Magik Knight decides to give you a little hypothetical(?) training exercise.

"Mmmm," the sultry blonde pleather-clad heroine next to you nibbles on her finger. "You know, even though Nightingale is a nosy, insufferable bore, she wasn't all wrong. Just seeing the way you carry yourself, I'm concerned you're not ready for the kind of things this city will throw at you. How do you say... you're not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy."

"Pffft! Magik Knight, would you just cut that shit out right now? I've already had my fill of heroines in this city and their snobbery, actin' like I stepped out of a Steinbeck novel or something. I didn't come here to publish a damn lifestyle column in the newspaper, make it in TV or navigate yer rarefied social circles, alright? Here's a new story for ya: I'm not impressed or bewildered by the city, I think you're just making it out to be more complicated than it is. I'm here to stop disasters, save bystanders and, most importantly, smash bad guys. I don't need mentorship from someone who just started, and I don't care a lick who your brother is."

Blue eyes flashing, the pretty heroine stops and turns to look at you. You put your hands on your hips defiantly. "Alright. How about this? One quick little work out, just so I can see your strengths in action. Maybe I just want to see how stylish you look while doing that smashing, darling?" she says, flashing her pearly white teeth in a smile that seems somehow dangerous. "Call it just for fun, if you prefer... and you can decide our next move regarding this Deathsmite thug, very well?"

You sigh through your nose. "You ain't got time to go retrieve my copy so we can merge again but you can go settin' up obstacle courses? Jeez louise. Fine, whatever. Do your worst."

"Excellent." She puts her black-gloved hands together and cracks her knuckles. I'll be right back." And suddenly, as you stare at her, her outline flickers black and, in a split second, she's gone.

As it turned out, Magik Knight's promise of "just a few minutes" proves to be quite deceptive. You sigh and spend a long while brushing off a trash can lid until it's clean enough for you to bear sitting on it with your (mostly) bare butt. As you wait, up in the sky, you see a searchlight of some kind projecting a funny symbol onto a nearby cloud. You wait, and wait. The sun is starting to go down.

"Damn it, how long is she gonna take?" you look up at the searchlight projection. "What are those circles supposed to be, a mouse or something? Ugh. I wouldn't mind coolin' my heels here if time wasn't a wasting. There's hundreds of novice heroines running around and only so much crime!"

You hear a groan. Turning around, you notice the last of the rowdy men who had tried to get a little too fresh with you and earned themselves a beating regaining consciousness and starting to crawl away on his hands and knees. "Yeah, you get on out of here, dumb fuck!" you shout after him. "You been readin' too many dirty comics, thinking a girl wandering around a dangerous street like this is easy pickins for any random pervert! You think I'd be out here by myself, dressed like this," you run a hand down the sheer surface of your swimsuit outfit, indicating your barely-concealed breasts and waist, "if I couldn't take care of myself?"

It feels like hours before Magik Knight pops back in. "FINALLY! I coulda sworn I saw a tumbleweed blow through here." you say to her in annoyance.

"Sorry, sorry, it had more steps than I thought at first. Allow me to explain the idea behind the test. After getting word that their partner was in distress, two novice 'millennium challenge' superheroines have, unfortunately, walked into ambushes by groups of, shall we say, not-so-legitimate businessmen. They've both been captured, and all sorts of bad things could happen to them. Five blocks to the north, in a tattoo parlor, the talented archer Arrowlette, with the, snrrk, amazing ability of being skilled with a weapon that became obsolete 500 years ago, has found herself overwhelmed at close quarters. And four blocks to the south and two to the east, in a waterfront dock yard, the brash young martial arts practitioner, Wushu Panda, bit off a bit more bamboo than she could chew trying to bust a couple of mafia gun-runners, and got herself taken at gunpoint, which she somehow didn't expect to happen. Your task is to choose which of them to run to the rescue of."

"Uh... wow, um," you say, stammering a little, "that's a little spicier than I was expecting, I thought we were gonna do a race or something."

"I can telep-" she starts to say and you hold up your hand. "I know, I know, I realized it was dumb when I said it! So, this is some kind of, whatchacallit, hypothetical thing right? You just want to see my judgement and how I book it? Or they're some, I dunno, holograms like in the League training rooms or somethin?"

"Is it really so unbelievable that two powerless, or close to it, heroines would get themselves into trouble at the exact same time, in two places equidistant from where you happen to be standing?" Magik asks, smirking. "You better hurry. Time waits for no heroine. Of course, if you aren't up to it...." she says with a teasing, sultry lilt in her voice, "you could always tell me you are over your head in a big city like this, get down on your knees, put your arms around me and beg me to take care of it for you."

"Like hell I will!" you say, having never quite grasped the concept of reverse psychology. "You're tryin' to trick me here! I see your game! You think I'm dumb, that I'm gonna split myself and go for both of 'em even though that would leave me half as strong AND half as fast, meanin' I wouldn't actually get there any faster. Like a math problem or something! Just watch how easy I make this look!" you take off like a shot, sprinting twenty paces away, before spinning on your heel and sprinting back.

"Ah... which... which direction did you say they were in, again?" you say, blushing, realizing you hadn't been paying close enough attention to her gestures. Not your fault. That darn outfit of hers is distracting as all get out...