Wearing the Cape

Who wants to be a superhero? Hope did, but she grew out of it. Which made her superhuman breakthrough in the Ashland Bombing, just before starting her freshman year at the University of Chicago, more than a little ironic. And now she has some decisions to make. Given the code-name "Astra" and invited to join the Sentinels, Chicago's premier super-team, will she take up the cape and mask and become a career superhero? Or will she get a handle on her new powers (super-strength has some serious drawbacks) and then get on with her life-plan? In a world where superheroes join unions and have agents, and the strongest and most photogenic ones become literal supercelebrities, the temptation to become a cape is strong. But the price can be high-especially if you're "outed" and lose the shield of your secret identity. Becoming a sidekick puts the decision off for a while, but Hope's life is further complicated when The Teatime Anarchist, the supervillain responsible for the Ashland Bombing, takes an interest in her. Apparently as Astra, Hope is supposed to save the world. Or at least a significant part of it.

Astra has finished her training and is now a full-fledged Sentinel, but things are not going well. She suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the public revelation of her relationship with Atlas has caused her popularity to nose-dive. To complicate things, the Teatime Anarchist's intervention has changed the course of events-leaving her with lots of knowledge about the way the future was before the Big One, a complete future-history that is now out of date. And just when she thinks she's getting a handle on things, unfolding events (a bank-robbery and a horrific murder) show that one of the nastier pieces of the old future isn't so out of date after all; unless she solves a murder before it happens, Blackstone is going to die.

The reward for a job well done is another job. After the Sentinels' takedown of the second incarnation of Villains Inc., things are relatively quiet in the great metropolis of Chicago. Astra, a.k.a. Hope Corrigan, is able to breathe a little, to hang out with her friends, and even to attend classes (where her professors are starting to think she is a myth). But Blackstone is loading more training and responsibilities on her, and converging events threaten the compromises she has made to balance her superhero career and student life and to protect her family and friends. Worse, a new supervillain has come to town, and it will take all of Chicago's capes to defeat the threat of the Green Man-if he can be defeated at all. When a new supervillain group begins targeting anti-superhuman groups, it becomes apparent that even the Sentinels are going to need help. Because one thing is certain: Chicago is going to have a very bad day.

Astra has become one of the most popular Sentinels in Chicago, past scandals notwithstanding, and is now the team leader of the Young Sentinels. But on their first big solo outing, the new junior Sentinels fall into a new scandal-one which could cost them the team. And Astra has a dream visit from Kitsune, the odd shapeshifter-thief who precipitated the battle between the Sentinels and Villains Inc. the year before. The dream warns of a fresh disaster, in a town Astra has never seen before and that may not actually exist. Astra's efforts to find the town from her dream leads to her "recruitment" by the shadowy Department of Superhuman Affairs, and she leaves the team behind in Chicago to learn more about the DSA's secrets than are good for her, face old enemies, and discover a little town called Littleton. Fortunately for Astra, "leaving the team" does not mean she's on her own.

Astra has returned to Chicago and the everyday life of a cape: getting kittens out of trees, training, aiding the city's emergency first-responders, training, doing public relations events, training, and the occasional superhero v. supervillain fight that threatens to level neighborhoods or at least set them on fire. Then Astra takes a hard hit during a fight and very briefly finds herself somewhere else, somewhere she's only been before in dreams and in the company of Kitsune, a shape-shifting trickster fox. Astra's friends learn she is under the increasing influence of an otherworldly realm they know absolutely nothing about, and that she may even be drawn permanently into it. If they hope to stop it from happening, they must find Kitsune before it's too late. But to find Kitsune they must go to Japan, and since Japan doesn't allow unsanctioned entry to foreign capes everything depends on secrecy. With no allies, few assets, and surprises at every turn, winning requires rewriting the rules and playing their own game. A ronin game.

Astra was done traveling, or so she thought. Benched for physical rehab and retraining, she's in LA dating movie stars (not as fun as you might think) when the Department of Superhuman Affairs asks for help catching a superhuman serial killer. When what should be a simple job develops . . . complications, she finds herself catapulted into another reality-one with its own history and superheroes! As her teammates scramble to find out where she's gone and what's become of her, Astra embarks on a cross-world journey in search of a way home. It's going to be a long trip.

It's been just weeks since the state funeral for the Sentinels, Atlas, Ajax, and Nimbus, lost in the Whittier Base Attack. Astra, Hope, is recovered from her own injuries. At least physically. Mentally . . . not so much, but she feels ready to actively wear the cape again. Which is good since, between the revelation of her short-lived relationship with Atlas (nine years her senior) and her virally pungent public comments on the current political debate over breakthrough registration (the National Public Safety Act), she needs to raise her profile. But she's better now, steady, ready for anything. Or is she? First her quantum-ghost BF Shell reveals that something's off. Hope's changed. Unaccountably and impossibly changed, she's not the Hope she was even just last week. Confronted with Shell's evidence, Hope recovers an impossible memory and follows it to the realization that she's really not the Hope of last week. She remembers three years of memories of a life she hasn't lived yet. She remembers the fight with Villains Inc., the addition of the Young Sentinels, her adventures in Littletone, Japan, and across a dozen extra realities. The one thing she doesn't remember is how she got here.

The heroes are on vacation. Really. The wedding of Dane and Annabeth (Danabeth) is over, the team has caught their villain-of-the-month, and Hope thinks everyone deserves a break from the cycle of training and public-relations appearances. So except for Ozma and Grendel (who've decided to return to adventures in Oz) they're all enjoying the sand and the sun in Littleton, the safest secret community in the world. But then Shell vanishes-her quantum-neural link with Hope and Shelly severed-and Ozma and Grendel return with ominous warnings that something is happening back in Chicago. As the Young Sentinels race to return home, the city is attacked by old and new foes and the fight does not go well. Heroes fall, and the survivors are faced with threats unlike any they have faced before. The Post-Event World is entering a new period of conflict, and Astra and the Sentinels must answer to their motto, Nos Preaestolor; We Stand Ready. Fortunately, they don't stand alone.