I feel exposed, standing in the street. Anything could sift in behind me, grab me, and the fight would be on. Would I win? What if there were a dozen of them? What if humans come for me in a small army? What if the princes themselves come?

Gah, I’m what-iffing! I don’t what-if! What-iffing is for grownups. They what-if themselves right into doing nothing, and die without ever living.

I turn around and look back at Chester’s.

Then I turn back around and look down the street.

In front of me, high odds of death. Behind me, a cage.

I hate cages. For most folks, they’re built from fear and they do it to themselves. Not me. Mine were forged of helplessness. Most kids’ are.

So this is what it comes down to: death or a cage.

I grin. Dude, I’m a superhero. No contest.

I flip the street both birds and slide sideways into freeze-framing, ripping down the posters as I go.

I go hunting for Dancer and find him hunting for me in, like, no time at all. It cracks me up because what are the odds we could go looking for each other in the hugeness that’s Dublin and actually find each other? But we always do. Like magnets.

When I see him, I grin. He’s walking down the street in the gray dawn, glowing like a star going supernova. I can’t look straight at him. I have to take quick looks at him from the corner of my eye. There’s a bubble of light around him so bright it’s blinding. He’s wearing sunglasses over his glasses and looks like some kind of glowing Mutant X guy with a superpower of his own, like say Super Brain.

“Dude!” I say.

“Like it? Hold on, let me turn it down.” He fiddles with something near his waist and the light dims to something closer to what my MacHalo throws off.

I check him out. His clothes are shiny. Shiny jeans, shiny shirt, even shiny ball cap. Clothes hang on his tall, lanky frame like something out of one of those glossy magazines, casual perfection. His hair’s getting long again. He’s going to ask me to cut it soon. I like those times. We take care of each other like two monkeys picking each other’s nits. Folks underestimate a good nit-pick. “New fashion statement?” I tease.

“Thinking about your wardrobe, Mega,” he says. “I was working on the spray for Papa Roach when all the sudden I got this idea for Shade protection. I need to spray your clothes with a reflective base, then I designed a harness of lights for you that runs off a battery system, and get this: it self-charges with motion!” He fiddles with a gizmo at his waist, wearing the rapt expression of a boy genius playing with electronics. All the sudden his head whips up and he grins and I just grin back because when Dancer grins like that all my worries disappear.

“Because of the way you move, it’ll never go out. I’ve been testing it and it stays charged off even my movements for days. I figure one good freeze-frame will juice it up for a week. That means when you go to Shade-town, you can sleep easy, wearing it.”

I’m speechless. Dancer was thinking about me, pondering the ins and outs of my life, so he could make it better. He spent his time working on something, not to save Dublin, like the Papa Roach spray, but just me. I fiddle with the bracelet on my wrist. He gave me that, too. It weirded me out when he did because I was afraid he was going to get mushy on me but that was way back in the beginning of us hanging together when I didn’t know that Dancer never gets mushy. We don’t let that kind of stupid stuff get between us. Using some of your own time to make someone else’s life better is, like, the nicest thing you can do for anybody. I almost can’t stand it, it makes me so happy.

“You’re the Shit,” I tell him.

And this time he doesn’t say it right back at me, he says, “You think so?” like he wants to hear it again, so I say it again and his grin gets even bigger.

After a sec he notices the wad of posters I forgot I was holding.

He makes a sound of disgust. “Mega, I been tearing those things down for hours. I stumbled on one of the crews putting them up and followed them around, ripping them down. They’ve got a bunch of Rhino-boys hanging them. Is it true? Did somebody take your sword?” He looks me up and down, searching for it. He blinks like he just noticed me for the first time and I get so embarrassed it’s all I can do to not freeze-frame right out of there. I feel so stupid!

I forgot what I was wearing!

My jaw juts and I say, stiff-like, “It’s all they had that fit me. Ryodan made me change. I didn’t have nothing to do with this getup. I wouldn’ta picked it in a million years!”

Dancer’s looking at me like I’m an alien from outer space. I could just sink into the street, yank the concrete and trash over my head and hide. I hug my arms over my chest, cross my feet at the ankles and turn sideways a little, trying to make myself narrower so there won’t be so much of me to see.

“I know I look stupid, okay? It’s been a real sucky day for me and I got bigger problems on my mind than what I’m wearing so quit looking at me like I’m some kind of geek dressed up for Halloween, because I didn’t have a choice since Christian gave me his stupid pajamas and Ryodan said they smelled—”

“Christian gave you his pajamas and they smelled? Wait a minute, Christian wears pajamas?”

“I only needed his pjs because I woke up in his bed with only my bra and underwear on and all my clothes destroyed, otherwise I never would have worn them,” I clarify when I realize how weird the first part sounded.

“Well. That explains things.”