My Super-powered Diary Chapter 43 Training 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?

I managed to only get choked up once as I told Hana about my dream and wrote down the details in my dream journal. When I was finally finished and she had put her arms around me to comfort me I admitted, “I dinnae ken why this ‘as been freakin’ me out so much. Sure, I’ll admit tha’ I’m scared tae hell o’ bein' trapped or held captive an’ bein’ unable tae escape. Given ‘ow I Activated, an tha’ unlike the others I was awake fer the whole thing, I kin ge’ tha’ part o’ it. Bu’ I jus’ dinnae ge’ why Phantom keeps showin’ up. Aye, she was the first person I’ve faced off against who really scared me, but I’ve had teammates die on me afore an’ I killed her, so why am I still so bloody scared o’ her?”

“I dunno, maybe it’s because subconsciously you’ve connected her to your imprisonment. Toxin could probably help you figure it out, babe.” She held me close, just running her fingers through my hair.

“Aye, I go’ another appointment wit’ her on the first day o’ school. I think I’d rather jus’ try tae pu’ it out o’ ma mind ‘til then. If I keep thinkin’ aboot it like this, it’s only goin’ tae make ma dreams worse tonight,” I said with a shrug as I took her hand in mine and stood up from the side of my bed.

“I know just what to do to get your mind off it,” the Japanese Hyper said with a smile. “I believe that I mentioned having breakfast at the restaurant, maybe we should help the others put all the blankets and stuff away so we can go eat as soon as Linds wakes up.”

Tha’ sounds great tae me,” I agreed. Then, still holding her by the hand I walked her outside to where the others were nearly finished packing up the sleeping gear we had used. We took down my tent and put both It and mine and Fawn’s sleeping bags away in my portable portal while Vanessa and Tasha took the Mythrilex blankets inside to be washed, after shaking out as much of the sand from the beach as they could. We decided that it might be for the best if we were all ready to leave for breakfast once 4-Ward’s resident Mystic woke up and found herself with a hungry baby dragon to feed, so we had Shu portal us to the school so that we could all get in a quick shower and change clothes without over-taxing the hot water in the house.

As soon as we arrived at Starfish Dorm, I carried Lindsey to her dorm room using the enhanced strength from my force field while Michelle carried the egg. She and Jordyn were going to take turns showering while the other watched Lindsey so that they could both get ready as well but still have someone there for Lindsey when she woke up. Since she was in good hands with her girlfriend and her cousin I returned to my own floor so Fawn, Vanessa, Brooke, and I could get cleaned up and ready for the day. Vidia and Silvermist both showered in their respective Fairy houses since the water pressure would have been too much for their tiny bodies, but Fawn was eager to shower in her human-sized form so that we could do our morning ritual together again.

An hour later we were all ready, even Lindsey had managed to get in a quick shower once she had awoken. As Peaches had with me, her new familiar had hatched and bonded with her not long after she had woken up, revealing a dragon only a little larger than Peaches, but colored a pale golden hue, like coffee with a good dose of milk. “I thought tha’ ya were goin’ tae make him magenta colored,” I said to Mei as we all sat down together at Paul Bunyan’s Pancake House.

“We were thinking about it, but it’s a boy dragon and Lindsey isn’t really a girly-girl so it didn’t feel right. So we talked about it and came up with this,” my little sister replied with a shrug.

“Besides, this works so much better with his name,” Lindsey put in with a grin. “I figured that our dragons are going to be paired together right, so I decided to call him Cream.”

It took a second for me to process what she was talking about and once I did I let out a groan. “Peaches an’ Cream? Ya really ‘ad tae go there?”

“Of course I did,” the Mystic agreed with a grin as she continued to lovingly pet her new familiar. I was still shaking my head over it when Hana’s dad came to take our orders.

After a satisfying breakfast at what was fast becoming my favorite restaurant in town we returned to our house to try and enjoy our last weekend of freedom a bit before school started on Tuesday. We would all be hanging out together again the next day for Labor Day of course, but that would be at Hana’s place above the restaurant and we all wanted to try and get in a little time more time on the beach. The morning mostly consisted of some more surfing lessons for those of us still new to it, something Fawn was enjoying a lot now that she could be human-sized and had a board of her own. I really liked it as well, it was a nice mix of challenging, exhilarating, and relaxing.

We continued along that vein until nearly lunch time, when I insisted on putting all of my sisters and the Fairies through a rigorous training session. We hadn’t done any training in a few days and I didn’t want any of us getting soft. Since it was Brooke’s and Vidia’s first time training with us I tried to make it a bit easier for them, though I made sure to throw in some hand-to-hand combat basics in. I finished the session by pairing all the Fairies off except for Fawn, who I had stay human-sized so that I could partner her with Brooke, for a sparring session to put what they had all learned to use. That meant that all of my sisters and the Fairies had partners to spar against while I could supervise them and make sure that their form was acceptable.

To my surprise the members of 4-Ward, including Jordyn, took that time to train as well as Hana gave them a martial arts lesson. It seemed that it wasn’t the first time for any of them, except for Jordyn. The Contractor Medium really needed the training too, since she wasn’t very coordinated in her new body and she needed to learn to control her slightly enhanced strength and speed better. Hana worked her team as hard as I worked mine and I fully expected that, except for the two of us, everyone would pretty tired by the time that Mom and Andy announced that lunch was ready.

It was as everyone was sparring that it happened, just as I was getting ready to call an end to the session for lunch. I had my force field up so that Fawn could fight Brooke with hers on and benefit from the strength and speed boost that would put the two on a more-or-less equal footing. Since the force field put Fawn and I around mid-range Cat three strength and speed and Brooke was somewhere between a high Cat two and a low Cat three Fawn had a slight advantage and was getting in some solid hits. Brooke was a bit sloppy, from both lack of experience and being too used to not feeling pain, when Fawn connected with a solid kick to Brooke’s solar plexus. The kick caused my newest sister to let out a grunt of discomfort and take a more guarded reaction before her eyes snapped open with realization.

“H… holy shit… I felt that,” Brooke said in stunned disbelief. “It didn’t really hurt, but I felt it! Hit me again Fawn! Harder this time!”

Everyone was staring at her now, except for Fawn who was giving me a questioning look. I nodded and told her with a grin, “Ya heard ‘er Fawn, if’n her new nanites are really workin’ all right an’ proper then Mom will wan’ us tae dae a thorough testin’.”

“Okay, if you really want me to, but I don’t want to hurt you Brooke,” Fawn said in concern.

“Do it Fawn!” Brooke insisted. Still looking a bit reluctant, Fawn wound up and put everything she had into a punch to Brooke’s jaw, her force field encased fist landing with a solid *thwack*. This elicited a surprised yelp from Brooke, whose hand quickly rose to rub her jaw. She quickly wrapped the human-sized Fairy up in a bear hug while squealing excitedly, “I felt it! I felt it!” Our sparring practice suddenly ended as everyone, Hyper and Fairy alike, descended upon Brooke in a group hug.

There was no going back to practice after that. Instead we headed inside to report the news to Mom, who of course wanted to run a full battery of tests on Brooke. It started with everything from pinches to full-on punches with varying degrees of strength, then moved on to heat and cold sensation, feeling various textures and materials and everything else that Mom could think of. Then she went on to having Brooke try turning the nanites on and off while feeling various sensations as well. The testing went on through lunch and into the early afternoon when Mom finally announced, “Congratulations, Brooke dear, yuir cured. Well no’ really cured so much as usin’ a sense prosthetic o’ sorts, bu’ ya can feel again an’ tha’s the important thing.”

Once all of the hugging and congratulations had subsided we all returned outside to the beach. Some of us were going to have another surfing lesson while some of us had other things we wanted to get done. The half happy and half surprised squeal from Brooke at the cool water as she went in with her board brought a smile to my face as we all went about our afternoon activities.

Most of us kids were surfing, while Andy stayed in the house. He wanted to get us connected to the school’s remote network so that he and Mom could get work done from home sometimes and so my sisters and I would all have easy access to materials for schoolwork once we got our school tablets on the first day of school. Mom wanted to go in to the medical center to try to finish coding the new DNA sequence from Hana’s stem cell samples so it could be sent to the Brain for confirmation and be ready for the next day. She had mostly finished it earlier that morning, but she wanted to finish the work at the clinic on school grounds, where there was more lab equipment available. Jordyn and Mei were continuing Mei’s lessons on sensing spirits and spirit energy so she could actively control it, rather than just instinctively when using her powers. As for Lindsey, Fawn, and I, we were going to do a bit of reading and try to start properly training Peaches and Cream.

Since both dragons were still in post-lunch nap mode I pulled out my two books for dragon training so we could look over them together and get a general idea of where we wanted to start once the pair of slumbering dragonets were awake. The first book was called Dracopedia: Everything you wanted to know about Dragons but were afraid to ask (For fear of getting eaten). It was a bit of a tongue in cheek informational guide on all the various types of dragons, and some of their close relatives among the magical creature population. We didn’t have time to read the whole thing, but we were sure to read the entries of each type of dragon that Mei had included properties of when creating our Meidragons.

The second book was called, Getting Familiar with Your Familiar: A training guide for Magickal creatures. There was a lot of good information in that one on general training exercises and for techniques specific to different types of magical creatures, including the Feydragon. Some of it seemed more pertinent to Lindsey than to me, since it was meant for training familiars but Lindsey thought that we should attempt them anyway since both Fawn and I had the Fairy’s passive magical abilities and we would be training Peaches to respond to both me and Fawn.

We started by training them to respond to their bells. Each time we rang one of their bells and the dragonet turned toward the sound Fawn would place them on the falconers shoulder pad that Lindsey and I were wearing. We decided that it might be a good idea at some point for Mom to put some padding in the shoulders of each our costumes so we wouldn’t have to wear the bulky pads over top of them. We also started teaching them to respond to a mental summons since they were empathically linked to us and some more basic things like using their litter boxes and breathing fire on command. Peaches was able to get a near-white-hot flame going, but Cream was less than a day old and couldn’t generate a flame yet. We figured, based on the information in the books, that they could breathe flame after a few days, but they likely wouldn’t be able to fly or teleport until they were a few weeks old.

Still, we were able to make some progress with them with the use of their training bells, toys, and training snacks. They were smart for babies and by early evening they knew that when we rang their bell or gave them a mental summons that they should try to come to us. Peaches was already using her litterbox fairly reliably, though I had to be the one to put her there since she wasn’t very mobile and I could usually sense through her emotions when she needed to use it. So far there had only been a few near-misses.

We weren’t the only ones making progress by the time dinner was drawing close. Andy had managed to get the house properly networked and connected to PSA’s network, so his computer, the one in Mom’s lab, and the laptop that he had gotten me for my birthday were all ready to go. Mei had made a promising step forward in her progress with Jordyn as well. She was starting to sense spirit energy and souls and could even tell the difference between Jordyn’s soul and Khestrid’s when looking at her Medium mentor. We were all ready to call it a day and figure out what to make for dinner when Mom returned home looking very pleased with herself.

Mom had used her power armor to get to the school and back to avoid traffic and make the trip faster and she was grinning from ear to ear as the armor retracted into its casual-wear mode until she could return it to its docking station. “Wot’s tha’ smile aboot, Mom,” I asked.

“Two things,” she said, still beaming. “First, I believe tha’ I managed to create a sample wit’ a stable Archetype fer Hana. I sent the data to the Brain fer him to analyze, so I should know fer sure by mornin’. Second, the automated construction fer those infiltration suits is complete. I’ll be callin’ Agent Smith to arrange transport on Tuesday, so we should be officially finished with the HAA. I feel like celebratin’, who feels like pizza? Yuir all welcome to stay fer dinner.” The last was offered to the members of 4-Ward who eagerly accepted the invitation.

We were all eating pizza and discussing the day’s progress, and I was snuggled up with Hana and Peaches as we ate. Lindsey was similarly positioned with Michelle and Cream and Vanessa and Garret were pretty cozy as well. It was still a bit weird seeing that, but they both seemed happy and that was the important thing. The sound of the doorbell cut all conversations short though, as we looked toward the front entrance foyer.

Mom quickly excused herself to go answer the door and for several minutes I could hear her talking with someone who sounded really familiar. Then she reappeared from the foyer wearing a frown, with Agent Smith following her. “John, what are you doing back in our neck of the woods so soon?” Andy asked his friend in concern.

Agent Smith did not look happy to be here, he also looked and sounded very tired as he spoke and clutched a tablet in his hands. “I’m sorry to have to interrupt your meal. There was an incident this morning at St. Sebastian’s Home for Orphaned Boys in San Francisco. Five boys were ripped to pieces by an unknown Hyper girl. One of the boys that was being held captive by Omega was returned to that orphanage after the incident and he is now missing. We were assuming that the two events are somehow related and then we got this footage… Does this mutant look familiar to any of you girls?” He tapped open a file on the tablet that he was holding.

My sisters and I all crowded beside Mom to look at the video from a security camera of a girl with white hair and skin and glowing red eyes appearing briefly and then vanishing again. She looked a lot like Phantom, so much so that it sent a chill of fear down my spine. It couldn’t be her though, this girl was younger and the face was different. Very similar, but there was no way it could be her. It was Mei who said in a hushed tone, “It’s Phantom.”

“Nae, it’s no’ her. I killed ‘er maself,” I said shaking my head and tearing my eyes away from the image.

Jordyn had been peering at the video as well, and had a dark look on her face as her golden wings twitched in agitation. “Khestrid says that that soul doesn’t really fit the body, and I have to agree with her. That’s a Contractor and she’s been possessed. Whoever that body belongs to isn’t in there anymore, the spirit cast them out.”

Agent Smith’s frown seemed to deepen. “Our current theory is that the missing boy was Activated in Omega’s base but that he was overlooked as Activated because he didn’t change physically and was a Medium with no real powers of his own. This would seem to fit that theory. That’s not what brought me here though. Two hours ago this girl appeared in L.A. and took the Governor hostage while he was giving a speech. When the FBI sent in hostage negotiators she told them to ‘Tell the HAA that I want the Scottish brat with the red hair and force field’. She’s given us until midnight. If we don’t turn you over to her before then, alone, she will kill Governor Brown.”