“Making it too easy,” Gale said. She flashed bright before releasing a blast of lightning and a bolt of ice. A moment later, she lowered two more attackers to our side, dropping them both.

  “What do you make of it?” Gale asked.

  “Just a distraction, but…” Twitch dismissed her screens. “Still best to be sure.”

  “Agreed. Aegriss, you close?”

  “Right around the corner,” she replied, and I pinged her location with a scan.

  “Perfect. Are you able to pick up any of their comms? Narrow in on them?”

  “Got their comms hacked—and an address,” she said, then projected a sound that wasn’t her voice at all, but the enemy’s.

  “Retreat!” one of them said. “We weren’t paid enough for this shit!”

  “Get back here!” another voice shouted over the comms.

  The argument was cut short by a flurry of panicked curses as the rest of my team gave the leftover assailants a thrashing. Always nice to have a woman who was also an android on the team—Aegriss was able to circumvent many security protocols, hack into computers and comms systems, and do so much more.

  I gave her the go-ahead to shut off the enemy comms, then activated my screen to see the map as she transferred it over. There were red blips showing enemy locations, green to show my teammates, and a large red area that had to be the headquarters from which the enemy had come.

  “Good work, Aegriss,” I said, closing the screen.

  She beamed and turned to share the same information with Twitch, who could better pass it to the holo-screens in the rest of the team’s wrist devices.

  A flash of pink caught my attention, and I turned to see Charm in the distance. She launched through the air, nine tails flailing out behind her, then landed on top of one of the dudes to punch him in the face repeatedly.

  Connecting to her through our comms with a touch to the small device next to my ear, I said, “That’s enough. Leave them for the authorities.”

  Charm dropped the guy and turned, hands on her hips and lower lip jutting out in a pout. After a second, she lit up like a star and then propelled herself through the air to land at my side. “Don’t you ever miss the old days when we could pummel them into oblivion?”

  “When the crime fits the punishment,” I admitted.

  “But Earth governments have to feel safe knowing we can operate without going overboard,” Twitch pointed out.

  “I know, I know,” Charm grumbled.

  “Good news,” Aegriss added, “The rest of the team is incoming! Looks like their work in Dubai came to a close early.”

  As if to prove the point, Harp flew down from the sky a second later. She let out a shout that sent the enemy stumbling to their knees, hands clamped over their ears.

  “Let’s take the fight to the warehouse,” Gale said.

  I agreed, but turned and motioned to Harp as she did a pass back toward me.

  “All good?” she asked. She’d once required a device to mask her voice when speaking with friends so that her power wouldn’t affect them, but code changes from Twitch had rendered that unnecessary.

  She landed nearby between me and Charm, eyes on Gale as the larger woman rose into the air with gusts of wind, electricity crackling around her.

  “Can you get to Kai?” I asked. “I want to make sure he’s safe.”

  “On it.” Harp’s wings extended from her lower back to catch the gusts of wind that Gale had brought in.

  As Harp took off, something else caught my attention from the sky—movement and a glint of metal. Something approaching the Earth, fast.

  “You seeing what I’m seeing?” Charm asked.

  A spaceship approaching the hillside in the distance—that same hillside where my team had an estate we called home. I frowned, but shook off my unease.

  “I am,” I replied. “If it’s trouble, Harp will alert us.”

  I turned back to the threat at hand, adapting my old, trusty space paladin armor and war hammer with a thought. Hard not to feel confident in this get-up—and it reminded me that, no matter how risky things got, there was always room for a little fun.

  CHAPTER 1: KAI

  Earth, Berserker Compound

  Nothing about the evening struck me as abnormal. Not the sounds of distant fighting or the rumbling of the walls during an attack. And not even the two girls dancing on my bed while I sat on my two-seater couch in the corner, playing a video game.

  It wasn’t like the girls were really interested in me. So many of their type had come over the years, hoping to get a chance to meet my dad and wondering if I also had superpowers.

  I couldn’t blame them. When I’d first learned that my dad and the team he worked with were superheroes, I had been overwhelmed with excitement. Especially about the beautiful one with the fox ears and tails—it wasn’t like she could hide those attributes, so I had wondered how she’d avoided being seen for so long. Then I learned that she could go invisible. All badass, but also reason for me to be more annoyed when, year after year, I failed to develop any powers.

  When I realized the sound of creaking bedsprings had ceased, I looked over to see that the girls were staring at me with half-smiles and curious expressions. Jenny and… what was the other one’s name? Sequoia, maybe? Yes, that sounded right. Jenny was the one with curly blonde hair and eyebrows so pale they were almost nonexistent, while Sequoia had almond skin and hair dyed a mixture of pink and purple.

  “When will they be back?” Sequoia asked.

  “Danny and—”

  “No, silly.” She threw a pillow at me, which I caught and put over my lap. Before I knew what was happening, she came over and wrapped her arms around my neck, lips nibbling on my earlobe. “I mean the Berserkers.”

  I sighed. “Breaker’s Berserkers” was the term those in the know used to refer to my dad’s team of superheroes. Apparently, many more were in the know these days—and it was my fault.

  The previous year, just before my sixteenth birthday, I had been in the back row of a movie theater with the most popular girl from my school, Emily Channel, and “accidentally” let it slip when her hand found its way to my leg.

  While my decision to let the secret slip had done its job and impressed her, the next day gossip worked its way back to me through Danny. My best buddy, offended that he hadn’t learned that little tidbit from the source itself, almost stopped being my friend.

  “Hellloooo,” Sequoia was there now too, bending over in front of me and staring into my eyes. “Does he always space out like that?”

  I swatted her hand away as she went to boop my nose. Setting my controller aside, I said, “Sometimes they don’t come back for weeks.”

  What I didn’t add was that sometimes it wasn’t just weeks, because when the team traveled through portals to fight the alien supervillains referred to as the “Nihilists,” time passed differently for them. A day for them could be a week or even a month for me. Hell, I had spent my whole tenth year without them, but my father claimed only a couple of weeks had passed on their side. Crazy, to say the least.

  And when I asked to go with them, it was always the same. “When your powers manifest, you’ll join us.” But that day still hadn’t come, and I was almost seventeen.

  The girls were both seniors and close to graduation, so I should have felt like quite the stud having them in my room. But dammit, I hated being used.

  “Why are you two so obsessed with them, anyway?” I asked. “It’s not like they’re the only superheroes in the world.”

  “Maybe not, but they’re the only ones we have direct access to,” Sequoia replied. She stepped away from me and to the television. “What’re you playing, anyway?”

  “A WW3 first-person shooter,” I replied.

  “Fucking sad,” Jenny said, shaking her head and coming over to sit on my lap. That move surprised me, and apparently Sequoia, judging by the arched eyebrow. Jenny leaned back so that I had to brush her hair away from my face, catching a whiff of coconut in the process.

  “You lost someone?” I asked.

  She adjusted her position on my lap, then took my arms and wrapped them around herself. “Almost. My grandma was visiting the Red Square and saw one of the big fights between the invaders and the supers. If it hadn’t been for the green-hared one, she would have been killed.”

  “Oh, wow…” In that moment, I almost forgot any bitterness over not having my powers—I loved hearing stories about Breaker’s Berserkers, whether they took place on Earth or the many other planets they had their adventures on. “What did she see?”

  “Never really said much. Just that there was a floating lady attacking us and strange monsters—beings like gods.”

  “We were attacked by Thor himself, if you listen to some of the stories,” Sequoia said with a laugh. “I’m still not convinced it’s all true.”

  “And the others? Death Girl inspires me. I mean, I can only dream of being that sexy after I’m dead.”

  “I don’t think she’s actually dead… is she?”

  I bit my lip, the scent of Jenny flooding my brain with desire. Leaning forward, I sniffed her hair again, then kissed her neck.

  She giggled, moving her ass across my lap. “Stop, that tickles.”

  “Keep talking,” I said, lips brushing across her neck as my hands moved toward her chest. “Tell me what else you’ve heard about the supers.”

  Her hand went to my inner thigh as she said, “It’s hard to tell where truth stops and fiction starts, but there’s rumors of a blue lady, of—”

  “Okay, that’s enough.” A chill ran up my spine, the moment over. I picked Jenny up off me and scooted out, letting her have the chair.

  “What was that?” Jenny asked.

  “Freak,” Sequoia said with a laugh and a glance at the bulge in my jeans. At least that bulge was quickly subsiding.

  “The Blue Lady, as some refer to her… that’s my mother.”

  “No shit?” Sequoia cocked her head. “And you? Are you blue…” Her eyes went to my crotch again. “Anywhere?”

  “Oh, God. No.”

  Jenny stood and headed for the door. “Fuck this. We’re out.” She reached the doorway and spun. “And for the record, I was referring to the one with horns—the one they call Europa.”

  “Ahhh.” I frowned, eyes darting back to the bed as I wondered how badly I had just screwed up the moment.

  Jenny laughed in response. “Not gonna happen, Romeo. Give yourself a hand for your smooth ways with the ladies.”

  Except, as she went for the door, Sequoia lingered, then even sat on the bed.

  “Sequoia…?” Jenny asked.

  “Go ahead, if you want. I’m still waiting for him to prove he’s not part Smurf.”

  “Part…?” It took me a couple seconds to process that she was referring to the blue cartoon characters from old Earth–entertainment. I sighed, put my hands on my hips, and was about to tell her she was welcome to inspect me when Jenny turned to the ceiling and clapped with a little squeal.

  “What…?” I asked.

  “I thought I heard something,” Jenny said. “They’re probably back!”

  She was already gone and up the stairs before I could let out my grunt of annoyance, but Sequoia lingered. With a large smile, she stood, approached, and then undid the button on my jeans. I stood frozen in place, not sure what to do as she slid down my zipper. Her pointer finger went to the rim of my boxers and pulled. She looked down.

  “I was kind of hoping it would be blue,” she said, then giggled and gave me a little pat on my lower head. “Let’s go say hello and… maybe finish this up tomorrow? Just me and you, behind the bleachers?”

  I gulped, preferring to finish it up then and there. My little soldier confirmed this preference, but I watched as she bounded up the stairs after her friend.

  “Not blue!” Sequoia’s voice echoed back down to me.

  I could certainly think of two round objects that would be blue. But my curiosity got the better of me, so I tucked myself away and followed the girls up. My dad wasn’t going to be happy with two girls in the house serving as a welcoming committee, considering all the man had done to keep this house’s location a secret.

  “Bad people are out there,” my dad had told me over and over. “Bad people, and creatures much, much worse than people. It’s up to my team to save the universe, but also to keep you safe. Even so, you need to do your part.”

  I advanced up the stairs, annoyed at the fact that I couldn’t live a normal life, but also wasn’t able to live the super life. Maybe I was, most of all, annoyed that I couldn’t just let it go and be satisfied with life as it was.

  When I reached the top of the stairs, I turned to the entrance of the house to find the two girls crouched down, staring out the windows and up at something in the sky.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  Neither answered, so I approached. When I was at Sequoia’s side, I bent over to have a look, instantly overcome with awe as they both were. It wasn’t my father or mother up there, but a ship that was clearly alien in nature.

  Shining black metal spread out around the ship like petals of a flower, all surrounding a smooth, horizontal obelisk that was beginning to rotate vertically. The “petals” began to close around the ship as it lowered to the ground in the parking lot outside.

  “Whoa,” Sequoia muttered, reaching out to grab my hand.

  I gave her hand a squeeze, more to comfort myself than anything. While I had heard plenty of stories and had my fair share of super sightings, seeing unknown ships arrive was as much of a surprise for me as for the two of them.

  If this was an alien crew here to attack, or supervillains from the Oram System where so much trouble had gone down over the years, I would be helpless.

  Or, almost helpless. I knew full well that my dad kept a spare blaster pistol near the entrance for emergencies.

  Releasing Sequoia’s hand, I turned to the painting of my mother that had been commissioned during her pregnancy. It still felt weird to me, seeing her almost seventeen years later, still looking as young as ever.

  Pulling the painting down, I placed my hand on the scanner and watched a light glow green, then the wall moved aside to give me access to the blaster. I’d trained on how to use this, but never had the need.

  Now I took it and turned back to the doors, surprised to see that my hands weren’t shaking.

  “The hell is that?” Jenny asked, while Sequoia let out a yelp and moved to my side, hand on my shoulder.

  “Be ready for anything,” I said. My voice didn’t break, even though I was scared.

  An opening appeared at the base of the craft. First a woman with a short pink side-shave covered in tattoos, followed by a Black woman with pale purple hair. They both looked human, and already I lowered my pistol, recognition taking hold even though I had never met these two. It wasn’t until the man with a shaved head and fierce eyes stepped out that I knew without a doubt this was my uncle’s team—I was staring at the legendary supers some referred to as the Ex-Gods.

  “Uncle… Drew?” I laughed, still frozen in place as my uncle approached the door and knocked.

  Finally, I broke free from my stupor and reached the door in two big steps, throwing it open.

  “You going to shoot me, or invite me in?” Drew asked, eyes weighing the three of us.

  “Depends—are you Uncle Drew?”

  “Uncle… No, you couldn’t be.” Drew’s stern expression morphed into a smile. “Kai? Chad’s son?”

  “Well, he doesn’t like to be called Chad, but yes. That’d be me. I’m Kai.”

  Drew thrust a hand forward and I accepted it, shaking it while trying give him as good of a grip as possible. It didn’t seem to be enough, judging by my uncle’s disapproving frown.

  “No super strength, I take it. So…?”

  I stepped aside, releasing his hand. “Oh, come in. How—why—I mean, what brings you here?”

  “We’ve got trouble,” Drew said. “It’s time.”

  “Time?” I frowned in confusion, turning to see two others who looked to be about my age approaching from the ship. One was a boy with green hair and tattoos, then a woman with dark skin and purple hair. I returned my attention to my uncle while the others entered. “Time for what?”

  “Time to find out which one of you kids is going to fulfill the prophecy.”

  “Technically, we’re not kids,” the boy with the green hair said, entering and giving me a once-over. He frowned, then laughed. “You…? Not a chance.”

  I looked from him to Drew, then to the girl.

  “Don’t stare too hard, numb-nuts,” the boy said. “She’s your cousin.”

  “I wasn’t…” I protested, but then found the girl’s hand thrust out toward me.

  “Ignore my jackass half-brother,” she said. “I’m Snapdragon. And you’re Kai, yes?”

  “Right.” I shook her hand, then turned to the half-brother. “That would make you Fourd?”

  “Used to be, but I prefer Glaze.” My cousin shot at me with finger pistols, then continued into the house. He suddenly stopped at the sight of Jenny and Sequoia, face scrunched up. “Ew, tell me you aren’t hanging out with normies.”

  “Hey,” Jenny said, standing as if about to fight him.

  Before she could say another word, Drew was in and walking past them as he said, “If you want to live, you’d best scram.”

  Jenny and Sequoia looked at me for confirmation. When I shrugged, they booked it out of there, not even bothering to go downstairs for their hats or purses.

  “What’s this ‘if you want to live,’ business?” I asked. My attention moved from my uncle to the others emerging from the strange ship. Most notable was a furry woman who resembled a cat, two who looked like an angel and demon pair, and then the women that had to be Glaze and Snapdragon’s moms.

  When I turned my attention back to my uncle, I saw that he was setting up some sort of metal board, unfolding it right there in the entryway. As he finished, he placed a disk on it and turned with a grin toward me.