Chapter 15

Jordan let me stay in her apartment for the night since for whatever reason she had two bedrooms. She lent me a nightie and we put my clothes for a wash and dry ready for tomorrow. It did mean no panties for the night. That wasn't a big deal except I knew Jordan was reading my thoughts and when a movement or accidental action reminded me, I could see Jordan blush. I may even have paid attention and allowed my thoughts to wander in that direction to get a rise out of her.

I lay in bed that evening thinking about being a teenage girl. Seeing Stacy standing behind me looking strong and proud after someone had given my arse a swat had caused a rush of lust beyond anything I can recall. Maybe I had similar feelings as a young man on my first crush, but that was so long ago, my memory of it is gone. If I was truly as young as my biological age I would now think I was in love. Logically, I knew that all I had experienced was a chemical attraction and I knew Stacy had a similar reaction. How did I know that besides the obvious look in her eyes and acting possessively with me while we were dancing? The amount of DNA coming from her panties spiked in my presence in the same way mine did. If we did go on a date I think I will be putting a pad in place. Curiously, Jordan was also showing a minor spike from her panties, but that could be from the teasing I am intentionally doing with my thoughts.

I have also noted that I am behaving and feeling different as a woman. Stacy made me feel feminine by her being the protective one and I liked that. I would never have thought that I would be the submissive one, but I think there is an element of that because Stacy is definitely not submissive.

The next morning Jordan was up way before me and woke me up leaving it as late as she could. I had a quick shower, got dressed and followed her into the hero centre. She left me to relax in the lounge, told me to help myself with the food and drinks before heading off for her office.

I didn't feel that comfortable raiding their pantry but I was feeling hungry so I had a piece of toast and made myself a cup of tea. I suspected Jordan's first job was to report on me and her reading of me. It amused me that I had thought that before she left me, so she knew what I was thinking and didn't contradict me, which I felt was a confirmation and she knew that as well.

I had tried not to think about telepathy and Jordan in particular, but I'm sure some of my feelings leaked out. I felt sorry for her. Her gift was incredibly useful but made her a social pariah. Even though I tried not to be bothered by something she couldn't help, I had a secret that would be dangerous if revealed. My worry was that Jordan was doomed to a life alone. It would be hard enough to find someone who would be willing to date a telepath, but to never have a hurtful thought was nigh on impossible. She would have to date an angel or be hurt frequently.

In my own case, my wife stopped loving me when I put a bit of weight on. Of course, that made everything worse and I ended up putting more and more weight on. And that was without being subjected to her actual thoughts, just the looks of disgust and that was beyond hurtful. Maybe Jordan could date another telepath or a null. Null's were pretty rare and I suspected dating another telepath would either be heaven or twice as hard as dating a norm. People tended to be judgemental and withholding the negative verbally was fairly easy, but if someone could hear your thoughts there would be no holding back. It does get better with age. I have found myself much less critical as time has passed but that could just be me.

A guy in his forties came in, my DNA check put him at a biological age of forty-eight with a typical brick type superpower. Strength, flight and invulnerability. No regeneration so that was probably his real age. He glanced over at me and then concentrated on preparing himself breakfast and a cup of coffee before joining me.

“Here to try out for the Gold Coast Supers?” he asked before taking a big bite of his bacon and egg sandwich.

I smiled politely. “I'm too squishy for that. I may be a consultant for investigative work. I'm Chris.”

He waited until he swallowed. “Adam,” he said, “well, good luck.”

“Thanks.”

We then had an awkward silence before Stacy came into the room and gestured for me to follow her. She was dressed in combat fatigues, but still looked sexy.

“I've explained to Derek about your powers and suggested how useful they could be. The rest is up to you,” Stacy told me.

“Thanks. I wasn't really looking for a job, but I don't mind helping out. I still want my date though,” I reminded her.

“If you stay as part of the team, taking you out for a date will become a lot easier,” she commented but didn't look enthused.

I sighed, discouraged. “I'm not going to force the issue. I just thought it would be fun.”

We arrived before an unmarked office door. Stacy stepped closer to me and put a hand on each shoulder looking into my eyes. “I had a lot of fun dancing with you and would love to take you out on a date. I'm about ten years out of practice and had been resigning myself to be alone. I also don't look my age and my last partner broke my heart. I'm looking forward to shaking the cobwebs off, I just need a bit of time wrapping my head around it. Please be patient with me. My head is saying stupid things that I need to get out of my system.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“You are too young for me so I will look like a cradle robber if we go out. I will grow old while you still look young. I know neither of those makes sense but my last partner broke up with me because she started looking a lot older than me. I didn't care, but she did. It has made me sensitive to the issue and I need to shake it off.”

“Alright. I will back off. Let me know when you are ready. I will say I am not used to these teenage hormones, they are making me a bit aggressive,” I admitted.

She gave me a small smile. “I've enjoyed the attention.”

She knocked on the door, waited for a response and then indicated for me to enter.

Chapter 16

“Come in, have a seat,” Derek said. He had stood up when I entered and sat again after his gesture towards the chair on the other side of his desk.

“Pleased to meet you,” I responded.

“Stacy and Jordan have told me about your powers and they do sound useful. I don't think we will find out how useful until you join the team and show us what you can do, so I am thinking of hiring you for a trial period. Are you interested?”

“What are you offering?” I asked.

“What do you need?” he countered.

He was probably expecting me to name a sum of money but that wasn't the first thing that came to mind.

“I need a new ID, at the moment my present ID reveals my real age of sixty-eight and I think that is dangerous. I also need a place to live and since I have just retired, I don't want to have a nine to five job.”

“We have apartments available, so that is no problem. We can make you a consultant, rather than an employee, which means we will call you when we need you rather than have you sitting in an office. How much you get paid with then be determined by how often you are needed. That is a bit of a risk though, financially,” Derek responded.

“I am happy with the standard rate for a consultant. I am not rich, but I am set up for my retirement, so I am not worried about money and only want to be paid if I have earned it,” I replied.

“Excellent. The ID request sounds reasonable, but I will need to kick it up the chain. I don't have the authority or the connections, but we do a similar thing with the regenerators, so a legal ID shouldn't be an issue. For superheroes, we tend to be quite thorough and label you as an orphan so no criminals can come after your family. It is standard policy that you need a full-body suit including an armoured mask before you can officially start, but since you are not part of the offensive team, a Raven suit will be sufficient. There is not much point in filling out any paperwork until you have your new ID,” he said, then pulled open a drawer and withdrew a phone. He wrote down some notes and then passed the phone to me with a cable for charging. “We will give you a call when everything is ready.” He used his landline phone to ask for his assistant to come to his office. “April will take you for the three-dimension scanning and then show you one of the available apartments. You won't be able to officially move in until all the paperwork is done, but she can give you a key so that you can start moving your stuff in straight away.”

He then stood up with a genuine smile on his face. “Welcome to the team,” he said holding his hand out for me to shake it.

After a quick hand crushing shake, I was allowed to escape. I guess I had a job again.

April took me to a room where I had to strip down to my underwear and put my feet on the marked spots with raised hands. Thirty seconds later I was able to get my clothes back on. The Raven suit is just a black armoured cloak with a hood. Worn in conjunction with a mask it provides bulletproof protection, anonymity and looks pretty cool.

We returned to the apartment complex and I was shown an identical two-bed apartment. Apparently, the joke was on me last night when I was told to stay with Jordan as she had a two-bed apartment. The smallest built was a two-bed. I was given a key and shown the communal swimming pool, spa bath, sauna and gym. I wouldn't have access to the secret tunnel until I officially joined. All the residents were either superheroes or relatives of superheroes, however, some of those relatives didn't know that, so we had to pretend to be normal and not give anything away. The gym was a normal gym and useless for those with physical superpowers.

I exited and made my way back to Talia. It was most of an hour walk, but I didn't mind the exercise, it gave me time to think. I hadn't really had much time to enjoy my retirement, but I knew I would have gotten bored quickly. I didn't have regrets about the life I had lived up to now, but there were things that I wished I had done. I loved to travel and there is always more to see, so I had been vaguely planning a round the world trip, but that could be done later. The two other things that I had wanted to start was learning a musical instrument and foreign languages. I didn't want to stop learning Salsa, Hula and any other dances that caught my fancy. If I was only doing consultancy work, I should have time to start all that.

I didn't want to stop seeing Talia or Kalie, but I also wanted to keep them safe from any involvement that my new work might bring. Kalie was more interested in the friends she was making than anything else, still getting over what her father had done to her and coping with a mother who was smothering her but trying not to. Adding me to the mix and explaining who I was would have been dangerous since I doubted an eight-year-old can be relied upon to be discrete. She only vaguely remembered that I breastfed her and soon put that down to her head trauma. She considered me her older cousin whose presence meant she didn't get a room of her own. I would keep an eye on her as best I could from a distance.

Talia had been my main concern, but she had met a man when she was looking for a lunchtime waitressing job. I think it was just what she needed although it was early stages and may not go anywhere. It was interesting talking to her now that I was a woman rather than her father. I got far more details and was able to giggle with her as she explained his clumsy attempt to get her phone number.

I felt a little sad to feel less needed and slightly like I was getting in the way. In a weird contradictory way, I also felt satisfied. I had been through my kids leaving home before and it was sort of like that, except I was leaving them.

I did want to reduce any connection between us from affecting them and since I had the ability to change my looks I wanted to take advantage of that. Changing my whole body would take too long, but changing my face would take anywhere from two to three hours depending on the changes. I waited until Kalie was back and explained that I was going to change my face so she would associate the new look as still being her cousin. My new look was designed to be quite different to my usual look, but I could only know the generalities of the changes until I looked in the mirror. My face went from round to more heart shaped, my eyes separated slightly, turned green and appeared bigger, my nose shrank slightly and turned up a bit.

“Nope,” I said with a sigh. I'm not that vain, but my face was now too beautiful. It would attract attention and that was the last thing I needed. Kalie would be going to bed soon, so she would have to see the new me tomorrow.

I tried again, making my face square, my eyes bluey grey and my nose straighter and a bit bigger. I now had three face settings. Normal, Beauty and Plain. My normal I would categorise as a seven out of ten, Beauty was nine and possibly a ten with the right makeup and Plain dropped a bit to a six out of ten.

I was hungry after all that, so I fixed myself a meal and went to bed. From now on, Talia and Kalie would only ever see Plain me, and I had asked for them to come up with a name for me. Talia thought Tina would work as it was a short form of Christina. I removed all my stuff from the bedroom in one go the next day by hiring a man with a van to do the heavy lifting. I would be sleeping in the provided apartment from then on but spent the days with Talia and Kalie. We had fun shopping to fill Kalie's new room and set it up properly. Likewise, I had to order furniture for the apartment.

At one point I had to go to my apartment, change my face back to Chris and get some passport photo's done and pass them to April who came to my apartment to pick them up. Two weeks after my talk with Derek, I was presented with my new ID and introduced as an official new member of the team. My new name was Josie Christina Hughes, I was eighteen years old with a Queensland driving licence and Australian Passport and birth certificate. I had to learn a fake history, but it was sparse and fairly easy to remember.