Alone, undisturbed, she listened in that cave, and watched the shadows on the walls reminisce about her past. Only by not thinking about leaving, was she able to introspect like this, but in watching her memories in the third person she felt like a spectator in a life that was hers. But watching her time shift by, moment after moment, year after year, she felt a strange detachment.

Jack and Mary, her late parents, were not bad people. Lyssa was able to come to that conclusion while in this unemotional state. They just weren’t all that good. That was one of the great observations of heroism. In the historical study of heroism, a few reoccurring questions—thought experiments, they could be called—were often mentioned again and again. Should people trust men and women with so much power look down on us with a protective gaze? The ‘who watched the watchmen’ trope. The schools of Apex and M.A.G.E got around that by tying a Supe’s actions so densely in the Consolidated Enhancile Operating Regulation. A gifted being was held accountable by the people. All an illusion of course. Even without the existence of gifted, there existed men with their fingers on the nukes. They were arguably far more powerful than someone who could punch through a brick wall. No average citizen ever questioned the power of those men in suits. The real answer had nothing to do with the question. People didn’t care about holding those in power accountable, they just wanted control over power they can see. After all, who looked more dangerous: the farm-fed soldier or the unassuming gentleman whose pen could send a thousand soldiers anywhere? The first conclusion of the history of heroism was that people weren’t particularly observant, or intelligent, or even knew what was best for them, but they wanted all of the above to protect them. And what’s more, if a hero ever acknowledged that he was all of the above, he would be deemed arrogant and unbecoming. The hero was superior, but must pretend he isn’t.

So there was Lyssa, born to Jack and Mary, two unobservant, mildly intelligent, fairly ignorant people. She watched them bungle their life—and by extension hers—for a decade, and then fail to redeem themselves. And now she was training to be one of those heroes, those humble, better-than-thou members of society with a license to maim. In retrospect she couldn’t have expected her parents to fix their lives. Expecting greatness out of average people was the central theme—the central lie—to billion dollar blockbusters. Instead of looking up to Jack and Mary, Lyssa had found solace in her early years spending time with grandfather. She had only visited him a few times, but it was enough. Reginald Unas was a great man. Sharply observant, highly intelligent, and extremely cognizant of the world around him. His one flaw had been his scientist’s curiosity. Only after he had perfected his gift creation/transplant process did he come off the high of discovery and realize he must never reveal his work to anyone. Even after his epiphany he couldn’t bear to destroy it, so he had hid it away. Then came the accident.

Lyssa remembered how it felt to have a vehicle roll over her child self. As far as accidents went in a gifted world, it was quite mundane. Grandfather thanked god he had not scoured his work, and the rest was history. Except there was more. Strange events kept happening throughout Lyssa’s life. Every time something upset her enough, she felt her memories change, her perspective change. The shadows on the cave wall transmogrified with dramatic flair as each of her Selves came into being.

At the last year of elementary school she had approached her homeroom teacher and asked if it was normal to have such vivid conversations in her head. Her teacher smiled and told her it was due to an active imagination, perhaps even a sign of loneliness, and that she would meet more friends in middle school. The shadows on the cave wall shifted.

The other kids had found a black sheep in her, in a literal sense. Her mundanity was strange. Her pale skin and Irish black hair was amusing in a gifted world where it was normal to look a little more transformative. Of course plenty of kids looked as normal as her, but they could float a few inches off the ground or possessed some other mild gift that made them special. Middle school would only last so long.

Yet high school was worse. Gone were the days of the cliché locker-stuffing, wedgie-giving bullies or catty, hazing groupies. Everyone was so nauseatingly aware, so kind, so caring, so inclusive. And they made an effort to be especially so towards her, but only on a surface level. She knew they didn’t care. It was the pretense that isolated her more than the worst ridiculing. She had to remind herself she had forgiven Carrie for this.

Here the shadows changed again. Lyssa felt her hands inadvertently form tight fists. Her memories were the clearest here, right after her first year. She watched herself wander through the days listlessly, living from moment to moment, apathetic and unmotivated. That was her. Lyssa began to breathe heavily, yet she could not look away, and she kept watching. She barely passed physics, she nearly had EMS called on her after being pushed too far by a coach, she was confessed to by a boy who must have lost a bet—she guessed right, she graduated with a satisfactory margin. She nearly died to a pyrokinetic, and then she joined M.A.G.E, where arguably her life truly began. All those moments she remembered with uncanny clarity. The moments before were nothing but shadows.

She couldn’t hold her concentration anymore. Lyssa stood abruptly from her meditative stance, breathing quickly, just as the elevator descended into the cave. The Self in the yukata and Bildungsroman stepped out of the elevator. Lyssa ran to them, creating noisy ripples through the water.

“Who are you? What is your name?” She asked demandingly.

“My name is Lyssa,” came the unsatisfying answer.

“But-”

The Self enveloped herself in blossom-colored energy, and reappeared in her seat in front of the shrine.

“Wait a minute!” Lyssa shouted at her. “When did I create you? Where did you come from?”

“Let’s go,” Bil said, grasping her by the arm.

“I don’t understand,” Lyssa said desperately.

“You do,” Bil replied. “It’s as obvious as can be.” She pulled Lyssa with her into the elevator and pressed the first floor. “In our greatest moment of resentment, Lyssa and I merged, and we lived in the memories of the world around us for a long, subjective time. She decided there was no point in continuing. I suggested suicide. She suggested escape, and well, she was the Primum.”

“I don’t- I. Am. Lyssa.”

“You are. You have been for a couple years now,” Bil said. The elevator dinged. The doors rattled open into the antechamber of the mind mansion.

“Try to make it worthwhile,” Bil said as she returned to smoke, leaving Lyssa alone to a horrible self-reflection.