
Arjun's problem was that he could never leave well enough
alone. When something bothered him, he just kept picking at
it. It had landed him in hot water more times than he could
count, but somehow he never learned. Ever since Ken Nassau
aka Cosmic Crasher had helped him get to the bottom of some
recurrent hauntings, Arjun had been wondering why one of the
heroes who had gotten their powers in the same event as Ken
was so much stronger than the others.

The Cosmic heroes were B and C listers, with the obvious
exception of Anna Li aka Cosmic Valkyrie. Anna wasn't just
strong, she was terrifying so, one of the small handful of
individuals who could plausibly take on a tier 1 military
on their own. Along with people like Crash and Side Eye
she was a reminder that that there was only so much ordinary
people could do in the face of metahumans. Fortunately for
the world, more people at that level had chosen to stand
on the side of good, or at least the side of order. Any who
didn't had been put down, some, like Ice Cold Killer by
Cosmic Valkyrie herself, though most had found themselves
at the receiving end of one of Side Eye's monogrammed
bullets. Questioning the idea that people like Cosmic
Valkyrie wanted to do anything but protect the world was
crazy. Even if it was true, what could you do against
that kind of power? Arjun knew he had no business poking
his nose into waters that deep, but the thing was, there
were just a few things about the Cosmic Meteor origin story
that didn't add up. When he'd started asking Ken about
his classmates who had died shortly after getting their
powers, murdered by a mysterious villain called Desiccation
by the press due to the state the killer's victims were
left in, Ken had grown uncomfortable, and the Cross of
Righteousness grew warm against his wrist, urging him to
smite the liar.

Now, days later Arjun was going through old year books in
the Harding High archives.
