As Mickey drove home he considered how best to apologise to Eleanor.

How exactly did you apologise for a week long feud, when it wasn’t really anybody’s fault? Mikey decided to go with the old standby, flowers and chocolate cake. Unfortunately it was late enough that most stores were closed so Mickey had to resort to buying his apologies from a twenty-four hour convenience store.

The cake and flowers may have been low quality, but better a poor, sincere apology early then a late apology of any sort.

Mickey walked into the lounge room to find Eleanor pacing back and forth. As he entered she turned to him and looked him up and down checking for obvious injuries. Satisfied he wasn’t injured her worry quickly turned to anger.

‘You fucking arsehole. What the hell are you doing starting a fight with those wack jobs?’ She asked.

‘Well they started it. Also, I come offering flowers and cake.’ Mickey said, changing the subject.

‘You’re not hurt?’

After Mickey confirmed he was unharmed, Eleanor gave a big friendly smile and floated the cake and flowers away on her force field.

‘Good.’ She formed her energy projections into numerous blades and tore off Mickeys clothes.

‘Let’s fix that.’ She said, gripping his hair and dragging him to the nearby couch.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Later.

Mickey sat on the couch while he applied antiseptic ointment to a bite on Elly’s shoulder which managed to break her skin.

‘You bite too hard. You could be more gentle.’ Eleanor muttered.

Mickey shrugged his shoulders, the action making the numerous lacerations Elly’s nails had made sting.

‘Pot, kettle, black, dearling. Neither of us is gentle when we’re emotional.’

Eleanor, hesitates briefly before blurting out.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pried into your past. We’re all entitled to set our own boundaries.’

Mickey nodded. ‘And I probably should have answered some of your questions. Instead I got stubborn and dug my heels in. My bad.’

‘I’m just really curious about your past. All I know is that you finished high school, then you disappeared for a decade before showing up in Brisbane six or seven years ago. It’s a big gap.’ She said.

‘Yeah, so I don’t like talking about my post high school years partly because they sucked big time but mostly because I fucking love being all mysterious and shit.’

‘What.’

‘I mean I’m just waiting for the moment I can pull out something crazy and when everyone’s going “Holy Shit!” I can just be like “Oh this? Yeah. Could’a done this all the time. No big deal.”’ Said Mickey enthusiastically.

‘Really. That’s the reason for the secrecy?’ Elly asked flatly.

‘Well part of it. The other part is that most of my secret weapons are only useful if they’re a surprise or are single use. I need to keep them under wraps in case of an emergency.’

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

Eleanor sighed, visibly letting go of her irritation.

‘Okay. But, you know that if you ever want to talk about your past I’m here to listen.’

‘Aha. Ironically that would be now.’

‘Goddamn it really? After all that?’

‘Yeah like I said, I really dug my heels in. But if you let me monologue I’ll bring you up to speed. I spare the and just give you a general idea because there’s a fair bit of ground to cover.’

Eleanor sat on the couch and made a ‘go ahead’ gesture.

‘Now the first thing to know is for the past five or so years, the entire time we’ve dated, I’ve been “retired” from the super scene. Which means I wasn’t a villain, a hero, or a rogue. When you’re out of the game, other meta’s leave you alone for the most part. That said, with this Dungeon scheme I’m running I won’t be retired much longer so that’s why some of this may become relevant.’

‘Starting from the beginning, I got my powers when I was seventeen. On Manifestation Day. Which makes me one of the relatively few surviving first generation. The first generation is the first of half a dozen secret societies I’m a member of by the way.’ Mickey paused as Eleanor interjected.

‘Secret societies? Really?’

‘Yup. Though to be fair most of them are just exclusive “members only” message boards. But there are more around then you would expect. Trust me if you had a more common power you would have already been invited to one. I know about the ones I’m a part of and the ones for elemental manipulators, but I’m sure there are a bunch more. People like to form communities you know?

Anyway back on topic. After Manifestation Day the Australian government freaked the fuck out and passed emergency measures which effectively conscripted every metahuman above the age of sixteen. So to gloss over a whole steaming pile of shit, that was my life for the next six years. If you want more details, there are plenty of movies about the Manifestation Crisis and some of them are even sort of accurate. Hell, ask Captain Amazing about it. She was already an officer in the navy when Manifestation Day happened, and She’s also a first gen.’

Eleanor interjection again.

‘If you’re first gen why are you so...’

Mickey frowned at the interruption.

‘So weak? Well it’s not that I’m weak, its that my power has progressed in a less obvious direction. And the reason the first generation has it’s reputation isn’t because we’re stronger. It’s because the metahuman death rate in the early years was crazy high. People were scared. There were pogroms and lynching’s everyday. Frankly being in the military probably saved my life even though I hated it at the time. But those who survived were all veterans of troubled times and have had more time to grow into our powers.

Anyway. After leaving the military, me and a bunch of mates decided to get rich exploring metaregions. Which in retrospect, was a terrible, if profitable idea. That ended when me and most of the well known dimensionals got together and said

“Wow fucking with metaregions is crazy fucking dangerous and we shouldn’t let people without extradimensional senses do it.”

And that’s where I joined the secret society of Dimensional metahumans. Which is mostly concerned with looking out for DMs, and regulating metaregion exploitation as well as preventing DMs from completely wrecking the transportation industry.’

‘Then I came back to Brisbane and worked some low paid entry level jobs, while ignoring the whole meta scene. That lasted about a year, and then we met at that stage play slash opera thing.

And that’s pretty much my whole sordid history. You know minus the horrible, awful details. And I only talk about those when drunk and it’s less talking and more incoherent sobbing.’

Elly got up and retrieved a notepad and pen from the kitchen and made a list of questions.

‘I have questions.’

‘Okie dokie. Some things I won’t answer because I really don’t want to, and some things are other peoples secrets or are classified.’ Mickey said, making a ‘Go ahead’ gesture.

‘How many people do you think you killed, that is were directly responsible for the death of, during your time in the military?’

‘One or two-’

Eleanor relaxed minutely.

‘Hundred. Maybe triple that in casualties.’

Elly tensed and took a deep breath.

‘Holy shit. Okay next question. Of the people you personally knew, how many died while in service with you?’

‘Fifty eight. Well less then that in the military, but I’m including the people who died while we were raiding metaregions.’

‘Are you in therapy?’

‘Oh my yes. Two days a week since I came back to Brisbane. The family insisted.’

‘Okay. Good, that’s good. Next question. What “secret societies” are you part of?’

‘Ahhh lemme think. The Guild of Metadimensional Affairs, The DeepThinkers, The Fabriccati, The First Generation, The Constructionists, and Big Belly Banky Blaine’s Barbeque Birthday Bash. Do not ask about septuple B. Seriously, I can’t tell you about.’

‘Okay. Now you said your power progressed in a “less obvious direction”. Could you explain that further?’

‘Errgh, I don’t wanna. But for you, I will. My power has a wild card growth pattern, so rather then a linear constant growth like Megabolt, or an adverse practise and conflict driven growth like you have, I get random spurts of growth. But my power doesn’t just get stronger and faster like most supers, I also get new capabilities. Most of these are utility based. At first I could only store or retrieve one thing at a time, so it was all or nothing. Then I could store multiple thing but had to empty the entire pocket, then I could only retrieve things in the order that I put them in, and so on and so forth.

Nowadays I have total control of what I put in or take out. I have almost total knowledge of anything in my pocket dimension, which by itself puts me in the deepthinker category. Plus I can heat things up or cool ‘em down whatever. Manipulate stuff in there to the point that I can separate the hydrogen atoms from oxygen in water or strip pure fluorine from toothpaste.

I got invited to the Fabricatti because of that. Like you know the regen ray machines in all the major Hero headquarters? A engineer from the Fabricatti made the things but they needed a mechanical part inside a perfect hollow sphere of the metamaterial. They don’t have tools for making the spheres so they got to shape the rock, remove impurities and place the machinery.

In a fight, my power only makes me as dangerous as a guy in armour with a gun and grenades. But in terms of utility? I’m fucking amazing. The Army gave me an open invitation back as some kind of special operations quartermaster.

So there you go, that’s how my powers are built different. Not much hard power but a whole lotta soft power. Any thing else?’

Eleanor marked off a few more questions on her notepad, before giving Mickey a completely insincere smile.

‘Just one last question. When was the last time you had a comprehensive combat assessment?’

Aahh fuck I’m boned.