Greg: Yeah, I should be there by this afternoon

Savannah: See you then

Shit was so cash.

I put my phone into my hoodie pocket. Dad was sitting up in his hospital bed, having just gotten out of surgery for the bomb Bakuda had implanted in his brain, which sounded worse than it was. The bomb was only technically against his brainstem as she clearly didn't have the resources to get people in labour working order after she opened up the cranium and sealed it again, so she had gone with the much easier yet still deadly option.

Mum sat in the chair nearest to the head of the bed. Neither of them looked good. Mum hadn't put the weight she'd lost during her coma back on, leaving her face pinched and gaunt, new lines standing out on her sunken cheeks. Dad was no better, under his new deep eye bags his fearsome beard was gone, revealing a weak chin.

None of my healing magic could fix these issues. I'd healed them both multiple times with my ring of Lay on Hands, which while it did leave them perfectly healthy couldn't do anything about the mental stress.

Mum blew her nose noisily into a tissue. "We've been thinking, Greggums, that when you move to New York we'll come too."

I swallowed past the lump in my throat, "Yeah?"

"It's," she sniffled and blew her nose again, her voice thick. "Safer there."

"And I asked about it before, when V-" the word caught in dad's mouth. He took a great fortifying breath. "Veronica was in her coma. The Protectorate will help us 'relocate' to a nice new house and even refer us for new engineering jobs somewhere."

I reached over a plucked a tissue out of the box on mum's lap, blowing my own nose. "That's great! It sucked so hard when I was in Boston and you could only come down on weekends."

Dad made a wet, sad noise in the back of his throat. "Finally time for us all to get out of this city, eh? You can even introduce us to this lovely Savannah girl of yours."

"Yeah, she's sweet. I'll invite her for dinner when we move; if her parents let her. Oh, her parents are really strict and don't want her dating," I continued at their confused faces.

"In that case, we forbid you from seeing her," Mum tittered, a look of girlish devilry forming on her face. "Now you'll have to sneak behind our backs and have a proper forbidden romance. Stealing precious moments just to see her for five minutes, hushed phone calls in your room late at night… so romantic!"

"We are gonna be working together, so I'll probably get to see her, like, every day."

I couldn't see any other team they'd put me in but the Lancers, though I did qualify for every team they had speed was my primary strength.

Mum looked at me despairingly. "You'd best fix your understanding of girls quick smart, mister."

"It's all in the pageantry, son. At least at first, maybe," said Dad. "You dance the dance. We have much to teach you before you go."

҉҉҉҉҉

Savannah's hand was sweaty, drenching my own clammy palm. I could feel my pit stains coming through my Smedium v-neck even with inventorying as much of it as I could. What did you say after the obvious chattery when you met for your first date?

I clamped down all signs of nerves as we waited in line at the ice rink, taking a step forward every minute or so as the line moved. Despite the sweat, neither of us were letting go for exactly the same reason.

The chubby guy with a greasy comb-over behind the skate counter lit up in a smile as we approached. "Savvy! It's been too long, how's my favourite customer?"

"Hey, Tony," she returned the smile. "How's it been?"

"Busy as usual," Tony guffawed, drumming is hands animatedly on the counter and looking over at me. "Who's the muscles? You finally got a boyfriend?"

Savannah flushed beet red, nodding shyly. "This is Greg."

I reached over the counter with my free hand and smoothly shook Tony's. "Nice to meetcha," I said, affecting his big smile. "Favourite customer, huh?"

"Oh yeah, she's been coming here for years," Tony gave my hand one last pump and let go. "I keep telling her, I want her on my junior pro team, she's got the moves. Unfortunately not to be."

"I have to study," Savannah said.

I gave her hand a squeeze.

"Yeah, too bad an education's even more important, huh?" Tony chuckled and ambled off to grab our skates. "What's your shoe size, big boy?"

"Ten."

He rummaged around in the racks of skates, "yo, best ones for Savvy's boy. You kids have fun."

We paid for the skates and headed to the rink, finding a spot amongst the crowd to sit down and put them on.

"Savvy, eh? I like that, can I call you Savvy?"

"It just sounds weird coming from anyone else, but I don't mind if you call me Sav," she smiled at me as we took a seat to switch our shoes, her hefting her skate case onto her lap and flicking the latches.

"Sav," I repeated. "Sav, Savvy. I can't do it, I can tell I'm going to slip up and use Savvy."

She pouted petulantly, "do not."

Ok, and locked into my mental vault of things to never do right next to watch moe anime in public. Again.

"I promise I'll try my very best," I lay a hand over my heart, making sure to smile in the utmost sincere way. My parents had told me it was unavoidable that we'd irritate each other in the first few dates, and that put a lot of people off each other, so I was adamant that wouldn't happen to us. I needed to try my best to be myself, but also palatable so that by the time things were settled she couldn't just dump me for being kinda annoying. The perfect crime.

We finished strapping the skates on and waddled the meter from the bench to a gap in the fence around the rink. My skates found ice, and there was a moment of pure fear as I kicked off because I'd never once in my life been ice skating before I found my balance and was gliding smoothly around the other skaters. I was already pushing it by showing off to Savannah by not wearing a huge hoodie so I made sure to push down my Grace so I wasn't floating over the ice like some kind of ethereal skate fairy.

My Ice Skating skill came online, putting into proper context what I was doing with my feet. Shwoo shwoo! I circled around with a big grin on my face, heading back to Savannah who was standing on the edge of the ice with a frozen expression. Something in her jaw set tense as I coasted to a gentle stop next to her.

"Never been ice skating before, huh?"

I smiled past her obvious annoyance. "Nope. It's fun though. I can see why you like it so much."

"And going on eleven years," she said brittly.

"That's really impressive. Until really recently I could never put the effort into something for more than a few weeks."

"Thanks," she ground out through gritted teeth and kicked off into a smooth stride.

This must be the 'unlikeable personality' her Observe bio mentioned she thought she had. I wonder what had set her off. Did she think I was lying about never having skated before? I didn't think that was it, it felt more like she was annoyed at how good I was given her competitive personality. I didn't want to deal with this, how did I sidestep the problem?

I rubbed my eyes briefly before following my ornery girlfriend out onto the ice.

A similar feeling of controlled weightlessness as when I was drifting on my motorbike came over me and I couldn't suppress my smile. With the basics of the skill provided by wherever my power gleaned them I moved effortlessly, too effortlessly. Inhumanly effortlessly.

Dammit.

With an effort I pushed my Grace down again, making sure I pushed with only the barest fraction of my strength. I'd need to somehow get access to a place like this privately, squashing myself down into the box of human limit took so much constant effort. Skill upon enhancement upon effect, engraved into my muscle memory at the deepest level; it was why I could still be exempt from school. If I got distracted for a moment I'd do something so obviously parahuman my identity would be blown. I couldn't do gym class, because it'd be obvious I was almost walking at a normal teenager's sprinting speed, and sitting through classes would be an exercise in frustration having to go through material I'd memorised months ago.

It might actually be worth it to unmask, it was getting harder and harder to remain in the bounds of human movement as my power increased and if I unmasked I'd be able to be myself in public. The only problem was my normal unpowered, parents. Ninety per cent of parahumans could be gunned down like a normal, so feeding them two of my vials mightn't even solve the problem. Maybe if I gave them the Tinker and Thinker vials, they could get set up with cushy jobs and protection details so that some dipshit villain didn't merc them.

Even Legend kept his identity secret, his having a husband was common knowledge.

I caught up to Savannah who seemed determined to outpace me. I could tell that she was actually really good at this, so it didn't really surprise me that someone claiming to have never skated before could bruise her ego so easily.

"I can see why that Tony guy wants you for his pro team," I said encouragingly. "You've really put in the hours, huh?"

Her scoff caught on some phlegm in her throat, "of course I have."

"I meant it when I said it was really impressive, it took Armsmaster forcing me to go to the gym before I stuck with anything for enough time to get good at it."

She smiled frostily, cornering in a wide arc as we reached the end of the rink.

"Do you have any cool tricks I can see?"

She made a little seething noise but I think she could tell I was being genuine in wanting to see.

I really hoped we could get past this hump soon.

҉҉҉

After our two hours of skating were up we took a break for lunch at a nearby mall where I took the opportunity to gorge myself on cheap sushi. My appetite, unfortunately, remained within human limits. Or fortunately, maybe, I didn't want to spend my entire paycheque on food every week.

I drenched my last bite of sushi with the little fish of soy sauce, "d'you want to hit up the arcade after this?"

I nodded toward it, just visible around the edge of the food court.

Savannah nodded but didn't say anything. She seemed to have calmed down some but had withdrawn into sulking.

Maybe… maybe I would end up having to dump her for being annoying. I really didn't want to, before today she was really cool and fun to talk to. She was also really hot, like, almost out of my league hot. If I could just find a way to help her smooth over her ego we could be happy together.

I polished off my last bite of sushi, dusted my hands off on my jeans and stood up, holding out my hand to her. She made a complicated expression and took it, letting me pull her to her feet.

"I'll have to go after this," she said as we walked to the arcade. "There was only so much time I could lie from my parents, I'll need to be home for my violin lesson."

She wasn't lying, but I also couldn't tell if it was a welcome excuse to go.

"Hey, no problem. I'll be moving here soon enough, so we'll see each other again," I smiled at her. "Maybe we can even jam together, I've started learning how to play the guitar for my Youtube stuff."

"Can you play classical? I can only play classical."

"I can learn."

She returned the smile a little sheepishly. "I'd like to jam with you."

That's what she said?

"It's a date," I said instead.

She made another complicated expression that was some weird mix between irritation, embarrassment and happiness. Didn't know how to parse that, but it seemed positive.

We went back to amiable chatting after that, and I made sure not to thrash her on all the hand-eye coordination games but this seemed to annoy her again.

"If you can win, then just win," Savannah huffed.

We were playing a competitive version of Whack-a-Mole which of course fell right in my wheelhouse.

I sighed. Best to get it over with.

"What's eating you?"

She set her jaw and didn't look at me, whacking more moles. We whacked moles in silence together for a moment as her body language got increasingly agitated.

She gripped her mole whacking paddle, white-knuckled. "You might be better at ice skating than me," she said in the small voice of someone who knew they were being an idiot.

Ah yes, I had been there before. Once I had been the twelve-year-old screaming 'niggerfaggot' over X-Box live whenever I lost a match.

"I don't think it's really fair on you," I whacked some more moles encouragingly, lowering my voice. "I have, like, six powers I can't turn off that make me better at stuff like that."

"I know," Savannah agitatedly smashed a mole. "Being stupid."

"You are really good at it, sweetie," I ventured. Was that too condescending sounding? "Without my powers, I don't think I'd be good at anything, I wasn't before. I'm not trying to let you win out of pity or anything."

I whacked a mole demonstratively.

"I'm just enjoying spending time with you."

She rubbed at her nose, still not looking at me. "Me too. I know it's dumb."

"It's just a first date," I said. "They're probably all awkward. I'm sure our second one will be way better."

She finally looked me in the eye, with a watery, embarrassed moue, face red.

"Yeah," she said and held out her hand. "It will be."

I took her hand and pulled her into a kiss.