Victoria Harris flew above the New York skyline, upside down, taking in a panoramic view of the nighttime city streets with her pairs of eyes. Her view was tinted by the soft glow from her costume, a relaxing shade of cool silver.
This was when she felt most at peace. The people below were as small as dots, their features impossible to make out, yet it made her feel connected, as if the entire city was at her fingertips. As if she could land in front of anyone on the street and be instantly recognized as a hero. She was getting there, she knew. Her new identity's name recognition was increasing every day. A soothing thought.
Peace wasn't what she wanted today, though. She'd had enough solitude in the asylum to last a lifetime. She preferred lively company. And today she had guests to entertain.
A five minute flight and she was home. Her apartment on the twentieth floor of the complex next to the New York Protectorate HQ. A convenient living space for the one of the newer members of the Protectorate.
Her assistant greeted her at the open window. "Silver Lining. I got the goodies you wanted. Um, the corner store was out of classic flavor chips so I got the barbecue flavor, if that's cool with you."
Victoria spoke with the aid of her implant, her voice coming out with a faint electronic echo. "Thanks, Ashley. BBQ is fine. I'm not eating anyway."
Ashley smiled. "Cool. I'll set them right up."
It took most people a minute to get used to her electronic voice, with its slow monotone and irregular pauses between words. Dragon had done the best she could, making a synthetic version of her old voice and implanting her with the same neural interface she used for Armsmaster, but the tinker's cybernetics were developed for humans. They didn't mesh well with Victoria's 'uniquely deviant' body and brain, more like a jellyfish's nerve net than anything human. After their first two attempts at remodeling her body sent her into cardiac arrest, she decided to stick to safer and less invasive forms of assistive technology.
Ashley was an expert at understanding her, though. She was with the PRT, working shifts as Victoria's assistant while she trained for a more advanced position as a specialist in parahuman psychology.
Victoria liked Ashley. She was cheerful, punctual, didn't ask about her past, and helped her without making her feel like a cripple most of the time.
As a nice bonus, Ashley was decisively not freckled, brown-haired, dimple-cheeked, et cetera. In other words, she looked nothing whatsoever like Amy. It was technically against the rules to choose her assistant based on her physical appearance, but given Victoria's condition the PRT had been willing to make an exception, but Victoria would have felt like crap rejecting a qualified applicant for that, so...yeah. Avoiding that bundle of issues had been a relief.
Ashley busied herself getting the refreshments together on the coffee table. "Smooth patrol tonight, Silver?"
Victoria arched her body in a nod. "Better than smooth. We caught the Grifters hitting a warehouse. The bastard teleporter got away as usual, but Chev and I nabbed the flunkies."
"Nice. Your turn as Chevalier's chariot again? I think he likes you best."
"Yeah, I know so."
"Chevalier's sweet on you? Lucky, lucky."
"Hey, no. It's not like that. All our movers who can carry him are girls, and I'm the only one who doesn't want to get in his pants."
"No way! Even Rerouter?"
"I know for a fact that he caught her checking out his ass in a firefight."
"Oh God." Ashley laughed. "I don't blame her. An eligible bachelor as the head of the Protectorate. He had to know what he was getting into when he took the promotion."
Victoria judged that Ashley was done with the refreshments and floated a foot closer. "Can you get off my costume? I want to shower before Sam brings in the guests."
"Cool. Let me get the zipper."
Victoria loved her costume. Say what you wanted about PRT bureaucracy, they had an awesome Department of Image. The department head, Glenn, had taken a personal interest in her case. He had been an unabashed fan of her Glory Girl persona and wanted to do justice to her new form.
Glenn had come up with a great concept that made her nearly family friendly. It had a personal meaning to her as well. The most important lesson her ordeals had taught her.
Every cloud has a Silver Lining.
Her costume was skintight silvery material tailored to fit her body, but it obscured the details of her shape with copious fuzzy, fluffy tufts and a hazy silver glow. It gave her the appearance of a formless silver cloud, floating in the sky and descending to earth to carry out the will of the heavens.
The only exposed part of her body was an oval for her most face-like appendage, the one with the eyes, nose, and mouth in almost the right positions. The rest of her eyes were covered with transparent silver-tinted material, letting her see clearly without making them obvious to casual inspection.
She was still damn intimidating, but she didn't make people faint or vomit or run screaming through the streets. That was important. Every second counted when she was ferrying kids from a burning building. Some of the kids had even approached and rubbed her fuzzy costume of their own free will.
Her costume was practical too. She could use her voice interface to dial up the glow to a stunning silver flash, and combine it with her aura to grab the attention of everyone in a wide area. Perfect for crowd control against villains, baiting them into wasting their attacks on her shield while her teammates caught them unawares. The silver light was at a very specific wavelength, so her teammates could wear goggles that filtered it out and left them unaffected.
The only downside was the unavoidable one. Her body was...big, and lumpy, and irregular. Which meant her costume was an ungainly mess of straps and buckles and zippers that was a bitch to get off.
Thankfully she had Ashley for that.
"Um, can you turn around to the left?" said Ashley, tugging at a zipper. "Yeah, there. Oh, I forgot. You got a voice mail from Dragon. She said to call her back."
"I'll call her in the shower. How long do we have? Twenty minutes?"
"Thirty. Plenty of time. Here, let me get the...okay. Done."
Victoria floated up to help her pull the costume free. The air of her apartment felt cool on her skin. It should have been embarrassing, being naked in front of a staff member, but she had gotten used to it in the asylum.
"Thanks, Ash. Can you bring out my casual outfit? The blue one with the cloud print."
"Ooh, going fancy."
"They're old friends. Gotta dress to impress."
Victoria floated into her bathroom. The shower was simply an open space with a gently sloping floor leading to a drain. There were two shower heads mounted on the ceiling that she could switch on and off with her voice. Soapy suds to clean her, then water to wash her off. She'd had Ashley set the sprays to their highest power setting. It took a conscious effort to let the spray through her shield, but she liked the firm touch.
She floated under the warm spray of water and let it wash her clean. After a moment the water began to pool on her body, concentrations collecting in the nooks and crannies between the menagerie of body parts on the top surface of her body. She used her flight to arch her body, letting rivulets of water flow down her back and splash on the floor.
She would have liked to let herself unwind, take a long shower to relax before her guests arrived, but she had business to take care of. She spoke out loud.
"Implant, call Dragon."
She heard her implant dial the number, the sound conveyed to one of her ears by an audio line. The tinker picked up on the second ring.
"Hello, Silver Lining." said Dragon. "Good job with the Grifters today. They hit one of my depots two weeks ago and I had to self-destruct it as a security measure. A total loss. The sooner we take them down the better."
"Thanks. We'll get the bastards next time." It was a little creepy how Dragon knew absolutely everything she did. She'd thought the tinker was stalking her at first, spying on her with her implant, but apparently she did that to everyone. "You're not calling about my patrol."
"No. I'm afraid I have bad news. The last batch of bioelectric cells from my suppliers has been wearing out at an accelerated rate. You'll have to come in for implant maintenance as soon as possible. Does Thursday work for you? Say three PM?"
"Damn. Let me check. Implant, say calendar for Thursday." An artificial voice played in her ear, listing the events on her schedule. "Yeah, three's fine."
"Good. I also have a new algorithm I want to try for your voice system. You should see a noticeable improvement in your ability to control your tone of voice."
Victoria did her best to convey enthusiasm in her artificial voice. "Great! Fantastic! Thank you so much Dragon. I can't wait. It's hard to get people to take me seriously when they think I'm an emotionless robot."
"I can see how that would be frustrating."
"It's cramping my social life, yeah, but the real problem is that it's affecting my heroing. The other day I was saving kids from a house fire. I told them 'climb on my back, now now now!', but I couldn't control the volume, the emotion, so they didn't get that they had to hurry. That was a close one."
"I read your report. You were insistent on that point."
"Yeah. It's just, you've done so much for me. You're a lifesaver Dragon, a true hero, the most heroic person I know, and you work so damn hard at it. I guess I, um, I feel like I should keep you updated on new chances for heroism. Where you can put your effort to do the most good."
"Thank you, Silver Lining. I do what I can. It's the support from true heroes like you that keeps me going." Dragon's voice was a touch warmer than before. "Your feedback is always welcome. Helps me pare down my mile-long priority queue. Speaking of which, there's a microreactor in my workshop I have to attend to. If there's nothing else...?"
"Nah, that's it. Over and out, lizard lady."
She could hear a smile in Dragon's voice, this time. "See you Thursday, cumulus child. Enjoy your company."
The call disconnected. 'Enjoy your company'? Yeah, Dragon was totally stalking her.
Victoria turned off the shower and spun herself in the air to get off most of the damp. She would have let out a deep sigh, if she had been able to.
Her meetings with Dragon were always stressful. She knew she was supposed to love the genius tinker who restored her voice. So she put on a mask and pretended to be the cheerful, fawning syncophant Dragon wanted her to be.
It had been like this ever since her change. Crippled, depending on others for the basic necessities of life...and those others didn't have her best interests at heart. She had to put on a mask and act like they wanted her to act to stay on their good side.
First she'd had to suck up to the doctors. Pretending to be the model patient they wanted her to be, hiding the worst of her rage and resentment, suppressing her aura on command like a trained dog. All to coax them into liking her a little better, giving in to more of her requests, making her life as a cripple a little more tolerable.
Then she'd had to suck up to Bonesaw. Every second of her days with the Nine had been lived on a razor's edge. A single word, a single moment's hesitation, a single blink, was all that stood between her and damnation. Please the tinker and her pal Mister Jack and she'd get another part of herself fixed. Displease them and she'd be lobotimized and turned into a toy.
Now she had to suck up to Dragon. She hated it. Dragon was supposed to be different. She was a hero. Her technology was a poor substitute for Bonesaw's but it didn't have to be paid for in the blood of innocents. And Dragon was renowned for her kind-heartedness and virtue. Every word the woman spoke was brimming with sympathy for Victoria's plight.
But Victoria knew that was all a front. Dragon wasn't helping her out of the goodness of her heart.
The proof was plain as day. Dragon must have had the technology for months, ever since she'd used it to save Armsmaster's life. And Dragon knew everything, she had to have read Victoria's incessant letters to the PRT begging them for help. But Dragon hadn't helped her then. She'd only given Victoria the implant after she'd gotten her flight back, after she'd applied to join her hero organization, after she'd become useful to the tinker as an asset and a tool.
Victoria imagined what the tinker must have thought as she read her desperate pleas from the asylum.
The broken girl wants to talk, does she? Pfft! I'm not going to waste my tinkering time on a useless invalid.
Oh, she can fly now? My bosses at the Protectorate think they can wring some use out of her as a hero? Fine, I'll whip up a copy of what I made for Armsy. No need to waste time adapting it for her freaky brain, the basic package is plenty good enough for her.
Yeah, right. The tinker's self-serving 'kindness' was a mutually beneficial business deal and nothing more.
Of course, she never let a hint of her true feelings about Dragon slip to anyone. She wasn't stupid. That would poison their relationship. Dragon would feel hurt and betrayed. She'd realize that Victoria wasn't the cheerful fawning company girl she wanted her to be. Then Dragon would punish her. Refuse her upgrade requests, skip maintenance on her implant with any number of plausible excuses, take her voice away from her...
...and that would be it. Her hero career would be crippled. Can't coordinate with her team. Can't use her voice to make people overlook her body and judge her as a person. She'd be reduced to a thing, just like her mother had called her, a thing that wasn't her daughter anymore, and the heroes would all abandon her just like her family did-
No. Couldn't let that happen. So Victoria took a minute to go over the call in her mind, and make a mental note of what she'd learned to stay on Dragon's good side.
Dragon hates the Grifters too. I'll prioritize them on my patrols. If I take down that teleporter I'll get kudos from her.
She was more willing to fix me when I emphasized how it would save lives. Maybe I can convince her to give me an artificial arm next. I'll tell her it'll let me hoist people onto my back, hold them so they don't fall off, cuff criminals to arrest them...
Ashley's voice filtered in to the bathroom. "Everything cool in there, Silver? Need anything?"
"I'm fine. Just a minute." said Victoria. She used a voice command to activate the dryers. Towels were inefficient for a body of her size and shape, so the Protectorate had installed a system with jets of warm air. She rotated her body slowly in the air, making sure the dryers hit all the odd spots on her irregularly-shaped body.
Three minutes later she floated into her bedroom. Ashley was waiting for her with her outfit laid out on the floor, on the arrangement of extra-large mattresses that served as her bed.
Her casual clothes were easier to put on than her costume, little more than mildly tailored bedsheets with holes for her most face-like appendage and a few of the better-positioned eyes on her flanks. They made her look like a particularly bulky, lumpy ghost.
The outfit for today was her nicest one. White clouds floating on a sky blue background. A match for her theme in her cape identity.
Ashley beckoned. "Can you float a little lower? I want to comb your hair."
"It won't show when I'm wearing my clothes."
"Yeah, but your hair gets in the zippers. Don't want you to get stuck again."
"Okay, okay."
Ashley took a minute to run a comb through Victoria's heads of hair one by one, then unzipped her outfit and began the unenviable task of wrestling it onto her body.
Victoria rotated slightly in the air to point her eyes away from her bedroom's decorations. Not something she wanted on her mind, now.
Her living room was filled with mementos of her short life in her new identity as Victoria Harris. Testaments to the joy she took in her life as a glorious hero. Photos of her time in the Wards and promotion to the Protectorate, posing with her team for publicity photos. News clippings about her exploits. The great photo the reporter had gotten of her flying children to safety from a fire, and another of her wrapping up a villain during a drug bust.
Her bedroom...this was her private place. The only place she kept remnants of her old life.
Her old life in Brockton Bay...she wished she could forget it. Erase it. She'd thought she had a perfect life, and then her so-called family had betrayed her one by one. Her sister mutilated her, her mother disowned her, her father went along with it because he was too weak to stick up for his daughter, her aunt and cousin never once visited her in the asylum with their endless raft of excuses.
Now that she could move and speak and be a hero again they suddenly wanted to snake their way back into her life. Sending her emails and arranging trips to visit her.
Yeah, right. She wasn't stupid. They were the same as Dragon but they didn't have anything of value to offer her. Only their love as a family, and she knew what that was worth. She didn't want any part of it.
She'd gone through the legal proceedings to emancipate herself from her parents. She'd greased the wheels by getting the PRT on her side, by promising to join the Wards and then join the Protectorate when she turned eighteen. The judge had been impressed by Dragon's recording of her mother Carol giving a loving goodbye hug to Amy, the psychotic villain sister who mutilated her...then saying she was happy to neglect Victoria, her crippled superhero daughter, coldly disowning her and calling her a mockery. There was no way she was going back to that household.
As a final touch Victoria had invoked a PRT regulation to get a new legal identity. She'd changed her last name to Harris, short for Harrisburg. The name of the asylum where her new self had been born.
It wasn't entirely perfect. Every few weeks Victoria got an email from a throwaway account that was obviously one of her ex-family, begging for forgiveness and trying to make contact.
She told them she'd talk to them again in a year's time, if they fought with her on the front lines to stop the Nine from ending the world. Then they could talk...about tactics or capes or powers. Just like any other pair of strangers in the defending forces. If they wanted to build a relationship with her, they'd have to start from scratch.
Then she had Ashley block their email addresses. Her assistant complied without a word. She loved her for that.
After that was dealt with, the only relic of her past life she kept was the one she could never discard. The set of three framed photographs on her bedroom wall, each blown up to be two feet across.
Amy.
She'd tried to eliminate the false love her sister had planted in her mind, but it was futile. Maybe she could have done it if she'd had anchors to balance it, back when the compulsion had first been instilled. But instead she'd been locked in the asylum with nothing but the bright spark of love for company. It had bled into every corner of her mind.
After their best attempts failed, her therapists told her that it was best to resign herself to her undying love and try to compartmentalize it. Admit that it was a part of her and try to keep it only a part.
The three photographs were her concession. One was a childhood photo. Victoria and Amy at a birthday party, age 7. They were making a valiant attempt to smile for the camera while Amy stuffed a piece of cake into Victoria's mouth with her bare hands. They were entirely too pleased with the mess they were making.
The second was a publicity photo from the day they had officially joined the New Wave. Victoria resplendent in her Glory Girl outfit, hovering a foot above the ground and holding Amy in a bridal carry in her arms. They were smiling a mile wide. They could take on the world.
The third was the last photo they had taken together, the day before Leviathan attacked. A candid snap from their cousin's camera as Victoria was getting ready to fly Amy to her shift at the hospital. Victoria was holding Amy's head in her hands, adjusting the hood of her healer's robe. Victoria had a smirk on her face, a mix of humor and exasperation at her sister's fashion sense. Amy was biting her lip and blushing a little, a mix of embarrassment at her busybody sister and what Victoria now knew was romantic affection.
It was impossible to hold back the love, the warmth, the longing that shot through her every time she saw them.
She did her mental compartmentalization exercise.
I love Amy. The Amy who was my sister, the Amy who was worthy of my love. My lovely Amy is gone, now. She died at the hands of the Slaughterhouse Nine. All that's left is a shell. An insane villain who hurt me and was sent to the Birdcage. I love the good Amy and not the villain who stole her face.
I am capable of new love. I am worthy of being loved, even as I am now. It will take time, but I will find a new partner who loves me. In every sense of the word.
The therapists said that with enough work she would be able to have a romantic relationship one day. Maybe even a relationship with a man, if she found one who appreciated her new shape. She still found boys attractive in a distant way, just less so than slim frizzy-haired freckled brunettes. According to one of Bonesaw's offhand comments she could even bear children, although the PRT's gynecologists hadn't been able to figure out the mechanics yet.
She was at peace with her past now. Or, if not peace, at least a steady truce. She left her past alone and it left her alone. She was free to focus on the present, and on her bright future shining in shades of silver.
It was liberating. She was truly enjoying her life, for the first time since Leviathan attacked Brockton Bay. She seized the day and lived each minute like it was her last. She was free, now, and she was going to make every second count.
Her guests today were another positive step. Reconnecting with some of the few people from her past life she still considered her friends. She was looking forward to this.
Ashley fiddled with one of the zippers. "Victoria, am I okay to stay? I don't know your friends, and if you guys are going to talk about cape stuff-"
"Sam said you're cleared for their IDs." said Victoria. "Thought she told you."
"Nope. Not a word."
"Huh. It figures." Victoria didn't need to elaborate. Sam was Prism, the second in command of the New York branch. She had to take command whenever Chevalier was busy with his duties as Protectorate leader, and ironically given her power, multi-tasking wasn't her strong suit. She inevitably let a few issues slip through the cracks.
The door buzzer rang. Ashley finished zipping up Victoria's outfit, gave her a smile, and hustled into the living room to the intercom. "Harris residence."
The response came from the intercom box. "Hey, this is Sam. Coming up to see Victoria with three guests."
"Sure! Buzzing you in." said Ashley.
Three guests? Sam had said she'd invited two. It wasn't like Sam to change her plans up on Victoria at the last minute. Maybe that was a good sign. Sam wasn't treating her like an emotionally fragile ex-asylum inmate anymore.
A few minutes later there was a knock at the door.
Sam was there, dressed in a casual outfit showing off her gymnast's body. A deliberate choice on her part. Sam was looking for a new boyfriend after her flings with Triumph and Phase Plane fell through, and she was having trouble finding a suitable beau.
Sam's eyes had a telltale look that meant she was only one-third of Sam. She was using her power to split herself in three, sending one self to hang out with Victoria and using her other two selves to do Protectorate paperwork. Poor dutiful soul.
The one-third of Sam who was present smiled and walked inside. "Hey Victoria. Nice job with the Grifters. I brought your old friends from the Wards..."
Behind her came a redheaded boy in jeans and a video game themed tee shirt, and a younger, blonde girl in a green dress.
Dennis and Missy. The first time they'd seen her since she'd become like this.
Victoria floated closer to get a better look. The two Wards stopped in the doorway, their prepared smiles frozen on their faces. But they didn't gasp, and they didn't take a step backward in retreat. Sam must have given them the briefing and showed them pictures in advance.
Then again, Dennis and Missy were Brockton Bay capes. They dealt with ten kinds of fucked-up shit before breakfast.
"Hi Vicky!" said Missy. "Congratulations on making the major leagues! Still four years left for me."
Dennis cleared his throat. "We came to check up on your Stratus. Jouster told me you're dating Chevalier but I couldn't tell if he was Cirrus."
Missy elbowed him in the ribs. "Damn it Dennis. I bet you were thinking of cloud puns the whole way here. I bet you were practicing."
Yeah, Brockton Bay capes.
"Ha ha ha ha." said Victoria. She couldn't laugh anymore, not spontaneously, but she could make a deliberate substitute. "Hi Missy. Hi Dennis the menace. Jouster told me you're dating Weaver."
Dennis gave a pained look. "Right, we're agreed. Our next mission is breaking into the Wards HQ and double teaming Jouster. You wrap him up and I'll put him on pause."
"Ha ha. So you're not denying it. Is that spider silk you're wearing?"
Dennis groaned. "Not in front of our guest. She's already too big for her britches."
Victoria caught sight of a third person in the hallway behind them, off to the side and out of the doorframe. Victoria floated up two feet to get a better vantage point.
A tall girl with long, dark, curly hair, standing very still and not quite meeting her eyes.
Sam made a gesture. "Another Ward you know from Brockton Bay. Not a friend," she gave the girl a glance, "but she was in town on a mission and wanted to give you her regards."
The girl stepped forward. "Hi. I...you might not want to talk to me, and that's okay. I can go if you want. But now that we're on the same side I want to apologize to you and clear the air between us. We might need to work together and I thought it's...it's a chance for a new beginning. For both of us."
The girl raised her eyes to meet hers. "Nice to meet you, Victoria. I'm Taylor Hebert. Weaver."
Victoria stared in shock. Her aura flared. The girl's eyes went wide, her pupils dilating, her hands shaking.
Sam brought her?
Victoria knew what she was supposed to do. Put on a mask and be the good little company girl her superior wanted her to be. A pleasant team player eager to forgive the warlord's sins now that she had conned the top brass into giving her amnesty.
But it was Her. Taylor Hebert. Skitter. The psycho who took Amy hostage with a knife to her throat. Swarmed Victoria with bugs in the bank, humiliated her again at the fundraiser. Brought her to her sister for 'healing' against her will, then stood by and let her sister seize control of her mind. The warlord who committed even more atrocities while Victoria was in the asylum, who took over Brockton Bay and murderered her favorite hero Alexandria.
She itched to attack. To make the villain pay.
Images flashed through her mind. Impressions of the people she hated the most, the targets for her vengeance. Her family standing above her mutilated body, her sister's insane empty eyes, her mother's cold snarl of disgust. Bonesaw unleashing hell on Brockton Bay and breaking her sister's mind.
Then...
...Another flash of images. The people who had given her her moments of greatest delight. Her parents with proud smiles as they inducted her into New Wave in front of the TV cameras. Her sister cheering her on as she raced Laserdream across the bay. Bonesaw fixing her broken powers and applauding as she did a loop-the-loop in the sky.
The same people.
This girl in front of her...she was the same as them.
Tormented her and Amy, declared war on the heroes, took over her city. Skitter the warlord.
Saved her life from Crawler, fought Jack and Bonesaw to save her a second time, surrendered to the authorities to turn her life around. Weaver the hero.
Victoria slowly relaxed her aura.
"You know." she said. "It's been a running theme in my life. The people who help me the most, hurt me. And the people who hurt me the most, help me."
Taylor was silent.
"These other people here. Sam, Dennis, Missy. They've been good to me and they've never hurt me, not once. Friends. That's rare. You're not like that."
"I get that." said Taylor. "Say the word and I'll-"
"But." said Victoria. "I can maybe be okay with that. Keep up the helping part, don't do the hurting part anymore, and...we might possibly get along."
Taylor regarded her, then gave a solemn nod. "I'll try my best."
Victoria used her flight to curl the edges of her body. A replacement for a frown. "Does that mean 'Yes, Victoria, I'll be a good hero from now on'?"
"...It means I'll try."
Victoria tilted her body a fraction, a questioning expression. "You're going to help us crush the Nine?"
"Hell yes." said Taylor, animated for the first time since she'd arrived. "That's part of why I came. I want to know what you overheard when you were with them. If you're willing to talk about that."
"...Okay. Then you can come in." Victoria thought back to Bonesaw. "But Weaver. If you give me a hug or start singing Love Bug, I swear I'll squish you like a gnat. That goes double if you try it with your bugs."
Taylor smiled a little at that. "I can live with that."
"Ugh. I'd squish you too." said Missy. "That show's for eight year olds."
Dennis jumped in. "I can't squish you, but I'll make you regret it for a long, long time."
"No threatening your fellow Wards. Kids these days." said Sam. She ushered the heroes inside.
Victoria flew to the center of the living room. "Make yourselves at home. We've got refreshments for you courtesy of my lovely assistant Ashley. Ashley, meet Missy, Dennis, and Taylor. Wards, meet Ashley."
"Charmed." said Ashley.
Victoria settled onto her extra-large beanbag chair, and made merry with her fellow heroes long into the night.
...
...
Author's note: End of the Silver Path. Happy(?) end! Glory Girl Returns is complete! There might be an epilogue or bonus chapter to come.