The engine sounded different in the morning.
Not louder. Just… clearer.
Ethan noticed things like that now the way metal responded to temperature, the faint vibration through the steering wheel when the car idled too long. He pulled out onto the road smoothly, letting the city stretch awake around him.
Sunlight slid across the hood in pale streaks.
He felt it register, quiet and familiar, like a background process starting up.
Enough to matter. Not enough to change anything yet.
Traffic thickened the closer he got to school.
Parents' cars. Buses. A few students walking in loose groups, backpacks slung low, voices already raised with forced confidence. He slowed, merged, stopped when he had to. No impatience. rush.
It was arrival.
The school came into view between rows of trees brick, tall windows, the cross mounted above the entrance catching the light. A Catholic high school didn't try to look welcoming. It looked certain.
That certainty hummed in the air.
The parking lot was louder than he expected.
Engines cutting off. Doors slamming. Someone revving a little too hard just to hear it echo. Ethan parked, shut the engine down, and stepped out.
Immediately movement.
Not toward him.
Around him.
Clusters forming, reforming. Laughter spiking, then dropping. Someone showed off a lighter flame dancing above their palm, drawing a tight circle of attention before a teacher barked their name.
"Save it for after class."
The flame vanished. The attention lingered.
Supes.
Not all of them, but enough. You could feel it in the way people looked expectant, measuring, already ranking who mattered more today.
Ethan adjusted his bag and started walking.
Inside, the hallway hit him like sound made solid.
Lockers. Voices. Shoes squeaking. Someone arguing loudly about schedules. Someone else floating an inch off the ground before being pulled down by a friend laughing too hard.
He moved with the flow, not fighting it, not drifting. Just walking.
Eyes slid over him. A few lingered.
He didn't react
The opening assembly gathered them outside again.
Rows. Loose at first, then tighter as teachers gestured and corrected. The chapel doors stood open behind the main steps, incense mixing faintly with morning air.
Ethan stood still, hands loose at his sides.
The principal spoke. A prayer followed. The choir sang.
Someone near the front lifted a pen and let it hover, spinning lazily. A few people noticed. A few people whispered. The teacher closest pretended not to see it.
Ethan watched the pen wobble, then fall.
Control problems, he noted automatically.
They released them into the building after.
Theology first.
Of course.
He slid into a seat near the middle. Not front. Not back. Just… there.
The teacher spoke about purpose. About gifts. About responsibility.
Ethan wrote slowly, not copying words so much as rhythm. Around him, students shifted, some bored, some intent, some trying too hard to look like they belonged.
A boy in the row ahead cracked his knuckles and muttered something about being able to lift a car now. His friends leaned in, impressed.
Ethan kept writing.
Between classes, the hallway narrowed.
Someone bumped him.
"Sorry, man."
"It's fine."
A girl walked past,Someone else laughed nervously. Attention snapped toward her, then away.
Power changed gravity.
Ethan felt it, even without looking.
He never thought he'd return to school again and feel that atmosphere of ambition and self-acceptance issues. There's nothing like a bunch of insecure teenagers who pretend to be smarter and more experienced than they actually are.
And then
He saw Annie.
Not all at once.
First her voice calm, steady, cutting through noise without competing with it. Then her face as she turned, blonde hair catching the light from the high windows.
She was talking to another girl, one hand resting lightly on a locker, listening more than speaking.
She looked… normal.
Not small.
Just real.
Their eyes met briefly as he passed.
No recognition or pause.
Just a shared second of awareness before the hallway carried them in opposite directions.
Ethan felt something settle.
This is where you are now, he thought.
Lunch was chaos pretending to be order.
Trays clattered. A kid across the room shot a paper ball that changed direction midair to hit someone square in the forehead. Laughter exploded.
Ethan found a seat and sat.
Across from him, a boy stared openly.
"You drove here, right?"
"Yes."
"At fourteen?"
"Yes."
"That's insane."
Ethan shrugged. "It works."
The boy grinned. "Wish I had that problem."
They ate. Talked about nothing important. Schedules. Teachers. Who had powers, who didn't, who was lying about it.
Ethan listened.
The day wound down gradually.
Classes blurred together. Introductions. Rules. Warnings about uniforms and conduct and responsibility.
By the last bell, the noise had softened.
People were tired now.
Honest.
Ethan walked back to his car with the others, unlocked it, and got in.
Sometimes, his super hearing wasn't an advantage. He could hear 20 people envying his car, a few spitting that it must be his daddy, and a few girls in his older class were planing to pick him up.
After all, for a 14-year-old, he was surprisingly tall, 190 cm tall, perfectly built, with midnight-black eyes and matching hair. He was simply handsome, without a single blemish on his complexion.
He drove away.
The Sun sat lower now, warmer through the glass.
He let it in.
At home, Margaret called out from her office which she decided to build for herself after he bought the house, he was supposed to live there alone, but couldn't convince his mother, besides, she was probably afraid of what a teenage boy could do with such a sum of cash and his own private apartment, but that's just his guess..
"How was it?"
Ethan paused, considering.
"Busy," he said.
She smiled without looking up. "That tracks."
He went upstairs, closed the door, and sat on the edge of his bed.
Same age. Same school.
Annie January wasn't a symbol here.
She was just another student navigating noise, expectations, and attention she didn't always ask for..
First day was over.
First Week
His mother agreed to move because she was tired.
She never said it that way, but Ethan had noticed long before he mentioned the town. New York had worn her down slowly long hours, constant noise, the sense that privacy was something you rented by the minute. When he showed her the house and the school, she didn't argue.
"This place is quieter," she said.
That was the deciding factor.
The school being Catholic helped. Structure. Discipline. Fewer problems. That's how she saw it. For Ethan, it meant something else Freedom from Vought
In New York, he had to be on his guard all the time because they lived near the city center and therefore near Homelander.
By the end of the first week, the numbers were clear.
Out of several hundred students, only a small group had powers. Not even twenty.
Fourteen. Fifteen at most with annie.
The rest were baseline human.
That mattered. Media made it seem like supes were everywhere. They weren't. They were concentrated, curated, and noticeable the moment you knew what to look for.
Those with powers drew attention naturally. Someone lifted a desk a little too easily. Someone reacted too fast in gym class. A locker bent where it shouldn't have. Teachers noticed and pretended not to. Other students watched constantly.
Power changed how people looked at you.
Ethan saw it differently.
His vision didn't show light or colors. It showed structure. Compound V altered the body in consistent ways. DNA mutations. Reinforced neural pathways. Abnormal cellular density in muscle and nerve tissue.
Once you knew the pattern, it was obvious.
Walking through the halls, he sorted people without effort:
powered
not powered
unstable
The list stopped growing by Wednesday.
Annie January stood out immediately.
She wasn't hiding her abilities because her mother took her to every possible competition for heroes, which is why she missed several classes in the first week alone but she wasn't careless either. Her nervous system carried a constant electrical load, stable and evenly distributed. Bioelectric energy circulated through her body even when she wasn't using her power.
When she was distracted or emotional, small discharges happened automatically. A faint yellow glow in her eyes. A brief flash at her fingertips.
She controlled it well.
Better than most.
Their conversations were never planned. That was the strange part.
Annie stopped by his desk without looking at him at first, flipping her notebook open like it was an excuse she'd grabbed on the way.
"Can I steal your brain for a second?"
She said it lightly, but her fingers tightened on the page.
He glanced over. Took it in.
"You already did."
She blinked, then laughed under her breath. "Okay, wow. Rude. But"
She turned the notebook toward him anyway. "This part. It keeps bothering me."
"It's correct," he said.
"That's not what I asked."
He paused. Looked again. Longer this time.
"It's still correct."
She watched his face, not the page.
"…You're annoying."
"Then stop asking me things."
She smiled at that, quick and crooked. "Nah."
She took the notebook back and walked off like the conversation had ended five seconds earlier than it should have.
They didn't talk again until two days later, when they both reached the stairwell at the same time and stopped automatically, like they'd rehearsed it.
She went first. Then stopped halfway down.
"You ever notice," she said, not turning around, "that everyone here is pretending really hard?"
He followed, keeping distance. "Pretending to be what?"
"Normal. Safe. Like nothing weird is happening."
She glanced back at him. "Even when it clearly is."
He considered that.
"Yes."
She exhaled. "God. You're terrible at conversations."
"And yet you keep starting them."
She smiled again not amused this time. More thoughtful.
"Yeah. I guess I do."
They reached the bottom. She hesitated, then adjusted her backpack.
"See you around, quiet guy."
He nodded once.
"Annie."
She stopped. Turned.
"You remembered my name."
"You're not subtle."
She stared at him for a second longer than necessary, then laughed softly and walked away.
That was how it stayed.
Nothing dramatic.
Just the sense that something had been noticed and deliberately left alone
the week.
The school wasn't random. Catholic institutions attracted families who trusted authority. Trusted recommendations. Trusted systems that promised safe space
It's interesting how people always gather around the promise of a quiet space and order.