"Sorry to make you come out here," I apologized, yet again.

"I told you, it's no problem," Alyssa said with a dismissive wave and a small, embarrassed-looking smile. "I understand."

"It's just that...I'd like to hang out, and get out of the house of course--"

"--But ya don't want to be alone with me in my place, because of yer girlfriend," she finished. "Yes, I get it." She looked around the little plaza we were in, white wire chairs and tables, umbrellas in the same gold-and-white as our school spirit. I was eating a fast-food beef bowl because I'd skipped AEGIS' breakfast of eggs sur le sel, while she sat and chatted amicably.

"Ya realize," she said, her voice a bubbling, slightly-embarrassed whisper "that people probably have sex on campus all the time."

I choked on my rice. "What?"

"Your point with yer girlfriend. Wantin' to meet here instead of my place. It's not like it would actually stop us if we were actually guilty of a fling."

I felt rice on my chin and attacked my face with a napkin before remembering to swallow.

"Yer fun to get flustered," she said with a grin. "I don't see that side of ya like, ever."

"You're terrible."

"Just a little bit. But I'm also here on a Saturday when I could be loungin' at home in my jammies, so I don't feel too bad about it."

"Sorry," I mumbled at her, but she just reached forward and flicked me in the forehead. "Ow?"

"There. Ye've been punished, not ya can stop apologizin'. We've the whole day ahead of us, and I'd prefer we not spend it mopin'."

"Thanks," I said, not sure that was exactly the right thing to say given I'd just been teased and choked and had my forehead flicked, but her message and intentions were the best. "So um, I'm eating, but is there anything you'd like to do?"

She looked around the concrete plaza again with a thoughtful expression. "Well, there's the bookstore. I wouldn't mind takin' a peek at something fun to read for a change. And later on, there's somethin' I wanted to pick yer mind about."

"Something serious?"

"Serious to me at least," she laughed. "But we'll talk about it later. Did ya ever wind up reading Thrash?"

I stood up as I finished my food, giving my face a final once-over with the napkin and heading towards the bookstore with Alyssa by my side. "No, I think I've heard of it?"

"I'd be shocked if ya hadn't. It's only number one on the best-sellers list. It's about a girl who meets a gent who turns out to be a diehard metalhead...the music, and their subsequent romance as she gets introduced into the crazy world of being a metal groupie."

"Uh, sounds...weird."

"It is," she laughed, as the automatic doors opened for us, and we filed through the fancy-ass glass displays of college-branded shit for parents towards the rows of books towards the back. "It's startin' its own niche genre of musical fiction, I heard one of the biggest knock-offs is about a girl in high school joining the school band which turns out wanting to play metal and basically mutinying against the music teacher. With romance, of course."

"Well of course. What would our hormones do if we didn't have random romance subplots thrown into every work we read?"

"I wouldn't know," she said, smiling embarrassed at me again. "But I've been on the fence about readin' it, given that it's crap, but also that it's popular and I should at least be aware of what it did to be that."

She led me down an aisle and there on the end display were dozens of copies of the book she described, solid black with red lettering like blood floating above a couple silhouetted against a close-up of a bright electric guitar.

"It looks exactly like I expected," I said.

"I imagine it reads like it was well. Care to spend an hour here or so seein' what it's about?"

"Anything that gets me out of the house," I said, picking up a pair of copies as she slid down to the floor, back against the shelf.

She was right. It did read exactly as I'd thought, which was impressive given that I'd never really read anything like this before. I certainly wasn't into romance stories, but somehow everything just seemed so done-to-spec, from the dreary grey setting of the girl's ordinary life, to her absolute utterly shocking normalness except one or two endearing quirks, to the sparkling, quazi-heroic introduction of the main guy, it all felt like it was written by formula.

None of which made it bad, however, and I was a little surprised when Alyssa closed her book and stretched, announcing that it'd been an hour and a half already.

"Wow. Really?" I checked my mobile and confirmed. "Wow."

"Guess ya liked it then?"

"I...I don't know. I was engaged, I guess. Are uh, all romance novels like this?"

She grinned as she patted me on the shoulder. "Oh Athan, yer such a junkie."

"What?"

"Let's go sit down and talk about it," she said, still grinning. She brought a copy with us which she bought on our way out. A few minutes later, were in one of the campus lounges, reminding me of when I'd lived homeless and had slept in similar places a few times. Yet another reminder of how weird my life currently was.

Wait. That should be backwards. How weird my life once was. Right?

"So ye might be guessin’ what my serious question for you was."

"What, it wasn't this?" I asked, patting her newest trashy possession. "I'm shocked."

"Worse than that, I'm afraid. I did as ye suggested, nearly pissin' myself in the process, but I did it, and stalked down some hapless, innocent upperclassmen in the English department and tortured 'em with my poorly thought-out questions."

"They had good things to say about the department?"

"They did, but also some less-nice things, which is why I believe 'em. I got some sound advice I'm not sure I'll ever take on which professors to avoid and which classes are particularly good, and what I can expect from the programs."

"Sounds great!"

"Yeah, it was. And I've got ya to thank for it, so thank ya."

"I did nothing. Literally."

"It was yer idea, and ideas are often worth more than the execution of 'em. Take your credit."

"Psh, no. I refuse. I'm just happy you did it and it was valuable to you." I smiled at her and got a broad smile in return. She seemed so elated.

"Yeah, well, I just thought that if I'm goin' to be a sophomore soon, I should have my act together enough to at least know what I'm doin'. Seems silly to be in school and not even know why."

That made me laugh, which was apparently the wrong thing to do because she glared at me.

"Sorry, I'm not laughing at you," I explained. "Honestly, I don't know why I'm here most of the time."

"Yer kiddin'. Ye've got more direction and ambition than most anyone I've ever seen or heard of. Yer at the top of yer classes, and ya study like a maniac, and ya got friends while doin' it, yer not just some loner loser who's more machine than person."

"I mean...I'd never put it that way."

"But ya aren't refutin' it."

"...but my point is, even if that were all true, that doesn't mean I'm not directionless. Like, I came to college because something happened in my life that suddenly gave me an opportunity to do whatever I wanted, like never before. And so I sat and thought about it a while and considered, what have I always wanted to do that I never got the chance to."

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"So ya came here," she nodded.

"Yeah, I did, sorta. I mean...not sorta, I'm here, there's not much arguing that. I mean more like...I'm not here to do anything or be anyone. I'm not here because I feel like this is a step towards my future. I just had a chance and jumped at it."

She shrugged. "I don't think that's so different from a lot of people here."

Hah. Yeah. I'm pretty sure my situation was not that common. "Uh, maybe."

"No really. There's a lot of pressure just to go to college. Even if people don't know why they are, it's just the thing they do, innit? Do it 'cuz yer supposed to. Like that?"

"Not really. For me it's that I thought I wouldn't be able to, so I did because I could. What I'm supposed to do...I have no idea." Except be a miserable Exhuman I guess.

"Well ya seem to fit in just fine to me. Maybe ye'll get used to it in the next few years," she said, standing suddenly. "Excuse me for a minute," she said, heading towards the bathrooms.

I fell further back into the little lounge chair, just kinda pointlessly happy feeling.

"Tem, you there?" I asked.

"I am here," her voice made me jump. She must have literally been sitting leaning against the back of my chair. Ever since I lost my powers, it had been too easy to forget her, and too hard to place her. Now I knew how the rest of the world felt about her, which is to say, basically nothing at all most of the time. Made me feel bad on the times I did remember she was basically omnipresent in my life.

"What do you think of Alyssa?" I asked.

"They s-seem nice. You s-s-smile a lot when they are with you."

"She makes a lot of jokes."

"Not really. But yes, if you s-say...if you insist. They are much s-smarter than me, but s-s-so is everyone here." She sounded a bit terse in her reply.

"Nah, there's plenty of stupid people in college, I'm sure."

"That doesn't s-seem to be what college is for. But you are right, I'm s-sorry." If anything, being in university had seemed to only further mangle Tem's self-esteem.

"Thanks, Tem." I was trying to keep it short. Not just because I didn't know how long Alyssa would be in the bathroom, but also because I think it pissed Tem off to ask her opinion on things. Both that she considered her opinions invalid compared to others', but also that I should never be asking. I, of course, thought both parts of that were utter BS, but I wasn't going to needlessly antagonize her anyway.

The awkward lull lasted only a few more minutes before Alyssa came back, smiling and refreshed and launched into a conversation she'd seemingly had bottled up about her entire future plans. Literary writing was sort of a dead-end financially, so she'd get into technical writing, something she hadn't considered until she saw me working diligently at my electrical engineering materials.

Of course, she continued, writing your own novel was the dream, but one had to pay the bills as well. There was concern of burnout if she did writing as both a hobby and a career, but that was something she'd deal with, she said. Better to have too much of it in her life than not enough? Besides, it wasn't like she had much else direction to go into.

We wound up discussing the topic for a couple of hours as people around us came and went, a steady trickle of students using the lounge to cut through the building, or hold conversations of their own. It wasn't until around noon when she perked up and stood, stretching as though only realizing we'd been still so long by its ending.

"I know ya just ate a couple hours ago, but I'm on a regular eatin' schedule and found hunger. Care for some lunch?"

"Sounds good. Do you just want to hit the dining hall?"

"Sure. Yer gal might get upset if we do somethin' fancy together, eh?"

I scoffed. "Yeah, I'm not altogether certain she gets the concept of food too well."

She laughed, even if I knew she didn't get it, and we got up to head out.

While we headed over there, the mention of AEGIS got me thinking about home life again. As usual, and depressingly, thinking about how happy I currently was just kinda threw contrast into the rest of my existence, making the present feel illusory and fake. Back home, AEGIS was worrying about me, Lia was working her butt off to secure her secrets and alter-ego, and by now, I hoped Moon had finally acquiesced to taking painkillers, but either way she was either doped up or miserable somewhere in the house. To say nothing of the invisible girl following me.

I'd really thought for a while there that I could escape it all, that somehow all the weirdness in my life and suffering of those around me was tied to my powers. Now, with them gone, it felt like nothing had changed, except I wasn't the one being sent on events, instead I was sending the clinically-depressed Whitney out in my stead, which somehow felt even worse.

I had to wonder, if it wasn't really human-Exhuman relations which were messed up. If I wasn't Exhuman, and the world was still a dumpster fire, was that because I'd lived too long in that other world? Or was it because the world itself was fundamentally broken, and people just couldn't see it without scraping the bottom of it first?

Or maybe, I thought with a frown, the world, this world, was fine, and it was me who broke. People like Alyssa, Sebastian, and Darris were totally normal and so were their lives. I was the one out here on a nice spring day sharing a pleasant chat with a lovely girl and still dwelling on how fake and wrong and broken it all felt.

"My dreams aren't that bad, are they?" she asked, pushing her wavy locks out of the way of her red eyes to look into mine.

"Huh? Not at all."

"Ya look like yer swallowin' bitter pills over there. Am I botherin' ya or somethin'? Thought this was yer idea."

I shook my head. "No, sorry, just thinking."

"About yer homework?"

I laughed. And yes, in the back of my mind, as usual, I was sorta thinking about my homework. I did have a bit of a mania for my major, after all.

"No that isn't it. Just...can I ask you something?"

"Didn't ya just?"

"Something serious." She nodded and stopped us beside a grassy field in the shadow of a few taller grey buildings. "Do you ever think...all of this is fake?"

"Like we're livin' in a simulation? Sometimes."

I laughed again, realizing Tem was right, and I did do that a lot around Alyssa, didn't I? "No, I mean like...our lives right now. They aren't real. We're just pretending."

"Oh, ya mean like we're pretendin' to be adults? College life ain't for real?"

"Well...sure, maybe."

"I feel that," she nodded. "Especially with this mess of talkin' to councilors and tryin' to get paperwork in for change of major and stuff, ya realize that college is just a big checklist and the staff are pushin' thousands of us through it all. Food and housin' and such are all there, just waitin' for us to take advantage of it, and I don't think the real world is quite so accomidatin'."

I smiled. She looked so serious as she spoke, her red eyes looking at me with such thoughtful consideration. It was cute, even if it wasn't at all what I meant.

"I guess it's more like a foreboding. Like I'm waiting for it to all go bad," I admitted. "Like, life can't be this good or this easy, so it feels like it isn't life."

"Ah," she said, turning away finally. "Well. I can't speak to that. I know ye've had some trouble in yer life before now, and maybe that's messed up yer ability to see the present with clear eyes." She turned back to me and gave me the trademark embarrassed-looking smile she always seemed to have ready. "But I think that life can be as good as ya can make it, and if yer here, that means ya earned it to be here. Nobody else put ya in this place or gave ya what ya have, did they?"

"No. I guess not."

She patted me on the arm. "Then try to enjoy it. Not everything has to be hard all the time."

We turned to keep walking, in silence this time, as I turned her words over in my mind.

Cognitively, maybe she was right. I wasn't a superstitious person who thought that bad luck singled me out and that was just it for me, we made our own luck, and I knew well enough that I'd just been too close to too many messes for my own life not to stink.

But none of that could touch the unease in the back of my mind which screamed at me whenever things seemed to be going too well. It was practically a conditioned response by now, bordering on paranoia, I considered. It wasn't always right, like, I'd never seen Karu's betrayal coming, and I'd been getting all kinds of red flags about the XPCA intelligence officer, Micaiah, but he'd proved relatively harmless, just with a fascination of Exhumans.

Then again, I'd gotten the same shivers from Diallo, whom I also thought was just fascinated, and then we saw what he did to poor Moon. The fucker.

So it wasn't exactly with relief that I stopped us, seeing a familiar figure standing in front of the two of us. Definitely not relief. But at least some level of...I don't know, macabre satisfaction? I wasn't paranoid, or at least, I wasn't too paranoid, because sometimes, no matter how much I was looking through the world rather than at it, sometimes what I saw was legit.

Standing on the other end of the plaza, hood drawn against the midday sun, as though pleasant weather was something he had to ward off, stood a gaunt, golden-skinned Sino, his flowing coat rustling gently in the wind atop the mountain of weapons I knew were concealed just beneath.

Dragon. As ever, faster than we expected.

"I believe you have something of mine, and I have taken an interest in your perseverance," he said, his voice clear, even from this distance. "Surrender the device and surrender yourself."

"Oh I've got something for you all right," I said, pulling a round device from my pocket, while my other hand jammed the emergency switch on my mobile for the several seconds it took to send. "But surrender isn't in the picture."

"I will give you only the one warning. I have taken an interest in you, and that is the extent of your life's value to me. If your living proves more difficult than that worth, I will end it."

"Athan, who is this guy?" Alyssa whispered at me.

"He's a very bad guy, and he will kill both of us without a second thought. Just get ready to run."

But I didn't run. Not yet. Not while he was still standing and talking. My one and only job here was to buy as much time as possible without dying, until AEGIS, the P-Force, Karu, hell even the police and XPCA could get here and take down Dragon. We just had to survive until then.

He gave me a broad smile that showed off his teeth and didn't meet his eyes at all. "Perhaps you are thinking to distract me until help arrives? Did you think I would not notice you fumbling with your mobile? Go on, take a look at it, then. I insist. Do it as slowly as you desire."

Not sure where he was going with this, but happy to waste any time he would afford me, I carefully drew out my device, keeping my eyes locked on him the entire while. As quickly as I could, my eyes flickered to my mobile and back, and then as my brain processed the words I saw, I did a double-take.

"Alyssa...what's your mobile say?" I whispered to her, pocketing mine.

I heard her fumble and draw and then she repeated the words I'd seen on my holo.

"No signal," she whispered. "Did he take down the whole 'net relay?"

"He must have," I said, swallowing hard. Help wasn't coming, not unless I could get somewhere else with signal. He'd even jammed satellite somehow, which my custom device should have been getting. I should never have underestimated him, and wondered vaguely if it was going to be my last mistake.

"Get ready to run," I repeated, thumbing the device in my other hand as I readied it. "Whatever happens, keep running."

"What about you?" she whispered.

"I've got a new life to protect, and a dragon to slay," I said, feeling my words hollow even as I said them.