The walk back across the lawn was nothing at all like the walk out.
Before the start of their training, Mark had talked the whole way about takeoff angles. Now, he moved three steps ahead of them with a tight frown while Dad walked behind them in silence. Aria carried the camera and the empty sandwich bag and the entire conversation by herself, which was to say there wasn't one.
-x-
The first few minutes had been the best and most terrifying moments of her life.
Flying turned out to be like using a new group of muscles. Dad's tutelage helped, but as he said, Mark and her were baby fliers. Getting good at it was going to take time and practice.
After one undignified encounter with a tree, she gradually got the hang of it, and the forest and plains opened up underneath her in full color. She'd flown with the wind dragging her hair behind her head and thought about auroras, and about how every photograph she'd ever taken had been shot from the wrong altitude.
While they flew with Dad, Mark tried landing, and unlike ascending to the sky, it was much, much harder. She managed to stop in time, but that was because she wasn't going all that fast. Mark was the exact opposite. His fast approach came in steep, stayed steep, and finished as a shallow crater at the center of a field.
Aria touched down beside it, already unslinging the Nikon.
"Don't you dare," said the crater.
The shutter clicked twice. "One for the fridge. One for your wedding someday."
"I'm telling Dad you brought a camera to training."
"He watched me pack it, dumbass. Get up."
He got up groaning, with dirt in his hair, and Dad told Mark to try to hit him.
Dad talked him through it, describing how to use the shoulder, hips, and legs. He talked about how Viltrumites can just freely move in physical space without having to push off anything, allowing them to create their own leverage. Mark threw a few at their father, who dodged with ease. Aria drifted closer with the camera half-raised, because her brother learning to box in midair was objectively worth documenting and totally not because she was waiting for future blackmail material.
She never took the shot.
Dad hit Mark as a demonstration. There was barely any windup, just Mark folding around their father's fist, all the air leaving him in one ugly sound. Her brother fell to the ground with his arms curled around his stomach.
Her eyes widened. "MARK!"
She got her arms around him while he wheezed in the grass. When she looked up at their father, her whole body had already decided to be afraid before her brain caught up. Dad hung above them, and there was nothing on his face. Nothing at all.
The Dad she'd known for seventeen years had simply stepped out, and what remained watched her brother gasp in the dirt with cold attention that belonged on something else.
Only when Mark started groaning did some of the warmth come back, though only slowly, and not all the way.
"Dad…" Mark gasped, arms still clamped over his stomach. "You... hurt me."
"I know, son. I… didn't…" Their father landed and put a hand on Mark's shoulder. "I didn't mean to hit you so hard."
Mark got a hand on the grass and pushed himself up, one arm still holding his stomach. "Why did you do that?"
"...Mark, if you wanna do what I do, you have to be prepared for anything. No one is going to pull their punches."
Aria helped her brother sit up and heard herself say, in a voice steadier than she felt, that maybe that was enough for one day and they should head home. Dad looked at her for a moment, then gestured at the open air.
"You haven't had your turn yet. Come on. I won't go as hard on you."
"M-Maybe next time, Dad."
She pulled Mark to his feet and kept herself between him and the sky, and their father didn't argue. He just said something about practice tomorrow.
-x-
Mark went straight up the stairs without a word. Mom watched him go, leaning on the wall next to the bottom step.
"So. How badly did that go?"
"I pushed him pretty far," Dad answered. "It's what he needs."
"Did you maybe push too far?"
Dad closed the distance between them in large strides. "Are you questioning me?"
What the hell was going on? Her father had never acted like this. For one horrible second, standing forgotten by the doorway, Aria thought he might actually hit Mom. Aria merely watched. She couldn't muster the strength to push herself between her parents.
Mom put her hands on her hips and didn't give an inch. "What the hell has gotten into you?"
The anger drained out of him all at once. "I don't know. I… I'm sorry. Mark and Aria got their powers so late, I wasn't… wasn't prepared for this." He stepped back and crossed his arms. "It changes things. I can't help but think… maybe our lives would be better if they hadn't gotten them at all."
"You don't mean that," Mom said quietly. She held his eyes a moment longer. "I'm going to go check on our son."
Her footsteps went up the stairs, and the living room was suddenly very large and very quiet, and Aria was alone in it with her father.
Eyes turning towards her, his shoulders came down, and she saw hints of the dad she knew.
"You didn't take your turn today," he said.
"...Didn't really feel like getting punched out of the sky."
Dad looked away, she recognized the look of guilt just as he closed his eyes and sighed.
"That's fair." He sat down on the couch. "Can I ask you something? Years ago, you said you wanted nothing to do with any of this. Capes, fighting, the whole life. Then right before we started training, you said you also wanted to learn how to fight. What changed?"
Aria opened her mouth to say nothing and found the honest answer coming out instead.
"You watched the same news I did." She shrugged, suddenly self-conscious, and looked at the camera hanging at her hip instead of at her father. "I have powers now. If I could use them to help people the way Wild Card did… then maybe all of this is worth doing. That's all."
It was the truth. Most of the truth. There was a part she hadn't said, and she had no intention of doing so just yet.
Her father was quiet for a moment.
"Wild Card..." he repeated for what seemed like the third time today. "Seems he left quite an impression on you."
"He made an impression on everyone," Aria said. "He's literally the top trending topic on every social media platform and news network in the country right now. He's even getting coverage overseas."
"Right, right..."
Dad pushed off the chair, and his smile came back, warm and easy. He stood and placed a hand on her shoulder. The uncertainty on her dad's face couldn't be more obvious, but the reason behind his uncertainty was an enigma.
"I'm... I'm glad you changed your mind. You have a good heart, Aria. Go get ready for school. Tell your mother I went out for some air."
The backyard sliding door clicked shut behind him. Aria watched her father take off into the sky.
She stood there for a second, taking the Nikon off her shoulder and went upstairs. Mom's voice murmured behind Mark's door, low and warm. Aria waited outside until it went quiet and Mom slipped back out, squeezing her shoulder on the way past.
"Your brother's in a bit of a slump. Don't go too hard on him."
Aria neither nodded or shook her head before she knocked on the door.
"Go away," her moping brother demanded.
This wouldn't do. Mark tended to stay this way until he got it all out of his system. And until that happened, he was a pain in the ass to deal with.
"Hey, bro~ I have a photo of your stupid face hitting the ground at two hundred miles an hour~"
The door swung open.
"…Delete that. Right now."
OOO
The rest of her day was rather uneventful. Mostly, anyway. Her brother still wanted to let out some steam, so at school, he provoked that douchebag, Todd, to hit him a few times. Mark became the talk of the school since then, especially since most people thought that blonde, Amber Bennet, was still the reason behind it.
Aria had rolled her eyes at that and rolled her eyes again when she saw him fly off from their house in a stupid, home-made costume that somehow looked even more ridiculous than his Duct Tape Man one.
She didn't know what kind of reckless "heroing" her brother was up to and she didn't much care. But when he returned with Dad, they seemed to have patched things up, and she couldn't turn down Dad's offer to make things up to them. It turned out what Dad meant by that was taking them to his tailor, Art.
Meeting the man responsible for making Omni-Man's and other superheroes' costumes was awesome. Art said he'd make their costumes, though neither she nor her brother had one made just yet. Her brother wanted something iconic, because of course he would. But Art told him that unless he had a name in mind, he couldn't get started.
As for her, she just wanted something that would look good. She didn't care about her costume being iconic. Having a symbol or something on her chest would only invite ogling eyes, and she could come up with a name later. But "something that looks good" was too vague as well, leaving her thinking about what she wanted.
In the end, they returned home with a lot on their minds while Dad flew in another direction to do more superhero work.
Aria thought she could relax for the rest of the day. Mark wasn't sulking as much as before, and he and Dad patched things up. It wasn't until the first muffled boom late into the night that she realized peace and quiet would be a scarce resource in their household from now on.
She looked outside her bedroom window, spotting what caused the commotion. In their yard, a cloud of dirt and dust cleared, and revealed her brother lying in a small crater.
"Mark?" Aria frowned. "What the hell is that idiot doing?"
Her brother answered her question by flying straight into the air.
"...Damn it. Can't believe that idiot's training his powers in the middle of the suburb."
He would be difficult to see. It was already dark, with thick clouds obscuring the full moon. But couldn't he at least care about not messing up their yard?
Her mother yelled outside her room, "Mark? Aria?"
Aria rushed to open the door. Mom was at the bottom of the stairs, hands on her hips and brows knit together in a frown.
"Hey, Mom! Thank god you're home," Aria said. "Mark's messing up the yard."
"Messing up the yard? What do you mean?"
Another muffled boom shook the house. Mom's eyes widened in alarm.
"I mean that," Aria answered.
Debbie sighed and strode into their backyard. This was going to be good, and if it was any other time, she would be listening in on the scolding from her bedroom. But fortunately for her brother, she had more interesting things to do.
Aria hovered as she moved back to her bed and grabbed the tablet displaying a sketch of a woman's body. She couldn't take her mind off of her costume and took the challenge of designing it herself. But even after staring at her screen for what felt like forever, her pen didn't move.
She sighed in disappointment. Maybe she just needed a reference?
What did Dad's old costume look like again?
Mom had shown them pictures before. That was years ago, though, and she could only remember it being bland and gray. But it wasn't as if she was drowning in ideas.
A quick search on her phone led her to plenty of pictures of her dad when he was still wearing his Viltrumite uniform. It was as bland as she remembered. Plain white with a gray abdominal section, gray skirt, and gray boots. Definitely needed a re-design.
A knock rapped against her door.
Aria minimized the pictures of Dad's old costume before remembering there was nothing embarrassing on the screen. She reopened them and lowered herself onto the bed.
"Come in."
Mom opened the door and leaned against the frame. She'd lost the annoyed look she carried into the backyard, which probably meant Mark hadn't been thrown through the fence.
"Your brother's done terrorizing the neighborhood for tonight."
"Did you bury him in the crater he made?"
"I considered it." Mom stepped inside and closed the door. "He filled it back in poorly, but I'll make him deal with that tomorrow." Mom glanced at the tablet in Aria's lap. "Working on your costume?"
"Trying to. Art said I needed a better idea than 'make me look good,' which I think is unreasonable. Looking good should be the first requirement for every superhero costume."
"Ah, your dad took you to Art, did he?" Mom smiled and sat beside her, taking in the pictures on the tablet. One showed Dad hovering over a crowd in his old white and gray uniform, his arms crossed.
Aria zoomed in on the short gray skirt.
"I don't understand this part. Why did his peace-keeping organization give him a cheerleader skirt?" Aria asked as she envisioned what the suit would look like without it.
"To be honest, neither did I. But I stopped asking questions about his old clothes ages ago."
Aria snorted and picked up her pen. She drew a circle around the uniform's shoulders, disliked it immediately, and undid it.
Mom watched her struggle for another moment. "I talked with Mark. He was... upset about a lot of things. I wanted to make sure you were doing okay."
Aria tensed.
"...I'm fine. Costume block isn't a serious condition yet."
Mom stared at her. "Want to get something off your chest?"
The pen stopped above the screen.
Of course that hadn't worked. Mom could hear a lie from two rooms away when she wanted to.
Aria put the pen down. "Have you noticed Dad's been acting strange since yesterday?"
Mom's attention shifted from the tablet to her. "I have."
"When Mark told Dad about him getting powers, Dad didn't jump with joy like I always thought he would. And afterwards, when I told everyone about me getting my powers, he asked whether I got hurt, whether anyone saw me use my powers, and whether Wild Card knew who I was. But he barely asked Mark anything."
"I think he was just worried about you."
"I know..." She sighed. "But that's part of the problem."
Aria shifted her legs onto the bed and faced her. She hadn't planned to talk about any of this. Saying it now made every detail return with irritating clarity.
"This morning, he hit Mark hard enough to put him on the ground. Mark couldn't breathe and Dad just stayed in the air, staring at him with this really cold look in his eyes." Her hands tightened around the tablet. "For a second, I didn't recognize him."
Mom's mouth pressed into a thin line.
"Then he came down and apologized, but it felt wrong. He just told Mark nobody would pull their punches, so Mark needed to be ready. After that, he told me it was my turn and promised he wouldn't hit me as hard."
Aria hated the sentence even more after repeating it.
"If Mark needs to learn by getting punched out of the sky, why don't I? Does Dad think I'm weaker? Does he care less when Mark gets hurt? I don't know which answer is supposed to make me feel better."
"Neither should," Mom said.
Aria looked down at the blank costume sketch. "Dad.. Dad scared me, Mom."
The admission came out quieter than she intended.
Mom reached over and held her hand. "He scared me, too."
That didn't help, but it made the tightness under Aria's ribs loosen.
"And then downstairs," she continued, quieter, "it was the first time I ever saw him get mad at you. He even got right up in your face and asked if you were questioning him, and I really thought for a second he was gonna... gonna hit you."
"For a second, so did I." Mom squeezed her fingers. "He didn't, though. And he apologized. But I'm not pretending it didn't happen."
"Then he just said maybe it would've been better we never got his powers at all," Aria added. "I don't get it. He's been asking if we'd gotten our powers for years, but the moment we do, he has second thoughts? It just doesn't make sense."
"...Your father has been waiting for this since you and Mark were born. Now that it has, I think he's dealing with feelings he never prepared for," Mom said.
"What feelings?"
"I don't know yet. But I'm going to find out. That man does not get to hurt our kids or yell in my face without giving me a proper explanation."
Aria rubbed her thumb along the edge of the tablet. She couldn't understand how her mother could talk about having a difficult conversation with their dad in that way. If it had been her, she'd be too scared to even approach.
"Flying, helping people, getting a costume, and even the fighting part sounded fun before Dad demonstrated it on Mark's organs." Aria picked up the pen, only to turn it between her fingers. "But what happens when we start doing real superhero stuff? We're a mess. Dad's acting weird. Mark put on sweatpants and goggles, flew into the city alone, then came home and started body-slamming the yard."
Mom chuckled. "When you put it like that, the men in this family sound exhausting."
Aria's lips curved. "They are exhausting."
"Mark has wanted to be a superhero since he was five. Your father has spent years believing he knew exactly how this would happen. Neither of them handles surprises well." Mom took the tablet from her lap and studied the unfinished figure. "You don't have to make any decisions right now. You can train without becoming a superhero. You can wait until you feel ready. You can even decide this isn't what you want. Your father and I will support your choice, whatever it is."
"Thanks, Mom."
Aria looked toward the window. The backyard lights revealed a patch of disturbed grass near the center of the lawn. Mark did a botched job. He had flattened the dirt but left the grass folded inward.
"I don't want to quit," Aria admitted. "Which makes this more annoying."
Wild Card had walked into a cursed room and hundreds of people had gotten their lives back. She wanted to do something like that, too. Something that mattered.
"I still want to help people. I'm just not sure I want Dad teaching us how anymore. Mark's wanted to be like him his whole life, and after today..." Aria turned the pen between her fingers. "What if he starts acting the way Dad is right now?"
"I'm sure your father will change his approach, especially after I talk with him. But..." Mom was silent for a moment. "If you're really afraid of Mark turning into a bad person, then you can make sure he doesn't."
Aria turned back to her. "What do you mean?"
"Mark listens to you," Mom continued. "He complains, argues, and calls you a tyrant," she smiled, "but he listens. You listen to him, too," her eyes swerved to the side, "whenever he manages to say anything sensible, at least."
"That only happens twice a year," Aria said, suppressing the urge to roll her eyes.
"Three times during a good year." Mom smiled and returned the tablet. "Point is, you two have always kept each other from doing your worst ideas alone. Powers don't change that."
Mark would rush into danger because somebody needed help. He would also rush into danger because he thought it looked cool. Separating those two motivations would require supervision. Constant supervision.
That sounded horrible.
"I guess I could do that. Sticking together as superheroes would be safer for both of us," Aria muttered. "But only once he gets a costume that doesn't look stolen from a gas station. I am not standing next to him if he wears that thing again."
"Right." Mom laughed. "Keep doing what you two have been doing so far. Train together. Go out together. Keep each other safe, and keep each other honest." Mom brushed a loose strand of hair away from Aria's face. "With both of you watching out for each other, I pity anyone who tries to stop you. The two of you teaming up? You'd be invincible out there."
Aria's pen tapped against the tablet once.
Invincible.
That... would actually be a good name. It was also a bit too on the nose. Wasn't there a roman version of that? She opened a search page and typed the word into a translator.
"What are you doing?" Mom asked.
"Discovering my superhero name."
The results loaded.
Invictus.
She frowned at it, then scrolled, spotting its feminine alternative.
Invicta.
Smiling, Aria wrote it beneath the unfinished costume sketch in capital letters.
INVICTA
She stared at the name for a few seconds before nodding satisfaction.
Mom leaned closer. "Invicta, huh? I like it."
"Please don't tell Mark I already decided on a name"
"Why?" Mom raised a brow.
"He'll take Invincible and pretend he thought of it himself."
"You could share."
"No, thank you." Aria could no longer suppress her eyes from rolling. "We already shared a womb."
Mom snorted and stood from the bed. At the door, she paused and looked back.
"Your father and I will talk before either of you trains with him again. Tomorrow, you and Mark can practice flying together. Preferably somewhere without houses, cars, or my garden."
"Yes, ma'am."
Mom closed the door behind her.
Aria turned back to the screen. Dad's old uniform remained open beside her sketch, full of white fabric, gray sections, and absolutely no personality. She could change the gray to black and distribute it more throughout the lower body, or do the opposite and change white to black. A belt for pouches would also be nice. She would need somewhere to put her phone.
The costume should be built for movement and shouldn't hug her body like a human-sized condom. But should she also get something to hide her face? Her dad didn't, and neither did other prominent superheroes like War Woman and the Immortal. On the other hand, there were also plenty of others who did, Wild Card being the first to come to mind.
She created a new layer and erased the gray skirt first just as her phone buzzed near her knee.
Mark: mom says ur training with me tomorrow
A second message arrived before she could answer.
Mark: dont slow me down
Aria raised the phone, aimed it toward the window, and took a picture of the crater he'd failed to repair.
Aria: Fix the lawn first, Duct Tape Man
She sent it, muted the flood of replies, and drew the first line of Invicta's costume.