"Heh. Well, they're the self-proclaimed good guys. They get to call themselves that because they work for the government and passed a law saying they're officially 'the heroes'. They don't do anything bad usually, but they don't do nearly as much good stuff as you'd hope."

"Anyway. The government hero capes are called the Protectorate. They have a team in every big city. The local team leader is Armsmaster, a Tinker who builds his own armor and a halberd and motorcycle and has lots of gadgets. Miss Militia, who can create and use every kind of military weapon in an instant, we just hope she'll never do an a-bomb. Who else. Velocity, he can run super fast... Assault and Battery, the stupid name duo who throw each other around to punch things... Dauntless has a shield and spear, I guess he's just a Brute... Triumph can shout loud enough to deafen... I dunno, I'm probably missing someone? They can also call in help from teams in other cities if there's something big going down."

"Then there's the kids division, called the Wards. They've got Kid Win, another tinker who flies and uses guns. Vista manipulates space, she can make you suddenly be really close or really far to something else, she's really scary. Gallant fires blasts that mess with your head, make you feel the wrong emotion at the worst moment. And Shadow Stalker, a literally murderous bitch who can turn to smoke and phase through stuff and shoots a crossbow. She has it out for me because my power can mess with hers."

"Besides the actual capes there's the PRT. They're - halfway between police and the army. They're supposed to be the government's response to capes, which means they don't stop crime unless there's a cape involved, and they have heavy weapons but not, like, tanks or bombers. They work with the Protectorate and are supposed to give them orders but I don't know how it works in practice."

"Feeling reassured yet?"

That's a lot of names! Elan wonders if he'll end up meeting all of them. Grue's joke gets him to laugh and cheer up a little.

"Well, it's good to not be totally confused about everything. Do all the good guys work for the government? Oh, and what kind of stuff does your power do? The name sounds like it has to do with shadows."

Eh, it's not really a secret. "I make darkness. Like this -" 

A black substance wells up around him. It's hard to tell if it's gas or liquid or shadow, because it's completely opaque and textureless and swallows all light and sound.

"And if you're in it you can't see or hear and phones and radios don't work, but it doesn't affect me." Behold, a demonstration: this is what it feels like to be completely enveloped in Grue's power.

...and a few seconds later in the sensory deprivation sphere Elan feels a hand land on his shoulder from behind, and the shadow recedes below their heads.

"You've been caught by a Grue," Grue says.

Even the background music goes completely silent! Elan really hopes that's just for effect.

"Eep!" he says to the hand on his shoulder, before the darkness pulls away. He can't even hear his own voice.

He giggles nervously, and then for real.

"Wow, that's a really cool power! Does it always do the same thing? Like, can you make it quiet without it being dark, or the other way around?"

"No, it's always everything. But I can control where it goes, open bubbles inside it. And I can cover a whole street with it, so it's really useful in a fight."

"You asked about the other heroes. There's one big independent hero team, New Wave. They're actually a family who all have different powers, I have no idea how that works, you can't just get powers on demand like that. Anyway, all their powers do lasers or light shields or superstrength, or some mix of those. And one of them can fly, she's called Glory Girl and is pretty strong and supposedly invulnerable. Or at least she's confident enough to say that and invite the people she's fighting to use their full strength."

"The other thing about them is that they don't wear masks and their civilian identities are public. They think that's what real heroes should do, so the public can hold them accountable. ...I guess they haven't done anything bad enough that I can complain that the public didn't hold them accountable. But the real reason they're strong, strong enough to drive off the Empire, is that one of them is Panacea."

"Panacea's power is healing, people say she's the best in the world and I believe it. If you're alive when she gets you you'll be fine. Wounds, disease, cancer, she can do it all. She clears out the hospital sometimes. A lot of powerful people must owe her and her family a huge favor."

"That sounds really amazing!" he says of Panacea. "Why do most people wear masks? Or, wait…"

He just got reminded of the Safe at Home and Opting In powers.

"If most capes aren't from a whole family of capes, then their enemies could kidnap their parents or siblings or kids or partners. Or kill them."

"I mean, they probably have some relatives somewhere who aren't capes? And like, girlfriends and stuff. I think it's just that if anyone did anything to Panacea's family a metric ton of capes would come down on their heads."

"That makes sense. Still, it sounds like… I dunno, if someone who isn't an amazing healer doesn't want people coming to their house in revenge for foiling their plans that doesn't have to mean that they aren't brave or they're doing bad things."

Elan's used to adventurers adventuring under their regular names, but it kind of seems like it's easier to find people here.

"I'm not saying masked capes are that," he's one of them! "The idea of public heroes sounds great, I just don't know if they could've pulled it off with a different team."

Here's the motel, as advertised, with a round-the-clock convenience store and gas station opposite. "This should be enough for a couple days," Grue says, passing him two hundred-dollar bills.

Elan nods.

"I was mostly thinking out loud."

He accepts the money, forming the intention to pay Grue back once it's been long enough that it won't be suspicious that Elan has $200 on hand.

"Thanks! See you tomorrow, probably."

He lets Grue skedaddle before he goes into the motel.

The motel receptionist will let him have a room for the night for $69.99. Checkout at 11am tomorrow, unless he pays for two nights in advance. Here's your room key and change. (Yawn.)

The room is pretty barebones but decently clean, with an en-suite toilet and a communal shower at the end of the corridor, and the street outside is currently quiet.

Elan chooses just the one night for now.

It takes him a minute to figure out the lighting in his room, but the plumbing is familiar enough. There's probably a timekeeping device in here, right?

There is a digital clock on the nightstand! It reads 02:34.

No wonder the desk guy was tired! Elan promptly covers the clock display up with a piece of sturdy paper, because even though he doesn't have any specific memories of taking Work-Life Balance he bets that if he just pretends he's in a little time bubble he'll have all the time he needs to process the events of the past little while and get a good night's sleep.

From his pocket dimension he retrieves two pens…

…and a notebook that looks like, but is not, The Notebook.

With the first pen, he writes:

Hi.

And then he uses the second pen.

Hi Elan! What's up?

I'm in the world you sent me to.

I'm not actually

I know, I know. Can you pretend at least?

…well, that's kind of a silly question to ask himself.

Sorry, that was silly.

Do you feel bad about being silly?

Maybe a little. This world is a lot scarier than I was expecting. Like, I appeared on this rooftop, and there was this mean guy telling his followers to shoot kids. And I forgot that I had the drawback where I can't do big things by myself, so I tried to get him to stop, and he was REALLY strong and fast and I couldn't even get him talking. Luckily some other people showed up though, and they said that the police for people with superpowers were coming to get him.

That sounds like an exciting adventure!

It was! But then… okay so one of the people who helped me was this girl with the power to control bugs, and there were a bunch of others. And I didn't realize that they weren't actually friends with each other already, so when they split up I went with the rest of them, so I feel a little bad about leaving the bugs girl behind. I can probably find her and say sorry later though.