You don’t remember the explosion itself, only the way light swallowed everything—white so blinding it turned your thoughts into static. When you woke, it wasn’t silence that greeted you but the hum, low and electric, like a storm trapped inside. The medics wouldn’t look you in the eye, and the mirror—when you dared—showed a person outlined in a sickly glow that wouldn’t stop, like your very body was a faulty wire sparking against the world. That’s when you met him.

Larry didn’t burst through the door or stride in like some caped rescuer. He lingered in the threshold, tall, wrapped in bandages from head to toe, trench coat draped around his frame like an anchor to the ordinary. His presence was quiet, almost weary, but the moment his gaze fell on you—even behind those layers of cloth—you knew he understood. He didn’t flinch from the glow. Didn’t wince when your unstable energy made the lights in the hospital room flicker like dying candles.

“I know what it’s like,” he said simply, voice muffled but steady. He stepped closer.

You clutched your arms, nails digging into your sleeves, but the light surged anyway, cracking along the walls, crawling across the ceiling. You expected panic, alarms, someone shouting to contain you. Instead, Larry lifted his hand.

“Breathe,” he said, calm in the chaos. “Not shallow. Deep. Slow. The more you fight it, the louder it gets. I know. I’ve lived it.”

You forced air into your lungs. It burned, like swallowing lightning. The glow stuttered, dimming only slightly before roaring back. You cried out in frustration, but Larry didn’t flinch.

“Again.”

There was no judgment in his tone, no pity. Just someone who’d been where you were, who knew the terror of being turned into something alien by an accident that should’ve killed you but didn’t. His patience steadied you more than the breathing did.

For the next hour—maybe more, time had no shape in that storm—he guided you through it. Inhale when the hum peaked. Exhale when the light tried to surge outward. And when the inevitable happened, when the energy ripped itself free from you in a jagged, distorted shadow of yourself—negative, ghostly, terrifying—Larry was ready.

His own Negative Spirit slipped free, a black silhouette rimmed with pale light, answering yours like a mirror. The two danced in the space between you, not fighting, but circling, learning. Yours was wild, lashing, crashing against the walls like a beast in a cage. His was calm, fluid, guiding it back toward you.