Damian finally noticed me properly after the hospital rift. Not as a street rumor, not as a viral joke. As a threat.
He appeared on a morning broadcast, smiling under perfect studio lights, praising brave young raiders while carefully suggesting that reckless unknowns could endanger the city. He did not say my name at first. He did not need to. The footage behind him showed my lightning, my coat, my face, and just enough of the hospital to make people nervous.
Harper threw a wrench at the screen. Owen dropped his breakfast. Riley asked if we were going to punch him. Grace said, "Absolutely not on live television."
I watched Damian smile and felt the old memory of being powerless crawl up my spine. Men like him do not always attack with fists. They attack with stories. They make you look unstable, dangerous, lucky, fake. They convince the crowd to doubt what they saw with their own eyes.
In my old life, I would have yelled at the screen and lost. In this life, I smiled back.
Damian wanted me to look reckless. So I decided to become the safest disaster Aster had ever seen.
For the next two weeks, we cleared rifts with cameras everywhere. Not hidden cameras, obvious ones. Harper built floating drones shaped like tiny storm clouds. Owen placed them at every angle. Grace narrated injury prevention with the enthusiasm of someone forcing the world to learn. Riley rescued civilians with style so unnecessary it became a trend. I fought like a lunatic with perfect control.
When a fire rift opened in a subway station, I absorbed the power from the train rails, lifted an entire train two inches off the track, slid it backward to safety, and trapped flame lizards inside a ring of flickering ticket gates.
When a rift opened in a mall arcade, I took command of every game cabinet, made pixel dragons distract real goblins, and defeated the boss monster by dropping a giant claw machine on its head.
When a warehouse rift released invisible spiders, I filled the air with static dust and revealed them as glowing outlines, then made them march into shipping containers like embarrassed pets.
Every attack became a lesson. Every rescue became a show. Every doubter became free advertising.
People started calling me the storm king, which sounded dramatic and also made Grace roll her eyes so hard I worried about her health. I did not correct them. A name is a weapon if the crowd sharpens it for you.
Money poured into the Stormhouse. Not through boring meetings or fancy promises. Through cores, rescues, races, videos, and people who wanted our help because we actually showed up.
We upgraded the base. Harper built a wall of screens that tracked rift activity. Riley built a garage full of vehicles that should not have been legal in any dimension. Grace built a clinic. Owen built a kitchen and somehow made it the most important room in the building. I built a throne out of stolen batteries as a joke, then sat on it during a livestream while charging five hundred phones at once and answering viewer questions. That made more money than clearing a low-level rift. I hated and loved that equally.
But success attracts followers, and followers attract parasites.
One night, a group of raiders arrived at the Stormhouse smiling too hard. They claimed they wanted to join. Their gear was polished, their words were flattering, and their boots had fresh alley mud from Damian's territory. Owen noticed first. He always noticed mud.
I welcomed them in.
Harper looked at me like I had lost my mind. Riley rested one hand near her keys. Grace quietly moved the clinic patients to the back rooms.
The fake recruits spread through the lobby, pretending to admire the place while planting tiny crystal bombs under tables, behind vending machines, and near the main generator. They thought our cameras were disabled. They thought Harper's drones were decorations. They thought I could only sense electricity, not the little heartbeat of unstable crystal triggers.
I let them finish. Then I turned on the karaoke machine.
A cheerful song started blasting through the lobby speakers. The fake recruits froze. I stepped onto the staircase above them, holding a microphone I did not need.
"Welcome to orientation," I said.
The doors locked. The lights dimmed. Every bomb floated out from its hiding place and drifted into the center of the room, spinning gently like fireflies.
The fake recruits reached for weapons. I raised one finger. The weapons flew away, stuck to the ceiling, and arranged themselves into the shape of a smiling face, because Harper had clearly hacked my dramatic moment.
I continued speaking into the microphone, because once you commit to a bit, you respect the bit.
"First lesson," I said. "Never plant electric triggers in the house of the guy who talks to circuits."
They attacked anyway. Evil people are wonderful like that. You give them a chance to leave, and they choose to become evidence.
The first one swung a blade. I made the floor lights flash, blinded him, and gently introduced his chin to the railing. The second fired a crystal pistol. I curved the shot around me and used it to cut the belt off the third, who fell over his own pants. Riley took down two more with a chair and a smile that belonged in a warning label. Grace stunned one with a medical device and looked disappointed in him. Owen hit a guy with a tray of dumplings, apologized to the dumplings, then hit him again.
The last fake recruit tried to trigger the bombs manually. I let him press the button. Nothing happened.
Then every public screen in the lobby displayed the footage of him planting the bomb. His face clear, his voice clear, his pathetic little grin clear. The same feed went to the city guards, the rift safety board, and three gossip channels Harper hated enough to use as punishment.
The guards arrived to find the entire group tied up with charging cables, sitting under a glowing sign that said, "Try harder."
Damian's smile on television became a little tighter after that. Mine became wider.