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Joan gulped her coffee.

“I’m just trying to figure out how your family fits in with your work stuff if they aren’t involved.” A new idea sprang to mind. “Are they with the police? Some special task force that works with the Supers? Or the mayor’s office?”

“Nothing like that,” Joan said.

“I guess I don’t understand how you can have one found family, and then another family with the Supers?—”

“The Supers arenotmy family,” she stated firmly. “They’re work acquaintances.”

Her vehemence was rather unexpected. “Oh,” Sadie managed. “I figured they would understand you, because?—”

“Mark and Perry are my family.” Joan kicked at a small rock. “That’s the truth. Perry has been like a father figure. He let Mark and I live with him for years. He taught us how to survive. How to harness my abilities so I wasn’t so destructive. I don’t know what would’ve happened if he hadn’t done that. I was with them last night while also having to deal with Super activity. The meeting with Race.”

“Okay.”

She looked over at Sadie. “Remember the man-baby I told you about? The one who doesn’t care about the safety of others?”

Sadie nodded.

“That’s Uncle Mel. Or really, just Melvin. I don’t want to think of him as any kind of family.”

“So when you got beat up by Spark last week, Melvin was there?”

“He was the reason that fight happened. He’s an asshole and is up to no good.” Joan clutched her coffee tightly. “He needs to be stopped. Mark and Perry are trying to help me stop him.”

“Oh. I just thought Spark was being a jerk.”

Joan flinched. “Spark’s not… She’s not the worst of…”

“Um, she shoots fire. That’s pretty scary.” Sadie swirled her coffee. “You’re lucky you can absorb it and give it back to her. A taste of her own medicine.”

Joan stared at her tumbler for a long moment. “Spark’s not really that bad,” she said quietly.

“Shoots fire,” Sadie said.

“And that automatically makes her bad?”

“She’s a Villain. Literally the definition of a bad guy.”

“Not all Supervillains are inherently bad. Some do bad things because they had no other option.” Joan looked up, meeting Sadie’s eyes. “It’s hard to go through life scaring everybody off because you shoot fire, or ice, or lightning bolts.”

“Yeah, but you can suck the energy out of people. And Race can literally run circles around us. You use your gifts for good. It’s a choice.”

“Is it?” Joan stopped and fully faced her. “There’s no real hope of living a normal life with thesegifts. You can’t just get any job. It’s hard to work in customer service when a client pisses you off so badly that you melt your phone. And computer and desk. There are some powers that make it impossible to exist in normal society.”

“I guess, but…”

“Even if you try to hide, the truth comes out in the end. Breeze went to college. He got an MBA. But he ultimately couldn’t pursue his passion for curating art.”

“Not legally,” Sadie drawled.

“Sometimes they try to go legit. Spark and Ice have tried. We’re not…” Joan’s mouth twisted. “We’re not meant to live like the norms.”

“The norms?”

“Regular people, like you.”

“Ah.”