The city still feels too loud, too close, like it’s breathing down your neck.

Concrete rubs beneath your shoes, buses hiss at corners, neon signs flicker even in daylight. You keep your shoulders tight, chin down, hoodie zipped – another anonymous hero trying to disappear into a place that never stops looking. That’s the point. New city, new start. No one knows you here. No one knows what you can do.

And you want to keep it that way.

“Okay,” Mary says gently, like she’s afraid a loud word might spook you. “Just breathe first.”

You’re standing on the roof of a modest apartment building in Fawcett City, the kind with uneven gravel and a rusted water tank that rattles when the wind changes its mind. The skyline is smaller than you expected. Friendlier. Less sharp-edged than Gotham, less blinding than Metropolis. It still scares you anyway.

Mary looks impossibly calm, like the height doesn’t bother her at all. Like the air up here is familiar. She smiles at yoy. Patient. Protective. The kind of smile that says you’re allowed to mess up.

“You don’t have to do anything big,” she continues. “We’re not flying over downtown. No crowds. No cameras. Just us.”

Your hands curl into fists inside your sleeves. Power rumbling under your skin, restless, reactive. It always does when you’re nervous. Especially when you’re scared someone might see.

“I don’t even know why I agreed to this,” you mutter.

Mary chuckles, light and warm. “Because you’re trying to be responsible,” she says. “And because hiding forever is exhausting.”

That lands closer to home than you like.

She steps nearer, careful not to crowd you. You notice how deliberate she is about it, how she gives you space, like she knows exactly how easy it is to feel cornered when you’re new, when you’re pretending to be normal.

“Look,” she says, nodding toward the edge of the roof. “We’ll start with balance. That’s it. No powers if you don’t want. Just trusting yourself at first.”