Page 123 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

“Is it ‘we’? Because here I thought you were just eating my cake.”

Tad wrinkled his nose at her. Yelena laughed.

“Just checking—you’ve been here since you came back, but with the aforementioned avoidance behaviors you and Vel have been exhibiting, it’s hard to say whether you’re part of the household or just a really persistent guest. We have cake because Torrey and I saved one of the bakeries downtown from supervillains with a sweet tooth last week. Like, a literal sweet tooth. It was three feet tall, it made a really unpleasant grinding noise, and it was going to eat the bakers. We stopped it, and now they keep sending us cake. I’m sure they’ll get tired of it eventually, but until they do, I’m going to enjoy the free assortment of baked goods.”

“Huh,” said Tad. It was technically illegal for superhumans to extort the people they saved for any sort of payment, from cash to free coffee, but thanks to some legislators with a keen eye for human behavior, they were allowed to accept gifts freely given.

During the brief period when this hadn’t been the case, resentment toward superhumans had ballooned to dangerous proportions, since now they were not only pompous weirdoes who thought they were better than everyone else, they were pompous weirdoes who didn’t like Aunt Susan’s award-winning chicken casserole. If you wanted your superhumans to belong to a community, you needed to allow the community to treat them like they belonged.

Spearing the last bite of cake with his fork, he looked up. “Where is Vel, anyway?”

“She’s at the hardware store with Torrey,” said Yelena. “Not normally her job, but if she wants to take my girl shopping for springs, she is more than welcome to the task. I love Torrey like anything. That doesn’t mean I need another afternoon spent listening to her cackle over the potential applications of little pieces of metal that I can’t tell apart even if I cared enough to try, which I do not. Really, her shopping trips just make me grateful that my powers don’t require any sort of outside component.”

“Sounds exhausting.” He rose, taking his plate with him.

Yelena raised an eyebrow. “Where are you going?”

“I filed the paperwork that allows me to patrol on a provisional basis,” said Tad. “Vel’s not here, and I don’t need to worry about running into her right now. I’m going to patrol.”

Yelena didn’t have a reply for that beyond an understanding nod and a small wave. “Have fun out there, and stay safe,” she said. “Don’t take on any robot armies by yourself.”

“After all the paperwork I just did? I’m not taking any chances.”

Yelena stayed where she was, watching him vanish into the kitchen. The smell of permanent marker wafted back through the doorway for a moment, and then she heard the back door slam, and she knew she was alone.

“Vel, I hope to fuck you understand what you’re doing right now,” she said, to the empty house. But the house was never really empty, was it? Vel’s toys were always there, stuffed into boxes and lining shelves. Maybe they’d tell her what had happened while she was gone. It was probably sad that she was hoping her roommate was spying on her, but she couldn’t think of what else to do, and this couldn’t go on. “If you don’t want him anymore, tell him he can go, but if you do, this isn’t the way you keep the boy around.”

The empty house didn’t answer her. Yelena sighed and stood, heading for the kitchen. If she was going to be dealing with this bullshit, she was definitely going to need more cake.

* * *

Tag wasn’t one of the heroes who only came alive on patrol. They had always sort of worried him when he was still in training; those people who seemed less than fully human before they slapped on a mask and started shouting catch phrases. Some of that had probably been due to the brainwashing he now knew The Super Patriots, Inc., had been using on all their trainees, but at the time, it had been deeply disconcerting. He’d never wanted to become one of those heroes. Heroes who shut down until they took to the streets were in danger of forgetting their civilian selves, losing touch with the world they were perennially supposed to save.

And despite that, Tag was a trained superhero, and he loved patrol. He loved the feeling of brick and concrete under his thin-soled uniform shoes, loved the wind in his face when he raced along the rooftops, loved the smell of solvent and marker fumes that perpetually followed him, like an olfactory tag on his environment. He even loved the fact that he was technically naked when he was patrolling—maybe it was weird of him, but his uniform was made of spray paint and Sharpie, sketched out on whatever flat surface he could find and pulled on in place of his street clothes. As soon as he let it go, it would vanish. He was far from the only superhuman to enjoy a little G-rated streaking, and a suit of ink was still a suit. It was just ephemeral in a way that amused him.

Vel’s house was in a residential neighborhood, but there was a cell tower not far from the backyard, and it had been equipped with a crouching platform specifically for use by the local heroes. Tag scaled it quickly and positioned himself gargoyle-style against the frame, resting comfortably on his toes with his knees providing a counterbalance. As he settled, he thought that he could sit like this forever.

He couldn’t fly. No part of his powers was related to movement in any way. But he could draw things that flew, hang gliders and shoes with wings, and sometimes that was the same thing. This platform had a large enough footprint that he could use it to sketch multiple ways of getting down, and he was planning to do exactly that.

No one could deny that an aerial view was a useful thing to have when it came to patrolling. He held his position until he saw movement near the skate park on the other side of the block. The sun had set, the park was closed; no one was supposed to be in there. Crouching a little further, he uncapped one of the paint markers he always kept at his belt and began to sketch.

Down in the skate park, the group of teens who had crept past the laughably ineffective closed gate—what was the point of a gate when your fence hadn’t been maintained in years, and was more gap than chain?—were in the process of unloading their backpacks when a slim figure dressed in black spandex dropped out of the sky, standing serenely on some sort of hoverboard. He stepped off the board and it dissolved into ink, melting into the air as he watched them from behind his rainbow swirl mask.

There was a long beat of silence before the teen at the front of the group straightened, dropping the can of spray paint he’d just pulled out of his backpack. It clattered when it hit the ground.

“Hey, man,” said one of the other teens. “No evidence, remember? They can get fingerprints off a can.”

“You’re Tag,” said the frontman. “I mean, you’re the superhero with the graffiti powers.”

“Tag is correct,” said Tag, feeling obscurely smug at being recognized.

“I heard you died, man,” said the teen. “Like, everyone said they saw you get crushed, and then you didn’t come around anymore. Where’ve you been?”

“Dead,” said Tag, shrugging. “The people who said they saw me die were telling the truth. Superheroing is hard work. I recommend an office job, if you can get it. Or become a plumber. They always make good money, and they have strong hands. They can open pickle jars. That’s a surprisingly valuable skill, post-high school.”

“Welcome back to the land of the living, man,” said the lead teen. “What’s up? What are you doing here?”

“The sun’s down and the park is closed,” said Tag. “I’m busting up some trespassers. What are you doing here?”