Who had they helped that they had thanked them in the worst possible way, turning them into monsters?

“They helped your real father, in his darkest hour, even though he did everything he could to make their lives miserable in each of their previous encounters, even trying to kill them.”

Wave remembered what Fearless had told her. Her biological father and her adoptive parents hadn’t been on good terms. He had been kind of a villain. That fit with what Ngi was claiming. Now she wanted to know everything! She wouldn’t wait any longer!

“Do you know anything more about this, or are you keeping me in the dark like all the others? They all claim to know something about my parents that predates the time I can remember, and then they leave me hanging with vague guesses.” She grimly looked at Ngi. “I heard that my real father was some kind of villain, one with special powers. Is that true?”

“Powers might be the wrong word,” Ngi said, sounding like he was searching for a more appropriate word. “I understood it more as a curse.”

“Curse?”

“Something like that. You have to know that your father was not a human, that changes the rules a bit. Even though he looked like one, he never showed his true form. Deep inside him there always was this greed that haunted everyone of his kind. In his case, it was the greed for water. Whenever he used his abilities, that greed became stronger and more dangerous to everyone around him.”

“Weren’t you going to speak clearly?” Wave laughed weakly.

“Sorry, this is a complex subject and I’m trying to put something into words that I’ve been told secondhand myself, and for which there might not be any understandable explanation.”

“Okay, I’ll try my best to follow through. Thank you, Ngi, for trying to explain it to me. It really means a lot to me.”

Wave slid into a more comfortable position, attempting to sit cross-legged, propping her elbows on her thighs and positioning her chin on her fists. Yes, that was a good position to listen to a story about heroes and monsters.

“His power made water disappear to satisfy his thirst,” Ngi continued. “Unfortunate for all the people around him, who then collapsed like dehydrated mummies and crumbled into dust.”

Wave didn’t even want to imagine it, but everything inside her tightened at the thought.

“He had managed to hide in the sealed Citadel for decades, trapped with millions of other people, quenching his thirst in harmless ways. He never once used his power in all those years and he suffered silently. With the opening of the Citadel, which promised new freedom, he was so carefree that he even managed to fall in love and start a family.”

“My mother? Was she human?”

“Yes, she was. And nothing ever suggested you could be anything else. It’s not like we exactly knew how his shape-shifting worked.”

Wave ran a hand through her face, fumbled for her hair, halfway fixing it, then returned to her listening position. “I kind of get where you’re coming from. But, if my biological father was as happy as you say and always lived in hiding, how did he become a villain? How did I end up with my parents?”

“You mean your adoptive parents, right? Something went wrong. Something always goes wrong at the Citadel, right? For some reason, he went berserk, killed a lot of people, even your mother. He raged and raged, fighting humans, fighting aliens, fighting beings with similar powers. At some point, he couldn’t stand his pain anymore and all that was left was his desire to die.”

Wave could understand that somehow. When the pain was too great, over what one had lost, or the loneliness that followed, what could one do? What would she have done without Aki’s voice when she came to the city? She remembered her adoptive father and the look on his face when he understood what he had done. He, too, couldn’t take it anymore.

Ngi snapped her out of her thoughts. “But he got to your parents. He knew their reputation and that they were good people. He wanted them to kill him and make sure you were taken care of by someone who could do better than himself.”

“And they did that?”

“No, not directly.”

“What do you mean? They raised me, didn’t they?”

“Yes, they did. With his other wish, he had ended up with the wrong people. You know they were always looking for a way to avoid the violence.”

“They used to, yeah,” Wave mumbled. It was so hard to reconcile these two sides of her parents. To admit that maybe they once had actually been heroes.

“And that was back in the day when they used to be that way. Your adoptive mother had a gift, too, you know? The gift of taking away others’ burdens. And she took the burden of his greed from your real father. She shared it with your adoptive father. Together they could endure it without either of them perishing.”

“Then what became of my biological father?”

“He found his peace.”

“So he did die?”

“Yes, but not until several years later. Without his powers, sanity returned, and more happened. The time he had actually lived caught up with him all at once and he became an old man. He moved to the sea to be closer to the element he had longed for all his life.”

An old man by the sea? A forgotten memory came back abruptly, the first memory of her life. How her father carried her up the hill on his shoulders, and she smelled the ocean and finally saw it for the first time. She knew that one. She had just forgotten how it went on. The waves breaking on the beach had not been the end. No, they had visited someone there, an old man by the sea. She could remember how later that day she had sat on his lap and played with him. She remembered the joy he radiated when he looked at her. That was the first and only time she had seen him. Had that been her real father?

Although she had always believed that she didn’t need to know who her real parents were because the love of her adoptive parents was enough for her, the missed opportunity hit her like a truck. Now it was too late. Too late to meet him and too late to talk to her adoptive parents about it. All she had left now was Ngi’s testimony.

“Then was it the same with my parents as it was with him? Something bad happened and they became monsters?”

“I guess that’s what it must have been like. Do you remember the day they went off to protect a settlement and negotiate with the city?”

“Yes.” How could she have forgotten that day? It had changed everything.

“All the people in that settlement died that day. And after seeing your adoptive parents’ wounds, they should have been dead too. But that power they took from your father, it must have saved their lives.”

“And turned them into monsters,” Wave concluded. “And every time they went off to take revenge on the city, it grew worse.”

Ngi nodded.

“I think I inherited that ability from my father.”

“Is that why you call yourself Wave these days? Because you crave the water, the waves?”

“You would think so. But then, I didn’t know anything about that. No, the ocean is just my oldest and fondest memory. But there’s a reason why I think that I possess his ability, his curse, or whatever it is. I ... I had a vision of destroying everything around me when I was in great trouble. But I didn’t. I knew it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do.”

“Your parents raised you knowing what is right and what is wrong, and that violence and destruction can never be the best way. They always believed that you wouldn’t turn out like your real father.”

Yes, only in the end they had become like him themselves. What was it that could drive Wave to snap, becoming so desperate that her powers burst forth after all? Was it enough that she was failing here? That her friends had been taken from her, or Aki, whom she loved?

Although she had never seen him, only knowing his voice and the past that connected them, there was this desire to see who he was. Not just visually, but to know what really made him tick. Love was crazy, it couldn’t be explained, but it was a force strong enough for Wave to take on the city and its mighty. It wasn’t just the good deed she wanted to do in this city, she knew by now.

Would this deed, whether it was done out of love or a desire to help, end up bringing her to her ruin, just like her parents? She would have to find out for herself.

She understood a little better now why her parents had done what they had done. Yes, there it was again, that dichotomy. Her head knew it, but her heart would take a while to heal.

Would they have liked her to help Aki, even if it put herself in danger? Yes, deep down she was sure they would have done the same in Wave’s place. That gave her peace. She would not give up. No, she was back in the game. Now she just had to find a way to return onto the field.

“Ngi, let’s get out of here!”