... unlikely," I said. "It's my experience that supernatural criminals are disinclined towards cooperation; anyone they can work together with, they already are as part of a long-term group. Granted, that's based on my observations on A-510, which may be unfounded here. Venus, you have any insights?"

"It depends," Venus said. "Some villains, who are primarily in it to enrich themselves, work with others quite well, even sometimes allying themselves with heroes. Other villains, typically the ones pursuing some sort of ideological project or bizarre personal fixation, are something of a crab bucket, because they are pursuing different, often incompatible or even mutually-exclusive goals."

"Good, that much is a constant," I said, nodding. "Now... Most of Austin's supervillains happen to be out-of-towners who came specifically to Austin for a shared reason of the local tech industry, to prove themselves as superscientists in some nebulous way. And while you and I may understand that science is a collaborative effort, these shitheads likely understand it in a much more competitive way. This is, no doubt in my mind, an alliance of convenience that will shatter the moment we apply any pressure."

"Can you check?" Akane asked.

"They took their fucking hats back," I said. "Psychic shields block not only mind-control, but mind-reading as well. I can locate them with my scanner, but that's about it. Also, Venus, that warehouse over there, with the peeling blue paint on the roof."

"...Why on earth does it say 'Welcome to Denver' on it?" Venus asked.

"It was Wednesday," I said with a shrug. "Land on the roof, as quietly as we can manage."

Which turned out to be very quietly; I had tentacles I could slither around on, Lisa was currently a particularly sneaky quadruped only somewhat larger than a loaf of bread, and Nicky and Akane didn't actually have to land, strictly speaking, and could simply hover.

"Okay," I whispered. "Telepathic link time. Everyone ready?" I waited for nods, then pushed my telepathy module to form the link. "Alright, can you hear me?" I asked, subvocalizing into the link.

"Loud and clear," Venus said.

"That's freaky," Lisa said. "I hear you."

"Yep!" Akane said. "Oh! Roxy, you don't need it, but Nicky, Lisa-"

The two were immediate in correcting her. "Lady Venus." "Red Fox."

"Just put these on," Akane said, pulling a pair of tech-heavy bracelets from a hip pouch, holding them out.

"...Alright," Venus said.

"Don't have hands right now," Lisa said.

"Fox, war form, now," I said. "Be ready to go in hot. I'm going to go in through this skylight first, figure out what's going on." The first thing I did- after a quick visual inspection revealed nobody was watching, of course- was spray down the hinges with WD-40- I've kept a can of the stuff in my coat pockets along with a roll of duct tape for years, and now it was finally useful- to stop them from squeaking.

I popped the skylight open silently, and carefully, gingerly, snaked my tentacles in to latch onto the roof joists and rafters. I slithered in, clinging to the ceiling like a spider, and cast my gaze on the warehouse interior. This place was old, and in an inconvenient place that meant it would never be viable as a warehouse again; the shelves were still here, but not much else. More importantly, though, the villains were all here, congregated in odd, mixed groups, speaking in hushed tones I couldn't make out.

"Too many exits," I said. "This thing has truck docks. We can't just camp out the exits and flush them into a trap. We'll have to do this the hard way."

"Roger that," Venus said. "We'll-"

A sickeningly familiar sensation flowed over me like a wave, and the telepathic link shattered. More worryingly for my health and safety, though, my tentacles all went limp and retracted, leaving me twenty feet above a concrete floor with no support.

I landed with limp, slightly bent legs and fell forwards in a shoulder roll across my back. A little sore, but more-or-less unharmed. It annoyed me that those parkour lessons kept turning out to be practical; they should have been a waste of time and money.

"How inconvenient," a man drawled, stepping out of the shadows. "You're more durable than I thought."

He was... honestly, he looked a lot like a mirror-universe version of me who was still cis, and not nearly as jacked. Tall, skinny, brown hair, strong chin, jaw, and nose... It was eerie. Especially with that beard.

"Gideon James," he said. "I'm Doctor Skinner's apprentice. I was hoping that fall would kill you." He shrugged, clapping his hands twice.

The villains all turned to face us, eerily still, their conversations long since stopped.

"We'll have to do this the hard way."