Important-ish question: Do I just keep posting the rewrite in this fic, make a new one for the rewrite, delete the old chapters and keep writing in this fic, or move the old chapters to a new fic and then keep using this one?

Have you ever tried to describe sight to a blind person?

It's like there's something fundamentally missing in the description. How do you describe the colour blue to someone that's never seen it? That's what my powers were like. Or as close a description as I could give. Looking back at my memories beforehand, something about them was just wrong, like I was deaf to something loud and obvious. There aren't enough words in all the languages in the world to describe what it was like to just wake up in the morning and have everything change.

"I'm just saying, if Über and Leet actually pulled themselves together they could do a lot of good!"

I could see every inch of the school corridor around me, and the bustling students pressing into me on all sides. No not see, feel. Not that I could fully understand it, even without the end of school crowds of Arcadia the sheer deluge of information was overwhelming. Basics were fine, distance, movement, I'd even managed to get a handle on electricity and energy over the week I'd had my powers.

"That's like saying if Hookwolf wasn't a Nazi he'd be a great guy. It's not as if their 'subject matter' is the only issue they have, or even the biggest."

It was when it got down to a smaller level that it got harder. I could get the molecules that objects are made of without much worry, and it was getting easier every day, but any further than that was pushing it. Let alone anything alive. I still remembered the first time I tried to look at someone with my new senses, the splitting headache it had given me hadn't gone away for hours.

"Hookwolf is a murderer and a monster. What's the worst thing the Dumbass Duo did?"

That was yesterday morning, the morning I got my powers; where the sudden influx of new seared its way into my mind in the most painful experience I'd ever had. I hadn't been able to go to school (not a negative mind you) or even get out of bed (much worse). Did everyone else's, all the other Capes', powers fuck them over too? I couldn't imagine any of the Triumvirate bedridden by their powers like mine had done to me. It was half a miracle that I'd been able to convince my Aunt not to take me to the hospital, though she'd insisted on taking the day off from work to look after me. Luckily I'd been able to slip away this morning while she stepped out to make a phone call, business again, though I was half surprised she hadn't called the school once she realised I'd disappeared. Or the police, yeah thinking about it, it could've gone a lot worse. Must have figured I was fine, I guess.

"Publicly assaulted some hookers just for attention? I swear you've got the memory of a goldfish as soon as it's convenient for you."

My powers. It was still weird to think of them like that, almost like they belonged to a different person. Definitely not me. The most interaction I'd ever had with the Cape world was accidentally running into one of the Dallon sisters or their Pelham cousin in the corridors. It was something completely different, separated by an invisible but distinct barrier, even if Arcadia blurred the lines a little.

"I wasn't even arguing their morals! Look at all the stuff they've pulled out, those robots were cool, seemed pretty strong too. They beat Armsmaster, I mean properly smacked him around like he was a toy. Think about what else they could do if they weren't busy making stupid prank videos."

Now, with my powers, I'd barely been able to focus at all. That line gone completely in the wake of information and how I could twist the world around me. Just a little push would give me fire, basic and easy. I'd felt my Aunt turn on the gas stove in the other room, memorized the feeling of energy and warmth. Funny how just a little twist to the fabric of reality suddenly went from idle daydreams to no big deal overnight. Not that setting off all the fire alarms in the school sounded like a good idea to me, it was just a cool option to have. Did that make me sound crazy?

"It was a stalemate until the robots broke, as usual for those clowns. Everyone knows Leet's backed himself into a corner with his power, he messed up his chances to do anything worthwhile except be a little comedic relief… which he also sucks at. Seriously, beating up hookers?"

The whole day had passed in a blur, the teacher's voices droning in through one ear and out the other. My attention had been on them, but not for what they said but for how the sound passed through the air. It was really fascinating, feeling the vibrations. Again, just like with the stove was with fire I thought the effect would be easy to replicate. I hadn't been able to practice yet, not with fire or sound, it was too busy and if there was one thing everyone new about almost all Capes it was how important their secret identities were to them.

"Whatever man, like you don't enjoy watching their streams. I know I've seen some of their highlights saved on your phone."

I wasn't trying to get discovered the day after I… triggered? Looking it up online triggers were mainly thought to happen when someone was put under a lot of stress or succeeded at something they'd struggled with. Others thought that just being put in danger was enough. Basically, it was all a mess where everyone had their own opinion on what was right and all of them were probably wrong. So just another topic on the internet. Either way nothing significant had happened to me that could've caused it…

"I appreciate the production quality."

Even in a normal school practicing with powers would be monumentally stupid, unless your surname was Dallon or Pelham. Though they also weren't strictly meant to use them either, that seemingly stop Victoria. It was a common sight to see her gliding around when she though no staff were looking. In Arcadia, where on top of those three I'd have to worry about the Wards, it went from blockheaded to suicidal. Even if, for obvious reasons, no-one had ever been able to confirm that they studied here, it was pretty much agreed upon that they did.

"Yeah, I'm sure. The 'production quality'. You know I've seen you watching their Pokémon highlights right? I don't think you were focusing on the production when you re-watched Dauntless getting 'Tackled' into the wall how many times in a row?"

No, I needed somewhere to go to practice properly. I'd been too scared about setting off the fire alarm at home to do much more than conjure the smallest embers. Somewhere away from where just anyone could find me and, much more importantly, away from where my Aunt could find me too. I didn't even want to think about how she'd react to me being a Cape, if anyone would have reason to hate them then it would be her.

"Going to weigh in on this at all Myles?"

Huh?

"Huh?

I looked up, to meet the concerned brown eyes of George. They peered at me, worry swimming through them over the thin rims of a pair of glasses that sat perched precariously low on his nose. He was tall and thinner than me, paler too. An unpleasant person could say that he looked like he'd been stretched out, even his face was slightly flat. I would say that he was wiry instead, and much smarter than me. He had to step to the side as another group almost walked through him.

On my other side, Isaac glared at anyone that tried to push past him, not that it proved very effective on most of them. The Hispanic boy's eyes moved back towards me though every time, just as filled with concern as George's, if hidden behind dry amusement. He stood at around the same height as me, which is to say about average. Before yesterday, 'average' would have described me to a tee.

"You've been out of it all day, you sure you're feeling better?" George asked, even as he had to again step out of the way of another kid.

My attention momentarily followed the passing student. I didn't know her but could see everything in her bag too. Textbooks, the paper they were made up from was easy enough to copy and possibly even the ink on them too. Food that had just started to go off, an apple I think?

"Myles," he cut in again and I snapped back to him, purposefully clamping down on my senses until all the information dulled into an only mildly distracting buzz, "Maybe you shouldn't have come in today."

I shrugged and adjusted the strap of my backpack I had slung over my shoulder.

"Bit late for that now, besides I told you I feel fine."

Isaac snorted derisively, giving me a look that just screamed 'are you kidding me?'. He'd gotten very good at that look.

"Yeah right and I'm Scion. You've been out of it all day. Can you even tell me what the last lesson was about?"

Last lesson was History right? Honestly that was about all I'd gotten from it before I'd sunk back into my power just like all the others. I only noticed it was the end of the lesson and the day when I felt more than saw everyone getting their stuff together. My answer must have shown on my face because Isaac just gave a sardonic chuckle while George only looked more worried.

"That's what I thought," Isaac paused to blow a few locks of his black hair out of his eyes, "Seriously what was the point of coming in if you can't pay attention to anything.

"I'm surprised your Aunt even let you come in today," George said before I could get a word in edge wise.

"Yeah," I trailed off, rubbing the back of my head awkwardly, "About that…"

They paused for a second, before letting out a deep breath.

"Of course, I'm not sure why I thought otherwise," George said, taking off his glasses just to rub his eyes tiredly, "there's no way she'd let you out like this."

He wasn't wrong.

"I'm not that bad," I protested weakly.

"I thought you'd died in Math," Isaac jabbed, "full on passed on, given up the ghost, everything."

"Like you're any better."

"Not like that dude," he shook his head, "even Kirk picked up on it and I swear he's halfway in the grave himself."

"I'm just a little tired, not about to keel over dead," I rolled my eyes, my friends worried over everything.

Neither of them looked like they believed me, but seemingly let it go as we started moving through the corridors again, sidestepping around mingling groups of teens as we went.

"Speaking of dying, when's your next check-up?"

George shot me a grin, making it clear he was joking. I snorted. When I'd first been diagnosed with stomach cancer I hadn't been able to stand even hearing any mention of it. That had been last year and I'd long since gotten used to the frequent pains and the heartburn and the difficulties with eating and…

Yeah the list goes on.

Now it was a lot easier to joke about. Just another everyday fact of life.

"Tomorrow afternoon, asshole," I replied, easily slipping into the well-trodden conversation topic, "Don't even know why I bother. I doubt I'm any closer to getting to the top of our good old Panacea's waiting list and nothing's changed for ages. At this point I just want to ignore it for as long as I can."

We fell into a slightly stilted silence for a few moments, before Isaac broke it with all the grace of a bull in a china shop.

"Do you think asking her in person would get you any higher on the list? Like a 'same school priority' kind of thing."

George and I gave him a flat stare, and I was sure he was thinking of the same prickly girl, bitter girl that I was.

"Not a chance," he said, voice dryer than a desert at noon.

"It's more likely she'd turn me into some kind of slug for bothering her," I added.

Surely there was something in the Hippocratic oath about that. Somehow, I doubted that would stop the girl. I don't think I'd ever seen her willingly interact with anyone other than her sister, though I wasn't in any of the same classes. Outside of them she only seemed to glare at the rest of us from behind her Victoria's back.

"You really think she could do that?" Isaac asked halfway between disgusted and intrigued. Notice how he didn't ask if she would do that? Yeah.

"Wouldn't put it past her. Either way, I'm sure she has far more important things to take care of than fixing me up."

I wasn't bitter about the fact that I'd probably walked past what was quite possibly the best healer in America, maybe the world, and was still stuck with this thing eating me up from inside. Really, I wasn't. The pain didn't even seem that bad today. In fact, I'd barely noticed it at all. Whatever, some days were better than others.

"Yeah, forget I said anything. For a girl whose whole shtick is healing she's seriously terrifying, or at least grumpy. Both? Definitely both."

"I can't say I blame her, being in a hospital that often… well, it would wear anyone down." I said, shivering slightly despite the relative warmth of the corridor.

Those blank, sanitized walls were a common feature in my dreams, and not the good kind. Once, I'd thought that I spent a lot of time in the hospital with at least one or two checkups a month. That was before some told me how many hours Panacea worked there, though when I found out it explained a lot about her attitude. There was just something about hospitals that tore into people.

I remember watching my Aunt's face when she found out about the cancer, my own thoughts and feelings so jumbled that I just went numb, how it had crumbled like it was under some unbearable weight. It was only the second time I'd seen her break down like that.

Neither of my friends said anything, both grimacing and looking away. We moved through the corridor in stilted silence, none of us willing to break it.

I felt her coming before I saw her. My power given senses yelled out a warning as a bubble of something started to seep around the corner. The outer edges were thin, weak but it quickly grew thicker and stronger as the 'bubble' kept coming. It pressed into and through the students and I watched as they stiffened and turned to face what was coming, eyes glazed over slightly.

Or rather, who was coming, I realised as Victoria Dallon skipped around the corner lightly, a red skirt flapping around her knees below a white top. I only had half a second to wonder if her powers were helping her hop so high, and what the hell that cable thing sticking out of the back of her head was, before the wall of what had to be her Shaker aura slammed into us full force.

George and Isaac both stood up straighter, locking onto the carefree Cape adoringly. For me, it was something like seeing in stereo. Anyone at Arcadia could tell you what it was like to be around Glory Girl. Amazing, fantastic, it made you feel like you were standing next to Scion rather than a teenage girl. When she was happy at least. I still got all of that, my feet moved automatically to put myself out of her way, but my senses pushed me off my equilibrium.

Because I could still see the aura, how it wrapped itself cloyingly around everyone in her range, what it was doing to me. Nausea welled up inside me, like each of my eyes was seeing two different things at the same time and my brain just couldn't compute it.

My feet tripped over each other as I tried to move, sending me tumbling to the ground, floor rising to meet me. A hand snapped out to catch me, snaking beneath my shoulder and hoisting me upright like it was nothing. The change from falling to not supporting my own weight was jarring, but not nearly so jarring as coming face to face with the teenage Cape herself.

"Woah there!" Victoria chirped, smiling without a care in the world as she held me up literally single-handedly, "You alright… Mike?"

She trailed off a little uncertainly at the end. I tried to press down how my heart fluttered in my chest at the idea of her having any idea what my name was. Mike was close enough right?

The feeling just brought more nausea.

"Myles," I coughed awkwardly, "and yeah, I'm fine. You can, uh, let me down now."

Victoria blinked at me before glancing to her hand like she'd forgotten she was carrying me. Was I so light that with her powers she couldn't even feel my weight? I wasn't sure if that was more impressive or terrifying. Thinking of her powers brought my attention to the cable running through her hair like it wasn't even there, hanging like gravity was pressing the wrong on it up and through the ceiling too now that I checked. It just phased through like a badly clipping model from a video game. That hadn't been there yesterday, or any of the other times I'd seen her. It pulsed with energy and the cloud of her aura pulsed with it. Nobody else could see them, or I assumed there'd be a lot more screaming about some Tinker malfunction. Maybe Gallant's gear had gone wrong? Pretty sure he was a Tinker.

"Right," She laughed happily, putting me down and brushing off my shoulders. I tried to ignore the mildly murderous looks some of the other students were giving me. Even my two friends were glaring at me sullenly, "be more careful next time, okay? I won't always be around to catch you!"

Without any further ado she dropped me like a toy. By the time I'd pulled myself together enough to say something, anything really, back to the beautiful Cape her aura was already sliding off us. Reality snapped back into place and I was left looking at an attractive but normal girl's back as she walked away.

With my attention no longer grabbed by Glory Girl's aura, my eyes drifted to the two figures following her that had escaped my notice.

The first was Amy Dallon, Victoria's sister, not that you'd be able to tell from looking at her. The two were practically polar opposites. Standing next to each other I couldn't help but see the differences, one striding confidently head held high, the other walking like they wanted to disappear. Amy was hunched over, like she was actively trying to make herself as easy to miss as possible. Next to her sister, it was an easy task. Nobody paid her any mind, eyes too glazed over staring at Victoria to notice mousy Amy hiding behind.

The other was Dean Stansfield, Victoria's boyfriend. That wasn't surprising, when the two of them weren't going through one of their rocky periods, the two were practically inseparable. No what drew my attention to him was that he had the same Cord (and I was really starting to capitalize that in my head) dangling upside down from the back of his head. That… didn't fit.

At least for Victoria and Amy I could rationalize it as my power visualizing their own powers. Thinking about it that was a huge deal in and of itself, everyone knew that secret identities were pretty much sacred. For the sisters it wasn't a problem, they were already publicly outed by their own decision. If the Cords did have something to do with parahumans, which I couldn't even be certain of because I just couldn't understand what my powers wanted to tell me, then that would probably be a big deal right?

More than that, it meant that Dean Stansfield, the jock, the popular guy that it seemed got on with everyone was… a Cape?

I eyed him curiously, shock flickering through me even as I scrambled for anything else that could cause it. My mind just turned up blank, unable to think of any other reason.

For a moment Dean paused, his eyes snapped unerringly back to me. The Cord pulsed as he stared. Just like Victoria's did earlier through her aura. He was too far away for me to get a clear idea of what he was thinking, only managing to pick up on surprise, panic and a lot of worry. I thought he was going to make his way back over to us, but Hurricane Vicky seemed to realise she'd lost her orbiting boyfriend and swooped to the rescue, grabbing him around the wrist and bodily hauling him off down the corridor.

Students shook themselves after she passed like they were waking from a sleep or a deep daydream. I could relate.

I couldn't hear what Dean was saying to Victoria as he was 'escorted' towards the exit by his girlfriend, but from the frantic hand waving and how he kept looking over his shoulder at us I could give the topic of their conversation a good guess. Luckily it seemed like Vicky waved it off or wasn't listening. Either way I could only offer a silent thanks that she'd saved my ass from what was almost definitely going to be an interesting conversation.

"You know George I think he really might be playing it up a bit now," Isaac's voice broke through my thoughts, "Maybe just to be swept off his feet by our resident flying Cape?"

"You could be right. Really Myles, such a convenient place to 'trip'," George smiled wryly. His glasses had fallen down his nose again while staring at Victoria. He pushed them up again quickly.

"Yeah right," I snorted, "I don't think she even realised I was there. Did you see how she held me up? Just one hand."

"She looked ready to throw you around like a doll," Isaac laughed happily, like the image of me being thrown through a wall amused him somehow. It probably did, "Ah well, maybe you'll get her to notice you next time!"

"Shut up," I rolled my eyes before pushing both of them onwards towards the front of the school, once I was sure that Vicky and her entourage were safely out of the way, "let's just get out of here."

"But maybe if we stick around she'll swing by again! Think you'd fall over your other foot then?

I didn't even dignify that with a response.

Soon we were back out in the afternoon sun, though the Bay being the Bay the air was as cold as you'd expect in early April. As subtly as I could, I checked around for any bright blonde hair, moving bubbles of gas like aura or dangling cables and found nothing. Or at least nothing within my range. I could feel things maybe twenty or so feet away, but the further I tried to actually use my power the harder it got.

Normally at this time after school the three of us would go hang out downtown, or to either Isaac or George's house. Normally I wasn't still woozy from the effect of Victoria's aura, or still trying to get the grips on my own powers.

Normally, a tall, blonde and very angry Aunt wasn't standing by her car door, foot angrily tapping against the ground waiting for me while glaring a hole into my face. Shit.

Time to face the music.

A/N: So yeah, the first chapter of the rewrite is finally done. It really kicked my butt but I'm glad I've finally gotten the ball rolling on this fic again. For once, I was quite happy with some of the dialogue in this one. And from what I've seen in feedback, considering how strong the protagonist of both this and Tyrant are, I should focus a lot on dialogue and character stuff instead of just fighting which should be fun.

I've nerfed Psychokinesis a fair bit, just for the beginning, so there's at least some build up in power rather than instantly instinctually knowing how to do everything possible with it... which is pretty much anything. If you've read my stuff then you know I'm a sucker for power fantasy stuff, so Myles definitely isn't weak, and he won't stay at this level of (still very strong) power for long probably.

I'm sure there are still plenty of typos and grammar mistake, and just mistakes in general but as usual it's about 1AM and I just wanted to get this out before going to sleep. Hope everyone enjoys it.