“Theodore, quit slacking off!” Milly scolded. “I can bearly see anything!”

Theodore the teddy bear backpack floated in midair with both his paws around Milly’s phone. He shone the only bit of light that was to be found in the basement of the police department since the electricity was out.

The bars of the white holding cells reflected the light more easily than the dull gray concrete of the floor and walls. It gave the illusion that Milly was surrounded by free-standing bars and little else. The flashlight on her phone was already not all that powerful, and Theodore’s neglect wasn’t helping.

The existence of gravity was no excuse for poor sidekicking.

Milly reached one hand out underneath Theodore and pushed him up until the light once again illuminated the steel lock on the door. A pair of thin metal rods stuck out of the lock. With one hand, Milly jiggled one of the rods around while in the other she held a small booklet with instructions that were getting her no closer to opening the darn thing.

“Yes, I realize that you just got stitched up at the doll hospital, but that’s all the more reason not to fall to pieces on me here,” Milly said while she flicked through the pages with her thumb. Frustratingly, anything to do with sound cues or allowing the pins to fall was completely useless to her. “Who knew that picking a lock is actually harder when you have superspeed? Ugh!”

Holding up the booklet was causing her sleeve to rub over a burn on her upper arm in just the wrong way. It caused an annoying itch more than any actual pain, but why was it bothering her now? She’d barely even noticed while she was with her Dad and later TRACE. It couldn’t have suddenly gotten worse.

It wasn’t just her arm, either. She’d become constantly aware of every little injury she’d sustained last night. Perhaps snooping around in a dark basement that might as well be a sensory deprivation tank wasn’t such a great idea. She could see almost nothing, hear nothing, and was becoming all the more aware of the senses she had left.

If she’d known how annoying this would get, she’d have taken Celine’s creepy blood tonic before Milly-time kicked in. Too late now, though. There was no way she was going to inject herself and experience whatever it was going to do in super-slow-mo.

She just needed a distraction.

“You’re right, Theodore. I should take a break after this.” Milly let go of the booklet so she could see it properly and work with both hands. One of the real joys of superspeed was that she never had to set anything down, kind of like being in space.

“Maybe we could go for a run. I still want to try vertical running again. If I had been able to do that last night it would have saved a lot of trouble… and what was up with that super jump at the end? There has to be a way to control that. It was pure luck that I hit a wall instead of the crowd of people one floor higher.”

The lock clicked!

Well, Milly imagined it probably would have clicked. To her, it was more of a clicky feeling in her fingers. Her last poke with the pick had allowed the lock to rotate a fraction.

“Finally!” Milly jumped up and gave the handle a jiggle only to find it was still locked.

The spotlight also slowly drifted off the lock as Theodore and the flashlight slowly spun away thanks to Milly’s moment of premature enthusiasm.

Rubbing the bridge of her nose, Milly fought the urge to scream. “Grr. You know what? Screw it!” She wrapped both hands around the lock, set one foot on the steel door frame, then yanked the whole lock straight off the door.

“There! It’s open!” She kicked the door for good measure, sending it into the concrete wall. The loud clang and crack made even her wince.

That might’ve been a little excessive. Milly had no problem interacting with objects and people without breaking them, but when she wanted to break something, it really broke. The side of her power that held such sheer destructive force was intimidating, even when she was the one wielding it.

“I… I’m sure that’s fine.” Milly sheepishly stuffed the lock into Theodore’s backpack compartment and then stepped into the cell to look around. “Better add ‘carefully breaking stuff’ to the list of things to practice.”

Milly’s investigation of the cell and subsequently the rest of the floor came up empty. While she found a couple of clues as to the identity of the occupants, they already had those. The good news was that it all lined up.

Afterward, Milly left the basement and roamed the rest of the police building. Each floor looked much like the first, burned out and black with soot. Thankfully, she didn’t come across anyone that had been missed in the evacuation either. The view only changed once she climbed the final set of stairs and made her way back onto the roof.

She almost didn’t recognize it in the daylight, but the damage from the fight was a dead giveaway. The only thing that was new was a molten hole where the T-Rex used to be, but when she peered down it was nowhere to be seen.

Actually, the same was true for all the flame sprites. Not one of them remained, the glass shells that once housed them were empty. Milly made a note that, whatever power created these fire elemental constructs, their manifestation was temporary.

At the edge of the roof, she found the shattered remains of her launch point. It looked roughly the same as everything else she’d destroyed so far. A pair of impact craters from where she’d kicked off and a bigger one in the distance where she’d landed. Just looking at it made her shoulder ache.

“Looking at it now, that’s a huge jump. How did I even make that?” Milly peeked over the edge and quickly stepped back. “Definitely not trying it again. Not from here anyway…”

“...Better.” Milly looked up at the police building from the pavement. Across the street stood the apartment building, notably unburned. Milly quickly crossed the street and counted the steps. “About forty paces. That’s something like five times the record at my old school. I guess I haven’t checked what it is here. Maybe there’s a student with frog legs that could make it.”

Practicing at ground level had to be relatively safe. She could just try to jump from the sidewalk to the opposite sidewalk across the street.

Milly pressed her back against the police building, trying to get as much of a run-up to the edge of the sidewalk as she could. Setting one foot against the wall, she readied herself for the jump.

Across the street, to the opposite sidewalk. Easy, right? It was much less than what she’d done last night.

“You can do it! Easy!”

While Milly psyched herself up for it, her gaze drifted up from the sidewalk to the wall of the apartment building.

Rough, red bricks that would scratch your skin if you so much as stumbled into them on a walk.

“…” Theodore’s head had slumped to one side.

“Great point, Theodore.” Milly stepped away from the wall and pulled out her phone. “I can practice jumping on empty stretches of road while I’m on my way to check on these names Niki gave us.”

“Actually, I should check on her. It’s been almost thirty seconds.” Milly walked in the direction of the alley she’d left Niki in; two Milly-hours ago.

On the way, Milly tried jumping a couple of times along the street with no success. The middle of the road proved a perfect runway, with the cars to either side.

No luck in getting any super jumps going, though. Disappointing but not surprising.

Turning the corner into the alley, Milly found Niki exactly as she’d left her. When Milly-time had kicked in, the two of them had been hard at work ‘practicing’. From the moment Milly noticed Niki stop responding, she had immediately backed off. Strangely, Niki was still pressed against the wall, face heated, and lips pursed for a kiss.

It brought a blush to Milly’s face just seeing her like this, but it also struck Milly as odd since Niki had more than enough time to notice her absence.

“What’s going on here?” Milly checked her watch to confirm time was still passing normally. Granted, that was relative, but it checked out. If Milly-time wasn’t faster, then could that mean Niki was slower? Milly examined her and noticed she was holding her phone. “Wait, that’s new.”

Milly noticed the notation app was open.

I did not tell you to stop.

“Eek!” Milly dropped the phone like a hot potato, but it just floated in front of her like everything else in gravity’s slow clutches. Milly covered her face with her hands to block the text, but couldn’t help peeking through her fingers. Her cheeks burned into her palms while she read the message again.

“I-I can’t do that!’ Milly protested.

Niki didn’t respond, obviously. She just stood there. Lips pursed. Eyes closed.

“I mean, it’s not that I don’t want to. Are you kidding me?” Milly gave a nervous chuckle. She tried to avoid eye contact for a moment before realizing she was being dumb. “Ah, it’s just. I dunno if it’s ethical? That’s why I stopped in the first place, you know?”

Milly wasn’t completely clueless. Yes, it had been a horrifying day when her dad decided to give her ‘the talk’, and she’d spent most of it under a blanket trying to pretend she wasn’t hearing it. Despite her best efforts, she’d learned a lot that day, including the importance of consent.

Funny enough, that lesson had become doubly important after her superspeed kicked in. Technically, she could go around kissing whoever she wanted and they’d never know or be the slightest bit bothered by it, but that didn’t make it okay.

“As far as I can figure, if we were making out and you were to suddenly fall unconscious, it’s obviously wrong to continue, right? Because the situation changed. You wouldn’t have given permission indefinitely. Same deal when Milly-time started.” Milly paced in a circle while she argued it out to herself then glanced down at the phone again. “But, how does this affect that? What’s even akin to this?”

Niki very helpfully offered no advice whatsoever.

Milly wracked her brain. “...I guess maybe it’s like having an operation? You can give consent for something to be done to you while unconscious like that, right? If that’s true, then…” Milly gulped while she looked back at Niki. She looked more than inviting, but even if Niki was okay with it, Milly still felt strange about it.

“Maybe I’m not okay with it?” The thought struck Milly like thunder on a clear day. “How can I not be okay with it? Look at her, she’s adorable!”

Milly resumed her frantic pacing while she considered this new option. She finally came to a stop in front of Niki again. She wasn’t okay with it. The idea of kissing Niki set her heart aflutter, but her stomach turned at the idea of pushing Niki’s tongue around like a dead fish.

“I figured it out.” Milly came to a stop and turned to face Niki. After gathering her courage for a moment, she leaned in and rested her hands on the wall to either side of Niki’s head. She could feel the warmth radiate from her face. “You’re going to have to settle.”

Milly pecked Niki on the lips then backed off. “That felt like maybe a quarter of a second? Okay. About a Milly-Minute then.” Milly turned her watch so she could see the display and gave Niki another kiss. This time, she held that same pose while peeking at her watch.

This Milly liked much better. She felt a little bit silly, but the idea that she was doing something that Niki could actually react to was more than making up for it. One thing she hadn’t accounted for in this brilliant plan was how distracting Niki would be even when frozen. The softness of her lips, the scent of her shampoo, and her warmth were all still wonderful. Milly nearly forgot she was supposed to be tracking the time! At the end of the minute, she hopped back and squealed as she saw Niki’s expression was in the middle of changing to surprise.

“Yes! Take that!” Milly cheered before pulling out her sticky notes and jotting down a quick message for Niki.

Off to investigate! Want more later? Yes/No

“That will have to do for now.” Milly nodded and then stuck it onto Niki’s phone. Maybe she’d feel more emboldened once she’d gotten more used to the idea, but for the time being, she was happy with her compromise.

With that, Milly ran off.

Her first stop was a sporting goods store.

Her secret identity had been at risk too often. While she didn’t know where to get a proper costume, she could make do with something simple. A stroll around the store yielded a generic white and black tracksuit with a big pair of reflective ski goggles.

Theodore held onto her school uniform for her.

Actually, there was one more loose end.

Milly looked around the kids' section and picked up a ski mask for Theodore. After all, she couldn’t have him get recognized either!

For payment, she just left the cash on the counter.

Now properly equipped, her next step was the relatively simple task of checking on the six inmates who had been in the cell with the suspicious drawing. Whoever was missing most likely had a connection to the attack. Milly remembered she saw all the inmates grouped together during the evacuation, but there wasn’t any record of where they were taken afterward which made it hard to determine if any had slipped away.

Or, well, it would’ve been hard for anyone who couldn’t just check every police station in the area in as little as ten minutes. As an added bonus, Milly even had sketches of all the minutemen in her comic book journal from when she captured them the first time. All she had to do was cross them off whenever she found one.

A quick search of the nearest two police stations already accounted for half of the gang. Apparently, they’d been split up into smaller groups so as not to overload the holding capacity of each station.

The only annoying thing was how much walking she had to do. Each station was in a different part of the city and it wasn’t as if she could just take the bus. Fortunately, Milly had some distractions on hand.

“That’s one hundred!” Milly giggled while petting a Great Dane who seemed to be taking his owner for a walk more than the other way around. Morale restored, she returned to the middle of the road and skipped down the dashed line.

She had hoped that making small jumps the whole way would eventually replicate the super jump that she’d accidentally done, but she was starting to think it wasn’t going to happen. That didn’t stop her from trying. Besides, she liked hopscotch.

“One, two, three, hop!”

The streets had been quiet so far. She’d yet to come across any crimes or accidents in progress. The closest she’d come was to stop a little old lady from spilling her groceries. Perhaps most crooks knew better than to hold someone up in plain view of the street.

Milly remembered the different conversations she’d had so far regarding control. Her dad and Stella both used a phrase to activate their powers. Paige used gestures to guide hers. Celine used medical books. Orchid asked plants for favors. These methods weren’t the key, but they made it easier.

“Maybe I’m going about this the wrong way,” Milly mused aloud while she jumped from one white stripe to the next. “None of that seems to start or stop Milly-time, but what if I tried using it to control these weird outbursts of power I’ve had on occasion?”

“Dad mentioned before that the trick was to associate it with the ‘right mindset’, but what counts as the right mindset to jump from building to building?” She skipped along and considered what mindset she’d been in on the police rooftop.

Desperate, that was one. Trapped. Scared. Regret. Confused too, if she counted the moment of disorientation after Stella’s teleportation and the strange nebulas she saw during it.

All of that also matched her first rooftop experience when she’d tried to run vertically up the wall and shot into the air. Something had sent her crashing back down. In hindsight, the sensation of that ‘something’ had been similar to whatever let her jump yesterday.

She hated thinking about either occasion. It made her feel claustrophobic even out in the open air. Maybe especially out in the open air since she’d been trapped there both times. Nothing around her she could grab to save herself and only the faint hope it wouldn’t be her last moment by some miracle.

Just wanting to escape.

She imagined the edge of the roof in front of her. It wasn’t even hard. The image of that dizzying precipice was etched into her mind, photographic memory or not.

She skipped over the edge, and the ground trembled beneath her feet as she pushed off, launching her through the air again. Milly gasped in shock as she passed through where the wall would’ve been. Instead, she stumbled and rolled along the street. Ironically she skidded to a stop right in front of a red traffic light.

“Ouch,” Milly shrugged Theodore off her shoulders and rolled onto her back with a pained groan, then sprawled out. Nothing felt broken. “I…did that just work? Oof. I hope I don’t have to start zoning out and daydreaming every time I want to jump. You okay, Theodore?”

Theodore apparently fared much better when he wasn’t being used as an airbag.

Good to know.

Collecting herself, Milly scrambled onto her feet, snatched up Theodore, and tried again.

She had the entire trip to practice and work on a phrase to help her remember the mindset. Maybe she could take a page from her dad’s book as inspiration.

Six police stations down and every member of the Minutemen was accounted for.

It didn’t make sense.

Milly paced back and forth in the street, trying to look through her notes. “Ugh, I need somewhere to sit down for this,” she grumbled and had a look around.

She spotted a fire escape on the side of a nearby building. The curtains on the second floor were drawn. Not the most comfy, but if she was going to sit still for a few minutes and look through this stuff, she had to pick a spot without prying eyes or security cameras.

The only problem was that the ladder had been pulled up to prevent random strangers from climbing onto the fire escape from the street.

Milly shuffled her feet while she eyed the second floor. “Okay… I guess this is as good a time as any to try this out. I’ve only practiced jumping forward so far, but it should be the same principle, right? Just angle up.”

Speaking of angles, she needed to line up so that she wouldn’t smack herself into a corner or anything. A metal staircase wasn’t the best of landing zones on the best of days. After a bit of back and forth, she finally settled on a spot she felt confident with.

“That still looks pretty steep.” Milly took a deep breath and sunk through her knees and swung her arms back. Now she just had to invoke that eerie feeling with the same phrase she’d been practicing thus far. Good thing her naming sense was: “Second to none!”

As soon as the sensation hit her she jumped and launched herself off the ground like she’d pounced a springboard… and completely overshot the second story. Instead, she crashed chest-first into the railing of the fire escape on the third floor. “Oof!” Milly managed to grab hold and clambered over onto the walkway with a wheeze.

Not great. She really had to work on her dismount… and her aim.

But, hey! She made it!

Milly climbed down one level then sat down on the fire escape, dangling her sore feet through the railing while she caught her breath and double-checked her notes. “I don’t get it. If you plan a major disruption like that, why wouldn’t you take advantage and escape?”

Milly was sure she’d found all of them. She’d personally waltzed into each station, taken the stairs down to the holding cells, checked each face there, and crossed the ones who matched off her list.

She suffered through the arduous process of sending a text to Niki to inform her. There was no doubt in Milly’s mind that Niki would know what to do next, but the wait was the real killer. Jumping practice was off the table until her feet stopped throbbing.

What else was there?

“Oh, right.” Milly dug through her bag and pulled out the lock she had torn from the holding cell door. “I guess there’s plenty of light here. Hand me the lockpicks, Theodore!”

Theodore was no help at all.