That darn hospital forced me to stay there for nearly three more days, even though I was obviously in completely perfect health!

Ahhh, well, I had a bed to sleep on, food to eat, a TV with silly shows on it to watch all day. Oh, and visits from Commander Ares. It seems he really wants me to go to this Compound on the edge of the city to find out just what I can do beyond leaving scorch marks on walls.

What has me annoyed right now is that most of the time I spent in this darn hospital was due to having to wait to see the psychologist. I know I'm all right, heck, you folks out there probably can tell that I'm fine, but no, they say I have to see this crazy doctor before I can leave.

Yeah, so it's been nearly three days of sitting in this bed, getting bored out of my mind.

The one good thing, I guess, is that my lawyer Bart Sims showed up yesterday morning, had me sign a few forms and informed me that all of my accounts will be transferred to my new identity within three business days, and that ID won't be a problem as my change was witnessed.

Heck, it couldn't have been much more public than what I saw afterward, although how that reporter got in there is a darn good question!

So I've been talking with Commander Ares when he has time to wander by, and he says I seem to be a new Super.

I asked him about these Supers. His response was they are people who've gained special abilities, some use them for good, some don't. He used examples like E-Girl, who is quite well known by now, and the Fluke, who twists luck into new pretzel shapes all the time.

Oh, my, there's someone by the entrance to the room, she's wearing a white doctor's coat, maybe she's the psych I have to see?

I could seriously do without having to jump through silly hoops like this. I mean, damn, there's another scorch mark on the walls? Oh, dear!

It turned out that the woman in the white coat was indeed the psychologist, an older woman named Dr. Morrow.

She gave me a quick once over before asking me not to make the obvious joke about her name. I just shrugged and waited.

We ended up talking for a while, especially about how I felt about being alive, as a girl, after being pretty much turned to a crisp.

I gave her the facts, including that the damn transformer shouldn't have done what it had obviously done just before it went bang in my face.

She countered that with the remark that, from what various technical people had learned, it was a rather odd trigger event. When she said trigger, I giggled, that was just sooo lame, but in effect, whatever caused that transformer to turn on at that point was still unknown.

We ended our little chat with her informing me that I would be free to go fairly soon, likely within a couple of hours. She shrugged when I asked why it couldn't be sooner, replying that the doctor who would need to sign the forms to release me was busy doing hospital rounds.

I admit that that irritated me a fair bit, enough that I sparked rather significantly, the spark just missing Dr. Morrow as she stood up to leave.

She sighed, then flashed me a brief smile, "I'm sorry that you feel upset about having to wait even longer, but he's in charge of your case."

With that, she waved back at me as she walked out of the room, leaving me fretting on that goldarned hospital bed.

It ended up being almost three hours later before I was finally free to leave. My lawyer, Bart, was waiting near the hospital entrance. When I walked out through the door, he smiled, stepped close and handed me a small folder, saying, "There's temporary IDs in there. The other lawyers who work on your behalf suggested keeping the name fairly similar to your old one, so you are now Jamie Raquel Stevens, okay?"

I thought about it for a moment, then nodded as I replied, "I assume keeping it similar will help simplify the transition process?"

It was his turn to nod, "That's right, it's extremely hard to deny live video footage of something like your transformation, kid."

I shook my head, twisted slightly to one side, then slapped Bart on the shoulder, knocking him several feet away in the process. He picked himself up a moment later, looking at me as if to ask what he had done, and I said quite simply, "Don't me call me kid again, Bart."

That was when he sniffed the air, then twisted his head to look at the shoulder of his suit jacket, which now had a large scorched area on it.

I looked at Bart again, then repeated it just to make it clear, "I may be a lot younger looking now, Bart, but I am in no way a kid."

He sighed, then nodded, picked up the larger folder from which he had pulled my ID items, then he turned and gestured, "After, you, Jamie."

I still had the items from my fanny pack, which included the keys to my four bedroom house in one of the better areas of the city.

Bart led me to a fairly new SUV, then pulled the gentleman act of opening the passenger door for me. I just laughed and climbed into the car.

The trip to my house from the hospital didn't take very long, less than fifteen minutes, then Bart was parking on the street.

He looked at me for a good minute or two after the vehicle had stopped, then smiled briefly and said, "Take care of yourself, Jamie."

I nodded, opened my door, stepped down from the vehicle, shut the door and watched him drive away. He's a good guy, if a bit silly at times.

I wasn't in the house for long, I just wanted to make sure everything was as I had left it before my life had changed so completely.

Commander Ares had given me the number for the Compound. I called there and said that I was on my way, then walked to the den near the back of the house where I kept my safe. I opened it, looked at the items in it, then grabbed the keys to the Jaguar F-type convertible.

I left the house via the door into the garage, then unlocked the car, hopped in, started it, and a moment later, was off and running.

I must have been a sight to see, an absolutely gorgeous girl with tri-colour hair in a gleaming red new Jaguar purring down the city streets.

When I arrived at the Compound, it only took a very brief moment before I was through their gates and rolling into the underground garage.

I looked around in surprise, the space was quite big, easily two hundred feet or more on each of five sides. No problems with parking here!

There was an elevator near the center of the garage area, I walked over to it and pressed the up button.

It arrived perhaps thirty seconds later, completely soundless, then before I could figure out which button to hit, it started moving again.

I was slightly startled as it rose toward one of the levels of the building, even more startled when I heard Commander Ares' voice.

"Don't be worried, Jamie, you're hearing me through a speaker in the elevator car. I know about your name, as I'm also a client of Bart's."

"Ooookay, that's nice to know, but you're darn lucky I wasn't startled much. I don't think the elevator would handle an electrical bolt well."

Well, now I know that Commander Ares has a sense of humour; he actually laughed, a good, solid belly laugh, after I said that.

I guess the elevator didn't go very far, it hadn't been moving fast. The doors opened and I exited into a large open concept room. I noticed that the elevator was enclosed within an internal wall near a corner of the room itself, with a rather large bar extending along the wall beside it.

Commander Ares was sitting on a bar stool in front of the bar itself, a bottle of a rather fine Scotch whiskey in front of him.

I made my way over to the bar, taking the stool next to Ares as he upended two shot glasses, then poured the whiskey.

We sat there, making idle conversation for a little while before Ares decided to get down to business.

It didn't take long for him to outline the tests they wanted me to do. My only worry was the damage I might do with my electrical charges.

He shrugged as he led me back to the elevator, then inserted a key and pressed a button for the third level basement.

The trip down to that level took a moment, the two of us saying nothing as the car descended.

Before we started the testing, I informed Commander Ares about how I seemed to be significantly stronger than I was before I changed. A quick session on a weight machine specifically for stronger Supers showed I can dead lift about 800 pounds. Heck, yeah, I'm way stronger now.

Well, the testing was a whole bunch of fun. It's a darn good thing that I found out i can actually pull in electrical energy, I needed it, honestly!

He had me discharging electrical bolts at a rather interesting wall, or more correctly, a force field of some kind.

He grinned when I asked if the electrical energy I was using would harm it, shaking his head as if to say no. I nodded and upped the intensity.

It seems I can launch the electrical energy much like a lightning bolt, sometimes single ones, sometimes multiple, as many as six at once.

I can also hold the electrical energy close to myself, allowing it to build and form a rather large bright ball that I eventually have to release.

Yeah, it was after letting go of one of those that I found out I could actually pull in raw electrical energy, I did it by draining a very big battery? Well, when I think of a battery, about the biggest I might consider is a car battery, but the one I drained was much, much larger than that!

I know I startled someone at the monitoring area, as Commander Ares was quickly asked to get me to stop what I was doing.

Once they explained about that battery being the electrical energy storage they used for keeping the Compound off the city grid, I giggled.

Perhaps ten minutes later, one of the techs informed us that I had drained from it, in just a few brief moments, more than 50 million kilojoules.

I have to tell ya that I felt pretty darn good at that point. If flight had been one of the gifts I had received, I would have been flying right then!

It turns out that I can also transfer the electrical energy from one location to another by pulling it through my center, I think?

I'm not really sure how to describe it, except that I'm not visibly showing any of the energy through the process. It's really weird!

There was some other testing, most of it to determine how far I could throw my various electrical bolts or bursts.

The one other facet of my electrical energy that surprised me was that I can apparently use some of that energy to form a shield/bubble of sorts. Obviously, I was safe inside it, but they asked me to test it out using Commander Ares as a guinea pig and he came out of it unharmed.

Someone also suggested I see just how much free electrical energy I could pull in, the result was an astounding 1.27 trillion kilojoules.

I have no idea why I wasn't glowing like a sun at that point.

I actually glared at Commander Ares and grumbled for a moment when I was told I had to return the energy to its original locations.

Once the testing was finished, Commander Ares and I returned to the bar for a drink or three, then I drove home.

Hmmm... it seems the electrical energy that I hold negates the effect of alcohol. I didn't even have the beginning of a buzz from the drinks.

I'm not sure just what I want to do at this point. I'm rich enough that I don't need to work, maybe I can just enjoy life for a while.

It might be interesting to work with other supers, people like E-Girl and Commander Ares, but I need to get used to being the new me first. I just realized, I spoke to him before about getting an outfit made in case I join them, and I still don't know if anything is being done about that!

I'm young again, well, younger than I was a few days ago by a good dozen years. There is a whole world waiting for me out there!