Joyce Knightly January 1st,20XX

Ever since I was a little girl, I’d always idolized superheroes. They were my hobby, my passion and my inspiration all at once.

It had started from that one superhero show, ‘Sparkle girl and the adventures of mythopicus’. A tacky name, I knew, but the show was amazing enough to make up for it.

Unlike other children my age, I’d never wanted to become 'Sparkle Girl' but had rather wanted to become her friend. The one that could help her get out of trouble in tough times, the one to cover for her in class when she had to go out to fight the forces of evil and the one she could confide her worries in before the big battles.

There were a couple of reasons for my obsession but the main one had to be my grandfather. My parents had always been busy but were especially so when I had been born. They would leave me under the care of my grandfather while they worked twenty-one hour days.

As a result, I was especially close to my grandfather and was indoctrinated into his superhero worship. He would always tell me the stories of the day he was saved by a hero and how it had completely changed his life.

The old man would describe the event in detail and the younger ‘me’ would always listen, riveted by how realistic it sounded.

I never told the stories to my parents and kept it as a secret between myself and my grandfather, ignoring the fact that they had likely heard the story from him when they were children.

Eventually, I’d had to admit that it was unlikely any of my friends were superheroes, or that these heroes even existed, but I’d never given up hope that I would find one.

Until recently.

The past few weeks had felt like a dream to me with my recent discoveries, but the apex of that had to be my most recent discovery that my boyfriend of six years would not only suddenly become a hero, one of the things I revered most in the world but would come to me first for help.

“You know, I would like it if you didn’t smile so brightly while I describe being run over by a truck.”

His dry voice filtered into my head and slightly scolded me, but I couldn’t drain the smile from my face. Why?

Because even as he sounded irritated his feet hung directly in front of my eye line and his head was only a few feet from the ceiling.

“Yeah. Sorry. How are you doing that?”

“I don’t know! The worst part is that I can’t control it either!”

I finally stopped smiling when I took a proper look at him and saw his distress at full play on his face. I grabbed on to his feet, intending to drag him down but was surprised when I felt myself rise a few inches off the ground.

“Waaah!”

I screamed in surprise to be flying but was even more surprised when I was suddenly dropped to the ground, and Aaron, the large guy that he was, landed directly on top of me.

No sooner than I’d felt his full crushing weight did I register him rising again. I then heard a thud and looked up to see him pushing himself away from the ceiling and closer to the ground.

“Ah, are you hurt?”

He floated down to me with a concerned expression and I started to feel bad.

Yeah, there was a real-life superhero in front of me, but he was my boyfriend before he was a hero. And he had just gone through a traumatic experience.

“I’m fine but more importantly are you okay? I already went to your apartment building to ask for the security camera footage. I’ll track down the trucker that hit you, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to take it to court.”

He nodded in agreement and I saw his facial muscles soften as I finally took things seriously. Well, it was my fault for putting my fangirling over his health. But the truth was I could only take things this lightly because he wasn’t hurt at all. If there had been as much of a scratch on his precious face, I couldn’t even think of what I would have done.

“Yeah, when I got hit, I flew halfway across the street and stayed in the air without so much of a scratch on myself. It would be bad if anyone saw that.”

“It's bad it happened! What would have happened if you hadn’t suddenly gotten these powers? I’ll lock that idiot up in jail one way or another. Don’t you worry about that… but... your powers.”

He winced at my choice of words.

“Don’t call them powers. Right now, they’re nothing more than a curse. Ah, I have a shoot with Aol in a week. Should I cancel?”

Honestly, I wanted him to cancel, but Aol was a brand that was big with athletes like Aaron. Although he didn’t compete much nowadays, it would shine badly on his team if he cancelled a few days to shoot day.

Well, it was a tennis team so it wasn’t like there was a lot of them, but the company had helped Aaron out a lot and I knew he wouldn’t want to disappoint them.

“No, no. Not yet. Let’s try to figure this out for now. If you can't get it under control, I’ll call them myself and tell them I need you for something for my company, Squire.”

As my boyfriend, Aaron had donated his handsome face to my company more than once, so I had started paying him for it. He’d rejected it at first, but I’d insisted under the excuse of being judged by others for abusing our relationship. Of course, there was no such thing, but it was a good enough reason for him to accept the payment.

The important part though was that I could use myself as a shield when Aaron had things to deal with. Like the time his father had experienced an episode and he needed to get home. I’d made up an urgent meeting as a spokesperson for him near his hometown and just had him report to the office after he’d checked on his father. I’d then handled the contract breaking fees and successfully maintained his relationship with the company by taking the blame. He’d paid me back despite my attempts to refuse but since I’d forced him to accept me paying him I’d had to accept.

He finally made his way to the ground and I swept him into a hug before he could make it up into the air again.

“Don’t worry love, we’ll figure this all out. Okay? Until then though would you like to stay with me?”

It was weird enough that we’d been dating for so long but didn’t live together but that was mainly because of my younger sister, a hellion that had moved in with me as an alternative to travelling to the west with our parents. She and Aaron got along well enough but it would be uncomfortable for the two to live together.

“Ah, that’s fine Joyce. I like the place I’m at now. I just… needed someone else to see and confirm I wasn’t going crazy.”

I caught onto his unspoken worry and tightened the hug, using my body to remind him I was real.

“You’ve been checked up so many times and all the doctors have said you didn’t inherit anything love. It's good you’re being cautious, but you can't let it get to you like this.”

He got checked up every half a year and would constantly worry about developing any mental issues as his father had. His father’s condition had developed suddenly and it must have had an impact on him as a child but his caution against it had developed into a condition of its own, and he would meltdown at any signs of hallucination.

He had gotten better with therapy, but it looked like the happenings of today had set him back by a lot.

He tightened the hug around me and put his nose into my hair then took a deep breath. We stayed like that for a while and even floated up by a few feet every so often, but he would take us back down to the ground once he noticed.

I stayed still and enjoyed the rare display of physical affection from him, but my mind wasn’t as focused.

My grandfather hadn’t just been a hero enthusiast like most, he’d had the money to back up his ambitions.

There was a building at the edge of the city he’d left to my mother in case she ever came across a hero like he had and wanted to help them. My mother had passed it down to me for my 16th birthday at his insistence and I’d spruced it up a bit but had otherwise left it alone. I'd already started to renovate it but with Aaron suddenly getting powers, I would have to speed things up.

It would take me about a month to fully restore it and bring it up to par but more important than the building itself were the people that would fill it.

As for research specialists, I had a few people I could trust, but more importantly, they were people I could threaten into silence.

The more pressing issue, of which I hadn’t told Aaron in case they turned out to be false.

A few detectives I’d sent out on a passion project years ago suddenly started reporting strange occurrences surrounding specific individuals. I’d asked for photographic proof and had even gotten one back. A video of a girl going invisible.

I tapered the rush of joy in my heart and focused on comforting my boyfriend.

“Don’t worry love. It’ll all work out. Trust me.”

“I do trust you.”

And what made me happiest of all, Even more so than finding the figures I idolized since childhood, was that I knew he trusted me.