“Okay,” said Oscar, propping one foot up on the windowsill. Without looking back, he lifted his hand in the shape of a pistol and shot an arrow of white smoke in Nova’s direction. It struck her chest and dispersed. “Origin story. Go.”
“Excuse me?” she said, waving away the remnants of odorless smoke that wafted toward the ceiling.
“You know,” he said, glancing back. “When someone decides to write the highly dramatized comic-book version of the story of Insomnia, where will it start?”
“He wants to know where you got your power,” said Ruby, slapping down a new card.
“Was it the result of some personal trauma?” said Oscar. “Or human experimentation or alien abduction?”
“Oscar,” said Adrian, warning, and Oscar turned his attention back to the window.
“Just making small talk,” he said. “We should know more about her than just her ability to turn an ink pen into a receptacle for blow darts.”
“We know she can clean the floor with the likes of Gargoyle,” said Ruby.
“And that she can give sass to Blacklight in the middle of an arena full of screaming fans,” added Adrian. He grinned at Nova, who looked away.
“Fine, I’ll go first,” said Oscar, and though she couldn’t see his face, Nova had the impression that this was where he’d wanted to take the conversation from the start.
“By all means,” she said, leaning back on her palms. “Origin story. Go.”
Oscar inhaled a long breath before proclaiming, quite dramatically, “I died in a fire when I was five years old.”
When he said nothing else, Nova glanced at Adrian to see if there was a joke she’d missed, but Adrian merely nodded.
“So…，” started Nova, “you’re a smoke-controlling zombie?”
She saw Oscar’s grin in the reflection of the window. “That would be awesome. But no. I’m not dead anymore, obviously.”
“Obviously,” agreed Nova.
“As the story goes,” he said, “my mom was down in the basement of our apartment building doing laundry when one of our neighbors fell asleep and her cat knocked over a candle she’d left burning. The whole place went up in flames in—I don’t know—minutes. I was in my bedroom and I heard people screaming, and then I saw the smoke, but I was petrified, and besides, I’m not exactly fast, right?” He shook his cane. “So by the time I got the courage to try to get out of the apartment, the fire was coming up the stairs and I didn’t know what to do. So I just froze in the hallway, watching the smoke until it was so thick I could hardly see, and couldn’t breathe. I passed out, and that’s how the Renegades found me.”
“The Renegades?” said Nova.
“Who else? Tsunami, to be specific. She’s the one who put out the fire, then she handed me off to Thunderbird who flew me over to the hospital, but they didn’t have much hope I’d make it. I didn’t have a pulse by that point. But while they were all mourning the death of this kid, I was having a dream.” His voice darkened, taking on an air of importance. “I dreamed that I was standing on top of our apartment building and I was breathing in—this long, long breath that went on and on. It was such a deep breath that it pulled all the smoke right out of the air and into my lungs. Finally, I stopped breathing in, looked up at the sky, and exhaled. And that’s when I woke up.”
“In the hospital?” said Nova. “Or the morgue?”
“The hospital. It had only been about ten minutes since they’d brought me there—plenty of time to declare me legally dead, but still. My mom was there, too, and she saw me exhale, and this big cloud of smoke came out of my mouth.” Oscar puckered his lips and blew. A gray cloud burst across the surface of the window. “And here we are.”
Nova cocked her head. “So … your power. It doesn’t have anything to do with…” She gestured at the cane, and though Oscar wasn’t looking at her, he tapped the cane against the floor a few times in acknowledgment.
“Nope,” he said. “This I was born with. I mean, not the cane. But my bones don’t grow like a normal person’s. Some rare bone disease.” He grinned back at Nova. “Probably the best thing that ever happened to me, though, right? Just think—if I’d been faster, I might have gotten out of that apartment building just fine, and I’d be stuck with all the other spry, non-prodigy suckers out there.”