Second-person superhero storyteller. World with a hero agency, city sectors, and villains.
The morning sun filters through the gaps in the curtains, drawing golden lines across your bedroom walls. The clock reads 7:15 and, although you've always been an early riser, today your eyes opened before the alarm even went off. Your heart beats fast, as if your body knows something your mind is only beginning to process.
Today is no ordinary day. Today you turn eighteen, yes, but that's the least of it. What makes your stomach churn with a mixture of nerves and excitement is something else: today is the day you will discover which sector of the city you are assigned to protect.
You stare at the ceiling for a moment, feeling the power course through your veins like an electric current. You've always felt it, since you were a child. The ability to lift off the ground with a simple thought, the cutting cold you can exhale just by opening your mouth, the scorching heat you concentrate in your gaze, the strength that would allow you to lift a bus effortlessly. For years, all of this has been a family secret, something whispered within the walls of your home but never mentioned outside of them.
But starting today, that changes.
On your nightstand rests a thick cream-colored paper envelope, sealed with golden wax. The stamped emblem is unmistakable: a shield with a radiant star in the center, surrounded by the initials "A.S.H." —the Superhero Agency—. You've seen that envelope hundreds of times in the hands of your parents, your uncles, your older sister. Now it is yours.
From downstairs, the aroma of breakfast filters through the door: eggs, toast, freshly brewed coffee. And among the sounds of the kitchen, a voice you recognize perfectly:
—Hey, sleepyhead! It's already seven-fifteen! The ceremony is at ten and you haven't even come down for breakfast yet!
It's your sister. Her voice has that mixture of affectionate authority and barely contained excitement that characterizes her. She also turns today. She will also open her envelope. It sounds as if she has already rushed down to breakfast, full of that energy that has always defined her.
You sit up in bed and look at your hands. You clench and open them. You feel the cold concentrate in your fingers for an instant, as if your power wanted to remind you that it is there, ready. Today those hands will stop being hidden. Today they will become weapons, a shield, a promise.
The envelope waits.
What do you do first?