Spectramancer sat cross legged on the ground, the Redwell City crater just a few feet from his position.  With his hands on his knees and his eyes closed, he waited patiently.  He wasn’t sure when the Morphic Man would arrive, only that it should be soon.  Spectramancer reached out, sensing the emotions around him.  Primarily he sensed animals, their simple desires for food and shelter ringing out.  Other than that, there were the reporters, where Spectramancer sensed a mixture of curiosity, determination, and ambition.

            As he sat there, he suddenly sensed a presence he wasn’t expecting.  Spectramancer’s emotion based abilities allowed him to connect to people he had a strong emotional attachment to.  He could locate and even communicate with his wife, children, and close friends regardless of distance.  His daughter had the same powers he did and worked as the Superhero Passion.  It was her presence that he felt suddenly.  For a moment, he wasn’t the superhero Spectrmancer, and she wasn’t the Superhero Passion.  It was simply Nigel Beaumont talking to his daughter Wendy.

            “Hey, Dad,” his daughter’s eloquent British voice sounded in his head.

            “Hello, Wendy,” Nigel sent back.  “This is a surprise.”

            “What?  A daughter can’t call her Dad when she feels like it?  That would be easier if you kept your phone on you, you know.”

            Through the connection, Nigel sensed her affection, but there was something else, something she was trying to hide.  It only took Nigel a moment to realize it was worry.

            “Wendy?” he asked.  “Why are you really contacting me?”

            He could sense her sighing through the connection.

            “I sensed your anger earlier,” said Wendy.

            “Have you been spying on me?  After all the grief you gave me for potentially spying on you?”

            “I was worried,” she protested.  “I…I didn’t mention this before, but during the Rocky Mountain incident, I…I sensed your anger without trying, and I was all the way in Virginia.”

            That surprised him.

            “I didn’t want you to feel worse than you already did,” she continued.  “But I keep feeling spikes of anger from you, and I feel like it’s getting worse.  I know you don’t want to, but please reconsider what we talked about.”

            Retirement.  That word just kept coming up.  It irritated him, but anger was the last thing he needed right now.  At the end of the day, she was doing this out of love.

            “I…I’ll think about it,” he sent back.

            “Okay,” said Wendy.  “I’ll see you soon.”

            “See you soon.”

            Spectramancer felt the connection fade away, and he took a deep breath.  She’d been getting more and more insistent on this, and now he had a good idea of why.  Was he really considering retirement?  He loved being a superhero.  He loved helping people, and he just couldn’t stop worrying that people would get hurt if he did nothing to stop it.  Was he really struggling with his power that much?

            Perhaps, but he wasn’t going to retire right this second.  Right now, Spectramancer was still on a mission, and he would finish what he started.  After that, he would think about it.