Getting powers was supposed to fix all this.

And yet there I was, looking down in the shower, letting frigid water steam off my newly-boiling skin, and crying. Again.

I reminded myself for about the hundredth time that day that I had superpowers now. I could feel the inner heat roiling, could summon it to my fingers, felt it run down my sides and through my stomach. I'd reached through a wall earlier, the bricks bubbling around my hand as I carved a hole to freedom.

Every kid has imagined what their powers would be like. We're practically submerged in hero culture. The Guild is on every screen, in every sky, fills every toy store, stars in every video game. We used to play heroes, in the yard during recess. Inevitably the popular kids would call Liberty and Steelstorm, the token girl in the friend group would get to be Crow Queen, the rest of the few would be forced to be the villains of the day. Sometimes the Human Virus, or Tyrant Rex - one kid loved to ham it up as Demagogue and pretend to mind control the rest of us (we'd all throw a halfhearted punch at a buddy and then get back to chasing him around the playground).

I learned to not pick Skyfire very quickly. She was so cool, though - flying and fire control? How lucky was that. I loved everything about her; her shimmering orange costume, her piercing silver eyes, the heat wave she left in her wake through the air. I had a poster of her on my wall, and she was my favorite of my posable Guild action figure set. But as soon as I shouted "And I'm Skyfire!" in my shrill little-boy voice, the insults came rolling in.

"I bet you want to marry her!" "Okay, if you're Skyfire, you have to kiss me!" "Don't be a stupid girl, be a real hero!"

After that, I stuck to the background. Shapeshifters who could look like anyone, or invisible heroes who didn't look like anything at all. I made a few new friends, who I told very little of anything to, and we stuck together for survival in the harsh world of grade school. When we played heroes, I even got to save the world a few times, from the dastardly clutches of Magnate or the Inviolate Trio, but too afraid to be Starfire anywhere outside of my classroom daydreams.

Now I had powers, and everything still felt wrong.

Maybe it was because I always thought I wanted to fly. Maybe I just envied that power, to soar through the air, never take another hour-long commute into the city, to kiss clouds and ride the lightning.

Maybe it was because I was never supposed to have powers in the first place. It was a freak accident, a radiation leak from a crashed hyperjet, that my friends and I snuck through the old abandoned railyard to check out on a dare. One explosion later, and three new powered kids crept out of the rubble. How was I supposed to help people? I wanted to, more than almost anything, but I couldn't help them like this.

Like what? I had powers. I could be a superhero.

Maybe it was because I never thought I'd be a superhero who looks like... me.

And that's when I had to sit down, because the tears were streaming down and then steaming off my face. The soap had melted in my hand a few minutes ago; I was caught so deep in my reverie that I wasn't paying attention to anything besides my own personal crisis.

Sitting in the shower, I took a deep breath, and looked into a part of myself I never, ever wanted to face again.

If I was a hero, who would I be? Not Liberty, even though he ranked the highest on any power level chart save for the Mythic Twins. Not Steelstorm, even though his metal creations were indescribably cool. Crow Queen was more like it - but mostly, Skyfire. I'd want to be Skyfire. And what separated me from her? I had fire powers. I'd barely scratched the surface of what I could do. I could get stronger, become a real hero, maybe even meet or join the Guild someday. I certainly didn't envy her strength. I envied--

Oh.

That's what separated us.

There's a reason I never, ever saw myself in the "best" members of the Guild. Stuck to my little group of accepting friends who I never needed to explain myself to. Dove into fantasies of being a hero rather than face the world outside my head.

Because no matter what, I'd never be satisfied if I wasn't like her.

If I wasn't a girl.

Shit.

It was a long time before I stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around me from my shoulders down and taking small pleasure in the merciful fog on the mirror. The tears kept flowing as I drifted off to sleep.

~~~

I woke up to a loud, insistent tapping on the window. Wait, what? The window? Some bird, I guess. I rolled out of bed, blinking my eyes blearily open, and stepped over to shoo the offending avian away.

It was a lot bigger than a bird. Well, she, not it. It took me a bit, but the blurriness just beyond the window resolved itself into the grinning, green-haired face of my friend Liz, silhoutted before the rising sun. Her grin only widened as my face contorted itself into some early-morning semblance of shock. It took me a minute or so to realize she was mouthing something, more and more insistently.

I clicked the window locks off, slid it up, and was greeted by an overwhelming blast of compressed noise. "HEY BRIAN HOW ARE YOU JUST WONDERING IF YOU WANTED TO COME WITH ME TO SCHOOL JEN AND TAM ARE BOTH SUPER JAZZED ABOUT THEIR POWERS LIKE WOW BY THE WAY I CAN DO THIS HEY CHECK IT OUT-"

I croaked open a greeting "Hi. Liz. It's... I dunno, like six? AM. Quiet. Please."

"Oh, sorry!" She'd cranked down to a more tolerable volume, though the neighbours could probably still hear her if they were up. Thank god at least my parents were heavy sleepers. "I just - it's a lot, ok? And I couldn't sleep because I wanted to see what I could do now (though part of it's probably also the double espresso) but now since I think we're all awake we can go and try them out before class starts! The two of us have first period off anyway and it's not like Tam hasn't skipped more than their fair share of classes before."

"Ugh. Uh, yeah, I guess? It's too early for me to disagree. Just lemme get breakfast first."

"Covered that! Sausage, egg, and cheese in the car!"

"Wait, what do you even do? Stick to walls or something? Fly?"

"Waaaaaaaay cooler. Here, hold this and take a few steps back!" She grabbed a pencil off my desk, pushing several stacks of post-its and old worksheets off it in the process. Well. I'd clean that up later.

I stepped over more piles of detritus over to the door-side corner of my room, then turned to face Liz. Her grin still hadn't disappeared. "Ok! Now chuck it at me-"

I did, and it flew over her shoulder, landing squarely in my laundry hamper. "Huh. So... you make my aim suck?"

"No!" she pouted. "I just wasn't ready. Your aim sucks normally, don't worry. Here, next time wait for me to count down." She fished it out of my laundry (a fate worse than many kinds of death) and tossed it back.

"Ok, Bri, take two! On my mark - three, two, one, THROW!" I fastballed it at her chest, maybe a little harder than warranted for the aim comment...

And a bright blue rectangle the size of a sheet of paper flicked into existence right in its path. The pencil stopped dead, and dropped straight to the floor.

"Whoa. Cool."

"I know, right? I can make them bigger, too! That's how I got up here actually, watch this." She flicked her wrist, and the shield she'd blocked the pencil with winked out of existence. Two new shields appeared, parallel to the floor, like... stairs? Liz hopped up them and hopped a few times on the higher platform. She reached up and tapped the ceiling a few times for emphasis. "Boom! Instant staircase. I can't make many of these at once, but they hold my weight easy. I actually have no idea how much they can take? That's something I want to test out... Hey, right, we're heading out. C'mon, get some clothes on and follow me."

"Okay - but I'm not coming out the window."

"Don't trust me? Fine, go down the stairs like a boring person." Liz stuck her tongue out at me, then turned and shimmied out the open window. I sighed, and got ready for whatever lay ahead.