Heroic Delusions

After the metahuman emergence of 2012, things did not turn out quite as comicbooky as some people expected. However, there was one guy who managed to pull it off, spandex, cape, secret identity and all.

Of course people were curious, for varying reasons, but the few times people tried to ask about the start of his "career", he refused to answer, refering to the wave of accident-suicides of hopefuls. The trigger for that had been people who had discovered their powers making their "origin stories" public, a good deal of which involved life-threatening experiences - flight first manifested when a parachute wouldn't open, or phasing in an accident that left the car looking like an accordion, you get the idea.

It was a perfectly noble pretext for someone who didn't want to admit to a past of having turned his room into a coccoon, with movies, comics, and games providing escapism that ended up shaping his gift.