I shook my head. I was getting annoyed again. I couldn’t put words to what I was trying to encapsulate for him. Something I felt Jessica Yamada got. The consequences. “Capes magnify, okay? They exaggerate. The personalities, the issues, the disorders. Everything gets bigger or more distorted. It’s why, if you really truly understood what I’m trying to convey, you’d hear what I said back at the courthouse, and you’d find those kids someone. Because Jessica was worried and Jessica got it. If you understood, you wouldn’t be here with me, you’d be running to get these kids some attention.”

“There aren’t resources. I’m sorry.”

I drew in a breath, then huffed it out, because I couldn’t quite get enough oxygen. I was too agitated to be still, even to the point of keeping my lungs in a state of equilibrium.

I hadn’t responded, so he carried on. “If you were to work with me, we’d work on outlining goals. What I would work on you with would be fundamentals. Fundamentals work because they apply whether you’re a five-year-old, a police officer, a surgeon, or a person with powers. You are human. Most of the rules still apply.”

Hosting this first meeting on a rooftop was a mistake, because I felt the very real impulse to just stand from my chair, put down my iced tea, and fly away.

I felt other impulses too. To break the table, to try to drive some point home by scaring him through a display of power.

The Warrior Monk wouldn’t have approved of that, though.

My voice was small. “I don’t know if I’m human.”

“I beg your pardon? Is this a case of arguing the idea of ‘parahuman’?”

“No,” I said. My voice sounded very automatic, as I found the words. “When my—when the incident happened. I was mutated, changed into a tangle of limbs, heads, torsos, pelvises and connecting tissue. I couldn’t speak and I couldn’t eat without assistance. I could barely move under my own power.”

“That was outlined for me,” he said. “I can’t even imagine.”

“I had my emotions twisted around. To make me fall in love with the person who did that to me, and to experience unending heartbreak over the fact that she couldn’t be with me and I couldn’t be with her. My—she was family, I always saw her as family. I didn’t exactly leave that behind or stop seeing her that way, so it felt wrong, twisted, even as I felt it in full.”

“You would argue, then, that this is beyond the usual human experience?”