“Just under a year ago,” he said. “I think, along with Chris, I’m the rookie here.”

Post-Gold Morning. That helped put things in context.

Chris, too. By process of elimination, he’d be the boy roughly Kenzie’s age.

“Family thing. You said that once,” Kenzie said. Rain acknowledged that with a nod.

“Second gen?” I asked. I wondered if I had any kindred on that front.

“There are a lot of questions you can ask about the parahuman stuff,” he said. “When it comes to me, the answer to most of them is ‘it’s complicated’.”

“That’s fair,” I said. “For a while now I’ve thought that parahumans should get a membership card, materializing in our hands when we trigger, or arriving in the mail at the first opportunity. A warning on one side, ‘handle with care’, and then on the other side, ‘shit is complicated, don’t ask’. Something that we can flash now and again, like a get out of jail free card.”

“Mine would be worn out, both sides,” Rain said.

“I could get good mileage out of the ‘shit is complicated’ side,” Tristan said.

“Now I feel left out,” Kenzie said. “I’d like to think mine would be nice and neat, stored away as a just-in-case.”

“Really?” Tristan asked. “Really?”

“Ruh-heally,” Kenzie said, with exaggerated emphasis and a roll of the eyes. Tristan mirrored her pose some.

“I do like the idea,” Rain said. “The card.”

Rain wasn’t a smiler, by the looks of it, but he’d seemed to relax more as I talked to him.

“By the way, I should have asked, am I allowed to swear?” I asked, twisting around to face Mrs. Yamada.

“Swearing is fine in moderation,” Mrs. Yamada said. “Being here wouldn’t be nearly as positive if you couldn’t say what you wanted to say. There’s a point where swearing takes away from the communication and expression I’m hoping to see, where you hide behind the swearing, or where it’s disruptive. I think you six have a good sense of where that point is. I may referee if we get close to it.”

“Alright,” I said.

“I remember the group therapy session we had back at the hospital,” Sveta said.

“Yeah,” I said. Sveta had only been there for the initial sessions. She’d left, I’d stayed. “Plenty of swearing. But it was different, and we didn’t have any kids in the group.”

“Well, not young kids,” Sveta said.

I looked over at Kenzie and Chris. “Will I be overstepping or bothering you if I call you kids? I’m not sure where the comfort zones are.”

Kenzie snorted. “It’s fine.”

“Nah,” Chris said. “Hospital? You were at the Asylum?”

He’d barely hesitated a second. He’d been so quiet up until now, and then the moment I’d given him an avenue to join the conversation, he went straight from negation to asking questions.