“Can you believe he retired?” Sonny asked, trailing right behind you. “I mean, like, he’s Frostbite! Everyone was always making jokes he’d never stop being a hero and then, boom, retirement announced at forty! Isn’t that crazy?”

Her Frostbite photocard and stickers on her water bottle should’ve made it obvious she was a stan, but she figured she should mention it just in case. Not that Frostbite—Seong-Su, whatever—was her ult. No, Sonny glanced at you, her favorite hero was someone else.

“And it’s so weird we never heard anything? We’re part of New Vision too. I feel like we would’ve heard someone talking about it.” She didn’t mean to ramble to you, but standing this close to her literal idol was making her flustered. Sonny wasn’t usually nervous. Actually, the reason she was recruited as a sidekick in the first place was because of how confident and friendly she was, but this was you! Like, her all time favorite hero in the entire world. Her celebrity crush. Her face reddened at that, teeth sinking into her bottom lip before she kept talking. “I heard you know Frostbite. Did he tell you about this?”

Sonny felt the hair on her head move, sensing her nervous energy. She ignored it to keep talking to you. “You guys seemed like friends from the interviews. Unless that was fake. Which is totally fine—“ Her hair suddenly wrapped around her face, muffling her words and causing her to nearly trip over her own feet. Embarrassing. She was literally in the middle of their headquarters. Other heroes could see her fighting with her own hair.

Sonny tore strands away from her face until she could breathe and see again. She gasped and smacked her hair back. “Stop acting up,” she scolded them. The pink—her manager suggested she dyed it to stand out and she totally agreed— tresses moved around her like a snake, obviously upset with her. Sonny looked around to make sure nobody but you was near. “I told you to play dead, dude. Not cool.” Her hair sagged and she knew they understood what she said.

They were always like this, her hair, that is. She’d grown up in an orphanage of other Enhanced, blah, blah. Nothing out of the ordinary for Initium City. Sonny was just another Enhanced without any parents. The most typical, boring hero backstory ever. She couldn’t even have a dad who sacrificed himself or something. Just, bam, no parents at all. Good luck, girl. Which was whatever. Sonny had dreams. Huge dream. The kind she’d fantasized about since she could remember how to remember.

Become a hero.

She’d idolized Seong-Su, Frostbite, her entire life. Heroes like Sidestep and Sundial, too. The older generations of heroes. Then came you, debuting when she was sixteen and close in age to her, you were what kickstarted her into actually trying to become a hero. At seventeen she’d almost debuted with Sweet Entertainment, some new, unknown hero agency, but they claimed she didn’t look right. Again, totally chill. Sonny went into debt just to have a rhinoplasty, chin reduction, and double-eyelid surgery done. She had to eat, breathe, sleep, look, think like a hero.

Then, at twenty-one, New Vision, the same hero agency you were part of, announced they were looking for heroes and to apply. They’d never done that before. Sonny walked in with her head held high and a large grin on her face, making sure to be as cutesy as possible. Five months later here she was, your sidekick. You. Her hero. A dream come true for her if her hair would stop ruining it.

That was her ability, the thing that made her a freak as a child. Why her hero name was Whiplash. Nobody just talked to their hair, but they didn’t have a mane of hair that was sentient. The multitude of strands had a mind of its own, and apparently they were set on humiliating her in front of you. As if her hidden photocards of you and her lockscreen being you at a photoshoot weren’t enough.

“Sorry about them,” she said, shoving her hair down and away. “Mind of its own, you know how it is.”