The sky was clear and blue, along with huge fluffy clouds floating in the air peacefully. The sun shone brightly down at the city below, bringing the perfect weather for a lazy Sunday for the people to lounge around and relax. 

Most people during this day in the week were off from work or from school, their main priorities in just being able to take a break from their normally busy schedules. 

All around the city, you could see individuals doing various things from biking outside onto the empty streets with their friends to screeching as kids played in their pools, splashing each other in obvious glee. And others chose to stay in and catch up on their missed favorite television shows or went to simply talk on the phone.

It was a normal peaceful Sunday. 

Then a sudden yell ripped through the peace, bringing attention to the scene below.

Near an abandoned set of buildings, a blue-suited tall girl could be clearly seen grabbing a man with one arm and unapologetically throwing him into the side of one of the buildings, hard. Her eyes were narrowed, face emotionless as she stalked after the gang of men advancing towards her with makeshift varying metal bars for weapons. 

Not too far from her, stood a shorter, blonde grinning girl dressed in a white and light grey suit. In just the blink of an eye, the girl seemingly duplicated multiple times over, until a whole army of look-alikes surrounded her. They all flashed a wild-like grin at the awaiting men before sprinting forward all at once. 

It turned out that in the messed up reality that they call theirs, superpowers existed despite how utterly ridiculous it sounded, and of course it led to a world filled with superheroes and the clichéd villains of society. However, not everyone was born with abilities; it was a rare occurrence and even then, there were drawbacks that came with them.  

Though the men they were currently fighting were far from the label of a ‘super villain’ and instead leaned towards the category of ‘dumb and powerless’ criminals. It was what it was. 

The tall girl, Tzuyu or better known to the public as ‘Invicta,’ threw a hard punch at a big bearded man, completely knocking him out and sending him flying a few feet back into the gravel. 

Tzuyu was blessed with super strength, that which exceeded a normal human being’s abilities. That meant she could most likely break a person’s bones with ease, so much as with a pinky touch if she wanted to. The only problem she faced was stamina-wise; she got exhausted quickly after using her powers and would need to take a rest immediately after or else she would collapse and black out for hours. The time it took for exhaustion to hit her and how long she would be passed out for also depended on the level to which she exerted her strength, such that using it in a small amount to open something like a pickle jar wouldn’t have an effect on her, compared to if she tried to lift a two-ton car by herself. Tzuyu had actually tested the circumstances and had found that if she attempted to lift a car, she would more or less be gone for a whole day. 

That was why if Tzuyu couldn’t be seen fighting off any criminals, she was probably tucked into her bed, sleeping soundly. 

Another man, this time with a mohawk and covered in tattoos, ran at Tzuyu with a loud yell while the tall girl let out an inaudible sigh under her breath. Once the mohawk guy was close enough, Tzuyu landed a punch right into his abdomen that left him wheezing and caused the man to grunt, falling to his knees in front of her as she gazed at him in disdain. Promptly after, Tzuyu delivered a kick to his chest, his body thumping down flat onto the ground as his eyes rolled to the back of his head. 

Meanwhile on the other side, the shorter girl had the entire group of men surrounded by herselves, slowly closing in on the distance that separated them from one another. 

Dahyun, who was called ‘Clonos,’ was able to clone herself to a max of about thirty, wasn’t just born with the ability to do so immediately. She instead had to work and practice to increase the amount of clones she could produce from herself and to be able to control them effectively with others at the same time. Dahyun had told Tzuyu that it was hard to hear her own ‘real’ thoughts when she had multiple different thoughts being pushed into her brain based on the observations from the look-alikes reporting to her. 

Dahyun also had setbacks from her ability, being that the clones would automatically disappear after a certain amount of time in which they served no purpose to her or died. Whenever her clones were killed, however, Dahyun felt small pain pricks depending on the cause of death and too much would eventually take a big toll on her body, forcing her to stop and retreat lest she suffer any more damage to the body. 

Tzuyu watched as Dahyun directed her clones, all of them rushing in and chaotically throwing punches everywhere with no sense of direction, hitting all the criminals that happened to lay in their path. It was strangely effective in teamwork, where three Dahyuns would take on a single man, attacking from different sides to blindside and hit them down. 

Turning back to her own group to still deal with, three of the masked men dared to charge at Tzuyu in unison, trying to pinch her between them in hopes that they could easily land a hit on her. It seemed that despite their numerous previous friends getting beaten up and downed unconscious, they believed they could get past Tzuyu and the situation.  

Tzuyu grabbed the first man’s arm when he approached her and swiveled around, twisting it behind his back and bringing him to his knees from the sharp pain. She dodged and kicked the second man's knee cap as he came barreling at her, and he howled in pain as he stumbled over himself and crashed down, clutching at his leg. Tzuyu figured he wouldn’t bother coming back up to face her, so she whipped to the left and simply back-handed the last guy, who thought he could actually sneak up behind her. She paired the move with a hard, swift chop to the back of his neck and watched the man crumple to the ground in satisfaction.

“On your right!”

Tzuyu felt the air rushing at her and quickly dodged the surprise incoming swing of a metal bat aiming for her head from the right, glancing thankfully at Dahyun, who flashed her a smile before jumping over a guy.

In return, Tzuyu grabbed the weapon with her bare hand mid-swing, much to the man’s shock and panic, and whacked him with his own bat, knocking him unconscious. She lifted his limp body with a grunt and threw him at the remaining guys on Dahyun’s side, all of them tumbling over one another into a heap.

“Strike!” Dahyun playfully called out as she too watched the scene, making Tzuyu roll her eyes in amusement.

Quickly getting rid of the last criminals, Tzuyu and Dahyun walked over and stood side-by-side looking at the beaten up men laying on the ground. Dahyun tiredly stretched her arms above her head, groaning at the little pops and cracks that sounded out, and leaned into Tzuyu’s side. 

“That’s what you get for thinking you can just rob a whole bank in broad daylight, dumbos.”

The two of them had been called over to a mission of stopping the criminals from escaping after stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the bank, arriving right on time to see the men scrambling out the door and sprinting past the building and attempting to get into their van. All of the other heroes were off on other, more dangerous, tasks from the headquarters, and Tzuyu and Dahyun were the only ones who happened to be available on hand. 

And now here they were, cleaning up the mess the men had started and created. 

Dahyun walked over to one of the men with blonde hair who was passed out cold. She poked his arm with the tip of her shoe, nudging him hard and pretended to kick his head. 

Dahyun beckoned for the clones to come over to the spot and they all surrounded his body, bending down and reaching for his limp limbs to grab. Tzuyu watched as the Dahyuns lifted the man’s body and walked over to the nearby open dumpster.

“What are you doing?”

“Disposing his body, duh.”

Tzuyu shook her head in exasperation, decidedly letting Dahyun continue on.

Dahyun frequently gave her a headache with the amount of times she had made some very questionable choices and actions, always earning her a disapproving shake of the head from Tzuyu. Dahyun was uncontrollable and often went wild and rampant by herself, being a ball of sunshine that was filled to the brim with chaotic energy that would surely prove to lead to incidents that were to be cleaned up afterwards. But other times Tzuyu couldn’t help but crack a grin at the girl’s antics. Dahyun always knew how to lighten the mood, to relieve their stress and ease the seriousness of their missions, and Tzuyu was ever grateful to her for it.

Because it wasn’t the villains that brought upon their downfall, that got to them, it was the pressures that came with the job. The responsibility they were held accountable for. 

It got to be a bit too much at times, suffocating them, leaving them in a chokehold as they struggled and gasped for breath. 

The clones yelled out, “Ready? One, two—”

With a collective shout, the man’s body was heaved up and forward, rolling over the top of the dumpster before falling into the trash heap. There was a loud thump and then the whole container shook from the force of the weight, the lid on top of the dumpster comedically shutting close by itself from the movement, as if it was all planned.

Dahyun proudly wiped her hands from any dust that remained on them and looked at Tzuyu. But Tzuyu twisted her head away to prevent Dahyun from seeing the grin that had broken out onto her face. 

Tzuyu closed her eyes, biting her lip, willing the grin to go away. 

She only turned back when she had managed to school her expression into something that was almost emotionless but serious. 

Dahyun lifted an eyebrow at her.

Tzuyu only said, “That was very unnecessary,” and flicked Dahyun’s forehead with her finger, a fake frown on her face. 

“The guy caused me the most hassle today, he just kept coming back up.” Dahyun whined dramatically, rubbing the sore spot on her head. “That hurt.” 

Tzuyu rolled her eyes, stretching her hand out to the shorter girl.

“I didn’t even use my powers, don’t be a baby.”

Dahyun grabbed the outstretched hand with a pout, and Tzuyu ignored the way her heart jolted in her chest the way it always did whenever Dahyun so much as grazed past her, only intertwining their fingers in silence. The feeling was ridiculous in her mind, her heart just needed to calm down. 

Alerting the higher-ups that the job had been finished with the single press of a button on the side of her suit, Tzuyu walked hand-in-hand with Dahyun, aimlessly, before turning to her as she felt the need to say something. 

“Coffee?”

It was still pretty early in the afternoon and she figured they had time to make a stop and rest till they were directed to head back to base. 

Dahyun swung their hands together and Tzuyu saw the way the girl’s face lit up out of the corner of her peripherals, making her feel all warm and fuzzy inside. “Only if it’s on you.”

Tzuyu chuckled, giving her hand a squeeze.

“Of course.”

. . .

It was rare that Tzuyu ever got a free day, or any superhero for that matter, where no villain or some idiot decided they wanted to blow up a building or two and take over the world, thereby setting Tzuyu on the clock to stop them. 

And even then, her free days would be crashed by one carefree Dahyun, the girl managing to wiggle her way with the help of her clones into Tzuyu’s small-sized apartment and staying there for the majority of the day to hang out or just plainly bother her the whole time.

Not that Tzuyu was necessarily complaining about it. 

She either slept or read a book in bed on her off days, pillows propped up behind her as she let the sunlight from her window stream through and light up the room. It was all up to her mood and how exhausted she was from the previous day’s mission the headquarters had sent her and Dahyun on. 

Today’s book of choice was titled, “The Alchemist,” one of Tzuyu’s personal favorites to read and reread over again countless times. The first time she had read it, it had felt like something had been moved in her, weirdly enough to say. The book’s contents were deep and the words resounded in her as she could relate to much of the overall theme the main character was struggling with in his life. Tzuyu flipped to the next page of her book, reading the lines, fully immersed in the story.

‘So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.’

A knock was heard from her window, pulling her attention from the novel, and Tzuyu put down her book onto her lap, twisting around to see the cause of the noise. She doubted the probability that it was a villain waiting for her outside, but instead a certain someone.

So of course, she wasn’t surprised to find Dahyun’s gleaming face looking at her through the window, gesturing for her to open up with one hand, the other occupied with something hidden.

Tzuyu couldn’t stop the smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

The brunette pulled the covers aside from her bed and slipped out, fitting her feet into her fuzzy slippers and walking over to where Dahyun waited. Dahyun made a face and crossed her eyes as Tzuyu approached her, the smile on her face only growing in size, and she brushed the blinds to the side. 

Tzuyu looked at her then looked away and pretended to walk away, a loud indignant, “Hey!” shout from Dahyun behind her. Tzuyu laughed, her eyes filled with mirth as she turned back around.

Once Tzuyu lifted the window frame that separated them, Dahyun leaned forward and propped her elbows onto the sill, a particular gleam that Tzuyu could spot in her eyes. 

“Guess what I have,” Dahyun said in a sing-song voice. 

Tzuyu decided to humor her and pretended to think, then answered