I knew I shouldn’t be out late at night. But now I felt like tempting fate, or perhaps making it, and I felt as if it didn’t matter. I could win any fight I got into.

Yes, I know that’s a fast way to get shot, but it also proved to be a good way to avoid being molested. As strange as it might sound, people generally don’t mess with you if you look like you’re ready to beat them up. Confidence goes a long way. And I felt it, in a way I hadn’t before.

You might wonder how I’d gone six months without knowing I could fight? I’d been smart enough not to get into any. Until now, and now I was looking for them. Looking for ways to explore exactly what I could do. I stopped outside the pawn shop again, wondering how that ceremonial sword would feel in my hands.

Nah. Nobody used swords these days. I’d just gone to a lot of self defense classes. But I knew in my heart that wasn’t it.

The horn. It was there again, then gone, but I knew now it was just…something to distract me. Maybe something intentionally to drive me crazy, not in the literal mental insanity sense, but in the sense of making me not think straight, want to hurt things. If that was the case, it had succeeded. I sure as heck wanted to hurt things. And didn’t particularly care if they hurt me back.

Tyr’s rune.

Justice. I toyed with the idea of being a vigilante for a moment, but this was the real world. People who tried that kind of thing usually got yelled at by the cops at best, arrested at worst. There were a few who’d gained a sort of local notoriety and were tolerated.

Reals, they called them. Real superheroes. And I toyed with it, because it would be more productive than wandering through Northeast at night half hoping somebody would try to mug me.

Somebody had tried to kill me. That meant I was important in some way I couldn’t remember. Somebody would try again, and I knew who I needed to talk to.

Somebody who might know how to deal with Mr. Otter.