My Super-powered Diary Chapter 4 With Great Power 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 hadn’t bothered to stop until I was a few feet away from where the other girls were gathered and staring. “Wot the fook?!"

Blair’s brow furrowed and she looked at me intently for a long moment before taking my hand and pulling me toward the bathroom. “Excuse us girls, but I think that ‘Merida’ and I need to have a little talk. Alone.”

The moment that Blair and I were in the bathroom with the door closed behind us she looked at me suspiciously, crossing her arms over her chest as she gave me a good once over with her eyes and then finally spoke. “Okay, who the hell are ya? Why do ya look like me at your age? And then there’s yuir accent, an’ how the hell dae ya know my name?!”

Answers to her questions weren’t exactly foremost on my mind at that point. She wasn’t the only one who was shocked, and I was pretty pissed that she had deliberately placed herself in danger without even telling me. “Ya think you ‘ave questions?! Why the hell didnae ya tell me ya were doin’ this kinda work?! Yuir a fookin’ Tinker, ya dinnae ‘ave the powers or trainin’ fer this kinda mission. Wot the hell were ya thinkin’ o’ doin’ if’n yuir l’il gadgets were disabled or ya were discovered?! Ya didnae even think o’ tellin’ me?! I always call or email ya tae let ya know if I’m goin on a dangerous Op! You’ve been doin’ this fer a bloody month an’ no’ one word outta ya?!”

Blair’s jaw dropped and she just stared at me for a long moment before blurting out, “Maddie?!”

I clenched my tiny fists by my sides at her little nickname for me. “Dinnae call me that! I hate tha’ bloody name! Especially now!” That was when everything hit me at once, the botched mission, the deaths of my team members, my first encounter with Phantom, the bomb going off, my changes, the new ’girl’ in the mirror, and the situation that I had been trying to calmly deal with since waking up. I just couldn’t take it anymore and I broke down into a sobbing mess for the second time that day.

“Oh God… that was yuir unit they sent in after the girls…” I barely heard her speak the words as she wrapped her arms around me and held me tight. She held me for a good twenty minutes while I cried it all out, telling me that everything would be okay and that she’d help me get through this. Finally when I had managed to get myself to merely a bit of crying and sniffling Blair said, “I’m sorry Mad… Merida was it? I didn’t want to worry ya an’ I didn’t have much notice before I got told about this. I don’t usually do this kind of thing, an’ I should have sent you an email, but I barely had time to finish the exoskeleton and bodysuit before Jade was supposed to meet her contact with Omega.”

“Phantom killed ma whole team,” I said still buried in her arms. “Reaper may ‘ave gotten away, but I cannae be sure. She only left me alive ‘cause she was hopin’ I would Activate. I couldnae save any o’ them an’ when the bomb went off I hid in one o’ the cells hopin’ I’d be safe. Tha’ poor girl, she started tae change an’ then she jus’ screamed an’ vanished. I dinnae ken wha’ I kin dae when we’re out o’ this place.”

“You can’t go back to the military, that’s fer sure, even if you didn’t look like a minor now, the Liberty Accords would prevent it. That’s why I can’t work on anything for the military or government that’s even close to being related to weapons technology, an’ another reason I had to be the one to do this, the exoskeleton could be classified as a weapon, I can’t legally make it for or allow any military or government agency to possess it. I was the only one who could be allowed to use it,” she explained.

The Liberty Accords had been ratified six years ago by the United Nations after several nations had attempted to create superhumans for military purposes. The superhero Liberty was Activated in one such experiment, but overall the results of such experiments had been either unsuccessful or complete disasters for the countries involved. The Liberty Accords prevented any of the signatory nations from trying to create superhumans or using Hypers for any military purposes. It also severely restricted what kind of technology that Tinkers and other intellectually gifted Hypers could produce for and sell to the military or government agencies.

I shook my head sadly. “I’m no’ jus’ worried aboot myself Blair, these girls ‘ave nobody an’ now they’re mutants on top. Dae ya really think they’re gonna find fam’lies tha’ will take them in? Mos’ people would jus’ end up usin’ them. They may no’ even be safe a’ the orphanages now, if we all manage to get outta ‘ere alive.”

“We’re all gettin’ out of here,” my sister replied sternly. “Then you’re stayin’ with me and Andy, all of ya. I’m not goin’ to have us get them out of here safely jus’ to let somethin’ worse happen to them, or you. I’m your only living relative so technically I should be your guardian anyway. We have a big enough house and I’m bringin’ in plenty of money to support all o’ ya.”

*Merida!* The instant I heard Tasha’s panicked voice I jumped to my feet and reached for that fire deep within me to summon my force field as I threw the door open and silently wished that I had a weapon of some sort as well, even a knife would be better than nothing when running into some unknown danger. I stepped through the door to see all of the other girls staring at one of the twins, whose left arm suddenly ended just above the elbow. She was moving her arm forward and back in curiosity and as she did so her arm would disappear further or reappear.

“What are you doing Shu?” her twin asked in wonder.

I hadn’t bothered to stop until I was a few feet away from where the other girls were gathered and staring. “Wot the fook?! I ‘eard Tasha scream ma name, is everyone okay?”

Blair, who had adjusted her disguise so that she once again looked like Jade, gave me an odd look. “I didn’t hear anyone screamin’ an’ I was right beside ya.”

“I didn’t scream… at least not out loud,” Tasha mumbled, looking down at her feet. “I might have thought about screaming for you, but I mean look at what she’s doing. Anyone would freak out a little.”

Blair watched Shu for a moment in interest before speaking. “It’s like she’s reachin’ into some sort of warped area of space time that only she can sense, some kind of portal, or pocket dimension, or somethin’ maybe? What were ya doin’ when it happened?”

Vanessa gestured to the foods left on the tray, quickly pointing out. “We were trying to figure out how to get rid of the drugged foods so they think that we’ve been eating them. We can flush the juice easy enough, but that won’t work as well for any solid foods they decide to drug and there aren’t a lot of good places to hide them in here.” The mermaid then cast a reassuring look and a smile in my direction. “I don’t think we’re in any danger Merida, you can probably power down and lose the knife. You know it’s a bit creepy when you do the force field thing, your eyes glow and your hair just floats in the air around you.”

“Wot knife?” I blinked in confusion before looking down at my hands. There, in my right hand, was a sort of opaque red combat knife. I just stared at it for a moment before willing both it and my force field to vanish. “I kin make constructs? Tha’s jus’ like…”

“Mom’s powers,” Blair finished as I trailed off. “I think you have a more powerful version of Mom’s powers. Her energy constructs were crimson colored too, but she could only create and manipulate small things like little holograms. She could have never covered herself with it like you do.”

The others were all looking at us intently, even Shu had lost interest in her new ability to look from me to Blair and back again. They deserved to know, I couldn’t tell them everything, but they deserved to know some of it. So looking down at my feet and probably turning bright red I told them, “Blair is ma sister.”

“We haven’t seen each other since our parents died last year,” Blair put in. “Maddie… err Merida used to look really diff’rent so I didn’t recognize her right away, I jus’ thought that she looked a lot like me at first.”

Blair was figuring by then that she would have to leave soonish to report her ‘progress’ to Phantom and the man in charge, who went by the name ‘Quill’. So we figured that we should discuss our plans. Blair approved of what we had so far and wanted us to get as much practice with our powers as we could whenever we were alone. She also let us in on her plans. Blair had had Andy bring her a device that would help her to find the source of whatever was generating the energy field and blocking communications, as well as a small EMP device that would hopefully disable it. If it was a person instead of a device that was causing it Blair would have to improvise. Either way, once the field was down her tracker would start transmitting to HAA and she left me her cell phone so I could call in other backup in case things went pear-shaped.

With that done Blair said her goodbyes and reminded us that she would be back in the evening to bring us supper before leaving with the food cart. We spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening in training. Those of us who had some idea what our powers were practicing with them, such as Vanessa and Shu using their abilities over and over to try and increase their control and longevity. I split my time between trying to get used to my new body and playing around with the new constructs application of my powers. Tasha was working with her newly discovered ability as well. She may not have called me physically earlier, but she had discovered that she could speak mind to mind with any of us with a little bit of focus. She couldn’t read minds or anything like that, but communication between minds was possible for her and it was a lot easier to practice with than her sixth sense.

As for Mei she seemed to be getting frustrated at her lack of powers thus far. It wasn’t long before dinner when that changed though, as Vanessa’s other ability made itself known and pushed over the dominoes of two other surprises in the process. Vanessa had been out of the water since before we ate lunch and she had been starting to get itchy and thirsty so I was walking with her back to the bathroom in case it was a mermaid thing and she needed to soak for a bit. We had just made it to the door when the water erupted out of the bathtub flying toward us both and wrapping itself around Vanessa like some sort of liquid shell.

She hovered above the ground in her watery cocoon wide-eyed for a moment before the water began for shift around her, covering her tail and keeping her hovering a foot off the ground as the mermaid stared at the tiny jets of water leaping and swirling through the air between her hands. “Ummm guys… I think I can control water.” She grinned over at me and giggled. “Check it out Merida, I bet I can splash Tasha from here.” A portion of the water around her body shot toward Tasha, but far more quickly than Vanessa had intended, almost like it had been shot from a fire hose. “Eep! No!”

Everything seemed to happen at once then, almost too fast for me to follow. Tasha suddenly vanished before the water could hit her, reappearing beside us and seeming just as confused as we were by it, and the water kept on flying through the air, right toward Mei who was sitting on her bed. Mei jumped in shock and fear and a pale golden glow surrounded her as a tiny little naked blonde pixie with translucent green wings appeared out of nowhere and yanked her off the bed and out of the way of the water blast. Once Mei was safe the pixie looked around, her eyes finally settling on Vanessa, and she looked pissed. She launched herself toward us and I quickly summoned my force field again. That was about when Mei yelled, “No! Stop!”

The pixie stopped, giving Vanessa a final dirty look before turning around and fluttering back toward Mei. I breathed a sigh of relief and let my force field drop again as Shu, who had been staring wide-eyed at the whole incident was the first of us to speak. “Well, that was weird.”