Frost spreading across a window to herald the coming of winter.

Night was falling, and with it the temperature, bringing a chill I shouldn’t have been able to feel. I knew I should get up, leave behind this secluded corner and uncomfortable stone bench and go inside, into the light and the warmth where my friends would be waiting for me, but I just couldn’t bring myself to stand.

They would all be excited, filled with nervous anticipation, ready to see my true form and certain the elders had given me the key to find it. It would never occur to any of them that I wasn’t a dragon like them, bound to human form in infancy until reaching a level of skill and power and self awareness sufficient to cast Revert to True Form. I had dragon magic, after all. So what else could I be?

A huff of bitter laughter fell away from me. Seconds later, there was Pitch, buzzing low to the ground in his true dragon form. I always thought it was funny that he was pure white and tiny as a dragon when his name was Pitch and his human form was so massive, but I was having trouble finding anything humorous at the moment.

“There you are, Kauri! We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“You have? Why?” I asked, internally admonishing myself for not casting a hiding.

“You missed dinner and no one heard from you after your meeting with the elders. We were worried. Some of us thought you might have gotten lost in the instincts of dragon shape and needed help remembering who you are no matter what shape you are, so we all came looking. I was put in charge of this section of the grounds in case you were little like me and couldn’t fly far, and Frost and Soot took some of the better flyers and they’re doing a wide loop in case you ended up big and went further than you meant to. But here you are, all human shaped and safe.” Pitch touched down, changing to his human form between one breath and the next. “Were you waiting for us to change shapes?”

We all start somewhere. Don't worry. Just keep writing, and eventually all the rules and spellings will become second nature.

"Because... I... They... Um..."

Thunderchord sighed, sparks trailing from his hand as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "The thought popped in your head and you ran with it without ever once thinking about whether it was a good or even a helpful idea. Come on, Nigel, we've talked about this. You were doing so well. Your last three schemes had a purpose that wasn't just trying to see if it can be done. Yes, people can be crushed int giant meatballs, but why should you be the one to do it? How will this benefit you or anyone else?"

"This was a bad idea, wasn't it?"

"A very bad idea. Have you been talking to your psychiatrist about how to handle these kinds of thoughts?"

Nigel nodded sheepishly. "I thought I was doing really well. It should be easier than this, but the ideas always seem so normal and important until you find me and ask why, but it's like I can't even see that it's MSI until then. Even the other heroes who just come in and start tearing things apart don't snap me out of the fugue."

"You are doing well. You're still trying. That's more than we can say about most of the super geniuses who develop Mad Scientist Impulse. And look, you haven't actually hurt anyone yet, not this time. And you mostly stayed Nigel and didn't go into your Science Guy persona."

"That's true enough. Thanks, Thunderchord. Would you mind, if you're not too busy, that is, um... Would you mind helping me dismantle all this? And help get the people my drones kidnapped back where they belong? And maybe being moral support while I call my sponsor and my therapist and my parole officer?"

"Of course. I'd be a terrible hero if I flew away once the drama was done."

Robin should have pressed the button the moment he saw the gun.

But he couldn't.

It wasn't that he didn't want her help, or at least, not just that he didn't want her help, but that there was still a part of him that hoped there was power in him, dormant and waiting for just the right moment to burst out of him, a moment that never appeared no matter how dire his circumstance.

So instead of pressing that button, instead of admitting he had little chance of solving anything on his own, he tried to be a hero. Tried to handle the situation cooly and calmly, give the mugger exactly what he wanted and let everyone walk away. He only wanted things, after all, and things could be replaced. It was a horrible circumstance: His daughter would probably need therapy and his wife would probably avoid taking shortcuts through alleys for a little while, but they would be fine. Everything would be fine, and he would still be powerless.

He realized that the moment Evangeline handed over her purse, as the gun came up and the mugger's finger pressed against the trigger and Lily screamed and his own fist tightened around the button and he was still powerless as he leapt for the mugger and grabbed his wrist and pulled it so it was pointing at him instead of his wife, instead of his daughter and the gun went off with an echoing bang that bounced back and forth and back and forth like thunder across an open sky and he waited for the pain to come but there was none.

For a brief moment he thought he finally had a power, that he was finally an heir to the legacy his great grandfather had started, but he already knew what he would see when he looked down at the gun and the mugger's wrist still clasped in his hands.

A green gloved fist closed around the bullet that could have killed him, burnished coppery gold rivets on the knuckles and a strike plate of the same color on the back of the hand. And when he looked down, that was indeed what he saw, and he followed her arm up to her face, where her face would be if it wasn't obscured by that great green hood that somehow contained shadows filled with starlight, and even though it had been years since they'd spoken, even though he couldn't see her face, he knew his sister was madder than he had ever seen her before.

"Drop the gun," she said, quiet and cold and furious and only mildly distorted by the whatever it was contained in her hood. "Drop the purse."

The mugger complied, eyes wide with fear, backing up and breaking Robin's. Whatever else he was, the erstwhile victim had to give him credit. He was smart enough not to run as Dawn Strider, the greatest and most powerful superhero, in the world knelt down to pick up both gun and purse from the ground. She tucked the gun into a pocket that looked far too small to hold it and yet did anyway before handing the purse back to Evangeline. From another pocket, one that hadn't existed until she reached into it, she took out a page of stickers, half of them gone, and applied one deftly to the mugger's forehead. It was a unicorn with a sparkly horn and so incongruous with the circumstance that no one knew what to make of it. Evangeline choked back a hysterical snort.

"That sticker was treated with a special compound designed by Cerilium Z," Dawn Strider said, still quiet and cold and furious. "It will not come off by normal means. Every police station in the city has the solution necessary to remove it. I suggest you go turn yourself in."

The mugger bolted.

Dawn Strider, as though only then realizing she still held the bullet that nearly killed Robin, opened her hand. The bullet tumbled to the ground, squished beyond all recognition. "I was nearly too late. Robin, I'm sorry."

"It wasn't your fault, Peregrine. I think he was already pulling the trigger by the time I called for you." As Robin finished speaking, he pulled a tiny fob from his pocket, turning it over in his palm. "I thought we'd be fine as long as we just gave him what he wanted."

"At least you kept it. When I sent it, for your wedding, I thought you might have just thrown it away."

"I took the peace offering for what it was. Lily and Jordan have the ones you sent for them on their keychains. I told them that if they're ever in trouble, all they needed to do was press the button and someone would come to save them."

Dawn Strider lowered her hood, the starlight streamed darkness vanishing like it had never been, revealing a half mask over her mouth and nose. Her eyes, like they always had when she used her powers, gleamed like a gentle sun. Sighing, she rubbed the side of her face with the side of her palm.

"All the same, I'm glad they've never had to use them. And... sorry. For everything. We probably won't talk again, so I just wanted to say that. At least once. My number hasn't changed."

She drifted lazily into the air, but Robin leapt forward again, catching her by the ankle before she rose too high.

"It was never your fault, Peregrine. Never. I just wanted to be a hero like you and Dad and Granny and I... I blamed you for getting the powers I never did. Can we... Do you want to get lunch some time this week? Bury the hatchet?"

"I'd like that. I'll text you tomorrow."

With a wave at Robin's confused wife and daughter, the latter of whom had whipped out her own key chain to look at her own fob, Dawn Strider flew up and up and up and turned into a streak of starry gold against the midnight sky.