“That is better,” Erik admitted, watching with mild fascination as the door behind Billy phased back into existence. He couldn’t say that he hadn’t meant to be an asshole, but under different circumstances, he might have felt a bit badly about having succeeded. Might have. But I wouldn’t put money on it. Still, he was almost impressed. He had not yet seen the boy’s powers in action, though he had heard a great deal about them. About what they could do. … About what his mother’s had done.
“And I was always taught that it was rude to enter a room without knocking or announcing your presence, but here we are.” A jerk of the wrist tugged at the metal skeleton of the tower, making the structure creek around the warped support beams. “We all do a lot of things we don’t need to do. And there are always wider-reaching consequences than we intend. But at least if I destroyed the tower, I would only decimate the population of this block."