Therapy for Former Child Sidekicks

• Chapter 1 Out of the Shadow, Into the Circle
• Chapter 2 Spandex Doesn't Stretch Like It Used To
• Chapter 3 Secondary Character Syndrome
• Chapter 4 Radioactive Origins and Unresolved Issues
• Chapter 5 The Cost of Being the Catchphrase
• Chapter 6 Batarangs, Boundaries, and Biphasic Sleep
• Chapter 7 Daddy Issues in a Cape
• Chapter 8 Triggers in the Batcave
• Chapter 9 Unmasking the Inner Child
• Chapter 10 Trust Exercises with Grappling Hooks
• Chapter 11 Coping with Cancelled Spin-offs
• Chapter 12 The Collateral Damage of Growing Up Fast
• Chapter 13 Rage Against the Utility Belt
• Chapter 14 Substitutes for Super-Serum
• Chapter 15 The Boy Wonder Grows Old
• Chapter 16 Apologizing to the Former Henchmen
• Chapter 17 Managing Post-Dramatic Stress Disorder
• Chapter 18 Unfunded Superhero Retirement Plans
• Chapter 19 The B-List Breakthrough
• Chapter 20 Forgiving the Alpha
• Chapter 21 Relapse at the Secret Lair
• Chapter 22 Hanging Up the Domino Mask
• Chapter 23 The Hero Complex vs. The Victim Role
• Chapter 24 Breakthroughs and Blackout Bombs
• Chapter 25 Graduating from the Support Group
• Chapter 26 Main Character Energy

The basement of St. Jude’s Community Center smelled of three distinct eras of carpet cleaner, damp drywall, and the kind of cheap, burnt coffee that only exists to punish people who are already suffering. Overhead, a pair of fluorescent light tubes hummed in a precise, maddening key of B-flat, flickering just enough to simulate an oncoming migraine.

Barnaby sat on a grey metal folding chair that groaned under his thirty-four-year-old frame. He checked his watch. 6:48 PM. Twelve minutes before the session officially started, but three of them were already here. Nobody who had ever spent their formative years waiting on a rooftop for a signal in the sky was capable of being late. Promptness was a survival habit carved directly into their bone marrow.

To Barnaby’s left sat Penny. She was thirty-two, wore a beige cardigan two sizes too big, and spent her time methodically tearing a Styrofoam cup into uniform, quarter-inch strips. Twenty years ago, she had been Prism Girl, capable of refracting sunbeams into searing laser arrays while executing double backflips off moving light-rail trains. Now, she worked in human resources at a logistics firm in suburban Ohio and had a mild posture problem.

Across the circle sat Jax, formerly known to the reading public as the Pint-Sized Paladin. Jax still had the heavy jawline and broad shoulders of someone built for high-impact vigilantism, but his eyes had the dull, unblinking gloss of a tollbooth worker on an overnight shift. He wore a heavy black leather jacket despite the humid basement air, his hands buried deep in the pockets, pulling the leather taut across his chest.

"The coffee is acid," Jax grunted without looking up from the linoleum floor. "I think the priest brews it on Monday and just re-heats it until Sunday."

"It’s not a church," Penny said, her voice dry as parchment as she ripped off another strip of Styrofoam. "It’s a non-denominational community center. Father Thomas just rents out the basement to offset the roof repairs."

"Same difference," Jax muttered. "Tastes like sin."

Barnaby adjusted his collar. His shirt was a little tight around the neck—he had put on twenty pounds since he stopped running across suspension bridges in emerald-green tights—but he refused to buy a larger size. Buying a larger size meant admitting that his metabolism had finally abandoned the hyper-kinetic acceleration that his old mentor, Captain Apex, used to call "the engine of justice."

The door at the top of the stairs clicked open, followed by the soft, rhythmic squeak of rubber-soled shoes descending the concrete steps.

Dr. Kevin arrived carrying a leather briefcase that looked older than anyone in the room and a clipboard overflowing with pastel-colored intake forms. Dr. Kevin was fifty-five, possessed a neatly trimmed grey beard, and wore a corduroy blazer with leather elbow patches—the universal uniform of men who had dedicated their lives to listening to other people’s damage. He wasn't a superhero. He wasn't a villain. He was just a licensed clinical psychologist who had made the mistake of publishing a paper on the long-term psychological impacts of childhood crime-fighting.

"Good evening, everyone," Dr. Kevin said, his voice dropping smoothly into the low, calm register he used for group therapy. He pulled a folding chair into the open gap of the circle, sat down, and set his clipboard on his knees. "I see we’re all early again. That’s okay. Hyper-vigilance is a difficult habit to break."

"It’s not hyper-vigilance, Doc," Jax said, pulling his hands from his pockets to reveal knuckles scarred by old street brawls. "It’s traffic. If I leave at six, I’m early. If I leave at six-fifteen, I’m stuck on the interstate behind a flatbed truck."

"And if you're stuck behind the truck, you can't scan the overpasses for snipers," Penny added flatly, not stopping her demolition of the cup.

Jax glared at her. "I don't look for snipers anymore. I look for state troopers."

"Progress," Dr. Kevin said with a small, encouraging nod. He clicked his pen—a sound that made Barnaby’s right thigh muscle twitch out of ancient reflexes. "Let’s wait a few moments for the others before we begin."

Right on cue, the heavy metal door at the top of the stairs banged open, and two more figures descended.

First was Gus, who walked with the heavy, dragging gait of a man who had spent his adolescence breathing through a pressurized regulator. Gus had been Tadpole, sidekick to the Sub-Aquatic Sovereign. Even in a dry basement in the Midwest, Gus looked damp. He wore a wet-weather parka over sweatpants, and the faint, unmistakable smell of brackish water and low-tide algae trailed behind him like an unwanted shadow.

Behind Gus came Jasmine. She moved without making a sound—a habit that no amount of therapy seemed able to break. Her dark hair was pulled back into a tight, military knot, and her eyes swept the room in a single, fluid motion: two exits, five potential improvised weapons, one therapist, zero visible threats. She had been the Dragonfly, trained from age eight by the shadowy vigilante known only as The Night Specter.

Gus collapsed into a chair, letting out a breath that sounded like water draining from a pipe. Jasmine took the chair next to the emergency exit, sitting on the very edge of the seat, her feet flat on the floor, ready to leap into a defensive stance at a millisecond's notice.

Dr. Kevin looked around the circle. Six chairs occupied. Six adults ranging from their late twenties to mid-thirties, all carrying the invisible baggage of a childhood spent fighting grown men in neon masks.

"Alright," Dr. Kevin began, clicking his pen once more. "Welcome to session one. I want to thank all of you for taking this step. Coming into this room—stepping out of the costume, out of the public eye, out of the shadow of your former mentors—takes a specific kind of courage."

"Or a court order," Gus mumbled, adjusting his parka.

"In your case, Gus, yes," Dr. Kevin conceded smoothly. "The incident at the city aquarium was technically a court-mandated referral, but you chose to stay after the initial assessment. That counts."

Gus grunted and pulled his sleeves over his hands.

"Before we delve into the weekly topics outlined in your syllabus," Dr. Kevin continued, tapping his clipboard, "I want to establish our ground rules. First: this room is a safe space. Nothing said here leaves this room. There are no cameras, no recording devices, and no telepathic monitoring." He looked pointedly at Barnaby. "I’ve had the ceiling swept by an independent contractor. It’s clean."

"Did he check the light fixtures?" Barnaby asked quietly. "The Specter used to hide micro-bugs in the ballasts of fluorescent lights. Standard operating procedure for surveillance."

"It’s clean, Barnaby," Dr. Kevin assured him. "Second: no active gear. No utility belts, no concealed sidearms, no smoke pellets, no miniaturized grappling hooks. If you have anything on your person that can be classified as a tactical asset, I ask that you place it in the plastic bin by the door."

Silence descended on the room. Nobody moved for five long seconds.

Then, with a heavy sigh, Jax reached into his leather jacket and pulled out a telescoping titanium baton, tossing it into the plastic tub near the door with a loud clatter. Jasmine reached into her boot, withdrew two thin, obsidian-bladed throwing knives, and slid them across the linoleum into the tub. Gus reached into his pocket and dropped a heavy brass valve wrench onto the pile.

"Thank you," Dr. Kevin said, not batting an eye. He had been running this group for three years with different cohorts; he had seen everything from concealed explosive gel to illegal alien tracking devices deposited in that plastic bin. "Third rule: we use our legal names here. No codenames. No titles. No 'Kid,' no 'Boy,' no 'Junior.' You are adults, and you own your identity."

Penny dropped the last shred of her Styrofoam cup onto the floor. "My legal name is Prism, Dr. Kevin. My mother was a hippy before The Illuminator recruited her into his cosmic vanguard."

"We worked on that last week, Penny," Dr. Kevin said gently. "You registered your name change to Penelope in May."

"Right," she muttered, rubbing her temples. "Penelope. Still feels like a fake name. Like a secret identity."

"That’s because it is a secret identity," Barnaby said, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees. "That’s the joke, isn’t it? For fifteen years, 'Barnaby Vance' was the mask I wore when I wasn't Kid Dynamo. Now Kid Dynamo is dead, and I'm stuck living in the mask full-time. Except the mask has a mortgage and high cholesterol."

A quiet hum of agreement rippled through the circle. It was the first real point of connection of the evening—the shared absurdity of their post-heroic existence.

"Let’s lean into that, Barnaby," Dr. Kevin said, shifting in his chair. "That brings us to the core objective of today's session: Out of the Shadow, Into the Circle. Today, we are talking about the transition. The moment you realized you were no longer the secondary character in someone else's epic narrative, but the primary subject of your own life."

Dr. Kevin looked around the room, letting the silence hang until it became uncomfortable enough to force someone to break it.

Jax was the first to snap. He scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest. "Primary subject? Doc, when you’ve spent your puberty driving a sidecar while a billionaire in a bulletproof cowl preaches to you about the sanctity of due process, you don't just magically become the 'primary subject.' You become the guy who knows how to change the oil on a jet-propelled motorcycle and has no other marketable skills."

"You have skills, Jax," Dr. Kevin said. "You managed logistics for a vigilante network."

"I hauled sandbags and picked up teeth," Jax shot back. "That’s not logistics. That’s janitorial work with high stakes."

"At least your guy gave you a vehicle," Penny chimed in, her tone dripping with bitter sarcasm. "The Illuminator didn't believe in vehicles. He believed in 'flight through pure force of will.' Do you know what happens to an eleven-year-old’s joints when they’re dragged through the stratosphere at Mach 2 by a guy holding their wrist? My shoulder still pops when it rains." She rotated her left arm, producing a wet, crunching click that made Gus wince.

"I had gills engineered into my lymphatic system," Gus said quietly, his voice raspy. He touched the thick, scarred skin just below his jawline. "I was nine. He told my parents it was an 'aquatic scholarship.' My parents thought I was going to a boarding school in Maine. Next thing I know, I’m swimming through sewer mains under Metropolis looking for radioactive sludge canisters."

Barnaby watched them. This was how it always started. The trauma Olympics. Everyone competing to prove that their billionaire mentor, alien guardian, or mutated benefactor was the most negligent, the most unhinged, or the most casually abusive.

"What about you, Barnaby?" Dr. Kevin asked, redirecting the focus. "You've been quiet. How did your transition out of the shadow begin?"

Barnaby stared down at his shoes. They were scuffed brown oxfords he’d bought off the rack at a department store. Captain Apex had always worn hand-stitched Italian leather, even under his battle armor. Appearance is authority, Barnaby, the Captain used to say while applying teeth-whitening strips before a press conference. The public doesn't want a savior who looks like he buys his pants at the mall.

"It wasn't a big dramatic moment," Barnaby said, his voice quiet, almost lost beneath the hum of the fluorescent lights. "No fallout over ethics. No tragic death in the line of duty. No tearful resignation on a moonlit rooftop."

"What was it then?" Dr. Kevin asked.

"I turned eighteen," Barnaby said simply. "That was it. I woke up on my eighteenth birthday in the Lair. I went down to the training deck, ready to run the obstacle course. Captain Apex was there, drinking a protein shake, watching footage of his own fight against the Iron Revenant from three years ago."

Barnaby paused, remembering the glare of the monitors, the smell of ozone and synthetic leather, the cold blue light of the supercomputer reflections casting long shadows across the concrete floor.

"He looked at me," Barnaby continued, "and he didn't say 'Happy Birthday.' He didn't say 'Good morning.' He just looked at my face, then down at my shoulders, then back at my face. And he said, 'You’re getting a jawline, kid.'"

Penny stopped fidgeting. Jax tilted his head slightly, listening.

"'A jawline?'" Dr. Kevin repeated, scribbling a brief note.

"Yeah," Barnaby said with a hollow laugh. "He told me the demographic research showed that the public didn't respond well to adult sidekicks. A teenager next to a grown hero looks like a mentor-protégé dynamic. A twenty-year-old man in matching spandex standing next to a forty-year-old man looks like a weird co-dependency issue. He said the brand couldn't absorb the shift in optics."

"So what did he do?" Jasmine asked, her first words of the night. Her voice was flat, sharp, and stripped of emotion—the voice of someone trained to report tactical status under heavy fire.

"He gave me a severance check for forty thousand dollars," Barnaby said. "He handed me a duffel bag with three suits of my old costumes, a signed copy of his autobiography, and the keys to a 2008 Honda Civic. Then he introduced me to the new Kid Dynamo. A twelve-year-old gymnast he’d scouted from a state competition in Ohio two weeks prior."

The room went dead silent. Even the fluorescent light seemed to quiet down for a second.

"Forty grand," Jax spat, shaking his head. "Jesus, Barnaby. The Paladin just left me at a bus station in New Jersey with a fake birth certificate and a bag of quarters."

"It’s not about the money, Jax," Dr. Kevin interjected, steering the conversation away from comparison. "Barnaby, how did that make you feel in that moment?"

"It made me feel disposable," Barnaby said, the words coming out flat and heavy, like lead weights dropped onto the linoleum floor. "I’d spent seven years jumping off buildings, taking punches from guys made of living rock, missing high school dances, missing algebra, missing everything... because I thought we were saving the world. I thought I was being prepared to take over the mantle. I thought I was his son."

Barnaby swallowed hard, his throat tight. He hadn't said those words out loud in fifteen years. He’d barely let himself think them.

"And then you realized?" Dr. Kevin prompted gently.

"I realized I wasn't his son," Barnaby said. "I was his accessory. I was the bright red cape that made his golden armor look better in photos. I was the guy who carried the spare utility clips and drew fire when the villain had a gun with auto-aim."

Penny reached out, placing a light, cautious hand on Barnaby’s forearm. She didn't say anything—sidekicks rarely knew how to offer standard emotional comfort—but the gesture was clear enough. I get it.

"That realization," Dr. Kevin said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees, "is the hardest part of the process. It’s what we call the 'De-Centering Phase.' For your entire youth, your purpose was defined entirely by someone else’s mission. Their enemies were your enemies. Their morals were your morals. Their brand was your identity."

"And when the brand drops you," Jasmine said softly, her eyes fixed on the emergency exit door, "you don't exist anymore."

"You do exist," Dr. Kevin corrected her firmly. "You just have to learn how to exist without a mission objective. That’s why we’re here. To rebuild the person beneath the mask."

Gus leaned back in his chair, the vinyl fabric squeaking against his parka. "Easy for you to say, Doc. You ever tried to get a job at Home Depot when your high school diploma is signed by the President of the United Nations under a security clearance that got revoked in 2012? My resume has a seven-year gap where I have to write 'Private Security Contractor' and pray they don't do a background check that hits a Department of Defense firewall."

"We'll cover employment strategies in Chapter Eighteen," Dr. Kevin said, without missing a beat as he leafed through his stack of papers. "Today is about acknowledging where we are. Step one of leaving the shadow is accepting that the shadow was real, that it hurt you, but that it is no longer casting itself over your every move."

"It still is, though," Jax grumbled, tapping his chest. "I’ve got three cracked ribs that never set right because the Paladin didn't believe in hospitals. Said emergency rooms created paper trails. He used to stitch me up on the kitchen table with fishing line and bourbon."

"And how does that affect you today, Jax?" Dr. Kevin asked.

"It affects me every time I try to turn my torso to look in my blind spot while driving," Jax snapped. "It affects me when I hear a siren and my heart rate hits one-eighty before I even realize I’m standing in a grocery store aisle buying milk."

"That's autonomic arousal," Dr. Kevin explained, writing a note on his pad. "Your body is still responding to the conditioning of your childhood. It took years to build those neural pathways, Jax. It’s going to take time to tear them down."

"Or a lot of alcohol," Gus muttered.

"We talked about chemical coping mechanisms during your intake, Gus," Dr. Kevin reminded him dryly. "The salt-water tanks and the gin are not long-term solutions."

Barnaby looked around the circle again. For the first time all evening, the oppressive grey atmosphere of the basement didn't feel entirely hostile. It felt like a decompression chamber. Outside those high, narrow windows near the ceiling, the rest of the world was walking past—normal people who had grown up watching them on Saturday morning news broadcasts, who thought of them as action figures or cereal box graphics, who had no idea what it was like to bleed through a custom-tailored suit of Kevlar while a forty-year-old man in a cape screamed at you for ruining his grand entrance.

"Dr. Kevin?" Barnaby asked.

"Yes, Barnaby?"

"Does it ever actually go away?" Barnaby gestured vaguely toward his own chest, toward the space where the lightning bolt emblem used to sit. "The feeling that you're supposed to be somewhere else? That somebody, somewhere, is pressing a red button, and you’re failing because you’re sitting in a basement eating cold donuts?"

Dr. Kevin set his pen down on the clipboard. He looked at Barnaby, then at Penny, then at Jax, Gus, and Jasmine. For a second, the clinical, professional distance slipped from his face, replaced by simple, unvarnished empathy.

"No," Dr. Kevin said honestly. "It doesn't go away completely. Not entirely. Because for a long time, you were heroes. You did extraordinary things under impossible conditions, at an age when you should have been worrying about algebra homework and junior varsity track."

He paused, letting his words sink into the damp basement air.

"The goal isn't to pretend it didn't happen," Dr. Kevin continued. "The goal is to stop letting the man in the cape decide what your life is worth now that the show is over."

Penny let out a long, slow breath. Jax stared at his scarred knuckles, his jaw working silently. Jasmine leaned back just half an inch from the edge of her seat—not much, but for her, it was an enormous concession.

"Alright," Dr. Kevin said, reaching into his leather bag and pulling out a stack of blue folders. "I’m handing out our initial self-assessment workbooks. I want you to take these home. Don't fill them out all at once. Just look at Section One: Identifying Heroic Conditioning in Daily Life."

He passed the folders around the circle. Barnaby took his, feeling the smooth texture of the cardstock. On the cover, printed in plain, unglamorous black font, were the words: RECLAIMING THE SELF AFTER SECONDARY ROLE TRAUMA: A WORKBOOK.

"We have twenty minutes left," Dr. Kevin said, checking his watch. "Who wants to share their first experience of trying to live like a normal person?"

Penny raised her hand slowly, like a student in a classroom. "I tried to go to a music festival last summer," she said, a faint, wry smile touching the corners of her mouth. "First time in my life surrounded by crowds without looking for snipers or bomb threats. I lasted forty-five minutes before I tackled a guy dressed as a giant banana because he reached into his jacket too fast to pull out a vape."

Jax let out a short, sudden bark of laughter. It was a harsh, rusty sound, like an engine turning over after years in a garage, but it was real. Gus chuckled, a wet, bubbling sound, and even Jasmine’s lips twitched slightly at the corners.

Barnaby opened his blue folder. The first page contained a single question printed at the top of the white paper: Who are you when no one is calling for help?

He pulled a pen from his jacket pocket—a cheap ballpoint pen, not a tactical stylus or a utility blade—and held it over the line. For thirty-four years, he’d had an answer ready for every crisis, every villain, every press conference, every tactical scenario.

Now, sitting in a metal folding chair in a damp basement in Ohio, listening to the hum of the light fixtures and the soft rustle of paper, Barnaby Vance looked at the empty white line.

And for the very first time in his life, he didn't have a clue.

The morning sun hit Barnaby’s bathroom mirror at an unforgiving angle, highlighting the faint, silvery crosshatch of an old shrapnel scar on his left shoulder and the undeniable softness that had settled around his midsection. In his hands, he held a vacuum-sealed plastic garment bag that hadn't seen the light of day since the bush administration.

He pulled the zipper. The smell hit him instantly: a volatile mixture of degraded polyurethane, dry-cleaning solvent from a specialized military lab, and three-decade-old sweat.

"Jesus," Barnaby muttered, taking a step back.

He reached inside and pulled out the torso section of his old Kid Dynamo uniform. In the late nineties, this suit had been a marvel of high-density synthetic weave, engineered to deflect low-caliber gunfire, disperse thermal shock from plasma blasts, and compress muscle tissue to reduce lactic acid buildup during extended rooftop pursuits. It was a masterpiece of tactical engineering.

Now, it looked like a crushed plum that someone had left in a hot trunk for fifteen years.

Barnaby laid the suit out on his bed. The chest panel—a gleaming gold lightning bolt set against a field of emerald green—was spider-webbed with micro-cracks. The rubberized shoulders had gone rigid, turning a translucent sickly yellow where the UV stabilizers had failed. The suit had shrunk, or, as Barnaby tried to convince himself, the synthetic polymers had undergone a natural post-chemical crystallization process that reduced their surface area.

He unbuttoned his khakis, kicked off his loafers, and stepped into the legs of the suit.

It was like trying to climb inside a cold, rubber fire hose. The ankle cuffs, once lined with memory-gel to prevent high-impact friction burns, were now hard as dried leather. Barnaby grunted, pulling the suit up over his calves. The fabric screeched against his skin, catching on his leg hair with every inch.

"Come on," he hissed, hoisting the waist up over his hips.

The fabric groaned. A sound like a tiny, high-pitched guitar string snapping echoed through the bedroom. Barnaby froze. He looked down. A two-inch tear had opened right along the left hip seam, revealing a sliver of pale skin and a grey pair of fruit-of-the-loom briefs.

He squeezed his eyes shut, let out a slow breath, and forced his arms into the sleeves. The armpits bound instantly, locking his elbows at a strict ninety-degree angle. He couldn't reach his back to pull the heavy-duty zipper up. He stood there in the center of his modest one-bedroom apartment, panting, arms pinned to his chest like a turkey prepped for roasting, wearing three-quarters of a suit that smelled like a melted rubber boot.

The phone on his nightstand buzzed. Barnaby waddled over, his thighs friction-locked together by the degraded neoprene, and picked it up using his thumb and forefinger because his forearms were too restricted to flex his wrists.

"Hello?" he rasped, the high-collar neck guard digging directly into his larynx.

"Barnaby? It’s Penny," her voice came through the speaker, crisp and entirely unbothered. "Tell me you didn't do it."

Barnaby swallowed hard against the collar. "Do what?"

"Try on the suit," Penny said. "Dr. Kevin specifically said in the intake notes that attempting to wear old tactical gear before completing Section Two of the workbook is a classic form of somatic regression."

"I was just checking the condition of the material for long-term storage," Barnaby lied, his voice three pitches higher than normal due to the respiratory restriction. "The... neoprene needs air."

"You're wearing it right now, aren't you?"

"The zipper is stuck," Barnaby admitted. "And the armpits are tearing."

A long pause echoed over the line, followed by the faint rustle of a paper bag. "I’m coming over with a pair of heavy-duty shears and a bottle of mineral oil. Don't try to sit down. If those legacy seams burst while you're flexed, you'll snap your lower vertebrae."

Twenty minutes later, Penny was standing in Barnaby’s living room, wearing a beige trench coat over her work clothes, holding a pair of heavy tailor's scissors. She looked at Barnaby, who was standing perfectly rigid next to his dining table, unable to lean or bend.

"It’s worse than I thought," she said, circling him with a critical eye. "The colors have oxidized. You look like a bruised avocado."

"Just cut the zipper," Barnaby grunted. "The neck guard is cutting off the carotid flow on my left side."

Penny snipped the reinforced teeth of the back zipper. The suit didn't just open; it exploded off his shoulders with a loud POP, the compressed neoprene expanding back to its original stiff shape like a spring-loaded trap. Barnaby slumped forward, taking a deep, ragged breath of normal apartment air, hands on his knees.

"Thanks," he panted, peeling the rubber legs down to his ankles and stepping out of the ruined garment. He left it lying in a sad, crumpled heap on the rug.

Penny sat down on his sofa, setting the shears on the coffee table. She reached into her handbag and pulled out a small plastic tube, holding it up to the light. "I found my old refract-lenses yesterday. In a shoebox under my winter coats."

"Did you try them on?" Barnaby asked, pulling on a pair of oversized grey sweatpants.

"I tried," Penny said softly. "The bridge of my nose is wider now. They pinched so hard I nearly gave myself an astigmatism. And when I turned on the light-split function, the battery pack leaked lithium grease down my cheek." She tossed the tube onto the table beside the scissors. "We’re decaying, Barnaby. The gear was built for teenagers with infinite cellular regeneration. We’re in our thirties. We have acid reflux."

That evening, the basement of St. Jude’s smelled even stronger than usual of floor wax and stale coffee.

When Barnaby and Penny walked down the stairs, Jax was already sitting in his usual folding chair. On the empty chair beside him sat a thick, dust-covered canvas duffel bag. The top zip was partially open, revealing the metallic gleam of a shoulder pauldrons finished in matte-black tactical paint.

"Don't," Jax growled as Barnaby sat down across from him. "Don't say a word."

"I didn't say anything," Barnaby said.

"You looked at the bag," Jax snapped. He reached into his leather jacket, pulled out a small tub of tiger balm, and began aggressively rubbing it into his wrist joints. "The straps don't fit. Okay? There. I said it. The chest harness was custom-molded for a sixteen-year-old with twenty-two-inch waist and no chest hair. I put the harness on this morning, breathed in too deep, and tore the carbon-fiber rivets right out of the leather."

Gus drifted into the room, trailing his usual scent of brackish water. He dropped into his chair with a heavy groan, leaning his head back against the concrete wall. "I can't even get my boots on," he said to the ceiling. "My feet flattened out two shoe sizes when I turned twenty-eight. The Sovereign used to tell us that flat feet were a sign of moral weakness. Turns out it's just what happens when you spend ten years jumping off pier pillars onto concrete revetments without arch support."

Jasmine arrived last. She carried no bag, but her walk was stiffer than usual. She sat down, adjusted her spine, and stared straight ahead.

"Jasmine?" Dr. Kevin asked as he entered the room and arranged his clipboard. "How are we doing tonight?"

"The leg holsters," Jasmine said through clenched teeth. "The thigh straps cause deep tissue ischemia after ten minutes if your body fat percentage is above seven percent. I had to use a seam ripper to widen the retention loops."

Dr. Kevin looked around the circle, taking in the bruised shoulders, the posture adjustments, and the collective air of physical humiliation hanging over the room. He clicked his pen.

"Welcome to Chapter Two," Dr. Kevin said calmly. "Spandex Doesn't Stretch Like It Used To: Coming to Terms with the Aging Heroic Body."

"It’s not just the spandex, Doc," Jax said, waving his greasy, balm-covered hands. "It’s the whole design philosophy. They built those suits to look good in photo ops for the city papers. High-cut hips, exposed joints for 'mobility,' minimal padding around the kidneys because padding makes you look bulky in a three-quarter profile shot. We were running through freezing rain in painted latex while the Alpha stayed warm inside a climate-controlled titanium mech-suit."

"The Illuminator told me that cold was an illusion created by a weak mind," Penny said, staring at her chipped nail polish. "He made me wear a sleeveless tunic in Chicago during December. I had frostbite on my elbows for three years. I thought everyone’s elbows turned purple in the winter."

"That wasn't a weak mind, Penny," Dr. Kevin said, scribbling on his notepad. "That was environmental exposure without protective gear. A classic violation of basic child labor safety standards, masked as spiritual discipline."

"We didn't care about safety standards," Gus rasped. "We wanted to look fast. We wanted to look like them."

Barnaby reached down and touched his lower back, where a sharp, persistent ache had taken up permanent residence since he had tried to flex his torso inside the old Dynamo suit two hours ago. "The worst part isn't the suit not fitting," Barnaby said, his voice dropping into the quiet register that made the rest of the room go still. "The worst part is realizing why it doesn't fit."

"Expand on that, Barnaby," Dr. Kevin said.

"When you're fourteen," Barnaby said, "you think your body is a weapon that the hero gave you. You think if you train twelve hours a day, if you drink the protein slurry, if you sleep six hours on a foam mat in the training room, you’ll eventually turn into them. You’ll get the eight-foot wingspan. You’ll get the jawline that can shatter glass. You think the suit is just a temporary mold you wear until you grow into the full-sized version."

He looked down at his scuffed brown shoes.

"And then you hit twenty-five," Barnaby continued. "And you realize you’re not a god in waiting. You’re just a guy who ruined his knees before he was old enough to vote. The suit didn't shrink. We just stopped being small enough to fit inside their fantasy."

The fluorescent lights hummed in their B-flat key, the sound vibrating through the metal frames of their chairs.

"That transition," Dr. Kevin said, looking across the circle, "from viewing your body as a functional instrument for someone else's mission to accepting it as a human vessel with physical limitations, is one of the most painful stages of recovery. In clinical terms, we call it 'Somatic Desecration Trauma.' You were taught that physical pain was a metric of success."

"'Pain is just the body shedding inefficiency,'" Jasmine quoted verbatim, her voice chillingly mimic-like. "That was Specter’s motto. He had it engraved on the wall above the pull-up bars in the sub-basement."

"It’s a terrible motto," Dr. Kevin said flatly. "Pain is a warning system designed to keep your internal organs from failing. When you ignore it for a decade, your body remembers. It stores the trauma in the fascia, the joints, the spinal column."

Jax leaned over his heavy duffel bag and unzipped it fully. He reached inside and pulled out an object that wasn't a weapon. It was a heavy, industrial-grade back brace made of grey neoprene and velcro.

"I wear this when I shovel the driveway," Jax said, looking at the floor, his cheeks turning a dull, dark red. "The Paladin’s public relations team used to sell action figures of me doing mid-air spin kicks over armored cars. Now I have to take two ibuprofen before I clean the gutters or my left leg goes entirely numb for three days."

"There is no shame in a back brace, Jax," Dr. Kevin said softly.

"There is when you used to be called the Pint-Sized Paladin," Jax spat. "There is when the kids down the street find your old trading cards in a bargain bin at a comic shop and then see you struggling to drag a blue recycling bin up a three-degree incline."

"I have a CPAP machine," Gus offered suddenly, his raspy voice cutting through the tension.

Everyone looked at Gus.

"The gill modifications," Gus explained, touching the faint scars on his neck. "They didn't close up properly when I stopped going into the water. Now, if I lay flat on my back, my airway collapses because the tissue is too loose. I have to sleep with a plastic mask strapped to my face that hums like an air compressor all night. The Sub-Aquatic Sovereign is currently seventy-two years old, living in a palace built of black coral, breathing pure, synthesized oxygen, and I’m in a two-bedroom apartment in Cleveland sleeping with a machine that sounds like a vacuum cleaner."

Penny let out a small, quiet laugh, then quickly covered her mouth. "I’m sorry, Gus. It’s not funny."

"No, it is," Gus said, a faint, weary grin touching his dry lips. "It’s absurd. We’re a walking catalog of mid-life medical complications, and none of us have even hit forty yet."

"This is progress," Dr. Kevin said, writing on his pad. "Humor is a secondary defense mechanism, but it’s far healthier than physical denial. Trying to force yourselves back into gear that was designed for adolescent bodies is a physical manifestation of nostalgia. You are trying to wear the proof that you were once important."

"It’s not about being important," Barnaby said, resting his chin in his hand. "It’s about being functional. Back then, if I jumped off a two-story wall, I landed in a roll and kept running. Now, if I step off a curb wrong while carrying groceries, my ankle clicks like a ratchet wrench for a week. It feels like betrayal. Like my own biology quit on me."

"Your biology didn't quit on you, Barnaby," Dr. Kevin corrected. "Your biology survived. You survived high-speed collisions, structural collapses, extreme altitudes, and severe psychological neglect. The fact that your body is stiff, scarred, and resistant to synthetic tights isn't a failure. It’s evidence of survival."

Dr. Kevin set his clipboard down and reached into his briefcase, pulling out a large, flat box wrapped in plain brown paper. He set it on the empty chair in the center of the room.

"What's that?" Jasmine asked instantly, her posture sharpening. "A containment unit?"

"It’s a box of civilian clothing," Dr. Kevin said. "Specifically, heavy-knit wool sweaters, soft cotton trousers, and orthopedic walking shoes with high-density arch support."

Jax stared at the box like it contained unexploded ordnance. "You want us to wear cardigan sweaters?"

"I want you to wear clothes that do not require an allen wrench to adjust," Dr. Kevin said smoothly. "I want you to wear clothes that are designed for comfort, for warmth, and for bodies that have earned the right to relax. Your homework for this week is simple: take one item from your old uniform—just one—and store it away in a permanent seal. Not in a duffel bag under your bed where you can reach it when you’re feeling weak. Put it in an attic. Put it in a storage locker. Or, if you’re ready, put it in the trash."

"I can't throw it away," Jax said immediately. "The weave contains trace amounts of depleted promethium. It’s technically a hazardous material according to state regulations."

"Then drop it off at a hazardous waste facility," Dr. Kevin suggested without missing a beat. "The point is to stop using your former gear as a benchmark for your current worth. You are not failed superheroes because your waistlines have expanded or your joints ache when the pressure drops. You are adult human beings who are no longer being shot at."

Silence returned to the basement, but it was less dense than before. The air felt lighter, as if the collective admission of physical decay had cleared out some of the stale, heavy shame that had been sitting in the room.

Barnaby looked at the small pile of tactical gear sitting in the plastic bin by the door—Jasmine’s throwing knives, Jax’s baton, Gus’s valve wrench. They looked smaller now. Less like legendary artifacts of a golden age and more like heavy scrap metal that had outlived its purpose.

When the session ended at 8:00 PM, the group moved toward the stairs with the slow, deliberate care of people who knew their own physical boundaries.

Jax picked up his heavy duffel bag, shifted its weight onto his uninjured shoulder, and looked at Barnaby. "You need a ride?"

"My car’s around the corner," Barnaby said. "A 2008 Civic."

"How are the seats?" Jax asked, rubbing his lower back. "Any lumbar support?"

"Terrible," Barnaby said with a small, dry smile. "The springs in the driver's side are shot. It’s like sitting on a bucket of rocks."

"Sounds perfect," Jax grunted, heading up the concrete steps. "Matches my spine."

Barnaby walked out into the cool evening air. The streetlights were flickering on across the city, casting long, pale beams over the pavement. For fifteen years, every time he saw a streetlight come on, his brain had automatically calculated light-to-shadow ratios for tactical concealment. He had checked the roofs for silhouettes. He had listened for the tone of the emergency frequencies.

Tonight, he just felt the cold wind against his neck—a neck that was no longer choked by a high-density, fire-retardant collar.

He drove back to his apartment, unlocked the front door, and walked into his bedroom. The ruined Kid Dynamo suit was still lying on the rug where he had stepped out of it, a hollow shell of green and gold synthetic rubber that looked remarkably small under the overhead light.

Barnaby picked it up. The fabric felt cold and brittle under his fingers. He walked over to his closet, reached up to the highest shelf, and pulled down a heavy, air-tight plastic storage bin he had bought at a hardware store three months ago.

He folded the suit—not with the precise, military precision Captain Apex had demanded, but loosely, almost casually—and laid it inside the bin. He took the high-impact shoulder pads, the cracked domino mask with its degraded adhesive strips, and the scuffed yellow utility belt, and placed them all on top of the green fabric.

He picked up the heavy plastic lid.

For a second, his hand hovered over the box. His thumb traced the edge of the plastic latch. He could hear the echo of the Captain’s voice in the back of his head, booming over the roar of a jet turbine: Stay light on your feet, Dynamo! The suit is your skin! You shed it, you’re just target practice!

Barnaby pressed the lid down. The plastic latches engaged with two sharp, definitive snaps that echoed through the quiet apartment.

He lifted the box, carried it across the room, and slid it into the dark, deep recess under his bed, pushing it all the way to the back wall until it was completely out of sight.

He stood up, his spine popping with a dry, dull sound that made him wince slightly, then reach for the tube of tiger balm on his dresser. He rubbed a pea-sized drop onto his neck muscles, pulled on a soft, oversized cotton sweatshirt that had zero tactical value, and walked into the kitchen to put the kettle on.