Parental Guidance Suggested

[Katabatik]

"It's quiet. Toooo quiet." Bobby's voice filled the hollow chamber. The lead superstructure was lit from within by a large orb of chemically green energy, which made all the shadows in the reactor core seem to stretch longer and deeper. Six teenagers stood or, failing to stand, hovered, in the room, all tense, waiting. They'd been waiting in the reactor core for nearly a half hour, except for the periodic breaks each would take to recharge their radiation shield, the thin wall of energy that kept radiation exposure at bay.

"Bobby? Shut up." Tony said.

"Oh. Right. Sorry." Bobby replied. "You'd think the reactor staff would've put some Christmas lights in here or something. Maybe a little wreath. It's not very cheery."

"Shut up, Bobby." Beth ordered.

"Right. Shutting up." The six of them--Beth and Brandon Jordan, Tony Kite, Billi Ivey, Matt Lamport, and Bobby Park--had slightly less than a second's warning of the attack before it came. They felt a prickle on their skin, smelled the faintest whiff of ozone before glowing gateways appeared, and then room was full of aliens, each several feet taller than any of the teenagers, each brandishing a plasma sword or rifle. The eerie quiet had become cacophony. Fire, both plasma and mundane, flew in all directions. Matt's voice sent aliens careening across the room, while Billi built protective ice walls around the teens.

Portals opened and closed. Aliens were knocked out or otherwise damaged too badly to keep fighting and winked out, presumably back to the safety of the mothership. When the portals finally stopped opening, the reactor core was largely undamaged, even if the walls and supports were blackened with fire and energy discharge.

"Is that the last of them?" Matt asked.

"I'm pretty sure it is." Brandon replied.

Matt and Billi both let out excited yips, but the celebration was quieter than it should have been.

"Damn good scrap. Has anybody seen Bobby?" Bethany asked.

"He didn't medevac out." Brandon said.

"Huh. That's weird. Maybe he had to go to the bathroom?" Matt helpfully added.

Tony flapped his wings and lifted himself off the ground to get a better perspective. In the darkness of the chamber he only barely managed to see the pair of spandex-booted feet sticking out from behind a concrete pylon. He dove for Bobby, and the others, seeing his haste, followed after him. Brandon was the first to reach Bobby and quickly took stock of the situation. After seeing him unshielded with a bleeding wound to the side of his head, he quickly hit Bobby's medbage. The teenager vanished in a flash of bluish-white light, but not before the others had had a chance to see him and each wonder somewhat grimly how long he had been unconscious--and worse, unshielded.

[Katabatik]

"That medication wouldn't happen to come with a smaller needle, would it?" Bobby asked the GIFT doctor. His nametag read "CLARE."

"No, sorry. It helps if you don't stare at it." Dr. Clare told him as he stabbed him in the arm with the syringe. "How did this all happen again?"

This really was not how Bobby wanted to start his holiday off. "Major Flagg told us about some intelligence he came upon that suggested a raid on the reactor tonight. We waited in ambush for them. They ported in, we were doing our thing, and all of a sudden this huge Rikti came out of nowhere and swung out with his rifle butt. Luckly, my head was there to block him."

"I see," the doctor said, clearly unimpressed.

"Hey, Doc?"

"Yes, Mr. Park?"

"Why didn't my badge yank me back here?"

"That's a good question." The doctor placed a bandage over the injection site. "The medcom only teleports you back if you suffer an injury you won't be able to recover from on your own. If the hit had been any more severe, it probably would have grabbed you. You were just close enough to consciousness for it not to recall you. You probably would have woken up on your own in a minute or two. Regrettably, the badge doesn't monitor adequately for radiation exposure."

"Yeah. Right. About that."

Dr. Clare sighed. Like a lot of emergency room doctors, he seemed to live permanently on the edge of exhaustion. He took off his glasses and rubbed the sides of his eyes near his crow's feet. "You dodged a bullet tonight, Mr. Park. If not for that concrete pylon you were lucky enough to pass out behind and your friend's ice shield, you likely wouldn't be getting out of here for a week. As it stands you've suffered a mild case of radiation poisoning. You aren't going to die, though you're likely going to wish you had when your symptoms start in what I would expect to be... " he paused to check his watch and reasserted his glasses on his face. "Sometime between now and the next hour."

Bobby swallowed through a hard lump in his throat. "What, uh, symptoms are those?"

"Nausea and vomiting foremost, which you can expect for the next 24 hours. That's the worst part. Shouldn't last all that long, though. That will be followed by a week and a half to two weeks of mild flulike symptoms--fatigue, malaise, the usual."

Bobby nodded, his head still swimming from the doctor's initial acerbic comment. He really wasn't feeling well at all. "Okay. That doesn't sound so bad."

"There's also a good chance that you'll be temporarily sterile, so I would discourage you from choosing now as a time to start a family." The doctor nudged a waste bin within reach with his foot. "I'm going to be writing you a prescription--" Dr. Clare hefted the bin off the floor, which made it a very convenient target as Bobby suddenly found himself needing to empty the contents of his stomach, which he promptly did. The doctor resumed speaking where he'd left off when Bobby was done wretching. "--for Rodonicol, which you will take two pills of promptly every four hours unless you'd like to fight leukemia as well as the Rikti." The doctor held the basket with one hand while Bobby vomited into it again. With his spare hand he ripped off a nearby paper towel, which he gave to the young hero when he was done. Bobby dutifully dabbed at his mouth with it.

"Did you catch all that?" Dr. Clare asked.

Bobby nodded, looking quite ill. His state did not seem seem to bother the doctor. Bobby said, "Two pills every four hours. Right. Ugh."

Dr. Clare passed the bucket off to Bobby. "There you go. Two pills, every four hours." He pulled a prescription pad out of his lab coat and scrawled on it. "My number is on here, and it will be on the side of the bottle. You are to call me if your symptoms do not improve or worsen. Do you understand?" Bobby nodded.

"Smart boy. You are to stay here for at least an hour, and longer if you don't feel up to moving around. You will fill this prescription at the pharmacy here on the first floor when you're able, and then you'll take taxi home--no flying. Did you understand that?" Bobby nodded and let out a groan that the doctor had, through years of practicing emergency medicine, come to accept as standing in for "Yes."

"Good! I think you're all set, then." The doctor stood, leaving the prescription and a stick of chewing gum on the counter. He clapped Bobby on the back, which prompted him to vomit once again. The doctor winced. "Well, better out than in. Have a nice holiday, Mr. Park." He scurried out of the room. He chose to interpret the fading sounds of gurgling and spluttering coming from the room as as Bobby wishing the doctor a very cheery Christmas himself.

[Katabatik]

The first thing Bobby did after getting back to school at the unholy hour of eight o'clock in the morning, which was all the less holy for his not having slept, was puke. He puked again for what felt like the fifteenth time that night and morning. After that, though, he went for his cell phone. He dialed his mom's direct line at work. Her cheery retail voice picked up on the second ring.

"GVH Nutrition, your healthy home for the holidays! This is Mary. Can I help you?"

"Uggggggggh," Bobby groaned into the receiver.

"I'm sorry?" He sensed a little tension in her voice.

"Uuuuugh. Mom. I'm sick."

"Bobby? Is that you?" The hyperpolite, sing-songy tone she used when speaking to customers evaporated. "Hi. Why are you sick?"

Bobby wasn't entirely sure how to respond. "I caught a thing, mom. I don't know. I was up puking all night." To his way of thinking, he wasn't so much lying as delivering parts of truths and excluding others. "The school nurse says it's an inner-ear thing. I'm all woozy and puking. It sucks."

"Okay. What do you expect me to do about it?" Bobby groaned inwardly and resisted the urge to snark back at her. His mom's moods tended to be unpredictable during the best of times, but she was prone to cases of the crazies around the holidays especially. Bobby blamed it on her work. He held to to the belief that retail brought out the worst in people, and as a store manager she had to deal with the worst of that. Today was the last day the mall would be open before the holiday, so he knew this was probably the most stressful day of her year.

"Can you pick me up tomorrow instead? The nurse thinks I'll feel better then, and I don't think riding in the car is going to do me any good."

"We'd planned to get you tonight. Why didn't you call earli--God. Yes. That's fine, Bobby. I have enough to do here anyway. We'll see you at ten tomorrow, okay? Be ready? Please? On time?"

"I'll be ready on time, mom."

"Okay, Bobby. Feel better. Love you."

"Love you too. See you tomorrow."

Bobby hung up the phone. He went to take some more pills.

[Katabatik]

Just like Dr. Clare had said, his vomiting had stopped and his nausea was mostly gone by the next day. By the time his parents arrived, Bobby mostly just felt weary. He blamed this on the radiation moreso than on his parents' looming arrival. He would be glad to see them, but things between them had gotten strange after his powers manifested. They hadn't talked as much. There was a clear distance that hadn't been there before.

When he saw their Honda through the school's gates, though, most of his anxiety burned away. He couldn't wipe his grin off his face as the car pulled up to the boy's dormitory, nor did he really want to. His father stopped the car and they both climbed out. His mom had cut her hair shorter than when he'd last seen it. His dad had gained five or six pounds.

"Hey, guys!" Bobby said, taking a step off the curb to greet them.

"Bobby!" His mom gave him a hug, which he warmly returned.

"Hey, champ." His dad gave him a quick hug, too. "It's good to see you."

"I think he's gotten taller," his mom commented, feigning conspiracy.

"Boys will do that from time to time. How're you feeling, by the way? Up for the drive?"

Bobby nodded. "I think so. I haven't puked in about twelve hours. Either the worst is over or I'm saving the motherlode for your upholstery."

His mom recoiled. "Eeeeew. Get your bags, get your bags." She opened the trunk. Bobby wheeled his suitcase to the trunk and tossed it inside, then took his seat behind his dad.

"Do you want to get going, or would you maybe like a tour of the campus or something?" Bobby asked. He thought he caught his dad's face scrunching up in the rear view mirror, but he wasn't sure.

"No, honey. Maybe when we drop you off." His mom said. His dad started the car and they pulled quickly away. Within fifteen minutes they were on the highway, heading west for New Haven.

[Katabatik]

By the time they had driven through Mystic, they'd nearly run out of things to say. They asked about girls first, and Bobby had little to report other than that he had a date when he got back. He mentioned Violet's name, but glossed over her description (Japanese, cyborg, brain-meltingly gorgeous, dressed sometimes in shockingly little) with words like "cute" and "nice." This didn't impress his father, but seemed to delight his mom.

They talked about sports. Yes, he'd given up swim team (partly because he had enough people thinking he was gay already, partly to make more time for hero-work, though he left those parts out) but was looking forward to soccer and track. His academics were fine. He said that he was in the top five percent for his class, which was true. His dad asked which part of the top five percent.

"Sure, but which part of the top five?" His dad asked. Bobby had said he wasn't quite sure.

His father had fussed with the heater. His mother had fussed with the radio and picked lint off her sweater.

"Grandma and Grandpa are going to be coming to Christmas dinner this year." His mom said. That meant all kinds of crazy Korean food and his parents working part-time as translators. It also meant an extra heaping of guilt for not going to Mass.

"Oh, that'll be great." Bobby had said.

His parents' work was going well. There had been layoffs at his dad's paper, but he'd managed to escape the chopping block himself. Sales were up a little for his mom's store, but there were some staffing problems. She talked about them, but Bobby didn't really have the context to understand what she was talking about.

His brother Marcus was doing fine. They were trying to get him into a math and science magnet school next year, though they were worried about that his English scores would stop him getting in. He'd gotten a B in Language Arts last term, which they were displeased about.

"It's too bad I'm not around. I've been doing a little tutoring at school now and then for English."

Bobby's comment didn't get a response. As he watched the little cape houses roll by along the whitewashed interstate, he had the distinct impression he was sharing the passenger compartment with a very large elephant that nobody particularly cared to discuss.

[Katabatik]

His parents had left shortly after getting home, having expressed the need to attend to some very last-minute shopping. His brother was still out, leaving him alone in the house. Most of it hadn't changed. It still had the feeling of lived in-ness he was used to, but that he had not perhaps entirely expected. His dad's stack of newspapers was waiting by the door to be brought out for recycling, just as when he'd last been here even though the dates on the papers were much more recent. His brother's schoolbooks were scattered around the house in piles of barely-contained chaos, and what order there was had been imposed there by his mother. There were boots by the door on a damp mat intended to catch melting snow. The air in the house felt dry and carried a tang from the electric furnace grinding away in the basement. It wasn't a pleasant scent, but it was comforting, homey.

His room was different, though. Although he'd only been away for a few months, walking into his room felt not unlike popping open the seals on a time capsule. His parents had kept the door to his room closed to conserve heat when he wasn't home. He knew this when he met his own closed door when he came to the top of the second floor landing. He hardly ever left his room completely closed. His parents did reasonable, economical things, but sealing the room off had left the air there still and heavy. When he was putting his clothes away he noticed that his dresser had accumulated a thin layer of dust.

He brushed the dust off the wooden surface with his hand and wiped his hand on his pant leg. It didn't exactly remove the grime so much as relocate it, but what was out of sight stayed neatly out of mind. He set his toiletries on the top of the dresser which, when he was done, resembled a small shrine to the gods of pomade. He set his meds next to the other bottles, and left his room to go downstairs and study the Christmas tree that had been decorated in his absence.

[Katabatik]

Bobby could never sleep on Christmas morning. Even though he was older and fairly sure he knew what he was going to get, he couldn't quite shake off the excitement he had about the holiday when he was a little kid. Even when he was little and had gone to midnight Mass with his family the night before, he always flew out of bed at some ungodly hour. This year he was up by six, alert and bolt upright shortly after the sun had come up, and he started directly in on making as much noise as possible by rearranging his furniture into a way he found a little more harmonious to the way his chi was flowing. His brother came in to join him ten minutes later, and set himself to putting the furniture back where it had originally been. His parents had gotten the hint and dragged themselves out of bed by seven, and Christmas was over by eight. He'd gotten gift cards in piles (mostly for clothes--his extended family had been informed that Bobby occasionally had wardrobe problems and had sent him valuable plastic to help) and a knockoff of an iPod Touch. It was a knockoff by request. He didn't want his family to go to too much expense considering the likelihood it would get accidentally melted.

His family did breakfast together shortly after as a whole unit, the four of them together at the table. His mom made turkey bacon and whole wheat toast while his dad scrambled eggs over the stove. They sat and talked naturally together. They ate and Bobby made fun of his brother. His mom eventually wandered upstairs to collect laundry and tidy up for her parents' later arrival. His dad retired to the living room to pore over a newspaper. Bobby and Marcus stayed behind in the kitchen to wash dishes and lob paper towels and moist sponges at one another, which they did for quite a while before Bobby's mom called him upstairs.

Bobby bounded up the stairs and stopped at the landing. He was a bit damp from when his brother had blasted him with the sprayer. This gave his mom brief pause but she pressed bravely onward. She shook a little bottle of pills in a bright orange bottle like a maraca. She wasn't upset, but she was curious. "What're these for?" She asked.

It was his Rodonicol. "Yeah, mom. Remember? I had the thing. With the ear." He lied. "They're antibiotics. For metas. Special antibiotics for metas. Bacteria don't always act normally in our bodies, you know?"

"Have you been taking the vitamins I sent you? You should be able to fight off these kinds of things before they take hold, you know." She pursed her lips, displeased.

"Yeah, I have! It was just really strong, I guess. It's probably the cafeteria food. We're convinced it's actually all cardboard-based. You should send more care packages, mom."

She rolled her eyes to return to the housework, and Bobby bounded downstairs to empty a glass of water on his brother's head.

[Katabatik]

Bobby and his brother were sprawled out on the living room floor, gathered in front of the television, frantically mashing buttons on their Xbox controllers in an attempt to slaughter one another digitally. Marcus took the lead with a roar of machine gun fire that left bloody chunks of Bobby's representation splattered and dripping down the screen. Other than that, though, the house was still and quiet. Their parents had trudged out into the snow almost an hour ago, arms overflowing with tastefully wrapped bottles of wine and other grownup gifts.

"I'm kicking your ass, Bobby."

"Of course you are! It's not like I have a lot of time to practice my gaming skills at school. Between all the classes, the tutoring, the sports, the h--hard work I do on powers control, uh, there's, er, just not a lot of time for fun stuff."

Almost blew it. Marcus would probably try to protect his secret, if he let it slip accidentally, but he'd probably let it slip eventually.

"You must be getting better. We haven't had to call the fire department since you got back."

"Well, it's only been a couple of days. Give me another seventy two hours." They laughed and went back to electronic slaughter.

"So... uh. You've gotten better?" Marcus asked.

Bobby nodded and shot his avatar in the leg, sending him sprawling. Marcus cursed.

"Do you think I could... uh.. see?"

Bobby turned to look at Marcus, which gave him the chance to lob a grenade directly under Bobby's character's feet. "You want to see my powers? Really? I thought you were kind of weirded out about it."

Marcus shrugged his shoulders and ran his character out of shrapnel range. "There's a girl at my school who can move stuff by thinking about it. She picked my pen up when I dropped it once. I guess it's not so bad."

"It's really not." Bobby's avatar exploded into a spray of meaty parts, which gave him a moment's pause. He stopped the game for a moment. "There are lots of people out there like me. They're actually pretty decent people." He gave Marcus a sidelong look. "You haven't been doing any weird stuff lately, have you? Is that why you're asking?"

Marcus dropped his controller and waved his arms defensively. "No, no, no. I just wanted to see what you could do is all."

Bobby nodded slowly. "Okay. It's just that it runs in families, so..."

Marcus nodded. "I know. I might get it, too."

Bobby rolled his eyes. "It's not a disease you get, Marcus. It's just this thing I can do. Here. Check it out."

Bobby concentrated for a moment and a solid cube of flame, roughly one foot long on all sides, appeared in the middle of the air. The heat from it was pleasant. "It's a shame they didn't want me to stay around. I could've really cut back their home heating bills." He manipulated the flame through a series of transformations, first a sphere, then a donut, then a cone, then something that looked like a bat that he made fly around the room before disappearing into a whorl of flame. Marcus' eyes and mouth opened wider and wider through the display.

Bobby shot a grin at Marcus. "Chill out, Marcus. It's not really that big a deal." He shut his eyes and concentrated on Marcus for a few moments too long.

"What're you doing, Bobby?"

"Aren't you cold?"

"No. What're you trying to do?"

Bobby opened his eyes. "You weren't getting cold just now? I was trying to siphon the heat away from you."

Marcus shook his head. "I feel fine."

Bobby scrunched up his face in disappointment. "Oh. I'm still trying to figure some of it out."

Only that should've come easily to him. He started the game back up and worried to himself.

[Katabatik]

The day after Christmas was always a slow newsday. It was especially bad for the local paper in a college town like New Haven. Yale's students made up a big portion of the town's noteworthy news, and most of them, out-of-towners, were gone for the holiday. The people he would need to communicate with for his longer-term stories were busy with family or friends or were just taking it easy for the final part of the year. That left little fit for print. Most of what Dan was working on was post-holiday filler--talk about sales, talk about the economy, opinions and reflection on the year that would soon be past--and a lot of that came in over the wire services. It left him bored and with precious little to do, so he did what any conscientious professional like himself would do when left with nothing but idle hands--he dawdled on the Web.

First he checked out some blogs he liked, hoping to find some Christmastime scandal to report on, maybe a report of lead in some Christmas toys from China or cadmium in candy canes, but not a blogger was stirring, not even Matt Drudge. Ha! He did stumble upon a report about a metahuman with flying powers and super toughness posing as Santa and stealing Christmas presents on the West Coast. That pained him a little. It pained him because it made him think of Bobby. Though intellectually he knew that he couldn't have been responsible for Bobby's condition, that there was nothing he could have done to change Bobby's biology, and was there anything really even wrong with it anyway, his feelings about Bobby's dangerous talents that forbade his blending into society made him feel a tight ball of knots in his chest. Would Bobby be one of those people someday? The knots in his chest tightened. It was how he felt failure, and it was a feeling he'd never managed to become comfortable with.

That feeling brought back something Mary had said to him yesterday, something about special antibiotics for metahumans, one of which Bobby was on. The notion of special pills for mutants struck him as funny at the time, but he'd forgotten about it under the pressures of Christmas. What was the name of that pill? Theronicol? Something like that? He dropped the name into his search bar and came up with nothing sensible, but Google helpfully suggested that perhaps instead he meant Rodonicol. That was it, he thought. He clicked the link and started to dig.

[Katabatik]

Bobby opened the door to his nice, warm, happy home. Relations were normalizing between himself and his parents. It was about eight o'clock, already dark. He'd just come from hanging out with a neighborhood friend, like he often would when he was living here. The lights were on, his parents were watching TV in the living room, the place smelled like electric heat. Even after the short walk in the freezing outside air, it was really good to be home.

"Bobby? Is that you?" His mom asked.

"Hey, mom! It is indeed!" He pried off his boots and coat.

"We need to talk to you." His dad announced flatly. The TV turned off and Bobby walked into the living room. His parents looked up at him. He noticed his mom's expression was strained.

"Hey, guys. What's up?" Bobby asked.

His dad shook a bottle of pills at him. "I talked to Doctor Clare today, Bobby. Katabatik. Which is it you prefer to be called now?"

Bobby felt a hollow lump rise up in his throat. He was in a chair. He didn't remember moving to sit in it.

"Radiation poisoning? Bobby Sebastian Park, how could you put yourself in that kind of danger?" His mom asked, her voice hitting a few warbling and dangerous high notes.

"Mom, dad, this isn't at all what you think. It really isn't!"

"What exactly do we think it is, Bobby?" His dad asked, setting the bottle down on a table with a punctuating thud.

Bobby swallowed. His throat had suddenly gone dry. "It may actually be what you think it is. But, look, I keep my grades up!"

His dad said, "We are incredibly disappointed in you, Bobby." The words reverberated in the air, heavy and sharp. Bobby felt his blood running through his ears. Disappointed. Disappointed. "You are not in school to wear a frilly cape and save the world, Bobby. You are in school to get a good education and to earn a good life for yourself."

His mom spoke. They were together a unified front. "It's bad enough that we had to send you away because of the things you can do, but this? This is too much."

The room spun. He tried to speak up in his defense, but his mom interrupted him.

"Do you think about us at all? Do you have any idea how much Marcus looks up to you? What would he do if he knew?"

They said things that threw him into a sea of guilt where he drowned.

"No more, of this, Bobby. Why can't you just live a normal life?" His mom said.

"You're done with it. You're done with it. It stops now or we'll pull you out of school." His dad said, the full weight of authority behind his voice.

"But," Bobby started to say, before they told him to go to his room.

[Katabatik]

It was past noon before Bobby came out of his room. He had his biology textbook open, but he wasn't reading it. His eyes passed over the words and diagrams but nothing stuck. Hot rage boiled in him. It boiled outside him, too. If his parents had gone upstairs to check on him they would have been surprised by just how warm it was upstairs, despite the heat not having turned on for hours.

But that wasn't what they did. They stayed downstairs, his father working to beat a deadline, his mom half absently watching television and half reviewing sales figures for her store. Mom's cheek (because she did not turn to greet him) flushed with warmth when Bobby came down the stairs and went to the kitchen for a late breakfast. He heated cold coffee to steaming and scorched the outside of two pieces of bread with an angry thought. The thought was of his impotence, of how he was utterly powerless against them. The irony was not lost on him as he liquefied a pat of butter with another thought and scraped it across the toast with his knife.

He rehearsed the same feelings he'd been feeling all that morning, and most of last night when he couldn't sleep. They didn't understand. They couldn't understand. Even if they could they would refuse. And it was such a poor decision to have forced upon him. But they had all the authority, all the power, and there was nothing he could do to convince them to let him keep doing this one splendid, meaningful thing. He would have to give it all up, his costume, his friends, the danger and accomplishment. His dad came in, got something, and wordlessly left, footsteps thudding on the hardwood, while Bobby searched for meaning in the viscous puddle on his toast, but found little.

[Katabatik]

Over the next couple of days things cooled enough between Bobby and his parents for him to feel comfortable talking to them. He was fairly certain he wouldn't get what he wanted, but he had to try.

When they both got home and after dinner he flung a thick stack of paper onto the coffee table in front of them. It made a punctuating thud as it landed. His parents looked skeptically at the pile--a quarter of a ream, by quick estimation--and turned off the television Bobby had interposed himself between.

"You guys know about the hero thing now, so there's no sense in not showing you this." Bobby announced, nudging the pile of papers a little closer to them. He'd spent all day while they were at work finding articles about the things he'd done as Katabatik, and he'd printed out every instance he could find, preferably with color photos, preferably in a large font.

A lot of the work he'd done was confined to the columns in the back of the papers devoted to heroes who help out with minor crimes, stopping purse snatchers, breaking up groups of petty thugs, that sort of thing. With so much superpowered activity going on in Paragon City, the little things just didn't often warrant a full write-up.

But there were more major things, too. He got mentioned by name as somebody who helped put out a fire in and rescue the occupants of an six story walkup that had been a victim of arson, which Bobby told them about, and how he'd helped track down the arsonist before he could strike again. He showed them the article where he got mentioned by name as one of the many selfless heroes who helped to undermine the weapons smuggling operations of a well-funded and powerful underground group of militant fascists.

"They had these huge guns that were as big as barrels and shot, I kid you not, at least a thousand rounds a minute!" Bobby said, feeling proud of his own accomplishments--too proud to notice his mom going pale.

He was mentioned as an essential component in an operation to stop the gang-led operations of a Superadine manufacturing facility, and as somebody who helped thwart the release of a deadly poisonous gas into the city at large, both of which he told his parents about in detail. And there were the numerous times when gangs went on a rampage, when an evil villain almost poisoned a water supply, where a giant robot almost destroyed the city, when the dead walked, when the Rikti bombed, where Bobby was one of many nameless heroes who stepped forward and risked their own well-being for the common good of the people of the city. Bobby had been talking for an hour and a half before his father, whose patience had finally snapped like a dry twig, yelled "That's enough, Bobby!"

Bobby, interrupted, stopped mid-sentence. He noticed his dad's eyes wide with anger, his mom staring out a darkened window, looking pale.

"I just... I thought this would make you proud, guys. All the stuff I've done." Bobby sputtered, realization slowly sinking in.

His dad drew his breath, marshaled his patience to his firm, quiet voice, and said, "This is the last thing we want to know about, Bobby. Are you done?"

"I'm done. I'm done. I'm sorry." He refused to cry in front of them.

"And you know better than to waste all that paper and ink. Maybe you should go upstairs." His dad suggested, rather forcefully. Bobby felt obligated to oblige.

[Katabatik]

His mom still wasn't really talking to him. She'd expressed, in the most linguistically efficient way possible, that Bobby had either outgrown or scorched most of his clothes, and that they would be going to the New Haven mall before lunch to find him something to wear for next year. Marcus would be coming too.

It would be good to get his mom one on one. She had always been a little less stable than his dad, and she was clearly shaken by... whatever it was about Bobby's hero stuff, he didn't know why it upset her so much, that had left her so unsettled. A few hours together doing normal stuff might show her that he was really the same Bobby he'd always been.

They certainly weren't talking in the car, so he worked it over again and again in his mind. It was queasy that they were so upset by what he did when he wasn't studying or doing homework or being in school clubs. He thought his work as a hero was an offshoot of the values they'd taught him--help other people when you can, be responsible, do no harm to others, respect everybody, not everybody is as privileged as you are. He got his clearance as a byproduct of the principles of his upbringing, but the very people who had put those principles in him couldn't stand the thought of his acting on them. It was weird, irrational, and he couldn't make any sense of it. But the normal stuff--what he'd been doing in his classes, his accomplishments, what he was going to do and where he was going to go--they could talk about still, and it would help.

Bobby thumbed through a circular rack of shirts marked for clearance. He saw a sweater he liked, but it was a little too flammable. His mom was on the other side, not looking at him.

Bobby cleared his throat. "So I've been working on a science fair project."

"Oh?" She looked up, but just for a second. She pulled a long sleeved tee out and put it back.

"It studies how electrical fields change the way E. Coli grow. I've got a little culture of them going back at school."

"Huh." Not even a nibble. She moved to a rack of pants. Bobby followed after her.

"Did I tell you I've taken some photos for the Fl--uh, the school newspaper?"

"That's nice, hon. What's your size again?" She asked. She thumbed through the racks, hangers colliding together.

Bobby said, "28 30. They might want to put me on staff next year, actually. Might look good on a college application, huh?"

She held up a pair of jeans with little bits of frayed, ripped material on the front. "Would you wear this?"

"Oh. I guess? Hey, I found a great scholarship the other day!" Bobby was getting a little desperate. Scholarships had excited her before.

She slung the pair over her arm and went back to the racks. "Really?"

Bobby nodded excitedly, glad he'd grabbed her interest. "Yeah! It's a G. I. F. T. scholarship. It's almost a full ride to a Rhode Island state school for kids with powers who have security clearances so they can go to school and not have to worry about getting a job to--"

Her face fell.

"--pay for food and stuff." He trailed off.

"That's nice, Bobby. I... think going to check on Marcus now. Find a couple of shirts, okay?" Her voice was quiet. He could hardly hear her over the elevator music pumped through the department store. She turned and left before he could say sure, that would be okay.

[Katabatik]

Bobby was one of the few kids who let out a little interior yip of glee when school reopened after a break. An hour out on his way back from New Haven, stuck in a chilly car with his frozen father, he'd never felt quite so good about the start of a new term. Traffic was light and the road was fairly clear. Grimy snow was piled high along the roadside and whizzed by too quickly to focus on.

His dad said the first words he'd said to him before he'd asked for Bobby's bags so he could put them in the trunk as the exit sign to Mystic flew by. "I'm glad we got the superhero thing sorted out while you were home, Bobby."

Bobby didn't turn his head from the window. He noticed a small animal--a cat, maybe?--reduced to reddish gobbets and shunted to the side of the road by a passing car probably weeks ago. "Yeah, me too, dad."

"So you're going to stick to your studies and look to your future, right?" Bobby nodded his assent, even though it wasn't really a question.

"I'm glad to hear it, pal. No more of this superhero sillyness." His guts twisted up at the last word. Dad passed an old guy in a Volvo on the left.

Bobby paused for a long while. He wasn't really thinking articulate thoughts, just mulling over a general feeling of pressure building inside his ears--what would his friends say, how would he deal with it, and the people he knew and the people he'd helped and more who needed him--that built and built. He called it sillyness. He didn't understand, couldn't, wouldn't, refused to. The pressure got tighter, clenching, and burst out as a few quiet words from Bobby's mouth. He couldn't look at his dad, so he addressed the passenger window.

"I'm not going to stop doing it, dad."

Bobby could feel the engine grind a little faster as his dad unintentionally stepped harder on the accelerator. He paused a frigid moment before speaking. "I don't think I heard you correctly, Bobby."

He wasn't even really thinking anymore. The words just bubbled out. "No, dad. It means a lot to me, and I'm going to keep doing it."

More tense moments passed. He could hear a change in his dad's breathing, even over the sound of the engine and the tires rolling over the slushy asphalt. "It's very important to us that you stop, Bobby." His tone was a measured sort of barely contained.

"I know, dad, but it's something I need to do. It's important. It really matters to me."

"There will be serious consequences if you don't do what we tell you to do, Bobby."

"I guess. I'll make do somehow."

"We'll ground you. We'll take your allowance."

"I don't live with you anymore, dad. And I can get a job if I have to, even if it'll hurt my GPA."

His dad seethed. "What about college? What if we don't help you pay for it? How're you going to afford it without our help?"

"My grades are high enough that I can get in on scholarships if you won't help, and I get can more for being a hero if I have to." Bobby swallowed a large, hard lump in his throat. He still couldn't stand to turn and face his dad. His dad couldn't turn to face him, either, but instead gripped the wheel harder and drove faster. "I'll make it on my own if you won't help me."

There was a long, hostile pause. They passed a sign for Paragon City. It couldn't come soon enough--though with the speed his dad was driving, maybe it would. "What if we pull you out of school, hm? What would you do then?"

Bobby tucked his hands under his arms, more for comfort than warmth. He wanted to be a small, invisible ball. "Can't. You can't afford to have me live with you. Insurance. You really don't want me there anyway--" his dad started to bark something at him but he kept on talking, his voice pitched louder to drown him out, a momentary fit of anger boiling out of the confusion of his feelings. The car was suddenly stiflingly hot. "And legally you need to keep me in school until I've graduated. You can do anything you want to, dad. I'm going to do this. There's nothing you guys can do to stop me."

They rode the rest of the way to the school--at sometimes frightening speeds--in silence. Bobby climbed out of the car with his dad, who went to the trunk and got his bags. He couldn't help but make eye contact with his dad then. He knew he cowed under his dad's glare, and the weight of the schoolbooks in his bag didn't help his confidence as he nearly toppled forward, but his mind at least was firm. Knowing words would be met unkindly, he turned and went into his dormitory.

[Katabatik]

"If I'm not mistaken, Mr. Park, I instructed you to call me if anything unusual happened while you were recovering." Dr. Clare quipped, reasserting his glasses on his face. It was odd to see him during the day. Bobby imagined him a permanent fixture at the overnight emergency ward. He seemed better rested, but no more spry or adroit than he had been on the night of Bobby's night spent in the hospital--how he'd been then was plenty.

"I'm sorry, Doctor. I really had a lot on my mind over the holiday." Bobby kicked his legs gently over the side of the patient's table. It made him feel a little juvenile, so he stopped.

"I'll imagine you did. I won't forget the conversation I had with your father for quite some time." Dr. Clare rubbed his temples with his long, stocky fingers. "And you were good about the Rodonicol?"

"Two pills every four hours."

"Like clockwork?"

"Like clockwork."

"Good lad." Dr. Clare fumbled over Bobby's chart. "Your tests came back from the lab." He sidled his rolling stool over to Bobby's side so they could look at the same piece of paper.

"Here is your powers markup before. Thermal control--here. Relatively competent. No Castle, but no slouch either, and it went both ways. Cold and heat." Bobby nodded, following along as Dr. Clare turned the page. The chart looked different, though Bobby still didn't entirely understand how to read it without guidance.

Bobby nodded. "I could sort of move heat and cold around, yeah. Trade them, kind of."

"Mhm. And here," Dr. Clare announced, "is your new markup. Thermal control is quite a bit higher. Quite. You'll be able to do quite a bit with this, I think, but it only goes one way. No more cold control. Quite a bit more fire manipulation too. You'll probably find your powers work very differently now. I'm afraid we'll have to reevaluate your security level."

Bobby wanted to glare and grit his teeth, but he felt instantly defeated. "You'll have to what?"

"Have to reevaluate your security level. You'll find it's already changed, actually. You'll want to stop by the GIFT main offices for a new ID card."

Bobby sighed, slumped forward. These last weeks--he rubbed his temples--had all been a lot, and now with this, it was a lot to take. He righted himself quickly, though, stuffing whatever he was feeling down so the doctor wouldn't feel obligated to say anything. Bobby could tell that his expression had still made the doctor feel awkward.

"Yes. Well. Right. Do you have any questions, Bobby?"

"No, Dr. Clare. Thank you for your time."

"Any time, Bobby. Do try to avoid repeats of such incidents in the future if you could, hm?"

Bobby slid off the table and grabbed his jacket. "I'll try, Doctor. Thank you."