Blue Cape, Big City, Zero Chill

Woodland Metropolis never slept — not really.

Even at breakfast time, the city hummed and honked and buzzed with the kind of cheerful chaos only a place full of humanoid deer and humans could produce. Commuters with antlers ducked under awnings. Coffee cups steamed on every corner. Somewhere below, a taxi driver leaned on his horn for absolutely no reason.

And high above it all, Super Darlene was already on patrol.

Her red cape snapped behind her as she banked left over the skyline, her big brown eyes scanning rooftops with practiced calm. She was having a perfectly ordinary Tuesday. Which, for her, meant she'd already stopped a runaway vegetable truck and caught a kid's balloon before eight o'clock.

"Nice and quiet," she said to herself, hovering near the spire of Solitude Thicket — the strangest building in the city.

It was a fortress built to look like a wild tangle of branches and thorns, but made entirely of dark steel and tinted glass. Nobody went in. Nobody came out. At least, nobody normal.

Darlene tilted her head.

A faint blue flash pulsed from somewhere deep inside the Thicket.

She frowned.

"That's new."

Blue Flash, Wrong Address

Darlene didn't wait long.

She pressed her palm flat against the cold steel wall of Solitude Thicket and used her X-ray vision — the ability to see straight through solid material — to peek inside. What she saw made her ears go straight up.

A room full of drones. Dozens of them. Hovering, spinning, arranged in neat rows like an army waiting for orders. And in the middle of it all, a tall humanoid deer in a sharp silver coat was typing furiously at a glowing control panel.

Darlene had seen enough.

She activated her teleport — a split-second ability that let her jump from one spot to another in a blink — aiming for the room just inside the wall.

There was a loud crack, like a thunderclap inside a tin can.

A blinding flash of blue light swallowed everything.

Then — nothing.

No room. No drones. No control panel.

Darlene blinked.

She was standing in a bedroom she had never seen before, wearing a silver coat that was not hers, looking into a mirror that showed someone who was absolutely, completely, definitely not her.