I marched down the hallway of the fourth floor, the cardboard box of the pinapple and ham pizza acting as a shield between me and the world.

  "Unit 4B," I muttered, stopping in front of a door that looked like it had seen better days. I took a deep breath, adjusted my dorky cap, and knocked.

  The door opened almost immediately.

  I was prepared for a lot of things - just based on my own prejudices about the sort of person who'd order pineapple on a pizza. A sweaty gamer, an angry dad, maybe a guy in his underwear. I was not prepared for Park Ji-hoon.

  He was ... well, he was the reason I usually stayed away from the "Beautiful Prontagonist" tag in manga. He was wearing a trim gray sweater that looked soft enough to sleep in and his hair was perfectly messy. When he saw me, his eyes crinkled in a way that felt like a direct attack on my nervous system and I swore that I saw a lens flare off his teeth.

  "Oh," he said, a slow, easy grin spreading across his face. "Hey there. I didn't think Za Bay actually had anyone with your beauty working deliveries."

  My brain, which had spent the last week barely acclimating to being a girl in a vinyl suit with superpowers, suddenly remembered it used to be a guy who could barely talk to the cashier at a grocery store.

  "Pizza," I said. It wasn't a sentence. It was just a noun.

  "I see that," he chuckled, leaning against the doorframe. His gaze lingered on my violet ponytail, then moved down my body, pausing on my motorcycle gloves. "You look like you're in a hurry to get somewhere. Secret mission? Superhero in disguise?"

  "I ... uh ... pineapple," I stammered, thrusting the box into his chest. "Extra crispy. Enjoy the ... calories!"

  Enjoy the calories? Really, Kurumi? What the hell is wrong with you?

  "Thanks," he said, his fingers brushing against mine as he took the box. The contact felt like a spark of electricity. Not the violent, violet kind I produced, but a warm, magnetic pull that made the circuit-like tattoos on my skin itch. "I'm Ji-hoon. You're ... ?"

  "Leaving!" I blurted out. I turned on my heel and practically sprinted for the elevator, my face so hot it was probably glowing. I hit the down button with a force that nearly broke the panel.

  "See you around, Pizza-girl!," he called out from behind me, sounding way too amused.

  The elevator door hissed shut and I leaned my head against the cool metal wall, groaning. I'm a disaster. A violet-haired, socially stunted, pizza-delivering disaster. He probably thinks I'm having a stroke.

  But as the elevator ticked down to the lobby, the embarrassment faded, replaced by a cold, sharp prickle at the base of my neck. Something was wrong. The air in the shaft felt heavy - charged with a familiar, sterile hum.

  The doors opened and I stepped into the lobby.

  Four black, windowless tactical vans had pulled to a halt across the sidewalk, blocking the entrance to the building. Men in matte-black tactical armor were pouring out, their movements silent and synchronized. They didn't have the flashy, colorful badges of the Bay City PD or the HeroHub association. They wore the stylized 'S' of S-Korp Corporate Security.

  One of them, a mountain of a man with a high-tech visor glowing red, stepped into the lobby. He held a sleek, short-barreled rilfe across his chest. "Move, civilian," his voice rasped through a heavy modulator. "This block is under corporate lockdown for a Level 4 sanitization sweep. You have thirty seconds to clear the perimeter or you'll be held until the end of the event."

  "I ... I was .. just ..." I stammered, my heart hammering.

  "Now!," he barked.

  I didn't argue. I scrambled for my moped, kicking it to life, and zoomed away. But I didn't go far. I pulled into a narrow, trash-filled alley a block and a half away, killed the engine, and ducked behind a stack of rusted crates.

  My hands were shaking. This is the Shonen moment, I thought to myself. The hero intervenes. The hero saves the hapless civilian caught up in the evil plot. I looked down at my orange polo and flour-stained leggings. I didn't have my suit. I didn't have the drone. I didn't feel like I had a lot of energy saved up.

  I watched through the gap in the crates, heart in my throat. Ten minutes later, the S-Korp team emerged from the building. Two of them were dragging a man between them. He was struggling, but feebly.

  It was Ji-hoon. They had pulled a black, heavy-duty hood over his head. I could see thin, blue fiber optic wires woven into the fabric of the hood, pulsing with a rhythmic light. And yet I could still recognize the handsome man who I'd given the pizza to.

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  They threw him into the back of the lead van like a sack of laundry. The doors slammed shut and the convoy roared away, disappearing into the neon-streaked traffic of the district as if they'd never been there.

  ---

  The ride back to Za Bay Pizza was a blur. I dropped the moped into the alley, ignored Kevin's shouted questions about why I looked like I'd seen a ghost, and practically ran the rest of the way home.

  When I burst into the apartment, Yuna didn't even look up from her monitors. She was surrounded by a dozen floating windows of code and data, typing furiously.

  "He's gone, Yuna," I wheezed, slumping onto the couch. "They took him. Ji-hoon. Right after I gave him his pizza."

  Yuna finally turned, her face pale in the violet light coming off her monitor. "I know, babe. I picked up a localized encryption spike in that sector. They used a 'Silence' protocol - bagged, tagged, and gagged."

  "We just watched it happen," I whispered, staring at my hands. The concealer was peeling, revealing the faint shimmer of the tattoos beneath. "If we keep doing this, if we keep following this list ... are we still heroes?"

  Yuna bit her lip, her golden eyes reflecting the scrolling names on the screen. "What do you mean?"

  "Heroes follow the rules," I said, my voice growing harder, steadier. "They wait for the boss to verify a threat. They file reports. They get paid by the city, look good on posters. But I doubt HeroHub is coming for the four vans of agents that took Ji-hoon. Right?"

  Yuna looked sad, shaking her head. "No, I don't think they are. S-Korp is a pretty big minority shareholder in HeroHub, I think they own like 20% of it. They don't own it outright, but they provide like half the manpower and logistics for HeroHub. If they say it's a private internal matter, there's _no way_ HeroHub will intervene."

  "So what do we do?" I stood and started pacing, nervous energy eating me alive. "I want to do the right thing. But ... they put a bag over his head and dragged him out of a building. I don't know if he deserved it or not, but I can't think he did. If being a hero means allowing that to happen, then maybe I don't want to be a hero."

  "Maybe we can ride the line," Yuna countered. "We need their money, their information networks. But then maybe we also do a little unauthorized off-the-clock work?"

  "This feels like a villain arc," I offered. "And I don't think I can handle being a villain."

  "Vigilante," Yuna corrected. "You're not a villain, babe. We're still on the side of justice ... just with a slightly different perspective."

  Sighing, I nodded my head and sank back into the couch. Yuna got up and snuggled up next to me, wrapping herself around my body. "But can Voltana be both a hero and a vigilante?," I asked. "That doesn't seem right. It's too obvious."

  "You're right," Yuna murmured, her breath warm against my neck as she squeezed me tighter. "If Voltana shows up at every S-Korp abduction, they'll link the data-heist to the hero. We need a shadow. A ghost. Someone who doesn't exist on the HeroHub registry."

  "A second secret identity?" I groaned, leaning my head back against the cushion. "I can barely handle the one I already have. And what about a suit? I can't exactly wear the Mark 2."

  Yuna pulled back just enough to look me in the eye, a mischievous glint returning to her lovely golden orbs. "Oh, I've already got an idea. Different silhouette, different color palette. Maybe a high quality wig - I'm thinking crimson or platinum. And for the outfit ... well, we'll lean into the distraction factor."

  "The distraction factor?," I asked warily.

  "Babe, it's basic psychology," she said, her hands tracing the line of my shoulder. "If you're waring something a little ... daring ... their eyes won't be looking at your face or your combat style. They'll be too busy staring at your tits or the curve of your hips to notice the specific way your power manifests. We play into the 'bad girl' vigilante trope. Minimalist, high-tension, maximum skin-to-air ratio."

  I sighed, the image of Yuna dressing me in an even more scandalous outfit flashing through my mind. "So you're saying that my superpower is actually just weaponized fanservice?"

  "I'm just saying we use every tool in the shed," Yuna chirped happily. "Now, look. I've got the next targets."

  She pointed to the screen. A map of the tech district pulsed with three red dots. "S-Korp has a 'containment' team scheduled for an operation at the University transit hub tomorrow night at 11:00 PM. They're moving fast, Kurumi. If we're going to act, we need to be ready to intervene - at minimum scout, but ideally interfere."

  "Fine," I muttered, standing up. The weight of the day - the stress of pizza deliveries, the black vans, the crushing guilt - felt like it was coated in a layer of pizza grease. "I'm going to take a shower."

  ---

  The shower helped, but only a little. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that blue-lit hood over Ji-hoon's face. I scrubbed until my skin was raw, watching the violet circuits on my hands pulse with a relentless, hungry light.

  When I finally padded back into the bedroom, damp-haired and wearing nothing but panties and a borrowed shirt, Yuna was already under the covers. Or rather, on top of them. She was completely naked, her pale skin glowing in the light coming from the window.

  "Come here," she whispered, patting the spot next to her.

  I hesitated, my heart doing that frantic little skip again. "Yuna..."

  "It's been a long day, Kurumi. You're stressed, I'm stressed. I could use the snuggle."

  I climbed in and immediately she was there. She didn't just stay on her side; she moved in close, her soft, warm front pressing into my back as she spooned me. Her arm draped over my waist, her fingers splaying across the bare skin of my stomach, dangerously close to the waistband of my panties. Her breasts were firm and warm against my shoulder blades, and I could feel the rhythmic thrum of her heartbeat.

  I lay there, stiff as a board, my brain screaming in a mix of denial and panic.

  She's just being a good friend, I told myself, clutching the edge of the pillow. She knows I'm shaken up. It's a comfort thing, like a weighted blanket. A very soft, naked, lavender-scented weighted blanket. It doesn't mean anything else...

  "Sleep, Sparky," she murmured into the crook of my neck, her lips brushing my skin. "We have a big day tomorrow."

  As her breathing slowed, I finally let out a long, shaky breath of my own. My skin was tingling where she touched me and it took a long, long time until exhaustion claimed me.