The ‘training’ with the pebble went exactly as expected, which means it didn’t… I wanted to scream that that wasn’t how my power WORKED, but to be honest? I didn’t actually know… the pebble just felt too big.

  “Graviton,” I finally breathed, the name tasting like ashes and childhood awe on my tongue. “The Scourge of the Champions. The guy who wiped Fiji off the map. The ultimate boogeyman for generations of hero-worshiping tweens. Hell, I learned to read from comic book fights between you and Kismet. My seventh birthday party was ‘Graviton vs. The World’ themed. We had a pi?ata shaped like the Sydney Opera House. My mom still hasn’t forgiven me for the glitter incident.”

  He sighed, a sound like continents grinding together. “Yeah, Kismet was amazing. A real force of nature. After the Cthulhian got her, that’s when I decided to stop playing supervillain and start killing Kaiju. The Fiji thing was… a case of mistaken identity, but I don’t expect you to believe that. You can call me Senpai or Mister Bob, though. ‘Graviton’ feels like a costume I outgrew decades ago.”

  “So your battles were fake?” I asked, a part of my childhood withering and dying a second death. First Santa, then the Tooth Fairy, now this. My world was a matryoshka doll of disappointing lies.

  He shook his head, a faint smile playing on his lips. “Oh no, the battles were real enough, just the reasons for them were fake. We were lovers for almost as long as you’ve been alive, and every once in a while I’d haul the suit out and Kismet and I would get in a little foreplay. Nothing says ‘I love you’ like throwing a city block at someone’s head.”

  “Ugh.” I made a sound of profound spiritual distress. “Now you totally wrecked my teenage spank bank. I hope you’re happy. You’ve desecrated a sacred, hormone-fueled place.”

  He grinned, a terrifying sight that promised geological upheaval. “Good. Honestly, you should probably just pull every heroine the hell out of it. Most of them are supremely egotistical attention whores who would do anything, sleep with anyone, if it gave them a chance to boost their rating or make them more relevant. Especially the over-the top squeaky clean ones like Angelique. That girl’s had every hole violated more times than the old New York subway system.”

  I put my hands to my head. This was blasphemy. Angelique was every boy’s dream come true. The Platonic ideal of a heroine. Blonde. Beautiful. A set of pure white angel wings that probably smelled like heaven and expensive conditioner. Sonic control—not just production, actual precise manipulation of sound itself.

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  A Class Five powerhouse. And the most beautiful, youthful face and incredible hourglass shape you could imagine, a living testament to the fact that awakening was one hell of a glow-up. She was the poster girl for hope, justice, and lucrative merchandising deals.

  Mister Bob smirked at my melodramatics. “Don’t be so worried about it. I mean, despite the fact that she’s old enough to be your grandmother, she doesn’t look it. If you really need to get a piece of Angel ass, you ARE a class six male. Just let it slip at a presser or something that you grew up dreaming about her, and she’d be on her knees faster than a sushi chef making a California roll. You’d be a trending topic and she’d get a sympathy bump for ‘mentoring a troubled young Alpha.’ Everybody wins.”

  I shook my head, still double facepalmed as if I could push the mental images back in. “No. No thank you. I will never touch an Alpha. Not even her. My policy is ‘don’t stick your dick in crazy,’ and with Alpha women, the crazy is usually weaponized.”

  He shrugged, a movement that momentarily altered the gravity in the room. “That’s a really good rule of thumb, let’s see how long you can hold onto it. Just remember, if someone like Angelique comes around and suddenly you fall in love or lust with her, power abuse is assault, maybe even rape. Even if you enjoy it, her using her sonic abilities to manipulate your limbic system is the same as using a date-rape drug. It’s not consent, it’s engineering.”

  A cold fury, familiar and bitter, washed through me. “If she uses her sonics to try and control me, I’ll pull her wings off like a fucking fly. I will NOT be used like that again.” The words came out sharper, more visceral, than I intended. Again. The ghost of Christine Freemont laughed in the back of my mind.

  He looked at me askance, his expert eyes missing nothing. “There’s a history there, I think. You could try, but it might not be so easy. She’s a highly advanced class five, and as Alphas train and live their lives, fight and even breathe, they become more durable, more resistant to damage, age, and disease. Ripping her wings off would take a hell of a lot of force. I could probably knock her unconscious with a gravity punch, but even as a class eight I don’t know if I could do that. Break her bones, kill her, sure, but tear her wings off? I doubt it. The bone density alone is staggering.”

  I was pretty sure he was underestimating the application of a sufficiently sharp, kinetically-neutralized monomolecular filament stretched across her flight path at several hundred miles per hour. Physics was a wonderful, impartial equalizer. But that wasn’t a debate to have with my new, planet-cracking sensei. What was important was the next thing he said.

  “I can help you with your energy problems.”

  I lowered my hands, all thoughts of dismembering national treasures gone. “What? How?” Hope, that treacherous little bastard, peeked its head out of the bomb shelter in my soul.