My Super-powered Diary Chapter 1 Changes By Amethyst When Maddock Ainsley gets involved in a rescue operation with his unit things go horribly wrong and his life is forever changed. Can the newly minted Merida cope with being a girl and a teenage super hero?

The timer on the bomb continued to tick downward. 8…7…

The timer on the bomb continued to tick downward. 8…7… I wasted no more time, quickly dashing to the closest of the steel doors, opening it and slamming it behind me in the hopes that it would shield me from the blast. Even if I had opened the doors to those cells immediately, the hostages had all been drugged into a stupor, so they were doomed to die alongside me. In my final seconds I thought of those poor girls laying helpless in these cells, they were all just kids, maybe thirteen years old average. That was when the bomb went off and the heat washed over me.

Okay, maybe I should hit rewind for a bit, after all that brief instant is when my life started flashing before my eyes. Before the bomb my name was Maddock Ainsley. I grew up in Tacoma Washington and was the second child of Scottish immigrants; my father was a surgeon and my mother stayed at home raising me and my older sister Blair. Mom was also a Hyper, or a mutant as a lot of people seem to call us. She wasn’t really powerful, but she could create realistic images from light and energy, they even felt solid. Let me tell you, we had some interesting playmates and bedtime stories while growing up.

Blair came into her powers when she was fourteen and I was twelve, she became super smart and was classified as a Tinker; she could build just about anything that her brilliant mind could think up. I never got any powers, my H Chromosomes were never “Activated” as the lingo goes. I didn’t really care much since mutants seem to get a lot of negative attention in general. My sister graduated high school at sixteen and went about getting doctorates in medicine, engineering, biotech, physics and a few other things that I couldn’t pronounce, much less identify. I finished high school more normally and enlisted in the army after graduating, hoping to learn some new skills and do something worthwhile.

Twelve years later I was still in the military, though now I held the rank of Captain and had been moved to an anti-terrorism unit that dealt with threats on American soil. And that was around when the shit hit the fan. Roughly three hours before the bomb went off my unit had landed at Los Angeles Air Force Base, ready and waiting for some action. As we headed toward our mission briefing I wondered whether I would have the time to visit my sister and her fiancé while I was in L.A. I had only met Andy a few times so far, and I hadn’t seen him or Blair since the funeral last year. That hadn’t exactly been a great visit for either me or Blair though, since we were both still reeling from losing both our parents in the plane crash.

The briefing had started almost as soon as we had gotten to the briefing room and only included the six people from my unit, a second group of six from a similar unit, and a government spook. The latter wore a dark grey suit with dark sunglasses hanging from his coat pocket and he was so absolutely average looking that his averageness itself was astounding. He was Caucasian; not too pale, but not darkly tanned, he looked to be six foot nothing with a build that was neither overly muscular nor stickman, and he had brown eyes and short light brown hair, parted to the side. Of course he had introduced himself as Agent John Smith from the Hyper Affairs Agency.

According to Agent Smith there was a mutant extremist group operating in the Los Angeles area calling themselves Omega. Currently they were holding hostages, children who had been taken from orphanages across the state, seemingly at random. Through a mole within the organization, the Hyper Affairs Agency had gathered enough information to discover that one of the mutants in Omega had positively identified these children as having dormant H Chromosomes and taken them. Those children were now being held in two separate complexes, one in Santa Monica and the other in Pasadena.

Once he had finished giving us the bare bones background, Smith frowned and told us why we were there. “The word from our informant is that those children are due to be moved to a larger and more secure complex sometime within the next twelve hours. The mutants guarding those complexes aren’t heavy hitters and there’s less than a dozen in each complex, which is why they’re being moved to a larger more secure facility. We need to infiltrate both compounds, put down any opposition and rescue those children before they’re moved, while Omega’s resources are still spread thin.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” one of the members of the other unit said with a shrug. “As long as there aren’t any Regens or Enhanced we should be able to take them out no problem, I’m guessing one unit per compound?”

Agent Smith nodded. “Yes, the plan is to hit both compounds simultaneously. I have to warn you though, that there may be a weapon in play as well. Our informant within Omega has also informed us that they recently stole the prototype and blueprints for a bomb. She isn’t certain about the particulars of the device itself, but it would seem that both were stolen from a now defunct anti-mutant group known as Humanity Now. They developed the device, but decided that it was too dangerous to be used.”

Lt. Tabitha Roper, or Reaper as she was known in our unit, stared at Agent Smith bug-eyed before blurting out, “Too dangerous for Humanity Now?! Before they were wiped out wholesale those guys were fanatical lunatics, they were almost as bad as The Right Hand. What kind of weapon could be too dangerous for them to consider using?”

“I’m afraid that I don’t have those details, and all records of the device in Humanity Now’s database were completely destroyed,” the spook stated with a frown. “Frankly, you’ll just have to be prepared for anything and remain cautious.”

It was dark when we arrived at the compound in Santa Monica. It was a large fenced solitary home near the Pacific Palisades, certainly not something that anyone on a soldier’s salary could ever afford. Once Tabitha had found a good position for sniping and covering fire Colonel Atkins called her on the radio. “Do you have eyes on the compound Reaper?”

“Affirmative Grizzly, we’re looking at a large three story affair. I see three patrolling the perimeter, one in the third floor balcony, one guarding the main door and another by what looks like some sort of cellar door on the south wall. I’ll have to take out the one in the balcony first followed by the one at the entrance, they’ll see you coming otherwise.”

As we crouched by the eight foot stone fence that surrounded the home Grizzly laid out the game plan. “Reaper, once we’re over the wall take out the one on the balcony, then the door guard. After that take down any other available targets and be prepared to give cover fire if needed. We’ll approach as quickly and quietly as possible and once inside Hammer and I will check the top floors. Tank and Spitfire, you’ve got the main floor.” He turned to each of them as he said their call sign and assignment and finally it was my turn. “Mad Mac I want you to check out that cellar. We go in, look for any traces of the hostages or that weapon, and take out any resistance. Wait until the all clear before you move any of those hostages, I don’t want them killed in a crossfire. Let’s do this!”

With that we made our way swiftly over the wall and I had barely hit the ground on the other side when I heard Reaper in my earpiece. “Target one down… Target two down. Careful boys you have a patroller incoming from your left. I don’t have a clear shot on him from this angle.”

I looked toward my left and saw the target. He was stick figure thin and in the darkness his eyes glowed with an eerie green light. He was twenty feet away and closing on the bushes we were hiding in. “Aye, I got ‘im,” I said, throwing my combat knife and catching the approaching man in the throat. He let out a brief gasp of surprise, followed by a sickening gurgle before falling to the ground, shuddering and choking, and finally laying still.

I retrieved my knife, wiping it clean on the man’s clothes before putting it back in its sheath, and then I made my way to the south wall as the others headed for the main entrance. Halfway there I heard Reaper again. “The cellar guard is down, your way is clear Mac. The second patroller is down too Grizzly, there’s one more but he’s on the far side of the house heading north, I’ll take him down when he reappears.”

“Affirmative, thanks Reaper,” Grizzly and I spoke almost in unison.

I hit the south wall and turned the corner to see the crumpled form of the guard twenty feet ahead. I stepped gingerly past him and made for the large wooden cellar door. It was heavy, but I was a pretty strong guy so I managed it without too much trouble. I was just heading down the stairs when Reaper said, “Shit! We’ve got a teleporter and she’s moving fast.”

“What’s she up to Rea… huuuuurk…” Grizzly stuttered the last and then went silent.

“You boys need to get out of there, she’s teleporting her people out, we’re compromised,” Reaper half growled in my earpiece.

“Fuck that! She just killed Grizzly! I’m taking that bitch dow… aaaarrrghhh!”

“Tank!” Spitfire shouted, “Oh God she just tore him in half!”

I was torn, uncertain what to do as I heard Spitfire and Hammer scream out next. It was far too quiet and my heart was beating a mile a minute in my chest as I stood there in that dark damp stairwell. I could see a hallway ahead of me as I skulked in the shadows, concrete walls and floors with a series of thick steel doors to either side, and in the center of the hall there was a large silver device. I heard a sniffing sound behind me and a woman’s voice suddenly spoke. “Hi there, I’m Phantom. My, aren’t you a big strapping man? And one of us too, or rather you would be if you were Activated. It will be interesting to see how you turn out, if you live.”

I had been slowly reaching for my knife, but before I could put my hand on the hilt it vanished in a puff of smoke, followed quickly by my assault rifle and sidearm. Unarmed as I was I threw my elbow back toward her with all the force I could muster. There was nothing there, she vanished before the impact, reappearing before me from a cloud of black smoke. She was tall and slender, clad in a black dress and cloak, and both her hair and skin were white as a sheet. She had a cruel smile on her face, a face dominated by glowing red eyes. I punched her, but my hand just flew through a cloud of black smoke and she was gone.

Her voice sounded from behind me again as a cold finger traced along my jawline. “Well I’d love to stay and play, but that thing is going to go off any minute and I don’t want to be here when it does. I tell you what though big boy, if you manage to survive we’ll play again sometime. Enjoy your rebirth. Oh, and try not to die.” Then she was gone.

I nearly collapsed to the floor, gasping for air and my heart pounding in my chest. I forced myself to stand up, taking a quick look around before checking out the device in the middle of the concrete hallway. It was counting downward, with less than three minutes on the clock. “Reaper if yer still there, ya need ta bail. I found some sorta bomb. There’s less than two minutes thirty afore she blows.”

“Get the hell out of there!” she shouted back into my ear.

I was already checking out the steel doors in the hallway, there were six on each side. The doors each had a small window and beyond those doors were small dank and dirty concrete cells, without even any beds, the only furniture was a bucket in the corner. The occupants were all female, most of the rooms playing host to two girls, while a couple only had one. I wanted to take them with me and get out fast, but they all seemed to be heavily drugged, hardly aware of what was going on around them, so getting them up and running wasn’t going to be an option.

Maybe I could disarm the bomb? I hurried back to the device, but it seemed that I had taken too long checking the cells. 10… 9… and now we’re back to where we started. This flashback has been brought to you by “Omigod we’re all gonna die!”, and we will now return you to the death of Maddock Ainsley, already in progress.

As the heat washed over me I had barely enough time to realize that this was one of the single occupant rooms. The girl looked about the average age for the group of girls that ranged from six or seven all the way up to near adult. She was only a tiny slip of a thing with short hair, as bright red as my own. I could only stare ahead as the pain and heat tore through me, watching helplessly as the girl in front of me began to change form into some transparent pixie or something and then with a final scream evaporated into nothing. Oh God, that girl couldn’t have been more than thirteen.

The heat that had now become my entire existence didn’t seem to be from the bomb, there had been no fiery blast, no shockwave, only a fire that burned inside me and a bright red glow that surrounded my contorting body. My bones, muscles and flesh were being pulled, pushed, compressed and twisted, and I seemed to be shrinking out of my clothes. I was soaked in sweat and it felt like something was eating me alive from the inside, devouring Maddock and leaving something else in his place. A sudden snapping of the bones in my shoulders and hips and a wrenching of my insides caused me to scream out in agony, the bright glow around me flaring, causing the sweat pouring from my body to turn to steam and steam drying my clothes. Then, as the heat flared again from another excruciating round of snapping bones and twisting guts, everything I was wearing was incinerated, leaving nothing left but ash.

It was then that it all seemed to end; the agony was gone, leaving me feeling strangely empty inside, and the bright glow around me faded and then vanished. A curtain of long copper ringlets fell over me and I reached out to brush it away from my face. After getting a bit tangled in what seemed to be my hair I finally managed to brush it aside and for a moment I just stared at my hands, they were so tiny now, tiny and feminine. I was afraid to look down, but I did and found myself staring at a similarly tiny and feminine body. I had breasts, pale white with pink nipples, a splash of freckles across them, and almost a full handful, though that might not be saying much if my hands were as small as they currently seemed to me.

Reaching down I frantically checked my crotch searching for a familiar piece of equipment that I feared would no longer be there. Those fears were confirmed by the presence of a feminine slit with only a small tuft of pubic hair. I knelt there in horror for several minutes as I wondered just what had happened to me and who, or what I was now. I was still me, in my mind at least, but my body was changed and probably not even recognizable to me anymore. Worse yet, while I was mentally freaking out about being changed and the differences in my body, I knew that deep down this body didn’t really feel as horribly wrong to me as I felt it should. So… Maddock really was dead then, his only remains now ash on the floor. The realization hit me like a hammer, around the same time as my exhaustion, and as I passed out on the floor of the cell my last thought was, “Who am I now and where do I go from here?”