Kay sat at his computer and messed around with his game for an hour or more, but all the talk he had with Philly about superpowers and his water form abilities got him excited. It was time to get out, so he shut his machine and headed out of his apartment. He met his mom at the door and she was surprised to see him leaving so close to supper.

“I’m going to see a movie,” said Kay, which wasn’t a lie. “With a friend,” he added, which was.

It had become routine for him to not be around for supper, only to eat when he got home. Hanging out with friends was the excuse Kay gave his mother, but in truth, he was out about town in his water elemental form. It was something he had been doing a lot.

Leaving his apartment and convincing his mother he was just out with friends was one thing. Making the shift was another matter. Kay had developed a strong sense of caution on where he could transform. Walking down the sidewalk and shifting into his water form in front of the public library was not ideal. Even if the streets seemed clear, who knew who was peaking from an open window?

No, the ideal places for transforming were discrete, had multiple exits, and allowed Kay to– in his water elemental form– slip into the (sometimes literal) cracks of the city. One spot that was close to home was a cemetery that shared an edge with a series of garages that Kay never saw in use and wouldn’t harbour many eyes. This line of garages pointed into a line of shops, the bakery being a two floor building. From there, Kay could hop to other buildings around the district, high above the people below. Two storeys above– where he wanted to be.

But the first step was transformation. Kay entered the cemetery, and made sure that no one was around. The cemetery was quiet as cemeteries should have been. There was a spot near the garages enclosed by a spattering of trees. In case someone walked down the cemetery’s road and looked over at Kay as he transformed, the buckeyes mystified the scene that plausible deniability was still a factor.

Transforming was weird, but easy. Once a strange sensation that Kay couldn’t understand, it had become second nature. It was like Kay flexing a muscle that wasn’t there. It was like unleashing an energy from the centre of his body and delivering it to every limb. Heck, that could have been what he was doing whenever he willed a transformation.

“Is it clear?” asked Kay, taking one final look to make sure no one was around.

He hung his arms out and concentrated that energy from his core out to the tips of his being. His body glowed, light gleaming off his skin like he was ready to explode. Except he didn’t. Instead his body became liquid; hair, skin, and everything underneath becoming a kind of living water. Kay was water. His human clothes disintegrated and were replaced with a sleeveless shirt and a pair of pants– both pieces made of the same magical water as his body, but taking the texture of fabrics. The clothes, too, were purple.

Kay was in his water form– the water elemental. He looked up at the top of the garages and compressed his body into a ball– shirt and pants dissolving into the living water they were made out of– so that he could spring up there. Aiming himself in that form was second nature. He bounced up and ran across the garages unto the rooftops and then did a spring-jump up to the top of the bakery. High above on two-storey rooftops and the sidewalks below, he felt safe to jump across streets and alleyways without anyone noticing.

Up ahead was a street, a gap of platform that would require a leap of at least eight metres. Kay dashed towards the edge and just when he got to it, he compressed down into a ball and using that forward momentum, he sprung out like a spray of water and fired across to the roof on the other side. He would have screamed with joy but being discrete was utmost important. And also because in that form that resembled an ocean spray, he lacked a mouth to scream with.

Maybe some of the people below would see a sparkle in the sky for a half second and turn their heads up only to just miss Kay flying above, and maybe some would get a bit of spritz on their faces and wonder where it came from, but if Kay moved quickly and moved right, he remained undetected.

Landing on the other side, Kay took his humanoid form and got back to running across rooftops. If he stuck to the centre of the structure, it was unlikely people would see or hear him from below.

That’s all it needed to be, Kay and his powers: running, jumping across rooftops. He would challenge himself to jump up to an apartment building and sneak across the patios, staying out of sight of anyone inside. It was October and the weather was getting colder so not a soul was using the patios at the moment. He transformed himself to a puddle to keep low and even hopped in that form between patios, a snake of purple liquid bridging over the gap from one platform to another.

It was wonderful. He had done it a thousand times before but jumping off the apartment building, leaping high through the air, the wind blasting against his aquatic body; it was a thrill he adored. He had been at it for months and it hadn’t dulled the experience.

It was a bit chilly but the pains of colder temperature didn’t hit as hard in his water form.

Running atop rooftops provided new perspectives, too. What was it like to run where people weren’t meant to run? Up above the city streets, the acoustics were vengeful.

Atop one particular business district where clothing shops and dining places lined the street, the music rang up into the roofs– from multiple sources. There was a spot above a clothing store where the music sneered out of of the ventilation inlet. It was that song “Get Low” that Kay had heard a hundred times over the summer. The techno bleeps and growling vocals were going to haunt them until he was an old man. If that wasn’t enough, there was a restaurant with a speaker aimed right up at where Kay was standing, blaring that new Christina Aguilera. Two auras of sound in a skirmish.

Kay didn’t have ears in that form, but he worried for them anyway.

In the time that Kay had gotten used of his watery body, he had seen more of Toronto than he ever did his entire time living there as a normal human. He got to know the streets and the districts. He saw more landmarks than ever before. He had feasted on the culture of Toronto every night he could.

And it was easy to partake in so much culture when your superpowers made the entry fee to places like the SkyDome or the Royal Ontario Museum an easy zero dollars Canadian.

If there were vents, Kay could turn into a puddle and slip inside and even if ventilation ducts were a no-go, Kay’s transfiguring toolset made it easy to sneak in and out of various establishments. Movie theatres were easy mode in themselves, something he could attempt even without powers.

The problem was sneaking in as a puddle of water, reforming as a humanoid elemental, and then turning back to human was not easy to go about undetected if the theatre was packed as most popular, good movies tended to be. He had heard good things about School of Rock (apparently the movie had a Led Zeppelin song), but it was filling seats so that was out of the question.

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Kay had to settle for the less popular movies, which usually meant the bad ones or ones that were old and on their way out of theatres. He snuck into the complex around the corner from his apartment, finding his way into the air-conditioning ducts.

Now to choose a theatre. He thought.

Even in his slime puddle form, he could still see and hear. Not optimally though. Without a proper pair of eyes materialized, his visual senses were blurry and the colours were dark. His hearing was like he was underwater, appropriately. He peeked out the grilles of one duct after another to see which room was empty. He saw a screening of School of Rock and it was packed so he thought about watching it through the grille, peeking at the screen through blades of steel, but then decided no. Down the ventilation duct there was another room playing a vampire/werewolf movie with only half of its seats filled, but Kay peaked into the place and there were too many people near the vent so he didn’t think he could sneak in.

Moving down the vent network, he found another gate and glanced inside the theatre to see that the seats were mostly empty. The opening spool was still going on so that spot was the ticket. He double checked to see that there was no one around where he was going to seep out, and then he pushed himself into and through the grille.

Quietly did the sapient puddle leak into the theatre, sliding down the walls. Still in his puddle form, he slithered underneath seats, being very careful not to rub up against any garbage or stains. He found an empty spot way in the back in the middle of the row. If he seated himself far away from the aisles, the ushers were less likely to bother him. He regrew into his humanoid form and then– concentrating the same way he did to turn into the living water– let his human form return, his clothes returning with him. A human again, he could enjoy the movie.

Tonight's viewing pleasure was Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. Kay hoped for a hidden gem or a nice surprise but unfortunately the movie was a mistake, both Kay choosing to watch it and the movie being made. Oh well. He went through trouble of sneaking in and the ushers weren’t bothering him so he took advantage of the evening and watched a free (new) movie.

The movie started, the movie went, and then the movie concluded. Kay got some looks on his way out with ushers and ticket takers suspicious that the teenage boy with shades and a leather coat wasn’t seen walking in. Before they could ask any questions, Kay walked out into the cold night. While Kay was watching a movie, the sun set and evening arrived. He wanted to watch the sunset but it wasn’t going to be tonight. He zipped up his jacket as far as it would go and hurried home before he caught a cold.

When he got home, his sister Aubrey on the couch was watching TV and his mom, Stevie, was at the dinner table reading a book although Kay didn’t care enough to read the title. Urban was lying down in the bedroom. The show Aubrey was watching blaring loud with quippy character dialogue and a prominent laugh track.

Supper. Kay might have had the ability to turn into a living water being but that didn’t meaning he didn’t need food. He went to the fridge and found the leftovers in a cooking pan– he lifted the tinfoil to see a spread of pastitsio.

Living with Urban had some advantages, thought Kay.

He brought out the pan, cut out a piece to put on a plate, then put the leftovers back.

While Kay heated up the plate in the microwave, his mom asked how the was the movie was. “Okay,” said Kay. His mom showed a mild amount of interest until he uttered the name: “Dickie Roberts: Child Star.”

“That sounds ridiculous,” said Stevie.

And she was right.

Stevie went quiet but Kay, leaning by the microwave, had a curiosity. “Mom,” he said, “what was that song that came out in the eighties where all the stars came together to make a charity… whatever?”

His mom looked up from her book, cocking an eyebrow. “’We Are the World’?”

“That’s the one,” said Kay.

After walking over to Aubrey to see what she was watching– “The Smarty Party,” said Aubrey– Kay took his dinner into his room and turned his computer on. While the machine loaded up, he sat down on his bed and picked at his dinner. He took a bite and scorched the top of his mouth, it was too hot to eat.

He put the plate down on his mattress to cool but saw a couple strands of hair on his sheets. They were a dark greyish kind of brown, so Kay knew they were not from him but a gift from his vulpine friend.

Kay picked them up and brought them to the garbage bucket by his door– “You better not have fleas, Philly!”– then returned to his bed to look out the window into the dark night, windows shining through the darkness on a quiet Tuesday evening.

Could I fight crime? Kay asked himself. Could I beat bad guys?

The very idea of violence, punching people and getting punched, got Kay to shiver. The thought of Shanda and everything Kay did to protect her, all the criminals he tried to fight and fail– the thought of that incident still made him cringe and twitch with embarrassment.

Deep down, though, Kay knew that he was thrown into the deep end with that incident. What would crime fighting entail around Toronto? Would he thwart bank robbers or knock knuckles with mobsters? Would it be him sniffing out muggers and putting them in their place? Punching out bullies?

That didn’t sound like anything he wanted to do but it didn’t sound bad either. Was Toronto really in the need for superheroes? The teenager didn’t know much about crime statistics and his reference for superheroes was what he heard about Lady Beat thwarting some crooks or some thugs, but he didn’t get the impression that Toronto had a crime problem that no other city had.

Kay took another bite of his dinner. Still too hot. That sauce was good, though.

Philly had good judgment. If he saw something in Kay, the chatty vulpine was probably right.

Kay sighed and put the plate down on the bed. Maybe tomorrow he would give being a hero a test.