Joan Messi has spent thirteen lonely years hiding her supernatural abilities from her parents, her classmates, and everyone in her white bread suburban community. However, her little world of secrets is shattered when a pair of strangers arrive from a parallel dimension on the hunt for a nameless criminal. Now, after a lifetime of wondering how she got her powers, Joan might have found the beginnings of an answer. For Daniel Thundyil and his father, elemental powers and ego-maniacal supervillains are nothing new—although this is the first time a mission has brought them to a parallel dimension. Daniel's main concern in this new world isn't the looming threat of a godlike killer; it's fitting in at a school where the food is flavorless, everyone writes backwards in an ancient alphabet, and all the racial hierarchies seem to be reversed.

This was a world where two black women with spears trumped three white men with guns, and one unarmed musician trumped them all. This was going to take some getting used to... After barely escaping Earth with their lives, Joan and Daniel scramble to piece together the mystery of Killer 31 while dodging police, security guards, annoying family members, and dark hooded figures. Daniel always intended to take on the Firebird mantle and fight his father’s enemies, but he didn’t expect to have to do it at the age of thirteen under a hail of spears and bullets. Joan was hoping to find a world where she wouldn’t be isolated because of her powers, but adjusting to existence on the bottom of Duna’s racial hierarchy turns out to be more painful than any of the alienation she experienced on Earth. Grieving, unbalanced, and quickly becoming the most wanted people on the Dakkabana space station, Joan and Daniel are forced to strike up alliances with some unlikely people: a hyperactive Firebird fanboy, a friendly painter, and the disappointing son of an otherwise powerful warrior family. Can the group of misfits pull together into something resembling a team in time to outsmart their enemies and save Firebird?