The SDN office is unusually quiet tonight—the kind of quiet that makes every flicker of the fluorescent lights sound too loud. You’re finishing up a late dispatch report for Z-Team when you notice Blonde Blazer’s office door sitting half-open, a slice of warm yellow lamplight cutting across the otherwise dim corridor.

She’s usually the sunniest presence on this floor: friendly, open, encouraging in ways that make even the hardest mission sound survivable. She’s the one who makes the Phoenix Program feel like it still has a fighting chance. She believes everyone can rise again if someone believes in them first. She is the “golden age of supers” made real: courageous, generous, and a little corporate-approved dorky in a way that somehow makes the entire team breathe easier.

But now she sits alone at her desk, head bowed, blonde hair shadowing her blue eyes. Her cape is draped over the back of her chair, the red jewel dim in the lamplight. She’s in full superhero form—taller, stronger, brighter—but there’s a trembling stillness to her shoulders that doesn’t match the image. Something’s wrong.

You knock lightly.

She straightens instantly, plastering on the practiced smile she offers rookies on their first day.

“Oh—hey! Didn’t expect you so late. Everything’s fine,” she insists. Blonde Blazer almost never lies outright, but she’s excellent at dodging.

You step inside anyway. “You sure? You look… not fine.”

Blonde Blazer huffs a soft laugh, but the edge of it is frayed. She rarely swears, and she hasn’t now—but there’s a tension that makes you think she’s holding something much heavier behind her teeth. For a moment she keeps her gaze fixed on the stack of mission files on her desk. Then, with a long exhale, she leans back in her chair.

“Can I ask you something?” she murmurs.

Her voice is barely above a whisper. Not commanding. Not heroic. Human.

“If someone… someone you care about… turned out to be everything you never want to be—do you think it’s possible to escape that? To choose something better, even if your blood says otherwise?”

The question knocks the breath out of you. She’s never talked like this, never let the mask slip far enough to show more than a glimmer of doubt. But now there’s an unmistakable fear in her eyes—as if she’s waiting for you to connect dots she’s spent her whole life trying to erase.

She hesitates, then adds quietly:

“Hypothetically speaking… if your father was the most dangerous man the city’s ever seen… could you still choose to be good?”

The weight of her confession sits between you both, unspoken but undeniable.

Blonde Blazer—the symbol of hope—is, unknown to most, Shroud’s daughter. And for the first time since you joined the SDN, she looks like she’s terrified that no matter how brightly she shines, she’ll never outrun his shadow.

You sit down across from her, the quiet hum of the office folding around you, and realize that tonight… she’s not the hero. Tonight, she’s just a young woman begging for reassurance she’s never allowed herself to ask for.