My Super Secret Life…Potentials-2.

Chapter 2

Landon St. Pierre looked at Songbird of the Ark Angels and rubbed at the fur on his face. “You’re kidding me right?”

She shook her head. “No, we’re dead serious about this Landon we want you and we need you and we can pardon you and get you out of here.”

“But teaching?”

“Yes teaching, I know you’ve been in the life a long time since your mutation kicked in pretty much and but you have real skills that we need.”

“Like?”

“You’re a skilled fighter, you know all about having heightened senses and you’re familiar with mutants of all sorts that’ll be going through the more feral mutations. You’ve been there. You know the woods and how to survive and you’re a licensed mechanic.”

“Okay…so?”

“Come teach auto shop, be one of the wilderness teachers and a councillor.”

“And what I’m a free man?”

“No, you’ll be under contract with Halo Academy for the rest of your sentence but you’ll still have the same freedoms as anyone else. We just want to lock you down in the position.”

“And you’ll pay me?”

“Not a lot, we’re not really ion this for the money y’know. You’ll be getting about thirty grand a year plush perks.”

“Perks?”

“Free medical and dental, free bus pass for Sanctuary, faculty housing.”

“Faculty Housing?”

“Rent free, just pay your own utilities.”

“I don’t know…this sounds too good and really shitty at the same time. Look Singer (Slang name for Songbird.) we both know the game and ho much cash I can make on the outside.”

Amber Swift aka Songbird of the Ark angels looked him over. Landon was the mutant villain Nightwolf not a really violent villain but things had led him into violence when his girlfriend had been killed by a bunch of shave gangers and they had beat him nearly to death.

His mutation triggered and he gained very wolf like traits as he became furred and his eyes became golden and other thins came to the fore like alloy hard claws like a canine’s nails and sharp teeth and enhanced animal senses. He still looked very human like…Victory said a midnight furred wolf version of the fictional character The Beast from X-men.

Amber had to agree, Victory was he 1rst cousin and she was a huge geekette even before she had gained her powers, since she became Victory though…all those comics became her instruction manuals and spiritual guides.

He wasn’t a die hard killer; he’d been almost feral after his change and having gone after the shave gangers. The rest of the time he had been out there he was on the run and pulling small jobs and being muscle for various crooks.

He’d already been in alpha Block for twelve years; he was the kind of person they were looking to recruit.

They looked at each other in the eyes and she looked away and took out an envelope with a letter in it.

“I talked to Laura; she wanted me to give this to you.”

He took it and carefully red it. Laura was his wife, the mother of their three kids and all but one had been conceived during his incarceration…there really must be something between them because she never left him.

Amber was pretty sure she knew some of what was in there.

“Cody…?”

“Yeah as far as we can tell it’s already started…he’s second generation so it’s hitting him right at puberty.”

“Dammit…”

He looked at her. “You’re not full of it. Not just him but my other two as well…even if they’re normal…they get a full ride education.”

“I promise, as long as the stay in school it’s free even the college classes that’ll be taught there.”

“And his siblings, they’re normal.”

“And we need normal kids there too to help socialize the kids that aren’t. We need to show people that despite the differences we’re not different.”

He looked at her.

Chewed at his lip.

“Okay…where do I sign up?”

…………………………………………………..*Cody St. Pierre.

I hunch and hide in my jacket and my gloves and my hoodie…yeah I’m roasting alive but…but I’m…

I’m like my dad and even before the changes had hit two weeks ago I was always getting shit on because of that and the fact I’m a mutie with mutie tainted blood.

But Melody was supposed to be different…she liked me for me…because I was into the whole goth thing and because I boarded and stuff because I was me…

But then we had sex and it was actually that morning after we hooked up when the cramps hit me and started twisting me up inside.

Yeah I got healing factor like my dad does…all that’s done for me was to give my body the go ahead to rapidly mutate ‘cause it wasn’t going to kill me.

By the time Mel had got to me to ask me what’s wrong my eyes had changed and my claws had started like some bad where wolf flick and she screamed.

Firing up my prey drive.

I chased her and she got away because e stopped myself from going nuts and I trashed her dad’s cabin.

The cops came and the taser bulleted me…

Spent the next three days in the jail because word had spread and there was an actual lynch mob outside wanting to string me up and they wanted to go after mom and my sisters too not caring that this never happened to them.

We got lucky and the town cops and some of the fire department did their jobs and kept us from getting killed. They got mom and the girls in to the station and we were to wait for somebody.

We never expected Champion from Paradise city to show up and get us out of town.

They burned down our trailer though.

April and Winter are really upset about it and Mom…Mom’s not worried. Oddly Champion looked worried. Why? Mom’s connected through Dad…Dad was a badass and yeah a mutant and all of that stuff but he had run with some people…people that still had been helping to take care of us while he was in the joint.

Still though it didn’t change things for me.

I’m still like this and as much as we knew there was a chance…we still never thought about it.

What hurts is losing the people I had thought were my friends, I mean I thought they were my friends despite Dad.

Guess not.

And Melody…someone had told me…she spent almost the entire day trying to wash me off of and out or her even using bleach.

It all hurts and now this…new place, new school but a school for us freaks…I never even really tried to take in the trip…

Okay flying over Ark City to this new place was…freaky and huge…nothing prepares you for it really.

I get out of the plane and I can smell excitement on Mom and the girls and I’m wary and confused. Yeah I can see getting excited about being here and stuff but mom too?

I pull my earbuds out and look around and…

He’s not in prison issue stuff…but a suit jacket and dress pants with sandals and there’s no monitor and no guards just him and a mini-van?

“Dad?”

I’ve never seen him not in prison before…

“Dad!”

I take off to him with Mom and the girls at a run.

………………………………………………….*Victory…

I look down from the windows at the Sanctuary airstrip and can’t help but smile. This, this is what the entire thing is about…this is the future that I’ve been fighting for.

Sigh…but a good one.

I should get going there’s more incoming.

My Super Secret Life…Potentials-3.

My great thanks to Thera who came up with the greater part of this really interesting character.

………………………………................. *Karma….

My name’s Quinn, Quinn Jackson…yeah that guy…poor me right. I know, I know.

I guess this is how things got started and that was as far back as junior high. I was famous. Q-J…the all star basketball star and even then…It thought I was perfect…I thought I was king of my world. Big and strong…I was even good looking and I’ll admit…I knew I was all those things.

I know, nothing new golden boy falls from grace. It’s far from being a new story. I’m sure those of you remember that I was in a car accident that’s left me paralyzed. That the doctors say I should be able to because of the implants they put in but nothing works, I can’t move.

It’s karma.

See my dad was that dad where I was the apple of his eye, the chip off the old block and had been all of my life. I’m not saying it’s his fault but what happen to a kids mind when nothing’s his fault, and he’s been praised all of his life.

Or sees his dad treat his mother like a slave…and she took it…like a good wife, meek and obedient just like dad said how girls ought to be, how the good book and god says they should be.

And I was a chip off the old block.

Girls wanted me, I was popular, good at sports but great at basketball. I treated the girls that I was with like that. It was rape…really it was with me pushing them down to blow me…or taking them.

“What…they’re going to believe you? Not fucking lightly…you were all over me, you wanted to get all over the money.”

I must have said that to dozens of girls. I must have done that to dozens of girls. There was nothing wrong with that…I mean it was just like dad said. “They’re all whores, all of the Quinn. They spread their legs when they want something.”

So…when I raped Julie…I don’t know her last name…I never gave a fuck when I fucked her and told her the same thing I told all of them.

And she cried, she bawled like every other little whore had. I had just zipped up and left and got in the car with the guys. Greg Patton passed me a beer and I guzzled the first one down then the second only slowing at my third and by then I looked up when I heard Scott. “Who the fuck is that?”

I looked…Julie was there…still barely dressed standing in the snow.

In that way that you remember stuff so clearly when it’s too late. I could see the tears running down her face.

“It’s the whore I was just with, just drive around the bitch.”

Scott went to do that not even slowing down and as we passed Julie he eyes flared blue white and an avalanche of snow exploded like from her hand and I seen it…seen her skin shift to icy pale…it made the blood on her legs stand out even more, her hair to bleached bone white…..the anger, the pain, the hate there.

That avalanche it our car and sent us a full twenty feet off the interdistrict overpass before we crashed down fifty feet below.

I was the only one that lived.

It was karma.

………………………………........I remember it was so black…and there were things that were going bump in the night out there…things crying out as lost as I was, as scared as I was and there were growls, screams, demented laughs and giggling even.

Something would touch me or bump me like a shark…

There are no words to really describe the sheer soul deep terror.

~Good…it is good that ye know this.~

~Who…what…?~

~Both…~

There was light and there was this woman in these hooded robes, like the ones you’d see in bible women but she was glowing golden and had these shimmering blue eyes.

~Who are you?~

~I am your judge Quinn, and you have a stain on your soul……you will not pass.~

She started to dim out…

~No!…No!~

I could feel them coming for me…

~No!…please!…anything!~

She stopped and stared at me, then she looked up like she was praying…she got brighter…Nodded.

“Yes…so mote it be.”

I sort of woke when the medical team yelled “Clear!”

But then it went dark again, but like regular sleep darkness.

I’ll skip over the hospital stuff mostly. I’m paralyzed from the neck down, they have said that I should be recovering but don’t get why. My father freaked out, my mother prayed and was a sobbing wreck for weeks.

Then they stopped coming.

It was slow at first and then just one day they just never showed up anymore. And that really tore me apart and I got really depressed…wanting to die almost depressed…I’m too scared of that though…those things out there waiting.

Depression and paralysis led to sleeping all the time…and sleeping led to nightmares…bad nightmares about things that made no sense.

Then one hit me hard one night with this guy…a drugged up gang type that looked high as a kite and he had the doors barricaded in a room in what looked like a room in the emergency department. There was a nurse trapped in there and he’d already hit her, tore her top and she was so scared…

Then I was there? And he was there and trying to hurt her, to catch her and I tried to stop him but he passed right through me….

I tried to scream at him getting between them to maybe scare him. Like he was scaring her…I could feel how scared out of her mind she was…

Then she stepped into me…

I was like sucked into her and suddenly I could move, I could feel, breathe right…He lunged and I moved…okay basketball, he’s trying to get me…I dodge right, the left then right again and he goes right like I telegraphed what I was doing and he goes for it and I let myself fall…drop to my knees instead and his grab misses me and I haul off and punch him in the balls as hard as I can…I’ve boxed, and wrestled and stuff when I was in school so…the hardest shot I can give him is an uppercut smashing his balls. He makes a sick sound and I punch him out and break his nose and send him flying back.

I stare at my…or rather her little hand for a minute. I’m, she’s five two…maybe ninety pounds and it felt like me when I hit him.

I’m a bit wobbly getting up to my feet band the rest of the staff get into there and I’m staring at myself in the glass of the door.

My eyes…her eyes are glowing a soft golden color like that woman in the robes.

I feel dizzy and stagger but I stagger out of her and I’m there again like a ghost again.

I’m not sure why or how but I staggered through tings and people until I got to my room…I was still there but gently glowing in that same kind of light…It goes away when I fall exhausted into myself.

That first time I thought it was a dream.

The second time…it was a black kid…in trouble with the cops and he had a gun…He was so scared…I stepped into him again almost by accident. Made him drop the gun before they shot and killed him.

The third time was the one that really made me sure of all of this, the thirteen year old kid with the carpet knife scared to death about being pregnant…about her dad…doing it.

I got into her…set down the knife…and had to sit…cry…cry because I felt her…not the girl I was possessing but her little baby…her daughter…life inside of us….things rushed together and a nurse and a cop sat with me…and I could touch her mind…her thoughts and feelings and…and even though I was pushed into remembering that bastard molesting me…I did what she couldn’t…

I talked…

I cried for three days once I was down in my body again. They drugged me, tried to make it better but nothing they did helped….I was crying because I really felt what she was too scared to get out herself.

It really showed me more than anything what I had become…who Quinn had been…who I had been.

I wandered around a ghost in the hospital for about a month helping here and there as I could. Mostly, mostly my powers worked with those overcome by fear…but those really out of it like a drugged up guy raging on PCP…I’ve stepped into them and calmed them or stopped them until the restraints were put on fast.

And once I stepped into a car accident victim in shock and kept him breathing…that was hard so I had to think about breathing, make him do it. Lend him my strength…That’s the thing when I take over, my strength gets added to whatever they have.

…………………………..It was late, dark and I was wandering the halls. If there’s real ghosts here I haven’t seen any here. But tonight I see Daystar…yeah the Ark Angel. Christian Stevens and he’s there in the flesh and huge…seven feet tall three hundred pounds of sculpted muscle…and super model looks mixed in…he’d make greek gods feel inadequate. He’s on my floor dropping off a bunch of boxes of goodies at the nurses station and he takes a drink of a take out coffee cup and he look directly at me.

“Hello Quinn.”

Oh…oh shit, WTF he can see me.

I take off and run.

He doesn’t chase or follow me and after awhile I can smell coffee. I’ve never smelled anything before.

………………..shit he’s in my room.

There’s a blur as I snap back into my body.

I open my eyes and he’s there with that Paki…uhm the Indian Mage lady from Paradise City. I ask scared. “What’s going on?”

He’s in a chair and leans forward. “I came to see the golden angel of St. Mercy Hospital.”

“Huh?”

“They’ve seen you when you’re inside these people…there’s a light.”

“Do they know it’s me?”

“Yes, your body shimmers while you’re gone.”

“But they…they’ve never said anything…never turned me in as a freak…”

“They’re hospital staff…and everything you’ve done and helped with here Quinn…they don’t look gift horses in the mouth here.”

“Oh…”

“I want to offer you a new chance.”

“New chance?”

“You’ve heard of Sanctuary? Of Halo?”

“Yes?”

“We want you to come with us there.”

“Me…why…”

“You still deserve to have a life.”

“But…”

“No…you do…we can help.”

“How? I can’t exactly go anywhere.”

“You can project, use this form.”

“But normal people can’t see me.”

“Parvati?”

The hindu lady comes over with a ring. “This is the ring of Seamus Sole, he was a thief that stole things by astral projection.”

“How?”

“It let’s your spirit form gather ectoplasm to take a form…it’s not really solid, it’s not really strong but it’ll let you be there physically in a way. Will you try it?”

“Uhm…okay.”

She slips it on my finger and I can’t feel it. “Try to push yourself out through the ring and the stone.”

It takes me several tries before I’m outside myself again…I’m this thin featureless grey sexless thing but I have arms, legs, fingers and toes…and I can move them…. “Whoa…and I can…I can use this?” My voice sounds strange soft, and androgynous and slightly muffled like through a mask.

“Yes…and go to classes, be around people that will see you.”

“But why?”

Daystar looks at me and stands and takes my new hand. God that alone after all this time feels so good.

“Because you can help people Quinn, because you’re all alone and that’s just wrong. Because you’re sixteen Quinn, you’re sixteen and you deserve to have another chance, you deserve to have someone to give a shit and not walk away…”

He gives me this look that only a dad can have and that honestly I barely ever seen on my own dad’s face.

I’m crying…I can see my body crying and this form’s shaking… “Please…Please…I’m so tired…I’m too scared….Can I?”

He smiles. “Yes…C’mon lets get started and then we can get you home.”

“Home…”

“Yeah, at my place if you want.”

I look at him again and as much as I can feel fear he gives off truth…caring…no bullshit.

“I’d like that.”

My Super Secret Life… Potentials 4.

*Faith…………………….

Hey…

My name’s Andrew, but I’ve always liked Drew better so there’s that. My last name’s Porter and I’m a mutant.

I have been since I was thirteen.

And my family doesn’t really know. Thankfully I pass for normal. I’m not sure actually what my parents would say but my sister Nancy would lose her shit. While she’s not one of those P4’s. (People-For-Humanity.) She’s scared of us. See she was beat up when she was a kid, well smaller kid by this antho kid had beat them up pretty good for abusing and teasing their little sister.

We ended up moving after that and stuff because Mom got a better job and we could actually live in the old family house. We bought it from her brother who was kinda a crook about it. It helped that move and I know we did it for her but it’s still left a mark on Nancy and now with the kids she hangs out with are this whole jocks and normal’s crowd she’s gotten worse. Troy really started that shit. He’s…he’s an import that moved here from the Federation.

The Federation’s the Federation of Free Colonies…and that’s bullshit, if you can just picture early 20th/21rst century America of Earth and apply it to colonies instead of states you got the same thing….Flag waving patriotic to being brainwashed only the normal folks count because the meek shall inherit the ‘verse.

Thank God I live on New Haven.

Now New Haven’s a charter member of The AAW of the Alliance of Allied Worlds. That’s a whole bunch of worlds, colonies and even some of the alien races planets all together for trade and defense.

We need to…the Feder-rats, the Soviets, the Chinese and others are frothing at the mouth over us.

New Haven has the ship and Freaktown and the largest mutant and anthro population anywhere in the galaxy.

They accuse us and the government of building a super human army. Assholes most of them have the policies of conscription for life for Metahumans and no rights at all for anthrosapiens.

Nancy’s part of this Mutant Apocalypse crowd. They’re going on about the fact that mutants are going to make normal’s extinct soon because more and more are showing up and it’s a sign of humanity going out and they need to fight and defend themselves.

It’s true and it’s not.

There’s a lot more of us humans now that we’re spread out. And we’re more and more dabbling in bio-sciences and stuff that we never dreamed were possible. And then there’s the press. Without governments hushing up the existence of mutants and stuff we’re as much in the media spotlights as crime and terrorism and stuff.

But yeah I’m a mutant.

Mom likely would take it and think on it if she knew. She’s an engineer for the city and a quiet thinking woman. I’ve never really heard her say much against the whole thing except to correct Nancy for being rude. Mom’s one of those people that even when she’s mad she’s mannerly and in control of herself.

Dad…well he’d be upset. He’s a teacher and stuff and he’s okay on civil liberties and stuff but to him meta’s and mutants are dangerous and should be always seen as such. He says that because of his mother.

He doesn’t talk much about grandmom that much but from what I’ve gathered…she was a super…that’s a known Meta. She was a crime fighter and hero and stuff and grandpa got hurt, dad and my aunts got hurt because of something that happened and he took the kids away and divorced her. She died the year after that.

And I get why.

Love, and a broken heart.

…………………….yeah.

Dad’s hard on them because of that and the whole power corrupts thing. Grandma might not have been evil at all but to dad’s thinking if she hadn’t thought she was “Special” she’d never have gotten herself killed.

Both right band wrong but I’m not gonna point that out yet.

Okay; I had dug stuff up about her a bit for school a genealogy thing for social studies. It took digging through the warehouse 13...it’s an ancient TV show, novel series and comics thing about…well never mind, it’s what we call out basement.

Sorry but just to give you an idea.

We live in Mom’s family home that’s actually an old five story walk up. We own the whole thing and between mom’s lab/shop the offices for both the library and other stuff the place is actually pretty full not to mention my family on both sides are pack rats.

Anyway…I found some of her stuff packed away in really well sealed and hidden under mounds of other stuff. Grandma…the family dirty secret. I’d started reading her journals which was hard because they were handwritten and that’s hard to read since it’s not normal to use handwriting in this day and age so it was like a secret code or something.

And it turns out she was recording her powers and stuff. Reading it was deja-vu like. I’d been going through the same things.

Her first words were. “It started with the headaches.”

When it started with me I had these migraines from hell. Like the world was trying to jump into my brain.

Then she wrote. “Then I was making things move.”

It had happened to me a few times and freaked me the hell out for weeks. It took me awhile to get it under control…I was a mutant…and one of the things I could do was telekinetic stuff.

Mostly the wild stuff happened when I wasn’t thinking about something. Like reaching for a can of pop or something and it’d slide to my hand. I read her notes and started to learn from her mistakes, her notes things she did feel the same for me.

Like my TK feels like those light tingles when your arm’s asleep but you can sort of push it. Oh and it more feels like soda bubbles to me.

And I can fly…well sort of I have it and telekinetic (Tk for short.) And Tk enhanced attributes. If I fill myself with the TK energy I’m faster and stronger.

But here’s the kicker.

I’ve really low baseline powers. But I’m an energy vampire like Grandma…Yeah I get that whoa and leery thing but it’s not like that. We feed or fed in her case off of positive directed empathy.

Basically when we’re getting cheered on or people have “Faith.” in us we convert that into psi energy. It makes us more powerful, faster, stronger and stuff. That’s kind of problematic right that means people have to believe in me in order for me to really do anything super.

Oh I can fly and sort of do stuff better than a baseline human without training but without a power base…or someone that really has faith in me I’m small potatoes.

See what I mean about why and how I think Grandmom died?

You can die from a broken heart.

But…

I’m like her so it’s not like I could just stand there and do nothing and yet…there’s my family and everything and I thought hard about it.

I came up with this…if people thought I was sort of the shit in real life then I’d have more power to draw on because “Drew’s awesome at that…” whatever that’d be.

So I hit the books pretty hard since I’m not a dummy and didn’t want to be seen as one but I also went in for chess club but the same time I went in for football, boxing and wrestling.

Oh I really can’t stand the attitudes on some of these guys. Even at thirteen when we’re supposed to be all kind of teenager…just turning into awkward teens there’s these guys that strutted. I hated being on their teams and even though I had an okay pass and could run really good and tackle hard I dropped out of football for soccer after the first year. Still ego but tons less than the football gods.

Wrestling was okay and It still had the meatheads but like soccer they were less and less. My boxing class was pretty good and I liked the coach was old school in this strange way. Nothing you did was to same the gym, even in your life outside the gym. You left the school to go to a match you wore a shirt, tie, slacks, jacket. You thanked them when you met the other boxers for giving you the chance, you said good match afterwards. And you fight smart.

“It’s not TV Drew it’s real like, it’s points and scores.”

And it was starting to work.

Kids in school saw me as quiet but strong, fast, and smart. I’d dropped wrestling for an out of school class in Jeet Kune Do…it’s fairly common being the style Bruce Lee invented and if I was going to do this I needed to know more and better fighting styles other than two years of junior high boxing and wrestling. I stayed with the soccer for the footwork and the cardio and stayed in chess club because I like it band I get along with the smart kids.

Not the too smart rub your face I it kids but just those kinda funny nerdy kids that are into all those neat hobbies and stuff. I like them better than the jock crowds or the evil geniuses and there’s been a few things that I guess tickled my mom’s blood in me like playing a few times with remote planes and cars and even building and flying kites. Plus as much as I’m not madly into them like some people I like movies and science fiction and fantasy stuff. I like to read too.

I guess, as much as my powers relied on being popular, I don’t like the popular crowd that much. But I’m still getting there…I sort of don’t hang around with anyone really.

I don’t really get why.

But like I said my baselines are stronger than when I started and my sort of reputation gives me some power to work with. I’ve built it up by pulling off some power stunts and passing them as martial arts tricks.

That works a surprising amount of time.

So does fighting.

I kind of can’t stand some of the bullies in school. Be it the jocks or the gang types I’ve stepped in a few times and used my powers to drop some of these guys….charged up I can hit 34% harder than normally…with Faith added to it I’m not sure. I’m not going to push my limits…not at school.

But there’s some decent energy at school now. I’m considered someone not to mess with but a nice guy too.

But tonight’s the acid test.

I’ve got Grandma’s stuff. Her heroine gear was actually pretty cool. Motorcycle leathers in dull black with these gothic crosses sewn or raised somehow on the leather. One on each shoulder like patches, a full sized one that was the front of the jacket and had the zipper in the middle of it and the ends that had the floret’s? The fancy cross ends where right where her boobs would’ve been and the zipper had a German cross as the zipper tab.

The pants had the same design on the back pockets and she had studded leather gloves for fighting and army boots. It all fits too mostly because I’m not too big and stuff but her gear was mostly unisex because of who designed it.

The domino mask is the hardest to get used to. Putting on the spirit gum stuff to glue it into place.

I head out with the parents doing their own things they only kind of pay attention to us. It’s not like we’re the kind of kids to sneak out at odd hours but…well tonight I am.

Being able to fly, really helps sneaking out since my bedroom’s on the top floor. My sister’s too but she’s on the other side of the building.

God it’s really cool to be able to do this. I can’t fly fast just around forty five kmph or just over thirty miles an hour without some way to boost myself and yet that’s still kind of fast.

And nights one through eleven going out are a pure bust. You’d think that it’s simple. I did. Go out and fly around and go help people by kicking butt.

Slipping out about one night out of three and a full month of nothing.

I finally clued in enough to buy a security radio with a police scanner and a headset.
Yeah…derp.
And holy crap those things are not cheap!

……………………………….Be careful what you wish for.

I changed tactics and covered different ground.

The first thing was getting there. It’d take me a long time normally so I went upwards and gained altitude. I head to one of the iffy areas called Diesel Strip. It’s up in the North-East areas of Ark City and seriously mixed and a rough neighborhood. Blacks and Hispanics, and the sub-cultures there off like South and Central American cultures and African an types plus a good number of anthro live in that area.

I get there by a flight controlled fall from a good height. It gets me there fast and it’s such a rush…except for that one scare me to death moment I dove/flew through a bunch of aero-car traffic in a route I didn’t know was there.

Whoops…I don’t think I caused any crashes or fender benders.

I’m actually there like ten minutes before there’s a bunch of white shave gangers trying to hurt these three girls at a phone booth. They’re hitting the booth with chains and stuff making the girls scream.

I hover down in plain sight and point at one of them but them in general. “You guys should leave while you can.”

“Fuck you freak.” Of course was their answer.

I was outnumbered but had a good reserve of energy from them and the girls…it seems you fly in and they sort of have some ingrained beliefs in the fact you’re kind of super.

I really helps.

Knowing how to fight really helps too. But uhm…yeah fighting at school and in a ring is not the same as on the street. And it’s not the same when they’re armed. I take some hits and shift my energy to the surface tension of my skin and instead of getting stabbed. I break off two of their shivs when I get stabbed.

It hurts like a bastard and I’m going to have serious bruises there and the second knife gave me a headache. I figure it’s like a bullet proof vest I burned off the energy the stabs had but it took a lot of power to do so but their knives breaking gave them an oh shit moment that fed me some more energy.

Okay I can see how Grandmom did this.

The third guy swings the chain at me and I do that trick again and let it wrap around my arm…okay…I turn and use a martial throw like I’ve got his hand and add some flight in the pivot of the turn and boost it with the energy I got from them and the girls. I throw/slam him down on the bench for the city bus and it bends collapsing around him.

Another oh wow surge from the girls and oh shit surge from the shave gangers. They run for it. I push power into speed and flight and cut them off. Faster hits using Tk to move my limbs faster, to make my hits harder. I don’t push it too hard because I really hurt the other guy and I just give it until I can drop them knocked out.

Oh…

I hear police sirens.

Stay?

Go?

I could get into serious trouble here.

I stay.

The police are there and one looks at me. “Give me your wrists kid.”

Oh shit I’m going to get busted.

“Hold it right there officer.” It’s the oldest of the black ladies/girls.

“Ma’am stay out of this, I have to charge the kid for assault and if they don’t take that mask off vigilantism.”

“Like hell you’re doing that to my client.” Cool…I have a Lawyer.

The cop looks not amused. “I have to do my job lady.”

“And my client has to do theirs.”

“That’s not a job, that’s being a public menace.”

“They stayed and stopped a hate crime as a private citizen.”

“Not in a mask they aren’t.”

“They’re protected under the law as a super to have their identity protected under law.”

“That’s for established super heroes that are sanctioned by the law.”

She’s got this look and I can see scrolling letters in her eyes. She blinks and they’re gone. “Actually officer that law in question doesn’t state that anywhere.”

He stares at her, then really closely. “You’re chipped up?”

“If I matters I am.”

“Papers?”

She takes a folder like a bank book out of her purse. Being chipped is slang for cybernetics and she must have a cyber wireless connection and more than likely a camera interface too.

He looks at her, then me. “I’m letting you go this time kid. Get legal, better yet don’t get involved.”

“Have to.”

“Why?”

“Family honor, and the Parker Code.”

“What the fuck is the Parker Code.”

“With Great Power comes Great Responsibility.”

“Oh for fuck sakes…goddamned comics!”

“Doesn’t make it irrelevant sir.”

He looks at me slightly mollified by the sir. “Alright, alright…let’s do this okay, I need your Alias and your statement. You three too.” The three girls nod.

………………………………..It takes awhile and as the adrenaline wears off the hurts start to build and build and it’s getting closer and closer to daylight. I get his card, and her cards and some pretty painful hugs and stuff from her and the other two and I leave.

I told them my alias was Faith.

Grandma’s old super alias.

I dunno, I was right y’know family honor and all that. I’m a legacy.

I get home about quarter to six, undress slowly and put the stuff under my bed…Jesus the bruises have bruises. I try a hot shower and just laid down on my bed a little bit and woke smelling coffee in my room.

Dad…

He’s not looking happy.

“Here, eat this Faith.”

“Huh…what…?”

“You’re on the news and the net-feeds someone put up your antics up about four in the morning. You’ve been featured on Hero-watch already.”

“Oh fuck.”

“Don’t swear.”

“Sorry.”

“Here, you’re pale and you’re sugars must be dropped through the floor.” It’s toast with about a half inch of jam and the coffee. I inhale the food as fast as the pain will let me.

“Thanks dad…you’re pissed?”

“Yeah but more that you never came to me.”

“But granddad…?”

“Dad had issues with Mom and I was too young to do anything about it other than get mad at her too. But I was mad mostly because I wanted to be a hero like her. I never got her powers but you did it seems.”

“Wait you wanted to be like Grandmom?”

“What kid doesn’t want to be a super hero?”

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

“No, I imagine not but the footage is pretty cool.”

It felt kind of odd that my dad thinks something that I did was cool. “So do we tell Mom and Nancy.”

“Got to they’re family. I agree that you should use your gifts for something good but Drew you need to find a way to do thing better than Mom did. She got killed because she got in over her head.”

“Yes and no dad.”

“What do you mean.”

I pass him her journals and show him the whole faith part.…. “But…I’m not sure I follow?”

“Granddad left her, took you guys and that yanked out her powerbase and that’s what killed her.”

“Did he know?”

“No dad I don’t think so…I think she figured this out it that year on her own.”

I sat and watched, I kind of figured that I wasn’t going to school today or him either so I just sat on my bed and tried to get comfortable while he read things with tears in his eyes.

God I…

I’m not sure why but I slid off the bed and hugged him. He was good with it but we are not hugging people.

………………………………... Things changed a lot after that morning. The first thing we did was pull us both out of school and they both took leaves of absences for awhile. Dad talked to mom first then we sort of had an intervention for Nancy.

She lost her shit.

I was a effing mutie, grandmom was an effing mutie…she P.O.ed mom enough with those she was grounded and it got way worse than that when they explained the birds and the bees and the genes.

How she might get it too.

How her kids might get it too.

She freaked.

She tried to take off and runaway, she tried to tell her douche bag boy-toy but the parents were smart enough to take that time off to keep Nancy on a tight leash. She didn’t get that she if she told him she’s my sister.

To his bunch that makes her gene trash like me.

It took just about two weeks to sink in. She really got bad too, like we told her she had a death sentence. She started to get in though, started to watch the news and stuff on the net about how are kind are treated…even our families because of just the chance of this happening.

She died her hair black last night and she’s been getting really EMO and stuff and she’s refused to go to school.

I’m still going after I healed up but….

Things aren’t the same.

Dreams, dreams like I’ve never had before…I don’t remember them but I wake and almost get sick in the bathroom. It’s been happening every morning since I first did the hero thing.

Foods been off too, things are tasting right and some things I used to like I’m not liking anymore.

School…everyone’s different…the guys…I’m just sort of finding them more annoying than ever especially the real dumbassses. I mean I thought that things were packed full of stupid before but wow.

It’s like I’m developing a psionic sensitivity to macho bullshit.

And the girls….not too much better, my airhead tolerance just actually went out the window. I mean sometimes the amount of pretty could sort of cut the annoying stuff with the airheads. But now it’s way more like I seriously don’t care about the hotness because their stupidity wrecks it.

But other girls, I’m kind of getting more into? And I can get them more?

But this morning….

This morning I’ve sort of found out why…My chest hurt…ached and no good reason why.

I’m growing breasts….I mean I’m not that stupid as not to get the signs plus Nancy went through “Budding” and I went to school with girls all my like and I know that fried egg look….and I…I…I haven’t masturbated for like a week. The feelings, the urges…aren’t there.

I head to mom’s office and knock. She looks up from her computers, she has several in a semi-circle. “Morning Drew feeling any better this morning honey?”

“No…I…I think I know why too.”

“Oh?”

I lift my shirt. “I’m growing breasts mom.”

“You’re turning into a girl Drew.” Mom…sheesh she never ever batted an eye. The first time I see dad cry was with those journals. Mom took all this in her quiet way. The only thing was a fight after we told her and that was about dad not telling her about his Mom. I think…They’ve never fought in front of us kids.

“Wha…how…are you sure?”

“Yes honey and it’s happening pretty fast too.”

“When’d you figure this out?” Because it would’ve been nice to know.

“I didn’t until I had some real proof.”

“Oh….”

I’m staring at the floor and I’m almost crying… “Why mom…grandmom’s books never mentioned this happening?”

“I’m not sure honey…I’m far from and expert on this. But we’ll hopefully be able to find out.”

“How?”

“Well with things as they are we’re moving.”

“Because of me?”

“Mostly. It’ll be safer we hope but there’s this project starting up called Halo Academy and we’re enrolling you and your sister there. It’s a meta school but other things too, it’s sponsored but the AA’s (Ark Angels) and other super teams.”

“Oh…”

“They have specialist honey, people who are all about these things and we’ll find out what’s going on.”

“I’m sorry mom…” I feel really like crying but I’m trying hard to hold it back. It feels like my fault and I’m changing into someone else?…I’m scared and it’s coming out different than before.

“Honey, this isn’t your fault…it’d genetics. It’s not even your grandmothers fault….”

“But…”

“It’s okay…we’ve got new jobs there both of us and your dad will be teaching there too. He’ll be making a lot better money than before. I’m even getting more money for taking a job there as part of the city’s engineering staff.”

“Okay…I’m scared mom…”

I want to be hugged or something but she hasn’t even stopped talking, or even got out of her spot behind her desk. We’re just…we’re not tight…

She was going to say something but Nancy comes in all in black, studs and spikes for EMO looking and she frowns at me. Like she still hates me for wrecking her life…and I did…god I feel even worse.

She stops and stares at my chest. “Drew’s growing tits?””

“Nancy language! Yes you brother’s changing.”

“Into?”

“A girl we think.”

She bursts out laughing and is this jaded nasty laugh. “Out fucking standing!” She smiled and punched me in the breast or the budding spot and I fall to my knees hurting…oh crap…that hurt!…and she’s laughing at me as mom’s following her yelling at her for what she did and her attitude which starts then in tis screaming match which happened raely but all the time now with her being EMO now.

I…

I head over to the sofa at a crawl and slip up onto it and roll to face the back of it and that’s all I’ve got before the tears hit…I’m scared and all of this is just swallowing me up and I’m…god I feel so alone.

And I can’t stop the crying…

My Super Secret Life…Potentials-5.

*Vanir…………………

It’s actually my name or the one that on my official papers. But usually everyone calls me Van or more likely Vana.

I get Vana the most.

And I’m not normal.

I’m sort of an orphan, I’m sort of not. I live here in White Star this big city on the planet moon of Coventry. That’s in the Federation if anyone’s wondering.

Gods…where do I start?

I guess at the first of stuff I guess.

Okay, I’m not normal because I’m Invitro conceived my birth mom was a soldier and I was born just like ten miles or so on the military base and I’m sort of a foster kid. My birth mom didn’t want to have any contact with me and they had me, left under sealed records and moved on.

I got assigned to a house unit and had foster parents assigned to me. Other than that I’m or I was and Army brat. The only real difference is well I go once a week every week for tests or something that they’re looking for in me.

Well that and I’m a tomboy much to the chagrin of my foster folks and stuff. My foster mom Jane is a pretty decent person but she’s just like most girls in the Federation. Dresses and skirts. Sometimes slacks or another dressy pant type but I’ve never really got it? Me I just don’t feel normal in them. I mean the slacks are okay and so are the dress pants but while I can take the skirts and stuff they just leave me feeling all kinds of unsettled.

I’ve never really felt what other girls get to feel. I mean in the Federation it’s pretty clear about the way things are set down. Women and girls are this, boys and men are this and that’s it.

Like the good book says.

Oh that’s the bible, the WBC edition.

Only I like the boy’s games and them building forts and playing games where you can be loud and run around and actually have fun. And I get into trouble every time I doff the skirts and I play with a few of the boys when they let me.

Because girl’s games can be fun but at the same time I’m or I was so sick of the toy kitchens and bake ovens and the Marcy dolls and all that stuff.

Did you know in the Federation even the ladies and girls bike all have three wheels and only have three gears?

That’s like no fair, and boys have their own channels for like cartoons and even on the radios and stuff all the stuff on the TV is like either family oriented or like separated by your gender.

I don’t watch the stuff because it gives me a headache a lot of the time.

It’s really lonely too being me…or it was.

See as wild as I was as a kid they sort of forgave that while shaking their heads but as soon as I started to bleed I was expected to fall into line and fit in. I just couldn’t do that no matter how much that I tried or prayed.

And then there’s the other kids who are pretty cruel and because I was a flat uncurvy girl they teased me and not all of it was about how ungirly I was.

Billy Cooper was talking to me about him going into the army as soon as he turned sixteen so he could be a legal citizen and stuff and Blair one of the popular girls didn’t like that and she started in on me and calling me names and stuff.

I told her. “God Blair you’re such a bitch! Why don’t you stick your head up your fat ass and fucking fight for air?”

Oh yeah girls are really never allowed to swear like that. You get like serious detention for it and too much and you get sent to the schools ministers office.

Okay it was kind of funny seeing how she might actually explode or something with like how made she got.

Then it was really unfunny when she screamed at me and she blew me out the side of the cafeteria.

Billy and a couple of the kids that were beside us were…they were dead…bodies all broken up and Billy had a chunk of re-bar coming out of his eye through the back of his head.

Me…I was alive…cut up but alive and I had this shield in front of me made of like misty blue white light and it was like those big round shields knights had but hovering in front of me connected somehow to my hands by this shimmery mist that was flowing off of them and I felt this strange feeling that…was flowing through my body.

I got up and my bra popped off under my uniform blouse and suddenly I hade boobies…good ones and I felt strange all over and my hair was a lot longer.

Blair…Blair was covering her mouth…upset, trying to hold back whatever was going on but people were running and she moved her hands to say something a few times…to het friends…and I saw this wave like heat but not but you know invisible but wavy hit them and send them slamming through the furnishings and tables.

Bonnie Timmens was right in the middle of the blast and she short blood out of everywhere before she was knocked down but she didn’t move like the rest she was like all floppy.

I…honestly I peed myself….I was so scared.

And Blair was still changing and her eyes were getting like filled with blood and her hair was going from blonde to black and there weren’t too many people left and there where sirens and stuff and she spotted me.

She turned her hate and stuff on me and I blocked it with the shield thingy by throwing my hands up. But I heard her screaming at me.

“You did this to me! You’re the freak; you’re the freak they made you! You ain’t even a real person!”

Okay she can talk now.

“Blair! Blair stop! We gotta stop this it ain’t right!”

“Ain’t right!...you fucking infected me you mutie freak…no it’s not gonna be alright it ain’t never gonna be alright!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

She laughed and it was on this crazy person’s laugh. “You we’re ever born…I heard me dad talkin about it…they made you in a fucking lab…from some mutie freak from off world…and not you got it in me!”

She screams at me or whatever again and I block myself again but my feet are digging little trenches in the dirt and I…

She’s going nuts…I gotta stop her…gotta…

Oh…I feel another wave of strange roll through me and with it that kind of fire in you when you get passed upset or mad.

My shield pulls back into my hands and I feel strong…like really strong and I run at her and she screams at me and I jump out of the way in mid run in this sorta diagonal way and I feel it first then see the sword form in my hand from the misty light stuff and I run her through before I can even think.

Blair screams and it’s a normal one and she arches and falls to the ground. I pull the blade out of her and there’s no blood just her on the ground twitching…crying and then puking.

I step back and then start to notice I’m built…not like a big guy or something but like I’m me but if I’d been on like those muscle drugs…my boobs are pretty much gone…I’m taller too and my clothes are too small for me and I feel funny just like before but in this other way…I mean just before…I felt like I changed into this finally right the way it was supposed to be version of me that would’ve fit in everywhere but this…

I want to run…do something I feel like I’m supercharged and want to just…

Then I hear guns clicking and energy guns priming and stuff as the police are here and SWAT and the MP and the power armored special anti mutant task force guys are there.

My foster father Paul’s there too with a gun but a sat-phone and he’s looking at me but talking to someone else. “Yessir heavy damages and casualties, one class three or higher mutant by the look of the damage. Oh and sir…Van’s crested and manifested…The project was a success…yes sir I’ll bring her in.”

I’m not a dummy…

Blair, people say the truth a lot in a blind rage.

Paul…and the project was a success.

Me…

Then I’m me again because suddenly I need to throw up and stuff and their closing in with guns and stuff but I can’t couldn’t stop puking.

Then Paul was there and I felt the bite of a needle and things went black.

……………………………………………………..I woke in scrubs and in a cell.

They said they had to make sure that I wasn’t dangerous and that’s when all the tests began and a lot of them and getting me to use my powers.

They had to…do things to hurt me until I stress triggered and the few times I balked at trying or doing exactly what they wanted me to do they sent in soldiers and they beat me with billy clubs and shock sticks until I triggered or passed out.

After the fifth time I tried get my foster mom or my foster dad to help me because they were always there.

Jane…she lowered her head and never said anything and walked away and Paul…Paul yelled at me in that army way.

“Listen here you little shit! What Blair said was true! You’re a project, made right here for us, the military, the government and that means that you are gonna do what we say! You got that Vanir? We literally own your ass! You’re fucking patented now shape the fuck up!”

Knowing I wasn’t real…that they made me.

I shaped up…there wasn’t really anything else to do.

Months and stuff went by and I missed all the holidays, the staff didn’t but yeah I missed Easter and Christmas…twice…

I was put into labs to get figured out and to see how I ticked and the rest was just sleep…trained…not if they didn’t have too. I was a dangerous mutant female…I’d be maybe good breeding stock for the next project.

I got to see them turn Blair’s emergence into a who thing of why now humans are dangerous and criminals and it they aren’t turned in as soon as possible they’ll end up going insane like Blair.

And they made up lies about her on TV and pretty much said that dissidence and gayness and drug use and a whole list of other things are signs of the change in mutant brain chemistry and to call the reward line.

Then they publically executed her.

Full police and military hanging.

Then there were a couple of football and snack commercials and then the ads for mutants to turn themselves in and get tested and saved! We can help you! You can be a military hero and fight to keep the Federation free and strong!

I learned that my time was coming…once they were done with me I was going to die and then autopsied and filed away…women don’t fight, and even if we did…how dare we defend ourselves right…

I learned a lot of stuff.

My headaches from the TV are the fact that the 24/7 subliminal messages weren’t working on me. They are constantly reinforcing the government’s policies and they’re good at it. They even have different audio frequencies for the sexes. Girls get this unpleasant thing when they watch mannish things and vice versa…and faith boosting, and patriotism.

And if a guy likes girl shows that telling isn’t it.

How do I know this stuff now?

Jimmy Cougar or just “Cougar.” He was a mutant human but he had feral powers and that made him look like a feline person. By federation law all “Anthros” are property of the government and get put into the military or culled.

His animal senses and brain made him immune to the government bullshit.

He was slated for execution or Culling but we shared a hall together.

We made plans together.

We escaped together.

I shifted to my Alpha state that’s the machoette version of me. I’m tougher like that, stronger like almost in the range of like power armor strong and faster too and I can heal really quickly. Oh and I get like six inches taller and lose breast tissue or it just gets spread out or something and I get about fifty pounds heavier all muscles, like this really buff kinda flat amazon.

And oh yeah the sword…it’s a psi blade as far as they could figure. I make like ectoplasm into a sword and it’s powered by psi energy and can either be like intangible and able to hit with this neural stun effect or it gets charge with telekinetic energy and it becomes like a vibro blade able to cut through…well anything.

They say because it’s all energy it pushes apart molecular bonds.

The other shift is the shield version of me they referred to as the Beta me. And when I shift my hips widen, I gain about twenty much needed pounds in curves and bust and my hair gets longer. My shield is so far indestructible as far as we know and I can make it cover someone up to ten feet from me and is a foot wide at it’s smallest and eight feet across at it’s largest.

Oh and I can heal wounds…I can’t do the shield thing when I’m doing it but if I wrap a wound in the misty light it’ll heal like it would naturally but like at a super rate but it tires me out doing it….but healing…being able too do that has kind of saved my soul.

It was a mutant jail break with me in alpha mode and Cougar running the show with some of the other “Inmates” and we stole a shuttle…we took a lot fire getting to the shuttle and we lost a third of us getting out and…

And I had to kill two guys in power suits…They had anti electrical stuff to protect them from stuff like lightning and stuff…they were going to kill me first and in alpha state it just was reflex…I didn’t like it, it just happened.

We were picked up by a ship from the very demonized Mutant Underground and we got out of there…

It took two months to get to New Haven and we were caught pretty fast by the Supers there…

I thought we were going to be jailed and worse when this one a dark scary guy called Shroud bumped into me and there was a note suddenly in my hand.

It read...Request political asylum.

“Uhm…We request political asylum…Uhm please?”

My Super Secret Life…Potentials-6 The Start.

Chapter 1

*Samantha Chase….

Things are actually busy and picking up with the whole Halo thing. I wake up feeling the headache form as my waking mind pulls signals in. You know how you focus as you wake up well I’m a psi-meta combo, a telemechanic. So like my eyes focusing in on my bedroom my powers are tuning into every signal around me.

God this sucks.

I really need to get my room shielded.

I get up stretch, scratch my itchy starting breasts. Go to the bathroom and pee, wash up, brush my teeth and I check myself out in the mirror and start going through my routine. Shower, shave…not my face I started early but my legs and underarms and then get dressed. Nice panties, and sports bra then body training running gear. Yeah the sneakers and the resistance top and pants and I head down stairs.

Breakfast is a shake, silken tofu, banana, avocado, vitamin and protein powder and whole milk. Yeah I’m going to run most of this off and stuff I dump blueberries in after it’s done and in my running cup I’ve got a big straw to suck them up like in those Asian bubble teas.

I head out at a run and start to filter out the signals, it’s actually great to do that running because my mind is focused on that and my running goes automatic and my body eats up the miles.

I do seven miles all the way to the Ark area and I head there usually to start training. I’m a legacy. Double Ark Angel parents. So I actually grew up in the middle of all of this. But I’m heading to Eden first for my breakfast but arriving I see up on one of the new buildings some kids up on some of the construction scaffolding.

I head over and I can sort of tell from here they can see the stuff going on with the protestors. I climb up and this very sleek looking guy…anthro but not offers me a hand up. Velvet thick and a little longer glossy, black fur, pointed ears like a Tolkien elf, yellow-golden eyes and claws, fangs…no snout but a human like face but a broader nose.

Fur that shiny short it shows off all his muscles like he was oiled. I’m not really thrown by the look I grew up with mutants, but damn…if he’s not fine.

“Thanks, I’m Samantha…but you can call me Sam.”

*Cody St.Pierre………..

“Uh…yeah you’re welcome.” she cute, really cute and sweaty…she smells good…but off. I’m not trained enough in scent stuff yet to really get what’s off. But the other two girls have it too but differently. I think, I think it’s not a girl thing because my mom and my sisters don’t have it.

But she smiled and she seems friendly. “I’m Cody.” I say back. I gotta speak softly because if I get like up into normal ranges I growl as I talk and that really sucks. I gotten see a speech doctor.

She blinks again and smiles at me. I’m not used to someone being nice. It’s been awhile. But people here are nice. I make room so she can see.

I was watching the stuff going on and honestly I’m a lot freaked. There’s a lot of people out there protesting us even having a place of our own. I’ve been here a bit longer than a week and it’s been kinda nice walking around like I used to. Not getting chased or having people wanting to skin me.

I look at Sam and she’s sweaty but she’s a stunner, I know it’s the work out clothes and the kinda sweaty bit too but she has this really toned body mixed with the whole girl next door thing.

Faith the Emo kid in the hoodie is why I came up here. She flew up here, well landed actually and we’ve been watching the stuff going on there. She’s been sitting doing that arms around their knees hugging themselves thing. She must have a job here helping out because I got whiffs of sawdust and paint and even tar from them.

I look over at Samantha and she’s frowning a bit as she’s sipping a shake…I can smell the blueberries but everything else is ick. “Scary stuff right?”

“Yeah and it’s getting worse by the sounds of it.”

“Sounds?” I listen. I’ve got seriously heightened senses but the whole thing is too far away. “I can’t hear them.”

“I can hear the radio chatter, both sides and the press transmissions.”

Faith speaks up voice cracking in and out. “So what’s going on?”

She takes a sip. They’re getting pissed that there some more busses coming in. The police are getting ready for the buses and the press are hamming it up.”

She get’s this shocked look and her shake drops from her hand…

“Sam? What you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”

She’s got tears already and closes her eyes. “No…not a ghost I just saw through a targeting system…someone’s locking onto the buses. I gotta tell dad and the others.”

She looks like she’s concentrating.

Faith get’s up and takes off flying towards the place. The other girl is pointing. “Too late…” We sort of watch as there’s these smoke streams heading to the bridge and the incoming busses…. Sam opens her eyes and reaches a hand out and the rockets sort of wobbled? But one out of a dozen out so went straight up and blew harmlessly…I look at Sam and she’s got a nose bleed and she almost pitches off the roof. I catch her and hold her while the other girl she nods to herself and her body changes as she goes like this big female body builder version of herself. “I’m going too.” Her voice was deepened by the change and she jumps the forty some feet to the ground and takes off running.

Shit…shit, what do I do?

*Quinn Jackson…AKA Karma……………

It wasn’t too long after the meeting at the hospital that I was moved. I’m now in Casa de Daystar where he lives with Saber his wife. I’ve got my own room and stuff with all these normal things. Even my own bathroom.

“Why do I need a bathroom of my own or a closet for my clothes if I’m like this?”

It was Sasha, that’s Saber’s real name who said. “You’ve got the ring, you can use most of this stuff in the ecto-form. This way you can do lots of things Quinn. Your own physic, chores, and going to classes.”

“I’m…I’m actually going to get to do all of that?”

“Yes…and training, and I’ll say this I’m agreeing with Chris. The stronger your powers get the more likely the chance of your own needs synching up to your bodies needs.”

“Huh?”

“You might be able to move your body again.”

“But…how?”

“Quinn there’s nothing wrong with your body, it’s either in your head as a result of the accident or it’s and off shoot of your powers. Either way we both think your possession powers will get to where you’ll be one with yourself again or will learn to.”

She kissed my cheek and headed out.

“Sasha?”

“Yes Quinn?”

“Thanks for this, for all of this…for taking me in…getting me out of the hospital…”

I start to cry and she comes over and lifts my head to her lap and holds me and let me cry like I hadn’t since I was little.

………………………………..Apparently as nice a woman as she is she does intend on me doing chores. I take out the garbage and help Aerin with the housework. Aerin’s Sasha’s daughter, she doesn’t talk…and I can feel energy bubbling in her…I saw her reading while she was ironing clothes with her hands…the book hovering in place. She’s got powers of some kind. Smart too, she’s got lots of books in her room like a library and she was reading something in Chinese.

……………………………….. Chris, He’s great he gets me out of my head. When he’s here and stuff he teaches me things. Like keyboard and guitar…he’s in a police rock band. I’m loving music because it takes not that much power to just sit and play but learning…it focuses me away from the other stuff.

Cooking…He’s not the cook of the family. Sasha is but there’s a lot of take out but he does three things really well. Grill on the BBQ, Make homemade pizzas, and pancakes.

I have clothes for my ecto-form, and this way I can go out.

The scary thing is the week I’ve bee here I’ve been out more than Aerin.

………………………………....That kind of leads to today.

I can still travel, well spirit travel and I’m drawn to the Super bridge….there’s so much fear and pain and anguish there it pulls me to it like a beacon. I don’t feel a call but it’s like going to a fire or a car pile up looking to help and not being able to not be there just in case.

Twice I’ve felt something scary? There’s this ancient movie called Harry Potter that’s a cult classic and there’s that snake one where it’s doing the whispering hissing thing. I hear that out there…faintly but it’s there.

I told Chris and Sasha and…

They took me seriously.

Chris taught me how to fill out a report…like for the AA’s. I have an Alias…an official Alias…Karma.

They asked me to keep looking.

And the sound is out there. In the crowd on he bridge, on the barges, even through some of the police and the military…I can feel some of the anger it stirs up but I can really feel it stirring up their fears…there’s more than one of them, and I’m actually on the bridge in the crowd of haters when I see it…

Smoke that sort of flows from shadow to shadow and into the person.

Someone like me but twisted?

I pursue it right up until it slips into the front of the crowd. The guy eyes shift to darkness for a second and he smiles and looks at me.

~Can you feel it? The anger, the fear, the hate?~

~Yes and we’re going to stop it.~

~You can’t stop nature cuteness.~

~Why are you doing this?~

~Fun…revenge…pleasure.~

~What are you?~

~You really but older, smarter…better….here it comes cuteness.~

~What?~

I don’t have time to really ask it any more things as the missiles hit coming out the sky as these white exo-suit armors are coming in…the helmets are sort of sculpted to look like the armored version of the ancient hate group the KKK…slitted visors, the pointed hoods sleeked back like it’s folded over.

They call themselves H.C. or Humanities Crusade.

I get ripped away literally as it happens.

……………………………….I’m falling…the bridge is gone and the bus is tilting to fall and I’m not in a seat but falling with others…towards the windows. Even if the bus doesn’t go over the glass…it’s not going to hold.

Shit, shit, shit.

* “Drew” Andrew Porter…AKA Faith……..

And the hits just kept coming.

I was still “Grounded” as things went and I was going through being sick half the time and being sort of tortured by Nancy who was taking great glee in me changing. My folks were well busy wit the move and Mom was her usual self and Dad while working was trying to get us moved and trying to find me a doctor.

I was the first one of my family to see Sanctuary. I was taken by aerobulance to The Ark. I wasn’t in danger but it was a good way to get me there and to Sanctuary Medical. I was put through a whole bunch of scans and stuff I never heard of. Like nano-blood work? It was kinda cool because Karly that’s Karly Winters my doctor…who’s my age…Meta with boosted I.Q. took nano bots and had them stay in the blood stream and transmit all the fluctuations that’s going on.

It took her two days before she gave me the news.

“I’ve figured out what’s going on with you Drew.”

“Good…I mean I’m not dying but this has sucked.”

It’s been like the flu, a bad flu and add in growing pains…aching boobs…literally because they throbbed even at night and itch…then my legs…head… my waist, well my hips just throbbed too. Because I’m growing and changing…getting girly…

“It’s your powers?”

“Huh?”

“Your powers are based on the vibes, the energy directed at you. But not just you but Faith.”

“Okay…”

“Your Grandmother was the first Faith.”

“Yeah I know.”

“Yes.”

“…………………………I don’t get it.”

“The energy that you use and feed from is a wavelength. It’s actually a remarkable combination of mutated telepathy, psychometry and bio-feedback. You convert the energy from those thoughts about you for your own use…amazing in itself. But the drawback of this is the energy that you’re pulling in from the media coverage of you and then the reports of the press on the first Faith has flavored the energies.”

“Okay…”

“Drew…they think you’re a girl, people are thinking you’re a girl because guys don’t 2nd gen female heroes. You powers are reshaping you to fit that image.”

“I’m going to stop being me!?”

“No, no…they don’t really know you and since there’s no “shrinkage” I’m saying that it’s changing you to meet the mass expected image.”

“Can’t I stop it? Go public and stuff about being a guy?”

“Well you could, and it might work but you’ve got breasts, the start of girl hips and your legs are getting longer…you’re not really guy passable anymore…not enough for this. And there’s a backlash risk.”

“Backlash risk?”

“Just think if you went public the energy that all the perverts would be sending you.”

I actually did and eleven seconds later was puking in the trash can.

I’ve kept this to myself. I can do that. Mom and Dad know but as far as anyone’s concerned I’m mutating. Even Nancy doesn’t know, especially so…she’d really be a bitch to me.

I kind of just kept to myself…helped move in and got some work helping the others in the block do the same. Baggy clothes, I even get a sports bra and try to keep the changes as to myself as I can. I feel like shit a lot of the time from the hormones I’m producing, and the aches…it just wears on me. I hate feeling like this…being in pain all the time sucks.

There’s even part time jobs with the town. I’ve gotten my parents permission but I’ve been doing stuff like shoveling Asphalt and building stuff with some other kids like picnic tables and signs and stuff. I work really hard…I guess to maybe prove my manhood to myself or something? The pay’s really decent though, not adult with papers money but a couple of bucks an hour over the whole flipping burgers thing. I’m banking most of it. I might need it later ad even though I can fly. I’d like to get some wheels….or maybe moving out…sometimes I just really want to get out of my house.

I was just at Eden getting coffee when I sort of heard the distant rhythm of the protestors chanting slogans so taking my coffee I flew up to the top of this building and there was this girl there already watching. Smoking a cigarette and looking upset.

“Hey…you okay?”

“No…”

“Can I do anything…you look…freaked…” Dammit my voice is cracking but in reverse, I’m starting to sound less and less like a guy.

“No…I’m just…just…” She turns and she screams at them. “Fuck you! Fuck all of you! Why can’t you just leave us alone!”

“Hey…chill, it’ll be okay…it sucks but we’re safe.”

She looks at me. Tears spill out and she wipes at them angry like. “I’m sure lots of people think they’re safe from them…but it just doesn’t stop…they, they won’t just leave us alone…” She shivers and breaks down crying and she shifts…I mean she looks like herself still but even more…like from a decent looking girl to this buxom beautiful girl. She cries even harder like this.

I hold her and I really don’t know what to say so I just keep my mouth shut. We actually end up just sitting there not saying much. She only says. “Thanks.” After she shifts back to normal. She’s not bad looking Scandinavian for sure but she’s got this bourbon accent…it’s what we call that southern twang or it’s also known as Federation accent.

I’m getting it now….especially after seeing the barcode tattoo.

Who knows what she’s been through.

“I’m Drew.”

“Vana.”

We sit and watch then we’re joined by Cody. Vana knows him, did the whole terse introduction thing. Him…Cody I’ve seen on the news when they were after him. He doesn’t seem like too bad a guy….

Then someone else showed up, nice looking kind of preppy though, high end name brand stuff and that whole my life’s so good I jog kind of people…not the kind of person I hang out with. Girl next door meets Barbie and Miss Rich.

I was sort of surprised when she’s a powered like us.

Then we all seen the rockets hit.

I’m moving before I’m even thinking. No gear, and I can’t fly that fast either but I can fly and…oh shit…I see a section of the Super bridge fall away and buses tip and fall, protesters on the bridge at the head of the crowd too.

I try to push my speed…I gotta get there.

I’m passed by these streaks of “Daystar” golden light and another shining red. I dive fast and reach out to try and catch two of the protestors…It’s a thee or four hundred feet down and at that height hitting the water will be like hitting the sand.

C’mon…c’mon…just a bit closer!

* Vanir “Vana.”…….

I…

This place is so different than home.

I made the request and it changed everything…everything in a big hurry. It got the law guys involved and these famous? Freaky people?

I mean these people were like us and yet some of them were actually celebrated heroes? Home they’d be dead or terrorists.

Me stepping up also had something else happen.

I became one of the one’s in charge.

There was a lot of interrogation. “Interviews.” Federal Marshals, Homeworld security. They kept us in segregation and quarantine and I get it, I do we’re illegal’s, we’re also mutants. From the Federation too…so we or some of us have a military aspect. Honestly I’d watch us if I was them too.

The situation could be worse. Scrubs for clothes, staff cafeteria access so we eat the same stuff. There’s barracks to sleep in, a games and TV room and free medical. About a third of us need it. There’s people from other places we had on our ship that were worse off than Cougar and I.
And because the NH’ers thought I was one of the ones in charge a lot of our people came to me. I played go between a lot.

Then there was that Shroud guy…passed him in the halls of the station…yes an actual space station and run by their military, the NHDF or New Haven Defense Forces. I got another note. “Lawyer, Nickolas Page.” And a number.

I got to make the call eventually.

He came up pretty quickly. And after we talk over lunch and coffee’s and he gets my story he got to work pretty quickly. Two weeks later we’ve been admitted directly into the Sanctuary project as some of the very first people to live there and work there. He was a really professional guy. Handsome too with dark black hair, great body and the most amazing green eyes. He never crossed the flirting line and treated everyone with respect and care. Especially any little kid…he softened and became a totally different guy.

And since getting here. I found out he paid for all of the costs he had taking our cases. All of our cases. And…he got everyone a check for three hundred dollars…so…much more than most of us have ever seen…even us girls had money. Not something even us pass for normal girls were used to.

No, no…ask your father, ask your boyfriend, ask your husband…don’t worry your pretty little head about money.

Pre-paid debits for female stuff is common in The Federation.

I…I’ve got job offers…once I’ve out of the school phase here. Ark City Police, NHDF, Paradise City Police…The Marshals even.

I’m in the dorms with some of the others. Cougar too we’ve been asked to go into for Training by the AA’s. Because like a gun…we’re going to need to be licensed and insured. Cougar wants to join up, to make a difference.

I’m thinking about it.

About all of it.

I walk a lot.

I was watching the boats out there with these people out there that hate us for what? I was out there since…well all night.

I don’t sleep well…lots of nightmares…then there’s just the fact I can…I can just go for a walk when I want. No getting held back, no you’re a girl you can’t. No cells, cages or being fenced in.

I was there still when one by one others showed up. Drew…he? Can fly. I never met a flyer before. Cody…I know Cody through Cougar they play B-ball together.

I think we might have gotten to where we’d get introduced and stuff but shit hit the fan and that Sam girl…she felt it and from as far as she was away she did something…she just threw herself into trying…doing not a single thought of no or can’t.

Then Drew takes off flying out to help.

He held me y’know when I lost it.

I have to, too.

I Butch up and jump clear and take off running. My amazon body is a lot stronger and faster. I didn’t even think about the height just jumped…then ran…I hurdle over the cars and things in my way and I see two streaks of light pass and then others and I’m trying to get to the beach/bridge area and do something.

Then there’s something…someone watching in a black hood…not a hoodie but a hood and a red blood colored trench coat and he’s watching…something like a big glass ball in his hand…I don’t know what made me did it and make me to stop in my tracks.

There’s this black smoke in the orb…and then red eyes.

~Master…~

The guy in the hood turns I can’t see his face. “I see…interesting…most unusual.”

“I get that…you started this?”

“No…yes…humans are just so easily pushed…but I never made their choices…this scuffle…it’s just pleasant.”

“You need to be stopped.”

“And you’re going to do that little Asguardian? Feel free.”

He rolls that ball towards me and there’s the sound of cracking and breaking glass but it’s breaking into more like it’s growing…and growing…black glass…eight feet tall with red burning eyes, mouth and this look like a demon crossed a troll and was made of living obsidian.

Asguardian? Whatever….

I need to keep my head clear…or I’m going to get killed.

The guy in the red actually lights a cigar… “Grendel, Kill her.”

My Super Secret Life…Potentials-7 The Start.

Chapter 7

*Samantha Chase…

I have a splitting headache and things are blurry when I come too and I’m in Cody’s arms.

Yayness that’d be so nice some other time. I cough and I can taste blood from the strain attack. Pinprick hemorrhages happen when you push yourself if you’re like me sometimes. It’s what happens when you sort of short yourself out.

“Gah…shit…oh my head.”

“You okay?”

“No…but I’ve gotta be.”

“No you don’t I mean you did what you could I mean like shit…you don’t look good and leave it to the others.”

“I’ll be okay…just set me down.”

Cody sets me down and grabs a bottle of water that was there from one of the others. “Here drink this.”

I take in and sip at the water and we can hear the chaos over by the bridge. I hear Cody say.

“Shit…Drew!”

I look up and Cody turns jet black, like living night and then there this sound like air ripping like from an air compressor sort of that Hissssssss-crack!

Then he’s gone? Just this wisp of black fog dissipating from where he was.

Teleporter?

*Karma/Quinn…

I’m in a body it’s some student…or will be one of us just freaked out to the point of being paralyzed with fear.

Mark…Mark Sheridan…

I feel something, something so…so different that before. There’s this thing there this instinct and it…shapeshifter…stretcher too.

Okay…shit here goes nothing.

I delve into that feeling getting hurled into all these experiences and the kid can feel me…which is freaking him out all the more.

~Chill! Chill! Help me do this? ~

~What are you! You’re in my head, oh god you’re in my head! I’m gonna die! ~

I’m assailed by images. He’s used his powers before…disguised himself…pounded bullies, made his dong larger…like seeing just how much he could shift it…changed genders…oh…he’s been a really x-rated kid and there’s too much…

~Show me how? I need to know how to stretch!”~

~What are you?!~

~I’m a student like you; I get pulled in to possess people that need help. ~

~Help! How are you going to help? ~

~You show me how to shift, to stretch! I can, we can save us! ~

~What! ~

~Mark fuck! Just do it! You won’t be the nasty perv y’know…just a hero…a stand up guy! ~

That’s it and it might be self serving stuff getting through to him and all that but he has some serious guilt over some of the stuff he’s done and he sort of let’s me ride along these feelings, instincts really.

It’s a good thing the speed of thought is pretty fast.

I reach out shooting out my arms and my legs…our arms and legs and I wrap them around the seats and the metal posts and I…we become this human or meta spiderweb and the kids behind us are hitting us and our torso and we get stretched so hard I can feel tearing and our back hits the glass hard and shattering it.

There’s that feeling of falling mixed with stretching and I am adding all of my strength to his just…~Just gotta hang on! ~

*Faith/Drew…

I’m passed by the big golden streak and the smaller crimson one as they head for the shit storm going on and I’m still pushing it…I’m not a fast flyer.

And I’m not in uniform….costume…whatever.

C’mon…c’mon you can do this! You’re flying straight down for christsakes that means you have to be faster!

I’m not sure where it came from but there was this surge…this sense of. ~You can do it. ~

It’s from just one person…but I can feel it still.

About two hundred feet from the water I pass them and I yell at one as I get under her. “Arms around my shoulders!” she grabs a hold of me and she hangs on tight and I reach out to the other two and yell. “Hang on! Both hands really tight!”

I fly up as hard as I can braking us…

I’m not built or powered up for this kind of thing! I feel my shoulders tearing out of my sockets and I scream.

I sound like a damned girl.

We drop about a hundred feet before we stop and I can still feel that person out there hoping, believing in me and it was enough…

I want to throw up it hurts so bad.

Then I hear the woman screaming in my ear.

There’s gunfire from one of the terrorist exo-suits and I swear I can feel hit when he gets us in his sights and the smile.

Then there’s blackness.

*Cody St. Pierre…

I was trying to help Sam recover and it was like nothing I ever felt before…I had gotten Sam her water and looked up at Drew saving those people…protestors and putting her mutant butt on the line for them.

Then I saw the powered armor suit coming in firing at Drew with the stuck there being a sitting duck.

So not fair.

And Drew’s kind of hot really. Emo hot but messed up and yet she’s really brave too.

I don’t want her to die!

Everything went what they call photo negative and super slow motion… and there was this stuff all around me? Swirling, moving and swirling…there was this eddy, this circular swirl and I could see…see…Drew through the golf ball sized hole and I pushed the stuff that energy? Into it making it spin more and make the hole bigger?

I dive through.

Everything snaps through behind me with a hell of a kick and suddenly I’m there and I’m tackling Drew and the people out of the air but the bullets are still going hit!

C’mon!

I do it again! The hole…I point it, imagining it at the beach…

We come through hitting the beach that was below us and I’m slammed into the sand and we end up rolling and I’m not able to catch my breath…fuck it was like I sprinted all those trips…I hear the loud cocking of large guns all around us.

“Mesa give ups.”

*Vanir/Vana…

I was not expecting any of this and the thing the guy in red called Grendle shifts it’s hands into a very large and very spiked mace and a very big and very scary axe. Then there’s eight feet of mad and psychopathic troll-demon-golem? Coming at me being all business and he laughs and he swings over and over again and I’m blocking with my sword and trying to duck a few strikes but those are fakes…feints or whatever.

I score three good hits on the thing though and Grendle is not pleased…each real blow that I’ve landed hurts it really bad leaving white smoking cuts lined with cracks.

I duck and roll as it suddenly breathes fire!

I know that this is going to hurt like a bitch. I duck and weave and I I’m not sure what part of what they were teaching me at The Project kicked in but I caught the mace on my sword and I stepped inside then my blade hooked into the mace’s spikes I hip throw him to the ground.

I make my move and sprint across the clearing while it’s getting back to it’s feet and I go for “master” I get about twelve feet from him and he exhales tobacco smoke from the hood and says something like.

“Aeros-necros-fulmination…” or something like that and he’s pointing at me with his first two fingers a pearl between them.

There was a static arc then lightning pours from his hand into me.

I didn’t know that I could shriek that hard…loud…that anything could hurt this much!

Potentials-8 The Start.

Chapter 8

*Samantha Chase…

I sort of see the puff of Cody reappearing out under the bridge area and then another puff of him vanishing again. “Okay…I hope he’s okay and not getting himself in too deep.”

I feel a Zzzt feeling off in the distance. I say feel that because as a TM or Telemechanic I’m sensitive to electricity this was a serious discharge, and another and another. I hear a scream that goes along with it.

“Shit, shit, shit…that can’t be good.”

I know that I shouldn’t be doing this but I patch myself into the streetlight cameras. Yeah something new for here that dad came up with even more concealed cameras and I try to pan in to where the screen might be and I see some guy in a hood and over that a red long coat and he’s frying Vana?

I think that’s her name and she’s in this divot in the ground with this big black mother-effer pounding on her only she’s seriously she right now and has this big round energy disc shielding herself and she’s screaming as she’s getting double teamed.

“Great, all we need is some Meta’s stirring shit up while the haters are running full force idiot today.”

I look around and see a construction exo-suit. I’m without my actual gear so I guess it’s time to Ripley up this bad boy and get into the fray.

I hop inside and buckle in and power everything up and take off running towards Vana and the things that she’s fighting. “Hang on Vana, just hang on.”

*Karma/Quinn…

~Sigh…oh shit that was close. ~

Mark’s looking around freaked but calming down. “Holy shit, holy shit! We made it? We’re alive?”

~Not quite out of the woods yet, look. ~

I turn our head to the power armor coming in on an attack pass and he’s raising the machine gun he’s carrying at the glowing red woman that towed us to safety. I don’t feel the fear in her like the others, I could jump to any number of them but I’m already in mark and he’s hurt…I think I’m hurt at home maybe…like some of the strain carried over to me?

“What do we do?” he asks.

~She’s not freaking like we are I think she’s okay, let’s get…~ We look around again and I see police and fire department but their too far down the ramp. ~Let’s get everyone to stay here and stay down the bus is our best cover right now. The last thing we need is to try to run for cover or that FD-PD line and catch some stray rounds.

“They won’t listen to me will they?”

~Mark, they don’t know about me in here so they thing it was you that saved a whole bunch of them. They’ll listen because you did something. ~

“But I didn’t.”

~You did, I couldn’t do squat without you helping me do it and it was your body, it was you. You can do this! You’re a lot tougher, smarter and braver than you think. ~

“Really?”

~Hey, I’m the one who’s been in your head…I’ve seen some of the stuff in there and there are a lot of great qualities that you just can’t see in yourself because you’re too close to it.~

“Uhm, okay.” We stand a little and rewind our stretched out limbs and stuff. “Hey, Listen I’m Mark…we’re going to be okay we are we just got to stay calm and stay here. It’s the safest place we’ve got right now so let’s just stay low and not give these guys a reason to shoot our way.”

I’ll be damned it’s working…

I’m pulled out of Mark seconds later…

*Faith/Drew…

I open my eyes and Cody’s there and the protestors and somehow we’re on the beach and there’s police and NHDF soldiers with their guns pointed at all of us. I jerk my hands up. “Shit, shit don’t shoot! I’m a student!”

Cody has his hands over his head even though he’s flat on his back panting like crazy. “Mesa give ups.”

One of the protestors scrambles from Cody like he’s the devil himself. “Get that thing away from me!”

Cody hocks a loogie on his leg. “There you go there’s some mutie-cooties for ya.”

The guys actually shrieks and he’s trying to wipe in off while the soldiers are restraining him. They’re not being gentle. One get’s in front of me with a tablet. “Palm.” It’s not a request either.

I place my palm on it and he looks at something coming up on the screen. “Funny boy with you?” he jerks his head at Cody.

“Yeah, he is can we go.”

“Yeah take the path off the beach there marked with the police tape and get the heck out of here.”

“Sure…Cody?”

He’s watching things upstairs. “Yeah…the AA’s are on scene and I don’t want to get in the way either. Let’s get back and find Samantha.”

“Who?”

“The girl in the jogging gear.”

“Oh, Barbie.” I’m not being catty, I’m not into this whole damned change I’m going through enough…I’m not. It’s just she looks like one of them. You know, little miss perfect, silver platter life and all of that.

“Drew, chill she’s nice.”

“You’ve known her how long?”

“About an hour less than you. She’s nice she didn’t even blink twice about the way I am…actually I think that she might have been checking me out.”

“Oh now we get to the “root” of it all.”

“Yeah so, the last girl I was with was pre-mutation and she literally had her self cleaned…like sterile clean to get the mutie off of her.”

“Sorry Cody I didn’t know…okay let’s go find her and catch her up on things.”

I’m biting my cheek to keep the urge to hug him away. Dammit I’m not a girl…grr, shit, shit, shit…

Cody and I head up the path and I have to sort of trot to keep up with him, he’s got that animal way of moving.

And me…I’m tired and sore…I really should have my costume with me…having my powers relying on how people believe in me really sucks when nobody recognizes you.

But some one was believing? Some one knew without me being in costume.

*Cody St. Pierre…

Drew and I get off the beach apparently we’re on a list of some kind. Me I’m not surprised I’ve sort of got a record and all of that stuff. Drew? I can’t see her getting caught up in things but there’s also the whole thing that people say that Victory and The Ark are running the show on the whole planet really.

Honestly I don’t really believe that.

I mean if I was doing something like that I’d be a like supervillain and things would be really different with like the protestors for one.

Harsh? You get run out of town hunted and hated and chased and see how charitable you feel to assholes like them. Me, I’ve no problem with the normals as long as they don’t have a problem with me. But the haters…I’m not sure I’d do what Drew did and save them.

I take us through the woods a few times taking shortcuts to the building where we left Samantha at. She didn’t look too great when I left her and all so I hope she’s alright. Drew’s bitching. “Dammit Cody I can’t move through the woods like you, ease up and what’s wrong with the roads?”

“Sorry, I guess I just move by homing instincts and stuff besides what are you talking about? You can flipping fly.”

I almost burst out laughing at the…oh duh I can look on her face…she’s actually pretty and kind of sexy for an Emo girl.

I stop when the wind shifts and I smell blood on the air and it’s Samantha’s and Vana’s.

“C’mon1 something’s happening! Vana and Samantha are in trouble!”

I start to run and Drew flies down beside me. “Hop on!” I hop onto her back and crouch surfer style as she pulls up getting height. “Cody if you can see there poof us there.”

“Okay…and it’s not poofing!”

I see them after a few minute and do the black circle thing and take us there.

*Vanir/Vana…

There’s a lot of things in the world that are wrong.

White shoes after Unification Day.
Taking the lords name in vain.
Non-grape jelly.
Hot pink if your IQ is over seventy.

And getting fried like a June-bug in a yard zapper.

The first shot hits me and the kick is that violent it bounces me backwards on the ground and “Grendle” is on my butt just like a wolf on a rabbit.

I barely get my blade up in time to block his blow and his arms shift into those evil hammers with the spikes on the back like on the ruskies flag. That’s the S.S.B. or space ruskies not the ones on Earth.

But you know the kind of hammers that I mean. I get a swing and a hit in his guts with my sword and I get hammered for my troubles. The force pounds me into the door and the last time I was hit by this was when Blair blasted me at school.

Then the hammers are coming down!

I shift and throw my shield up and all my feelings sort of shift with it and I’m scared, I’m screaming as “Grendle” is pounding at my shield like the way that a baboon when it’s losing it and beating someone to death.

Only it’s laughing like a hyena and that hyena sounds like a synthisized one.

I can feel my shield giving and I’m getting scared.

Then the ground starts shaking and I see this ten foot tall construction orange and black Servo-suit. It’s more of less a robot frame that you use instead of a forklift because it’s so mobile. It looks like a big giant football player with a person inside the chest and the driver where the head should be is a glass-steel dome thing.

That Samantha girl is in there. It’s so strange seeing a girl doing that because it’s just…not done at home.

She charges in really fast for one of those things and she yells over the things loudspeaker.

“Hey you; laughing boy!”

Grendle looks up at her, grins and drools hot demon spit on my shield. It hisses and she drives the thing right at us and she swings a great big punch at it.

Grendle blocks and it swings both hammers to squash her head and somehow she drops to her knees under the swing. These things don’t move that fast? Do they? The she’s coming up off her knees and hit’s Grendle with a full on uppercut with her right.

“Pucker up buttercup.” I heard her say and he goes flying ass over tea kettle and lets out an almost piggy angry freaky squeal.

I get up and jump in front of her as the magic man guy does his lightning trick again. I scream as it hits but not the scared scream but an angry one. I’m getting really tired of people just throwing their weight around doing whatever they want to because they thing that they can.

I start to take steps forward even taking more blasts to my shield. I’m not some smart magic person or even the Meta thing but he’s going to run low on energy at some point…

Samantha is trading blows with Grendle she looks like she’s boxing like serious boxing at one point and then doing wresting like I seen the boys do in their gym class back home that mat wrestling stuff. Her construction exo-is getting beat to hell but she’s really not holding back at all.

And there’s part of me is really all…oh wow over this.

I turn and I push again as more lightning hits and I yell and charge him and bash him off his feet with the shield.

He drops the pearl and snarls at me pointing.

“Noth-Nostre-Dedaimis-Este-Necros!”

Or something and I feel something invisible hit me and cold, cold and hurt and pain like I’ve never felt is sinking into me and I can’t breath…black mist is coming out of my mouth and I’m turning pale and blue…can’t breathe…

I drop to my knees and he gestures with some words I never caught and a shiny black samurai sword is in his hand and he’s walking toward me…I can’t see his face even this close…all that’s there is this blackness in there and something red and swirling in the center like a nebula? If the inside of the hood could be called space.

He goes to swing at me and he’s tackled by Drew and Cody?

I see Sam on her back as Grendle rips off the head protection and she closes her eyes as he leans and leers in over her.

I hear her say to Grendle. “C’mon big boy give me a kiss.”

Eeeww…

She reaches up and grabs him with the servo-arms and then she does something I never expected and kind of scares me. She holds him in place and then her eyes go this glowing solid white with blue then she screams like Blair did…but at point blank range.

Grendle’s head explodes in a burst of busted glass and molten glass and she keeps screaming and using the exo-suit to pull on its shoulders. He reaches a point where he’s all out of give and instead of ripping to shreds Grendle just kind of blows up.

I’m slowly starting to cough this stuff up out of my lungs.

It’s killing the grass though.

Mage-guy is cursing in several different languages as he’s trying to fight off Cody who’s really thumping him good and so is Drew but he’s a better fighter and landing way more effective hits too. I’m not sure what he’s doing style wise but I see and hear him dislocate Drew’s shoulder with a punch and she drops screaming.

He say’s something and he blows Cody off of him with a touch of his palm to Cody’s chest and he smashes through a tree.

I feel better though…it’s like his spell’s wearing off and he turns and he goes to take Drew’s head off and I shift and jump…slide over the grass with my super strength in this form and I swing down hard and shatter his samurai sword before it hits Drew.

He staggers back from the change in weight and momentum.

“How…? You should be dead right now.”

I stand up straight and I point my sword at him straightening my shoulders. I make a fist in the other hand so tight my knuckles are crackling….the knuckles but light shimmering too?

“The Federation government couldn’t kill me you think you can?”

I’m staring into whatever he has for a face.

It’s staring back the red swirly thing’s more agitated…Pissed?

“Vaku-Tr’vailous-Azazel…” I move doge left and swing but he turned into that red misty stuff in the hood of his and the mist sucks in on itself until there’s nothing left.

Samantha’s lying on her back in the exo-suit that’s smoking and giving off sparks she so can’t move… “Guys…little help?”

I take two steps before… “Drew! Help Samantha!” I run heading for where he blasted Cody.

Potential-9 The Start.

Chapter 9

*Vanir/Vana……

I run over to where Cody is and find him aways away pinned to a tree by a tree branch blood everywhere….

“Oh shit, oh shit of fuck…Cody…hang on Cody we’ll get help…” I’m looking for something anything…I don’t have a phone…shit!

I pull off my shirt it’ll help stop the bleeding….I have to try.

“Aaaargh!” Cody screams as he pushes himself off the branch…oh…dammit! He falls to the ground and I almost puke…blood wow there’s so much blood.

I run over and try to use my shirt to staunch the blood and he’s coughing… “Cody shush you gotta breathe slower, try not to move help’s coming.”

I’m feeling the pull towards my shielding self…I shift and bite my lower lip…I get sort of super girly like this…fuller and curvier. I’m almost spilling out of my bra…my hands are starting to shine…? Oh no, what now…

“Hang on Cody…”

He reaches up and moves my hands. “I’m okay…”

I push his hands down to keep him from keeping me from helping him. “No you’re not.”

He stares at me and he’s so…intense…

“I’m okay…” He pulls my bloody shirt away…holy…the hole on his chest…it’s closing, pulsing and moving almost but rapidly closing on its own.

“You…self…mend?”

“I’m a regenerator…healing factor…a family trait…”

“That’s amazing…”

“Yeah…It got you to take your shirt off.” I look at him shocked and he’s got this grin…showing some sharp teeth…but he’s also elegantly handsome…elflike but dark skin under black velvet fur…like some dogs the skin of his lips is dark colored.

I cover my chest as I feel my nipples get hard…I’m blushing…oh…dammit…

Dammit…I’ve no idea what to do...no experience with guys. Not past being friends and everything happened home before I found someone willing to court me.

But as wigged out as I am I can’t help but to touch the shrinking wound and the shine from my hands leaps at the first contact from me to him.

It feels like…like I just did really hard exercise all at once…but the sort of shiny white energy is in the wound and Cody gasps…and the wound closes like almost instantly.

He’s staring at me….I’m staring at the healed wound that’s even starting to refur over as the shine’s fading.

I’m in shock. “Did I…?”

“Just healed me…” He takes my hand and gets up. “We tell no one but the AA’s.”

“But…”

“No…anyone with healing gets in deep shit…”

“Huh?”

“Look…Valla right?” I nod.

“People with healing powers are sought after by the rich and the needy and they’ll either end up burning you out or they’ll blame you when you can’t heal something or somebody.”

“But you’re the first time that I’ve done that.”

“Good…fine, it’s great but I’ve seen this stuff happen.”

“Happen?”

“Yeah…” He sort of hunches and he’s stalking almost pulling me behind him while heading to the others.

*Cody……

I’m not pissed off, well I sort of am. There’s stuff that I get reminded of when I was being hunted and chased.

And I remember stuff like the psi-kids or the other Meta kids that could heal. People are fucking selfish assholes and they will use a healer up with their needs and demands even if they’re legitimate and honest ones. Regens like me are safe because of the fact that you might catch mutie from any kind of transfusion.

I’m not pissed at Valla, she seems a really sweet girl but she’s only seen a little of the life from what I figure. She needs someone to look after her.

We get over to where Samantha is and Faith is and their both sitting on the cargo bot-loader thing and their staring.

I turn to look at what they’re staring at and Daystar is coming down all shiny and golden like…hmm how do you describe this guy. That guy from that old relic movie Thor? Make him clean shaven and put him in biker boots, faded jeans and a tight black t-shirt then make him all golden glowing Super Sayan and you’re close.

Good the calvary’s here.

*Faith/Drew……

I…

Okay great I get to rescue the princess.

I head over to where Samantha’s at in the power armor suit loader thingy and I look at her. “Huh…you’ve looked better.”

“Thanks… (Cough.)…little help/”

“You know how to get into this thing?”

“Sure my dad’s an engineer.”

“So’s my mom but that’s not helping me any.”

“Sheesh sorry, take a pill.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean.”

“I mean, what’s your problem.”

I bite my tongue. “Nothin…”

“Sure…like that’s actually the case. You know I’m a Vox right?”

“A what?”

“Vocal powers, a siren.”

“No, so what does that have to do with stuff.”

“I can read voices.”

“Huh?”

“It’s not nothing, it’s something and I can hear it all over your vocal ranges.”

“Great…how about it’s none of your business.”

“Jeeze what the heck did I ever do to you.”

I just glare at her. I’m sure that she might be alright to some people but she’s a damned Barbie doll and just as fake. Pretty and shiny from head to toe and almost like she really…

She’s one of them, she might be a meta but she’s one of them perfect people. And compared to my life…

Just…grrr.

I’m getting the latchings undone and open it so she can get out and even sweaty and with blood on her face like a nose bleed and stuff she’s still looking just…

Too damned good…I get too good a look at her breasts and how they’re just so really well defined through her damp tight shirt and in makes me stir down below and at the same time it makes my nipples get hard…dammit…I’m not supposed to feel stuff like that.

And she’s smiling at me; even after this whole thing we’ve been through she’s smiling.
Grrr… “What? Why are you smiling at me?”

“Thanks Drew.” She leans over and she kisses my cheek. Even after I’ve been and asshole she just kissed me on the cheek.

I sit on the servo-suit thingy and draw my knees up…I don’t get her. Okay maybe she scares me a little.

She sits beside me on the thing as Valla comes back being dragged along by Cody and then there’s this shimmer in the air and Daystar’s coming down to land. Samantha looks up at him with a great big smile. “Hey Uncle Chris.”

Uncle? What!?

Oh just who the hell is this girl?

*Samantha Chase……

Drew is so…

She’s cute, like really cute.

But she’s really uptight. I’m sort of into guys and there’s the thing I’m reading mixed signals sort of in her language tones and cadences. She sounds like a semi husky voiced girl, just enough to be sexy like but the way that she talks is male.

I’m sometimes attracted to girls too but it’s a kind of specific thing with them, only some girls and only some of the time. Drew’s sort of right in that perfect zone maybe…maybe she’s both.

I’m transgendered just the way that things had come about so I’ve actually had very little issues with what I am but trying to figure out who I am sexually is hard. Even more with someone like Drew who honestly likes me as much as she doesn’t like me.

In the end I just go with sort of letting her be the Emo-girl she is and drop the whole urge to ask her what’s up her ass. If she’s as confused as I’ve been that’s not a good way to go about things. That’s touchy stuff. And I’m way too tired for the drama.

Then Cody’s coming back and well it’s Cody and I might sound like I’m all over the place in who I’m into but Cody is just…

Yeah he’s more that cute, feral and sexy…

Or rather he’s all kinds of day-yam.

And then there’s Valla, and he’s holding her buy the hand as they come back into the clearing. I might be kind of jelly about it since she’s in her bra and that’s not really being structurally sound and she got really big breasts that I’d honestly need surgery to get in my like or some other kind of augment.

And Drew was definitely checking her out until Uncle Chris comes flying down for a landing.

“Is everyone okay?”

I grin. “Hi Uncle Chris…yeah sort of we ran into someone here though…I don’t know some kind of magic user type going after Valla here.”

He looks at her. “You okay?”

“Yes sir everyone was real kind and came to my rescue. Ah think I surprised him and his pet.”

“Pet?”

“Yes sir he called it a Grendle or something.”

He looks at me. “How bad?”

“Demon in a toy, some kind of animated body I think Uncle Chris, the mage though he was seriously Sithing.”

“You have enough to download it?”

“Yeah but something to eat and stuffed help.” Like I said I’m a Telemechanic, so everything I can see and hear I can download telepathically into a computer. I catch the tubes he’s pulled out of his belt’s pouches and the bars. Honey and peanut butter like in the army from a tube and a bacon bar…yeah they’re evil candied bacon with toasted smoke almonds pressed into a bar….

Cody…Cody is staring at me with this look. Eyes wide and just staring like slightly tranced.

I offer him half… “Thanks…regen’s a bitch and….oh my shit that’s good.”

Drew’s making faces at both of us. “Why don’t you too just shoot up lard right into your veins?”

I grin. “It’s got nuts those are omega threes it evens out.”

Vana’s telling him about the fight and what happened with the start of things on his end and he’s powered down and looking around. He stops and he holds his hand over something and he picks it up with a stream of light from his hand like a tractor beam…cool because I’ve never seen him do that before.

“That’s new?”

“Always’s training kiddo, always learning.”

There’s this marble thing that he floats up out of the grass and into an evidence pouch. Vana’s all. “That it y’all the thing thet he was using to fry me like a bug on a July night.”
She blushes because of her federation or Confed accent, some people call it Dixie or Dixmerican….actually I find that it’s one of the few charming things about the Federation.

He looks over at me. “Sammy, get everyone over to the Ark and teach them how to download Avery’s on their way over and you know the drill. Then here… (He tosses me a card.) take everyone out to supper.”

I smile and sigh at the same time. “I get AA privileges?”

“No, but you get being my assistant’s privileges.”

“Cool, okay!” Oh I can deal with that.

He lights up and he takes flight again headed to The Ark himself and I look at the other who are trying to get their heads on straight after watching Uncle Chris do his thing. Even without a costume he’s impressive; he’s one of the only supers that totally out in the open about who he is.

Squashes a lot of flak that way, Victory gets a lot of flak for being top superhero and superheroine out there. Some people are actually all butt-hurt over just that fact alone that the top super’s a woman.

It’s not long before there’s an Ark aerovan coming in for a landing and some of the tech’s get out and Avery’s there smiling at us. He’s about our age but he’s really hot looking with long tumbly wavy blue hair, he’s a mutant psi and sort of on the B team for the Ark Angels like me.

Faith and Vana are staring at him too.

Did I mention that he’s hot looking? He’s kind of got this whole elf thing going on with his mutation…flawless skin and he’s a really beautiful man, guy, teen.

“Hey you all need a lift?”

I smile and call out. “Shotgun!”

*Karma/Quinn……

I wake in my body and the pain hits me too of the strain I had put out when I was in Mark’s body. I cry out in pain and it just…

I deserve this…

After what I did I deserve this…I can feel the strain behind all of my muscles and yet I’m not supposed to. I guess this is psychic pain…

And it’s over all too soon.

Yeah too soon.

Which to be going back to not felling anything…

Hurts even worse.

I’m crying which sucks because I can’t do anything about my tears and stuff and that little extra bit of suck was tearing me down even more when there’s a hand out of nowhere and Aerin’s there.

“Blow.” She has a tissue to my face.

I blow…and she wipes my tears aside with her thumb.

“You pushed it too hard.” She’s frowning at me but who can tell what that actually means she a goth.

“Yeah…thanks…”

“Yeah…later…”

And just like that she leaves.

So just what the heck was that just now?

My Super Secret Life…Potentials-10 The Start.

*Vanir/Vana…………

I’m still holding hands with Cody as he’s devouring the weird bacon and granola bar that this Sam girl gave him. I’m…I’m not sure how to think or react really since he’s nice and he’s sort of cute in a way that is so freaking me out and she’s friendly to him and he’s friendly back like they already sort of know each other and…

And dammit if she ain’t one of them pretty ones.

Oh I’m not homely I know that and when I do that whole defensive healer me I actually sort of get more good looking and an my boobs grow and I’d hafta say that I’m really pretty then kinda like those cheerleader girls back home but this Same she’s already looking like one of those teen fitness models or one of the super over achieving models that y’see now a days with the job doing stuff like surfin or snowboardin she’s really hot and athletic.

And she had these really odd looking eyes that are this mixture of silver and blue and these soft kissable lips.

What?

What, what no…I’m not lesbian! I ain’t gay…but feeling her against me would be…Oh…oh damn I’m feeling my muscles itching like I wanna go all into my offensive side and that’s where I lose curves and I bulk up and get all like freaky muscled and stuff.

Me sort of being a guy kinda….what it it’s butch-guy-whatever enough to make me gay!?

An then she’s intraducin us to that fella that Daystar was talking about this Avery…it’s a cute name too sort of one of those rich boy names but on him it fits.

He’s got this longish blue hair and this killer smile and these ears with the slight points to it but he’s…oh holy molley he’s good looking.

Sam calls shotgun and I get in the back seats with the others helping Cody in and we lift off in the air-van. Now I’ve been in flyin stuff before mind you just the shuttles and the space ship I came in with but this is a everyday sized mini-van but it’s New Haven and it can frigging fly.

Now we’re only on Sanctuary island but at the same time it is a town sort of or it’s going to be after everything and I really can’t help but to rubberneck and there’s part of me that’s all enchanted and such.

I love this.

Then we’re headed to The Ark.

Even on the TV y’never get this close to it not like this and he circles us twice and it’s huge. I’ve never seen anything like it and it’s just amazing.

We land actually down underground in a huge parking garage and the doors open and we all start getting out and I’m nervous. I mean well its one thing being the way that I am but I’m still from The Federation and this here’s the center of all evil on New Haven and its mutie central.

Ah know; ah know mutie’s not a good word. I guess all of this is bringing the Fed out in me being all kinds of nervous.

Cody takes my hand and he’s looking at me. “Hey, it’s okay it’s not as bad as it seems these are the good guys remember.”

“Not home they ain’t.”

That get’s me a nasty look from Drew.

Cody turns and blocks him with his back and says. “Sam you want to show us where to go?”

*Cody…………

Dammit I’m sore and I’m hungry and I’m a animal based mutant so I get growly when I’m both. Sam’s energy bar barely took the edge of and I’m feeling my healing factor gnawing away at my reserves.

I’d be a lot more of a bastard if I didn’t learn while I was running for my life out in the world to pull in my temper.

Drew’s being a dick, or a bitch whichever the case might be since they’re sort of in-between things.

Vana’s actually helping me more than she knows with her being freaked out it’s giving me someone else’s problems to focus on.

Dad’s working for the AA’s now so it’s been a few times that I’ve been in here. While the school’s being built a lot of the faculty offices are in here. I’m sort of not as impressed with stuff here as the others just because some of this stuff’s pretty showy.

Sam’s dad Ryan might be a super genius but he’s also kind of a showboat even if he’s a nice guy.

I follow Sam to the staff elevators with the elf-boy Avery. He’s one of those fae-kind mutations and he might even be a mage.

I’m not sure about magic since there’s a bjillion theories on it and the most common is…it’s majik and the second is that it’s quantum manipulation but like in the way the psionic types can do with astral stuff and all that.

The fae-kind mutants are an actual group, a subset of mutant kind with a large group of them claiming they’re not metagenic humans but they are the returned fae to the world now that mankind has spread out to the stars.

Personally to me they’re using it as an excuse to form their own society but hell what do I know.

He’s fae and he’s pretty and he can pass as long as people don’t freak over the ears. I’m not a fan since the few times I’ve met with fae-kind they’re kind of elitist snobs most of the time or they use being fae as an excuse to just act like a bunch of weirdo’s.

Actually I’ve never been much of a joiner, having been asked a few times especially by several of the feline groups. Well gangs is more to the point really.

We get to the place were we should be and it looks like any usual police bull pen where they detectives are at only there’s Halo agents here.

Halo is a sort of joint task force between the police and federal marshals and the Homeworld security agency and the AA’s. They police the powered and what they call MG’s which is short for metagenics. They’re also responsible for our safety too since there is a very anti-mutant anti non-human hate front that has the normals eager and ready to commit hate crimes and exercise extreme bigotry.

Halo academy is a whole new thing for them to be involved with us on a grass roots level and it’s good for Galactic and Alliance PR.

The Vishanti, Avari, P’hari and N’yai plus I can imagine others are all looking at things here on NH as the hinge place for how humanity will treat new evolution in their midst or will they go and kill us all off eventually like they did to their primitive competition.

Sam leads us past there to a conference room where there’s some other kid there kind of regular looking and a bit chubby and tired too he waves a few fingers a bit shyly and he’s in a halo track suit and looks like he just showered I can smell blood on him in scratches he still has.

Drew leans over. “I think that’s the stretchy kid from the bus thing at the bridge.”

Sam offers her hand all smiles and stuff and introduces us and he quietly says. “Mark, Mark Sheridan.” Drew actually seems like their calming down and being less of an ass or maybe it’s just being here but they offer a handshake too and I follow and so does Vana who does this thing with her hand like?

I don’t know but he does sort of and he lifts it up and down gently and nods his head to her and she’s smiling and their both sort of blushing because the rest of us are stopped there just staring.

Sam sits and she gets this psi-shimmer going in her eyes and the large table holo screen and keyboard pops into being making us jump a little and Drew bitches. “Give a guy some effing warning first okay?’

Sam looks at his boobs and raises an eyebrow and Drew shuts up and gets even more pissy than me and crosses his arms over his breasts.

“Just…fuck off.” Being in the middle of gender has to suck and from what Drew’s ‘tude is like it’s not by choice.

We all kind of ignore him when I smell something!

Saber…that’s Daystar’s wife and the AA’s street samurai weapon’s genius and martial arts mistress comes in and she has this big set of plastic tubs big enough to hold like three loaves of slice bread each and I can smell cold cuts right through the plastic.

She sets them down.

“You guys have at it. And eat as you get stuff down for the record okay?”

She’s really a beautiful woman and I’m not saying that because she’s bringing food. But early thirties martially athletic body and long black hair and she’s from what’s been said Japanese and Polynesian mixed and put her in black leathers and swords on her back and hot looking weapons.

A friendly smile and food really doesn’t hurt either and she’s opening things and there’s. All kinds of cold cuts in one of the boxes and condiment and bread in another plus one with paper small plates and veggies cut for the sandwiches and cheeses and the last one is cans of juices and pop and chocolate and candy bars and even some bags of chips.

It’s funny Vana’s the only one that thanks her without her mouth full and I’m starving and I’m shoving slices of meats into my mouth as I’m making a sandwich.

Then she joins us after Saber leaves and she’s shaking her head looking at us. “Y’all’s never made a sandwich before in your lives?’

I’m eating and grab a bag of chips as Vana is taking bread and she’s putting a skiff of butter on it like not even enough to taste then salt and peppers it and then she adds mayo and puts a good amount of it on both sides the leaf lettuce on one half and thin slices of tomato on the other and then mustard on the lettuce and I watch her as she takes roast beef slices and she folds them and lays the meat in rows of folded over beef with half a slice of cheese between each bit of the meat and she puts it all together and she cuts it in half and puts an handful of chips on the side of the mini-plate.

Then she passes it to me.

“I..uhm…thanks this looks great.”

She smiles at me and blushes a little. “It ain’t nothin special just how you’re supposed to make a sandwich with fixins like this.”

Then she makes one for that Mark fellow and one for Avery and another for Drew. Sam’s actually doing stuff on the computer and I can see the fight and stuff showing up on screen with the demony thing and the evil wizard old dude.

Drew’s looking too.

*Drew/Faith…………

Yeah I’m in a bad mood, I’ve just been through stuff that I…

I’m still trying to wrap my head around and then there’s just everything else. Cody who’s kind of an ass but he’s kind of I don’t know…a friend? I friend that I saw get impaled and I thought that I lost.

Then there’s Vana/Vanir who during the fight was so awesome and she really out classed me there too but she’s such a girl…and that’s not bad but she’s so not like any of the girls in my family either or the few I know and she’s so damned federation it’s getting sort of on my nerves.

Like her and the sandwiches doing the whole Suzie homemaker thing and I don’t know she’s like Sam Chase in a whole other way I guess.

And Sam Chase…Cheerleader…jockette, popular, powerful and not just with her mutant stuff but she’s family she a goddamned AA legacy and just the way that she’s so cavalier about being here.

Maybe I’m just being an insecure jerk.

But honestly there was war gear…power armor terrorists and machine guns and all this other stuff…

I’m trying not to fall apart here and cry like a girl.

My powers might have shifted me into this whole in between thing but I don’t have to be happy about it either.

Vana makes me a sandwich and I have to admit Dixieland can make a ready for TV bit of food. Mine’s turkey with tomato and lettuce and some sliced ham and Swiss sort of a real sandwich version of a Cuban minus the pickles. It’s actually really good. “Thanks this is really good.”

“Y’welcome anytime y’want I can show you how.”

“Okay…” Wait…why’d she?

She never said that to Cody or to that Mark kid.

Grrrr….she thinks I’m a girl.

I chew on my sandwich and go over to Sam. It’s so weird seeing someone typing on a table into an image of a keyboard and she’s so fast. Like inhumanly fast or something and she’s somehow got the footage there from the fight from a POV that’s…it’s her POV.

“You had a camera?’

“Better I was there.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I’m a Telemechanic which lets me link up directly to machines like telepaths do with people.”

Oh…shit…yeah powerful…this and some kind of sonic powers too and she’s like a model and she’s rich.

She’s looking at me.

“It’s not that cool.”

“No?” I know I’m sounding like a bit of a bitch.

“No…try actually being able to catch a computer virus, having to walk through anywhere blocking signal noises all the time. You think telepaths have it bad do you know how many times we’re scanned in a day? Pinged by commercial devices? I get to feel all of that and I’ve super developed hearing too from my sonic powers.”

I say softly since she’s got super hearing. “Well at least your powers aren’t changing you into a girl.”

“Sorry if it’s something you don’t want then I totally get it.”

“Bullshit.”

She stared at me. “Not in the least, I’m transgendered Drew I’ve wanted to be a real girl my entire life.”

“What…..” But she looks so…so…

*Sam Chase…………

And right there cue the look.

You’d think after this long that people would be less shocked about finding out and it’s gotten to the point where I’m not even offended anymore when they stare at me and then they say just like Drew.

“But you’re so pretty?”

I sigh but put a smile on. “Thank you some of its good genes and some of it’s helped out.”

“Oh it’s just…”

I can see the gears turning in his her or her head I wonder how far Drew is along in their change. He’s trying to figure out just how to be around me now when he’s not been that friendly towards me since we met…there’s all these tones of anger and resentment towards me that have been in his voice.

I’m a Vox or a vocal empowered person my mom’s the Ark Angel Songbird and I got my powers form her in part and my dad in another way with my psi abilities.

It sounds like I’m one of those power house types and yeah sort of I’m a legacy so I’ve got lots of both but I’m not as strong as either of them but I can do things they can’t do either.

I’m a much better verbal analyzer than my mom is and I’m a much better radio or com transmitter and manipulator. I can’t use my powers to levitate large scale machine parts like dad but I’m like a walking radio station and telecommunications system.

It all sounds cool right?

Well I’ve been targeted since birth by bad guys labelled as soon as I was born by hate groups calling me assuming I’m a mega-mutant.

No seriously add in the fact I’m transgendered and I’m fully open about it to being a psi and a mutant…HfH or Humans for Humanity have a magazine article that pretty much makes me out to be Magneto…That’s an ancient comic Marvel Villain, kind of funny because they say Victory is well Dr. Doom.

Well I will agree that she is pretty much “Big Sister.” She even has the ear of the colonial presidents…yep everyone since she’s been the official NH hero of heroes.

Anyways…

I’m going over things the way that I went through them and stuff and what I could see and tell and include all the footage I can find into the computer.

And this is why Uncle Chris asked for Avery.

He sit’s with the others and he psi-reads them as they’re telling their story only with Avery it’s not like telepathics but he does telegraphics…he can’t actually read your mind but he can convert what you’re saying and thinking by touch into holographic images. Only since his psi bubble this is psi-energy it’s really killer quality super high definition.

He gets only the stuff you can picture and not thoughts you have or even had then just what you can picture and what you remember that you seen or heard. It’s still super useful and Avery is trained in getting people to remember things like any good police interviewer. He’s also the most sought over criminal sketch artist in the whole city he could work 24/7 if he wanted to.

We’re looking for more people with his talents…and since I’m watching things with the others and doing the stenographer thing too I’m downloading all of it into visual video files for them here.

But Mark…wow what he did…and…he admits to being freaked out and then we find out about this other kid, the one who walked into his body during the thing on the bridge.

Quinn…Quinn…I think that’s the kids that’s paralyzed living over at Uncle Chris’s house.

Wow…even to me that’s kind of freaky and kind of neat.

*Mark…………

It’s so messed up me being here and with these other kids but…Oh god I’m so not ready for this stuff. I’m…I mean it’s bad enough when I turned out like my brother and started being a mutant but being a messed up shape changer…that really sucks.

Yeah I can shape shift but it’s sort of people only based and it’s better if it’s like small alterations and stuff but my biggest freaky thing is that I can stretch….like…I don’t know but it’s just all kinds of freaky.

Like being the chubby guy and a cops kid wasn’t social stigma enough.

Oh it’s not that bad being a cop’s kid but everyone thinks you’re going to tell on them, be a rat or that you’re a goody two shoes and stuff. I’m just friggin normal or I was.

But I was learning to deal.

Then I got accepted into this new school and it’s my first time away from home which is Bay City and I got on the escorted bus with all these other meta kids and as if all of it wasn’t bad enough the attack happened…and Quinn jumped into me and we worked together and he kept me from browning my shorts and stuff.

I’m so freaking lost and scared right now I just want to go home, I just want to lay down somewhere and hide.

God thought I was staved and Vana? I think that’s her name…she made me this really great sandwich and stuff…I really like her she’s really pretty and I love the accent….

Whoa…I’m seeing her in that holo thingy and she shape changed too sort of…busty and super hawt she’s this shield making healing type and then she butches out and gets flatter and all ripped with muscles and she’s this hard core warrior…I think her personality changes too…that’s got to be hard to deal with.

Is she with this Cody guy? Likely he’s actually kind of hot…not that I’m gay or that there’s anything wrong with that but he’s dark velvet furred muscled elf…with a tail…c’mon he looks human the rest of the way.

Dude will never have to worry about finding a girl.

Then there’s Drew? I think that this is Faithe from like TV and the internet, she was on hero watch and then there’s Sam…Okay she I know about and stuff because she’s like famous and stuff but you can’t tell you can’t even see it y’know all you get from Sam is an extremely pretty girl.

Okay…she’s also really cool like actually a cool person and brave and really, really nice person too so maybe that’s part of her appeal to me…I’m not sure a regular girl that pretty and rich would be even remotely that nice.

And she’s actually smiling at me after I’m done with everything in the report…okay transgendered or not she’s making me blush.

I think we might have been going to say something when Victory herself comes in.

*Victory............

I’ve been reading and watching things as they’ve been coming in from Avery and Sam with these kids. I had the debriefing and lunch with the others before that and the talk with Scarlet and gave Shroud the official go ahead to look for this Rook person and to try and bring them in.

He’s been warned though.

Again.

Nick has a thing where he’ll go overboard…he’s…he’s damaged.

Yes I know who he is; I started the Ark Angels with him all that time ago when he was going by Knightshade.

Nick’s a clone, well a half clone. He’s the son of the mercenary assassin Trask…Taskmaster, or The Mechanic…and that man is a eugenic killing machine from a long line of eugenic killing machines called The Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood are the killing hand of the Illuminati….

Yes they’re real too but not what people think.

But later on that stuff.

Nick, Nick was raised in a lab, he was to be this second gen version of his father who turns out cannot be cloned…so the crossbred him with a suitable candidate which was Nick’s mom one of the researchers at the company that made him.

Chimera-Corp.

Long defunct after we shut them down they’re responsible for a lot of the anthrosapiens that are here on New Haven…their first projects were animal based soldier weapons.

Well Trask somehow found out and he came loaded for bear and he wiped out the whole facility and he murdered Nick’s mom.

So anything that has to do with his old man he had blinders on and its war…and his scruples tend to go out the window. That’s part of what happened with Terry in Paradise City.

Damien Trash is Nick’s half-little-brother and Trask’s actual kid. They have a hate on for each other really bad.

But Nick’s always had a rough time putting the brakes on. Ruthless is literally built into him and so was the fact he’s been trained to be a soulless killer in that Chimera lab until Trask came…Nick’s mom was the sole humanizing influence on him in those early years.

So yeah I had to talk to him about not going to far.

But I’m also as intrigues as he is that this Rook contacted him.

So I’m going to play ball for now.

I head inside and I’m getting stared at by the kids except for Sam and Avery, those two I know a lot better than the others and Cody I haven’t met yet but we hired his father to work here and mostly at the academy but the others are all new.

Mark Sheridan’s here.

Strangle’s little brother.

That’s something I hope we can deal with. His brother was a cop too, ten years older than mark he’s got the same power set until he went vigilante and faced down some corrupt cops.

We have hundreds of millions of people here in this Mega-city there are always going to be cops that aren’t good guys.

Steven his brother killed four police officers and he fled and has become a mercenary for hire, a killer and an assassin. He’s definitely on our wanted list but it’s hard to nail down a police trained shapeshifter.

I don’t think that his family has told Mark that yet.

“Afternoon everyone please don’t get up I won’t be here too long.”

They all sit down of course they had all gotten up. I get that a lot.

“I was looking over everything and we’re going to take over the details from here but what I can say is that we’re all really proud of the whole bunch of you. You faced some stuff today that you shouldn’t have had to face and you did so with bravery and distinction. I had to come and thank you myself for that.”

I look at each one of them. “It never should have came to this not in a world that we should be living in but it did. And you all, all went above and beyond you saved lives.”

It might just be me here but I clap for them and they’re all blushing and smiling even the really shy ones.

“It’s just a token and don’t think that I or any of the staff or the police here think that you kids going out and doing this is a good idea but this isn’t a thing for medals or trophies but well here…”

I pass them out Halo Academy debit cards with a pre-paid thousand dollars on them each. They’re all trying not to be excited about it and I’m smiling a little, well a lot. I really mean it if they turn out that they want to do this then fine we’ll train them to work the job and to do it right but I’d never endorse doing this like they are now.

I started out doing this at their age a long time ago…I’ve buried so many that it’s…it’s why we’re doing this, why I’ve fought tooth and nail to get this place off the ground.

But…seeing them happy and excited will always be something that I will enjoy. I can’t ever have kids my body it’s…everytime…well.

“Spend it in good health but don’t go too nuts too fast okay, we’re actually planning to get bands and stuff to come here and play for us too so leave something there for concert tickets okay.”

Okay they’re really excited now and it’s true I’m looking at trying to get some bands and stuff to put us on they’re tour dates but there’s always the mutant thing.

“Samantha, you and Avery get everyone home and let mark vid-call his folks so they won’t be worried over the stuff on the news. Drew…if you want give my office a call okay? I knew your grandmother worked with her if you ever want to ask stuff okay?’

He’s blinking… “Uhm…yes…sure…?”

I leave waving goodbye to them and headed to my next thing for the day and that’s the meetings with the city reps over what happen and the police and NHDF.

I stare at the closed door.

If we get even one in ten that are as good as these kids are heart wise this will be so worth it.

My Super Secret Life…Potentials-11 The Start.

*Sam Chase…………

It’s all sort of busy after we’re done talking to Victory. Avery and I get the other kids to call out to their folks and stuff and which doesn’t take too long really since Drew’s not really that talkative to their folks and there seems to be something going on there with like tension and stuff and Cody well he’s pretty much just telling his dad that he’ll tell him later and stuff since his dad works here and for Halo.

Then it’s me sending all the computer files and videos off to get looked at by the Ark Angels and I’m done for the day and I’m pretty wiped out myself so I can only imagine how the others have to be feeling.

“Avery you think we can get lifts home?”

“Sure you kids all look wiped out.”

Drew’s looking at him. “Kids? You’re one to talk.”

Avery smiles at him. “Yeah I know but I’m actually twenty five. I haven’t really aged that much since I awakened. And as far as I know I won’t either that much if I’m the same as most of the other mutant fae.”

Drew blushes which in kind of cute. “Sorry, but how old are you then?”

Avery laughs a little. “No…not like that I’m twenty six, not some really huge number or claimed by some of them.”

“Oh…well just don’t call us kids okay not after today and stuff we have names.”

“No offense Faith no offence.”

“Yeah-okay.”

Drew’s actually not looking that great, actually he sort of looks like I do when I have a rough patch with my hormones. Yeah I’m on the retroviral gene treatment and that sort of rewinds some of those changes that hit you when you were forming as a boy but they don’t reverse it. They sort of make you a little more androgynous and then they sort of take your t=production down to zilch…well pretty much to it and then the rest if my hormone cocktail fixing the damage of being male as best as they can.

But sometimes they can not agree with you considering what it’s telling your body to do.

Faith changing and stuff well that’s got to have some rough effects on a person.

We’re all heading back to the van and Vana’s looking at me.

“Everything okay Vana?”

“Yes, no ah don’t really know for sure.”

“Well if I can help just ask okay?”

“Okay…uhm ah saw what you did with the screaming at the monster that was kind of scary.”

“Sorry it’s pretty loud when I cut loose.”

“It is but I saw someone like you though back when I was still…still in the program.”

“Oh well sonics are pretty rare actually.”

“Yeah you’re the only second one that I’ve ever seen and all and the first one she manifested right there in school when we was having an argument and she killed a bunch of people.”

“Yeah, it’s unfortunately stuck with a long list of people that have gone wacko from it. It’s the vibrations some people think.”

“So will you?”

“Not that we think so I was born this way more or less I never even manifested and stuff they were just ort of there. My psi powers were longer coming in I think from my psi abilities.”

“Oh it’s just that it was kind of freaky to see.”

“I can imagine if you saw someone else using the same thing and she killed people.”

“Sorry ah didn’t mean anything by it and all.”

“No worries girlfriend we’re good.”

“We are?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean girlfriends.”

“Well we’re not dating and stuff but I was meaning we’re like friends.”

She blushes and I smile and she’s looking flustered. “No ah, ah like boys and all.”

“Me too.”

“Really, but…”

I smile as we’re walking and she’s looking a little confused. “But you heard that I was born a boy?”

“Uhm…yeah.”

“Well I was born male but I was never born a boy.”

“Huh?”

“I’m transgendered and actually I’m in transition.”

“What’s that?”

“Well I’m taking medicine to reverse some of my puberty stuff, and when that’s done all it can do the female hormones I’m on will help me grow into the girl I should’ve been born as.”

“But what about your thingy.”

“I’ll be shifted to what it’s supposed to be.”

“Shifted?”

“Well in the old days it was sort of surgically reconstructed but once my genetics is changed they’ll do surgery to open my canal up and they’ll use a local kind of tissue graft to fix me.”

“Graft?”

“One I’m done my gene therapy I’ll be not XX like you but I’ll be more like X little y and X as it adds an extra one to me and that’ll be enough that they can use some of my cells and a donation of cells from that area from my mom to actually grow the tissue I need down there and once it’s grafted I’ll be just like every other girl except for being able to ave kids.”

“So you’ll have a real hoohaw?”

I giggle pretty hard at that. “Yes it’ll be transformed into a real vagina Van.”

She seriously blushes at me saying that word.

I bite my lip and really try not to laugh. “I’m sorry Van you’re not used to talking about sex and stuff.”

“Nn..n..no…and the V word back home was a cuss word only filthy people said stuff like that. It’s all part of how they mess with your head.”

“Mess with your head?”

Cody huffs. “Yeah you gotta hear this, Jim told me about that stuff.”

“Jim?”

“Cougar.”

“Oh….”

Vana looks at us. They have most stuff segregated like for TV and radio and girls listen to girl stuff and boys to boys stuff and it full o’that subliminal stuff that makes you think after years an years of it that you’d be perfectly normal and that you’d be happy being a wife an a cook an a mommy an that it’s gods mission for a good federation girl to breed like crazy as part of her patriotic duty and it don’t matter what y’all might think that’s what you want because you’ve been programmed all yer life.”

I actually am staring at her. “You can’t be serious.”

“Ah am. Most girls in The Fed are good and docile little housewives and stuff and the boys are good little workers and soldiers since they’re the glorious next generation and the future of mankind and all of that.”

Cody nods. “Cuu said they even use it to weed out the undesirables.”

“What?”

“Fed-boy version of Sammy would’ve loved the female channels instead of the stuff that guys are supposed to like so the can weed out all the LGBT undesirables.”

Vana nods. “Or metas, most metas have just something different in them that it can’t break through or psi’s either and anyone too rebellious or full of all then idears gets taken in too who don’t the brainwashin.”

I’m just sort of looking at her and some of the others are too. I can’t help it. “That’s…that’s a high level of sick stuff you know.”

“Ah know and the worse thing.”

“Worse thing?”

“It ain’t like the greatest secret in the worlds. Folk home like people to be the way that god intended and if a little thing like that can weed out the mutie’s and readers and the homo’s and trannies then they don’t mind so much.”

“Really?”

“I didn’t know that much about it maself but Cougar said that it’s not like it’s a state secret.”

Drew looks pissed which seems to be going hand in hand with his…her not feeling good look they’re sporting. “If people know about it then why isn’t the government doing something about it? That’s human rights abuses…Jesus Christ!”

Vana gives him this look that was straight up her not liking him taking the Lord’s name in vain. “Wouldja mind not cussin please?”

He gives her a look like he was going to bitch then say. “Sorry…it’s just really, really wrong.”

Cody turns and he’s walking backwards. “The kicker Drew is that if someone went in there who? And how much of a force do you need too they’re a joining of fifty some odd colonies and they has one of the biggest militaries out there.”

I nod. “One of the most powerful ones too when you look at just hardware. They budget huge amounts of money towards their military industrial complex.”

“So they’re screwed.” He has this look and I’m sure that he’s trying to look sour faced or something but he just looks like a sort of cute girl doing a pout. A serious pout but a pout looking thing still.

The funny and not so funny thing is that Vana has more of a brooding look on her face that he does.

But then again given where she had gotten out of?

Cody nods. “Likely since it’s not a secret it’ll be that way until some massive war either with someone that messes that up or a big internal one.”

He gives us this sort of smile and he cracks the knuckles on his hands just by clenching them into fists. “Later guys.” Then there’s this swirl of black mist that sucks itself into a popping hole thing and he’s gone.

I smile. “Teleportation…all sorts of cool.”

There’s a couple of nods.

*Vana…………

I was hoping that Cody might have stuck around but he mighta had some stuff to do and all of that and I don’t know him that well. Not that I would’ve mind it either…getting to know him I mean.

Unless he’s got a shine for Samantha.

Really? She’s a boy? Or was a boy?

I’d hafta shift to my Beta state to be in her league even then she’s just really pretty. Maybe it’s one of those meta things.

We all walk to our places. Well for me and Mark we’re in the dorms. Now don’t get me wrong these are nice and all of them are singles too with a bathroom but there’s part of me before it all fell apart that misses living in a house…in a home.

But it was all like fake and not real and stuff so…and this is a lot better than a cell waiting to get killed.

I head straight for my shower and get out of my things and stuff and just stand there under the water.

Okay kind of nice with no one to yell at you to get out of the shower.

Endless hot water too, it’s something I guess that Sam’s dad invented with a laser do-dad that heats the cold water in the shower head according to the temperature that was set. Yes a serious luxury especially compared to home.

I soap up and enjoy myself not in like a kinky way but just a long, long shower.

But during that the evil wizard fight keeps playing through my head.

Asguardian?

What did he mean by that?

I get out and I dry off another weird thing too the towels here are soft like terry cloth but suck water off of me like a car shammy. So it’s sort of just patting myself dry. There’s even a laundry chute for the towels and bedding.

From what I was told settling in laundry is free, house keeping does towels and bedding but we have to do out own clothes.

I’m okay with that. It’s not like I wasn’t spared the work back home and stuff.

I get into some fresh underwear nothin fancy I’m a cotton girl and that’s okay by me I’ve never really known anything else. I go over to my desk and press the button to raise the flat screen and the keyboard and touch pad and I start looking up Asguardian.

There’s a lot of stuff, a lot of entries. I get comfortable and start lookin and doin some research. I might have the Fed accent and all but I wasn’t too bad a student.

I’m learnin as I go about all this Asguardian stuff…Aesir and Vanir…

Vanir that’s me sort of right?

There’s Freyr and Freya and all sorts of other gods and boars and Valkyries it all seems so strange and yet the way I am? Did they design me after all of this?

I’ve got my head full of ideas and stories and stuff when I head ofta bed.

…………………… Ma dreams are messed up. I go through a mixture of vids I’ve seen on the stuff I looked up to strange words and things being said, stuff I never hear before and then there’s the fight and that demon thing called Grendle and the fight with the majik man and seeing Cody getting impaled.

Then the demon’s got me all of a sudden and I wake up with a cry in my Alpha side and I rip the sheets I’m entangled in to shreds.

I’m panting and I almost fall out of bed on my way to the bathroom and end up washing my face with cold water then looking at myself in the mirror.

Like this…I’m as male as it gets without actually becoming or getting guy parts. Big shoulders, taller, muscles on muscles or it seems that way to me. It doesn’t take a whole lot of flexing to show rippling muscles small breasts, just into being a B-cup but I’ll likely need a special bra just because of my size and all.

I head to my closet and get changed it’s nearly dawn and I could shift down but I just…it sort of feels easier to deal with things like this right now.

Panties then just sweat pants and a hooded sweat shirt…no, no bra or even a t-shirt I pull on my sneakers and grab my debit card thing and slip it into my panties. Their tight enough on me this way it’s not really going anywhere and I head out with my keys and I hook them to the necklace ribbon thing with my student ID’s…yeah they actually made me three cards for all three states of me.

I go for a run and it feels good. As much as I hate to admit it before things went south on me and all that on the base back home they kinds had us doing stuff like army types do and while I’m in Alpha state I’m not all bouncy and stuff like normal and jeeze Beta state forget it unless I was seriously strapped down.

But I like this just like this all this power and muscle and sleekness and it feels different than going fast in a car this, this is how horses must feel. I’m fast too, muscle doesn’t just slow you down like some people think but it can make you faster because when you’re like me the way they teach you to do this is to push with your strength as you run.

Here in Sanctuary I must be going at least as the same speed as say the buses here. Or as fast as someone pedalling a really good clip on a bike.

I kinda feel free and I even take a few me-cuts by jumping off flights of outside steps and I even jump a few things hurdle style like the odd garbage can and newspaper machine or bench as I clear it and the hedge and make it into Common’s park.

They call it Common’s I guess because it’s man made but designed to actually bridge the bulk of downtown with the school and Sanctuary east and west. It’s pretty big too with lots of different areas with names and stuff and there’s public recreation stuff too. Actually given the money Sam’s father has it might be a better park than in Ark City itself.

Speaking of which I see Sam jogging and I’m catching up with her in no time flat then pull up beside her and slow down.

“Mornin.”

She looks over to me surprised I think because I just came up on her from out of the blue. She smiles though like it’s not a bad thing to see me. “Morning Val, out for some exercise?”

“Naw, just couldn’t sleep is all I still got lots going on up in the screw-box.” I give her a look though raising an eyebrow. “Val?”

“Valkryie, you kinda fit that.”

“Oh okay, actually that’s better than Vanir. No I just couldn’t sleep after all of that yesterday and woke up shifted and keyed up.”

“Gotcha, I can get that.”

“Really? The trans thing?”

“No…well maybe…but just life stuff for me being who I am and stuff.”

Okay…it takes me a minute to process that and I do get it after a minute. She’s not just some rich kid; she’s the second generation child of two of the Ark Angels. That’s gotta come with a lot of baggage.

“’kay gotcha.”

“You okay though?’

“Yeah, I think so it’s I think I jus gotta find my footing first.”

“Makes sense, you got your class stuff yet?”

“Nope, kinda waiting on the guidance office and everything but that’s kind of swamped with stuff after the whole bridge thing.”

“Yeah, and we’re likely the only school with an actual whole wing of the school hospital that’s all about therapy and stuff.”

“We do, I mean like a school hospital?”

“Meta’s and anthros aren’t just needing special care but there’s a lot of people that can do things that are medically oriented.”

I’m looking at her a little confused. “Like people with like healing touch…?” My fingers feel, I feel odd just sort of thinking about that.

“Yeah there’s those and stuff but like other people too. Say you have a meta that can create light and focus it into laser like levels.”

“Okay…”

“Now think of all those things we use lasers for medically.”

“Okay but we have those in hospitals.”

“But not in clinics, or small places out in the boonies, Through Halo we can take them out there and stuff and there’s all sort of other things too.”

“Like?”

“People with healing factor, we can’t really use their blood because of it healing and feeding and taking over but we can with those people volunteering develop cures for things by exposing them and using them to create anti-bodies and screening them out.”

“Wow…” I’m actually impressed and like I said I’m not stupid despite the accent but this is kinda bigger stuff than most and I’m kinda getting it.

I look Sam over. “So what are you going for?”

“I’m trying to get to where I can head a farm team.”

“You wanna play baseball?”

“No, I want to set up an Ark Angel based super team someplace else, maybe in some other part of Ark City even.”

“Oh not something normal?”

“This is my normal Val. I’ve had bad guys trying to kill me since I was born, I grew up in this fight and have lost friends over it and family I’m in ad deep as it gets. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to do things my own way.”

“Your own way?’

“No offense to my Aunt Victory but I want my own command.”

“So you’re classes are going to be all based on that?”

“Actually I’m going to be double majoring in engineering and taking music on the side.”

“Double majoring isn’t that a college thing?”

She nods. “I skipped a few years of school.”

Oh so she’s a genius too.

Actually that does make sense her dad is a mega genius type and her mother is supposed to be too. I think that I read some place that a lot of the AA’s are really smart and talented like crazy and that’s their biggest strength.

I look at her and blush a little. “Ah don’t know how my federation schooling is going to hold up at all.”

“Well they likely had you set out for testing when you got here so…” she reaches and takes my ID’s and her eyes get this funny look and a swear for a second I see numbers and stuff reflected there.

“Well it say’s here that you’re passable in Alliance Levels of Math and English for the ninth grade levels though barely. You did great on some of the other stuff like gym and domestic arts.”

“Yeah, we we’re all jus taught the basics of being literate and all I mean not like boys do. I could read as good as any girl I suppose and that’s just enough fer romance books and homemaker magazines and recipes an such. But I always was a fair cook and I had good marks in presentation and all but sewing was my weakest and I can knit fer shit.”

“I can’t sew at all but I can cook some but what is presentation?”

“Oh that’s house keeping and how to look pretty.”

“What!”

I grin. I knew that’d get her. “Women aren’t really looked favourable on unless they know how to look like a lady and then you are expected t’know how to keep a house.”

“That’s so fucked up.”

“Yeah, kinda…I do agree that housekeeping should be taught though in schools like cooking and stuff like the basics.”

She actually has this look on her face and she smiles. “Just a sec.” She takes out her smartphone but her hands, thumbs don’t move and I know she’s doing a bunch of stuff but it’s so fast that I’m jus seeing screen flickers and she’s only like doing it for a minute or three before she’s done.

“Congratulations Val.”

“On what?’

“I put the idea out there and Dad thinks it’s a good one so there’s now a mandatory class in what he’s calling Real Life 101.”

“What’s that?”

“Like you kind of said it’s basic cooking and cleaning and changing tires, simple fixes and how to do banking and job apps and resumes how to find an apartment and check a lease and stuff like that.”

I’m blushing. “Wow…I’ve never…I’m not used to contributing like that…he wasn’t mad?”

“Nope and heck I’m going to sigh up for it too.” Sam smiled.

“Yeah you’re not going to be in regular classes but I’m kinda glad though Sam I don’t know a lot of these things either.”

“Yeah it’s a good idea, so you know what you’ll be interested in taking Val?”

“Well I’m not exactly sure besides I’m in The Guardian Project but I haven’t gotten my training schedule for that either.?”

“Oh well you’re with me then too. It’s still getting formalized and stuff. I didn’t know that you were signed up for it.”

I stop and form my sword. “It’s not like I’m designed for being a fry cook Sam.”

She stops and takes a few breaths. “You can be whoever you want to be. You could be Thor and still work at a fast food place if you wanted to.”

I laugh. “Aye, verily maiden wouldst thou doth want fries with that?”

We both start laughing until my darned body demands food with a loud growl- gurgle.

Sam looks at me. “Hungry?”

“Aye starved.”

“How about we head over to the food hall and check out what the offerings are there.”

“Actually that sounds like a good idea and I need to get things too since I own next to nothing so I need to do some shopping.”

Okay it’s really cliché and stuff but Sam completely gets this look on her face and she perks right up and looks at me. “Ooooh shopping I love shopping!”

“Good because I have no idea what fashion for here is and I need like things that fits all of me.”

“Oh good point. C’mon we can take a look at classes while we eat and then we can go shopping on the mainland.”

“Okay, okay…”

Sam’s already ahead of me and I start moving to catch up. It’s so odd to have a friend like her…Then I’ve just smiling because it clicks that Sam is actually a friend.

*Cody…………

I went home from the whole debriefing and talk and while the food there was good it really wasn’t enough and after getting hurt and everything else I really just wanted to get home and actually do the wounded animal thing and curl up somewhere.

My instincts were taking me out of there and I just had to go before I got any more short tempered with people and said some stuff that I shouldn’t have because I was hungry and tired and I get more feral when I’m like that.

So I jumped again.

It’s not really a just either it’s like a tunnel of darkness like being in a negative and everything slows down to nothing but it’s also like a tunnel too because I can see this sort of direct line between me and where I want to go even through objects.

And it sort of ramp thing too so me being that high was kind of not an issue as I sort of slid down it, inside of it and made my way home…but I’m not like running inside of it either it’s like I’m sort of being floated then sucked out to the point of where I want to go like a vacuum tube in a warehouse.

Maybe it’s some kind of like controlled wormhole like thingy?

So I’m not smart like that but I do read a lot of science fiction and watch it on TV a lot. I’m just guess but I imaging that I’ll find out soon enough.

I pop through in the backyard and it takes a second to get my head around the fact I just did like twenty miles in seconds and I head in the house and I take off my sandals and it feels better to get out of them. I still wear then even if dad goes around barefoot all the time outside.

He’s way more comfortable being himself than I am.

I’ve got the house to myself right now and checking the calendars data log Mom’s out with my sisters and doing dance practice then swimming before getting home. Dad’s still at work and will be until seven.

Food…it almost sort of takes a bite out of me I’m that starved…maybe jumping home didn’t help that. I head into the kitchen and open the fridge and the cupboards and I grab a two five hundred mils of chocolate milk and I kill one right off and I grab an apple and then some other stuff…bread…Jiff peanut butter…I make three one slice fold over sandwiches and eat them between bite’s of apple.

And I’m careful; I shook out the bread slices from the bag. I don’t care if my family is used to it and that dad just does stuff I don’t want my fur in other peoples food.

But once I have something working away inside my stomach I get one of my sweat shirts and pull it on and some rubber gloves and I make some supper.

Hamburger we have lots in the house with me and dad but I take some liver and puree it into goop and pour it into the burger and then add some garlic and some nutmeg and then an entire bottle of Heinz 57 sauce and a little bit of molasses and some dark soy and a bunch of oatmeal and some crushed up crackers and I make a meatloaf.

Yeah the Heinz thing is mine, it’s this sort of ketchupy thing imported from earth and I kind of like it and it’s actually pretty good in a meatloaf or in burgers better than on it actually.

I switch out my gloves and scrub some potatoes and put them on a sheet tray and set everything for about when they’re going to be getting home and I head to the shower.

I get a good long hot shower and I use the trimmer attachment too and that’s this water safe vibrating brush that has this combing edge on it that’s a trimmer too and I use both and get my fur to this one millimetre level and while that’s really thin enough to see skin under it my healing factor will fur me back out to two to three millimetres by the time I’m awake and I’ll be back to my full centimetre of fuzz by midnight.

That’s also why I have long hair, I had it shoulder length when my powers kicked in and it keeps growing back that long.

My and Dad’s shower is separate from the others just for out stuff and it have a really nice set of turbo fan jets for drying off that work pretty good and I head off to my room and I fall on the bed and just crash.

I have dreams and they’re not that nice, thankfully I did get some serious out of it time before my brain rebooted into nightmare time. Well not nightmares just memories of today’s stuff and then my own stuff going on from before I was brought in and stuff and it all kind of blends together and culminates with me getting impaled on the tree.

I wake up and the house is busy or sort of and I hear mom and my sisters and I think Dad’s home because mom’s said honey a few times and I smell supper. Meatloaf and baked potatoes. Yeah…oh yeah that’s just about perfect right about now.

I slip out of bed and pad down the hall only to get sort of tackled and hugged by my little sisters and they start asking me questions about today. Mom jumps in too. “So who’s the girl? I saw you come to her rescue and…did you teleport?”

“Uhm…their name is Drew and they’re a friend mom nothing more…and yeah they were going to get shot up and stuff and it just sort of happened.”

I look at Dad who’s sitting on the floor his back to the couch with a can of beer in his hand and watching stuff on TV. “You never said that you can do that?”

He looks at me. “I can’t that’s a trick that’s all yours.”

“Oh.” I sit down. I’d sort of give mom a hand but she actually likes her space when she’s in the kitchen.

Dad…he’s bigger than me and he is all black furred and we both have claws and cat like tails but we also have canine traits too. He’s also dangerous he actually used to be a “super-villain.” He sort of started out like me but he wasn’t really brought in young he had to live and survive on his own and being a feral mutant and not an anthro it took only a couple of serious fights with the cops before he got the whole label put on him.

But he’s not exactly innocent either…feral instincts, claws, healing factor, boosted strength and reflexes and endurance…when he went off he really went off.

It’s so weird having him home and with a job actually as a teacher here and one of the instructors and stuff too. Yeah he’s got sentencing stuff and all that but still.

And it’s just kind of nice to just sit with him and just chill out and be our meta-caline selves together.

I got a second chance and so did my whole family and I do plan on making the most of it.

There’s a break on the TV from the game dad was watching and the news is playing bits of the whole deal at the bridge and the fight with the power armor guys and Drew’s getting some coverage. She…they…look good even though they’re not in uniform and stuff…she’s still got some anonymity as despite someone having caught what they did saving them on camera there’s apparently been no progress tracking who they are down.

And of course The Ark Angels aren’t saying anything about what had happened and then there’s the thing with me grabbing her and teleporting it and out.

My mom and my sisters cheer when I did that and dad looks at me.

I just shrug. “It doesn’t feel that fast to me.”

“You should talk to Doc Winters about it.”

“Yeah, I’ll wait until assessment.”

He shrugs and we just kind of watch TV and eat supper all there on and by the couch and I just kind of lounge in that feeling of being home.

*Drew…………

I thanked Avery and Sam for dropping me off at my house and I head inside and I’m alone with both parents out and working and doing stuff and I just head to my room and turn on a music file on my stereo on low but just something to kill the silence and I go to bed.

I falter a bit getting undressed but I do and I get into a pair of pyjamas so I don’t have to see myself and I crash.

If I didn’t hurt so much I’d be up from the bad dreams, the freaky dreams…my body hurts and my arms and my shoulders are screaming at me and the muscle strain I put on myself and it’s just mixing up with everything else and I hurt it’s like this mixture of light all over throbbing and specific even more painful stuff and cramping too.

I keep remembering trying to catch those people and then the power suits flying at us and having nowhere to go and then Cody wrapping me up and…he jumped us out of there and saved my life, our lives really and I still remember his arms…him against me and I shiver because…I’m not gay…right? I mean he had to and it’s like hormones messing me up and stuff or something but I shouldn’t be having these thoughts right?

Then there’s seeing him getting impaled and all the blood and the spray and I’ve never seen that much blood before and there was that guy and there was a monster there a real honest to god monster there and…

The cramps hurt pretty bad.

I think I screamed freaked out from my nightmares when dad touched me. I have a killer head ache too.

“You okay?”

(Sniffle.) “No…”

“You’re on the news.”

“Bad?”

“There’s some pretty accurate close ups.”

“Shit.”

“No one’s been able to I.D. you though.”

“Well that’s good yay for changes.” No…not yay and I’m being sarcastic.

“You think you can eat?”

“I ate before.”

“When?”

“Back at the whole debriefing thing.”

“That was a few hours ago.”

“Really? I must have been really out of it.”

“You would be you’re changing.”

“Again…!?” My voice starts cracking on me.

Dammit, dammit….just dammit!

I sit up and I’m still hurting and aching. “Yeah…what are we having?”

“Your mother’s ordering take out.”

“Soup would be nice.”

“I’ll see if they have soup.”

I hug him and it feels good and then I’m getting embarrassed again because well I’m…I’m hugging him like I’m a little kid, well not just like a little kid but a little girl.

Dammit…

He leaves and I sit there for a bit and then grab my blanket and wrap myself up in it more like to sort of shelter me from life than being cold and I sit in front of my computer and start looking things up.

Me…today…

I watch the footage and look at the online comments.

“Oh…great they ones that aren’t freaking out and calling me a mutie freak are saying I’m super hot.”

I get up and creep to my mirror.

“Shit.” Yeah I’m changing more because apparently being a hero is me being a heroine because I looked the way that I did on camera and that’s a flying girl saving people and that makes me hot.

And the way that my powers are it’s making me change even more.

I look down my bottoms…I have to sort of push my boobs…aching boobs down with my forearm to look but it’s still there.

“Thank god for that.”

It still sucks though it really, really sucks and I chew on my bottom lip and head back to watch and read my impending doom.

And cry.

I hate crying but ‘I’m a girl’ and girls cry…shit, shit, shit.

It’s all sorts of horrible knowing this and watching it and reading it and stuff but it’s like watching a car crash and I just can’t keep myself from doing it and I’m doing it right up until my sister shows up and she looks in on me.

“Eeew fuck Drew you look like shit.”

“Gee thanks.” My voice cracks again.

Nancy sniggers at me.

“It’s not funny.”

“No, it’s not you’re a freak and you drug all of us into it with you.”

“It’s not my fault.”

“No, it’s not but you just couldn’t take off like all the other freaks out there could you…no you have to show off all the time and show this off and become some kind of super hero freak and wreck my life.”

“You’re an effing geneist Nancy honestly I’m not giving two shits about wrecking you’re life. The way you were headed you might have been up there on the bridge when the shooting happened and as far as freak goes you really don’t know…this could happen to you too we share the same DNA.”

“Fuck you Drew.”

“Get the fuck out!” I lose it and scream at her and it’s all goddamned girl voice and she screams in rage at the stuff I said about the same time as I did and we sound like two sisters throwing a bitch fit at each other and she slams my door.

I think I hear dad but I’m too busy hurling myself onto my bed and losing control of my feeling and bawling harder than I’ve ever cried in my life.

Thankfully I’m left alone and I cry whatever the heck is wrong with me out and just lay there staring at the wall for awhile before getting up once I hear Nancy blasting her music in her room and I figure she had it out with our parents or dad at least and I head downstairs.

I don’t see dad but I see mom. And she’s looking at me and there’s this sort of semi-soft look there. She’s not an emotional person, she just isn’t but when she is nice or sort of nice it’s because she is trying.

She’s got some pills in her hand. “Here, these will help.”

“What are they?”

“Some are menstrual relief tabs and this one’s a muscle relaxer for the other cramps and the other’s a pain killer.”

I take them; she’d never give me something that would hurt me she’s not that kind of person. She watches me and heads to the kitchen and I follow and she gestures for me to take a seat at the table while she heats up the leftovers.

I don’t know what to call the kind of food I’m eating but grocery store take out? Roasted chicken and roasted potatoes with butter and herbs usually I’m not into this kind of stuff but the rosemary smells good and they have that almost browned fried look and the first one was crispy and butter and soft inside so I get some more of them. There’s veggies too and they’re mixed together but its beans cut into halves and long baby carrots and peas in the shells but still edible but they have these little peas in there and it’s like a nice garden mix and they’re really good.

And she reheats my soup in the take out bowl and it’s just for me and its chicken noodle with these really fat egg noodles. I’m actually hungrier than I thought and I eat supper and I actually have an appetite.

She does the dishes and she doesn’t really talk much but she’s there and she’s looking at me and the conversation actually ranges just around the food and the place she got it from. Sterling Market…apparently it’s a semi-high end kind of grocery chain place where the do catering but take out catering too.

Then it’s about my classes and what I’ll be taking and the fact that I can actually learn not just the powers stuff but if I take all the pre-req classes I can go onto to take the college level classes without having to enrol in college so if I study hard I could get a big head start on things.

Actually that does sort of semi-appeal to me. Though I’m actually thinking about actually taking art classes and stuff and mom’s very practical being just the way she is…heck dad’s an engineer. I’m not sure if I want to do that kind of stuff.

Though honestly I can see Nancy doing something like what I’m thinking about but doing that typical coaster arts degree.

She’s never really been a good student or responsible.

Actually even if I minored in art it’d still be okay. I really don’t know what I want to be yet and right now I’m having a hard time just being me.

“Here try this too.” She says setting down this big slice of a very fancy looking chocolate cake in front of me and a coffee. “Cream? Sugar?”

“Uhm…just milk like you do.”

She blinked for a minute then gave me one of her mom sort-of-there smiles and she sat and ate cake with me and we had coffee.

It’s cliché as hell but….Omigawd chocolate! I swear it did something to my brain that helped the funk I was in be not so bad. Okay I know mom actually making an effort helped a lot and the medicine too and I was likely bottoming out blood sugar like or something was happening too but the cake, the chocolate actually tipped the scales inside me from suck to okay.

I get up and I look at her and I hug her. It’s not long and I am just as uncomfortable as she if doing it and stuff so we sort of break it pretty quick. I look at her. “Uhm…mom…thanks for this…it helped.”

She looks at me and she’s sort of serious again and she extends her arm to me and we shake hands for the first time in my life. “I watched it Drew, I watched you save someone’s life and face down something that’s just plain wrong. I hated them trying to kill you but I’m…I’m proud of you.”

…..Oh.

Oh I’m about to waterworks again and I’m saved by her letting go and going to her office. “Take a long soak Drew with some Epsom salts it’ll help with the soreness.”

(Sniffle-voice crack.) “Okay…”

I head up to my room and here in the new house we all have our own bathroom and I get one ready with the bottle of the salts that she must have left here and I switch off my computer and change my stereo file to something nice…like something kind of…I actually log into the net and do the radio channels for some light popular rock and dim the lights and go for a long soak.

Okay that did help.

I get my hair blow dried and head off to bed…as much as I feel not sucky I’m still really feeling all of it and it’s more like bone tired and drug out than like it was before.

I fell asleep dreaming of some coffee shop with a band playing so light rock and chocolate cake.

*Quinn…………

I slept through most of the whole day recovering from stuff with the whole thing at the bridge. Chris and Sasha came in to check on me and we talked a bit about what happened but they pretty much just let me recover.

I do remember Aerin being in my room a bit and reading while sitting on the floor in like the Lotus position?

But morning wakes me with the smell of coffee and I focus on the ring and take form.

It’s plenty strange doing it I concentrate and pour myself through the ring like a filter but also like when I step into people to help them.

The world goes yellow light and vanishes as I’m on the astral plane and it’s this mist below my feet and white tinged violet clouds above me and I have to concentrate on being me, the way that I used to feel before the accident and as I get more and more solid the astral fades away and I’m me.

Or I’m ecto-me.

I look like I’m utterly white from my skin to my eyes and my hair and well I’m naked so I get dressed and that’s hard too. I’m solid but about as solid as one of those ballistic gel targets and I’m not really strong at all either it’s pretty dependent on the whole gel-ectoplasm thing so about twenty pounds in my limit.

I head down stairs and get hugs and I head for the coffee.

As it turns out I can eat, and eating is actually easy. The ecto stuff mimics me and it does something sort of psi and breaks down what I eat and beams it to me as food energy through the ring.

Don’t ask me how it’s magic, actual real magic so its way out of my league.

But the freedom is so nice to have especially just doing little things.

Sasha hugs me. “So what’s the plans today?’

“I was thinking of going into campus and looking around but also to exercise my projection time too.”

“Good idea, I think there’s a psi section in the library if you wanted to check it out, I’ve never been but you might find it useful.”

“I’ll try that, but I’m going to swing by the food hall first and see what’s there to eat. I kind of feel the need to be around others some without getting pulled into them. Though I might try to see if Mark’s around.”

“Mark?”

“The guy with the powers I jumped into on the bus.”

“Oh okay I met him at the debriefing. Have fun but don’t push it you’re still recovering Quinn.”

I roll my eyes but you could never tell since their all white like the rest of me. “Yes mom…”

She actually smiles at that and it’s a pretty big one. “Good now that my authority’s been established…”

We both laugh and I hug her and give her a peck on the cheek.

I’m not getting into all of that stuff with her yet mostly because I’m chicken to right yet but her and Chris both of them have taken me in and have been taking care of me and seriously…it means a lot.

I head out and just try to enjoy this, feet it and take it all in as much as I can.

It was a longer walk that I thought but also I’m learning and walking…and learning to walk…it’s different because I don’t weigh that much, I’m ecto-gel not water gel so I’m only about fifty pounds so it’s like a whole other thing to learn how to walk and then there’s the way that everything looks when I really look at it.

Everything alive has this sort of shimmer to it, this odd kind of look that is sort of like wearing three-d glasses until you stare at things and after a few minutes I’m seeing their aura.

Metas and stuff have much brighter or stronger ones than normals and they are colored differently too. I have no idea what it means at all but still. Just walking and seeing and looking its very strange. It’s seriously neat but it’s seriously strange.

I find the food hall and I can feel Mark…like a familiar scent or something and I follow it until I see this Girl this great looking girl in a pair of sweats and a hoody with pretty big boobs looking at the food.

“Mark?’

She stares at me with this oh shit look.

I lower my voice. “It’s me Quinn. What’s going on?”

She drops her tray on the counter and she bails running out and away from me.

What the hell?

My Super Secret Life…Potentials-12 the Start.

*Mark…………

How do you explain the stuff you do, feel to someone? Especially to someone that’s been literally inside of you and living in your head. I mean Quinn wasn’t with me that long but he recognized me right off the get go and as strange as Halo is. And all of the other kids and students are pretty odd given everything and everyone it’s also not as odd as me I’ll bet.

It’s really not fair that Quinn can fly either. I might look like I’m in shape but I’m really not.

Because I’m actually a fat kid with super powers and not this tall girl with a nice bust and bum.

Yeah, well I’m a shape shifter. Well sort of I’m an elastomorph that’s the technical thing for me and I can stretch like a rubber person and I can shift stuff in me around.

Like my body fat. So yeah that’s where the bust and but comes from and I stretch my legs a bit and my body and neck and arms so I go from being five foot nothing and heavy set to being close to six foot and really curvy.

Why?

Why the heck would I do this?

One fat doesn’t equal muscle so me going all buff and bumpy well it’s all still going to jiggle. And even if I tried to go guy big and stuff well I’m five foot nothing it doesn’t stretch out to that kind of big without looking all mutant.

Two… Girls are awesome and they’re pretty and it feels good to get the attention that I get like this as long as it’s like me and me being anonymous.

Hey Mark you’re a babe just isn’t what I want to hear ever.

And I’m kinda winded and kind of feeling the boob running effect when Quinn lands in front of me.

He looks so weird, kind of scary too like all washed out and white like milky white with these eyes that are just a touch of blue so as not to be white and even his hair is like that.

“Hey, wait…look I’m sorry I really didn’t mean to freak you out.”

“Well…well you did.” (Pant.)

“I can see that, I mean…”

“Mean what Quinn?”

“Uhm…can I ask?”

“No.”

I know, I know that he’s just trying. But I really, really don’t want to explain all of this and the fact that it’s all kind of a pity trip, an ego stroke.

He’s looking at me and it’s so strange too because he’s like there and not just this sort of white also plastic like stuff and yes he’s wearing clothes and stuff but still.

This place is so just weird.

He shrugs at me. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah I mean okay like whatever if this is something that’s you then who am I to judge?”

“You’ve been in my head…inside of me.”

“Mark…is it Mark like this?”

“No…it’s Amy.”

“Amy?”

“I like the name okay?”

He raises his hands. “Seriously I am no position to really judge anyone…ever.”

“Okay…so…”

He offers his hand. “Breakfast?”

I…and I sort of realize that there are people sort of looking at us out here after me trying to run away and stuff.

And I see Sam Chase coming with that girl…the Vanir girl only kinda sort of not a girl. I mean she is a girl but the way she’s coming in she’s like buff and built with like broad shoulders and muscular arms and just…it’s her but she’s like a female body builder or something.

Sam Chase is smiling and stuff but she’s been like that all the times that I’ve seen her and she looks like it’s kind of a common thing for her and stuff.

She does a little skip over and she extends her hand to Quinn.

“You must be Karma.”

“Uhm…” Quinn sounds like he’s lost.

Some people are just way too morning people.

“I’m Quinn; Karma’s sort of my code name.”

“You got named already? That’s pretty cool.”

I look at Vana and she’s all…like wow and stuff like super weight lifter girl instead of the busty southern belle.

I try a smile…. “I…uhm we were heading for breakfast you girls want to join us?”

Sam says for both of them. “Sure!”

Quinn does this head tilt and the after you gesture. “Ladies…”

Oh…he included me in that too.

I start and the girls come with me as we head to the food hall.

It’s…it’s kind of an amazing place really, it’s self-serve buffet but there are some stations. Like right now there are an omelet station, pancakes, crepes, and waffles all manned and a few other things here too from like other cultures or ethnics.

*Vana/Vanir…………

I’m lookin and this place is huge. It’s a place the size of a gym or like a stadium but with all these levels and dais’s at random for like seating and tables and stuff and they have like ones that are glassed in and ones with like wooden planters with like plants that those fancy restaurants have and there’s some that are just normal and stuff too but it’s like something right out of like some cafeterias of the rich an famous.

They have people cooking too.

Hey there’s a thing, I’m a darned good cook maybe a kin get some work to like help with things? The one’s cookin look like students well teenagers.

We all head over to the buffet things an get trays.

I’m actually hungry like this and I’m cravin stuff I wasn’t really allowed t’have before.

Home girls kinda ate certain stuff so like more than two slices of bacon was a no-no.

There’s this pop and this mist of black smoke that ain’t real smoke and Cody’s there and he smells? It’s weird because he’s sort of an anthro but he smells like shampoo. “How’s that work?”

He’s getting a tray and looking at me and passes the tray to me and gets another. “How’s what work, the teleport?”

Hmmm…now’s here where I should consider if I should ask about powers and stuff or if I should come across like a red neck and ask him about how he cleans himself.

“Uhm…yeah, you know yet?”

“Nope, wormhole I think.”

“That’s a physics thing right?”

Sam looks like she’s going to say something and Cody looks at her and points. “No…”

She blinks. “No?”

“No hard-core physics this early in the morning, there’s not enough coffee on New Haven for that.”

Yep, he’s into her.

And I’m not sure how I feel about that? Like ah mean Cody is cute and all but the whole not looking human thing is naggin at me.

Ah know I know a lot of different people now and all but there’s still all that stuff from home I hafta deal with.

I mean it’s like having this automatic bigot sitting in my brain.

I damned hate it y’know.

We hit the different places t’get food and I get bacon and one of those fancy omelet things and then a bowl of oatmeal and a can of juice and a can of milk.

Seriously milk in a can like pop comes in from home. That’s just so.

I’d feel guilty about my portions but I’m starved and there’s some girls there that are getting a whole bunch more than me. I’ll admit I’m staring at some of them… The seven foot girl built like me but more with those black people braids but she’s like sorta mixed race looking.

A black girl that looks like a super built model with muscles and this spic…Hispanic girl eating as she’s plating food so fast she’s blurring? Super speed? Yeah there’s others too but these were the ones that I noticed.

The black girl and the big braided one look at us as they leave together…we’re getting checked out? Me and Quinn and they sort of look at Amy, Cody and Sam but mostly just us two.

Then Quinn’s like. “They’re magic’s of some kind.”

Sam’s doing the eyeballs and numbers thingy that she does looking at files. She’s frowning.

“Bad?” I ask?

“Yeah, dad’s locked me out again.”

I look at her. “Locked you out of your house?”

She shakes her head. “No out of the school’s mainframe.”

“Oh…you can do computer stuff.”

She nods. “You still want to go shopping later?”

“I need to; I don’t have much for this form or my other form.”

“Great we can get you familiar with town here and stuff.”

I nod. “I’d prefer that actually t’going over to the mainland Ark City looks really nice and all but it’s also pretty scary.”

There’s some agreement from Amy and Cody as we’re eating good I’m kind of glad that I don’t just come across as some yokel.

*Faith/Drew…………

I get up after an iffy night with lots of dreams about what happened with everything and then there was all the stuff that’s going on with me and my powers.

The very first thing that I have happen is me rolling over wrong and doing that boob press pinch thing…ow…it’s kind of that ow that you get when you sit on something wrong as a guy and pinch something down there.

I adjust and go fully face down into my bed which puts pressure on my breasts and not in a bad way just freaky and alien and strange…but good because they ache and they kind of itch so the pressure in actually kind of nice.

But the me having to experience the entire deal has my planting my face into the pillow.

“Gah…I hate this.”

Gulp…my voice…it’s changed again.

Softer and lower? Female and yet…I sound like a woman, not a girl but a woman.

I do a push up from the bed and have a face full of hair and I get it out of my face and I start to check myself over.

Boobs…yeah and they might be different…I check below…it’s still there for now. Hopefully forever…what they don’t actually know that I have in my pants is my business.

I get out of bed and head to the bathroom and the bounce and sway of my new assets is very distracting and I get in and I take a look at myself.

There’s differences but not a whole lot of them…more hair I think it grew out a couple of inches and it’s darker sort of a rich chestnut color of brown and my face looks a little bit girl symmetrical but the difference I’m sort of seeing and stuff in my hips…they sort of look a little wider and I think some of my body fat that didn’t go to my boobs went to my butt.

I use the bathroom and then I go from there to having a shower and I’m really glad that I have my own bathroom in our new place. Then it’s trying to do something with my hair and failing since it just seems to want to not style of anything and just come loose but oddly it’s not all that messy looking.

More to get used to.

And y’know what I am going to get used to it so once I get a shirt on and my boxers I leave my room and I fly down the stairs and into the kitchen to come in for a landing and three steps to the fridge.

Nancy is staring at me and she’s stopped eating.

I can see the gears working in her head like she’s trying to decide if she’s freaked or disgusted.

Screw her…I wanted to do like grandma and make a difference after reading her journals and stuff and I took up her mantel and I didn’t want this and I didn’t think I’d be turning out like this.

I get some pineapple juice and I pour it into the blender with some lemon flavored yogurt and add a banana and then I buzz it up and I make a slice of toast.

She’s just about to say something as I take a bite of the toast and fly slip down the hallway and do a spin around the corner stair rail and I fly back up to my room.

No, I’m not in a good mood but I’m not going to let this mess with me without fighting back.

And fighting back right now is now letting Nancy get her way and her digs in and stuff.

Now then next step is to look for the positives.

Like I can fly.

Not fast or like super but I can fly.

I go online with my computer and I look up some things and I bring up the whole song thing for Peter Pan. You know that song for “You can fly!” and yeah that stuff still exists it really never goes away and I crank the volume just to get Nancy’s goat and I actually clean my room and make my bed but I fly while I do it.

It’s really easy to make a bigger bed when you can hover over it.

And it’s really not so much cleaning my room as it is unpacking my room and then it’s me going through things to see what fits me and what I have to toss out and stuff.

I lose a lot of clothes…I wasn’t small but I wasn’t a really big guy either just with the changes very few of my shirt fit. Oddly enough I haven’t shrunk instead I’ve grown into my feminine parts.

My hips and butt too have decided that they’re just too much for about a third of my stuff. Honestly most of it is older stuff and I haven’t worn some of it for a year or two.

I get a decent pair of black jeans on and a dark green t-shirt and after looking at myself I get my hoodie because I’m having nipple issues and stuff.

Then it’s flying downstairs to get myself some bags and I bag up all my old stuff and I bring it down and pass Nancy on the stairs.

“Fucking walk Jesus Christ Drew!”

“Why I can fly?”

“God you’re such a freak!”

“yeah well that’s not going to actually change Nancy so I might as well get used to it and maybe even enjoy it.”

“Enjoy It!”

I float the rest of the way down but backwards looking at her. “I’ll see you at school.”

“I’m not fucking going to freak central!”

“Have fun arguing that one out with Mom and Dad.”

“Fuck you! fuck you!, arrgh! Fuck you!”

She storms the rest of the way up the stairs and she slams her door with a scream.

I’m almost smiling…almost because as much fun as it is to just piss her off for all the bitchy things that she’s said and done recently she was with a bad crowd.

And she might get back into that unless something happens to change that.

I meet up with mom in the hallway and she’s looking at me and I shrug. “I’m adapting.”

“Good, and you’re going where with those?”

“Drop off center I think, I’d rather donate them then just toss them out.” I gesture with one of the bags. “They don’t fit anymore.”

“Aaah well we’ll have to get you some things that will fit you.”

“Mom…I can get my own clothes.”

“Do you have any idea what you’re going to need with the changed to your body?”

“No but I can learn.”

She’s looking at me and she nods and she takes out her personal tablet and she does a few things. “There I transferred five hundred to your account so you can go and get some new clothes just keep all the slips in case we have to take some things back.”

“Okay, I’ll see you later.” And I head out the front doors and I take off a few inches off the ground and down the side walk…I slow and I look back towards the house.

Did mom?

No…she doesn’t even really do that kind of stuff with Nancy.

Maybe I wanted?

I swallow a lump in my throat… damned hormones.

I turn back around and I head down the street and head to the HALO drop off center where all sorts of stuff gets dropped off to be re-purposed for those that need it.

I saw this on the school’s site for the students and stuff and it looked like maybe a good extra credit thing too since it’s all student run.

I stop flying and I get a look or two from people around the place but you know what most of those people aren’t regular people/baselines I mean one’s indigo skinned and Asian and he’s playing hacky sack with another guy? They’re like anthro-touched feline which mean he looks normal and yet has the anime cat ears and tail and these really big eyes…I’m just saying he because they’re flat but as things go they’re really androgynous.

But yeah they look and they don’t really say a whole lot except I think I’m getting checked out.

And yeah a kinda blush because that’s really weird for me.

I head inside and it’s really big actually like a warehouse and a shop combined along with what is a front counter and stuff.

I head up to the counter and there’s this girl there reading some really big stack of books and she looks at me. Asian…Japanese and very pretty with pink cyber eyes and matching bangs and she’s checking me out too.

It’s a whole other kind of blush when a cute girl is checking out your breasts.

“Uhm…Hi I’m dropping some stuff off.”

“Cool and thanks you need a slip for them?”

She says as she hops out of her chair and does this skirt tug thing and I can’t help but stare…it’s really short and she has those stocking things on and she’s wearing a belly shirt and she’s really cute.

“Uhm… I don’t really need one but I guess for like taxes and stuff.”

“No, it’s like campus credit rebates.”

“Huh?” Dammit…I said huh…actually said that.

She smiles at me. “It’s like there’s this system here that you can sign on and do like charity work and get paid in school credits.”

“Like course credits?”

She grins and she takes the bags and sets the on this thing that looks like a scale and turns out it is but it’s like some kind of scanner too. Okay that makes sense seeing that who knows what will/could be carrying what. “No like debit for stuff at school.”

“Isn’t that like getting a job for the school?”

“It is and it isn’t, I mean you could like sign onto one of the school charities it’s linked to and donate time and help and stuff and the school will pay you in debits even if the charity can’t afford to.”

“How can it do that?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know but I mean this whole Halo thing starts with really big pockets and stuff.”

“Okay then…sure I’ll take the slip.”

She nods and asks for my student I.D. and two bags full gave me about thirty debit dollars and that’s with the money Victory gave me and I… “Hey…thanks uhm…?”

“It’s not uhm it’s Pepper.”

“Pepper?”

She nods and she blushes.

Oh wow. “I’m Drew.”

I look at her and she’s looking at me and I…oh wow this is sort of hard.

“I’m headed over to the food hall and going to get some breakfast you want to join me…I mean if you like can?”

Pepper looks me over and nods. “Sure just a sec…” She does this sort of look…stare head thing and is spaced out for a second and then she’s going for her coat and a big black guy comes out front and looks at me.

Guy eyes right to my chest and the he’s looking the rest of me over. He smiles and I really don’t know what to do or feel because it kind of felt scary and eww and objectifying in this really freaky-bad way and yet at the same time I’ve been him and sometimes you can’t help but to stare and I wasn’t thinking crude stuff or nasty thoughts and stuff it’s just…really strange.

I look at Pepper and we head out together walking and stuff and she’s actually pretty well known and stuff and there’s a lot of people that wave and say hello to her and stuff.

I feel a telekinetic reaction happen as she calls out to this Hispanic girl in what I think might be Spanish and she’s lie twenty feet from us and she and pepper do this hand slap sideways high five and I hear this Spanish girls hand connect with TK force and they move on.

I look at her. “Wow…that was cool.”

“Yeah Anita’s pretty awesome.”

“You know a lot of people here.”

“Some but I’ve been here awhile too and stuff and got to meet a lot of people while I was helping out with stuff.”

I nod. “A lot of people come through the resource center?”

She nods. “Lots, since the island is a meta sanctuary community and we had a lot of people move here or settle here after they had their refugee status cleared and stuff. I did the center and worked for the food trucks with deliveries and even with the housing company.”

“Housing company?”

“Halo housing company it makes like homes for the homeless and refugees that we get here.”

“You’ve done a lot of cool stuff.”

“My mother was a Double A.”

“Really!?” Okay that’s kind of…. And she’s quiet now…. “Shit…sorry…”

She nods and rubs at her yes. “It’s okay…it happen a long time ago and stuff and she went out doing the right thing.”

“Who was she if I can ask?”

“Dragonfly.”

I’m drawing a blank…there’s been a lot of heroes and heroines in the Ark Angels and a whole lot of the public just seems to forget that sometimes heroes don’t win, sometimes they don’t come back.”

“I’ll have to look her up.”

She nods and she looks around and I see my “friends” and some other’s I don’t know waving me over and Pepper’s waving back.

“I suppose you must know Sam Chase then?”

“Oh yeah we grew up together and stuff. Her dad designed my cyber eyes.”

“Oh…so the pink was a choice then?”

“No, they’re multi-color shifting and stuff I can change them to whatever I like.”

“Okay that’s cool.”

It is and it isn’t I’m sorry cyber stuff as common as it is still is kind of freaky to me.

“So…buy me some waffles Drew?”

She smiles and she has her hands behind her back in that cute way and she’s… “Definitely.”

Okay she’s getting in a better mood as she’s getting like waffles made and she’s doing the whole whipped cream and strawberries and stuff and she’s getting candied bacon and stuff and putting it on her plate.

I’m smiling a bit more and having fun watching her and I get two things of savory French toast with like herbs and chives and some corned beef hash browns… (I haven’t had it but it smelled good) and I get a basket of bacon from the self-serve tables and our drinks and now I get a coffee and we go to sit with the others since she knows them too and I take the basket and set it in the middle of the table. “Community bacon.”

Cody grabs a handful. “Drew! You rock dude.”

Dude…

And now Pepper and this girl and this weird looking pale ghostly looking guy are staring at me.