A Morning Like Any Other

Canvas City never sat still.

Even at breakfast time, the streets outside Paint Mansion hummed with color — humanoid cats in bright scarves weaving between humanoid deer with satchels over their shoulders, while humans honked and laughed and spilled coffee on their shoes.

Inside the mansion, twelve-year-old Marcus — better known as Paint Man — sat at the kitchen counter still wearing his supersuit from last night. His red paint-splatter gloves left faint smudges on the orange juice carton.

"You slept in it again," said Dot, his round little robot assistant, rolling across the tile with a disapproving beep.

"I was going to go back out," Marcus said, yawning wide.

"At two in the morning?"

"Crime doesn't check the clock."

Dot beeped again. This time it sounded almost like a sigh.

Marcus grinned and looked out the blue-tinted window at the skyline. Canvas City stretched in every direction — vivid, loud, and impossibly colorful.

When the Blue Went First

Marcus was still finishing his orange juice when Dot's lights turned red.

"That's new," Marcus said.

Dot spun toward the window and let out a sharp, urgent beep — not the sighing kind.

Marcus looked up.

A crack split the sky above Canvas City. Not like a cloud. Not like weather. It was a clean, silent tear running from one end of the skyline to the other, and wherever it touched, the color just... left. The blue of the windows across the street faded to gray. A cat woman's bright yellow scarf went white. A passing drone — one of the city's small silver mail-delivery bots — sputtered and dropped from the sky, its painted logo completely gone.

Then Marcus's orange juice lost its orange.

He stared at the clear liquid in the glass.

"Dot," he said quietly. "How fast is it moving?"

Dot's screen flickered with a map of Canvas City. A thin gray line was already crawling across half of it.

Marcus set down the glass and grabbed his mask off the counter.