Mallory held up the puck launcher before her new charge with the grave authority imbued in her by six years of service. Emily was caught with an expression of bewildered amusement, unsure of exactly how serious to take it. Well, it would need to be clear, then.

"You'll get one of these once I'm satisfied you can handle it and not a second earlier," Mallory said. "The first rule is you treat it like it's loaded even if you know it isn't. If you hit someone at point blank range, you're going to take half their head off. You’ll want it to be intentional."

They had settled on using the space usually reserved for armor fabrication and storage. It stank of chemical processing and always became a little too warm during production for comfort. It had everything they needed to stock up, and would expedite the fitting process. Tanya looked up from her work on the other side of the room, giving just the slightest roll of the eyes behind Emily’s back. Tanya had heard this lecture a few times now, and perhaps found it more endearing than intimidating. 

"If you have to draw it in here try to keep it facing open space, these walls ricochet like a motherfucker. It'll hurt just as much on a rebound."

"Ah...Green or purple?" Tanya called from her console at the fabricator.

"What?" Emily asked.

"Preference."

"Oh, green, I guess?"

"You're going to be spending mornings with me for the time being,” Mallory continued. “For as long as it takes to get you up to speed. And I mean mornings, not whatever it is you’ve been doing.”

Emily stared at her silently for a long moment, amusement gone, before asking “If you’re so sure I can’t do this why did you vote for me?”

“If you can’t, you’re going to want to find out now, and not when you’re about to be shot through with holes,” Mallory answered.

Emily looked back over her shoulder at Tanya, “And you all had to do this?”

“Don’t look at her, I’m talking to you,” Mallory snapped. 

Emily did turn back to face her, and said nothing, but looked very sincerely like she wanted to.

“If you’re standing behind me with a firearm you’d better be pointing it at the right target, or we are going to have a problem,” Mallory continued, and let the threat hang in the air.

“Hold still, you’re going to want the shoulders to fit,” Tanya approached with a tape measure, as if the tense exchange had not happened.

“Your family seems to have a real problem with authority,” Mallory observed.

“Okay, let’s get this out of the way,” Emily gave a theatrical sigh. Tanya swatted her shoulder with a hand to prompt her to hold still. 

“Is this thing with Duke going to be a problem?” Mallory asked.

“What thing? I don’t know him,” Emily answered. “I’d never met him before a couple weeks ago, why does it matter?”

“Coincidences,” Tanya muttered as she did her measuring, though it was unclear if it was meant to be part of the conversation or something she merely thought aloud.

“It is strange that out of billions of people that he could have chosen, what Dragaunus reached for two that have a tie to us already,” Mallory clarified Tanya’s muttering. “You didn’t know Duke?”

“No, he disappeared before I was even hatched,” Emily said.

“Surely you knew about him.”

“Why does it matter?” Emily pushed Tanya’s fussing hands away, irritated. “He left!”

Mallory raised a finger for silence and said with deadly calm: “That’s why. That right there. You can’t do that. I need to know you’re not going to.”

Emily’s face smoldered with anger as she stood there, and then looked at the floor between their feet, resembling nothing so much as a sullen child. For a long moment, no one moved, because whether or not they continued hinged on what she did next.

“Something went wrong ten years ago,” Emily said, quiet enough that Mallory had to strain to hear, despite being within an arm’s length. “An art forger got caught and named all his…buddies as part of his plea deal. I only found out Duke even existed because they questioned my mother for months.” Emily looked up, and where Mallory had thought to see petulance, there was none. “Is that enough?”

“Who’s Winterwing Flashblade?” Mallory asked, though she tried her best not to phrase it accusingly. She was not sure she was very successful.

“He found me on the side of a road and took me to a doctor. I nearly died of exposure, apparently.”

“In the wrong universe.”

“I guess?”

“How’d you get there?”

“I don’t know.”

“No?”

“I’ve never been so sick in my life, before,” Emily said. “I could tell you what I remember, but I can’t promise I didn’t hallucinate the whole thing.”

“You told him about your new ability before you told us.”

Emily hesitated. This was the first time anyone had confronted her about it, and while Wildwing had not instructed Mallory to do so, he had also not specifically told her not to. It needed to be addressed sooner rather than later.

“Yes,” Emily said, at last. She was choosing to make things simpler, at least. She was taking a more halting route than Mallory would have liked, but it was progress.

“Why?” Mallory pressed.

“Because he deserved to know.”

“Deserved?”

Emily shrugged. “Helping me ruined his life, he may as well know why.”

“Is he going to be a problem?”

Emily hesitated again, before answering “No.”

“I...don’t think he sees it like that, uh, if it helps at all,” Tanya said, before moving back to her work station, satisfied with her measurements. 

“Well, he hasn’t bothered telling me either way,” Emily shrugged. Mallory gave an impolite snort of amusement, that she chose not to explain. She should not have been reminiscing about Wildwing, especially not fondly, but the comparison kept inviting itself unbidden.

The combat boots were the first things to complete fabrication. Tanya presented them without ceremony, already turning to focus on something else while dropping them in Emily’s arms. 

Emily made a noise of distress as she handled them. “What are these made out of?”

“It’s better than a broken foot,” Mallory said. “Your comm unit will be synced with them, you can call for skates or blades.” 

“Ha, be absolutely sure you know what you’re doing before you call for the blades,” Tanya advised from her station.

Mallory smiled, “There’s some propellant involved.”

Emily set the footwear carefully down on the floor, staring in horror, “That’s the most insane thing I’ve heard today.”

Which only amused them more. Jet blades were not going to be nearly the most ridiculous thing they were going to have to tell her. If she didn’t wash out. 

Tanya handed Mallory the utility belt she completed next, rather than Emily herself. There were things on the belt, of course, that were just as questionable as the blaster, so it would be Mallory’s job to review every piece of the kit to her satisfaction before turning it over.

Emily stopped her halfway through the distinction between the explosive and freezing commands.

“My turn,” Emily said. “Who is Canard?”

It was Mallory’s cue to hesitate. Canard was an incredibly sore subject.  It was an obvious question, but no one had bothered to tell either of their new guests anything.

“He lead the initial strike team into Dragaunus’ base on Puckworld.” Mallory said, as succinctly as she could manage.

“Ah, found the Mask of Drake DuCaine,” Tanya added, absently.

“Wildwing’s friend,” Mallory finished.

“’Was’ the lead?” Emily asked, looking between the two of them. “What happened to him?”

“We lost him in the transition between universes,” Tanya said, this time more present as she spoke. “You’re not supposed to be able survive that.”

“But, that’s good, right?” Emily asked. “That you found him again?”

Tanya looked to Mallory, unsure. As with everything else, they were going to have to act like Emily was a member of the team. They had voted for it, Mallory could not be upset now that she had to follow through. Emily got the information that the rest of them did.

“Winterwing makes it a problem,” Mallory explained, after the silence had gone overlong.

“Winterwing?” Emily balked, “What’d he do?”

“We don’t know if he’s our Canard, or if the person we left behind is still missing and what we found was a Canard.”

Emily frowned, confused. “But Wildwing and Winterwing are different people. We all can tell. From a distance, you can tell.”

“There’s-there’s no rule saying your counterpart in another reality wouldn’t be g-g-genetically identical,” Tanya shook her head, without looking up from her workstation this time. “Just happened to work out differently for your-your friend? If there’s infinite universes to pull from? There’s infinite people who are different...and infinite that are the same.”

Emily seemed to grasp this at last, and contemplated the floor again while she thought, before looking up to Mallory. “Has anyone told Wildwing?”

“He knows,” Mallory said.

“Yes, but has anyone told him?” Emily repeated.

And it irritated Mallory, in a way that it should not have, to have this asked. The conversation stopped, and she let Tanya fuss over fit and chemical purity and fabrication for some time, letting the question fester.

Someone was going to have to have a conversation with Wildwing. That someone didn’t necessarily have to be Mallory, but she had a sneaking suspicion that it was going to be. Someone needed to remind Wildwing of his duties, and someone needed to tell him what Duke had found. He was not going to like it, and she did not want to be the one to do it. Conversations with Wildwing were hard, now, and it was her own fault.

“There’s no way to know?” Emily asked again, breaking Mallory’s thoughts.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Tanya shook her head. “I think-I think Dragaunus might have the answer, I guess he must,” she tapped at the side of her workspace as it processed her commands, and brought up her next thought. “It’s worse than that, though.”

“Worse?”

“We need to recover his gateway generator. We need the data he has,” Tanya said. “It’s not just people. It’s infinite… infinite places. If we can replicate the tech maybe we get home, or maybe we find somewhere else, like you did.” And then, more quietly, to the point that maybe she didn’t realize that she was saying it aloud, “A-a-almost...almost certainly somewhere else.”

Mallory retrieved a bodysuit from one of the lockers, in the dark teal-green that matched the team colors, and held it out. Emily looked between them in growing horror, as she realized they expected her to strip down and put it on right there. Tanya went back to her work, and Mallory waited impassively with the same disinterest as every time she had been in a locker room prior. Emily made a noise of frustration before complying, but did, ripping her shirt off over her head.

“Somewhere else might be better,” Emily said as she adjusted the stretchy fabric caught around her knees. “Winterwing’s Puckworld wasn’t destroyed.”

“You didn’t belong there,” Mallory pointed out. “There was another you already there, remember?”

“So, what? It was better than what home looks like, now,” Emily said, slipping on one of the combat boots, testing its weight, and grimacing as she did. She was going to love learning to run in them.

“It’s home,” Tanya said simply.

“Home is a pile of burnt rubble,” Emily insisted, “does it matter if it’s the right pile?”

“Yes,” Mallory said, emphatically, but without malice.

Mallory was at last allowed to continue her lecture on the utility belt, and when Emily was able to repeat back what she was told, perfectly, multiple times, it was handed to her, though the explosive options were disabled for the moment. Mallory was not quite ready to give her that sort of firepower.

Emily snapped it on with a dramatic flourish, contemplating it for a moment, and said, “Wraith knew.”

This gave Tanya some pause, and she stopped her work entirely, “What?”

“I was in the completely wrong universe and he knew exactly where to find me. Specifically  me,” Emily said.

Tanya contemplated this for a moment, before shaking her head, and leaning against her workstation with a sigh, “Why does everyone keep suggesting magic to me? I can’t do anything with that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s, it’s just, it’s something that defies rules, science requires tests and experiments that can be repeated, not hand waving and wishes.”

“That can’t be true,” Emily said, “it must have rules. Like your big fancy shield. You can’t teleport through it but the communicators still work. Wraith can find the time to bother me, but he can’t just appear here to take me.”

“Respectfully,” Tanya exhaled, visibly annoyed, “that might be more your school of practice than mine.”

“My ‘school of practice’?” Emily repeated.

Tanya made a motion with her hands that involved the wiggling of all her fingers.

Mallory cleared her throat. “What I think she means is we all have special skills we bring to this team, perhaps yours is whatever Wraith has done to you.”

“…You guys know my last job was a waitress, right?” Emily’s brow furrowed.

“Doesn’t matter,” Mallory said. “You’re a scrub now. Congrats on the demotion.”