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Author's Note: Here's chapter 2 of Syryn's Song. Thank you as always to all my readers for the comments, kudos, and thinking that my work is worth reading. Also thanks to the Big Closet team who work tirelessly to give us all a wonderfully supportive venue to read and post TG fiction ~Amethyst.
 

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Chapter 2: New Beginning

Three days after our big outing Dr. Park sat down with us for lunch and said, “Okay everyone I’ve got some news to share.” Once she was sure that she had our undivided attention she gave Twilight and me a sad look and continued on to add, “Leslie and Candice will be leaving us today.” We all stared at her eyes wide and my breath caught in my throat. “Leslie turns eighteen in three weeks and Candice does in August. Neither of them has medical needs to keep them here any longer. I have contacts in New York who have offered to pick the girls up, help them get settled in New York City, and see that they get the training they both need.”

“Well I guess if we’re going to try to break into the music industry that’s a pretty good place to start,” I put in.

“New York City?! That’s awesome, we’re gonna have so much fun there,” Twilight added with a grin. “Wait! You said were leaving today?”

Dr. Park nodded, “After lunch you’ll have half an hour to get packed and say your goodbyes as they’ll be here at one thirty. All of your paperwork is done and I have high school diplomas for you both. She handed us each an envelope and I found that the diploma inside was made out to Candice Lynn Graham and was certified by Hill Regional Career High School. She must have seen the confused look on my face because she gave me a reassuring smile and said, “The exams I had you both taking were from that school. I have had other long term patients like you do the same before. It’s not all that unusual for this hospital to have long term patients study privately and take equivalency exams through them and they know I work with the Children’s Hospital. Since you both did so well on all your exams they had no problems with issuing the diplomas.”

“Thanks Dr. Park, I’m going to miss you all,” Twilight said with teary eyes,

I nodded in agreement, “Me too, you’ve been great Dr. Park. You said they’ll be here at one thirty?” When she nodded I asked in a concerned tone, “That’s barely enough time to pack, will we have time to put on my disguise?”

She shook her head, “You needn’t worry about it. You won’t be out in public except in the elevator. My friends will be coming here to pick you up and they assure me that they will have a means to disguise you when you get where you’re going.”

Twilight and I finished our meals quickly and went to our rooms to pack what little we had in the two large suitcases that Dr. Park had brought for us. I finished pretty quickly and was saying my goodbyes to Smog, Taser, and Armor when Twilight came out with her own suitcase and the case containing her keyboard and stand. “You guys behave yourselves,” she said as she joined us. “We’ll send emails to you all once we’re settled. Smog has his laptop so at least we can stay in touch that way.”

We were both giving Dr. Park a hug goodbye when the intercom to the security door buzzed. “That will be your escort girls. Keep in touch; it won’t be the same without you here.” She let us go and we took one last look around, grabbed our baggage, and walked with Dr. Park to the door. She pressed the button by the door and said, “Hello.”

“Hi Maddie, we’re here to pick up our potential house guests,” came a friendly and very female voice. Dr. Park opened up the door and nothing could have prepared me for the two people standing on the other side. The first of the pair was a man who was six foot six and dressed from head to toe in black. Seriously, he was dressed like a ninja but even his eyes were covered in the black material of his costume. The woman I would have had to be completely ignorant of the news and internet and have lived the last five years of my life locked in a box to not know. She had long red hair and green eyes and wore a blue mask and a blue bodysuit with white stars along the outer arms and legs with a red leotard, boots, and a utility belt over top.

“Liberty,” I said in awe. Aside from Paragon she was probably the best known super hero in the whole country and she was the leader of Aegis.

The red, white, and blue heroine chuckled and said, “It’s nice to meet you. You must be Candice and Leslie, or would you rather I called you Syryn and Twilight?” she asked with a wink and I could feel myself blushing a deep purple as she continued speaking. “This is my teammate Blackout of course. Most people know that he can cancel out another mutant’s powers by touching them. What most people don’t know is that he detects powers as well and can accurately measure them.”

The large man nodded, “You were right Madison, these girls are going to need training.” He gestured to Twilight. “She’s got category two regeneration, some sort of darkness related ability I would rate at category two as well, category three speed, and strength somewhere between category three and four. She’s nearly as strong as Liberty is.”

Liberty’s eyes widened a bit at that. “That’s impressive; I’m surprised she hasn’t destroyed something yet.”

Twilight blushed, “I did destroy a MRI scanner accidentally in a panic attack when I was first being tested but I’ve been working really hard the last six months at limiting how hard I grip things and how fast I move.”

“It’s good that you’ve learned that kind of control but you will need to push your limits as well to find out exactly what you’re capable of. You never know when you’ll need to use your powers, so if you don’t develop them to their fullest it could be just as dangerous as not developing them at all,” he explained before turning to me. He was quiet for a moment before saying, “You mentioned the interesting changes in Syryn’s physiology Madison and those alone would likely make her a noteworthy candidate for the project but you failed to mention how powerful she is. She has category three projective empathy and category five telekinesis. If she doesn’t train both of those properly someone is going to get hurt.”

“Well, I have only been studying her for a week,” Dr. Park countered, “And her telekinetic abilities have been growing stronger each day since she was activated so it has been hard to get an accurate measure.”

I was only vaguely aware of her speaking though as what Blackout had said had me concerned. If they were rating powers like hurricanes then that meant I was a damn powerful telekinetic. And then there was the other thing he said that concerned me. “Excuse me, but what is the project?” I asked nervously, wondering if they wanted to dissect me or something.

“Aegis has done a lot of good since we formed five years ago,” Liberty began to explain. “Now we have decided that we want to start training a secondary team of five or six young people that can serve as reserve members of Aegis, a backup team if something else comes up when we’re on a mission, or to take on assignments we’re incapable of doing. From what Blackout and Madison have said and based on Madison’s psychological assessment of you both I would like you two to consider being the first two members of that team.”

“So you’re offering us a job?” I asked uncertainly.

“Right now all we’re offering is an opportunity, it’s up to you whether you decide to take it,” Blackout replied. “If you both do decide that you want to join the program we’d be glad to have you and you’ll get equipment, training sessions with us and the other members of the team, whatever help you need getting set up in your civilian identities, and a place to live as part of the deal. If you decide not to take the opportunity then we will still help you how we can but I would suggest that you seriously think about taking it. With powers like yours, a little control is sometimes worse than none at all.”

“I don’t know,” Twilight said uncertainly. “This is a great offer and all but we kind of have our hearts set on starting a band and trying to get into the music industry.”

Liberty smiled warmly at us both. “Madison mentioned that on the phone. Whatever civilian career you choose to pursue is of course up to you and we won’t prevent you from doing that. We all have civilian identities and some form of employment and we will try to fit training sessions into your schedule if you do start a civilian career. For the first six months all you would be doing is training unless you have a unique skill that we need on a mission.”

I wasn’t too keen on the idea of running around in spandex fighting people who would in all likelihood try to kill me but practically speaking we would be getting a lot out of the deal and learning to control our powers. Besides, would you flat out refuse such an offer from one of the most respected superheroes in the country? Finally I nodded. “I do need to learn to control my powers so I guess I don’t mind giving this a try as long as it won’t interfere with my goals.”

“If Syryn is in then I guess I’ll give it a shot too,” Twilight added.

“It’s decided then,” Liberty said with a smile. “Welcome to the family. I will ask you to make sure that anything we show you and the location of our headquarters be kept secret. We have no official ties to the government and keeping our secrets keeps us all safer.” Then she turned to Dr. Park and hugged her, “It’s been good seeing you again Maddie. Make sure you take some vacation time this summer and come visit us all.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she laughed before hugging me and Twilight in turn. “Good luck out there girls, remember us little people when you make it big.”

“I don’t think either of us will ever forget you Dr. Park, thanks for everything,” Twilight said for us both. I would have said something too but I didn’t want everyone all sad and nervous if I couldn’t control my subsonics. So I merely nodded and waved as we turned and followed the costumed pair.

When we arrived at the roof the first thing I saw was the large sliver craft on the helipad. It had an aerodynamic shape and was roughly the size of a city bus with no visible entrance and sat on six legs. “This is the Ladybug, a Tinker friend of ours designed and built her for us; you’ll meet him when we get home,” Liberty said as she took out some kind of remote control from a pouch on her belt. It did have the general shape of a ladybug and resembled one even more when the top part of the rear three quarters of the ship seemed to separate from the ship and spread out into large aerodynamic wings with powerful looking propellers aimed toward the ground. “This baby has a maximum speed of mach three in atmosphere, VTOL capabilities, a cloaking device, and is both submersible and space flight capable.”

A platform had descended from the ship’s undercarriage and as we walked toward it Liberty continued to explain. “Once we’re in flight the legs retract into the ship, and if we need to go into space or under water the wings will return to their resting place and the manoeuvring thrusters will emerge. The main booster engine on this baby has a lot of thrust.” I was in awe as we stepped onto the platform and it rose into the craft and I thought I heard Twilight whistle.

Once inside we were directed to place our baggage in a storage container and to sit in one of the dozen seats in the passenger area while Liberty and Blackout went to the cockpit to get us in the air. The flight was all too short and I watched the scenery below speed by out the window beside me. I kept watching until I could see New York City spread out beneath us getting closer and Liberty came out of the cockpit. “We’re going to land in the East River near Mill Rock Island and submerge, there’s less water traffic there. Then we’ll make our way to a tunnel that we’ll travel to get to our headquarters. We’ll show you the ways in and out once we have a quiet day to teach you to pilot the Ladybug.”

Soon we had traversed the underwater tunnel and a platform raised the ship out of the water to a large hangar type room. Once we had disembarked Blackout explained, “There are three sub-levels that make up our base. This is the hangar level and above it is the training level where the pool, gymnasium, obstacle course, and shooting range are. On the level above that are the situation room, recreation room, laboratory, and underground parking. We will need to make you both key cards, both those and fingerprint identification are required to get to these lower levels by the elevator or into the garage from the outside.”

Twilight and I both nodded and I asked, “If these are the sub-levels what’s above that?”

“Above that is the apartment complex where we all live. Senator Dixon bought the land and deeded it to my civilian identity a few years back,” Liberty said. “The building is on East 88th facing Carl Schurz Park.”

“I thought you said we had no ties to the government,” Twilight said with a confused look.

“Not officially we don’t,” she replied, “But I saved his son’s life and he wanted to help us to continue to work without government interference. We work better when we don’t have to cut through a bunch of red tape to get anything done.”

“Why are you trusting us with all this?” I wondered aloud, “You barely know us.”

“Because Maddie thinks that you both are trustworthy girls with a strong moral compass and that you have the potential to be a great asset to us. I would trust Maddie with all of our lives, any member of my team would. She has helped every one of us turn our lives around at some point.” I could hear the conviction in Liberty’s voice and see it in her eyes as she spoke.

“I guess we all have a lot in common then,” I said.

She smiled and nodded in agreement as she gestured to the elevator. “Let’s get you girls to the recreation room and introduce everyone, and then we can help you get settled in. Do you two still want to share an apartment, or would you rather have your own? Most of the apartments in the building are two bedrooms and with just us living here we have ten apartments sitting empty right now.”

I‘d still like to share one if it’s okay with Twilight,” I said. “I don’t really like the thought of living in a place on my own.”

My friend grinned at me. “Good, because I feel the same way.”

As we rode the elevator up Blackout said, “I hope you don’t get upset with Madison but she informed us of your unusual situation Syryn. She figured that you’re going to need help getting documentation for your new identity. We have Silver Spirit and Blake working on that, hopefully they’ll have some good news for you.” When he saw the uncertainty on my face he was quick to try to reassure me. “None of us care who or what you were before. We all have pasts, and it’s who we are now that’s important.”

“In fact,” Liberty added, “We all decided that if you did join us that since we know so much about you and Twilight that it’s only fair that we tell you a little bit about ourselves too.”

We entered the recreation room and I took a moment to take in the large room. It had a fridge, a small kitchen, a pool table, and three large sofas in a U shape in front of what was quite possibly the largest TV I had ever seen. There were four people already seated and waiting for us and at Liberty’s encouragement Twilight and I took a seat on the one unoccupied sofa. while the two we came in with sat beside a boy who looked maybe fifteen years old on the center couch. What surprised me the most was that none of them were in costume. I was even more surprised when both Blackout and Liberty removed their own masks.

Liberty was very pretty under that mask and I noticed that she had freckles that had been hidden by her mask as she began to speak. “So, we’ve all been briefed on you and we all know one another so I guess I’ll start by introducing myself. My civilian name is Lisa Leeds. Ten years ago I enlisted in the army and their medical tests showed that I had dormant H Chromosomes. They placed me in a unit with a bunch of others like me and put us on the front lines in Afghanistan. Then they spiked our water rations with a drug to make us agitated hoping that they could trigger our H Chromosomes to create a unit of super soldiers. Only three of us survived the hell that ensued and had our powers activated, I was the only one who came out anywhere close to sane. I tried to end it all but being invulnerable that proved difficult. After I got discharged Maddie helped me to get my head straight and my life together.”

Blackout was the next to speak. He was an African American man with short cropped hair and a thin mustache, and his eyes seemed to hold so much sorrow. “I’m Nick Tanner and I used to work for a government organization that shall remain nameless. I didn’t much care who they were so long as there was a paycheck. They paid me to find other Hypers to work for them but I found out that they were experimenting on them when one escaped. We broke the rest out, but I was in pretty bad shape after and one of them brought me to Madison.”

The young man on the couch with them smiled at us. He had shaggy brown hair and green eyes and was dressed in a red t-shirt and jeans. “I’m not really a member of the team, but I make all the team’s gear, including the Ladybug. My name’s Blake Dixon, I’m fifteen and my dad is Senator Ronald Dixon. A couple years back my Tinker powers manifested when I was kidnapped. They were going to kill me as soon as they got the ransom money but Lisa came in and saved me. My dad bought this place and I fixed it up. When he deeded the place to Lisa my dad asked that I be allowed to stay here under a new identity so I’m not in the public eye so much. It’s great, I’m independent and I get to invent all sorts of cool gear for all of you.”

“I’m Jason Jackson and my codename is Phantasm,” a wiry blond man with bright blue eyes dressed in a plaid shirt and worn out jeans said. “I was the mutant who escaped from the government agency Nick mentioned. When the experiments started damn was I glad I had only told them about my illusion powers and not my intangibility. I helped Nick break the others out and Madison introduced us to Lisa when the mess was over with. Together we founded Aegis.”

The next to introduce himself was a Native American man with long black hair who wore a dark grey suit. “Hi girls, I’m Travis Truman but I’m better known as the Silver Spirit. Last year I found a strange device on my Grandfather’s ranch in New Mexico. The device turned out to be a nano-tech bodysuit with an on-board AI that I call Phil, he says hi too by the way. Phil used to belong to the sole surviving alien of the crash outside Roswell in the fifties. The alien was badly wounded and after he escaped the government’s detection he died when flying over the ranch. Phil’s permanently bonded to me but I’m okay with that because we get along and he allows me to fly, turn invisible, and fire energy blasts. He can also hack any computer on the planet and has a pretty durable armor mode. Madison helped solve a compatibility problem with the neural interface when I was mistakenly thought to be a Hyper and sent to her for treatment.”

The last person was almost as unusual looking as I was. She wore a green dress and had long silver hair, amber eyes, and her ears were pointed like my own. “I am Tessily,” she stated simply, “Eight centuries ago I fell victim to a betrayal most foul. I was a princess among my people, soon to be a queen, but my own sister turned me to stone and cursed me to remain a statue until touched by a human pure of heart. I was found in a cave in Ireland nearly a century ago and passed through the hands of various collectors until fortune smiled on me and I found myself in the home of a collector in this city. His young daughter touched me and broke the curse. This fellowship of heroes introduced me to Madison and she is attempting to discover what has become of my people.”

“Tessily is extremely agile, has better senses than a human, and is a crack shot with a bow,” Liberty explained. “She also has some small magical ability that she uses to cast enchantments on her arrows.”

Tessily nodded and turned to smile at me. “I believe that this telekinesis Madison spoke of, is very much like magic as it relies solely on your mind and willpower. I will teach you some meditation techniques that my people use to improve concentration and mental imagery. Before you master your gifts you must master your mind.”

“So I’ll be leaving your training in Tess’ hands Candice, while I’ll be helping Leslie to push her limits. Eventually we’ll all do group sessions with you both though to help with teamwork and strategy and such,” Liberty said to us. “Get used to calling us all by code names when we’re in uniform and by our civilian names when we’re not so there are no slip ups. Leslie, I’ll help you to choose an apartment while Blake and Travis commandeer Candice for a bit. Everyone else can get back to whatever they were doing before we arrived.”

With that everyone split up and Blake and Travis led me to the laboratory where Blake had some devices for me to look at. “When Dr. Park told me about your appearance I began to think about a more effective disguise for you that won’t take a lot of time to put on and remove. Sometimes you need to get into costume fast, and taking off a burdensome disguise would take far too long. So for that I created this.” He pointed to a silver heart pendant on a silver chain.

“It’s very pretty,” I said, “So what does it do?”

“Once you put it on, the pendant will be coded to your DNA. After that it will only work for you and whenever you wear it the pendant will generate a photon field along the surface of your skin that will cause it to appear a light colored flesh tone. I also programmed it so that your eyebrows should appear blonde and your eyes blue, and to warp the way light reflects off of the pointed tips of your ears to make them appear more normal. I call it the second skin.”

“Neat,” I said as I put it on and I gasped in a mix of pleasure and surprise as my skin suddenly appeared normal. “What’s that?” I asked pointing to something that looked like a flesh colored swimming cap with thousands of tiny black dots.

“I call that the hair net,” he said with a grin. “Like the second skin and most other devices I make for you it will be coded to your DNA so nobody else can use it. The hair net is worn over your own hair and when you put it on it will fasten securely to your head until you press the small mole behind the left ear to release it. Each of those dots is a tiny three dimensional image projector that will project a solid light hologram of a blonde human hair approximately two feet in length. It looks and feels just like human hair, is effected by gravity, and can be styled any way you like, though it is only light so don’t try to get it cut unless you want to freak out your hairdresser.”

I laughed at the picture that caused in my mind, as I piled my hair on top of my head and he helped me to put the device over my hair. “Don’t give me any ideas.” I could feel it tighten on my head and a moment later there was a curtain of blonde hair in my eyes. I brushed it aside and it did feel very real. “That should cover my disguise, so what’s this third device?” I asked pointing to a black belt with silver wires running through it and a black metal clasp. It also had some black pouches on it.

“It’s a utility belt,” the boy genius replied. “The pouches are for whatever you might need to have with you and are removable but the belt itself has another use completely aside from handy storage. Put it on and fasten the clasp.” I did as he asked and once I had it on he said, “The buckle is a specialized touch pad, give it a tap.”

Again I did as instructed and found myself hovering a foot above the ground. “Holy crap, I’m flying!”

He chuckled at that, “Technically you’re floating actually, it’s an anti-gravity device. Flying devices are feasible but it’s hard to control the direction and speed without a lot of additions that would make it impractical to wear. I’ve heard of only three other TKs category three or above. They can all fly, but it’s like ten times more taxing on them then it needs to be because, not only are they moving in whatever direction they want to go but they’re pushing against the earth’s gravity to keep themselves in the air as well. It’s like trying to hold a push up, the longer you do the more your arms, or in your case your brain, hurts and the more effort you need to use. If you don’t have to fight gravity then even a category one TK could fly. In your case you’re free to fly and have more power to spare for other things, like rescuing people. You’re the only category five TK I’ve ever heard of and having to use less power to fly will give you a lot of extra power to spare.”

“So I just tap the buckle whenever I want to turn it on or off?” I asked to be certain.

“Yup, I tried to make it as easy as possible for you,” he responded. “You need to be wearing it for it to work though, and it will only respond to your bio-electric signature now that you've used it.”

I tapped the buckle and dropped to the floor. “Thanks Blake, you’re amazing with this stuff. I can’t wait to use this properly.”

“No problem Candice,” he said with a grin. “I love a good challenge and the problem you presented really made me have to use my brain. Just let me know if you need anything else or when you have an idea what you want your costume to look like. I’m working on some great new materials.”

Travis chuckled beside me. “Now that Blake is done showing off your goodies and getting your disguise on I believe he has something for me as well before I drag you downtown to the office.”

Blake picked up an envelope from his desk and handed it to Travis. “Here you go, Dad had it sent by courier first thing this morning.”

“Great Blake, now we can do all this legally. Come on Candice we have someone to go see,” Travis said as he led me to the underground parking. We both climbed into his black Lexus and he drove me downtown to the Department of Justice building on Chambers Street. It was weird and a little exciting to be driving through the streets of New York City with a real live superhero, and it was getting me a little excited. By the time we arrived his suit had morphed into a black and silver armored costume that covered him completely from head to toe. “Just act casual,” he told me as we got off the elevator on the third floor and made our way down the hallway, “If anyone official-looking asks I’m here to protect you at Senator Dixon’s request.”

Finally we entered an office that said ‘Tara Miller: HPP’. A brunette woman with her hair tied back in a ponytail sat behind the desk looking bored. She immediately perked up as we entered though, and she stood to greet us. “Spirit! Senator Dixon mentioned that you’d be bringing me another case, please both of you have a seat.”

“Tara, this is Candice, Candice this is Tara,” Travis offered as we all sat down and he let his face plate dissolve. Then he explained to me as he pushed the envelope he carried over to the woman on the other side of the desk, “Tara is our contact with the Hyper Protection Program, an offshoot of the federal witness protection program. It’s for Hypers with no criminal records that face potential life threatening violence or need to change their identity for some reason. She helped create identities for both Blake and Tess and is one of the few non team members that knows our real identities.”

Tara nodded as she opened the envelope and read the signed document inside. “Yup this is an official request from Senator Dixon’s office, so I guess we can get down to business. I usually don’t get much work sent my way because we’re not exactly in the yellow pages and government/Hyper relations aren’t really that great right now. So why don’t you tell me why you need a new identity? You look pretty normal to me but sometimes even the most normal looking mutants are victims of violence and threats.” At my look of uncertainty she quickly assured me, “This is all kept completely confidential, only those of us in this room will be privy to anything you tell me. I’m a Hyper myself so I know how important it is to keep secrets.”

I told her everything, from my change in the hospital and my mom declaring me dead to the peculiarities of my appearance. “So you see since I wasn’t even female before this and I look completely different now. Nobody will ever believe I’m my old self.”

She shook her head sadly. “Sometimes our Archetypes decide to really throw us for a loop. Blake is a real genius, that’s a damn fine disguise. The first thing we’re going to do is change all records of Ken Graham to deceased since just changing that information would still make it possible for people to connect you to your old self. Then I will take some pictures of you with your disguise on and we’ll come up with an entirely new identity for Candice Lynn Graham, who was born and raised in New York City. To make things easier we’ll say that your parents died when you were young and you grew up in various foster homes. Shall we make Lisa your current foster parent like we did with Blake until you’re eighteen?”

“That’s probably a good idea,” I agreed. Then she took out a camera like the kind they use for drivers licence and passport photos and took several pictures of me. By the time she was finished I had a completely fabricated history including singing lessons, in opera of all things. She accessed all of the proper databases and created new birth and medical records, social security information, school records and a diploma, a driver’s licence, and even foster care records from a reputable foster care agency. I think the most shocking thing was that she managed to print out official looking copies of all the documents and identification while we waited and she drilled me on my fictitious past.

“Damn you’re quick, but isn’t changing the records like that a little illegal?” I asked. “I don’t want anyone getting in trouble on my account.”

Tara shook her head, “It’s all legal for me to do it so long as I have a signed and verified written request from some level of government or a government agency. Travis and Phil could have probably made the changes easily but it’s better to get it done through me by request so it’s legal.”

Travis nodded in agreement “Phil and I could do a lot of damage if we cared to but we just aren’t like that,” he assured me. “There is nothing on earth that can trace a hack by Phil even if they did discover the changes, which they wouldn’t, but I would still rather go through the proper channels.”

“Thanks a lot Tara, I was a little worried about having proper ID and stuff and this is a load off my mind,” I said as she handed me the packet with all my new documents and identification.

“It was my pleasure,” she replied with a smile, “You have enough on your plate right now without that to worry about as well, so I’m glad I was able to help. Oh and before I forget, here’s a check made out to your new identity for getting yourself settled into your new life. It’s not a lot, but it should help.”

“You’re giving me money too? Why?” I asked a bit confused as I looked at the check in my hand.

“It’s basically to cover start-up costs and expenses, witness protection does it for all people needing to start over, and so do we,” she explained.

The next few days were extremely busy. Lisa took us on a tour of New York City and helped us to get all the necessities we would need for ourselves and our apartment. The apartment came furnished but we still needed things like dishes, bedclothes, groceries, and more clothes than what we had. We both enjoyed the time with Lisa immensely, especially when going to tourist sites like the Statue of Liberty and Times Square. It was nice for Leslie to be able to be out in the sun and for me to be able to blend in somewhat. The disguise that Blake had invented was working flawlessly, I still did get looks but only because I was… so hot. As pretty as both Lisa and Leslie were, I still managed to take attention away from them.

It will probably kill any remaining male pride I have left to admit it, but I really enjoyed shopping as well. We had to make several trips but we got everything; we got a good start on our new wardrobes, what we needed for the apartment and enough groceries to last at least a week. It wasn’t so much the shopping and buying things that was fun but the company and the talk as we suggested different items of clothing for one another, asked opinions, and just generally enjoyed one another’s company. Leslie also bought a Hammond portable organ and a pair of laptops for us with music recording and editing software in preparation for our musical aspirations, which thrilled me to no end.

In the evenings we both donned simple black bodysuits, then Leslie became Twilight to have her workout sessions with Liberty, while I had my sessions as Syryn with Tessily. I think the elven warrior princess felt some sort of kinship to me because of my appearance and abilities. Not only did we spend hours in meditation and focusing exercises each night but she also took me to the gymnasium to begin teaching me the fighting style of her people. They didn’t rely on strength and force of arms to win fights but rather intelligence, agility, speed, and using the terrain to their advantage. My new form was in really good shape for a human and I had a lot of stamina so she thought that I would be able to take well to it. She was even teaching me to fight with a sword.

Tessily had had some other ideas as well. She had me working on the concentration and focusing exercises while holding my breath underwater. I had progressed to where I could hold my breath for fifty-seven minutes and I was already starting to get better control of my telekinetic abilities from the exercises with her. As long as I visualized what I wanted to do properly in my mind rather than trying to brute force things I was able to move several large objects at once or create a telekinetic bubble around myself to block attacks. She also had me practice singing while constantly switching my empathic voice on and off and the constant switching was really helping me develop my control over it. The idea was that through constant use I would become more at home using my abilities. She had me using that same theory to develop my skills with my telekinesis as well. She was hoping that soon it would be second nature to me if we kept it up and that I would be able to expand my abilities and control.

We had been in our new home for over two weeks and it was on a Saturday evening, although we were both worn out from training sessions earlier that afternoon,that we finally had time to practice and discuss forming a band. Leslie had just finished cutting my hair to a shorter style just above my shoulders, which would be easier to manage. “So what do you think we should do to find band members? Take an ad out in the newspaper?” I asked my friend and roommate as I used my telekinesis and the anti-gravity belt to move myself around the apartment. Tessily had suggested I do it whenever I was in the building.

She had taken a seat on the couch with her laptop in front of her and I casually floated in front of her and turned myself upside down and facing her. I wasn’t wearing my disguise because it gets itchy after a while and I was getting comfortable enough with myself that I just wanted to be me when we were at home. “I don’t know. The problem is we’re going to be spending a lot of time with these people if we form a band and I think they might find something like that a little unusual,” she said pointing at my current position with a sigh.

“True, if we ever make it big we’re likely going to be living with our band mates while on tour and right now we both need to practice with our powers so we’re not giving ourselves away. If we were looking for other Hypers it wouldn’t be a problem but…” I stopped speaking as her jaw dropped and she stared at me. “What?”

“You are brilliant Candy!” she exclaimed. “I’d hug you but that would be really awkward in the position you’re in right now.”

“You’ll have to explain, it might be all the blood rushing to my head but I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Turn yourself right side up then silly,” she laughed. As I did so and floated myself into a sitting position beside her on the couch she asked, “Why don’t we look for other mutants with a love of music?”

“News flash Leslie, most mutants don’t want other people to know they’re mutants,” I retorted, “Or have you forgotten that that is our current dilemma?”

“Didn’t Lisa suggest earlier that we start looking for other Hypers to be part of the project?” Leslie pointed out. Liberty had indeed suggested that. She had a meeting with us both after our afternoon training sessions to tell us how happy that she and Tessily were with our progress. In fact she was putting the entire team project in our hands and wanted me in particular to play a leading role, though she had suggested a possible place to start looking.

“Yeah she did, I don’t’ know why she’s put me in charge of that though, aren’t you her protégé?” I asked. “I thought that she’d be training you to lead this team like she does Aegis.”

“She is teaching me some leadership stuff but Dr. Park thinks you’ll make a good team leader. I’m too impulsive whereas you think things through and plan better than I do, and you’re really responsible. Now that you’re not so down about your looks and being a girl and you’re making progress with your powers, Lisa thinks you’ll do well at it. We talked a bit about it during our practice session since she didn’t want my feelings hurt and wanted to know my opinion on it,” she explained. “So let’s go talk to Blake like she suggested and maybe kill two birds with one stone.”

I shrugged and replied, “Okay, we’ll ask Blake, but I’ doubt he’ll be able to help much, I don’t think he gets out a lot.”

She nodded, got up, and headed toward the door and I followed her via telekinesis. Soon we were outside Blake’s apartment knocking on the door. Blake answered after a moment wearing his usual black t-shirt and jeans and grinned at us. “Hi Candy, hey Leslie, is there something I can help you with? Do you need me to build something?”

I chuckled as I shook my head. Blake was always eager to help us both since we arrived, probably because we were both attractive and only two years or so older than him. “Lisa suggested we talk to you about finding places that young Hypers gather locally. We’re looking to recruit for the project and we were also thinking that we wouldn’t have to hide as much from our future band if they were mutants too.”

He thought about it for a moment and then seemed to have an idea. “You need to talk to Starbright.”

“Starbright?” I repeated questioningly.

“I first met her on a Hyper discussion forum online,” the inventor explained. “She knows a lot of local mutants since she’s the social type and a bit of a party girl. She’s also as crazy about music as the two of you are. I’ve lost count of how many music threads she has started on the forum. She plays bass and has light-based powers but I couldn’t tell you for sure if she’s in a band or not. She has mentioned that she does get together with some of the local mutants who love music to jam sometimes. So you might want to meet her just because of your common interest.”

“That sounds interesting,” I agreed. “Do you know where we can find her?”

“Tonight she’ll probably be at the freak show. It’s a weekly party for Hypers only, and the location changes every week,” he supplied casually.

My eyebrows rose. “I’m not sure if I like the idea of going to an all mutant party, especially one with a name like ‘the freak show’. How do you even know about something like that?”

He laughed at that. “What did you think I don’t get out much? I’ve gone before, so I’m on the email list that gives the party’s weekly location and time. It’s not as bad as it sounds, it’s just a party with music and dancing where mutants can be themselves and show off a little if they like. I was thinking about going tonight if you must know. If you want I can bring you both as guests and help you find Starbright.”

“Is there anything we need to know about this party?” Leslie asked.

“There are some rules,” Blake advised. “”The first rule is never talk about the freak show to non-Hypers. Rule two is no real names, code names only, so you’ll need to call me Prodigy while we’re there. Rule three is no fighting and/or destruction of property inside the party location. Oh and the doorman will use a scanner to confirm you’re a Hyper and take your email addresses to add you to the mailing list. I advise using a dummy email address that you can access but that is not connected to your civilian identity in any way.”

An hour later Leslie and I had both created dummy email accounts that were easy to remember, and were dressed for a party. Leslie was wearing a red silk sleeveless halter top with short black skirt and black heels. She had somehow convinced me to wear a black strapless mini dress with my black knee high leather boots and had painted my nails pink to match my hair. She also suggested that I wear my spare anti-gravity belt as an accessory since Blake had designed it to look like a girl’s belt to be worn with a variety of outfits. I was wearing the second skin pendant and the hair net as well, but as soon as we got to the party those would be going into my purse.

We returned to Blake’s apartment and he grinned as he opened the door and saw us. “There’s going to be some jealous guys there when they see me show up with the two of you.”

“So how are we getting there anyway?” I asked. “Leslie and I don’t have a car and I don’t know if I would want to take the Ladybug for something like this. Aegis might need it tonight if something comes up.”

“The party tonight is being held at an empty warehouse on the waterfront, and don’t worry about the transportation because I have just the thing. I’ve wanted to take them for a test drive anyway,” he answered with a teasing grin.

“You’re not going to tell us anything until we see whatever they are first hand, are you?” I replied with a shake of my head. I had found that Blake liked to keep his inventions quiet until he was ready for a dramatic reveal.

“Would I do that?” he responded with a chuckle as he closed his apartment door. Then he led us downstairs to the garage where, in addition to everyone’s civilian vehicles, there was a large tarp covering something. He guided us over to the tarp and pulled it away to reveal absolutely nothing. I was in the middle of giving him a dirty look when he said, “Disengage cloak,” and six vehicles that looked like a cross between motorbikes and jet skis suddenly came into view. “I call them Sky-bikes,” he said with another of his grins.

“I assume the name means that they fly,” Leslie responded. “How do they work?”

I was looking one of them over and I saw that the setup of the hand levers and foot pedals was basically the same as a motorbike. It also had a panel with a GPS system, power gauge, speedometer, and what looked like an altimeter. At Leslie’s question I turned to see how Blake would reply. “The right foot pedal controls the altitude and the left halts the main booster engine and kicks in maneuvering thrusters to stop you in a hover. As for the hand levers, the right increases your speed and the left will slowly ease off on the speed. To turn it’s just like riding a motorbike, turn the handlebars and lean into the turn and it will tilt the forward altitude thruster to turn the bike. There is a safety belt so that you don’t fall off and the cloaking device and the engine are both voice activated and will only respond to the user whose voice has been programmed into it.”

After re-programming the black and hot pink sky-bike with my voice and the black and silver one with Leslie’s he gave us a list of the basic voice commands, which we went over a few times to make sure we had them before buckling ourselves into the seats, making sure we were cloaked, and leaving the garage. As soon as we were free of the garage we took to the air and set the coordinates for the autopilot as we had been instructed. I had been worried about using that feature but Blake assured us that the bikes had sonar emitters as part of an impact prevention system as well as a pilot ejection system if somehow a crash was likely to occur. The helmets connected to each bike would relay voice commands, allow us to see through the cloak, let us communicate with one another, and extend the cloak to our bodies as well.

I missed my old motorbike since we had come to New York but this was just as good if not better. There was something thrilling about racing through the night sky, even if I wasn’t currently in control of our course. Soon the bike came to a hover and I slowly eased off on the altitude pedal to land on top of the warehouse. Then I unfastened my safety belt, removed my helmet, and stepped off the bike saying, “Engine off.” Blake was already standing there waiting and a moment later Leslie emerged from seemingly nothing ten feet away.

Remembering that we were only to use code names from this point on I said, “Prodigy, you are awesome.”

“I thought you might like them,” he said, looking very pleased with himself. “You can take your disguise off now, and I’ll need you to fly Twilight and I down to the ground so we can get inside.”

“What, you don’t have rocket boots or something?” I teased as I reached behind my left ear to disengage the hair net and then placed both it and my pendant in my purse. Twilight and I followed him to the edge of the roof and I turned on my anti-gravity belt. “Okay, let’s get down there and party.” I reached out with my mind to lift Twilight off of the roof and into the air with me and when I was sure I had a good telekinetic grip on her I reached out to lift Prodigy as well. Then, as I brought us all down to ground level I silently thanked Tessily for working me so hard on the concentration techniques.

I could feel when the feet of both my companions touched the ground and let go of them both, turned off the anti-gravity belt, and eased myself to the ground as well. “You’re really improving,” Twilight said as she wrapped me in a hug, “All that hard work is really paying off.”

“Yeah,” I admitted as we followed Prodigy, “Tessily has been a great teacher.”

There was a large muscular man leaning against the wall and he touched some sort of wand like device with a display screen and keypad at the other end to each of our hands. A solid green light appeared when it touched Prodigy, while for us the green light flashed. “Welcome back Prodigy,” he said, “Your guests both check out as having H Chromosomes so we’ll get them registered and you can all go in.” He scanned me again but this time he asked my codename and email address which he entered via the tiny keyboard. Once the process had been repeated with Twilight he smiled at us both, “I’m Guardian, welcome to the freak show ladies and have fun.”

Inside the music was loud, people were dancing, and there was the most amazing light show I had ever seen. Colored globes of lights danced in the air while light blue colored lasers erupted from the center of the dance floor. Whenever a laser struck a globe it would explode into a display of multicolored fireworks and more colored globes would appear from the symphony of light. “Wow,” I said.

Prodigy chuckled beside me, “Well at least we know Starbright is here.”

“A person is making all of that?” Twilight asked with a wide-eyed look on her face.

“Yeah, Starbright can create various different light constructs, fireworks, and she can probably do a lot more if she put her mind to it,” he replied. “I’ve only ever met two category five mutants, one is standing beside me and the other is putting on that light show. That’s one of the reasons I suggested her. Even if she’s already in a band she might be a good candidate for the project, and she knows people.”

We made our way over to the dance floor, both of us dancing with Prodigy while slowly making our way toward the source of the light show. There were some envious glances directed toward the inventor while lustful or jealous ones were focused on Twilight and me. We mostly ignored them and just enjoyed ourselves for the moment. That is we were enjoying ourselves, until two guys shoved Prodigy aside and cut in. One was over seven feet tall and had dark blue skin and hair with spikes jutting out from his back, shoulders and arms. The other was a skinny Latino with gold eyes. “Hey there gorgeous,” said the big blue one, “I haven’t seen you here before, I’m Ogre and you look like you were made for me. My friend here is Scanner.”

“No you haven’t, and I’m not interested and neither is my friend,” I practically growled as I looked to make sure Prodigy was okay. He was getting up and gave me a thumbs up as he moved toward a pretty Asian girl in a white mini dress.

“Do you have any idea who you’re talking to? I’m more than a match for any mutant here. I have category three strength and invulnerability. So if you’re trolling for guys I’m the best catch here,” the behemoth said grabbing my wrist. “Scanner, see what these two do besides look pretty.”

Scanner reached out to grab Twilight’s hand and swallowed, “Ogre this girl is stronger than you are and she doesn’t have your invulnerability but she does have category two regeneration, category three speed, and some other ability.” He backed away from Twilight and touched me and his eyes went wide. “Uhm… Ogre you might want to let the girl go, she’s a psychic and one of her abilities is a category five.” There were several sharp intakes of breath from those who had gathered to watch what was going on.

“Let go of me before I get really mad,” I said to the pair very slowly as I held back my empathy. The blue behemoth didn’t move fast enough for my liking so I added, “You have to the count of five. One…” I telekinetically pried his baby finger off my wrist. “Two…” I began to do the same with the next finger when he quickly removed his hand. “Get lost and leave us alone before my friend and I decide to take you both outside and see how tough you really aren’t.”

The two made tracks through the crowd and there was a smattering of applause as Twilight and I made our way over to join Prodigy. He and the girl he was with led us back to the entrance so we could talk without having to shout over the music. Once we were outside Prodigy grinned at me. “Nice going Syryn, I knew you could handle that jerk.” Then he gestured to the girl in the white dress who now that I got a closer look was probably Japanese and in her late teens or very early twenties. “Girls this is Starbright. Star, this is Syryn and Twilight.”

I smiled at the girl and said, “Starlight, Starbright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have a word with you tonight.”

“So I’ve heard,” she said with a big smile. “Prodigy tells me that you’re into music.”

I nodded. “I was in a band before I activated and now Twilight and I are looking to form a new one. Preferably with other mutants so we don’t have to hide who we are from them.”

“Boy do I know how that feels,” the light user replied. “What instruments do you play and what style of music are you thinking of?”

“I play the organ and keyboard,” Twilight put in.

“I’m a singer,” I added, “I’ve been training since I was a kid. We’re thinking of doing a mix of rock, Gothic rock, alternative rock, and electronic rock. I figure that we’ll need a backup singer, a bass player, a guitarist, and a drummer.”

She looked pensive for a moment before nodding. “I do know some people, including myself, who would be down with that. Do you want to do auditions? Or are you willing to trust my judgement?”

I shrugged as I replied, “Prodigy says you know the local mutants who are into music better than anyone. If he trusts your judgement so do I, though I do prefer people who aren’t glory hounds or assholes. I had enough of the one in my last band. I want a band that’s going to be able to stand one another’s company on and off the stage.”

“I can understand that,” she agreed. “I can play bass and sing backup and for drums I would suggest Decibel, he’s a good guy and a good drummer. And if at all possible we have to have Riff for the guitar. He has an ear for music and has studied guitar, bass, piano, violin, and drums. He’s a fun guy too especially with his talent.”

“Do you know anything about their mutant abilities?” I asked.

She nodded. “Decibel’s is pretty self-explanatory, mostly he amplifies sounds but he also has a sonar sense and can emit a high pitched sonic shout. You better cover your ears when he does that last one though. Riff has a personal force field and he mimics any sound or voice he has heard before and can mix and match multiple sounds at once. The guy is a walking band by himself.”

“I would like to meet them both and then maybe we can have a jam session to make sure we can work well together. It would be nice to be able to get to know one another and make sure there’s no personality conflicts too,” I suggested.

“We’ll need to sort out a place to practice,” she pointed out. “But if you want to meet them both I could text them. They’re both here and I could have them come out to join us.” Twilight and I both nodded eagerly so she took her cell phone out of her purse and began rapid texting. About five minutes later a young African American man around the same age as Starbright with short cropped black hair and brown eyes left the warehouse and headed toward us. He was followed by a taller Caucasian guy of about the same age with long brown hair and brown eyes and both were dressed in a t-shirt and jeans combo.

The first of the pair walked up to Starbright and kissed her on the cheek and said, “I was wondering where you disappeared to sweetie. So what is the big news you just had to tell us now?”

The second saw me and laughed, “This should be interesting. The blue girl is the one who sent Ogre running off.” He smiled at me and added, “That was cool, Ogre is a jerk and a bully and he deserved it. You got him to back off and nobody got hurt, I like your style. I’m Riff by the way.”

“I’m… ummm… ahhh… Syryn,” I replied stumbling over the words. Why was I having such trouble speaking? Just because he was cute doesn’t mean I have to yammer like an idiot. Wait did I just think he was cute? My cheeks turned lavender and I looked at my suddenly fascinating boots.

“Now that you’ve met Riff, this is my boyfriend Decibel,” Starbright provided. “Guys, this is Prodigy and the girls are Syryn and Twilight. Syryn and Twilight are looking to form a band.”

“We were… ummm… thinking that it would be easier to just find other mutants who loved music to join us rather than having to hide my appearance and our powers and activities from people we would likely be spending a lot of time with,” I clarified, glad of the change in topic.

“Yeah I bet it’s not easy being blue, and hiding powers can be a pain, especially when you don’t have good control of them,” Riff agreed. “I would have joined a band by now but my powers would make spending that much time with normal people difficult. I have a personal force field that Scanner rated at nearly category four but I have trouble turning it on and off and it’s not like powers come with an instruction manual. When it’s on I get this green glow around me and it’s pretty noticeable. I can control my other ability really well but it has very little practical use aside from pranks. Did I hear Scanner say you’re a category five?”

I nodded slowly. “Yeah that’s what Blackout tells me but that’s only my telekinesis, I’m a projective empath too but it’s not as powerful and I need to be speaking or singing to use it.”

Starbright gave me a sympathetic look, “Having people know you’re a Category five really sucks. They expect you to be the next Paragon or something. We didn’t ask for it, we don’t want to have people watching us wondering when we’re going to do something amazing, and we have to live with knowing that we have way too much power to control easily and that people around us can still get hurt if we lose control.”

I nodded sadly in agreement. “When I was activated in the hospital I sent my mom flying across the room. I’ll never forget the look of horror on her face. She called me an abomination and I haven’t seen her since, I’m dead to her now. She was the only family I had.” I almost let control of my empathy slip but I caught myself as Twilight put her arm around me.

Starbright winced, and shook her head as she looked at the ground. “Yeah that’s pretty harsh. I lost most of my family when I was activated too. I was fourteen and we were holding a New Year’s Eve party. My older brother had just been accepted to Harvard and my parents had to brag about it to all their business associates and guests that we were introduced to. I was introduced as an afterthought. I just wanted to enjoy the fireworks and the dancing. I was so tired of being dragged along and living in my brother’s shadow. My powers came in a big way; the flash of light permanently blinded over twenty people who happened to be looking at me at the time, including my brother. They sent me away to live with my grandparents in Japan and I didn’t come back to the states until I graduated two years ago.”

And I thought I had it bad. “They shipped you off to Japan? That must have been rough.”

The Japanese Hyper just shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad; it helped me get more in touch with my roots and the traditions of my people. I actually really enjoyed myself there and my grandparents weren’t intimidated by my powers. I probably would have been sent to live with my aunt and uncle in Canada if they were still alive but they died in a car accident ten years ago. They had a daughter named Sakura who would be about fourteen or fifteen by now.”

“She died in the accident too? It’s always so sad when kids die young,” Twilight said with a sigh.

“Actually nobody is really sure what happened with her,” she replied with a sigh. “The family wasn’t told that she died and she sort of disappeared into the system before they could send anyone to claim her. It’s a shame because if she was living with my grandparents I would have had a little sister of sorts. If I could afford it I’d go up there and try to find out what happened with her. She’s still a kid if she’s alive, and she should have family to protect her. Maybe she got lucky and was adopted, I’d like to find out though.”

Decibel gave her a reassuring hug and a kiss and as he pulled away I saw his eyes widen. “Hey guys, us getting to know one another is great and all but I think we might need to table this discussion for later.” I turned to see him pointing to the entrance of the warehouse where the two idiots I had scared off earlier were standing, and it would seem that they had brought along some friends.

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Author's Note: Here's chapter 3 of Syryn's Song. Thank you as always to all my readers for the comments, kudos, and thinking that my work is worth reading. Also thanks to the Big Closet team who work tirelessly to give us all a wonderfully supportive venue to read and post TG fiction ~Amethyst.
 

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Chapter 3: RevolveR

Including Ogre and Scanner there were eight of them in total. Ogre was pointing me out to a tall blond guy dressed all in black with a sword while the others seemed to be watching us and waiting. Aside from those three there was a short guy, barely five feet, with red skin and bat-like wings, a girl in a black bodysuit and hooded cloak, another girl with red hair in a red and gold flame inspired costume, and a guy and a girl who looked similar enough to be twins in matching red and black costumes. “Looks like we have company,” I muttered. “I wonder what it is they want.”

“Probably nothing good,” Riff answered me. “Those jerks are no better than a street gang with super powers. They call themselves H8 and they think they’re better than humans, and most other mutants, and that they should just be able to take whatever they want.”

“That explains Ogre’s attitude on the dance floor,” I agreed. “You guys seem familiar with them; do you think they’re looking for a fight?”

“It’s pretty likely, they would love to brag about taking down two Cat fives, though with them pointing you out to Ronin it’s possible they want to see if you’ll join them. They pulled that with me once they figured out I was Category five,” Starbright put in.

“I guess we better be ready to fight back then. What can you tell us about them?” I asked the Japanese light wielder.

“Ronin has Cat three speed and agility and likes to think of himself as some sort of samurai, frankly that’s insulting to my people,” she grumbled before moving on to tell me about the others. Ogre is big dumb and strong and his skin can deflect small arms fire, from what I’ve heard. Scanner is useless and not much of a threat. The red one is Imp, all he really does is fly and annoy people. The twins are called Micro and Macro she can shrink and give the mass she loses to her brother causing him to get bigger and stronger. I know from experience that they both need to be awake for their powers to work though so if we knock one or both of them out they aren’t a big problem.”

I nodded as I started trying to come up with a plan in case things got ugly. “What about the last two girls?” I asked.

“The one in black is called Tendril and she has some sort of black energy tentacles. The other is Pyra and she’s probably the biggest threat aside from Ogre and Ronin. She can fly and I heard Scanner say once that she’s a Category four pyromorph and pyrokinetic.”

“Eight against six, I don’t know if I like those odds, since you and I are the only ones with much in the way of offensive abilities,” Twilight said with a frown.

“Actually it’s eight against five,” I replied. “Blake, if a fight starts go find some cover while we deal with it. Twilight I want you to take down Ogre first, hit and run tactics, keep him off balance. Riff, if you can get your forcefield to work, keep Ronin occupied while I keep Pyra entertained. Star and Decibel, when I give the signal I want you to open up with a sonic shout and a flash bang; so everyone else be ready to close your eyes, cover your ears, and hit them hard and fast. Everything else we’ll have to play by ear.”

Starbright nodded. “Sounds like a plan, what’s the signal though?”

“You’ll all know it when you see it,“ I replied as I noticed the group walking toward us. Either they were tired of waiting for us or they wanted to make an offer like Starbright thought. Since they weren’t attacking outright I was going to assume that it was the latter.

Ronin walked right up to me while his cronies followed a few steps behind. “Ogre tells me you refused his invitation to dance, which was pretty rude of you.”

“It wasn’t exactly an invitation,” I retorted, “And he’s not really my type. I don’t go for the whole Neanderthal thing; we’re more evolved than that.”

“Yes we are, aren’t we,” he responded with a grin. “Much more evolved than normal humans. They’re a dead end, it’s survival of the fittest and we are so much more fit than they are. Why should we allow ourselves to be treated as second class citizens when we’re the ones who should rule them? You know they’ll never accept you looking like you do, so join us and you can take whatever you want.”

“I don’t take what I want, I earn it. If you think we’re better than regular humans, maybe you should prove it by acting better. Just taking what you want without earning it makes you a common criminal.”

“We have earned it, simply by being what we are,” he said with a frown. Apparently something I said had cracked his composure a bit. “You could be powerful with untold riches and whatever else you want.”

“I’m already powerful, that’s exactly why you want me,” I stated. “You wanted Star for the same reason. Not everyone is like you though. We don’t want riches, we don’t want power and you can’t buy or steal what we want most.“

I could see shock and anger warring for dominance over his face. “I’m giving you one last chance you blue bitch, if you’re not one of us, then you’re our enemy.” The others of the group started moving menacingly forward,

I frowned at that, and I gave him a real good look at my middle finger as I said, “Bite me.” Then I shielded my ears telekinetically, closed my eyes tight and mentally prepared myself for a fight. I could see the flash even with my eyes closed and my ears were ringing even though they were shielded. Once the flash was over I opened my eyes to see Twilight disappear into the shadows behind us and reappear from Ogre’s shadow to deliver a punch that staggered the large mutant and made a sound like a thunderclap.

Twilight wasn’t the only one who leaped right into action. There was a green glow around Riff that seemed to flicker for a moment before it became steady and he tackled Ronin. Starbright and Decibel both headed right for the twins and I could have sworn Star was smiling in satisfaction when she decked Micro. I quickly turned on my anti-gravity belt and started gathering small stones off the ground with my telekinesis to pelt Pyra with. She turned to glare at me as she rubbed a spot on her forehead that I had hit, so I assumed that her vision was clearing as she screamed, “You bitch! I’m going to burn you to a crisp!” Her whole body erupted into flames.

“You’ll have to catch me first,’ I said with a reckless grin as I flew off. Antagonizing a human flamethrower probably wasn’t the best idea of my life, but I needed to keep her from hurting the others. I could use a telekinetic shield to keep the flames off me, but even Twilight with her burn resistant skin and healing might have a problem if Pyra decided to unload on her. She took the bait and flew right after me.

I wove through the air, narrowly avoiding her attacks and keeping up a shield to defend myself against what I couldn’t avoid. I wasn’t sure how long I could keep this up though, it was taking a lot of concentration to fly at a decent speed, maneuver, and keep up the shield. She was also fast, and while the shield was keeping the flames that she was hurling from touching me, I was starting to get pretty hot and that could be a distraction. My biggest advantage was that in the air she was all speed. She couldn’t seem to turn worth a damn at those speeds, and her focus was on me alone. I needed to use my surroundings to my advantage, but how? We were up in the air between the harbor and where the main fight was happening. The others had their hands full, though Twilight seemed to be more than holding her own against ogre.

Then I grinned as an idea struck me, I just hoped my best friend would catch on quick enough to make it work. I moved down to ground level and made straight for the pair with Pyra hot on my heels, putting everything I could spare into my flight as I shouted, “Twilight! Batter up!” She turned to look at me approaching and then she seemed to catch my meaning as she caught a punch by Ogre and used his momentum to pull him off his feet and swing him around. I quickly focused on going straight up before I reached them, but Pyra, who didn’t have my maneuverability, couldn’t turn and flew right into the trap as Twilight used Ogre to knock her deep into center field.

I could smell burnt skin and Ogre was screaming, but I didn’t have time to wait around as I tore after Pyra. She was just where I was hoping she would be, above water, and while she was still trying to catch her bearings I delivered a telekinetic blow that knocked her straight down into the drink. If my theory was right, she superheated the air around her to fly and if she was in the water she wouldn’t be able to generate the flames to do that. I dove in and smiled at her, “Nothing like a nice cold drink when you’re feeling hot is there?”

“You fucking bitch! If I can’t burn you I’ll fucking drown you!” she screamed grabbing me by the shoulders.

“You’re welcome to try, but you’ll be at it a while,” I replied coolly. “I can hold my breath a long time.” I didn’t say anything else as I hit her with a telekinetic blow hard enough to knock her out and flew us both back toward the battle, where I unceremoniously dumped her on the ground on the shore as I assessed the situation from a distance. It would seem that my idea had worked for both of us since Twilight had left an unconscious Ogre behind to see who needed help. Neither Ronin nor his sword could seem to harm Riff but he also was too fast and agile for Riff to do much more than keep taking blows. She was about to go assist him when suddenly Guardian appeared out of thin air and with a single touch Ronin fell to the ground unmoving.

The twins were down and Decibel was all over Scanner. I could hear the blows from where I was but I figured that that was due to Decibel increasing the volume of the impacts rather than any great strength, Imp was trying to attack Starbright but he seemed to be fighting six of her and wasn’t sure which one was the real one. Again Guardian appeared; taking both Imp and Scanner out of the fight as well and I quickly looked around wondering where the other one went. Did she run off? I got my answer when I felt cold tendrils start to wrap around my legs, arms, and throat. “Let’s see you fly your way out of this,” a voice from behind me spoke.

I couldn’t see her to attack her and the tentacles seemed to be holding me in place and keeping me out of striking distance. I couldn’t seem to affect the tentacles with my telekinesis either and we were too far away from the others for my liking. I barely had time to take a breath and I was worried that it wasn’t going to matter much if she managed to crush the air out of my throat as my vision started to get blurry. I began to panic. Crush… my throat… No! I would not lose everything a second time. I lashed out with my powers, a concussive wave of telekinetic energy that sent everything not bolted down within thirty feet of me flying, including Pyra and my new assailant. I heard a shriek as the tentacles vanished and once the dust settled I turned around to face Tendril.

She had been launched a good forty feet away and was getting unsteadily to her feet as I floated toward her. My attention was so focused on Tendril that wasn’t even consciously aware of the cyclone of sand, large stones, broken glass, litter, and various other junk forming and growing around me. Nearby lamp posts began to shudder as the telekinetic storm intensified and I glared at her. She looked terrified and I could see that there were some massive bruises already beginning to form on her face as I got closer. “No… please… don’t kill me.” she tried to back away from me and tripped over her own feet.

Kill her? What the hell? Then I realized just what was happening around me and that I must look pretty damn frightening at the moment. But I would never kill someone with my powers; at least I wouldn’t when I was in control of them. I had just lost that control though, and it took me several minutes before I was able to focus my thoughts and figure out what exactly was happening let alone get control of whatever it was I was doing. My telekinetic tantrum had been growing more powerful by the second and I knew that I was only just touching the surface. I reached out with my mind trying to still each object but there was just too much of it, I couldn’t focus on all of it.

What do I do?! I was starting to panic again and even in my current state of mind I knew that was not going to help matters. My thoughts were as wild and uncontrolled as whatever it was I was doing. I tried to shake it all off and focus on one of the techniques Tessily had taught me for meditation and mental control, carefully calming my thoughts and emotions, putting them in order, and taking deep breaths to steady myself. As I began to calm so too did the storm and before long everything that had been swirling around me dropped harmlessly to the ground. So far in my sessions with Tessily I had been holding back, uncertain of how strong I was and not wanting to hurt her, but if this was any indication of what it would be like when I lose control then I knew I needed to work twice as hard to master both my mind and my powers. Tendril was scared of me… my powers, and now so was I. I didn’t want this to ever happen again.

Tendril managed to get to her feet and ran for all she was worth. I stood there for a moment alone before Guardian’s deep voice spoke from behind me. “Do you have this under control or do I have to paralyze someone else?”

It was pretty evident that he wasn’t talking about Tendril and I managed to give him a nod. “I’m good. Thanks for your help with the others.”

“It’s what I’m here for,” he replied. “I would have helped sooner but some friends of these ones were causing trouble inside. Prodigy came and told me what was happening, but you and your friends had it mostly handled when I got out here. That was a pretty impressive display of power, are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m okay now,” I replied as he walked with me back to the others. “I just panicked a bit and lost control. You were pretty impressive yourself. What exactly was it you did?”

“I’m a teleporter and I can temporarily paralyze people by touch, it comes in handy in this line of work,” he said.

“I would imagine it does,” I agreed as we joined the others. “Why did you believe Prodigy? We could have been the ones who started it, and it’s not like you were here to witness it.”

“It could have something to do with the fact that I’m the one who pays him,” Prodigy answered for him.

“Well I guess that does make sense… wait, what?” I replied as I turned to stare at my young inventor friend.

“Last year I was talking to some friends and we were discussing how stressful being a mutant is with all the physical changes, powers, and our lives turning upside down,” he began to explain. “Mutant youths need a way to let off some steam more than just about anyone else on the planet, but more importantly they need to be able to do it in an environment where it’s okay to be a Hyper, where we can all be ourselves and be accepted for that. So I decided to do something about it and I thought what better way to let off steam than by going to a party, one that celebrates our differences and only other mutants are invited.”

“You’re the one who started the Freak Show?” Starbright asked, staring at him.

He nodded with a big grin pasted on his face, “Who better than me? I’m the last person anyone would suspect of putting something like this together, I have tons of money to throw around, and I could invent all the gear to set up the weekly parties and make sure that only mutants could get in. I needed a public face though, to book locations, set up the equipment, and make sure the party doesn’t get out of hand. Guardian used to be my bodyguard until I moved to our current safe house, and I knew I could trust him to handle anything that needed to be done, so I hired him to do the security and the legwork that I couldn’t.”

“I’ve moved all of the trouble-makers onto the no entry list Sir,” Guardian advised. “They won’t be showing up again.”

“Thanks Guardian,” Prodigy replied before turning back to us. “Please don’t let anyone know about my connection to this. The Freak Show works better if nobody knows who’s really in charge and the local mutants need this.”

“Tell me about it,” Riff agreed. “This is the only time all week that I can be myself without worrying if my force field is suddenly going to activate in public and out me. Starting up a band with other mutants sounds like a good idea to though, I can do what I love with no pressure to try and keep my powers hidden. I hate not having any control, this probably won’t turn off until I sleep tonight,” he added, indicating the green glow around him.

I blushed a deep lavender color. “I’m… ummm… learning control, but I’m obviously not as in control of my powers as I thought, I’ll have to train harder.”

“What happened there?” Twilight asked in concern. “I’ve never seen you use so much power before.”

“Tendril was crushing my throat and it reminded me of what happened before I activated, when my voice was taken from me. I kind of lost it. I didn’t even realize what I was doing until I saw how terrified she was of me,” I replied, looking down at my feet in shame.

“It’s okay, we all lose control sometimes,” Starbright said as she hugged me. “I know what it feels like to worry about losing control and hurting someone. I’ve always been afraid to explore the full scope of my power so I mostly just keep to my little light shows and party tricks. I think the important thing isn’t that you lost control, but that you realized that and stopped yourself.”

“I think Tess would be proud of you Syryn,” Prodigy put in. “And Guardian may have come in to finish things but the five of you worked pretty well together and held your own despite being outnumbered, you made a good team.”

The way that he stressed the last word I was suddenly reminded of the other reason we had come to the Freak Show. I took a deep breath as I looked over the three other mutants we were considering for our band. We had worked well together, they seemed to be good people, and they all seemed to need training as bad as Twilight and I did. Also Prodigy seemed to think they might be a good fit. Finally I said, “Speaking of teams, I have an offer to make that I think might be very good for all of you.”

We spent a lot of time over the next few weeks getting to know Starbright, Riff, and Decibel better. Despite the fact that they had only known us a couple days, they helped me to plan a surprise party for Twilight’s birthday. Overall the three of them were all good people, with whom Twilight and I didn’t have any major personality conflicts with, and who we enjoyed spending time with. They fit so well into the band. Liberty and the other members of Aegis thought that they were good choices for our team as well. After two weeks they were all accepted into the program and moved into the apartment complex so we could all be closer for band practices, and so they’d have a nearby place to crash once Blackout was done putting them through an exhausting day of combat training.

After my loss of control outside the Freak Show, I asked Tessily to intensify my own training so we were spending even more time together for those two and a half weeks, while Blackout was seeing what the others had to work with. I was determined to never let something like that happen again and poured everything I could into mastering the mind focusing and meditation techniques in the pool. She kept adding more and heavier objects for me to manipulate at once and she wasn’t just having me hold them in place but move them in various ways; spinning some, hurling others at targets, and moving others in an orbit around me in an attempt to create a shrapnel shield, as I jokingly called it. Sometimes she had me attempting all three at once.

I was content to focus on the mental stuff, but Tessily was pushing me harder on physical combat too. I was adjusting well to the fighting style of her people with the odd form of hand to hand combat and using the terrain to my advantage. She said that with my abilities teaching me to use a bow would be redundant, but she did start training me a lot harder on the sword form her people used. Eventually at the end of those two weeks while we were going at it with practice swords I asked why. The Sidhe princess said, “There may come a time when you cannot rely on your powers or you may face someone of equal power who carries a weapon. Having a weapon of your own and being proficient in the use of it gives you an advantage you would not otherwise have.”

“I guess I can see that, but I’m not so sure that I like the idea of cutting someone in half,” I replied as I barely parried her thrust.

She smiled at me, “Sometimes it is hard to not think of you as one of my own kin. My people wish only to preserve life and we only ever take it when there is no other recourse. A true warrior fights to defend the weak and will strive to disarm and disable the enemy rather than slicing them open. I regret that there are no proper smiths in this era to forge a weapon you would be deserving of. Perhaps young Blake could help with that? I shall ask him. Let us stop for the day, I know you are eager to get cleaned up and sing with the others and I am reminded that I have other matters I must ask young Blake about.”

I was curious, but I figured that whatever it was it probably wasn’t any of my business, so I went back up to my apartment and hit the showers. Once I was clean again and had shaved the pink stubble from my legs and underarms I let Leslie have the shower, patted myself dry, and stepped into a skimpy pink satin bathrobe. The others were probably done their own training sessions by now and I wanted us to practice In the Shadows and the new song we were working on. We all played pretty well together, but we were still getting a feel for one another and the mix of music styles we wanted to devote our time to. Red Prophesy had been hard rock and going from that to gothic rock, alternative, and electric rock was a bit of a change for me. I was eager to do it, but I still had to figure out how to best use the nuances of my new voice for those styles.

I thought briefly about my new friends and band mates as I started to dry my hair. Decibel, or John Edwards, was mostly a quiet guy, possibly because he was nervous about unintentionally doing something with his powers. He was starting to relax more and more around us though and I quickly discovered that he was intelligent, loyal, and he tended to put his friends needs before his own. He was the kind of guy a person could be lucky to call a friend.

They say opposites attract and with him and Starbright it couldn’t be truer. Where John was quiet and introverted, Mai Tanaka was an extreme extrovert. She loved to party and was very social, always happily chattering with me and Twilight. She was impulsive and, like her powers, she was flashy and I was worried about that being a problem, but she was extremely professional with anything band or team related and a lot of fun in all other aspects, though she did have tendency to play practical jokes.

Then there was Riff. Ian Smith was a great guy and as I got to know him I thought that in my past life we could have been best friends. There were times that I thought he might want to get to know me as more than a friend but he would quickly pull away and it was confusing the hell out of me. It was probably just wishful thinking on my part. As much as I tried to deny it those first couple days getting to know him, I was extremely attracted to Ian. I still got tongue tied around him and he probably thought I was some kind of idiot. Why would he be interested in me anyway? As freaks go, I‘m pretty much the freakiest, my powers are downright terrifying at times, I can’t even seem to speak properly around him, and he knew I used to be a guy.

I wondered if I had made a mistake in being so open with my new friends about my past. The point was to not hide from my band mates so I wanted to be completely honest about myself with them, so I had told them everything. They all seemed to take it well and Mai took it as a personal challenge to help Leslie make me as girly as possible. That was when Riff started doing his getting close and backing off thing though, so yeah he was probably weirded out by the fact that I used to be a dude. I was getting a good self-pity trip going when I heard the intercom for the front door of the building buzz.

Anyone who buzzed the intercom wouldn’t be in on the secrets in this building so I quickly put on my second skin pendant and wrapped a towel around my hair before going to answer the intercom. “Hello?”

“Hi I have a package here for a Candy…” the male voice paused. “I’m sorry to bother you miss; this must be some sort of joke. But I have a candy-gram here and it says it’s for a Candy Graham.”

I groaned at that and resolved to get Mai back later. “That would be for me, I’m Candice Graham. Come on up.” I pressed the button to let him in and a few moments later there was a knocking at the apartment door.

I opened the door to see a cute blond guy with blue eyes and dimples holding a large box of chocolates. His eyes widened as he saw me dressed in only a skimpy bathrobe, towel turban, and my pendant and I was pretty sure he liked what he saw. “Y-you’re Candy Graham?”

“That’s what it says on my birth certificate,” I replied with a roll of my eyes. “Sorry, you caught me just getting out of the shower.”

“N-no problem. Sign here please,” he said handing me a clipboard. He gave a nervous laugh, “The things some people name their kids huh?”

“I prefer to think that she was completely ignorant of the connection at the time,” I muttered as I quickly signed for the box. Once it had changed hands the delivery guy took one last look at me before walking down the hall to the elevator and getting inside. I could hear Mai giggling from the doorway of the apartment she and John shared as I looked down at the card.

My lovely Siren,

This candy could never be as sweet as you. I can’t stop thinking about you, your beauty drives me wild and your voice when you stutter makes my heart soar. Let’s make beautiful music together.

Ian

“Mai!!!” I shouted as I stormed down the hall not caring at all about my current state of dress.

The Japanese mutant’s head peeked around the corner of her door frame as she tried to look innocent. “Oh, hi Candy, you bellowed? Is it time for practice already? You really should get dressed first.”

“You know damn well what this is about!” I snapped, holding up the box.

She pretended to read the card. “Oh, a gift from Ian telling you his true feelings? Scratch getting dressed, you should go knock on his door right now and let your passions take hold. That’s totally what I would do.”

I could feel my anger start to take hold and it as taking all the mental discipline I had to not lose control with my telekinesis or empathy as I yelled, “I’m gonna… I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but you’re not going to like it one bit!”

Ian’s door opened, “Whoa, what’s all the screaming out here?”

“Why don’t you ask Mai? Or maybe you should just see for yourself.” I said, handing him the box and attached card.

He read it and his face turned pale, “Mai did you? Not cool! What were you thinking?”

Mai crossed her arms, frowning at us both. “I was thinking that two of my close friends were obviously into each other and that both of you were too scared to do anything about it. So I decided you needed a push. Come on you two, when you’re in the same room you couldn’t cut the sexual tension with a chainsaw. You need to get a room, or at least go on a date. Candy, anyone can see you’ve got the hots for Ian, you can barely even speak properly when you try to talk to him about anything that isn’t band or team related!”

“So you do this?! You try to push me into doing something when there’s no way he’s interested in me?!” I screamed back, gripping the box tightly.

Ian looked like he was about to add something to that when he suddenly turned and gave me a confused look. “Why wouldn’t I be interested in you?”

I returned his confused look with one of my own. “I… uhhh.. can think of a bunch of reasons, like… umm… the fact that I used to be a guy. You keep looking like you're… ahh… attracted to me and then you back off.”

He shook his head. “That’s what you think? I didn’t want to push you into anything you weren’t ready for, I know if I suddenly became a girl I wouldn’t want to be rushed into dating some guy I hardly know. I couldn’t even be sure if you like guys that way now. I never knew you as a guy, I’ve only ever known you like this, and you’re a girl now… a really attractive one… and you’re… umm… not wearing any clothes.” He swallowed as his eyes seemed riveted on my barely covered chest.

I could feel myself blushing as I dropped the box and turned to run back to my apartment. I didn’t stop until I was in my bedroom. I was lying on my bed when there was a light tapping at my door. I didn’t respond, but that didn’t stop Mai from coming in and sitting on the bed beside me. “I’m sorry Candy. That was really stupid of me. I just wanted you both to get over whatever was holding you back and admit that you’re into one another. I thought with the candy-gram we could all get a good laugh about it later. I just didn’t think you would be wearing that and that it would be so awkward.”

“Awkward doesn’t begin to cover it,” I muttered. “I probably shouldn’t have taken it so personally, but that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook.”

“I know, I’ll make it up to you, I promise,” she said as she leaned over to hug me. “I’ve known Ian for a while, he really likes you and he would never push you into something you don’t want to do. I haven’t known you long, but we have so much in common and you’re one of the sweetest people I know. I think you would be good together and I wanted to see you both happy, but you were both hesitating. Being a Hyper you have to learn to snatch up whatever happiness you can find, it makes the rest of the shit we have to go through more bearable.”

“You really think he likes me?” I asked uncertainly.

“Is your skin blue?” she replied with a faint smile. “Of course he likes you, and if he wasn’t attracted to you just now in that getup there’s something wrong with him. So here’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to find you a really sexy outfit to wear for practice and dammit, if he doesn’t ask you out you’re going to ask him.”

“How did you manage to talk me into this again? I’m pretty sure I’m still upset with you,” I grumbled as I looked in the mirror. I was wearing a pair of tight white denim shorts that might as well have been painted on and a white crop top that barely contained my chest, showed a large amount of cleavage, and left most of my midriff bare.

“I’m very charismatic,” Mai retorted with a grin. “You’ve got to admit that outfit is perfect though.”

“How is this perfect? I look like… I’m not sure what I look like.”

Leslie had joined us to help us pick out an appropriate outfit and responded with a grin of her own. “You look like you’re wearing a relaxed look for practice but it’s carefully orchestrated to show as much skin as possible at the same time. This might not be good for practice though. I don’t know if Ian will be able to concentrate with you looking like that.”

Mai giggled, but shook her head. “Ian’s a professional, he won’t let it affect his performance, but before and after Candy will be sure to have his undivided attention.”

“I’m not sure if I can do this… ask him out I mean. You know how I get, and being nervous isn’t going to help,” I said, pulling at my top.

“This is no worse than facing down H8 or performing in front of a bunch of people, you just need to relax,” Mai encouraged me as we left my room and headed toward the one bedroom apartment that Blake was turning into a practice and recording studio for us.

The guys were already there waiting and when Ian saw me I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head. He quickly stood up from the couch he was relaxing on and held out the box of candy from earlier. “Uh… Hey girls, Candy you look great. You sorta dropped this earlier and I thought you might want it back.”

I took the box uncertainly. “Umm… thanks…” Dammit I knew I was going to sound like an idiot, but I decided it was probably just best to get it over with so we could both focus on practice. “I was… uhhh… thinking. Would you like to… umm… hang out some time? You know, just… you and me… kind of like…ahhhh…”

“Like a date?” he asked. “If you… err… think you’re ready for that I’d love to. We could get some dinner and catch a movie or something on Saturday.”

He said yes?! What the hell do I do now? We didn’t cover this! I thought in a panic before managing to repeat, “Saturday? Oh yeah, Saturday is… uhhh… great.”

“Thank God that’s out of the way,” Mai said with an exaggerated sigh. “Maybe now we can get some practice in.”

I couldn’t agree with Mai more. It was such a relief to get that out of the way and not have him reject me. I put the box of chocolates on the coffee table and quickly busied myself making sure that my mic was set up properly.

“So, now that you’re going to try dating, am I still going to be hearing about how great Candy is all the time or are you going to be capable of having normal conversations again?” John teased Ian as they made sure their own instruments were ready to play.

“So we’re trying that new song today right?” Ian asked in an obvious change of the subject, causing everyone to start laughing.

Once we were all ready to go we went through In the Shadows five times to get ourselves warmed up and to work out the timing. Then Leslie and I started handing out the drafts of the other song we had been working on. Moving On was another Gothic rock song but with a slightly less haunting melody than In the Shadows.

Ian, John, and Mai all started in on a slow and steady melody, setting the pace before Leslie joined in on her organ, punctuating the rhythm as the song began to speed up and I added my voice to the mix.

I trusted you to hold me tight
To keep me safe within your arms
You disappeared into the night
Ripped out my heart, left only scars
You tried to turn it all around
By accusing me of treason
Your heresy the only sound
Your every word is poison

I carried that last word of the first verse in my voice, shouting it out with a mix of pain and sorrow. If there’s one thing we mutants know its pain, rejection, and betrayal by those we thought were closest to us. The melody slowed and the strains of the organ became softer making way for bass, guitar and the steady beat of the drums as I softened my voice, projecting sadness as we eased into the chorus with something like hesitation.

Hell is a long way down
And I’m sure you’ll find your way
Don’t let me stop you now
I should have known you’d run away
Look at me and see your lies
I am the truth you cannot face
Your craven heart I so despise
I’m moving on past your disgrace

My voice dripped with disgust as I sang those lines and held that last note. Once again the tempo increased as the organ came to the forefront and I let my voice become harder again, tinged with hurt and betrayal.

I must admit you got me good
A betrayal I could not forsee
And though I didn’t think I should
I bared my soul for you to see
You had me fooled and I believed
That you could really love me
‘Twas you who made the choice to leave
Was meant to hurt but set me free

I softened my voice, closing my eyes and letting hope slip in as I sang the last note and the music started to slow again as we slipped into the chorus.

Hell is a long way down
And I’m sure you’ll find your way
Don’t let me stop you now
I should have known you’d run away
Look at me and see your lies
I am the truth you cannot face
Your craven heart I so despise
I’m moving on past your disgrace

There was less disgust and more resignation as I finished the chorus this time. And as we entered the next verse the music and my voice became louder, harder and more insistent than any of the verses before while not straying from the original music. It was like musically saying we’re here, so deal with it.

Oh I don’t cry about it now
I’m better off without you
I think I’m ready to allow
Myself to try to love anew
I don’t need you anymore
I’ve shed enough tears for you
About time you know the score
It’s over now and we are through

I shouted out that last line and instead of carrying the note this time I ended it abruptly and letting the strains of the organ and steady strumming of the guitar rule until the music once again slowed and softened into the chorus. But, where the first time the chorus was meant to sound hesitant, now it was steady and sure.

Hell is a long way down
And I’m sure you’ll find your way
Don’t let me stop you now
I should have known you’d run away
Look at me and see your lies
I am the truth you cannot face
Your craven heart I so despise
I’m moving on past your disgrace

I let my voice softly fade as the music went on. The melody of the chorus repeated and faded a bit more with each repetition until the room was silent. With the song complete I reached into my pocket and grabbed my phone. It had been vibrating for a few minutes and as tight as my shorts were it was very hard for that not to be distracting for me. Thank God for elven mental focus techniques.

I held up my phone, letting the others know that I had a call. It was from an unknown number but I merely shrugged and hit the button to receive the call. “Hello?”

“Hi Candy?” asked a familiar voice.

“Yes, who am I speaking with?” I replied.

“It’s Smog from the hospital. I hope you don’t mind, but I asked Dr. Park for your number.”

I smiled as he identified himself, “Hi Smog, I thought I recognized your voice. I don’t mind you having this number, Leslie and I have really been missing you guys. What’s up?”

“We miss you too,” he responded with a sigh. “Taser and Armor say hi. We were listening to a webcast about the music scene here in New Haven and I think you really need to hear this. Are you near a computer?”

“Sure, the computer we’re going to use for music mixing is in the other room. Hold on a moment.” Leslie gave me a questioning look and I motioned for her and the others to come with me. “Smog says he was listening to a webcast about the New Haven music scene and there’s something I really need to hear.”

We all sat in front of the music mixing computer and I opened up a web browser window. Smog gave me the address and I typed it in and he directed me to the ink for the webcast in question before apologizing, “Sorry Syryn, but I have to go, my mom’s going to kill me when she sees the long distance charges for this call.”

“Okay Smog, it was nice hearing from you, hopefully we can talk again soon.” He disconnected the call and I put my phone back in my pocket as I clicked on the link for the audio file of the webcast.

The webcast was fairly dry talking about some of the good local bands, some of them I was even familiar with. Then I felt all the color drain from my face as the hostess said, “And now I’d like to introduce today’s special guest, he’s the front man for Red Prophesy, Alex Collins.”

“Thanks Becky, it’s good to be here,” Alex responded smoothly while Leslie quickly took my hand in hers and gave a reassuring squeeze.

“So Alex, two months ago your group was really starting to make a name for yourselves locally, but after what critics called a disappointing performance at Club Tartarus on May 31st you dropped out of sight. What was the reason for this and what’s next for Red Prophesy?” the hostess asked.

“Our performance at Club Tartarus was a disappointment to us too Becky. None of our heads were in the game that night. Our former lead singer, and my best friend, Ken Graham was in the hospital and died shortly after that and I had to suddenly try to fill his big shoes. The loss of Ken hit us all pretty hard there for a while and now we’re trying to get back to the music. We’ve already signed up for the Battle of the Bands in New York City this August, and we’re dedicating this run to Ken. He was always hoping that we’d make it big someday and we’re going to do our best to make that dream come true, for him.”

I couldn’t listen to another word I stopped the audio file, clenching Leslie’s hand tightly with my other hand. “That son of a bitch! He took everything from me, and when he thinks I’m dead he still tries to use me to get ahead.”

“That’s the asshole that did all that to you?” Mai’s voice came from somewhere behind me and it sounded very angry. “Oh, it is on! We’re entering that contest and we’re going to win it.”

I sighed and shook my head. “It’s a nice sentiment Mai, but we’ve only been playing together two and a half weeks and that contest is two months away. There’s going to be some popular bands there with a good fan base. We won’t be able to compete against that unless we play damn well and have some sort of way to stand out from all the other bands.”

“Okay so we’ve only been together a short time, but we’re all good musicians and we play well together,” she insisted. “If we practice hard over the next two months when we’re not training and you and Leslie write us some more great songs we could do this. We also have one big way to stand out from all the other bands and I’m looking at her.”

Every one of us turned to stare at her but it was Ian who responded. “You want Candy to out herself as a mutant?! Are you insane? That could get her killed and it would be dangerous for all of us too.”

“I’m not saying she should take out an ad in the Times!” she snapped before going on to explain her idea. “We can all wear costumes and use our code names, play the mutant super hero angle. The way Lisa and the others are talking we’ll be doing that someday anyway so why not be the first ever band that’s also a super hero group? We’ll make history, we can make sure nobody knows our real identities, and people don’t seem to hate superheroes as much as run of the mill mutants so if we become big we could use this to improve things between mutants and humans. Just think of the show we could put on with the abilities each of us has.”

I wasn’t too sure I liked the idea but I did have to admit that we could put on a hell of a show with Mai’s light powers alone. And if my powers, Ian’s mimicking power, and John’s sound amplification were added to the mix there were all sorts of things we could do that other bands couldn’t, at least not without a bunch of bulky equipment and people to run it. “I hate to admit it, but she doesn’t have a bad idea there,” Leslie pointed out, seeming to read my mind. “Candy has to wear a full disguise for everyday activities anyway and this way she could actually be herself on stage. We’ll certainly stand out and most people will just think it’s a gimmick or stage makeup at first anyway, so we can back out if we don’t like where it’s going.”

“Well Blake could easily create costumes to help hide our real identities, just look at Candy’s disguise,” John put it. “And he’s been itching to come up with gadgets and costumes for us. If anyone could make one of Mai’s crazy plans actually work, it would be Blake.”

Ian looked over each of us and let out a sigh. “If you’re all sure about this, and Candy is in, then I guess I’m in too.”

They all turned to look at me. “I think you’re all insane… but let’s do it. We’re going to need to work hard until the contest. For the next two months whenever we’re not training we’ll be practicing or working with Blake on costumes and logistic stuff.”

“We should get back to practicing then,” Ian suggested.

I shook my head tiredly. “I’m too tired and pissed off at the moment, plus I have a song I need to write and Leslie is going to help me with the music.”

The next evening, after a hard day of training, saw us getting right to practice and starting with the song that Leslie and I had finished the night before. I had the band run through it with only instruments the first few times just to get a feel for it and work out any kinks before I added my voice to the mix. It was harder, faster, and grittier than any of our other songs, but I felt that was okay since we didn’t plan to concentrate solely on Gothic rock. This one was a mix of hard rock and alternative, but I liked what Leslie had done with the music and it certainly suited the lyrics. Leslie was on her keyboard rather than her organ for this one but it was really Ian’s guitar and John’s drums that would be at the forefront. Once they had rocked their way through the intro I jumped in.

We were all doing fine until you came along
They let you in, But they were wrong
I knew you’d only take us through the gates of Hell
But you put them, Under your spell
They all took your side after what you did to me
Knife in my back, They couldn’t see
And a person has no need of enemies
When they’ve been ‘blessed’
With friends like these

I practically spat out the last line as Ian launched into his first guitar solo of the song and took a deep breath to calm myself and just let myself feel the music as the melody changed to the slightly slower chorus. Both Mai and I would be singing the chorus so it might take several practices before we could get properly synched. Regardless we both gave it our best on that first go at the chorus.

Is your head heavy?
From your self-imposed crown
And do you hear that?
Very distant rumbling sound
Your broken kingdom
Isn't built on solid ground!
And I hoooooope that I'm arounnnnnnnd
When it all comes crashing down!

We carried the words hope and around, dragging out that line before practically screaming the last as the melody jumped right back into the harder and faster one. We were both a little off there on our timing but we would work on it. There was no time to think on it though as there was very little time between the chorus and the second verse.

I held the door for you; you slammed it in my face
Shoved me aside, To take my place
I think we both know what you wanted to achieve
To take it all, And then just leave
There's shattered pieces of the world you stole from me
Tossed them aside, So now I'm free
And now I'm super-powered from the tragedy
Invulnerable
You can't hurt me

My voice as still angry as I finished this verse but it was also filled with the confidence I had in myself and my new friends. Ian jumped into his second guitar solo and I just had to shake my head in awe. He was incredibly talented and I was really lucky to have him… in the band of course. Once the others jumped back in and things slowed again Mai and I jumped back into the chorus.

Is your head heavy?
From your self-imposed crown
And do you hear that?
Very distant rumbling sound
Your broken kingdom
Isn't built on solid ground!
And I hooooooope that I'm arounnnnnnnd
When it all comes crashing down!

Our timing had been a lot better that time, the first run through the chorus had given Mai a better idea how I wanted to sing it and she ran with it. I gave her a nod and smile in approval in the brief instant before my voice rang out with the last verse. Even though my life had taken an unexpected turn it was better now and I knew that Alex was using me because Red Prophesy was just another garage band without me and they were going to fall hard. The last verse reflected that certainty.

Do my old friends ever ask about my fate?
Without you all, I’m doing great
You think with me gone that you’re the one who rules
Blind leading blind, Kingdom of fools
And do you see your golden opportunity?
It’s not really yours, They wanted me
You needed me much more than I needed you
Now that I’m not there
What will you do?

As soon as that question left my lips Ian launched into his final guitar solo. I was a little jealous at just how talented he really was, but at the same time really glad he was on my side. Maybe he could teach me to play guitar? I forced myself to stop being distracted as the others started in on the chorus again and Mai and I put our voices to work.

Is your head heavy?
From your self-imposed crown
And do you hear that?
Very distant rumbling sound
Your broken kingdom
Isn't built on solid ground!
And I hooooooope that I'm arounnnnnnnd
When it all comes crashing down!

Let it all come crashing down!

I want to see it all come crashing down…

We let our voices slowly carry that last line, softly fading as the music came to an end. I let out a sigh at turned to grin at Mai. “A few more runs and I think we’ll have the timing on the chorus and the end nailed. Am I ever glad I met the three of you, we are going to be the best damn band that the Battle of the Bands has ever seen.”

“We wouldn’t be this good without practice together, the past few weeks of practice and getting to know each other have really helped. And you and Leslie are writing some awesome songs,” John put in.

“We really need a good name for the band though,” Ian pointed out. “Maybe something to go along with the whole super hero theme?”

“How about Hyper-active?” Mai suggested. “We are all activated Hypers.”

I shook my head, “If we had other musical influences maybe, but we’re mostly Gothic Rock and that just does not sound like it suits a Goth band.”

Leslie nodded in agreement with a pensive look on her face. “Well Aegis chose their group name because the team was meant to be a shield to protect the innocent. Couldn’t we do something similar?”

“What? Call ourselves Shield or something? No thanks,” I muttered. “A shield is a defense and doing this we’re not waiting for things to come to us, we’re going on the offensive, so maybe a weapon instead.”

“What, like a sword or something?” Ian asked.

“I was thinking something more modern with a bit more meaning for us” I replied. “I like the name RevolveR.”

---

 
Author's Note: Here's chapter 4 of Syryn's Song. It is so good to be back and posting again. Thank you as always to all my readers for the comments, kudos, and thinking that my work is worth reading. Also thanks to the Big Closet team who work tirelessly to give us all a wonderfully supportive venue to read and post TG fiction ~Amethyst.
 

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Chapter 4: Adventures in Dating
 

Friday evening found us cutting practice a little short when there was a knock at the door of the studio. “Hey guys,” Blake said somewhat sheepishly as I opened the door to let him in. “Sorry to interrupt your practice, but I wanted to introduce you to the person I’m getting to create your costumes since she’s visiting tonight.”

“I thought you were making our costumes though?” Ian asked uncertainly as we started putting our music gear back in their usual resting places.

“Nah, I just designed the materials the costumes will be made from, and I’ll install all the tech once they’re finished, fashion really isn’t my thing. Modiste though, just earned her associate’s degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology, and is starting towards her bachelor’s in the fall. Her powers lend themselves to this kind of thing too,” the young inventor explained as we made our way out of the studio and toward to his apartment.

“Oh thank God!” Mai said with a playful smile. “I thought we were all going to end up performing and fighting crime in jeans and t-shirts.”

Blake looked down at his current outfit and shrugged as he opened the door to his apartment to let us in. “I go for comfort over fashion, but I knew you guys would want your costumes to be really good so I called in the professional. Guys, I’d like you all to meet Brianna Bowman, or as Lisa likes to call her, Modiste. Bri, this is Candy, Leslie, Ian, Mai, and John.”

“Isn’t Bowman the name Lisa has you registered under as her foster child?” I asked Blake before I got a look at the young woman sitting on Blake’s sofa. The young woman in question was dressed in a green and white sundress and looked like a twenty year old female version of Blake, with those same green eyes, though her brown hair was longer and straight rather than shaggy. She also looked a little shorter than Blake, maybe about five foot three, though it was hard to tell with her sitting.

As I was staring at her she said, “Bowman was our mom’s maiden name.”

“How come you never mentioned having a sister?” Leslie asked.

“Technically he’s only my half-brother, but it’s a good half,” Brianna corrected Leslie with a smile. “Mom married Ron when I was four and had Blake when I was five. My real dad died when I was a baby, but Ron has always been good to me, he always treated me like his own kid, even since mom died.” Her expression turned sad as she sighed, “If I’d been there when it happened maybe I could have helped.”

“You had your own problems Bri so stop beating yourself up about that,” Blake said with a sad shake of his head. Then he began to explain, “I was kidnapped during dad’s first term as Senator. They were going after me and Mom, but one of the kidnappers had an itchy trigger finger and shot Mom,” Blake explained sadly. “She didn’t even have time to try and use her powers. I’d probably be dead too, but Lisa rescued me and I Activated.”

Your mom was a Hyper too?” John asked.

Brianna nodded slowly. “She was a low level Tinker and had some small magical abilities; she could see auras and had an alchemical touch that let her change what things were made of, even her own body. We both got our powers from Mom; Nick says my abilities are magical in nature and Blake got the tinkering gift.”

“So what are your abilities?” I asked after a brief awkward silence. “Blake says they’re useful for costume design.”

“I’m the clothes-fairy,” she joked.

Blake sneered at his older sibling and rolled his eyes. “She magically creates and alters clothing. She just needs to picture an item of clothing or an outfit in her mind and she can make it reality, and she can change whatever someone is wearing the same way. She can also resize, make alterations, change the color, and even change the material they’re made from.”

Mai’s eyes lit up as she smiled. “Oooooh, she is the clothes-fairy.”

“The materials have to be something I’ve touched before though, and my ability only seems to work for clothes,” she specified with a sigh. “We’ve tried other things, even curtains and bedclothes, but the only time it worked was when I wore a bed sheet as a toga. I seem to be limited to things designed for people to wear or that they are currently wearing. Accessories and jewellery are doable too, but they can be a bit tricky, it’s actually a bit easier if I create a whole outfit rather than piece by piece.”

“That is so cool,” Leslie said with a grin as she and Mai exchanged looks.

“Anyway,” the mutant seamstress said, “My little bro here says you guys are Aegis Jr. and you’re looking for costumes.”

“We call ourselves RevolveR,” I put in, “and we might have an interesting challenge for you. We’re not just going to be doing the whole saving the world thing in these costumes. We’re a Gothic Rock band and we’re hoping to be the first ever openly mutant band.”

“So you want costumes and masks to be sort of a blend between Superhero and Goth?” she asked in sudden interest.

“Yeah, only I won’t be wearing a mask. The others will, they look normal and have identities to protect so they need disguises, but I’ll be going out there like this; blue skin, pink hair and all. Candice Graham is my disguise; I only wear it when I need to. I’m Syryn, this is me, and I’d like to be me on stage.”

“I like this one Blake,” she said with a grin.

“You would, you have a lot in common,” Blake said with a shrug. “So do you think you can do it?”

“Of course I can do it, I have some ideas. I’m thinking mostly black with Goth influences and differences for each of them to give them different personas. Do you guys have a team/band logo yet? Or personal symbols you want on your costumes, or can I just go wild?“ she asked with a grin like the one Blake wore whenever he had an idea for a really cool invention.

I shook my head. “We don’t have anything like that planned yet, so feel free to make any suggestions. We don’t even know what we’re going to do about an agent or manager yet. I did it for my old band, but our agent needs to be able to blend in, not to mention have the time for all the business aspects involved. Even if I did have the time, I don’t want people connecting my civilian identity to us. The others can’t do it for the same reason.”

“Let me worry about a manager and agent for you guys,” Blake volunteered. “I may know just the… umm… person for that and Bri is minoring in graphic art so she can come up with something cool for a logo.”

“Will you contact us through Blake when you come up with something?” Leslie asked.

“I suppose we could do it that way if you really want to…” she trailed off with a pensive look on her face. Then she broke out in a grin, “Or you could just come up and see me on the top floor. That’s the reason I came by in the first place, I asked Lisa if I could have my old apartment back. I’m gonna start moving my stuff in tomorrow.”

Blake looked as surprised as the rest of us. “You’re moving back in? What about your apartment by the campus?”

“Our lease is up at the end of the month,” Brianna answered with a look of relief. “Gina asked if I wanted to find another place with her, but I swear if I have to live another day with that slob leaving her clothes all over the place, she’s going to find them all three sizes too small, including whatever she happens to be wearing at the time. Why look for a new place when the apartment upstairs is already furnished and my studio is still set up in the spare room? Besides, I miss being around you and Lisa and everyone and it’s not too far a drive to campus from here.”

“Not to mention, you won’t have to concentrate all the time to keep yourself looking normal at home,” Blake suggested. “Not that I’ll mind having you back here,” he quickly added.

“Looking normal?” I asked as I thought about Blake’s earlier comment about us having a lot in common.

“I usually look like this,” she said as her features began to change color, her skin and hair both becoming a shiny gold color. Only her bright green eyes remained the same color. “Like our mom I can change what my skin and hair are made of, and their color, to materials I’ve touched before. I Activated looking like this and it took a while before I was able to get normal looking and feeling skin and hair down.”

“Normal feeling?” Mai asked, staring at the other mutant.

Brianna extended her hand and offered, “Touch me and you’ll see what I mean.”

The guys seemed reluctant to try, but Mai, Leslie, and I all cautiously reached out to touch her skin. “Is that…” Leslie began to ask in wonder as we gently probed the smooth and soft texture.

“Silk, definitely silk,” Mai said with a smile.

“Well at least you can look normal on your own,” I put in with a sympathetic smile. “I don’t mind looking like I do so much anymore, but I wouldn’t be able to go out and blend into a crowd at all if it weren’t for your brother.”

“It took me a while to be able to do it,” she admitted, “but I had to stay in hiding after I Activated. What with me looking like this, my powers being on a hair trigger, people thinking I was dead, and then Blake’s kidnapping and Mom’s death Ron wanted us both safe and out of the public eye. He had Tara make us new identities under Mom’s maiden name, gave us the money from our trust funds, and had us stay here with Aegis while Blake got this building fixed up for them and I waited to start college. I met Dr. Park while living here and she helped me figure out how to do it.”

“Dr. Park is awesome,” Leslie agreed with a smile. “I wouldn’t be able to go out in sunlight without her help.”

“Yeah she is, she helped me a lot,” the silky-skinned Hyper agreed before pausing a moment. “Umm… speaking of help… I… hate to ask this of people I’m meeting for the first time, but do you think some of you could give me a hand tomorrow when you’re done training for the day? I really want to get moved back in tomorrow if possible, I wasn’t kidding about my roommate. I was hoping to have Lisa’s strength available for a few things, but she’s putting the finishing touches on her new manuscript before having dinner with her publisher on Sunday."

All of the Aegis members had day jobs that allowed them to mostly set their own hours: Nick occasionally escorted Hyper criminals to prison as Blackout to keep them from using their powers to escape, Travis had a very popular tech blog and did product reviews, and Jason was a security advisor. Even Tessily had some sort of work, translating old texts in dialects that she was familiar with for Empire State University under her civilian identity of Tess O’Brien. Lisa though, wrote tawdry romance novels under the nom de plume Elsa Tremblay. “It seems like the whole team is catching up on work this weekend,” I said with a nod. “Tessily mentioned having to go to the university as well, so we have the weekend off.”

“I’m afraid that I can’t Bri,” Blake said apologetically, “I’ve been working on something with Travis and Phil, and since they have the time we want to get as much done as we can this weekend.” This wasn’t really terribly surprising since Travis, his onboard AI, and Blake had been taking every chance they could to slip away in the Ladybug for hours at a time the past few weeks while Lisa, Tessily and the others had been training us.

Mai quickly spoke up, “Candy and Ian can’t help either, they have a date, but I’m game.”

Ian was blushing at that and I was pretty sure I was turning a dark lavender as Blake looked at us both and grinned, “It’s about time.”

Mai grinned at our embarrassment, but mercifully she got back to the topic at hand. “How about you sweetie? Are you up for helping out?”

The last was asked of John of course, and he quickly nodded. “Sure, I don’t mind helping out. But if there’s anything really heavy we might need Leslie’s strength.”

“And you shall have it,” my best friend agreed. “I’d love to see some of the things you’ve designed Brianna, and maybe we can talk about what kinds of ideas you have for our costumes.”

“You read my mind,” Mai agreed with a smile.

“That sounds good to me,” Blake’s sister said after some thought. “I don’t really have much to move, just some clothes, a couple dozen boxes, a trunk of personal items, and all my design and sewing gear. It shouldn’t take us long, and once it’s all here and the dock and peripherals for my tablet are set up I can work on more detailed logo designs. I’ll do some sketches of logo and costume ideas tonight before bed while they’re fresh in my mind. I can show you those tomorrow.”

“I’m not so sure about this,” I said as I stood in front of my mirror late the next morning. It had been strange having a morning off, but I had put it to good use by emailing our entry to the voting committee for the battle of the bands. The file was a recording of us playing In the Shadows, since that was the song we had the most practice with. Following that I had hopped into the shower to get ready for the big date. Once I was out of the shower and dried off, I was immediately hijacked by Mai and Leslie, who insisted on helping me find the perfect outfit for my first date with Ian, before they left to help Brianna.

So now I was wearing this little dress, though I thought calling it a dress was being generous. It was sleeveless halter dress made of a white lace with a sheer pink under layer. The V shaped hem of the damn thing barely covered my thighs and butt, and beneath that I was wearing a tiny hot pink bikini that made the dress look down-right respectable. Leslie had bought it just after we had come to New York, hoping that wearing something like that would help me come out of my shell a bit. Completing the outfit were a pair of sunglasses, my second skin pendant, white open-toed sandals with two inch heels, and a large matching purse containing all the necessities and my slim silver anti-gravity belt.

The date or the outfit?” Leslie asked in response to my uncertainty.

“Both,” I replied with a sigh, “And this isn’t an outfit, its underwear.”

“So it’s a little revealing,” Mai said with a roll of her eyes. “I’d totally wear that if I had your body.”

“That’s because you’re an extrovert, I’m not,” I retorted. “I don’t want a bunch of guys looking at me like I’m dessert and they have a sweet tooth.”

Mai shrugged my complaint off. “You probably just want Ian looking at you that way, but honestly, guys look at you that way no matter how you’re dressed, so this shouldn’t be any worse for you than any other trip out in public.”

“A little attention isn’t a bad thing, so long as it doesn’t go past looking, it can make a girl feel confident,” Leslie put in. Then she added, “Besides, didn’t Dr. Park say you’re so pretty and have features that stand out so much because you wanted attention?”

I groaned and sneered at my roommate. “You would have to remember that, you traitor. Maybe the attention isn’t so bad, it’s kind of nice sometimes if the guys don’t go too far, but I think this might send the wrong message, I want to get to know Ian better, not drag him to my bedroom.”

“Are you suuuuuure?” Mai teased. My inner conflict on that must have been written all over my face though, because she quickly became serious again as she gently put her hand on my shoulder. “Ian knows that Candy, and he’ll respect that you’re probably not ready for a physical relationship yet. He’s as into you as you are him, but he won’t rush you. You just want to look your best for him to show him you do like him, and believe me this does the trick.”

“I don’t even know what we’re doing on this date though, what if we’re just going out for burgers and a movie?” I said while casting another uncertain glance at the mirror.

“Candy, stop it. Calm down girl,” Mai said with a serious expression and a tone that would brook no arguments. “I want you both to have fun and relax a bit. Do you really think I’d have you dress this way if it were something like that? I asked Ian what the plan was for the date and this should be appropriate.”

There was a knock at the door and I almost panicked when Leslie said, “That’ll be Ian.”

Mai frowned at my reaction and started pushing me toward the door. “Just relax Candy. Ian’s a fun guy, he already likes you, and there’s no pressure. Go have some fun, be yourself, and get to know him better.”

I could see Ian’s jaw physically drop as he got a good look at me once Mai had gotten me to the door and I had opened it to greet him. He was looking pretty damn good himself though, with that dark red tank top and shorts showing off his well-toned body. He also wore a dark blue bandanna covering his long brown hair, which was tied back in a ponytail. “You look great Candy, are you ready to go?” he managed to blurt out as he smiled at me.

“I think so,” I replied uncertainly. “So… uhh… What exactly are we going to be doing?”

“Well, I originally thought of dinner and a show, maybe take in Phantom of the Opera, but when I found out we had the whole day available I thought we could start out at Coney Island and see where things go from there. There are some great restaurants there, and we could walk along the boardwalk, go swimming at the beach, go on some rides, play skee-ball, and whatever else looks fun. I think you’ll enjoy it,” he said hopefully.

“Sounds like fun,” I agreed. “I’ve actually wanted to go there since Leslie and I came to New York, but I haven’t been able to find the time yet.”

“Cool, let’s get going then,” he answered with that smile that never ceased to make my heart flutter when it was directed at me.

“Have fun you two, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Mai said sweetly from my doorway.

“There’s things you wouldn’t do?” I heard Leslie tease Mai as we departed.

Since Ian had loaned his pickup to John to help with Brianna’s move and I no longer had a civilian vehicle we decided to take the sky-bikes to Coney Island. We flew in stealth mode, staying in contact through the communications gear in our helmets and he gave me a sort of aerial tour before we came in for a landing in an empty lot by the Parachute Drop and parked the bikes in a small stand of trees. He told me that the Parachute Drop was a historic landmark originally built for the 1939 New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadows in Queens, In 1941 it was moved to its current site as an attraction for the Steeplechase Park amusement park which closed in 1964. The ride is the only portion of Steeplechase Park still standing today and has become a historic landmark.

The lot wasn’t just close to the Parachute Drop though, it was near the amusement parks, the beach and a lot of interesting shops and restaurants on the boardwalk as well. Before leaving the bike’s stealth field I hurriedly smoothed out my dress so I wasn’t showing Ian, or anyone else, any more than I already was. Then, once we had re-cloaked the bikes, we slipped casually out of the lot. Since we had all day we decided to just take our time looking around for a bit, so we started out by just walking along the boardwalk and checking out the sights at ground level while Ian pointed out anything of particular interest to me.

Before long we had made our way to the amusement parks so we started on some of the rides and games. The Cyclone was exhilarating and, even though I sucked at it, skee-ball was kind of fun. I could have done a lot better if I had used my powers, but that would have been wrong and taken the fun and the challenge out of it. Ian though, turned out to be some kind of skee-ball genius and earned enough tickets to get me a pink stuffed rabbit. I felt kind of silly carrying around a stuffed toy, but at the same time it was from Ian, and he had won it for me, and that made me feel kind of gooey inside.

After the amusement park Ian bought us lunch at a restaurant on the boardwalk called Paul’s Daughter. It had this big hamburger man statue on the roof and apparently is one of the oldest businesses on the boardwalk. We had clams on the half shell, wedge shaped fries and nice cold sodas and sat in a quiet corner to eat while we got to know each other. It was nice because of all my band mates, I knew the least about Ian. I noticed though that he only talked about his interests and his life now that he was part of RevolveR, or since he had met Mai and John, and that worried me.

I needed to address this before it really started bothering me. “Ummm… Ian...” I said in a hushed tone that wouldn’t carry to the other diners, “I thought we were supposed to be getting to know one another better. Look, if anyone gets how hard it can be being… different it’s me. My Mom freaked out and wants nothing to do with me and my whole life turned upside down, so if you… ummm… need to talk…”

Ian let out a long sigh and shook his head with a conflicted expression on his face. Finally he spoke just as quietly. “Yeah I know you went through hell with the stuff with your mom and all the physical changes when your life already sucked. Mai accidentally blinded her brother and a bunch of other people and her parents want nothing to do with her either. Leslie’s parents were killed when assholes set her house on fire, after she confided in someone she trusted. John grew up in foster care and his foster parents tried to kill him when his pow… puberty hit him in a big way. You’ve all had it hard, that’s exactly why I don’t talk about my family or my past much.”

“What do you mean?” I asked as I wondered why he didn’t seem to want to open up.

“You really want to hear my Activation horror story?” I barely heard Ian ask as he looked down at our mostly finished lunch. “I was fifteen and I was taking my little sister Kim trick-or-treating for Halloween. We nearly got hit by a car when we were heading home and, even though he managed to swerve in time to avoid us, my life flashed before my eyes and my gift made itself known for the first time. When we got home we told Mom and Dad what happened, mom made some hot cocoa, and the four of us had a family meeting. They didn’t disown me, or try to kill me or anything like that, they just wanted to make sure that we were okay, that I knew what kind of things I might be in for, and find out what special needs I might have. You guys all have these horrible origin stories, and what’s mine? I have a supportive family that loves me.”

“Are your parents… like us too?” I asked quietly. I didn’t really want to make assumptions about it.

Ian shook his head. “No, at least not the parents who raised me, but I don’t know about my biological parents. They knew enough about how… people with differences were treated to be concerned for my safety though, especially when it became obvious that I had trouble controlling my abilities when I was stressed. They were worried that I might be bullied in school if someone found out, so Mom decided to homeschool me and found private music teachers she could trust.”

“So you’re adopted then?” I wondered aloud. He could have been a foster child, but I had a feeling he wasn’t.

“Mom couldn’t have kids, so I was adopted at birth,” he confirmed. “They adopted Kim when I was seven; she was one of those Chinese baby girls. If she wasn’t adopted she probably would have ended up dead, in prostitution, or in the slave trade. We grew up in a nice house on Staten Island, and I was still living there when we met. I didn’t want to bring it up because I didn’t want to seem like I was rubbing my perfect little family in your faces.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard a smart guy say,” I snapped, barely remembering to keep my voice down. “There is not one of us who wouldn’t be happy that you haven’t had to go through what we have. Sure we might be a little jealous, but you and your family prove that we can be accepted and live somewhat normal lives. Did you really think we’d hate you for giving us hope?”

“No… but I…”

I countered before he could say anything more. “No buts, we’re getting to know one another better so I want to hear all about your ‘perfect little family’ and what you were like growing up,”

“Mom and Dad met during rehearsals for a Broadway musical,” he began uncertainly. “He was the director and she was cast in the leading role. They just clicked. A year and a half later they got married and adopted me a year after. Dad’s a producer now, and Mom is an acting and singing coach. She started doing that when they adopted me so she’d be at home more and never looked back. Kim and I both grew up watching rehearsals though, and I guess the bug bit us both. I found my love for music and Mom got the best teachers for me that she could find. Kim wants to be a lead in a musical like Mom was, so Mom’s teaching her singing and acting, and she’s studying dance whenever she’s not in school.”

I couldn’t help but smile at that. “That sounds so cool; my mom never really understood my love for singing. She only paid for lessons because she would rather I pursued that than sports or something where I could have gotten hurt.”

To my delight he finally cracked a smile of his own again, God damn he had an incredible smile. “I told them about you and the others, they’re really happy that I’m learning to control my abilities better and that I’ve made some good friends to pursue music with. They’d like to meet you all when we have some spare time, especially my mom and Kim. I just didn’t want to push you, with what happened with your Mom, and the others’ family baggage as well.”

I shook my head and told him sternly, “I am not going to let her run my life. She’s decided she wants nothing to do with me, then that’s fine. I don’t need a Tyniehl like her in my life anyway.”

Ian gave me a confused look, “What is a Tineel?”

I blushed as soon as I realized I had said that. We had both been trying to keep our conversation quiet and not mention obvious words like mutant or Hyper too much since we were in a public place. We hadn’t seemed to draw anyone’s attention though and the other diners were still going about their own conversations loud enough that they likely couldn’t hear ours. “It’s a… umm… Fae word. When I told Tess what happened with my Mom, she called her that. She said it’s one of the most offensive words in their language, it’s meant to refer to a parent who has no honor and abuses their children.”

“The shoe does fit if you count emotional abuse,” he said thoughtfully as he took another sip of his soda. “I don’t really see it though, Tess seems a bit distant, but she’s really polite too, she doesn’t seem the type to say things like that about people.”

“She’s not distant; she just takes her duties seriously,” I quietly clarified. “Beneath that she’s really sweet and caring once you get to know her. She’s been really great to me since I came here. I like learning from her and spending time with her. It’s weird and kind of nice at the same time.”

“What do you mean?” he asked looking a little confused.

I answered as quietly as I could and still be heard by him. “She’s still not used to living here yet, in our modern world. It’s been two years and she said she still finds things strange and confusing sometimes, people most of all. A lot of people hide who they really are inside and pretend to be something they’re not. Her people don’t do that because they’re all accepted for who they are, no matter what shape they wear. There’s no pressure to conform to be something you’re not. She treats me like that.”

“You’re saying that she accepts you for who you are? I can see why you would appreciate that more than most.” He reached out and took my hand uncertainly. “It’s got to be hard having your genetic heritage so obvious to everyone.”

“It is, but I don’t want to let it bother me anymore,” I countered quickly. “Sure it was a bit hard at first, but then I think of John, Mai, and all those other minority people who get discriminated against every day because of the color of their skin. I’ve had to deal with it for what, six weeks? And I have a way to hide my differences when I want to, so it would be pretty shitty of me to complain when others have been facing the same treatment for generations. As for Tess, I think she relates to me better because of my looks, and it helps her feel more natural and at ease. She sometimes slips into her own language with me. She lets down her guard, she can be herself, I can be myself, and there’s no social bullshit getting in the way.”

“I think I know how she feels. You’re a beautiful person, and I don’t just mean skin deep; you have this sense of honour, you’re a sweet person who cares about others, and I think anyone who takes the time to get to really know you can see that. I know I…” He was leaning forward now, we both were, I hadn’t even been aware that I was moving closer and now that I was my heart was beating wildly. He had such gorgeous eyes, there was his sweet and musky scent, and my lips were trembling as they were about to meet his own.

*EEEEEEEEEK*

Our near kiss was quickly aborted as we both stood up and looked toward the sound of the woman’s scream. Ian was the first to speak. “What the hell was that about?!”

“I don’t know, but I think we’d better find out,” I replied as I grabbed my purse and bunny.

The scream had come from the boardwalk just outside the restaurant. When we got there after Ian had hastily paid the bill, several people were gathered around a middle aged woman who appeared to be having some sort of panic attack. “What happened?” Ian asked of the crowd in general.

The young man who answered didn’t even look our way as he watched others trying to calm the woman down. “A big circle of light opened up just up there,” he said pointing a few feet above the heads of the crowd, “then some black and green freak jumped through and landed on that poor woman. By the time anyone thought to do anything it had already gotten to its feet and took off.”

“Did you see where it went?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady as I wondered whether it was a Hyper, or something else.

“It ran off in that direction,” he responded, pointing off to our right.

We made our way off the boardwalk and onto the beach and began to look around; keeping our eyes peeled for anything fitting the man’s description. We were approaching the water’s edge near the pier when we heard it; the sound of someone yelping in pain. “Did you hear that?” Ian asked as he looked around for the source.

I nodded as I removed my sandals and tried to pinpoint where the sound had come from. This stretch of the beach was pretty quiet with a few people nearby being spread out on the beach, but most were on the pier itself. At first I thought it might be coming from the crowds on the pier, but it sounded like it was coming from underneath. I was within ten feet the pier when I thought I saw something moving in the shadows beneath. “Over there,” I said as I began walking quickly in that direction. Ian joined me, and we heard a voice muttering, “Ow, goddamn fucking glass… who drinks beer under the pier… they could have at least cleaned up their fucking trash,” as we moved closer and saw a sort of green glow.

“Are you okay?” Ian called out.

“Do I fucking sound okay?!” the voice snapped as a pair of glowing green eyes turned toward us. Whoever it was, they were hidden in a clump of rocks under the pier, half in and half out of the water. All I could see of the person though was those eyes, a glowing green mass that I thought was hair and a few strange geometric patterns and lines all over their body that glowed as green as the eyes and hair. It sounded like a girl and, whoever she was, she sounded very tired. “If you don’t want to get hurt, get the hell out of here,” the voice warned.

“You don’t sound like you’re in any condition to hurt anyone,” I responded candidly.

“Not me, the assholes following me. They’ve been after me for a long time, since I escaped. No matter where I go, they find me.” Now that I was closer, I could see her in better detail. She looked human, definitely female, but it was hard to make out details at first since her skin seemed to be pitch black where it wasn’t glowing green. She sat on the sand clutching her bare foot, and once I was within a few feet of her I was close enough that I could make out more detail. She looked about fourteen years old, far too skinny to be healthy, and the skirt and top she was wearing were torn and filthy.

Now that we were somewhat hidden from prying eyes underneath the pier, I carefully removed my pendant and hairnet, placed them in my purse, and handed Ian my sunglasses. “Put these on in case there’s trouble.” If someone was after her then I wanted to be ready in case they showed up. I removed my anti-gravity belt from my purse and managed to stuff my bunny in its place, though its head was still sticking out. As I was putting the belt on slowly, hoping not to panic the girl, Ian removed his bandana and used it to cover the lower half of his face before adding my sunglasses. It wasn’t a great disguise but it would have to do. I slowly offered the girl my hand. “We can help you, we’re Hypers too.”

The glowing eyes narrowed as she looked at me suspiciously. “So, that’s the plan now? They send in a friendly face or two to bring me in? Nice touch, sending in people I don’t know. You got here quicker than normal, usually I have at least an hour to catch my breath. Is whoever’s in charge getting tired of me making fools of their regular goons?”

“We’re nobody’s goons, just calm down and let us help you,” Ian said with his hands raised so she could see them.

“I’m not sure who or what you’re talking about,” I told her calmly. “I’m Syryn and this is Riff. We heard the commotion on the boardwalk and came to see if you needed help, nobody sent us here bring you anywhere. Why don’t you tell us what’s going on?” I kept my tone calm and as I spoke I made sure to project that calm.

She relaxed slightly, though her eyes made a quick scan of the beach beyond us. “You probably wouldn’t believe me,” she finally said uncertainly.

“I’ll be the judge of what I’ll believe,” I told her, still projecting calm. “You said it usually takes whoever’s after you a while to catch up? You have until they get here to tell us what we’re dealing with, so you should fill that time with words.”

“Or I could just teleport away,” she countered, as she tried to get to her feet, visibly shaking from the effort.

“You don’t even look like you can stand right now, and I think that if you had the strength to teleport again you’d have done it already,” I shot back. “If I’m wrong then go ahead, do it and we won’t be able to help you. Otherwise, tell us what’s going on, and start at the beginning.”

The girl was fifteen and her name was Amy Quinn, but she had taken to calling herself Rave. She was at a dance party when she was thirteen, when someone had slipped something into her drink and it was enough for her to overdose. Her H Chromosomes had activated as a result and she had run away from home when her parents reacted much like my own mother had. Since then she had been living on the streets of New York City and sleeping in abandoned buildings since the homeless shelters wouldn’t let her stay there. Roughly three months ago she had been staying with some other mutants in an old brownstone that was slated for demolition. The building was raided five weeks ago in the middle of the night by people in armour. She had been asleep at the time and, before she had woken up enough to realize what was going on and teleport away, someone had hit her on the head from behind.

“If it weren’t for that, they’d have never caught me,” she said with a grimace. “The next thing I knew, I woke up in some sort of high security doctor’s office. I was lying on a metal table, there were all sorts of machines, and the walls and door were like steel or something too. I think they had some hidden cameras, because the moment I sat up a man’s voice came through a speaker on the ceiling.”

“Did he explain why you were there, or say what he wanted or anything like that? Riff asked.

Amy shook her head, still frowning. “He didn’t ask my name, where I was from, or anything like that. He just wanted to know what powers I had. I think that was why they had the machines and steel walls, it’s like they expected all mutants to be like Eva.”

“Who’s Eva?” I queried.

“She was one of the other mutants in the brownstone,” the young Hyper explained, and I thought that I could see tears beginning to roll down her cheeks. “Her name was Eva before she activated so, because of her powers and looks, some of the others nicknamed her Eva Destruction. She hated that nickname, the poor girl wouldn’t harm a fly, but she was like seven feet tall and built like a Sherman tank. She was covered in silvery-black scales, had wings like a dragon, and fire for hair. I never saw anything that could hurt her, she could fly, and she threw exploding fireballs; she was damn scary until you got to know her.”

She sniffled, pausing as she took a nervous look around, then she let out a sigh and continued to speak. “Anyway, he asked what my powers were so I created a portal and got the hell out of there. After my escape I tried to rescue the others, but they were all dead, even Eva, and those goons have been on my tail like bloodhounds ever since.”

“Amy, I know a doctor who can help,” I told her as I sat on one of the rocks beside her. I kind of wanted to reach out and hug her, but she obviously had trust issues, and with good reason. “She’s like us and you can trust her. She can take a look at that cut on your foot and make sure you’re not sick or anything. No offense, but you look like hell.” I turned to Riff and said, “I’m going to call the Doc, do you think you could go grab her something to eat and drink and bring it here? She doesn’t look like she’s eaten in ages and I don’t think she should be exerting herself too much. I’ll stay here in case those people following her show up.”

“You got it, just please be careful” he replied with a worried glance before lowering his bandana around his neck and taking off at a run.

As he started to run across the beach I leaned over to have a look at Amy’s foot. She had a nasty cut there, but at least she had managed to get the glass out. I quickly fished a sanitary napkin from my purse to staunch the bleeding. I needed to find out why she was on the run though so, after instructing her to unwrap it and hold it firmly on the cut, I asked, “Can you think of any reason those people might be after you, or why they raided the building you were in? Did you or the others there use your powers to do anything illegal?”

She shook her head and crossed her arms in denial. “No way! Insight wouldn’t let anyone live there if they used, or planned to use, their powers to commit crimes.”

“Insight? Was she a psychic or something?” I asked, hoping for clarification.

“She was a telepath and she ran the place,” the young mutant girl responded. “She interviewed anyone who wanted to stay there to keep us all safe, and she organized everything so that we could all contribute without breaking laws: She and some of the others who could blend in got day work or went panhandling when things were bad, others helped with cooking and cleaning, Eva scared off the troublemakers, and I helped with transportation. I guess some of the people she wouldn’t let stay were pretty pissed off though.”

I frowned as I thought about how people like H8, with egos far exceeding any powers they might have and no qualms about committing crimes, would react to being cast out by people they saw as weak. That wasn’t as important as the girl’s current condition though, so I took out my phone and searched for Dr. Park’s name in my contacts, quickly selected it, and hit call. It was several rings before she answered, “Hi Candice, how are things in the Big Apple?”

“Hi Doc, things are pretty good here, but I have a bit of a problem,” I explained. “Riff and I are at Coney Island and we ran across a homeless mutant girl. She’s been on the run from some sort of armoured goon squad for over a month, she’s injured, and very weak. I was wondering if you could have a look at her, we could bring her to you if you’re working this weekend.”

“No need for that,” she quickly replied, “it’s my weekend off. I’ve actually been helping Blake and Travis with something, so we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“Great, thanks, we’re hiding underneath the pier at the moment, but the girl seems to think that those goons will show up again soon. Every time she escapes they seem to find her again within a few hours from what she’s said.”

“They could have placed a tracker on her,” she suggested after a moment. “Blake and I will see what we can do about that, but it’s probably best to stay where you are at the moment. If you took her to the base, you’d likely just lead them there. We’re on our way.” She disconnected the call and there was nothing more I could do but wait.

For the next five minutes we waited in relative silence, as Amy occasionally cast nervous glances around us. Riff soon returned with a pair of hot dogs and a soda, which Amy thanked us profusely for and then quickly devoured, and I wondered again just how long it had been since she had had a proper meal. As she ate I informed Riff of the situation and he put his disguise back in place in case the goons showed up before our friends. Then we waited under the pier until the sounds of the people on the pier and the beach were drowned out by the whine of turbines and people shouting.

People were running from the beach as a black VTOL with a military look came in for a landing at the water’s edge, perhaps 100 feet from the pier, and blew sand all over the place. As soon as the turbines had stopped, eight men jumped out of the aircraft wearing some sort of light weight black body armour and helmets with white faceplates covering their faces. They also carried weapons and, from the way they were waving them around, I was pretty sure they weren’t there to surf or get a tan. Other beach-goers seemed to be under the same impression, as they ran for their lives, leaving the stretch of beach to the goons and us. On the pier above us I could hear some people running off while others seemed to be getting in a better position to see what was happening on the beach. The three of us ducked behind the rocks as we watched the men.

“Shit,” I thought I heard Amy curse as she looked warily at the men. “We need to get out of here, fast,” she said in a whisper as a look of concentration appeared on her face. The green glow coming from her seemed to become brighter and a glowing green disc a few inches in diameter appeared before us, slowly growing before suddenly fizzling and vanishing. She collapsed against the rock, looking almost ready to pass out as she grumbled curse words. It looked like she still didn’t have the strength to teleport, and even trying had badly drained her.

“Come on out freak! I know you’re hiding under there,” called a man’s voice. His tone when he spoke was one of undisguised loathing, and the pistol he was carrying was moving from side to side, panning the general area we were in, as he and the other men approached the pier. The one brandishing the pistol was looking at a device in his other hand before looking directly at our hiding spot, seemingly confirming Dr. Park’s tracker theory.

It seemed that Amy recognized the voice. “Is that you Smith? They haven’t sent you after me in weeks.”

“You cut off my arm you little bitch! It took them a while to make me a cybernetic one. I’m a freak now thanks to you,” the man snapped back angrily.

I looked around for possible telekinetic ammunition and reached down to activate my belt while Amy kept Smith talking. She sank further back against the rocks that we were hiding in, and Ian shielded her with his body, as she spoke again. “I was wondering whose arm that was. You shouldn’t have tried reaching through my portal when it was closing. I guess, all that metal on one arm probably makes you look all asymmetrical now. If you want them to match again, I can arrange that. So what’s the plan now Smith? Looks like you assholes have given up on subtlety. You used to wait until dark, but the last few days it’s been every few hours. I hope you guys are getting paid overtime.”

“You know that we’re going to find you wherever you go freak, and each time we come closer to catching you. Just give yourself up now and we won’t hurt you… too badly,” he responded.

“Fuck you Smith,” she shot back, “If you want me come and get me asshole.” She was trying to sound tough and defiant, but she was obviously tired and scared as she shrank against the rocks, hiding under Riff’s larger frame.

They knew exactly where Amy was with that tracker, and they were brazen enough to act in broad daylight at a popular location like this. If they just wanted her dead, they would have just riddled the area with bullets and been done with it No, the men obviously wanted her alive, so I was relatively certain that the weapons they had drawn at the moment were of the non-lethal variety and that would give me a slight advantage. “Let us handle this,” I told Amy sternly, reaching out to squeeze her hand. Then I whispered my plan to Riff as he activated his force field.

Two of the men were coming toward our cover while the others were fanning out, probably in case she tried to bolt. I floated up to the wooden planks above me and kept myself flat against the underside of the pier as I waited. I could hear the approaching men say something about seeing a green light as they stopped and pointed their weapons in Amy and Riff’s direction. After several seconds the two men slowly approached, each moving to one side of their hiding place before jumping forward and training their guns on them yelling, “Freeze!”

I was enough of a performer that I knew a good time for an entrance when I saw one. I floated down behind the pair and whispered, “Boo.” The pair didn’t even have a chance to turn around before I relieved them of their weapons and telekinetically hurled them away from the pier, right past one of their companions, and into the water beyond.

“We’ve got hostiles!” one of the other goons shouted, causing the others to scan under the pier waving their guns left and right.

“Come out with your hands up and surrender the girl!” Smith shouted.

I handed the one of the weapons I had confiscated to Riff and the other to Amy and told her, “Hold on to this for me.” Then I began concentrating on the sand of the beach as I watched the six remaining armed men and replied, “I don’t think she’s interested in going with you, so maybe you should all leave, while you’re still able to.” I was really glad that I had been practicing my shrapnel shield and working on my fine control and multitasking, because what I had planned was going to take a lot of focus. Sand began to rise and move at my mental manipulation and, once I felt that I had enough, I let loose.

I battered the men, raining down blows that seemed to do little more than sandblast their armour. I could have hit them a lot harder, but I didn’t want to seriously injure or kill them, besides it was mostly just for show while I used the sand to carry out my real plan. After a few minutes I released my control on the sand, letting it all just drop to the ground harmlessly. Once it had hit the ground I smiled at reassuringly at Amy and Riff as I stepped out from under the pier to confront our adversaries.

Smith was laughing as he stepped closer and kept his gun trained on me. “That all you got freak? You’re going to have to do a lot better than that to hurt us.”

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you… yet,” I told him with a glare as I walked toward him.

“Too bad for you that I can’t say the same, this isn’t going to kill you, but it’s going to hurt a lot.” He pulled the trigger on his weapon, but all that happened was a clicking sound. “Wha…”

I grinned at him. “Don’t you just hate it when you go to the beach and sand gets into everything?” His comrades were trying their weapons now, with the same lack of results. I just kept grinning and shrugged as I taunted, “That’s what you get for relying on hardware.”

“Get her!” Smith shouted. The three closest to me drew combat knives and tried rushing me, but only one actually got close to me. Amy had stood up from her cover under the pier and fired the weapon she was holding at one of them and he fell to the ground screaming and writhing in pain as soon as the energy blast hit him. Meanwhile Riff had shot the other one, who was contorted in a similar state of agony. The one who did get close I stopped in his tracks, holding him in place telekinetically, before throwing him into one of his companions like he’d been shot out of a cannon. The two fell to the ground in a groaning heap as Riff fired the weapon again at the fifth combatant, who was making a break for the VTOL.

The only one left standing was Smith and I made certain he wasn’t going anywhere, levitating him a foot off the ground and giving his throat a telekinetic squeeze to show him I meant business, as Ian ran to check out the VTOL and make sure nobody else was hiding inside. “Now you’re going to tell me who you’re working for, and why they want this girl so bad, or you’ll find out what it does feel like when I try to hurt you.” I was bluffing of course, since I really didn’t like the idea of seriously hurting someone who was already disarmed and at my mercy, but I was really hoping he wouldn’t call that bluff.

He made a gurgling sound that I discovered was laughter as I released the grip on his throat. “It doesn’t matter what you freaks do, you will never escape the reach of the Right Hand.”

“That would sound a lot more intimidating if you weren’t at my mercy right now, and if I didn’t know that the kid you’re chasing has been doing just that for over a month.”

“Don’t be cocky just be cause you’ve managed to defeat one unit mutie,” he retorted. “The Right Hand’s reach is far and we’ll…” He didn’t finish that sentence, as he began to gurgle and shake and finally went limp within my telekinetic hold.

“Syryn, what the hell did you do to him?” Riff asked as he returned, staring at me in horror.

“Nothing! I swear that wasn’t me!” I replied in a panic as I lowered the limp form to the ground and began checking for life signs. Smith was dead though, and a quick check of his nearby men showed that they all shared that condition. It was around that time when the VTOL exploded.

Riff threw himself between me and the blast, covering me with his body and shielding me as his force field took the brunt of the blast. He looked at me in concern as he held me close and my heart fluttered in my chest as he asked, “Are you okay?”

At first I could only nod, but after a moment I managed to reply, “Yeah, I think I’m good.” We quickly scrambled to take stock of the situation. The VTOL was mostly obscured in flames and a cloud of black smoke, but it looked like the two of us had been the only ones close to the explosion. We needed to put that fire out, and I was worried about any bystanders. So while I took to the air to do what I could, Riff went to make sure that Amy was safe and unhurt, and to phone 911 with a cell phone snatched from Smith’s body.

As soon as I was in the air I took an aerial survey of the damage, then I began prioritizing and got to work. First, I gathered up as much water as I could, using it to smother the VTOL until the flames went out. Next, I took a good look for anyone who might have been hurt. Thankfully, since people had fled the immediate area when Smith & Co. made their big entrance and started waving their guns around, there was nobody close enough to get hurt by the explosion itself. A few had been hurt in the panic that had followed on the pier, but the injuries were minor and I was more concerned about the panic as I used my empathy and spoke to calm the crowd.

When I returned to the pier to rejoin Riff and Amy, the Ladybug had arrived, the police and fire department were busy cordoning off the area to the public, and the paramedics were caring for the injured. I joined Silver Spirit, who was coordinating with the first responders, and he informed me that Riff had already taken Amy inside the ship, where Dr. Park had begun looking her over. I quickly gave the details of what had happened, only omitting Rave’s real name, to Spirit and the officer in charge, a woman in her mid-twenties with long auburn hair who was dressed in black slacks, a white blouse, and sunglasses.

The police officer smiled as I finished giving her my account. “That was nice work, I got to see the whole thing on a cell phone video. You took down an entire squadron of the Right Hand, and with no civilians seriously hurt or killed in the crossfire.”

“Syryn, allow me to introduce Detective Serena MacArthur, she’s with the N.Y.P.D’s Hyper-related Crimes Unit,” Silver Spirit offered in introduction. “Serena, this is Syryn, She’ll be the one leading that new team that Liberty has been telling your team about.”

“It’s nice to meet you Detective,” I said offering my hand.

“Likewise, and please call me Serena,” she replied with a smile as she shook my hand. “It’ll be nice having another team in the city that’s willing to work with us. It really sucks that we couldn’t have interrogated one of those guys though.”

“Yeah, they’ve been hounding that poor girl for over a month. Do you have any idea what killed them?”

“Both the HCU and Aegis have dealt with the Right Hand before,” the detective replied with a grim expression, “and every time we capture one, they die before we can get more than a word or two out of them. Those face plates have camera’s built in to monitor operations, and every one of their operatives has a tracking implant just below the left shoulder that contains a powerful neuro-toxin, which kills within a minute of being released into the body. The self-destruct on the VTOL served the same purpose, to keep anyone from finding out too much about their organization.”

“We suspect that they operate in cells and are involved in the mutant slave trade as well as the disappearances and/or murders of several high profile Hypers,” Silver Spirit added. “Police forces all over the country have reported encounters with them.”

“I’d like to interview the girl as soon as possible,” Serena requested, with a glance toward the Ladybug. “She might have some actionable Intel and Lt. Russo will want to act on it as fast as possible if she does.”

“It might be better if I’m there when you do,” I suggested. “She doesn’t seem to trust people, but I think she’ll talk to me.”

It was over two hours later that Dr. Park finished with Rave. “I’ve cleaned and bandaged her foot and I removed this from just beneath her left shoulder,” she explained, displaying some sort of microchip in a small plastic bag which she handed to Serena for evidence.

Serena frowned at the sight. “That’s… how in Hell is that girl still alive? If they thought that they were going to lose her to Syryn, they would have activated the neurotoxin. Hell, I would have thought they’d have used it as soon as she escaped.”

“They likely did,” Dr. Park replied candidly. “I only found very faint traces of the toxin that Spirit told me about in the device, but she has an incredible resistance to toxins, some sort of hyper-accelerated immune system. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, it creates antibodies to attack any foreign elements in her body instantly, so aggressively that I had to use a local anesthetic when I removed the device. I tried both injection and aerosol anesthetics before that, but they had no effect whatsoever. I believe it has something to do with the circumstances of how she Activated.”

“Maybe that’s why they were so eager to capture her, to find out how she survived, although it could be for her teleportation as well. It’s a useful and uncommon ability,” the detective suggested.

“Both are possible,” I agreed before asking in concern, “how is she?”

“Except for exhaustion and malnutrition she seems to be in good health. She should be fine after a few days of rest and proper meals, but I’d like for someone to keep an eye on her while she recovers.”

“I’m sure we can arrange something,” Riff offered. “She seems to be somewhat comfortable with me and Syryn, and I might be able to get my hands on some clothes for her that don’t look like they were found in a dumpster.”

I smiled at him at him, nodding in agreement before turning back to Dr. Park. “Our team can take turns watching her. Are you sure that was the only tracking device?”

“Prodigy and I did a full work up of scans on her, that was the only device,” she confirmed before turning her gaze on Detective MacArthur. “You can speak with her for a few minutes, but please try not to get her too upset, she’s been through enough.”

“I’ll try to keep it short,” the detective promised.

Serena and I entered the small med-bay on the Ladybug together to find Rave reclining in a bed while Prodigy sat in a chair nearby watching over her. It was a little strange seeing Blake in the blue and white exo-suit that served as his costume, and I couldn’t be certain, but I had a feeling that our resident inventor might just be a bit smitten with the other young Hyper as he leaned forward in the chair watching over her.

“How are you feeling?” I asked as she looked up at us.

“I’ve been better, but I’m a lot better now than I was when we met,” she replied candidly, before looking down at her clasped hands. “Thanks… y’know for stepping in and taking care of those guys. Not a lot of people would’ve done that.”

“There was no way we were going to let them take you,” I told her without a second of hesitation before sitting on the bed beside her and squeezing her hand. “The Doc wants you to rest for a few days and get some proper meals, so my team and I are going to watch over you for a few days until we can decide how best to help you. Riff mentioned some clean clothes too, but first Detective MacArthur here would like to ask you a few questions about those men and the people they work for, are you going to be okay with that?”

The Hyper’s green-eyed gaze focussed on the policewoman for a long moment, before making it’s way back to me, uncertainty written all over her face. I gave her an encouraging smile and a nod and finally she let out a deep sigh before saying, “Okay, but I don’t really know much. I was sleeping when they captured me and I didn’t really get to see anyone’s face in the brief moment before I was knocked out.”

“It’s alright,” the policewoman answered reassuringly. “I’m sure that this was a very traumatizing experience for you, and I don’t want to make it worse, but any information you can give might help me in my investigation. The rest of my unit and I have been itching to take these guys down for a while.”

“Do you promise? That you’ll take them down, I mean?” Rave asked, expressions of uncertainty and hope warring for dominance on her face.

“I promise,” she replied with determination. “We’ll do everything we can, but it would be easier if we had more information. Syryn said that you called the leader of the unit who came after you today ‘Smith’, why was that?”

“Once in a while I would hear the unit leader radio whoever was in charge to let them know that they had found me and such. It was always ‘Smith to base’ or ‘Gates to base’, or ‘Carlson to base’, but those are the only names I remember, and I never saw any of their faces.”

Looking a bit discouraged, Detective MacArthur asked, “What do you remember about the place you escaped from? Could you tell me anything about the location?”

“I was in a big steel room, at least for the time I was awake, and I used a portal to get out of there so I didn’t really see anything outside that room,” Rave admitted sadly. At the disheartened look on the detective’s face she seemed to come to a decision. She took a deep breath as she looked between myself, the detective, and Prodigy, who had so far remained a silent watchful presence at her bedside. Finally she suggested, “I could open a portal there.”

“What?! Really?!” Serena was half leaning over the foot of the bed in sudden interest.

“Yeah, I can open portals to anywhere I’ve been, seen in photos or video, or close to anyone I’m familiar with.”

“Are you sure you’re up to that?” Prodigy asked, his voice tinged with concern even through the distortion of the exo-suit.

“I don’t know if I can open one big enough for a person or how long I can hold it open for right now though, I’m still really tired.” Rave sat up and her expression turned focussed as the green patterns on her body began to glow softly and a small glowing green disc began to form near the med-bay’s door. It was less than two feet wide and began flickering almost immediately in synch with the patterns on her skin. “I… I’m trying, but…”

She collapsed back onto the bed as the glow faded from her markings and the portal vanished, but not before Prodigy had stood up and fired something through it from the forearm of his exo-suit. He quickly moved to the bedside to look her over as I put her messed up blanket back over her. “No more portals for a while, you need to take it easy. Don’t worry I made sure that one counted,” he quietly assured her.

Serena looked away for a moment, her shoulders slouching a bit as she bit her lip. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been so eager… you didn’t have to do it immediately, the Doctor said that you were supposed to be resting.” Then she turned to Prodigy and asked, “What do you mean, you made it count?”

“I fired a tracking device of my own through the portal before it closed,” the young Tinker said before standing once again, removing a device from his forearm and handing it to the police detective. “This will track the signal, it has a range of roughly sixty miles, so you may need to search a while by air before getting a signal, but we should be able to help with that.”

After that arrangements were made. Dr. Park, Silver Spirit and Prodigy would help Detective MacArthur to find the location with the Ladybug in stealth mode while Riff and I took Rave with the sky-bikes to get a few things and a solid meal before taking her home so she could rest properly. Serena would also be contacting Lt. Russo regarding the new Intel so they could organize an HCU raid. Once we had picked up our sky-bikes and brought them back to the Ladybug I asked Riff, “You mentioned clothes, but Modiste can’t make clothes from nothing, so it would take her some time and I don’t want to assume, besides, they may still be busy with the move. We aren’t exactly low profile at the moment, so where to?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine where we’re going,” he assured me as he pulled out his cellphone. He tapped a number in his contacts and after a brief wait he finally spoke. “Hey Mom, I was wondering if you and Kim could help me with something… Okay, great I’ll be there soon, but I’ll be coming in by the back door and I’ll be bringing a couple friends.”

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Author's Note: Here's chapter 5 of Syryn's Song. Thank you as always to all my readers for the comments, kudos, and thinking that my work is worth reading. Also thanks to the Big Closet team who work tirelessly to give us all a wonderfully supportive venue to read and post TG fiction ~Amethyst.
 

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Chapter 5: Logistics
 

It was a short hop over New York Bay to get to Staten Island and I slaved the navigation system of my skybike to Ian’s to make the trip. For one thing, he knew where he was going. For another, I wanted to keep a firm telekinetic hold on Rave, or rather Amy, during the trip. As soon as she had seen the ‘bikes she had been very eager for the trip, but she was still very weak and I wanted to be cautious in case she lost her grip on me.

We ended up landing in the backyard of a large two storey brick home, backed against Clove Lakes Park. There was a fairly tall fence and plenty of trees to keep prying eyes out, so it was with great relief that I helped Amy off the bike and we exited its cloaking field. “I can see why you wanted to enter by the back door,” I said with approval.

Ian smiled at me. “With neither of you wearing a disguise at the moment, I thought it would be best. It’s not exactly how I wanted to bring you home to meet my parents, but Kim is about the same size as Amy, so I was hoping she might be able to help with the clothes situation until we can get her some of her own.” He opened the door and called out, “Mom! Dad! We’re here!”

“We’re in the family room,” called out a woman’s voice. Ian led the way through the kitchen and we followed him into a comfortably furnished room tastefully decorated in cream and cocoa. There was a large brick fireplace, hardwood floors, and sitting on a comfortable-looking leather sofa was a slender blonde woman, just starting to go gray, and a fit man whose salt and pepper hair was just beginning to recede. Both were dressed casually, but fashionably and they smiled as soon as we followed Ian into the room and rose to greet us.

“Ian!” I had to assume that the teenage Chinese girl who suddenly ran down the stairs to glomp Ian was his sister Kim. She looked about the same age as Amy, wore her hair in twin pigtails and was dressed comfortably in a white crop top and skinny jeans. “It’s good to see you bro,” she said with genuine affection and then turned toward us to ask, “So who are your friends?”

“This is… uh… Syryn, she’s the leader of our team and the lead singer of our band,” Ian offered, seeming uncertain on which name that he should introduce me by without my disguise on. “And this is Rave, we saved her from some people who were after her. She’s been on the run for a while and her clothes are in bad shape, so I was hoping that Kim might have some things that she could borrow to wear while she recovers and we watch over her for a few days.”

The three of them hadn’t even raised an eyebrow at Amy’s and my appearance and I thought about that as Ian explained the situation with Amy. These were his parents and they had been supportive of him and kept his secret, in fact when he had Activated they warned him about what kind of treatment he could expect. Finally I gave them the best smile I could manage and once their son was finished his explanation I told them, “Please call me Candy, it’s not like we’re in the public eye at the moment and from what Ian’s told me you’ve been pretty good at keeping his secret, so I think I can trust you with mine.”

“I guess you can call me Amy too,” Rave offered, uncertainly following my lead. “It’s not like I really have a secret identity anyway, looking like this.”

“Prodigy will help you with that,” I told the younger Hyper. “Do you remember how I looked normal when we met? He made me that disguise and I’m sure he’s already got ideas in mind for one for you.”

“It’s good to meet you both,” Ian’s father offered with a smile. “Any friends of Ian’s are welcome here anytime. He’s a good judge of character.”

“Don’t worry about your secrets girls we won’t tell a soul, it’s nice to finally meet you Candy. Ian’s been careful not to use names, but you’re all he’s been talking about lately,” Mrs. Smith said with a smile of her own, causing Ian to turn a deep red.

Kim looked Amy and me both over for a moment before adding a grin of her own. “Yeah Ian’s always talking about you Candy, it’s good to finally have a name and a face to go with what he’s been saying.” Then she turned her attention to Amy. “It looks like you’ve had it pretty rough. We’re about the same size Amy, so I’m pretty sure I have some clothes that you can have. Would you like to take a nice hot bath before we pick some things out for you? If you’ve been on the run I’ll bet it’s been a while, and it’ll probably help you relax a bit.”

“That’s a good idea,” Ian’s mother agreed with a nod. “Oh! And you’ll all have to stay for dinner.”

“I’ll head to the butcher shop and pick up some things and then Ian and I can start up the barbecue. Are either of you girls vegetarian? I’d hate to pick up something that you couldn’t eat,” Mr. Smith chimed in.

Ian’s family was kind of like a whirlwind, and Amy and I looked at one another for a moment unsure of what to do. Finally we both just relented, and Kim took Amy upstairs to put her in a nice hot bath while she picked out some clothes for her. While they were doing that Mr. Smith headed out to the grocery store and the butcher shop to get some things for dinner as Ian and I chatted with his mother. It was kind of strange for me being in a home with such a friendly and supportive family and I had to wonder how Amy was handling it as Mrs. Smith pulled out the baby pictures and told me all about Ian growing up.

Mostly I just listened and commented when it was appropriate or answered questions, since I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. It wasn’t that I felt uncomfortable or unwelcome, in fact it was very much the opposite. While Ian’s family was bringing me and Amy out of our comfort zones, it was done in a caring and supportive way. Rather than pulling, pushing, or dragging us into their sphere of influence, it was more like we were being drawn into a protective and loving embrace, one that makes you reluctant to leave it.

Was this what normal families were like? I couldn’t really be certain anymore. It was possible that they were so accepting because they were adoptive parents, it takes a special kind of person to do that. My mother had been overbearing and restrictive, and then once I had changed I was no longer her child, just an abomination. Ian’s mother on the other hand, and in fact his whole family, was supportive and loving without being constrictive. They treated us as they would any other friend or family member, and it felt like they were doing it because they actually cared and wanted to see us feeling safe and happy.

After an hour I started to loosen up a bit and got to know Ian’s mother a bit better, I even started telling her about myself. When I told her how my own mother had treated me when I Activated she scowled and wrapped me up in a hug. “You Poor dear,” she said with a frown as she reassuringly took my hand in both of hers. “Disgusting that a woman should treat their own child that way, no wonder you’ve been so skittish. I take it that poor Amy suffered similar circumstances?”

I nodded slowly. “Yeah she was treated the same way by her own family, from what she told me and Ian. Though she’s had it much worse than me what with living on the streets since and then being on the run from those Right Hand assholes.”

“Well you’re both welcome here any time, and your other bandmates as well, Ian has said nothing but good things about you all. If you’d like we could watch over Amy while she recovers,” she offered.

I smiled as I considered her offer. “I appreciate it Mrs. Smith and I think you’ll be seeing more of us in the future. We promised Amy that we’d watch over her until we could find a more permanent arrangement for her though, since she seems somewhat comfortable with me and Ian, and I don’t like to go back on my word.”

Ian nodded beside me and his mother smiled warmly at us. “A person’s word is their bond,” she agreed, “It’s nice to meet young people with such good values nowadays. I think you’ve found a keeper Ian dear.”

I blushed a deep lavender at that, but Ian and I were spared further embarrassment as his father chose that moment to come home and he and Ian went into the back yard to start the grill. While the men were in the backyard taking care of the lion’s share of dinner, Ian’s mother and I went into the kitchen to do our share. As she worked on making some potato salad and I put together a salad we chatted about music and singing. It wasn’t hard to see where Ian had gotten his passion for music from and it was nice talking about singing with someone who loved it as much as I did.

It was as we here happily chatting and finishing up that Kim and Amy returned from upstairs. Amy was looking a lot better, and a bit more relaxed, now that she was cleaned up and wearing decent clothes. Kim had managed to find the young mutant a pair of white low-rise jeans, a pink crop top, and some socks and sneakers that fit her fairly decently. Amy still looked like she hadn’t eaten in weeks, but nonetheless she looked markedly improved from when we had first met.

“Ta-da!” Kim gestured enthusiastically at Amy. I thought that Amy might be blushing a bit, but with her pitch black skin and glowing green lines and patterns it was really hard to tell. “I found a few other outfits and some pajamas I don’t wear for her as well, but we’ll need to go shopping for her at some point to get her some more clothes, especially underclothes. I found one set that I’ve never used, but she’s a bit bigger than me in the chest, so the bra is a bit tight on her.”

“Thanks a lot for helping her out with the clothes Kim,” I told her appreciatively as I finished tossing the salad. “Hopefully once Prodigy has her set up with a way to blend in while in public and we’ve figured out something more permanent for her living situation she’ll be able to go shopping.”

“Give me a call when you do,” Ian’s sister eagerly offered. “We could all go together, I’d love to hang out and get to know you both better. Or Amy and I can go on our own if you’re busy with band and team stuff, she should have a friend her own age to go shopping with.”

I looked uncertainly at Amy. With her trust issues around people in general, and the way that normal humans had hounded her in particular I wanted her to be able to make this decision for herself. Finally I looked over the other mutant and asked, “What do you think Amy?”

“I wouldn’t mind that,” Amy admitted a bit uncertainly. “It’s been years since I had people that didn’t treat me like some sort of freak... I had Inverse and Eva and the others for a while, but we kind of stayed together through necessity, except for being mutants we didn’t have a lot in common and not many of them were the same age as me. We were talking a bit while Kim was helping me with the clothes and stuff and she seems cool. I forgot what it was like just being a normal girl and hanging out with a friend, and it was nice.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, I had been worried that Amy might just be too jaded, but it seemed like Ian’s family was having a similar effect on her as it was on me. Being seen as ourselves and treated normally was something we weren’t used to from normal humans, but I think it was something we both needed as well so, now that the initial shock had worn off, we were clinging to it and hoping that it could last. “That sounds like a great idea Kim,” I told them with a smile.

“Great! Just have Ian give you my number when you’re ready then,” Kim replied with an infectious grin. Then she seemed to remember something and reached into the back pocket of her jeans, producing her cell phone. “BTW Candy, Youtube is loving you right now.” She swiped the phone a few times and then handed it to me with a Youtube page on the screen. The video was entitled, “Who is the Blue Bombshell?” and in the past 3 hours since it was posted it already had over ninety thousand hits.

Wide-eyed, I pressed play on the video. It looked like it had been filmed from the pier and captured the whole incident with Smith and Company, from when the VTOL Landed to when I put out the fire and flew over to the crowd to calm the panic. Most of the video was a wide view range of the incident, but at the end it had zoomed in on me hovering above the crowd. The comments section was already filled with people buzzing about the incident. Most of the feedback was positive, though there were a few blaming me for the death of Smith and his men. There were even a few comments from girls on my “sexy sidekick” that confused me a bit, until I clicked on a similar video that had zoomed in on Ian in his bandana and sunglasses shielding be from the blast of the explosion with his force field.

“Omigod,” I finally managed to get out as I sank onto one of the kitchen stools.

“Maybe we should turn on the TV and check the local news,” Ian’s mother said as she gently pulled me to my feet and into the living room.

The four of us sat on the couch and Ian’s mother turned on the television, switching between several channels until she found a local news station. We had to wait nearly ten minutes, but once the world news was finished a picture of me floating in the air appeared behind the news anchor. “And in local news,” he began, “an incident between a pair of Hypers and what has been confirmed as members of the terrorist organization, The Right Hand, shook Coney Island earlier today.”

The video I had watched on Youtube replaced that of the news room as the anchor’s voice continued speaking. “The incident was recorded on a cell phone and has already gotten nearly one hundred thousand views since being posted earlier this afternoon.” Once the video had finished the view switched again to a podium where a police officer in a formal uniform stood and the anchor’s voice said, “We now take you live to a press conference with Lieutenant Anthony Russo, head of the NYPD’s Hyper-related Crimes Unit.”

“Good evening,” Lt. Russo said as he shuffled some papers in his hands. “Regarding the incident earlier today at Coney Island; the armored men were members of a terrorist organization called the Right Hand, and the cause of their deaths has been determined as a neurotoxin released into their bloodstream by their own organization to prevent us from getting any useful information. The two young Hypers involved are part of a team that is cooperating with the HCU and Aegis and were protecting an escaped prisoner of the Right Hand. They are in no way responsible for the deaths of these terrorists and their quick reactions prevented serious injuries or deaths among bystanders. Due to the ongoing nature of our investigation into this terrorist organization I will not be answering any questions at this time, thank you.”

I just stared at the screen, uncertain of what to think until Mrs. Smith turned off the screen and gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “It was going to happen sooner or later dear, you’ve been training for this kind of thing and you were bound to start getting attention once you came to light. At least you’ve been publicly cleared of any wrongdoing.”

“I guess it’s not too bad when you put it like that,” I admitted, “And we did save Amy. I guess that I was just really hoping we could avoid media attention like this until after the Battle of the Bands.”

“The Battle of the Bands?” Amy asked, her interest suddenly piqued.

I nodded and started to explain, “Riff and I are training to do the whole superhero thing with some friends of ours, but we’re also all part of a band and we’re hoping to make a big splash at the Battle of the Bands at the end of August.”

“Really?! What kind of music do you play? Can I hear you play sometime?” Amy blurted out, firing the questions at me.

“You can sit in on our practice tomorrow, as long as you’re quiet and resting while doing it. Remember what Dr. Park told you. You’re supposed to be taking it easy while you get your strength back,” I told her.

It was then that Ian and his father entered the room, the latter calling out, “Dinner is ready.”

To be certain that nobody would accidentally see me or Amy, we ate dinner in the dining room rather than in the back yard. The meal consisted of the tossed salad, potato salad, iced tea, baked potatoes, barbeques ribs, and hamburgers and Amy was encouraged to eat her fill. As we ate we informed Ian and his father about the news and the Youtube video and Ian seemed about as uncertain about the whole thing as I was.

After dinner was finished, and much friendly jabbing from Ian’s family and Amy, Ian got an acoustic guitar from his old bedroom and we managed an acoustic version of In the Shadows. It probably would have been better with Leslie’s organ too, but they all seemed happy with it and Amy couldn’t stop staring at me. After that we had to leave though, with promises to come visit, since Amy was looking very tired and I wanted her to get some proper bedrest.

It was almost nine o’clock by the time we got home and I was very glad that I had kept a firm telekinetic hold on Amy while we travelled, since she had ended up falling asleep during the trip. I levitated her all the way up to the apartment that Leslie and I shared, careful not to jostle her, and then settled her on the couch, where I covered her with a spare blanket. I had Ian place the backpack full of spare clothes that Kim had given Amy on the floor and then I placed my purse and stuffed bunny on my bed and checked my phone, which had been buzzing in my purse for most of the trip home.

The call display showed Blake’s number, so while Ian went to find our bandmates I quickly tapped call icon and waited for Blake to pick up. I didn’t have to wait long, since it had barely rung once before my young Tinker friend picked up. “Hi Candy, how did things go with getting the clothes and stuff? How’s Amy?”

He was worried about her, it was so cute. I managed, just barely, to hold back a giggle as I replied, “Ian’s sister gave her a bunch of clothes and his parents made sure she had plenty to eat before we left there. We just got back and she’s sleeping on my couch now.”

I heard him let out a sigh of relief. “Oh good, I was a bit worried about her, I’m glad she’s getting some rest.”

“How goes the search for the evil lair?” I asked, hoping that they had found something.

His voice carried an angry and annoyed tone as he answered my last question first. “We found the place, but it was scrubbed and completely abandoned. Detective MacArthur thinks that they pulled up stakes after Amy escaped. The HCU is looking for clues, but it looks like it’s going to be hard to find anything. We’re going to help comb the place over, so could you let Brianna know that I’ll probably be back late? She wanted to do something tonight, but I’m probably gonna crash as soon as I get back.”

“It figures,” I grumbled in disappointment. “I’ll let her know for you. I saw the press conference on the news, did you and Travis have something to do with that?”

“Sorry about that, but Phil constantly monitors the internet for anything of interest and once that video started going viral we needed to start thinking about spin control. You and Ian did the right thing and even though it’s unofficial, you have ties to Aegis and thus the HCU as well. People needed to know the truth before anti-mutant flamers could start dragging your names through the mud. Lt. Russo also had a public warning about the Right Hand and how dangerous they are posted on the NYPD’s website along with video footage of HCU incidents with them and their sudden deaths to support your innocence.”

“We haven’t even met this Lt. Russo, so why the hell is he willing to go to bat for us like this?” I wondered aloud.

Blake laughed as he replied, “He trusts Aegis and Detective MacArthur vouched for you. It’s not common knowledge, but a lot of the cops in the HCU are Hypers, including Lt. Russo and Detective MacArthur. None of them have really flashy powers suitable for putting on a cape and tights, but Lt. Russo hand-picked every member of that squad.”

“They’re Hypers? What powers do they have?” I asked in sudden interest.

“I met them both last year and trust me, there’s a reason that Detective MacArthur never takes off her sunglasses,” he told me with another laugh. “She has a minor telepathic ability and these weird eyes that give her a sort of hyper-enhanced intuition and powers of observation. She’s like a modern day Sherlock Holmes, which is why Lt. Russo is willing to take her at her word and why she’s working this case. If there’s a clue to be found she’ll find it. As for Lt. Russo, he can sense other mutants and has low-level telekinetic abilities.”

“Those sound like useful abilities in their line of work, and having so many Hypers means that they’ll actually want to solve these cases instead of just pinning the blame on us when it’s convenient.”

“Yeah the HCU is a lot better about giving us a fair shake than a lot of agencies that deal with Hypers,” Blake agreed. “I should be getting back to the others though Candy, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Later Blake,” I said, signing off. Then I headed for the studio, where I was hoping I would find Ian and the others.

Brianna and all of my bandmates were all crowded around the laptop that we used for sound editing when I walked in, and from the sounds of it Ian was showing them the Youtube videos and the press conference. “Hey guys,” I said with a wave as I entered the room.

“Well, lookie here, if it isn’t the ‘Blue Bombshell’ herself,” Mai teased. I could only groan as I realized that that nickname wasn’t going to be going away for a while. “You two are moving pretty fast, usually fighting mutant-hating terrorists and becoming a Youtube sensation is a third date kind of thing.”

“Ian sure knows how to show a girl a good time,” I shot back playfully. “And I even got to spend the evening with his family having dinner and getting to know them. There were baby pictures and everything.”

“I can’t tell if you’re joking or not,” Leslie put in, giving me an appraising look.

“She’s... uh… not,” Ian admitted, looking just a little embarrassed. “My family wants to meet the whole band by the way, I was just never sure how to bring them up before since none of you have a good relationship with your families.”

“Wait… you actually had dinner with his family? For real?” Mai sputtered, her eyes going from me to Ian and then back to me again.

“Yeah they were really nice,” I admitted. “They didn’t even flinch at my appearance when I met them, blue skin and all. And as for our new houseguest, they were more concerned with getting her some clothes and making sure she ate a good meal to care about her appearance either. Luckily Ian’s sister was close to her size and had some clothes that she didn’t mind giving up.”

“Houseguest?” John asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Ian and I kinda promised Dr. Park that we would all keep an eye on Amy, the girl we saved, for a few days while she rests and recovers. She’s kind of in the same family situation as me so she doesn’t have anyone else to turn to right now. She’s asleep on our couch now Leslie, so we’ll need to be careful not to wake her when we return to the apartment. Dr. Park wants her resting as much as possible and getting three solid meals a day.”

“Now that I’m settled in, I don’t mind keeping an eye on her while you’re all training for the day,” Brianna quickly offered. “I may be able to help more with her clothes situation too, and maybe I can get my little bro to help keep an eye on her too.”

“Thanks Brianna, that’s really nice of you. I don’t think it’ll be a problem getting him to help out, it looks like he’s a bit sweet on her,” I told her with a giggle. “Oh, that reminds me, Blake said that he likely won’t be back until late since he, Travis, and Dr. Park are assisting the HCU in their investigation of the Right Hand. He said that he’ll probably crash as soon as he gets home.”

“Thanks for letting me know Candy, I guess that means that we’ll have time to go over some of the ideas I have for your costumes then,” she offered with a grin.

I grinned right back at her. “I was hoping you might say that, let’s see what you got.”

We all had relocated to Brianna’s studio, a well organized room with a huge work table bearing her sewing machine and serger on one end, with a medium sized rotating rack between them that played host to spools of thread in a rainbow of different shades. The other end of the worktable was cleared for cutting materials or being able to lay them out flat. One wall was dominated by square cubbies hosting rolls of different materials of varying shades and textures, and in the corner there was a pair of adjustable mannequins, one male and one female.

Brianna had us all gather around the cleared end of the worktable and soon she had placed her tablet in the center to give us all a clear view of the ideas she had sketched while she explained them. So like I said before, I’m thinking mostly black in gothic styles with the team/band logo on your backs to give them a uniform feel. Each of you would have slight differences in style, an individual symbol over your hearts, and a signature color to go with your on stage personas.”

“Wait, we’re going to have to act like someone else when in costume? I don’t know if I can really do that,” Mai pointed out in concern.

“Trust me, they won’t be much of a stretch and most of the persona will be displayed in the costumes themselves,” the designer assured us, “but feel free to play it up as much as you like for the public.”

“Okay, so what are these personas?” Ian asked in interest.

Brianna pointed at me with a grin. “Okay first we have Candy. As Syryn, I’ve decided to make your costume sultry and seductive with a lot of gothic flair. Sirens in the Greek myths were known to lure in sailors and seduce them with their voices. You have the voice down, from what I’ve heard, so the sultry and seductive look will play on that. Your signature color will be cotton candy pink to go along with your hair and contrast the black of the rest of your costume. I haven’t really come up with definitive symbols for each of you yet, but for you I’m thinking of something music based with a lot of curves to suit you. Unlike the others, you’ll be showing quite a bit of skin to accentuate your differences, but all the vital bits will be covered with the bulletproof material I’m making all of your costumes out of. ”

I had been half expecting something like she was describing, so I quickly explained, “No worries about the exposed skin, I don’t really need to concentrate anymore to keep a TK shield up at all times. It’ll protect me from bullets and other projectiles. I was planning on keeping one up whenever we perform or do the hero thing anyway since I’m not wearing a mask and I’ll be putting a pretty big target on my exposed head for anti-mutant extremists.”

“Good, I knew that you wanted to be yourself on stage, but I was a bit worried about someone shooting you in one of the exposed bits,” she responded with a sigh of relief. Then pointing to the rough sketch on her tablet she continued explaining. “Now for your costume itself I was thinking of a studded collar with a front-lacing corset to hug your curves, show a good amount of cleavage, and leave your shoulders and upper arms bare. The skirt will be secured with a studded antigravity belt to match the collar. The skirt itself will have a hem at mid thigh on your right side that tapers down to just below the knee on the left with a crinoline in your signature color underneath to fill it out and bring attention to your legs and the curves that your corset is showing off. Elbow length fishnet gloves and ankle boots over thigh high fishnet stockings would complete the outfit and the lacing in the boots and corset would both be in your signature pink. I’ll also make you an optional leather jacket for those times when it’s a little colder.”

“Ooh! Do me next!” Mai blurted out eagerly.

The designer laughed, but flipped through a few images before settling on one. “For the rest of you I’ll be adding touches to your costumes to subtly, or in some cases blatantly, hide your real identities as well as add to the believability of your personas. For Starbright your persona is the sexy and flirty party girl.”

“I think she can handle that just fine,” Leslie teased with a laugh.

Mai stuck out her tongue at my roommate as Brianna continued her explanation. “Your signature color will be a pastel blue that contrasts the black and gets attention. You’ll be wearing a full skintight bodysuit that covers you from head to toe in that blue color and made from a bulletproof material. The only part of you that bodysuit won’t cover will be your ears and the area of the mouth, nose, and chin not covered by the mask. To preserve your secret identity I’ll be adding padding to the mask to make it look like you have more prominent cheekbones and strategic padding to the bodysuit to give you the more stereotypical superheroine physique since you’re so petite.”

“The body suit is just to disguise your features and keep you from being riddled with bullets,” the designer carefully explained while raising a hand to stave off Mai’s possible protests. “Over top that we’ll build your persona’s look. The bodysuit will have a built-in realistic looking wig to hide your normally long hair. I’m thinking black, since that’s your natural hair color; something short on one side with a side part and then shoulder length on the other, with light blue streaks and half covering your face. Over top the bodysuit you’ll be wearing a black crop top with a black three quarter sleeve leather jacket and matching miniskirt, gloves, ankle boots, and utility belt.

“I think I can live with that,” Mai said with a grin.

“Now for Twilight, we’re going to go dark and mysterious, with silver as her signature color,” Brianna said as she once again flipped through images until she found the one she was looking for. “You’ll be wearing a dusky silver bodysuit from ankle to neck with a black leotard overtop. We’ll accessorize with black knee high combat boots and elbow length gloves, both of which will lock firmly in place with a series of prominent silver buckles. The final touches will be a black domino mask and a knee-length black cloak with a deep hood that will obscure the features of your face and body.”

“Dark and mysterious huh? I like the look of it, it goes well with my codename,” my roommate stated with approval as she looked over the design. “So, who’s next?”

Brianna flipped one image over before turning to regard John. “Decibel may bring the noise, but you seem to be a fairly quiet person by nature, so we’re going to work with that and make you enigmatic and a bit intimidating. You have a good physique that’s not overly muscular and not toothpick thin, so we’re going to do a form fitting bodysuit from ankles to neck, black in the legs with a gradient fading into the red torso at the waist, with a black trench coat over top. The boots and gloves would be in your signature dark red. We won’t do a regular mask for you, but rather a helmet or something that will completely hide your face from view and distort your voice when you do speak. I’ll work with Blake to come up with something that works with the overall costume theme.”

“Feel free to make me look as badass and intimidating as you want,” John joked with a chuckle, “I’m not going to complain. I guess that just leaves Ian then. Feel free to make him look slightly less badass, he does have a force field after all, and we can’t have the sidekick outdoing the Blue Bombshell.”

“Thanks a lot dude,” Ian muttered, letting out an exaggerated groan.

“Well he is the ‘sexy sidekick’ Brianna replied with a laugh. “Plus he’s the lead guitarist so maybe we should use that, cash in on sex appeal for the girls, since Syryn will be holding the attention of all the guys. I was having trouble deciding on something for Riff, but I had a few ideas and one of them should work well with his newfound popularity with the girls.”

“What kind of idea?” Ian inquired cautiously.

Brianna looked thoughtful for a moment, flipping through several sketches before coming up with the one that she was looking for and making some quick alterations. “Like I said, we’ll make you Syryn’s opposite number. We’ll go with tight black pants and a military style vest fastened with four straps in the front with royal purple clasps and accents. We won’t have you wearing a shirt underneath to show off your chest and arms and make all your fangirls happy. To contrast the mostly black outfit a bit we’ll have a purple strip, maybe three inches wide, run down each side of your body from underarm to ankle. We could finish it off with pirate style boots and gloves, black with royal purple trim and a mask to cover up the upper half of your face, but open at the top to let your long hair hang freely.”

Ian thought about it for a moment and finally nodded. “That sounds okay, but Syryn gets a jacket in case it’s cold, so shouldn’t I too?”

“What? And disappoint all your fangirls?” Brianna said with a shocked and serious look on her face. She couldn’t hold it in place for long though before she broke down into a fit of giggles. “I’m… just kidding. I’ll make a male version of Syryn’s Jacket for you.”

“You’re almost as bad as Mai,” Ian muttered, though he was smiling when he did so.

The next day we spent mostly relaxing and watching over Amy since most of Aegis was still busy with doing work for their civilian jobs and Blake, Travis, and Dr. Park took the Ladybug to continue whatever work they had been doing before I had interrupted them the day before. Before they had left though Blake had stopped by to tweak a version of my second skin pendant and hair net that he had whipped up the night before for Amy that gave her the appearance of having lightly tanned skin and chestnut brown hair. She had been so happy with the results that she had hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. Blake had left after that, just as happy and a bit red in the face.

After making sure that the three of us had eaten a good breakfast and that Amy was resting on the couch watching television, Leslie and I worked on a new song that I had an idea for since meeting Amy the day before. Our treatment from both our parents and many other normal humans in our natural forms had been very similar and it was a far too common reaction to obvious mutants like us that pained me inside. It wasn’t even just mutants, but anyone who was even the slightest bit different in some way ended up hated and ridiculed for things that were beyond our control.

We had finished working on the new song by lunchtime and so we decided to take Amy out for a brief walk to a nearby burger joint to get her out of the apartment for a bit and used to being, and blending in, in public. She was nervous at first, obviously worried about someone seeing through her disguise, but as we ate nobody paid any special attention to us, other than the looks that boys reserved for girls they thought were cute. She was a lot more relaxed by the time we returned to the apartment and it improved my mood immensely.

We had decided on an extra long practice during the afternoon since we had the free time and Brianna and Amy made themselves comfortable on the couch in the studio to watch while we ran through each of our songs several times. Amy was enraptured the whole time, especially after Brianna had explained that we were going to be super heroes and the world’s first openly mutant band. Finally we were about ready to finish for the day when I started handing out the music sheets for the new song. “Leslie and I finished this one this morning guys,” I explained a bit uncertainly, “I call it ‘Light the Darkness’. Now I know that it’s a bit slower than our usual stuff, but I had the idea running through my head all night and I wanted to give it a try.”

The tempo was slow, sad, and languid and Leslie started in on the organ almost as soon as John had started setting down the beat. Ian and Mai jumped in filling out the melody and I just let it take hold for a long moment, washing over me and our audience before adding my voice as the first verse began. I thought about all that Leslie and Amy had been through before I met them, how lonely and difficult it must have been for them, how much they had suffered. Being very careful to control my empathy and just let my voice itself convey those emotions, I started in on the first verse.

Some people play at being sharks
They prey on those alone or sick
Their biting seems to leave no marks
But how can people be so thick
All the scars are deep inside
Each day hiding them gets harder
Then one day it’s suicide
And bullies get away with murder

Sadness and disgust at that kind of treatment, and how it could have ended up so much worse for my friends or even for myself, colored my tone. I let that final word hang there as the interlude began and then when the tune slipped into the chorus I beseeched my listeners to hope as the words flowed from my tongue.

A single candle in the night
It doesn’t really seem so bright
But stand up tall and hold it high
So that others see your light
You might find not everyone’s so heartless
When that one candle is a sign
To call more candles in the darkness
And together you will shine

I let the final word carry, keeping that hope alive in my voice as long as I could before the next interlude. Then as the next verse began I though of my mother and how much her words and actions had hurt me since I had activated, pouring all of that into the next verse, while continuing to keep a firm hold on my empathy. I wanted the words and the emotions in my voice to carry the song, not my psychic ability. I wanted to provoke deep thought, not the depression and anger that those thoughts actually made me feel.

They say you’re a freak, they say you’re a loser
They call you so many hurtful names
Whoever they are they’re just an abuser
Don’t be a victim to their games
You’ve heard their side, now hear my side
It doesn’t matter what they’ve said
We may all be different on the outside
But in the end we all bleed red

I let the message and the words slowly ebb away, taking a moment to collect myself before the chorus began again and I once more put all the hope I could muster into those words.

A single candle in the night
It doesn’t really seem so bright
But stand up tall and hold it high
So that others see your light
You might find not everyone’s so heartless
When that one candle is a sign
To call more candles in the darkness
And together you will shine

The next verse was more insistent and I put my own confidence into the words as I started in. I had found good friends who accepted me for who I was and I had to believe that with the right push others could as well.

Who you are, where you come from,
Who you love, the color of your skin
It doesn’t matter, you’re still someone
And what counts is what’s within
Take it from someone who’s been there
Just hold high that candle’s light
There are others with a light to share
And together things can be alright

After carrying that last note I took a good silent breath of air. I was under no delusion that these simple lyrics could change the way that those who were different were treated, but if even one person who ever listened to this song didn’t feel so alone anymore, if I could change one life for the better than it would be worth it. I broke into the chorus one last time, hoping that that would be the case.

A single candle in the night
It doesn’t really seem so bright
But stand up tall and hold it high
So that others see your light
You might find not everyone’s so heartless
When that one candle is a sign
To call more candles in the darkness
And together you will shine

Yes, together we will shiiiiine…

I held that last note, reluctant to let go and then I let the others bring the song to a close, the melody growing ever more silent until it had faded completely.

I looked up to see Brianna and Amy smiling, tears in their eyes. My bandmates all wore similar expressions and John gave a nod of approval. Nobody really had to say anything at that point. The song may have been slower and more melancholy than our usual fare, but the message, that was something we could all get behind.

For the next two days, Brianna watched Amy while the rest of us trained for the day, but whenever we weren’t in training she was everywhere we were, following us, and particularly me, around like a little lost puppy. She seemed to have fully recovered, but we had no idea what to do with her now. I wasn’t about to let her go back to living on the streets, but putting her in the foster care system wouldn’t work out well for her unless the foster parents knew she was a mutant, and I didn’t want her to have to out herself either now that she had a way to blend in.

Brianna had taken a liking to Amy and had offered to see Tara at the Hyper Protection Program office in regards to becoming her acting foster parent. Amy was even keen on the idea, but there was one problem that I could foresee. Her obvious hero worship toward me and the other members of my team was pushing her to want to become more involved in what we were doing. She wanted to be a part of RevolveR and that made me nervous. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her or thought that she shouldn’t be part of the team because she didn’t play an instrument. We all liked her, in fact she was kind of becoming like a kid sister to us and there were other ways she could help the team than just as a band member. What bothered me was her age, and that what we were doing was going to be dangerous.

I had tried to subtly discourage her, but it hadn’t helped and at the end of those three days she spent recovering she finally got the nerve to ask what was on her mind. “I want to join your team.”

I sighed as I thought about how best to discourage her. Finally, I just came out with the truth. “This isn’t a game Amy, people die doing the superhero thing and you’re not legally old enough to make that decision for yourself.”

“I know it’s not a game and I know what’s at stake,” she stated, crossing her arms stubbornly. “I stayed alive for a month and a half with those Right Hand assholes on my heels, and ‘that decision’ was made for me the moment that I Activated. Besides, I could be so useful to you on missions with my powers, and I don’t need to be an actual part of the band, I’d be like the best Roadie ever!”

I hated to admit it but her points were valid, in fact similar thoughts had entered my own mind as I had considered the problem over the past day. The biggest problem was that her powers could allow her to accompany us on missions whether we wanted her to or not. She also had the determination and sheer stubbornness to do just that, and I could hardly keep her safe if she was jumping into missions and not part of the game plan.

Time and again it came back to one conclusion. The only real way to keep her safe was to allow her to be a part of things, but on my terms. I needed to be able to know what she was going to be doing and limit her involvement with anything potentially dangerous. Finally I said, “I’ll talk to Aegis about it, but there will be conditions. These are non-negotiable, you do this on my terms or not at all.”

She jumped and hugged me. “Name them! I’ll do anything!”

“First of all, since Brianna seems to want to be your guardian, she has to sign off on this. Second, you need to follow orders at all times. Third, you’ll be a probationary member until Blackout and Liberty can assure me that you’re not going to be a danger to yourself or anyone else out there. Blackout is going to work you hard and if he doesn’t see an effort to learn and improve you’re out. Fourth, come September you’ll start homeschooling; you’ve been out of school for two years and you’ll need to catch up to graduate. And last, but not least, no lone ranger bullshit; you stick with the team and where I can keep an eye on you at all times, unless I give you the order to leave.

“You got it! Absolutely! I’m gonna go talk to Bri right now!” With that she took off for Brianna’s apartment and left me wondering if I had just made the biggest mistake of my life.

To say that Liberty and Blackout weren’t enthused by the idea is putting it mildly, but as team leader it was my decision and they couldn’t argue with my logic and my conditions had met with their approval. I think that Blackout was privately hoping that Amy would quit once the training got too hard for her, but I had the feeling that he was going to be disappointed on that score. Amy wasn’t the type to give up and I was fairly certain that she would work hard to make sure that every one of my conditions was met or exceeded.

Amy had convinced Brianna to endorse it as well, probably because Brianna knew as well as I did that without my terms she probably would have done it whether we liked it or not. She would be better off doing it with our knowledge and full protective gear. The designer had shown us the costume design she had come up with for Amy’s alter ego Rave as well; a full neck to toes neon green bodysuit that exactly mimicked the glowing lines and geometric patterns found all over her body, only they were in black on green rather than green on black. Over that she would wear a black crop top with her personal emblem over her heart, a short black skirt, knee-high leather boots, and black elbow length gloves with what looked like glow bracelets over top.

Rave’s suit wasn’t the only one that had gained a personal emblem either, since Brianna had managed to design a personal emblem for each of our costumes in our signature colors, as well as an eye-catching gold team logo that would go on the backs of our costumes and optional jackets. When she had shown us those they had been on a black background so we could see what they eventually would look like on the black material of our costumes. It would take a while for the costumes to be finished, but none of us was in any particular hurry. We were all still in training, and I didn’t plan on making any more appearances as Syryn in public until our debut at the Battle of the Bands, and that was still over a month away.

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Author's Note: Here's chapter 6 of Syryn's Song. Thank you as always to all my readers for the comments, kudos, and thinking that my work is worth reading. Also thanks to the Big Closet team who work tirelessly to give us all a wonderfully supportive venue to read and post TG fiction ~Amethyst.
 

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Chapter 6: Birthday
 

The next month passed in a blur of day long training sessions, and band practices most of the evenings. We were training even when the members of Aegis were off on missions, since we pretty much knew our routines by now. It was exhausting, but we were getting damn good as a band and not too shabby with our powers either. I had a lot more control over my abilities now and the daily workouts were keeping me in excellent shape as well. Ian and I were also going steady now, though we were taking things slow since he wanted to make sure I was ready for a physical relationship before going that far.

In other news, the website for the Battle of the Bands had announced the twelve entrants who would be competing for the title and the two thousand dollar prize. We were there, but so was Red Prophesy. The other bands consisted of Unsafe Company, Torpedo Agenda, Naked Effigy, One Dagger Mutiny, Invader Edict, The Cramps, The Metal Dolls, Drunk Uncle, Black Malice, and Nuclear Bong. While I was pleased that we had been selected I also noted that we were near the bottom of the list and all the other bands were hard rock or metal.

“How long?” I asked Tessily as I pulled myself from the pool on Friday August sixteenth, following another rigorous day of training followed by underwater meditation. She had had me following our training each day by meditating and performing the various mental exercises she had taught me under water until I absolutely needed air. It usually helped me to relax after all the physical training and pushing my telekinetic abilities to their limits, and it was really helping me to hone my mind as well. My control and precision with my powers was really improving since she had started training me two and a half months earlier.

“One hour and thirty eight minutes,” she responded with a smile as she handed me a towel. The smile was replaced by a look of uncertainty though as she paused briefly before speaking again. “Candice, before you return to your abode to prepare for your meeting and practice there is a matter that I would like to discuss with you. Would you mind joining me in my sanctum?”

I already had a lot on my mind with getting the band ready for the battle of the bands in two weeks, worrying about who was going to be our agent and manager, it being my first birthday as a girl, and my upcoming meeting with Liberty and Blackout to discuss the progress of my team. Now I had something more to worry about it seemed. With the uncertain expression on her face I wondered if I had done something wrong. While Tessily usually took everything seriously to some degree, there was this determination in her eyes I had only seen rarely. Whatever it was she wanted to speak to me about, she wasn’t sure if she should bring it up, but she was making herself do it regardless.

If it weren’t for the seriousness and uncertainty in her expression I might have just written it off as her wanting to do something for my birthday. I had already been surprised with an impromptu party and gifts from all my band mates this morning: John and Mai had chipped in to get me a really nice mic stand tor my wireless mic, Leslie had bought me a diver’s watch, Amy had gone shopping with Kim to get me a silk bathrobe that matched my hair, and Ian had gotten me an acoustic guitar, with a promise that he would start teaching me to play when we had free time. The Fae though still didn’t follow a lot of human customs though, so that couldn’t be it. No, Tessily wanted to talk to me about something serious, I could feel it.

I looked up at the clock over the pool, as I began towelling myself off, and saw that it was only three thirty, and that only made me more worried since we usually didn’t finish for the day for another hour or so. That meant I still had an hour and a half before my meeting, but what could she need to speak with me about so badly that she would deliberately cut practice short? Pushing my worries aside and firmly clamping down on my empathy so my feelings wouldn’t leak out when I spoke, I nodded. It was probably better to get whatever it was out of the way. “Sure Tessily, it looks like I have enough time for it,” I told her with as much of a smile as I could muster.

Once I was dry, and had put my new bathrobe on over my bathing suit, the Fae woman led the way out of the pool and toward the elevator we used to go from the sub-levels to the apartments. This elevator was in the corner of the building furthest away from the main and side entrances, away from the prying eyes of any visitors and hidden by hologram emitters that made it look like a normal wall. Blake had made sure nobody would be able to see it and it only opened to the voice commands of team members whose voice prints had been registered.

Once we were on the ground floor, I followed her to the one bedroom apartment she lived in. I had never been in her home before so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from her living space, especially with her allergy to many synthetic materials. She had only been freed from her curse and living here under the name of Tess O’Brien for two years now, so I doubted that she had embraced human culture yet. The longing in her voice whenever she spoke with me about her people made me doubly sure of that.

She opened the door to the apartment and I wasn’t really all that surprised by what I saw. The living room was well lit with hardwood floors and was dominated by the green of various potted plants, herbs, and even some growing vegetables that gave the place the feel of almost being in a forest or jungle. Seriously, the room was filled with them, like some indoor garden and the only furniture was in the centre of the room; a pair of wooden garden benches and some large sitting cushions in dark blue that I figured were cotton and filled with down. A quick look around told me that the kitchen was left more functional, but I figured that her bedroom was much the same as what I was looking at now.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” I told her honestly as I finished getting a look at everything. I took a deep breath of the scents of the flowers and other plants around me as I did so and couldn’t help but smile. It was very relaxing, and probably helped her feel as close to being at home as a Fae living in New York City could.

She smiled as she responded, “Thank you Candice, and please make yourself comfortable.” Some of the uncertainty seemed to leave her as she took a seat cross-legged on one of the cushions and breathed in the subtle scents of the plants around us. She had explained to me when we first started training that the Fae have very acute senses, which was why Blake had fitted the pool with an advanced automated sea salt filtration and cleaning system rather than a regular chlorine one.

I decided to sit on the cushion closest to her, copying her own pose as I got right to the point. I needed to get this over with before it made me even more nervous than it already was. “So you wanted to talk to me about something?”

The silver haired elf nodded and took a deep breath before speaking. “Candice, since I began training you, you have been reminding me more and more of my own people. It is not just your appearance, but who you are inside as well, the way you value life, and how you have learned our fighting style so quickly. We are ready to go well beyond the basics that I have been teaching you so far, and my feeling of kinship to you deepens each day. My kerridae has long since vanished and I have yet to find any others that remain…” She paused uncertainly before she finally said, “That is why I have brought you here, to ask you if you would be willing to undergo the Minari an Ciele.”

Tessily had taught me some basic words from the Fae language, but I had no idea what she was talking about. It didn’t seem like I was doing anything wrong, but I had no clue what she seemed to want from me either. All I did know was that kerridae was the Fae word for a community of Fae, she had explained it once after using the term by mistake and told me that in English they could be referred to as a troupe. “Huh?” I inquired, oh-so-cleverly.

“My people can produce children only very rarely,” she said with a sad look on her face. “Each child we did have were great treasures for our kerridae and loved by all, but many of us who did not have children still longed for one of our own. Long ago we began taking in orphans and stealing away children who were unwanted or badly abused. Sometimes we would leave a Changeling in the child’s place for a time to give us the time to get them away safely. I know that some of the Yiantuul-sair, Fae that have embraced the darkness, took infants as well. These were not children of our own though, they shared neither our blood nor our clan marks, so we came up with the Minari an Ciele to create a stronger bond with our adopted children.”

“You want to adopt me?!” I blurted out as I realized where this was going.

She nodded slowly. “Not in the human sense of the word, but yes, and I thought that this would be an appropriate day to ask you. I asked Tara about this and it would not be recognized here in the human world unless we have the documents and certificate for an official adoption. She has offered to help with that process, should we choose to do that though. Since we are both in her system and you were legally a ward of the state she could attain those documents and alter our files accordingly. What I speak of though is more of a magically binding vow, on my part only; you would have no obligations other than those you choose to place on yourself.”

“What exactly does this involve?” I asked. Technically and legally I had no parents now, and my birth mother had made it quite clear that she didn’t consider me her child, or even human, anymore. Also, the thought that Tessily thought enough of me to ask this was very flattering. I had come to like her very much during our time together. Sure most of that time was training, but she was always encouraging and caring and I thought sometimes that she worried about me more than she let on. She was teaching me a lot of things about her people that didn’t fall under training my powers as well, and we had done a lot of bonding.

“There would be an exchange of a small amount of blood from both of us, a few drops would suffice,” she explained, watching my face for my reaction. “Then I would use a spell to activate the magic in my blood to give you the mark of my clan. If we do this I will not be able to take another adoptee for another fifty years. I believe that I am making the right choice with you though; you are so much like one of my people, and you are trying to develop your powers, but you do not wish to abuse them. I do not think I could possibly choose a better child for myself.”

I stared at her for a moment as I considered what she was saying. I was of course deeply flattered that she thought so highly of me and had come to care for me so much in such a short time. There was also the revelation that she was choosing me, despite the fact that she could not do so again for fifty years, if that was true then she would never have offered if she weren’t certain about this. A few drops of blood didn’t really bother me too much, but this mark she mentioned had me curious. “What is this clan mark? Is it like a tattoo or something?”

After a moment’s thought she nodded. “Some could see it as that, but all Fae are born with the mark of their clan. These marks show that we carry the magic of our clan’s lineage, in the case of a child with parents from two clans they show what clan that child is aligned to, and they allow us to use the ability unique to our clan. There are many clans and each clan has a different ability, such as the Changeling’s shape shifting and the Pixies ability to take a pixie form to fly and increase their magical energy. Having the mark of the Royal Clan you would gain our ability, though it would not be near as powerful as it would in a true Fae.”

“And just what is your clan’s ability?” I inquired, wondering why she had not explained it along with the other two clans she had used as examples. “You’ve never mentioned it before and the only magic I’ve ever seen you use is on your arrows.”

She answered my unspoken question first. “I told you of the Changelings and Pixies first because, of all the clans, your people seem most familiar with them. As for the mark of my clan, it has very little use in the world of modern humans. You see Candice, ours is the power to command creatures of magic, including other Fae.” She sighed sadly and looked away before taking a slow breath and returning her gaze to me. “The other clans believe that our mark only inspires loyalty and confidence, but in truth it is far more than that. When we command a magical creature it will obey without pause. Fae and other intelligent species bound to magic can sometimes resist us, but only if they are very strong willed and the command feels wrong to them. Only others who wear our clan mark and non-magical creatures are completely immune though.”

“That sounds like an easy ability to abuse,” I said with a frown once I had stopped staring at her.

“It is,” she agreed, nodding soberly. “That is why I have chosen to never use it on another sentient creature, especially one of my own people. I would rather my people follow me because they wish to, not because I have commanded them to. If I make an error in judgement my people should be allowed to question that error. My elder sister Minira did not feel as I did though, which was why our father chose me to lead our people before he died. I fear for what has become of my kerridae under her rule. Ours is not so much a clan as a royal lineage, each kerridae has one, and we two are the last of that line unless she has had a child during my long absence.”

“I hope we can find them someday,” I told her sincerely, reaching out to comfort her by taking her hand in my own.

Tessily shook off her sadness and smiled at me. “I shall not give up on finding my people, but I feel like there is one with me here now. Do you have any other questions about this?”

“I was wondering how having that mark will affect me. I’m not Fae, but I’m not exactly human either,” I said while tapping one of my pointed ears.

“My father adopted a human while I was a young girl,” she spoke with a pensive expression. “She could not command Fae, but in time she became very adept at commanding less intelligent magical creatures, such as elementals and she had a unicorn she was very fond of. The mark made her inherently magical as well and I suspect that the same would be true for you, so experienced magic users will probably be able to sense something different about you. You would be able to sense them as well though, and see magical creatures shielded from the sight of mortals. You do not need to worry about physical changes, if that is your concern.”

I breathed a sigh of relief before replying, “Good, I think one traumatic physical change was enough for one lifetime. So, other than possibly getting the attention of magic users and gaining the ability to see and command creatures that no longer exist, there’s nothing to worry about?”

“Nothing that I am aware of,” the silver haired Fae woman agreed, “but your assumption that magical creatures no longer exist is incorrect. There are many magical creatures on other planes, and even some still on our world, but they prefer to live in natural places with a high concentration of magic. They would avoid cities like this, unless summoned or drawn to a large source of raw magical energy or a powerful force of nature.”

I took nearly fifteen minutes then to consider things very carefully, since I didn’t want to just jump into a decision like this. Tessily merely waited quietly and I figured that she knew me well enough by now to know that I needed to do that. She really seemed to want this though, and I had to admit that I felt a sort of kinship to her. It wasn’t just the pointed ears or that we would both look strange to normal people without a disguise, it went much deeper than that. We had similar values and the more I learned about her people the more interesting it was to me. There was also the fact that we had both been cast out by the only family we had and we both knew what it meant to lose our purpose in life.

I knew that it was stupid of me, but sometimes I still missed my birth mother and wanted to call her or try to see her. At the same time though, I still felt the anger at her betrayal and abandonment of me when I needed her the most. Since we had come to New York Aegis had become like a new family for Leslie and me both and while Leslie had found a caring mentor in Lisa, Tessliy had been that and more for me; teaching me all sorts of things, offering advice when I needed it, or just being there when I felt down about my differences and alone in the world. Leslie was like a sister to me, but Tessily had been my mother figure in this strange new family of ours. What was the harm in making that role official to her if it made her happy? We didn’t even need to make it a legal adoption unless we both decided later that it was something we wanted.

Then there were the aspects of agreeing to take her mark. Tessily was a magical being, but she didn’t seem to have mages coming out of the woodwork to attack her so that didn’t really concern me too much. I was going to have to get used to getting attention anyway, looking like I do and choosing to become a rock star/superhero. Seeing and commanding magical creatures probably wouldn’t even be an ability I’d be able to use much, though that might fall under the same decision-making category as a condom: I’d rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it. I also respected Tessily’s restraint while possessing such an ability. It takes a damn good person to be able to command other people to do your bidding, but not do so for moral reasons.

Finally I nodded. “How do we do this?”

First Tessily had me choose where I wanted the mark to be, while she prepared a few things. She was born with hers on her upper back, but since the ritual would allow her to place it anywhere on my body we both wanted to choose a spot where a tattoo wouldn’t look too out of place. We decided on my right shoulder and she used a small knife with a narrow blade to make a small incision. Then she made a small cut on her right hand as well and placed her slowly bleeding hand against my shoulder to mix our blood.

What followed next was Tessily chanting something in the Fae language with a look of concentration on her face. I had no idea what she was saying, but I had this intense tingling sensation where her hand met my shoulder. When she finished she used a wet cloth to wipe the blood off our skin. There wasn’t near as much as I had been expecting though and when I checked my shoulder in the small hand mirror she offered me there was no sign of a cut on my light blue skin. In its place there was what looked like a black and gold tattoo, roughly three inches in diameter, of a six pointed star entwined in leafy vines.

“That’s kind of cool,” I said as I looked at it. I could feel a sort of warmth fading from the mark and looking at Tessily I could sense that faint warmth fading from her as well. Was that what magic felt like? I put down the mirror and smiled at her, “So what happens now?” I asked uncertainly.

Tessliy seemed to get what I was talking about without me having to say it. She wrapped me up in a hug before speaking. “We go on as we were before; I will teach you more about our people and our language, in addition to the combat training and assisting you in developing your powers, and should you need me for anything else I shall be here for you. There are some things we could do to spend time together outside of regular training as well if you would like.”

“That sounds nice,” I agreed. I meant it too, I liked Tessily, I felt even more connected to her now than I had before, and spending time with her outside of training would help me to figure out if I might want to make this adoption official.

She reached behind the cushion she was sitting on and produced a small wrapped box. “Thank you for this; I cannot express properly how much this means to me. I had Lisa help me purchase something for you; I am told it is a human custom to give gifts on the date of a loved-one’s birth.”

I looked at the small box wrapped in light blue paper and tied with a pink ribbon uncertainly for a moment before beginning to open it. “Thank you, you didn’t need to do that, you’ve given me enough since we met.” Once I had the box unwrapped and opened I discovered a simple silver bracelet with something engraved on the inside. “Hanun lien”? I asked curiously. It wasn’t a Fae term that I had heard her use before. Sometimes I couldn’t be sure whether or not she needed a reminder that I wasn’t actually one of her people. Her desire to adopt me using that ritual showed that she knew it consciously, but sometimes she needed to explain the Fae terms she used so casually around me.

“It means ‘treasured child’,” the Fae princess explained as I put the bracelet on my right wrist, “it is a term of affection my people use for our adoptees.” She hugged me and then got gracefully to her feet. “Now, you had best go prepare for your meeting with Lisa and Nick, I do not wish for you to be late because of me.”

It turned out that my meeting with Liberty and Blackout was nothing to be too concerned about either. When I arrived at the situation room after a very quick shower, wearing a pair of jeans and a halter top, I found Lisa and Nick without their masks and relaxing at the large shield shaped table with cups of coffee. It seemed that this was just going to be a casual meeting. “Take a load off birthday girl,” Lisa told me with a smile as I sighed in relief. I took a seat to Lisa’s right and as I was getting comfortable her smile became even broader as caught sight of the new mark on my shoulder. “So Tess actually asked you did she? She’s been fretting about it for days, worried you would say no.”

I wasn’t really surprised that Tessily would have talked about her desire to ‘adopt’ me with Lisa. As the only two female members of Aegis, the two of them tended to spend a lot of their off time together and had become very close over the past two years. If she would have discussed it with anyone it would have been Lisa, and Lisa had helped with the gift as well. “I wasn’t sure what to think at first,” I admitted, “but she’s been a great teacher and more to me and I’ve come to like her a lot. We have a lot in common.”

“I’m glad you two have found a sort of family in one another,” she said candidly. “This whole team is a family, but having a tangible family bond can mean a lot when things get hard. Tess is very proud of you, you know.”

Nick nodded in agreement. “So are we, of all of you kids. You’ve all really put a lot of effort into your training since you joined us. Tess says you’ve got the basics of what she can teach you down. She wants to go on to a few more advanced things, but we can probably cut your training for your powers and the physical stuff down to a few hours a day, and add an hour of team training for all of you. After lunch you’ll all be free to study and have some free time for other things.”

“Study?” I asked, wondering what they were talking about.

Nick handed me a silver flash drive. “That has a database of super villains known to operate in the New York area, both Hyper and otherwise, as well as some that we have encountered on missions, and any who are wanted by federal authorities. The data contains known aliases, powers, weaknesses, and combat strategies should you encounter them. Some records are more detailed than others, but they all have photos and names that you can familiarize yourself with. There is also data on various criminal organizations and on organizations that we believe may be exploiting innocent Hypers, including what we have on the Right Hand.”

“Unfortunately, with the latter we have little more than suspicions at the moment, but we try to keep a close eye on their dealings if we can,” Lisa added with a sigh. “You’ll also need to start learning how to use all of the equipment Blake has for you as well.”

“I thought this meeting was to discuss my team’s progress,” I said, blinking in confusion.

“It is,” Lisa agreed with a nod, “you’re all ready to move on to team training. Tessily gives us glowing reports of your progress and Leslie is doing as well as you are. We’re still working on finding the upper limit of her speed, but she’s just as strong as I am and her control over both is progressing nicely. Her shadow walking ability only seems to have a range of around one hundred feet, but it doesn’t seem to require line of sight. She would make a frightening thief with that ability; if it’s in her range and there are shadows anywhere she can get in and out without a trace.”

Nick spoke next. “As for Decibel, John isn’t as powerful as the rest of you, but he’s a hard worker and he’s done well with the hand to hand combat lessons. His sonar sense is his most powerful ability; he can sense a quarter being dropped from almost fifty feet away and tell you what side it landed on every time. The sonic shout seems to be an extension of his ability to manipulate sound. He manipulates the sound of his own voice and it doesn’t appear to be limited to only volume, so we’ve had him trying to use the ability in different ways.”

“What kind of applications could there be for that?” I asked in interest.

“Depends on how much range and fine control he can develop,” the large man answered. “It’s possible he could create sonic shockwaves or make people pass out or get sick. We’re trying to help him find ways to use it both offensively and defensively without harming civilians.”

“We mostly have Jason working with Mai when she’s not doing physical training,” Lisa told me after a long pull at her coffee. “He’s teaching her to make more convincing illusions since that’s his specialty. She already had some training in martial arts, and even Nick here thinks that she should be fine with an hour or two of practice each day. She’s a lot like you in that she fears losing control so she was reluctant at first to try using her powers in offensive ways. We do have her working on it though, and I believe we’re starting to make some progress in that area.”

None of that really surprised me at all. She had mentioned that her grandparents had had her study martial arts while she was living in Japan in order to teach her discipline, and even though she seldom used it she still practiced. Given what had happened when Mai’s powers activated the first time though, I figured it was going to take her a while to be comfortable training to use them for more than just lightshows and party tricks. Of us all she had the most emotional baggage connected to her powers, so the fact that they were making progress was very promising. “So, what about Ian then?” I asked.

“Ian’s sound mimicking ability is amazing, when he’s mimicking a person not even a voice print analyzer can tell the difference between him using his ability and whoever he’s copying. I don’t see much use for it though, outside of pranks or possible infiltration purposes. He has gotten much better at activating and deactivating his force field, but even after two months it has had a few surprises for us; I still have a bruise from yesterday,” Lisa muttered rubbing her side.

I stared at the red headed Hyper beside me. Lisa had Category four invulnerability and strength; hurting her at all was damn near impossible. “He bruised you?! How the hell did that happen?”

“His force field is nearly Category four, so we thought it would be safe for Lisa to use close to her full strength sparring with him,” Nick quickly began to explain. “He usually just depends on his force field to stop whatever is directed against him, he hasn’t really been in a serious fight with it except your tussles with H8 and the Right Hand so we wanted him to start sparring with it active. Lisa got in a solid hit and he hit her back just after, hard enough to knock her off her feet.”

My incredulous stare was now directed at both of them. “It would take at least Category four strength to do that, he’s just got normal physical abilities.”

“He wasn’t using his strength, he was using mine,” Lisa replied cryptically before she began to explain a few seconds later. “We had Blake run an analysis of the video footage from the training room and it seems his force field is an energy field that he generates around himself that absorbs all energy directed at him. It doesn’t just stop punches and bullets; it absorbs all the kinetic energy from them. It’s not just kinetic energy either, but any energy directed against him while his shield is up; heat, radiation, all sorts of things. His field devours it all.”

“So what happens with this energy once he’s absorbed it?” I wondered aloud, thinking that it probably had something to do with why he was able to use Lisa’s strength against her.

“He seems to store it for about ten seconds before it begins to dissipate harmlessly,” Nick said with a smile. “But if he hits back or throws something within those ten seconds, all the energy absorbed is released in that action as pure kinetic energy equal to the energy he’s absorbed.”

“There also seems to be a limit to how much his field can absorb and redirect before it needs to shut down and recharge,” Lisa added. “It could last all day if he’s not getting attacked, but when we were seriously going at it in the training room today it only lasted twenty three minutes before it turned off. It took over half an hour before he was able to activate it again. A Cat 5, or a medium to high range Cat four using their full power, would probably be able to overpower him with his field fully charged, but we’re not sure what would happen in such a case. The shield could just collapse like it normally does when depleted, or it could react more violently.”

Well that was an interesting aspect to his power; I had been worried we would need to come up with some sort of weaponry for him in case he had to fight people like Ogre, with both strength and invulnerability. “So, what about Amy?” I asked, concerned about my latest recruit.

Nick appeared to consider his answer for a moment before answering with a faint smile. “After getting to know her a bit I’m forced to admit that you were right, she would want to help you in the field regardless of whether we want her to or not and there’s not much we could do to stop her. At least with her being willing to listen to your orders and by giving her specific duties with the team, you’ll be able to keep tabs on her. Overall, I have to say that I’m very happy with her progress. She seems willing, even eager, to follow the conditions you set on her and she works hard during our sparring sessions. I still worry about putting a girl that young in a position where she could be in danger, but between her immunity to all toxins and viruses and her excellent control of her teleportation portals she should be safe enough with the gear Blake and Brianna are making her.”

“So there you have it,” Lisa said with a grin, “you’re all ready to start team training sessions. Now go eat something before Blake drags you off to his lab to show you all your new gear.” The pair had no other information for me except to let me know that we would begin our new lesson plan the next day, so I was free to go back to the apartment Leslie and I shared to make some dinner before our meeting with Blake. I began mentally filing away all the new information I had on my friends’ powers and limits as I made my way there.

Leslie wanted to know all about my ‘adoption’ over dinner once she noticed the new mark on my shoulder and I had explained it. I was worried that she might be a bit jealous of the bond I was forming with the Fae, but she merely laughed when I voiced that concern. “Candy, I’m just happy for you. Besides, I’m Liberty’s protégé, and I think that’s just as awesome as being the adopted daughter of a Fae princess. When I first got my powers I wanted to be just like her and now she’s teaching me, it’s a dream come true, so don’t worry about me your Highness.”

I managed to not spit out the bite of chicken I had been chewing and quickly swallowed as I groaned. “Please don’t call me that, especially where Mai could hear. She’d probably send me another candy-gram to congratulate me or something.”

“Don’t be silly, this is Mai we’re talking about,” my roommate disagreed. “She’ll wait until you’re not expecting it before she uses that joke again. She’ll probably do something with light constructs; she’s trying to get them as realistic as possible. Before you got home from your meeting with Nick and Lisa I answered the door to a sparkling vampire, so I’m betting it’ll be something to do with elves, fairies or royalty when she gets wind of this.”

“A sparkling vampire? She really went there?” I asked, shaking my head.

She nodded seriously. “Yup, she even had Ian in on it. They were both staying close to the wall beside the door and she had him ask if Bella lived here. She must have had him watch part of one of the movies, because he had the voice dead on. I might have even believed it if the lips were moving in sync with the voice.”

“If those two are working together, this is going to take pranking to a whole new level,” I muttered.

“We can always fight back,” Leslie suggested. “My shadow walking and your powers could lend themselves to pranking too, and Amy and Blake would help out too. We’d have to plan carefully though, if it’s too obvious that it could be done with telekinesis she’d catch on.”

If I had been looking in a mirror I’m pretty sure that the grin I was wearing would have threatened to split my face in half. “I’m in. I’ll leave the planning up to you though, since I’m sure you already have some ideas in mind.”

“I do, I just need to do a bit of research when Blake finishes with us tonight,” she said, returning my grin.

“Sweet, now let’s get going, I want to see what surprises Blake has in store for us,” I told her once I finished the last bite of my Caesar salad. We both stood up and I telekinetically floated our dishes to the kitchen sink as I thought that a night off might be good for all of us, even if it hadn’t been intended. We had all been working hard all day and practicing most nights since our band/team had been officially formed and some time for ourselves would be nice, even if it was just going over costumes and gadgets and such with Blake. He had mentioned that things might take several hours and something about having us meet someone, so he wanted us to have the whole evening free.

Five minutes later the five of us were all gathered in Blake’s lab waiting for the grand reveal. Leslie and I arrived to see the others already there waiting for us. Before he could start though, I asked, “Blake, do you think you can adjust my second skin pendant for me?”

“Yeah, that’s easy, what do you need done? You want a tan for summer or something?” he asked.

I pointed to my new clan mark and explained, “I thought it might be a good idea to make it so that this doesn’t show while I’ve got the human look going. Call me paranoid, but it wouldn’t be good for someone to notice that Candice Graham and Syryn both have the exact same tattoo in the exact same place.”

“You’re probably right, better safe than sorry,” he agreed with a nod before examining the mark. “I should be able to program it so that the black and gold in the area of the mark default to the same color as the rest of the skin for your disguise. Nobody should be able to tell the difference, though it may take a few tries to get it right.”

“Whoa, wait, you got a tattoo? If you wanted to get a tattoo for your birthday you should have told me. And why didn’t you take me with you?” Mai blurted out.

“Tessily gave it to me today, it’s a Fae thing,” I explained while Blake took the pendant to his work bench and began fiddling with it. “It’s not really a tattoo, it’s kind of a magic mark passed down through her clan. That’s all I can really tell you though, apparently her clan doesn’t talk about their mark much, even with other Fae clans.”

Mai frowned at me in confusion. “If that’s the case though, why would our resident Elf Princess give that mark to you? Unless…” Her face lit up with a smile as she put two and two together and she nearly crushed me in a hug. “Congrats Candy! I’m so happy for you!”

They all wanted what details I could give them and ten minutes later, when I had finished explaining everything that I felt that I could; Blake had adjusted my pendant twice. The third time he had me put it back on there was no trace of the mark in my human guise. “Thanks Blake, you’re awesome,” I told him sincerely.

He just grinned and motioned for us all to join him at his work bench. “My pleasure Candy, and since we’re on the subject of you and Tessily, I might as well show you that first.”

“Show us what?” I asked in anticipation. If he was willing to delay his grand reveal by over ten minutes to adjust my pendant than whatever stuff he had to show us was going to be really cool.

He decided to fuel the anticipation even more by explaining first. “A while back Tess came to me saying that you needed a sword worthy of you, but explained that you were both adverse to something that could do a person lasting harm. She wanted something that you could wield like a sword but could be used to disarm and disable only. I got to thinking about your telekinesis and I couldn’t resist…”

“Would you just show us already?” Amy said, rolling her eyes and trying to hide a smile.

Blake pulled the sheet off his workbench revealing our costumes neatly folded and a wide array of gadgetry before he pointed to a metallic tube about an inch in diameter and six inches long. It was mostly black in color with a quarter inch wide silver band around one end and the visible side had a small dark red button half an inch below the band. “Be my guest Candy, just point the silver end away from you and press the red button to activate or deactivate it. It’ll be coded to your DNA when you touch it so that only you can use it.”

I reached out for the device with my mind and it flew into my hand. Once I made sure the silver end was pointed away from me and anyone else, I pressed the button. There was a humming sound as the weapon activated and a pink beam of light nearly three feet long emerged from the end. I stared at it for a long moment, but it was John who spoke first. “You made her a freaking pink lightsaber?”

“It’s not a lightsaber, though it is an elegant weapon, I call it the stun sword,” Blake corrected with a grin. “It can’t cut through people or steel doors or anything like that. The color is for show and so you can actually see what you’re working with, but the beam is actually contained in a shaped electromagnetic force field that resonates at a frequency which temporarily disrupts the signals that the brain sends to the muscles along the central nervous system. If you hit someone on the knee with this for example, they wouldn’t be able to move anything below that knee for ten to twenty minutes. It’s just like if their leg fell asleep so it’s harmless, temporary, and has no lasting ill effects. It runs on a quantum flux power supply, so it won’t run out of power.”

I gave the weapon a few experimental swings and grinned back at the Tinker before turning it off. “Blake, have I mentioned you’re my favorite inventor?”

“I’m your only inventor,” he replied with a laugh as he pointed to a similar black and gold tube on the work bench. “This is for you Mai and before you ask, no it’s not a lightsaber too.”

“Awwww, what it is then?” she asked sounding disappointed as she picked it up and looked it over.

He sighed as he said, “I’ll admit, that there are some issues with this device. With all the gear I needed to install for two variable field projectors instead of one set projector, and to make it respond to your powers there were some features I couldn’t install without making it quite a bit bigger. First, the power supply isn’t as big or as powerful, so the more punishment the field takes the quicker the stored power will dry up and the field will collapse, though it will recharge on its own within a few minutes or so. Second, because of the smaller power supply I can’t get it to resonate at the same frequency as Candy’s, so it won’t disrupt the nervous system like hers does. You can use it to make solid light constructs though. So, it’s whatever you want it to be, within reason.”

“Still sounds cool though, and I like the thought of making some constructs solid.” Mai looked at the device in confusion for a moment, “Ummm, there’s no ‘on’ switch and what do you mean by ‘within reason’?”

“It’s always on, just not always active, it responds to you focussing your power through it,” the Tinker quickly explained. “Just focus your power to create an object in the hand holding it, but try to keep the shape fairly simple. It should react to the light passing through the projectors and create a force field around the shape of the light construct. You can probably manage a riot shield and basic swords, spears, staffs, or other simple weapons and defenses as long as you don’t go overboard on the details.”

A focussed look passed over Mai’s face and suddenly pale blue light erupted from both ends to form a staff. She tapped me on top of the head with it, and it felt solid enough, though it was kind of warm and tingly. Then she laughed and stuck her tongue out playfully at me, “Double-bladed for the win Candy.”

I stuck my own tongue out right back at her as Blake gestured to a pair of sturdy looking black knee-high combat boots with a low heel and a series of silver buckles up the front that looked a lot like a pair I had in my closet. He handed them to my roommate as he said, “Leslie, you were complaining that your shoes weren’t able to handle the strain of you running at your full speed right?”

“Yeah, my running shoe budget has been insane the past month,” my best friend grumbled. I think that I’m getting a good handle on my strength, though my full speed is still uncertain. We think that since its Cat three that I could probably hit the sound barrier and I’ve gotten close, but it’s hard to get good with my speed when my shoes keep melting and burning my feet. It takes a half hour for my feet to heal afterwards.”

“You could hit the sound barrier? I didn’t know you could go that fast,” Ian said, looking impressed.

Blake shrugged as he gave his input. “A Cat four could go at least three times that fast and a Cat five speedster that can fly could possibly reach light speed, since they wouldn’t have to worry about friction as much. It’s not so impressive compared to that, but still it’s pretty cool. Those speedsters probably have to be invulnerable to handle the stress on the body though. Dr. Park thinks that’s why Leslie has the healing and why her bones are denser; otherwise her bones would break at top speed or whenever she hit something too hard and she would have windburn all over any exposed parts of her body when running too fast. As for your shoes melting though, these boots won’t Leslie; they’re made of a super-Kevlar of my own design and are reinforced with carbon fibres.”

“That’s awesome Blake, now I can start going full out, I’m putting these babies on right now,” Leslie replied happily as she got out of her running shoes.

Keeping up with the theme of ladies first, Blake decided to reveal Amy’s gear next, picking up a pair of black gloves and what appeared to be a dozen bright green glow bracelets and a dozen pink ones. “Amy, I thought I’d go along with the theme of your codename and give you something useful at the same time. Put these on and I’ll explain how they work. Make sure each of the beads is connected to one of the grooves along the underside of your forearms.”

Once Amy had put on the elbow-length gloves, and the bracelets over them, Blake reached out to tug experimentally at one of the bracelets, grinning as the single black bead that adorned each brightly glowing bracelet seemed to be stuck to her glove. “These won’t come off for anyone but the person wearing the gloves, at least not without a lot of strength or effort, so despite being wide enough to easily fall off, they won’t if you’ve properly docked them. The gloves contain microchips which control the nanites in the bracelets.”

“So ummm… what do they do besides look bitchin’, and not fall off?” Amy asked as she easily removed one of the bracelets and examined it more closely.

“The nanites in each bracelet generate their own power and do four things, the first being giving off that bitchin’ glow,” the inventor replied with a grin. “The second is that once the green ones are detached from the gloves they will shatter on impact and release a super-adhesive spongey foam which will safely and harmlessly encase the target and prevent them from moving. The pink ones will do the same, only they contain a solvent to dissolve the foam in case you hit the wrong target or use them on a non-combatant for some reason,” he assured her.

“So what else do they do?” Amy asked, looking over the bracelets.

“The bracelets might shatter on impact, but those beads will regenerate them good as new over time. Or else I’d probably have to make hundreds of them for you,” Blake said with a grin. “And last, but not least, if you clap your hands, the gloves will send a signal to the beads from any bracelets you’ve thrown that are within two hundred feet, calling them back to your gloves, so be ready to catch. The signal range is only two hundred feet or so, so if a bead is out of range it will lose the signal and revert to a dormant state until reconnected with one of the gloves.”

“Cool, can you put that last feature on my keys?” Ian joked.

“No, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me once you see what I’ve cooked up for you Ian, I put a lot of thought into this one,” he responded as he took a second pair of gloves, these ones black and purple, off the work bench and handed them to Ian. “Like Amy’s, these gloves are made of the same material we made the rest of your costumes out of, but yours contain micro devices in the palms which should allow you to spread your force field over whatever you’re touching. I designed them to copy the data of your own biometrics and overlay it on the person or objects in question. Essentially it tricks your force field into thinking they are an extension of you and covering them as well. This will likely cause your field to drain faster though, relative to the amount of extra mass you’re extending it to. I figured that this could help you protect innocent bystanders, but we’ll have to test them out.”

“That sounds pretty sweet,” my handsome boyfriend admitted as he put the gloves on. Once he had them on, he placed his hand on Blake’s shoulder and after a few seconds of concentration the familiar green glow of his force field covered them both. “So what now? Do we have someone hit you to see if you’re protected?”

“I’d have Leslie do it, but she could cause serious harm to me if the field isn’t really protecting me, maybe I should…” the inventor began to answer uncertainly as he started to try to solve the problem.

Mai didn’t give him time to say anything more than that before grabbing one of Leslie’s discarded sneakers and tossing it at him as hard as she could. The shoe bounced off Blake’s head, but he only looked pleased when he saw the shoe fall from his forehead to the floor. It was Ian who gave her a dirty look. “Really Mai? Who throws a shoe?!”

“What?” The light user said trying to look innocent. “He didn’t even feel it, and it’s not like it had a heel, besides he said he wanted to test it.”

“Don’t worry about it Ian,” Blake said with a shake of his head. “I didn’t feel a thing so the field worked fine. There was no harm done, and it wasn’t really all that dangerous even if it hadn’t worked. You can turn your field off now.”

“Well if it didn’t bother you than I guess that I can let it go,” Ian replied with a sigh. He got that concentrated look on his face again and after several seconds the green glow around the pair faded.

“It saved me a lot of time coming up with a way to test it actually, so now I can show John what I have for him.” Blake moved back to the workbench and picked up a metallic black faceplate with a metal band to secure it to his head, red tinted lenses where the eyes would be, and some sort of extremely intricate metal mesh in a triangle covering the area of the mouth and nose. “Here, put this on John.”

John took the faceplate and placed it over his head, adjusting it to fit comfortably over his face, and suddenly metal strips and wires were flying from the band and the sides of the mask, reaching out to become a form-fitting helmet that covered his entire head. Then, what I assumed to be a built-in and modified version of my hairnet, spat out some foot and a half long dreadlocks. “Whoa… dude, you look like the bastard child of Darth Vader and the Predator. It’s kind of working for you though,” Ian teased his best friend.

“Very funny,” John replied drolly, his voice sounding much deeper with an electronic tinge. “It feels weird, but not as heavy as I thought.”

“That helmet is made of a titanium-tungsten mesh, it’ll stop bullets, and the face plate is a lightweight alloy that should be able to handle the vibrations from your sonic shout. It will also allow you to narrow or widen the effected area of your sonic shouts to affect one person, a small group, or a large area as needed. It’s all voice-controlled and also contains all the features that I put standard in the rest of your masks, as well as a built in air-filter. Just say ‘remove mask’ when you want to take it off,” our resident genius explained, looking pretty pleased with himself.

“So what are those standard features? And what about those of us who aren’t wearing masks?” I inquired with a look at Amy.

“The lenses in the masks have a light amplification mode, infrared, a mode called ‘shades’ that will protect from flashbangs and such, and a HUD that works on voice commands to switch modes, display GPS information, locator information, or data files when needed. They also have built in earbuds and microphones which can be set to either “Performance” mode for concerts or “Ops” mode for silent communication. For you and Amy I’ve come up with headbands with retractable visors that have all the same features. Your costumes are resistant to small arms fire, water resistant, insulated against heat and cold, and contain a GPS tracker that will let you all know one another’s locations at all times.” He broke out in a huge grin as he gestured to the gear on the worktable, quickly adding, “I’ll let you all get suited up and meet me down in the hanger so I can show you the really cool stuff.”

The look of my costume hadn’t changed since Modiste had designed it for me and other than the stun sword there were no apparent additions to it, except the leather jacket with the team logo on the back and my emblem over the heart, but I decided to forego wearing that for now, since it was warm and we were inside. I was slightly confused by the added headgear though. It appeared to be a black circlet and was roughly a quarter inch wide with attached ear buds and a microphone. I placed it on my head and it settled over my ears loosely before suddenly tightening securely around my head. I tried to just shrug it off, put in the ear buds, and adjusted the mic before leaving to join the others.

Leslie, or rather Twilight, was waiting for me in our living room and I had to admit that Modiste had been right about the dark and mysterious vibe. Soon we had met up with the other’s and I walked arm-in-arm with Riff, who had also decided not to wear his jacket, as we made our way down to the hangar where the Ladybug was usually parked. Beside the Ladybug was a similar, slightly larger ship painted black with our band logo emblazoned on the sides. Blake just grinned at the shocked looks on our faces and gestured grandly before saying, “This is the tour bus; it flies just like the Ladybug and has the same capabilities, but I made it a bit bigger and removed the forward passengers’ compartment so I could add a retractable docking ramp for the skybikes and make room for a kitchen and six small dorm rooms. I thought that when you make it big, it could be your little home away from home while on tour.”

“That is so fucking awesome Blake,” Rave blurted out.

“Is this what you’ve been working on with Travis, Phil and Dr. Park for the past two months?” I asked, still looking at the ship in awe.

“Well this is one of the things,” he admitted, “but it wasn’t really too hard since we just had to alter the design of the Ladybug a little. Let’s go inside so you can meet the other one.”

I was unsure what he meant by that, but we followed Blake into the tour bus. First he showed us the docking ramp, which already had the skybikes secured in place and the helmets hanging on hooks. Next he took us to show us the small med-bay that matched the one on the Ladybug, the kitchen beside it, and the small dorm rooms opposite them. Between the med-bay and the kitchen there was even a small dining table bolted to the floor with six chairs and a very pretty ginger-haired woman in business attire sitting at one of them.

The woman looked up at our approach, immediately standing up and greeting us with a big smile. “This is Sasha,” Blake told us. “That’s short for Synthetic Administrative and Support Humanoid Assistant; she’ll be your manager, backup pilot, and she’ll be supervising Amy’s homeschooling as well.”

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you all,” the apparent android said, still smiling. “I’m very eager to get to know you all and I’m looking forward to seeing to all of your needs. I have been programmed with knowledge of business, the music industry, piloting, public relations, human behaviour, psychology, culinary arts, housekeeping, twenty four different languages, and over two hundred other subjects that may be of use to you.”

“You built us a robot manager?” Mai asked as we all looked over her curiously, “she looks so real.”

“Technically I’m an android,” Sasha replied in Blake’s stead. “Being very lifelike is important to my purpose as your manager and I’m hoping to add to that realism as we interact and I learn more from you about being human.”

“It’s nice to meet you Sasha, I’m sure you’ll do a great job and welcome to the group,” I said smiling back at her.

For the next few hours we familiarized ourselves with the tour bus and the various features of our new gear and got to know Sasha better. The android was extremely eager to help us in any way that she could and it turned out that her AI was a sort of sister to Phil, recovered from a damaged suit similar to Travis’ own that had been recovered from the surface of the moon. Blake had been working with Dr. Park, Travis, and Phil to expand its programming and integrate the suit’s systems and the AI itself into the realistic android body that we were now talking to. She also had many of Phil’s abilities, in addition to the new programming that she had received.

Once we had decided to call it a night I was ready to head back with Leslie to our apartment when Ian asked, “If you don’t have anything planned, do you think that you could come over to my place for a bit once you’ve changed out of your costume?”

“Sure,” I replied with a smile. It wouldn’t been the first time I had gone over to my boyfriend’s place to spend a bit of time together before bed. Sometimes we would just watch a movie and snuggle or I would just sing something unrelated to the band while he played guitar. So after I changed back into my normal clothes I wished Leslie a good night and left our apartment to go down the hall and knock on Ian’s door.

Ian had changed back into a pair of jeans and a casual t-shirt and as he opened the door I could see that the living room was dark, save for some candles on the coffee table. My boyfriend took me by the hand and led me to the couch, kissing me tenderly before showing me a small cake with a single candle on top amongst the mass of other candles on the table. “My mom baked you a cake,” he admitted sheepishly, “but we didn’t really have time to eat it this morning. I put one candle on it, because it’s your first birthday as the new you, but there’s seventeen others on the table for your time as Ken.” Then he gestured to the cake and whispered softly, “You should make a wish.”

I hesitated for a moment. Everything that I could possibly want right now I already had, I realized after some thought. I had a caring and understanding boyfriend, good friends, a great band, and even a mother who loved me now, so what else could I possibly ask for? There was only one thing that I could think of, to utterly destroy Red Prophesy at the battle of the bands. So I blew out the candle on the cake, careful to not blow out the other candles on the table. This was Candy’s birthday after all, ken had died over two months ago and those other candles should stay lit for a while longer in his memory.

Ian produced a small wrapped box and handed it to me as I looked at him suspiciously. “You already gave me a gift,” I objected, “two if you count both the guitar and lessons.”

“I know, but those were from your bandmate and friend, this is from your boyfriend,” he told me with a smile while softly caressing my cheek with his free hand. “Open it, when I saw them I couldn’t help but think of you.”

My hands were shaking a bit as I opened the wrapping and then the box itself. Inside rested a pair of silver earrings; each one was a tiny mermaid holding a turquois crystal that matched the color of my eyes, supported by a delicate chain maybe three quarters of an inch long. I could feel tears coming to my eyes as I thanked him with a passionate kiss and he just held me in his arms for several minutes. Then we each had a piece of cake and snuggled in the candlelight as we talked about the events of the day and I eventually fell asleep in his arms.

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Author's Note: Here's chapter 7 of Syryn's Song. Thank you as always to all my readers for the comments, kudos, and thinking that my work is worth reading. Also thanks to the Big Closet team who work tirelessly to give us all a wonderfully supportive venue to read and post TG fiction ~Amethyst.
 

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Chapter 7: Family Ties
 

The next week was a bit hectic. We started our mornings off with team practices, coming up with strategies and basically getting a feel for one another in combat. After that we would spend a half hour studying the files on various villains and organizations, followed by three hours of working on our individual training. Once training was complete though, we had the rest of our days to do whatever we wanted.

The team practices helped us to get used to not just cooperating and getting used to our new gadgets, but getting a better idea of each others’ full scope of abilities as well. First there was Twilight. She was starting to get better control on her speed and could indeed break the sound barrier now that her shoes weren’t constantly melting. That, combined with her enormous strength, healing factor and shadow-walking ability, made her a terrifying opponent at times.

Riff had been training his force field so much that he had to be reclassified as a solid Category four Energy Manipulator. He could summon and dismiss his force field at a moments notice and hold it for longer periods of time. With it on, he could easily hold his own in a fight for short periods of time against Liberty. I’m not just talking about taking damage either, since if he hit back or threw something fast enough he could dish out some serious damage too.

Starbright, now that she had lost some of her hesitation about using her powers for more than just light shows, was mastering illusions and the use of her variable solid light weapon. It also seemed that she had figured out how to bend light around herself for brief periods of near invisibility. She was quickly becoming very adept at combining those techniques with her knowledge of martial arts to take opponents down hard and fast.

Decibel’s sonar sense made him very difficult to ambush. Twilight could do it using her shadow walking and I had managed it once with a mix of Elven focussing techniques and telekinesis, but against anyone who made a sound, he could sense them coming from well over fifty feet in any direction. He had taken a few days to get used to how his mask could be used to widen and narrow his sonic blasts, which had amounted to more than a few migraines over those days. Now that he had a feel for it though, he was becoming a lot more adept at changing it up to suit various purposes and was experimenting with sonic shockwaves and various subsonic frequencies.

And then there was Rave. She was naturally quick and agile and had done very well learning to fight under Blackout’s tutelage for the past month. Her control over her portals though was frankly astounding. She could create them to any place or person she was familiar with, in various sizes, anywhere within her line of sight, create multiple portals at once with only a thought, and she had recently developed a technique of air hopping; leaping through the air from portal to portal to travel quickly and even standing in mid-air by connecting the other side of a portal along a wall, the ground or any other sufficiently large flat surface.

We were all really starting to get a good feel for each other in team practices by the end of the week and in my practices with Tessliy she was teaching me more advanced hand to hand and sword techniques and having me mix them up with telekinetic attacks, in addition to the mental focus exercises. After practice I had been getting into the habit of eating lunch with Tessily and spending part of the afternoons with her so that we could explore our new mother-daughter relationship outside of training time. She was even teaching me to cook Fae dishes and I really enjoyed spending that time with her and learning more about the Fae culture and language and about Tessily herself. Our relationship was just so natural to the both of us, in addition to being something that we both needed and wanted, that by the end of that week I was sometimes even calling her Mahar, which was the Fae equivalent to mother. She may not have been my birth mother, but she was quickly becoming my soul-mother.

Each day I felt our relationship growing, whether she was giving me some pointers on combat, we were making and eating lunch, or we were just spending the afternoon shopping and chatting together. She was the mother I had always wished that my biological mother could have been. First, she always had time for me and enjoyed spending that time together. She also didn’t constantly nag me to do what she felt I should do with my life and never told me specifically what to do in general, but rather guided me with her own experience. Lastly, while she did not share my interest in music or the style of music I liked, she encouraged and supported me without judgement because it was what I wanted to do and it made me happy. She even came to watch us practice if she had the time.

The couch in the music studio was actually getting a bit crowded during our nightly practices, and we had to set up a pair of comfortable chairs as well, as Tessily and Sasha had joined Blake, Amy, and Brianna. Sasha had been quick to take charge of our affairs, making suggestions and talking them over with us as she got to know us better during the evenings, and she was seeming to become more human by the day.

Sasha’s first idea was to start off by having us do one full practice in costume on her first official day as our manager, so she could take some photos and soundbites and set up various social media accounts and a website for RevolveR. She had even created limited bios for each of us, including our ‘roadie’ Rave, though thankfully they didn’t give much information other than our codenames, what our roles in the band were, the instruments we played, and other band related minutia, some of which she made up to suit the personas that Modiste had cooked up for us. I was worried that someone could trace our location from those accounts, but the android assured me that for all such activities she was using an encryption program and running it through over two hundred various websites and ISPs worldwide to make any data trail impossible to follow.

We were actually getting followers on both the website and social media accounts, especially once people started to recognize me as the ‘Blue Bombshell’. Most of the early comments were related to that or now knowing what to call me and my ‘sexy sidekick’ Riff. There were also some who were looking forward to checking us out in the Battle of the Bands, and of course the anti-mutant flamers. We were getting emails and messages too, though Sasha was careful to screen those for us. That was how my birth mother found me, or at least my online presence.

It was nearly a week after my birthday, two days before the opening day of the Battle of the Bands when Sasha approached us after practice. She had been practicing expressing emotions in her body language, facial expressions, and voice since we had met her and the frown she wore was extremely realistic, as were the concern and uncertainty in her voice when she spoke. “Candy, I do not wish to alarm you, but we received an email addressed to your Syryn email account and directed from our website for a ‘Kenny’. I have run a trace and the email address, ISP, and location match those of Karen Graham, your birth mother.”

“What the hell does that bitch want?” Leslie muttered in a glacial tone. She had been there through all the attempts to get in touch with my mother and had seen firsthand the emotional effect that her refusal to accept me and her eventual claims of my death had caused me. She had made no secret of the fact that since then she would very much like to teach my birth mother a very painful lesson. From the looks on their faces, my other bandmates were of a similar disposition. Still, I didn’t want to dismiss the email out of hand without looking at it first, so I took the printout that our agent and manager was holding and looked it over.

Kenny,

I am so glad that I’ve finally found you. I’ve missed you and I want you to come to New Haven for a visit so that we can put this horrible situation behind us. I know that I have no right to call myself your mother after how I treated you, but I hope that you will come visit. I forgive you and hope that you will forgive me as well since we have a lot to work out and I want to put our issues to rest.

“Oh yeah, that was a real heartwarming maternal letter,” Mai practically growled once I had finished reading it. “Like a batch of fresh-baked cookies, laced with arsenic.”

Amy snorted in agreement before snatching the printout and adding acidly, “Translation: I know who you are and could out you to the world any time I like. I’m so glad that I finally found you. I totally fucked up before while freaking out and now I want to correct my mistake. I need to use some leverage here so I’ll mention the whole mother thing, without actually admitting to it, just to get you here. I’m hoping that you’re stupid enough to fall for this, since I would really like to get you here so I can put you to rest properly this time.”

“Come on guys, it’s not that bad… is it?” I ventured uncertainly, torn between my own pessimism and the ever so slight hope that my mother might really be trying to reach out and accept me.

John shook his head, his expression warring between anger and sadness. “Candy, I know you really want this to be on the up and up, believe me we all get that, but this is bad news.”

“I concur,” Sasha put in, “That entire message was a crude psychological attempt to manipulate your feelings for the mother that you remember. It focusses on your feelings for her, while carefully avoiding any real connection that she had with you. She did not once admit to an actual relationship with you and in fact carefully avoided words like ‘home’ or anything that could show actual affection for you. The one time she used the word ‘mother’ was clearly intended as emotional manipulation, as was her use of the name Kenny. I calculate a ninety-six point eight percent chance that this is a trap, given what I know of the situation.”

I sank into the couch, biting my lip and trying to hold back the tears that threatened to come. Finally once I had some control I managed to get out, “Amy is right though, she could out me to the world at anytime.”

“That possibility is unlikely Candy,” Sasha pointed out. “Based on the psychological profile that I have extrapolated from all available information on Karen Anne Graham, there is an eighty-nine point four percent probability against her doing that. Exposing you would only reveal herself as your mother, exposing her as a possible H Chromosome carrier and endangering her as well as you. Her own indoctrination of hate toward mutants would make her extremely reluctant to do so. Still, we should probably begin considering strategies to negate that outcome, slight as it is. I anticipated this when I received the email and have already spoken with Lisa regarding this possibility. She and the other members of Aegis would like you all to join them in the situation room downstairs.”

With all of the members of both Aegis and Revolver plus Brianna, Blake and Sasha gathered, the situation room was a bit crowded when Lisa called the meeting to order. None of us were in costume but there was a very serious tone to the gathering, like a dark cloud hanging over us all. Lisa tapped away at one of the consoles for a moment once we were all settled in and a picture of my mother appeared on the main view screen. Lisa gestured to the screen and began to lay out the situation for those of us who didn’t know why we were gathered. “This is Karen Anne Graham, Candice’s birth mother. She is a known member of the Church of the Purity of Adam.”

Lisa tapped the console again, bringing up an image of the fight that Riff and I had had with the Right Hand. “Detective Serena MacArthur with the HCU has a very strong suspicion that the Church of the Purity of Adam has strong ties to, and may possibly be funding the Right Hand, who I’m pretty sure we’re all familiar with by now. While Serena admits that she has no concrete proof of such a connection, I trust her intuition enough to be cautious when anyone is involved with either of these anti-mutant organizations.”

Sasha joined Lisa at the head of the large shield shaped table before speaking. “Earlier this evening I received this email directed to Syryn’s email account from Karen Graham.” She tapped the console and the email from my mother appeared on the screen, causing the members of Aegis who didn’t know why we were there to frown and grumble as they read the contents. “The psychological profile I have constructed on Karen Graham would indicate that this is a trap, meant to take advantage of Candy’s feelings for her birth mother and the fear of the possibility of her being exposed.”

Lisa gave me a sympathetic look as she spoke again. “I know that Candy probably wants to hope for the best here, but I believe that we need to take this as an active threat against Candy’s life and possibly the lives of the other members of RevolveR as well. We only have two choices here unfortunately, allow her to spring the trap if there is one, or ignore it and allow a possible threat to attack Candy at a later time of their choosing. We also have to assume that with her accessing RevolveR’s website that she knows that they will playing in the Battle of the Bands starting the day after tomorrow, giving her, and any allies she might have, opportunity to attack at a time and venue that we don’t have control over, endangering Candy, the members of her team, and civilians as well.”

“So we get Candy to respond and walk into the trap then?” Ian snapped, not sounding like he liked that idea at all.

“We can do that and have the time and place be one of our choosing, preferably tomorrow before the Battle of the Bands begins on Friday to negate the possibility of an attack beforehand. In that case we will be able to provide backup for her as well. The other option is to wait and limit the chances of a direct assault by having RevolveR withdraw from the Battle of the Bands,” Nick pointed out matter-of-factly.

“No way are we withdrawing! We’ve worked too damn hard for this and we’re going to win! Candy deserves to get a little payback at Red Prophesy after what they did to her!” Mai shouted.

Everyone had turned to look at me expectantly. It was my call. I didn’t want to pull out of the contest and, whether my mother was being honest or really did intend to kill me, I just wanted this over with. Finally I sighed and said with a feeling of doom, “We do it tomorrow. I’ll email her and ask to meet her at her house when she gets off work.” I surprised myself by saying her house instead of our house or home, but I guess it wasn’t really home anymore. This was my home now and these people were my family, that was just the place where Ken Graham grew up, and Ken Graham was dead. Long live Syryn.

Lisa nodded and tried to give me an encouraging smile before speaking again. “Now, let’s decide how we’re going to do this. We’ll have to coordinate with local authorities to keep people out of the area in case things go as I fear they will, and both Aegis and RevolveR will be there for backup and to evacuate people in the neighbourhood, should it come to that, but we will remain in our respective ships and those ships will remain cloaked until we are needed. Candy, I would suggest that you go disguised as a normal human, but not your usual disguise, we don’t want to expose your normal civilian identity.”

“I shall accompany Candice,” Tessily broke in. “I shall cast a glamour over us both to appear as normal humans casually dressed, while allowing us to remain in our uniforms for safety. I will not be dissuaded from this Lisa,” she added, cutting off the redhead’s protest before she could make it. “Candice should not have to face this alone and my place is at her side. Should that Tyniehl attempt anything we shall be prepared.”

Lisa let out a sigh, but nodded. “Okay, I get where you’re coming from Tess, I’d probably be feeling the same way in your place. Just be careful, both of you, if she really does have ties to the Right Hand things could get intense and we won’t be able to act right away. Anything we do will need to be seen as a response to a threat. The anti-mutant extremists would just love it if it looked like we were starting a fight. At least if you’re both in uniform we’ll be able to monitor things over your built in microphones, warn you of any threats, and time our response properly. Just keep your lines open so we can be ready to back you up.”

With the general plan laid out we composed an email from me to my birth mother. I wanted to make sure that it was optimistic just in case she really was reaching out to me, but it made me sound a bit naïve as well, which I guess wasn’t too far from the truth when I had first heard about the message. The objective was to make her think that I really was eager to meet with her and work things out and had no idea that it could possibly be a trap. In other words, we were typecasting me as the blue-skinned, pink-haired bimbo. I would have been insulted if I hadn’t already admitted to myself that, from the way my birth mother’s email had been worded, that was how she probably saw me. I was an easy mark as Ken, and I guess she didn’t think that would change too much, even if my body did. Why then couldn’t she see me as the same person and accept me?

Hi Mom,

It is so good to finally hear from you. I’ve missed you so much and I’ve been like so lost trying to get used to this freaky new body and weird powers without you. I’m like so excited that my dream of becoming a rock star is looking like it’s finally going to come true though. I’d love to come home to see you, but I‘ll be busy Friday and most of the weekend, so would tomorrow after you get off work be okay? I could come to the house, and don’t worry I’ll wear a disguise so your Church friends don’t like freak out or something. I’d really love for us to talk this out as soon as possible and have you back in my life. Maybe you can come see me and my band play sometime, that would be like totally awesome and make me sooo happy. I really hope we can do this tomorrow, I’m really looking forward to seeing you now.

Love Kendra

The last part was to keep anyone else who read it on the wrong track while still looking naïve and eager enough to really want to patch things up. Hopefully she and anyone else who read it would simply believe that “Kendra” was a bit of an immature bimbo and a momma’s girl who was eager to have her mommy back in her life, and who was impulsive and reckless enough to just jump into it as soon as possible. With the email composed Sasha sent it from my Syryn account, once again doing her thing so that it couldn’t possibly be traced back to our location. Then all we had to do was wait.

We didn’t have to wait long. It looked like she was probably waiting for a response, or more likely she had an alert set up on her phone. The reply consisted of merely one line. Tomorrow after work would be perfect, I’ll see you at the house. That certainly confirmed a few things. First, she wasn’t the loving mother wanting to be reunited with her child. She hadn’t even attempted to convey that, and in terms of maternal warmth that message was somewhere in the range of hell freezing over. Secondly, she likely bought the whole “naïve and vapid boy-turned-girl who was desperate to be reunited with Mommy” persona that we had tried to make me sound like in the email. That or she just didn’t care what I was really like so long as I showed up for her trap like a good girl. I was leaning toward the latter at that point.

After training the next morning Tessily boarded the tour bus with me and the rest of my team while the other members of Aegis boarded the Ladybug and then we made our way to New Haven. We kept the tour bus cloaked, but the Ladybug was supposed to be seen in the area and Liberty had even scheduled herself a few last minute public appearances in the area to make it seem like she and her team just happened to be already in the area in case they had to get involved later.

We killed time out of costume by playing tourist as Leslie and I showed the other members of our team, and Tess, around New Haven, grabbing a late lunch and taking in some of the sights before returning to the ship and changing into our costumes. Since we still had an hour and half before my ‘meeting’ we landed the tour bus on one of the helipads of New Haven Children’s Hospital and took the elevator down for a visit with Dr. Park and the kids in the Hyper Ward. When Dr. Park answered the intercom at the security door she seemed surprised, but quickly opened it up to give us all a warm greeting. “It’s good to see you all, what brings you to New Haven?”

She was less than enthused when we told her what was going on. She had been the one contacting my birth mother to try and get her support and it wasn’t hard to see that she hadn’t liked her at all. “Anyway, we thought we’d come to visit the kids since we’re here.”

Dr. Park hugged all of us in turn before turning to Twilight and me. “Well most of the kids from your time here were cleared to go home, Marcus is the only one still here, but I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you both, and we have some new patients that I’m sure would love to meet you. Marcus has been following your exploits in New York and your new website and the girls don’t believe that he knows you.”

“Let’s see what we can do about that then,” I replied with a grin toward Twilight.

It brought back a lot of memories, both good and bad as we walked past the patient rooms and into the common dining area. Marcus was sitting at the table playing monopoly with a pair of girls who looked around fourteen or fifteen. One was a fairly average-looking brunette who was tapping silvery nails impatiently on the table with a noticeable metallic clicking sound. The other girl bore a passing resemblance to me, if I were only fifteen and she seemed to have a pale silver aura around her that made my clan mark tingle. “Whoa… holy doppelganger… and some kind of magic going on there.” I barely managed to get out as I spotted her.

“Yes that girl is definitely magical in nature, and a familiar magic too,” Tessliy agreed.

Dr. Park stifled a laugh and whispered, “That’s Allison, she’s… complicated. I think she’s a Shifter of some sort, I guess it could be a magical ability and it would make sense given the issues involved, but she’s having problems controlling it consciously. She may have a small hero complex about you since Marcus started showing them the news footage and your website yesterday. It’s probably best you let them introduce themselves though Candy.”

“Right Dr. Park, Leslie and I know the drill,” I responded with a wink before striding over to the table with the others behind me and calling out, “Smog! How’s it going?”

Twilight took that as her cue and called out, “Are you ever going to get out of here? I see that Taser, and Armor got set loose.”

Marcus looked up in a mix of shock and euphoria. “Syryn! Twilight!” Then in an aside to the girls he said, “See, I told you I knew them.”

I giggled a bit at that before standing behind Marcus and giving him a friendly slap on the back. “Know you? Twilight and I were patients in here with Smog, he’s like a kid brother to us. Anyone in this ward, is family. So why don’t you get our new sisters to introduce themselves Smog, and then I’ll introduce my friends.”

Smog gave the brunette a quick elbow to the ribs, spurring her to speak up. “Ummm…. hi… I’m Jennifer, but Smog says I should call myself Savage. My bones are made of iron and so are my finger and toenails, except they don’t seem to grow anymore and they’re really sharp. I’m also really agile and I can make myself heal really fast for short periods, but it tires me out a lot. I guess I’m in here because we’re trying to get me on a proper diet to fix my increased need for iron, and I have a bit of a temper and some impulse control issues since my change.”

My clone didn’t really look exactly like me, the face and body were obviously different, and all that was really similar was the pointed ears and the color of the skin, eyes, and hair. She wrung her hands nervously, and her coloring began to shift, while her general facial features and body type stayed the same. She cleared her throat twice before speaking up and by the time that she had she now possessed pale white skin and mouse brown hair and eyes. “I’m Allison… though most people call me Allie… I haven’t really chosen a codename yet. I change my appearance… obviously, and I guess how I look is based on… strong emotions so I can’t really control it. I seem to have a different form for each emotion and my abilities with each form seem to be different.”

“She only Activated two days ago so I think that she’s still developing her new forms as she encounters strong emotional states and mentally connects them to people or concepts that she associates with them. Each time she goes back to a strong emotion she’s already felt since her change the form seems to be the same as before,” Dr. Park quickly explained. “The form you saw when you came in was Confidence and this one seems to be Shyness.”

“Your abilities seem very much like the Changelings among my own people and are almost certainly magical in nature Allison,” Tessily offered while kneeling beside the girl. “The magic itself feels very similar to a Changeling’s as well. Perhaps you have some of their blood far back in your family line.”

“This is my adoptive mother Tessily,” I quickly explained. “She’s a Fae princess, she knows more about magic than anyone else I know, and she’s been training me to use my psychic abilities. So she knows what she’s talking about.”

“So how do these Changelings control their power?” Allie asked eagerly.

“They do not,” Tessily replied simply before elaborating, “or rather they do not need to. Among my people what a person looks like is unimportant, it’s who a person is inside that counts and we are used to Changelings not looking the same from one moment to another. Your appearance may not be set in stone, but it reflects who you are inside; your values, emotions, and sometimes the people you admire. Be proud of who you are and do not be afraid to show how you feel.”

It looked like she was hoping for more, but she seemed to at least consider the advice. “Ummm… would you be offended if I chose the name Changeling?”

“Not at all Allison, I think it would suit you well, Please, use the name with pride,” my adoptive mother told her while smiling warmly. Allison beamed back at her and her features began to shift again, her ears becoming pointed, her hair silver, and her eyes the same amber with slit pupils as Tessily’s own.

“Well, I’ll be damned, I think Allie just associated you with happiness Tessily. That’s the first time I’ve seen her smile since she came in here two days ago,” Dr. Park said with a smile of her own and a shake of her head.

I put a hand on Allie’s shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “If you find that you really can’t control it and need to blend in then Dr. Park knows how to contact us, and we have a friend who can probably help you. If he can help me and Rave look normal, he can probably help you too, and I’m sure he’d love the challenge of coming up with something that shows a single appearance for someone who’s often changing shape. You can also email me through our website if you ever need to talk or get into some sort of trouble, and I’m sure Twilight and the others feel the same too, just remember that none of the information shared in this ward goes beyond the people here now, for all of our safety.”

Both girls nodded solemnly and I turned to smile at the other girl. “Now as for you Savage, Tessily has been teaching me some mental focussing techniques that I think I can adapt to help you control that temper. I’ll send them along to Dr. Park and hopefully they’ll help, but like I told Changeling, feel free to email me if you need help with anything. We Ward kids look out for one another, whether we’re still in the ward or not.”

After that I introduced the other members of my team and we chatted with the three of them for a few minutes before saying our goodbyes and heading back to the ship, though Dr. Park asked Twilight and me to talk to her in her office for a few minutes. As we went inside and each of us took a seat, Dr. Park shut the door before giving us both a big hug. “Thanks for stopping in to visit girls, I think that meant a lot to all three of them. Marcus misses you and the others and I think he’s been afraid to bother you unless it’s important, but maybe you’ll hear from him more now. Those two girls said they didn’t believe him about knowing you when he told them yesterday, but they were really hoping he was telling the truth.”

“Yeah, I think Allie’s ‘Confidence’ form looking like me kinda gave that away,” I retorted with a giggle.

“Those two really remind me of the pair of you since Allie showed up the other day.” Dr. Park began with a sigh. “Allie Activated here in the hospital too and her first form was Fear which is as frightening as it is inhuman. When her foster parents reacted much like your mother did she turned to Anger, think of it as one of your early telekinetic tantrums, but with fire. Since she got here Jenny has been trying to take her under her wing and become friends, but she has her own issues, her parents were exposed as mutants and since they only had nuisance level powers they couldn’t fight back and her whole family died in the attack that followed. She was out with friends at the time, but when she got home and the police told her what had happened the trauma and anger caused her to Activate. She passed out from the strain on her body and was brought here. In truth neither of them needs to be here, Allie has no real medical conditions and Jenny’s increased need for iron is easily treatable now through a proper diet and vitamin regimen, but they have nowhere to go and they’ll both be dangerous if not properly trained and emotionally supported, especially Allie.”

“So basically they’re a lot like us back then, in the same boat we were, but they’re screwed because they’re not even close to eighteen yet,” Twilight muttered. “So what do you want us to do? It’s not like we could qualify as foster parents or anything. Could we?”

“I was considering having Lisa become Jenny’s foster parent, but you would make a good mentor and sister figure for her Leslie, you have a lot in common. As for Allie, I was concerned by some of the blood and DNA tests I ran when she first came in and I compared them to a former patient. Allie was in foster care for most her life, but by comparing the samples I discovered that she does have one living blood relative, who could legally care for her if she wished to…” Dr. Park trailed off uncertainly.

“So call this woman then and ask her,” I said with a frown.

“I’m trying to,” she replied with a sigh. “It was hard to find the paper trail, but Allie was born out of wedlock and orphaned soon after birth in a car accident when her mother and father died. She only barely survived and was placed in foster care. Her birth was registered to a Lara Nichols, who was herself an orphan and an only child, but the father’s name was also on the birth certificate. It was Cameron Graham, and the only reason that Allie didn’t have his last name is because she was the result of an extra-marital affair.”

“Are you saying… that she…” I sputtered as I tried to wrap my head around it.

“Yes,” she replied reaching out to squeeze my hand in her own. “Allison is your half-sister. I double checked the blood and DNA tests and the paperwork to be certain.”

“Holy shit…” Twilight gasped, staring at me.

I couldn’t think of anything more appropriate than that to say at the moment so I just kept staring at her slack-jawed. Finally I managed, “That was Dad’s name. Mom said he died in a car accident, while driving drunk, when I was three. I guess the time fits.”

Dr. Park shook her head. “I looked at the accident, medical, and police reports myself, there were no signs of alcohol in his system, but there were signs of foul play. The brake line of the vehicle had been tampered with, but there was no evidence pointing to any specific suspects so the case wasn’t pursued.”

I stood up and had to tightly reign in both my empathy and telekinesis. “Don’t let Allie leave here, I’ll be back to figure this all out once I finished talking to my mother, and she damn well better have some good answers.”

I stormed back up to the tour bus, more furious than I had ever been in my life, even when my mother had abandoned me or when Alex had come into my hospital room to gloat. Twilight actually had to use a bit of her speed to keep up with me. Once we were aboard I headed to the pilot’s compartment to tell Sasha, “We’re ready, let’s go do this.”

“Syryn… Candy, what’s wrong? What happened? You don’t need to be giving off empathy for us to see that you’re really pissed off right now,” Riff ventured, placing a hand on my shoulder as I returned to the dining area.

“She lied to me my whole fucking life! She told me my dad was a drunk! What else did she know that she lied to me about?! Did she know I had a fucking sister?!”

Tessily wrapped me up in a tight hug. “Candice, I do not know what has upset you so much, but you must calm down, we need to adhere to the plan. Focus your mind, control your power, and remember your task, all other things we will face together as they come.

I had managed to calm down somewhat and regain my focus by the time of the meeting. I was still furious, but I was keeping a very tight leash on my emotions and my powers. Tessily was right, being angry and confrontational would only make things worse. As much as I wanted to get some answers out of her, going about it while angry would only be a bad idea. So as my Mahar worked her magic on us I tried to focus on the task ahead.

Tessily usually only used magic on her arrows because it was more practical for her in combat, but she was actually an accomplished mage and by the time we stepped through Rave’s portal to a quiet alley a few blocks away from my former home she had woven a very convincing glamour over us both. From what the others had said I looked like a busty and bubbly redhead coed clad in a pair of denim cut-offs, a green halter top, green sandals that went well with the top, and carrying a denim purse. Tessily herself was a slender blonde clad in a white tunic style top, jeans and sneakers.

Don’t freak out, just stay in character, at least until you’re inside, I admonished myself as I rang the doorbell. As soon as she opened the door I gave her a big hug and gave a fake little giggle to stay in character. “Mom! It’s so good to see you!”

She looked confused for a moment, but that was good I wanted her off balance. “It’s me… Ken…dra,” I said, playing at being suddenly shy and uncertain. “I told you I was coming in disguise right? What were you expecting a trench coat and hat?” From the expression on her face I figured that she was expecting just that, or something very similar. “This is my friend Lily, she’s like me and she’s like totally awesome with disguises and stuff, so she offered to help.”

“Please, come in,” she said a bit awkwardly as she looked both of us over and then as she opened the door for us her eyes seemed to dart nervously around the neighbourhood. The moment we were all inside and the door was closed she plastered a fake smile on her face and suggested, “Why don’t we all go into the kitchen and talk over some coffee?”

“That would be great Mom!” I fake-enthused, giving a vapid little giggle for good measure. I felt like an idiot, but I couldn’t make the first move if this really was a trap, and since I couldn’t trust anything my mother had ever told me now, I had to believe that it was.

We followed her into the kitchen and sat at the table while she prepared some coffee, except that I knew for a fact that the drawer she reached for to “get the spoons” was not where she usually put them. That was the drawer she kept emergency supplies in, like candles, flashlights and such. The instant she pulled out the gun I reached out with my mind and tore it apart at the seams. It was a plastic and ceramic weapon of a very familiar design. It was the same kind that Smith and the other members of the Right Hand had had when they tried to kidnap Rave.

“Well, I guess it looks like we can both drop the act now,” I told her conversationally, while making certain she could hear the anger in my voice. So that was your whole plan? Invite me home and then kill me over coffee? That doesn’t sound like something the Right Hand would normally cook up though, they’re all about overkill and I know that those weapons are non-lethal. Do they really want me that bad after Coney Island?”

“My comrades and the Cardinal don’t know anything about this… they can’t… or I would have called my squad in when I set this up.” she spat as she watched both Tessily and me carefully and her hand reached into the drawer for something else, but her hand then withdrew still empty. “Do you really think that I would tell them that my own child was a monster? Kenny died in the hospital, and I tried to just let you go on to whatever miserable death awaited you. Then you showed up on the news killing my brothers-in-arms and started popping up all over the internet. I couldn’t let anyone connect you to me so I was planning on handling this myself, it would have been self defense when a mutant freak attacked me in my home, but you just had to bring a friend. I should have killed you as soon as I found out what you were. All your life I tried to keep you safe, teach you God’s path, and protect you from becoming like your father, but you became an abomination, just like he was.”

“Keep her talking Syryn, we’re recording all of this. If she’s a member of the Right Hand and not being monitored at the moment she could give us some valuable information,” Liberty said in my ear.

“We may not have time for that,” Sasha interjected, “I just picked up an omnidirectional signal coming from your general location Syryn, possibly a tracker or some kind of long range distress signal.”

“She probably called in backup,” Nick muttered. “Everyone get ready in case we need to engage hostiles and evacuate civilians. Keep her talking Syryn.”

The signal was probably from whatever she had touched in the emergency drawer. They wanted me to keep her talking, fine I had questions I wanted answered anyway. “So I’m guessing that your ‘job’ wasn’t really religious counselling. Do you work for the Church or the Right Hand? And what about my father?”

“I’ve been doing God’s work! The Right Hand is the right hand of God. We are the most dedicated of our church, the most committed to doing Gods work and cleansing the world of the mutant abominations. Your father was an abomination too, not a visible freak like you, but one nonetheless. He said that he wasn’t dangerous, that they were just little magic tricks, but things would start to fly around the room whenever we argued.”

Trying to contain my anger I prodded, “He wasn’t a drunk was he? His ‘accident’, was that you? What about thou shalt not kill? Or is that only for people who fit into your limited view of what the world should be?”

“I was a good wife! A good mother! Then I found out about him and that Nichols woman, and their child! He said I was the dangerous one! He was going to leave me for her and he wanted to take you! I did it for you!” Dishes and appliances on the counter started to shake and I was pretty sure it wasn’t me doing it. I had a very firm grip on my anger.

“We’ve got incoming,” Sasha’s voice noted. “Four Right Hand VTOL’s are inbound and moving in fast, I calculate two minutes before they are in range to deploy.”

“That’s bullshit,” I responded to my birth mother as calmly as I could manage. “You killed my father and almost killed my sister too. You’ve lied to me my whole life and tried to control me. How was that for me? That was for you, so you could keep your delusions about yourself and so you couldn’t be connected to people like us. You see those things shaking on the counter? That’s not me, I’m holding my powers in check. You killed Dad, so it can’t be him either.” I pointed to Tessily who had been remaining quiet and concentrating on keeping our glamour up. “She doesn’t have abilities like that and if she was going to try to harm you you’d already be unconscious on the floor. So guess who’s causing that.”

She stood there with a look of horror on her face until I could hear the sounds of the VTOL’s outside. That was when she snapped. “No! I’m a good girl! I’m one of God’s chosen! I am not a monster!”

Knives flew from the rack on the counter toward me and Tessily and I quickly put up a TK shield to intercept them. “It looks like I’m not the only one you’ve been lying to all these years. Oh, by the way, your friends are here, but so are mine.”

That was the cue that the others had been waiting for. Liberty snapped into leader-mode immediately. “Okay let’s go visible. Take these guys out hard and fast. We have groups to both the front and rear of the house. Silver, take out the self destruct on those VTOLs, we’re in a residential area and I don’t want any collateral damage here if possible. All other Aegis members get on taking down enemy combatants and evacuating civilians to the police cordon.”

“Rave, you’re on evacuation duty, and everyone outside activate ‘shades’ mode.” I said into my own mic as Tessily dropped our glamour. “Decibal and Starbright target those coming at us from the rear, take out their eyes and ears and then disarm them and disable those chips. Riff work the perimeter, take out any stragglers, and cover any civilians that Rave hasn’t evacuated yet. Twilight, make them fear the shadows; hit and run tactics, but limit your speed and strength to try to disable or injure, we don’t want any casualties attributed to us.”

One of the knives that had clattered to the floor flew into Psycho-mom’s hand and she lunged at me with a crazed look in her eyes. I had a TK shield up and ready to counter her but Tessily moved faster than I had expected and decked her hard enough to send her flying to the floor, the knife skittering away harmlessly. The Fae stood over her, somehow remaining cool and calm despite the fire of anger in her eyes. “You shall never harm my daughter again! You dared to call yourself her mother. A mother loves unconditionally and does things for their child’s sake, not their own. Unatri Tyniehl! You are a disgrace.”

“Star and I are about to do our thing, you two might want to cover your eyes and ears in there,” Decibel’s voice warned.

“Engage shades,” I said. The slim visor retracted from my circlet to cover my eyes and took on a dark tint as I covered my ears and Tessily did the same, closing her eyes as well. I kept a close eye on the woman on the floor in case she tried anything else and once the all clear was given I disengaged the visor, quickly drew my stun sword to temporarily disable her legs and prevent her from getting up or trying to run off. The sounds of fighting outside were starting to get loud as I extracted the scanner and one of the mini-EMP devices that Blake had given us from my utility belt. “Now let’s see about disabling that death-chip in your shoulder. I’m sure the police are going to have a lot of questions for you about your church and its activities and I wouldn’t want you dying on them first.”

I sat her up and waved the handheld device over her shoulder and, once I received the triple beep confirmation that the chip was indeed there, I slapped the small disk on her blouse over the spot where the implant had been detected. Then I hit the button to engage the device and stepped back a few feet. After several seconds the device beeped once more and then sparked and died. “It looks like you’ll live.”

To my surprise she started laughing. “You’re not saving me. I’d be better off dead if I’m a freak like you, but I’m not, I’m one of God’s chosen and I’ll die as one.” She bit down hard and started frothing at the mouth and choking as her eyes rolled back in her head and then she collapsed to the floor in a dead heap.

“Shit! Everyone be advised; our adversaries have cyanide capsules or something in addition to the chips so feel free to knock some teeth loose or find a way to keep them from biting down on them.” I looked down at the body on the floor and sighed. “We never really knew one another at all did we?”

Tessily wrapped me up in a hug, but I didn’t have any more tears in me for that woman. I had already shed them all in the hospital when she had made it clear that I wasn’t her child and she didn’t want to be my mother. All I really knew about her was that she was a crazy and deluded religious fanatic, that she had killed my father and the family that should have been mine, and that she had gone out of her way to try to kill me too. My real mother, the one that mattered, was holding me in her arms. I just let her hold me a minute longer and then I said, “Let’s go help the others finish things up.”

We had managed to disable all of the self-destructs on the VTOLs and capture three of our adversaries alive, two men and one woman, after disabling the chips on most of them. One of them had three teeth knocked out by Twilight during the fight and one just happened to be the booby-trapped one, while the others we had gagged with something large enough that they couldn’t bite down and they would be drugged and have the cyanide capsules removed at the hospital, where they would be kept on suicide watch until they could be properly questioned and charged. The rest of them had been taken out by the chips or eagerly taken the tooth.

Between those three captives, what I had learned during the conversation in the kitchen of Ken’s home, some things we had found in the master bedroom of the house, and the VTOLs we had plenty of evidence connecting the Right Hand to the Church of the Purity of Adam. Federal organizations like the HAA and the FBI were now able to get involved to freeze their assets and perform raids on their properties across the country. The world wasn’t saved or anything, but I think that we took a small step toward making it a better place.

Best of all, no civilians had been harmed at all, Rave had evacuated a lot of them and the other members of both teams had done a good job in covering the escape of others while taking down the bad guys. Overall it was a good mission, despite having been a bit an emotional rollercoaster for me. I knew that Tessily and my friends were all concerned about me, but really I was fine, I had been angry when I learned about my father’s murder and emotionally blindsided by the existence of my sister, but I was over the other stuff before this even happened.

It was nearly seven thirty by the time the police got things sorted out and the federal agencies had gotten involved. Our job was over and Liberty had said that while all physical evidence would be turned over to the proper agencies, the conversation in the kitchen would only be kept for our own records since my past was none of anyone else’s business. In fact, it seemed that all of her correspondence with our website and my email address had mysteriously vanished from Karen Graham’s computer and email account. I would have to remember to thank Sasha and Phil for that later.

Now though I wanted to focus on other things, like getting back to the hospital and the Hyper Ward before visiting hours were over and Dr. Park left for the night. I needed to deal with that tonight or I would be a distracted mess tomorrow when the Battle of the Bands started. Twilight and I spoke about it with the others as we flew toward the hospital and they were as shocked as I had been about the existence of my sister. They all thought that we should do it. It may mean a bit of a change as Twilight would share an apartment with her new protégé and I would do the same with my sister, but it would be better for all of us.

It was Mai who said it best though. “You both need to do this, especially you Candy. You’ve kinda come full circle and these kids need us as much as you needed Aegis when you got out of that hospital. You have a sister Candy. If it were me, and I found my cousin Sakura, I wouldn’t hesitate to take her in. She’s family and we can work out the details later, the important thing is that she knows that she’s not alone and that you, and all of us, are there to look out for her. Now let’s go get them, we could use the extra fans in the stands tomorrow.”

I pressed the buzzer to the security door a bit nervously, but with my best friend right beside it gave me the confidence I needed to do this. Mahar had offered to come as well, but this was something that Twilight and I needed to do ourselves. Dr. Park’s voice came over the crackling speaker sounding a bit tired. “Hello.”

“Hi Dr. Park, its Syryn and Twilight, we’re here to pick up the girls,” I told her.

The door swung open to reveal a somewhat surprised Dr. Park. “Really? You’ve thought about this right?”

I nodded and tried to give her a confident smile. “I’d like to get to know my sister and I won’t abandon her when I’ve just found her. She needs me, and I think Tess… Mahar and I can help her learn some control.”

“I’ve been having fun being Liberty’s protégé, so maybe it’ll be fun to start working with one of my own,” Twilight put in. “Besides, we’re going to be rock stars soon and I still have a large portion of the insurance money, so what’s an extra mouth or two to feed when they’re family.”

Dr. Park hugged us both, “You girls have grown up a lot since you left here. I’m proud of both of you. And you’re adults now and not patients here, so you should start calling me Maddie, or Madison. How did things go with your meeting by the way?”

I hugged her back tightly. She was like family too. When I came in here broken and scared, she fixed me and helped me want to live again. “I got the answers I was looking for, even if they weren’t the answers I wanted. Ken Graham is truly dead and buried now, and I think it’s time to put the past behind me and look toward the future. I was thinking yesterday that that future would start tomorrow with the Battle of the Bands, but I think it began right here when I first came into this ward as Candy and met you. You helped us both get off to a good start on our futures so let’s go help those two girls in there do the same.”

“I really miss you girls sometimes,” she said with a chuckle as we both let go of one another.

“Good, then maybe you’ll come visit more often.” I replied with a grin. “We’ll try to come visit sometimes too.”

We walked to the dining area and Dr. Park called out, “Jenny! Allie! You both need to go get packed.”

“What?!” they both gasped in unison as Allie switched to Shy mode.

“Hurry up, your ride is already here,” Madison insisted. “Neither of you really needs to be here, so we’ve made arrangements for you. Jenny, I’m going to go print out your dietary needs and vitamin regimen, so maybe Twilight can help you get packed. Allie, I found out that you have a half-sister, and she’s offered to take you in rather than risk sending you back into foster care. Syryn will help you pack.”

Just to make sure that Marcus wasn’t feeling left out, I called out, “And as for you Smog! Keep in contact and shoot us a damn email once in a while. It’s not going to bother us, you’re one of us and we’ll always be happy to talk to you, besides who else is going to keep us up to date on all the kids who come through here?”

He looked about ready to jump out of his chair, but he smiled and gave me a quick salute, “You got it Syryn.”

With that out of the way I guided Allie to her room to gather her things. “You look a little shocked,” I said conversationally as we started putting her things in the large duffel bag I’d brought.

“Well duh, I just found out I have a sister that I didn’t know about and I’m going to be living with her, you’d probably be pretty freaked out too,” she ventured. “I’m a bit scared, but really excited too. Do you know anything about her? Where does she live? What does she do? What’s her name?”

I had to hold back a giggle at her prompt switch in moods and the physical change that came with it, now her hair and eyes were a bright neon blue and she was talking and moving so fast that she seemed to blur. So, excitement comes with super-speed that’s good to know, I thought to myself before answering her. “Well your sister is feeling the same way you are, she never knew about you until today, but you’re her only blood relative left and family is important, so she wants to give this a try. I think I know her better than anyone, though not even I was sure who she was at first. She lives in New York City and she’s just starting out as a superhero and close to achieving her dream of becoming a rock star. Her name is Candy Graham, but she also goes by Syryn.”

She stopped speeding around the room and filling the duffel bag to stare at me. “You’re my sister?!”

"Yeah, Dr. Park discovered that we have the same father. His name was Cameron Graham, I don’t really know much about him, but we’re his kids and he wanted us to be together with him and your mom before they died, so he couldn’t have been too bad.”

I barely managed to brace myself in time for the super-speed hug that followed. It didn’t take us long to pack after that, she didn’t really have much, and soon we were waiting for Twilight and Jenny while saying our farewells to Smog. The other pair joined us and soon we were on the roof and introducing them to the tour bus. It was funny seeing them as excited as we must have been that first day when we had boarded the Ladybug. As we flew back to New York and we laid out the rules I was feeling pretty optimistic about things. I had a sister and I had discovered the truth about my life as Ken and was able to put it behind me, well most of it anyway. I planned on dealing with Alex and the rest of Red Prophesy starting tomorrow at the Battle of the Bands.

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Author's Note: Here's chapter 8 of Syryn's Song. A bit of a warning to start off, there is referenced abuse for those of you who may be triggered by that, and a fairly explicit sex scene at the end. Thank you as always to all my readers for the comments, kudos, and thinking that my work is worth reading. Also thanks to the Big Closet team who work tirelessly to give us all a wonderfully supportive venue to read and post TG fiction ~Amethyst.
 

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Chapter 8: Battle of the Bands
 

When I awoke that Friday, it was slightly after five in the morning, my heart was racing, and I was having trouble breathing. The first was because the Battle of the Bands was going to begin that night and I was a nervous bundle of energy as I realized that today was the day for RevolveR to make it or break it. The second was because of the girl beside me in my bed, clinging to me for dear life as she slept. Allison was just too happy to have a big sister, any sort of real family connection after growing up in foster care, and didn’t want to let me out of her sight. That was okay though, because I didn’t either, at least not for a few days.

I was this mixed bag of emotions right now, and even my dreams had reflected it the night before. On the one hand I was so happy to have a real family connection, and a connection to the father that my mother never really let me get to know. I was excited about tonight and about getting to know Allie and being a big sister and role model for her. On the other hand though, I was blaming myself. I had been gullible enough to believe my mother’s lies and I couldn’t help but wonder if things could have been different, for both me and my sister, if I had questioned her sooner. Maybe she could have avoided all the abuse she had suffered in foster care, and from what Dr. Park… err Maddie had told me privately it had been bad. If only I had taken an earlier interest in finding out what my father was really like for myself, rather than taking the word of the woman who had raised me.

You know what they say about hindsight, well sometimes it’s not really 20/20. Sometimes it can get distorted, by “what if’s” and “should haves”. I knew deep in my heart and my mind that I couldn’t have really done anything for either of us, we were both kids after all, but that didn’t stop me from wishing that I could have. I may not have been able to do anything for either of us before, but now was a different story. Now that we were together I needed to watch over and protect her, that’s what big sisters do.

That was why when we returned home last night I had decided to let her sleep in my room with me and let Jennifer sleep on the couch, or with her new mentor, instead of trying to get a new apartment set up for the two of us right away. Firstly I wanted us to spend the time together, getting a feel for one another and for being sisters. Secondly, we wouldn’t have had much time to set up a new place anyway for the next few days, since RevolveR needed to get in both our regular training session and some band practice before heading over to Sullivan Hall for the start of Battle of the Bands that evening. The event would go on for three days with half of the dozen bands being eliminated on Friday night, three more on Saturday, and then the remaining three would battle it out for the title on Sunday.

It’s going to be a busy weekend, I thought as I turned to look at Allie curled up beside me with her arm wrapped around me as if she was afraid I would vanish in her sleep. After what she’d been through and suddenly having an actual blood relative who cared enough to take her in, that was probably exactly what she was afraid of. She was happy though as she clung to me, it’s not hard to tell someone’s emotions when she looks different for each one, and right now she was looking like a younger, sleeping Tessily.

I gently shook her and called out, “Allison, wake up sis. Come on, the alarm is going to go off soon so we might as well get up now,”

Her eyes opened and she looked around blearily for a moment before she realized where she was and happily hugged me,” It’s real! It wasn’t a dream!”

I ruffled her currently silver hair and grinned at her. “Yup, now get up so we can all eat some breakfast before we start training for the day. Tessily is going to teach you and Jennifer the basic focussing exercises that the Fae use to control their emotions while we’re doing our teamwork training, and that’s something you both need.”

After a quick breakfast with Allison and Jennifer, Leslie and I escorted them down to the base’s recreation room, where we left them in Tessily’s capable elven hands. She was to begin training them both in elven mental exercises meant to help control their emotions, to help Jennifer with her anger and impulse issues and Allie with possibly controlling her shapeshifting. While they were doing that we joined the rest of our team for our hour-long teamwork training session. When we returned so that Tessily and I could start work on my daily training regimen the two younger girls seemed a bit down.

“I see you’ve gained a new form, so which emotion is that one for?” I asked my sister, whose hair and eyes were both now a bright orange. Electricity crackled around her as golden flashes of energy arced along her skin. Jennifer was wisely keeping her distance and both girls were frowning.

“Frustration,” Allie snapped, before realizing how bad her tone might sound. Then she looked down at her feet, “Oh God, I’m sorry sis, I didn’t mean…” Her voice trailed off as her features once again shifted, her hair turning a deep plum and her eyes a near-black brown. I guessed that one was guilt.

“How’d they do Tessily?” Leslie ventured after a moment.

“It was only our first session,” my Mahar replied with an encouraging smile. “It shall take time and practice, but I am certain that they will both master these techniques just as Candice has.”

“Don’t worry,” I offered, trying to reassure both girls with a smile. “It took me a while too, and Jennifer, you should only really need the emotional control exercises. I had to learn all of the focussing techniques that a Fae mage would so I could control my telekinesis. We should probably be teaching you all of them too Allie, and possibly the hand-to-hand and sword techniques as well, since your abilities seem to differ with each form.”

“I guess I’ll let you have at that then, while I take my protégé and we’ll get some training in with Liberty,” Leslie said with a smile. “C’mon kiddo, let’s go see what you’re made of.”

Then Tessily began going through some of the other focussing exercises with Allie while I went through my daily regimen in the pool and we followed up with some sparring and advanced hand-to-hand and sword techniques while Allie worked on some beginner stances and motions that Tessily had assigned her. When eventually we quit for a shower I was feeling the burn from a good workout and Allie was perspiring and breathing heavily.

Once I had finished my post-training shower, and had instructed my sister to take one as well and to get dressed in something comfortable and casual, I started getting ready myself. First I massaged some lotion into my skin to get it feeling nice and soft. Next, I got dressed in a nice white sundress with a floral pattern and a pair of strappy white sandals with two inch heels. I didn’t really need makeup since Brianna had helped Blake program several good make up settings into both mine and Amy’s new and improved second skin pendants a few weeks ago. Trying to get makeup to look right with our disguises before had been a pain in the ass.

“Engage casual makeup,” I said clearly once I had the pendant on and was putting on my hairnet. Then I transferred everything I might need, including my spare anti-gravity belt, into a white purse that would go well with the shoes. Tessily and I had planned to take Allie out for lunch, but first I needed to see my young inventor friend about a disguise for her. He had mentioned last night that he had an idea that should only take an hour or two to finish and he was hoping to have it done before going to sleep.

Blake answered the door with a grin. “Looking good Candy.”

“Only thanks to you,” I quickly countered.

“Nah, you’d look good without my tech, just a bit more… exotic,” he replied with a wink. “I guess you’re here to see if I was able to come up with something for your sister?”

“Yeah, every time a strong emotion hits her she changes. It’s not exactly low profile.”

“Don’t worry, I have just the thing, just let me grab it and we’ll get her all set up.” He dashed back into his apartment for a moment, returned with a small cloth-wrapped item, and then we headed back to mine and Leslie’s apartment.

When we entered the apartment Allie had just gotten out of the shower and Leslie and Jennifer had returned from their own morning activities with Lisa. Allie was wrapped in my white terrycloth robe and the three of them turned to look in my direction as I walked in casually with Blake on my heels and told my sister with mock-sternness, “You’re really going to need to wear more than that if we’re going out to lunch.” Then I turned to my best friend and her new protégé and smiled at the pair. “Mahar and I are going to take Allie out for lunch before this afternoon’s practice, there’s that new sushi fusion place that opened up a few blocks away. Do you two want to come with?”

“Sure, that sounds like a great idea. We can’t really take them to see the sights or get some more clothes until after the weekend, but going for lunch before practice could be nice,” my best friend replied with a grin.

Allie and Jennifer just stared at me in confusion, as Allie’s eyes and hair shifted to match the light blonde and crystal blue of my disguise. “Oh! That’s right! It’s me Syryn, or Candy when I’m like this. You two didn’t get a chance to see me with my disguise on yesterday, did you?” I asked, pausing a moment to let them make the connection before continuing speaking, turning back to my sister/doppelganger. “It’s so cute that you associated me with confusion, or at least this me. Anyway, this is Blake, he made my disguise and all of our gear and he has something for you Sis.”

Blake offered the cloth-wrapped package, unwrapping it to reveal what looked like a long silver-hued strip of shiny and flexible metal about a foot and a half long and a quarter of an inch wide. “It’s a choker of sorts. Just pick it up, place it around your neck, connect the two ends, and it should adjust to fit comfortably.”

Allie was somewhat uncertain, not to mention still fairly confused, but did as Blake asked as I held her hair up and out of the way so it wouldn’t get caught in the choker. Once she had placed the two ends together the silver band tightened around her throat, becoming a little thicker as it did so, until it was firmly in place around her throat but not quite enough to choke her. “She doesn’t look any different Blake,” Leslie pointed out, “though with the same eye and hair color you can really tell that she and Candy are sisters, their faces are pretty similar.”

“This one doesn’t actually generate a disguise,” the young inventor admitted before turning his attention back to Allie. “It’s a modified inhibitor collar.”

Allie’s eyes widened in sudden realization and she suddenly looked torn between relief and wanting to rip the collar off. “Why…” she began to ask in a panic.

Blake gently put a hand on her shoulder, cutting off her questions and protests by offering an explanation. “Your problem isn’t just your appearance changing, you also have different powers with each appearance, powers that it’s going to take time to learn to control and you don’t want to lose control in a public place, your sister could tell you how that feels. It activated when you put it on, and while active it will block out your powers, keeping you from shifting or using whatever powers you may have In that specific form. It will only work on you since it’s coded to your DNA and will only respond to the voice commands of the person wearing it, that being you as well, so that the only one controlling when you can or can’t use your powers is you. To activate or deactivate it just say ‘Activate collar’ or ‘Deactivate collar’, to remove it say ‘Remove collar’, and if you want to switch between it’s normal look and a more casual one just say, ‘Activate casual mode’ or ‘Deactivate casual mode’. I tried to make it as easy as possible, and it has an emergency manual release button at the back if you ever need remove it and can’t speak for some reason.”

“So I control it?” my sister asked, seeming to need reassurance.

“Yes, you and only you,” Blake replied. “You need to be able to choose when you may need to use your abilities or when you can’t risk showing them, I am just giving you that option. Here at home you probably won’t need to use the collar much, but it will help regulate your appearance when you’re not at home and prevent any accidental power use until you have more control.”

Once Allie had put the collar in casual mode, which made it look like a simple black leather choker, she and I went to find her a nice outfit to wear. She really didn’t have much and, since she was a bit shorter and a little less curvy than me, there really wasn’t much I could lend her that would fit decently. I made a mental note to get her some more clothes soon as we settled on a pair of worn, but presentable, low-rise jeans and an emerald green poet blouse with ruffled sleeves. The outfit didn’t really go with the running shoes she had, but we wore same shoe size so I was able to loan her a pair of hunter green double-strapped sandals with a one inch block heel that didn’t look too bad with the blouse.

By the time I was done with her, Jennifer had gotten out of the shower and we helped her to get ready as well. She had a few more clothes than Allie, but not by much. They really were in a situation similar to mine and Leslie’s when we first got out of the hospital and came to New York, except they didn’t have the money that Leslie had to help. Nope, they had even better, they had me and Leslie. My best friend had barely put a dent in her money from the insurance policies and the sale of her car and the property that her childhood home had been on before burning to the ground. I on the other hand had invested a large portion of the start-up money I got from Tara at the HPP with Phil’s help and was currently sitting on a nest egg of roughly forty thousand dollars. It helped that neither of us had to pay rent, just our share of the utilities.

I would have to have Sasha help me invest again, maybe a quarter of what I had, but I felt that caring for my sister and myself would be doable until we started making money from our music. Leslie would have no problem caring for her new ward/protégé either. Our first priorities on Monday after the Battle of the Bands would be new clothes for them, setting up one of the other two bedroom apartments in the building for Leslie and Jennifer, and seeing Tara at the Hyper Protection Program. We were worried about their safety if they kept their old identities, since it wasn’t really too hard to find people on the internet these days.

We had discussed the girls’ situation last night immediately after returning to the base with Blake, Brianna, Sasha, and all the members of both RevolveR and Aegis in attendance. Jennifer’s parents had been murdered after being outed as mutants and there was a good chance that she was being targeted as well. As for Allie, her foster parents had been abusive even before she Activated in the hospital. She had been originally admitted with severe bruising over almost half her body and cracked ribs. She didn’t know what excuse they had used when they admitted her, but whatever it was it was probably a lie. After she had Activated her foster parents had to be banned from the hospital after calling her the spawn of Satan and threatening to kill her in full view of the attending nurse. They definitely needed protection, so Blake and Brianna were going to talk to their father about putting a rush on HPP approval for the pair from his office.

These thoughts were all heavy on my mind as we helped Jennifer get ready. Eventually we managed to get her in a layered skirt and tunic style top, both in shades of blue and a tan pair of strappy sandals that looked good together. After that Jennifer put on some light makeup while I helped Allie with hers and told her what I was doing and why. Despite being born a girl she never really had the opportunity to have much more in the way of makeup than lip gloss and had no idea about most of it. I hadn’t been doing it long myself, but I had gotten used to it over the time we’d been in New York City and I was even getting pretty decent at it, it was kind of fun getting just the right look. If somebody had told me back when I was Ken that in three months I’d be teaching my little sister about how to use makeup I would have laughed in their face. What a difference a few months can make.

By the time both girls were ready for our outing, Leslie had already hopped out of shower and was mostly ready. “I’ll be like five minutes,” she promised as she started on her own makeup.

“Cool, I’ll call and let Tessily know we’re ready,” I replied before snatching my phone from my purse. I quickly hit the Fae’s number in my contacts list and waited for her to answer.

“Nahal hanun lien,” she greeted me. You and young Allison are prepared to leave for lunch?”

“Nahal Mahar. We’re all ready to go, we’ll meet you down in the foyer in five minutes. I invited Leslie and Jennifer to tag along with the three of us, I hope you don’t mind.”

“I do not mind at all Candice, Jennifer and Allison could both use some fresh air and good company I think, and Leslie is always welcome to join us. I shall meet with you all downstairs,” came her chipper reply.

“Jisse Mahar, aine vel amistriel. Nayr vel vise oluhaime,” I responded before disconnecting the call.

“Jeeze Candy, you’re getting as bad as Tess, could you please speak something us humans can understand?” Leslie teased after finishing applying her lipstick and lightly blotting it with a tissue.

I blushed a light lavender as I took Alison’s hand and led her out of the room. “Sorry about that, I just told her, ‘Yes Mom, I love you. We’ll see you there.’ She’s been teaching me to speak Fae whenever we spend time together relaxing and it’s coming to me easier than I would have thought, it’s like I was born to speak it. So it kind just happens sometimes when we’re talking and I already know how to say something in Fae. Maybe it has something to do with the clan mark.”

“Or the pointed ears,” my best friend offered with a smirk as we made our way out of the apartment. “Tess did say it was possible that Allie had Fae blood back in her family line and you both have the same father. I know that most of your features, like the general body shape, pretty face, eyes, blue skin, and pink hair may have been from a subconscious desire to be noticed, but would the ears really make a huge difference to that? Maybe it’s just your Fae genes showing themselves.”

That made a lot more sense than I cared to admit at the moment, not that I would be bothered by being part Fae. I mean I took the clan mark, and since my change I haven’t exactly been the poster girl for normal humans. I just wished that I knew more about our father, for both Allie’s sake and my own. I tried to put all of that out of my mind for the moment though as we joined Tessily in the foyer and headed out to eat.

Lunch, and the band practice afterwards seemed to pass in a blur. The food at the restaurant had been very good and we all enjoyed ourselves, and the girls seemed to really enjoy watching us practice afterward, but now that we were getting ready for our big night I was starting to get just a bit nervous. Well at least we had out own cheering section, even if nobody else liked our music. Blake, Brianna, and all of Aegis were going to be in the crowd in their civilian identities watching with my sister, Jennifer, and Ian’s family The latter had come to the apartment complex to give us a little encouragement and Kim offered to hang with Allie and Jennifer in an effort to get to know them better, since Amy would be helping with our big entrance that night as Rave and couldn’t watch the show with her.

They had all left together and now they were out there somewhere in the crowd as me and the other members of RevolveR waited in the backstage area of Sullivan Hall with the other bands waiting for the show to start. We were already in costume and I had put on some subtle makeup earlier to help enhance my features. They don’t really have foundation for my unique skin color so it was basically just mascara, eyeliner, eyeshadow and a lip gloss in a slightly darker blue than my lips. We were getting a lot of looks from the other bands, most of whom were hard rockers or metal heads and we stood out a bit. Several of them had already come up with dirty looks on their faces asking, “Just what the fuck are you supposed to be?”

My heart jumped in my throat and I nearly hid behind Riff as I noticed Alex and my former friends approaching. I took a deep breath to calm myself and stood up tall as I muttered to the others, “Oh look, it’s the Douchecanoes.”

Mai turned around, her eyes snapping on the approaching group as I spoke her little nickname for them. “We’ve got your back if you need it,” she offered, taking my hand and giving it a tight squeeze. The other’s looked like they wanted to rip Alex’s head off, which is pretty scary since Twilight probably could have. Luckily they too managed to calm themselves and adopt more indifferent expressions as the jerks approached with Alex in the lead and the other’s following in his wake like the simpering toadies that they had turned out to be.

Alex was the only one to speak of course, the other’s just sort of half waved from behind him as he strode up, casually tossed his blond hair out of his eyes and winked at me. “Hey there gorgeous, I’m Alex, and we’re Red Prophesy. That’s an interesting look you guys have going there.”

“I’m Syryn, we’re RevolveR, and I’m familiar with you,” I replied as casually as I could make myself while ignoring his obvious flirting. “I used to live in New Haven and followed the music scene there pretty eagerly.”

“Oh yeah? I don’t think I ever saw you around, but New Haven’s a big place. So what made you decide to go from groupie to joining a band? And why the costumes and blue body paint? You’re pretty hot so you don’t need a gimmick. Hell if you’d come to me I’d have let you audition as a backup singer or something.” The last was said with a leer that made me want to retch in my mouth.

“This isn’t body paint, this is what I really look like,” I responded coldly in a carefully controlled tone while keeping a firm grip on my empathy. “And I would rather die than join you and the Pretenders… Oh wait the Pretenders were actually a good band. You’ve been nothing since Ken Graham died and if you dare pull that ‘we’re doing this for Ken’ bullshit then I will make sure the world knows how Ken really died. Ken’s name isn’t going to carry you anymore, so you’ll have to get by on your own limited talents.”

Alex’s eyes narrowed, “You don’t know anything you blue bimbo.”

I actually laughed at that. Then I smoothly twisted the events that night as if I had been a witness. “Don’t I Alex? I remember that night very well. You weren’t the only ones there that night at Farnam Memorial Gardens, hiding in the trees. I saw everything. You were all drinking and Ken offered to drive you home in your truck when you got too hammered to even stand up straight. He made a grab for your keys and you called him a faggot and when he stumbled you punched him in the throat. He started coughing up blood and couldn’t breathe. I heard that he died later from complications. I... left before the ambulance or the cops arrived. I mean, if you looked like me would you approach a group of drunk idiots in a park at night? Or want to risk being seen by the cops? That’s not the case anymore though, I’m out of the closet and I’m a superhero now. I wonder how the cops will react to a witness coming forward on that case…” I trailed off letting that hang in the air a moment before adding purposefully, “Good luck on stage and in all your future endeavours, we’ll be watching you.”

Alex and the others looked terrified, and I couldn’t help but smile in satisfaction as they half-ran to the other side of the back stage area. “That was awesome,” Twilight said with a smug grin.

‘Did you see them fucking run?” Rave was having trouble holding back her laughter.

As luck would have it, we were up right after Red Prophesy that first night of the battle of the Bands. Each band had to perform one cover song and one of their original pieces. We watched from the side of the stage as we awaited our turn and Red Prophesy used one of the early metal songs I had written as Ken and followed up with Enter Sandman by Metallica. I’m pretty sure they were nervous as hell, either from the crowd or me and their performance was pretty disappointing.

“Showtime,” I told the others with a satisfied smile as the curtain dropped, accompanied by a lackluster applause, and Red Prophesy gathered their instruments and left the stage.

Once they had abandoned the stage we quickly started setting up our instruments and patching them and our mics into the soundboard with the assistant of Sasha and Rave. The latter two had been practicing set-up and take-down in preparation for the past week and things went pretty quickly. We were done well before the MC walked back onto the stage.

I could hear him speaking as we all headed offstage, leaving Rave standing there by herself. “That was Red Prophecy, from New Haven Connecticut! Up next we have, from here in New York City, RevolveR!” We actually got a pretty good round of applause as he said our name and it surprised me a bit. I knew we had our own little cheering section, but maybe some of those people frequenting our website the past week had been telling the truth when they said they couldn’t wait to see us perform here.

As the MC left the stage and the curtain rose Rave turned to the crowd like a cat who ate the canary and spoke through the Mic in her costume. “Hello New York! As you can see I’m not RevolveR. I’m their roadie Rave, but I know I’m not who you’re here to see, so without further ado… here they are, the one, the only, RevolveR!” She tapped her mic off and the patterns and lines on her body flared a bright green as she opened up a portal from the side of the stage where we were standing to center stage. We all stepped through, accompanied by one of Starbright’s amazing light shows, to a stunned silence. As Decibel headed for the drum set and I tapped my costume mic on, the others got to their instruments and got ready.

I gave the crowd an exuberant wave and a smile as I spoke, “Hello everyone! It’s great to be here among such great bands! I’m Syryn, and my friends here are Twilight on the keyboard and organ, Riff on lead guitar, Starbright on backup vocals and bass, and on the drums we have Decibel.” Each of them gave a jaunty wave to the crowd as they were introduced and I finished up by adding, “Our first song is called Crashing Down and I’d like to dedicate it to someone who isn’t with us anymore. He died tragically after being betrayed by people claiming to be his friends. This one’s for you Ken!” Decibel and Riff started laying down the beat and Twilight and Star soon joined in on the keyboard and bass, pumping out the hard rock rhythm that got the crowd moving. Once they had rocked their way through the intro I started in on the first verse, dancing in the air above the stage as I sang out to the crowd.

We were all doing fine until you came along
They let you in, But they were wrong
I knew you’d only take us through the gates of Hell
But you put them, Under your spell
They all took your side after what you did to me
Knife in my back, They couldn’t see
And a person has no need of enemies
When they’ve been ‘blessed’
With friends like these

I practically spat out the last line, turning my gaze briefly off stage to where Red Prohesy had left not long before. Then Riff launched into his first guitar solo to thunderous applause. I grinned over at my boyfriend as he lost himself in the music until the melody changed to the slightly slower chorus. Starbright and I started in on the chorus and I was suddenly glad we had practiced it so much as I lowered myself back to the stage, leaned against her, and we sang in unison.

Is your head heavy?
From your self-imposed crown
And do you hear that?
Very distant rumbling sound
Your broken kingdom
Isn't built on solid ground!
And I hoooooope that I'm arounnnnnnnd
When it all comes crashing down!

We carried the words hope and around, letting that line take hold before practically screaming the last line as the melody jumped right back into the harder and faster one. I was grinning from ear to ear from how well our voices were working together as the chorus ended and I had to take a quick breath before jumping into the next verse. I rose into the air again and held out my arms wide to the audience as the words flowed from between my lips

I held the door for you; you slammed it in my face
Shoved me aside, To take my place
I think we both know what you wanted to achieve
To take it all, And then just leave
There's shattered pieces of the world you stole from me
Tossed them aside, So now I'm free
And now I'm super-powered from the tragedy
Invulnerable
You can't hurt me

I let my anger at Alex and the rest of Red Prophesy be heard in my voice as I sang the verse, but I was careful to keep tight control over my empathy and subsonics. My voice was still angry as I finished this verse, but it was also filled with the confidence I had in myself and the rest of my team. Those who stood by me through thick and thin and who I knew always had my back. Riff started in on his second guitar solo and the crowd erupted again. Once the others jumped back in and the song slowed a bit again Star and I jumped back into the chorus.

Is your head heavy?
From your self-imposed crown
And do you hear that?
Very distant rumbling sound
Your broken kingdom
Isn't built on solid ground!
And I hooooooope that I'm arounnnnnnnd
When it all comes crashing down!

We shouted out the last line of the chorus and as Star joined the others in playing the next verse I took a quick breath and started singing as if questioning the audience. I reached out my hand in inquiry, closing my eyes and swaying to the music as I floated toward the front of the stage again.

Do my old friends ever ask about my fate?
Without you all, I’m doing great
You think with me gone that you’re the one who rules
Blind leading blind, Kingdom of fools
And do you see your golden opportunity?
It’s not really yours, They wanted me
You needed me much more than I needed you
Now that I’m not there
What will you do?

As soon as that question left my lips Riff’s final guitar solo began and had the crowd rocking. His fingers and guitar pick coaxing out sounds that I could still scarcely believe even after two months of having him in my band. He was like some sort of guitar God and I only hoped that the audience enjoyed the song and my singing half as much as they did his playing as the others started in on the chorus again and Starbright and I put our voices to work on the final repetition of the chorus.

Is your head heavy?
From your self-imposed crown
And do you hear that?
Very distant rumbling sound
Your broken kingdom
Isn't built on solid ground!
And I hooooooope that I'm arounnnnnnnd
When it all comes crashing down!

Let it all come crashing down!

I want to see it all come crashing down…

We let our voices slowly hold that that last line out to the audience, softly fading as the music came to an end. Then we all took a quick bow before I turned back to the crowd feeling more energized than I had ever felt before as I spoke again. “That was Crashing Down, I hope you all enjoyed it. For our second song of the evening we’re going to play a little Guns N’ Roses and I think you’ll all recognize this one.”

We had been practicing some cover songs for about two weeks now, since I found out that we’d probably have to do some for the Battle of the Bands. We rocked our way though Sweet Child O’ Mine and I thought I made it work pretty well with my voice. The way that Riff plowed through Slash’s guitar solo really sold it though, and the curtain closed to the sound of a standing ovation.

There were four other bands after us on that first night, but I couldn’t tell you how well they did. We were just too energized from our first public performance to really pay much attention. Hell, I barely remember us getting our gear put away with Rave and Sasha’s help. Mostly we just sat backstage and waited for the results of the first days judging to be announced as we spoke excitedly about how our performance had gone. I do remember some of the other bands coming up to congratulate us on a great performance though.

Finally after what seemed like far too much anticipation the guest judges’ results had been tallied and the MC brought all the bands on stage for the announcement of the results. “We’ve had a lot of great performances tonight,” he began as he addressed the crowd, “so first let’s have a big round of applause for all of our entries this year.” Once the applause that had resulted from that statement had died down he addressed the crowd once again, reading off a piece of paper. “The judging was tough and there were a lot of great performances, but our six semi-finalists who will be returning to play again tomorrow night are: One Dagger Mutiny, RevolveR, The Cramps, Drunk Uncle, Black Malice, and Nuclear Bong!”

We would have celebrated that night, but we were all too tired after our long day and the next round of the Battle of the Bands started in the afternoon tomorrow, so if we wanted to get any band practice in before it started, it was going to have to be in the morning. Our cheering section were all pretty proud of us though, and I was pretty happy that we had made it to the next round and Red Prophesy hadn’t. I felt a bit guilty for that, especially after the way I had scared the living shit out of them backstage, but I kept telling myself that it was no less than they deserved, all of them.

Alex may have taken everything from me, but my ‘friends’ hadn’t lifted a finger to stop him and hadn’t really been my friends since they pulled Alex into the band. No, they all deserved to fall flat like that and I couldn’t let Alex think he’d gotten away with what he’d done. Especially after the way he had behaved backstage. I could have been the better person and let it go, but his comments there had made me want some sort of payback. What can I say, I’m not perfect. Besides, who knew what Alex would do from now on if he kept thinking he could get away with murder. No, he needed to know that if he crossed the line again someone was going to make him pay for his crimes.

The second day of the contest was a bit stressful since we all found out at the last minute that we wouldn’t be playing our own material. It had been decided the night before that, to mix things up and provide a challenge for the bands playing, we would be performing random songs. Before everything was set to start each band was given a set of music and lyrics sheets for six songs, chosen at random, that we would have to perform covers of. The styles weren’t just hard rock or metal either which threw most of the bands for a bit of a loop. We had gotten Together by the Pet Shop Boys, Shoot to Thrill by ACDC, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, Symphony of Destruction by Megadeth, Zombie by the Cranberries, and Bring Me to Life by Evanescence. I was really glad we had Twilight for keyboard and organ and Riff on guitar for some of those. We’d have been screwed otherwise.

We did a pretty good job overall, especially on Bring Me to Life, since I had the vocal range for it and the song was right up our alley style-wise. I’m a mezzo contralto, as I had discovered during that first month and a half as a girl. I had had to practice with my voice a lot then, pushing it to its limits to get used to it, and to learn to control the secondary vocal flaps that emit my subsonic carrier wave when I’m using my empathic abilities. The good thing about that is that can push into either the contralto or soprano ranges when I want to. I was surprised that we had been able to do as well as we did, given the extremely short time we had to prepare and plan for the six songs. We didn’t even get a chance to practice them beforehand and a lot of the bands weren’t as able to adapt to their song selections as we were.

Thankfully we were one of the three finalists, alongside Drunk Uncle and Black Malice. That evening saw us planning out the set of four songs of our choosing that we would get to play for the finals. I think that we were all pretty nervous about the next day once we had finished a quick practice and headed back to our apartments for the night. I was lying awake just after midnight with my sister cuddled close to me fast asleep when I decided that I probably wasn’t going to be able to sleep for a while.

I slipped out of bed snatching up my bathing suit and a putting my pink silk bathrobe on over my black baby doll nightie, planning to maybe take a swim and relax with some elven focussing exercises to get myself into a more sleepy disposition. I quietly padded out of my room and then the apartment and made my way toward the elevator. It was pretty quiet for a Saturday night in our building, with most of us wanting a good night’s sleep before the final round of the Battle of the Bands the next day, but as I passed Ian’s apartment I heard the strumming of a guitar from inside. Before I even realized what I was doing I lightly tapped on his door.

Ian answered the door wearing only a pair of green flannel pajama bottoms and I could feel myself flush as I stared at him for a moment. “Couldn’t sleep either huh?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, I was thinking of going for a swim or something. I heard you playing as I was walking by and I figured that we might as well do something together since we’re both still awake.”

“That sounds good, come on in beautiful,” he agreed with a smile. “Maybe we could start those guitar lessons.” He took me by the hand and led me to his couch where he sat us both down and put his guitar in my hands. Then he began showing me the finger placements for the various chords and proper strumming technique and for the next half hour he had me repeating what he had shown me, sitting close enough to correct the position of my hands or my hold on the guitar when necessary.

“Remember you should hold the neck lightly so you can finger the chords properly, you don’t need to grip it so tight, it’s not going to run away,” he said putting his arm around me to correct the position of my hand.

“Umm yeah… okay,” I fixed the position of my hands and tried the chord again as I tried to ignore the sudden dryness of my throat and the warmth of his naked chest pressed so close to me. As his arm lingered there for a moment, my pulse quickened and my breath came in short feathery gasps as I felt my whole body flush. I bit my trembling lower lip as I turned to face him panicking for a moment as I stared at him uncertain which of my warring emotions I should be listening to right at that moment. “Ian… I ummm… ahhh…” figuring that I couldn’t depend on my voice in that moment I gave up speaking and kissed him instead.

He kissed me back eagerly, his tongue slipping between my lips. The guitar fell to the floor, momentarily forgotten as we held one another tight, our tongues dancing vigorously around one another until he had to come up for air. We held each other close, breathing heavily and just staring at one another for what seemed like minutes. My chest was heaving, my nipples poking through both my nightie and my thin silk robe as I once again bit my lower lip and pressed my body into his to kiss him again, running my hands along the muscles of his bare chest. I could feel a heat rush through me, goosebumps rising along my flesh and a moist warmth growing between my legs, as I pushed him onto his back.

Ian broke the kiss again, panting for air as he softly caressed my cheek with his right hand, his left hand reaching for the neck of my robe before suddenly stopping. He took me by the shoulders and looked me right in the eyes. “Candy… we don’t have to do this if you’re not ready yet.”

My answer was to slip my robe from my shoulders, letting it fall onto the couch beside me as I leaned in to kiss him again, my fingernails slowly tracing along his skin, barely touching the flesh and eliciting a shiver of pleasure from him as I could feel the growing stiffness between his legs. I smiled down at him, shaking my head. “I ‘m ready Ian. I want this, I want… you.”

“Okay, but let’s go to my bed first, it’ll be more comfortable and I have condoms in there. I don’t want to risk getting you pregnant until we’re both ready for that.” He stood up and picked me up in his arms, carrying me into his room as I pondered the fact that I could indeed get pregnant. What would that be like? What kind of mother would I be? It wasn’t the first time I’d had those kinds of thoughts though, and I blushed a bright lavender as I considered it and my response.

“Thanks for… thinking of me… and being responsible, but I’ve been on the pill since we started dating. Dr. Park wrote me a prescription for them the day after Coney Island,” I admitted.

“Still, better safe than sorry,” he said with a loving smile as he gently placed me on the bed and we both slipped out of our clothes. Then we just stared at one another for a moment, slowly drinking in what was in front of us. I’d never seen him naked before, I’d never seen any man naked before, unless you counted myself before my Activation. I found myself liking what I saw and in a brief moment of self-conscious uncertainty I wondered if he felt the same. “Oh God, you’re so beautiful,” he murmured after a moment quelling my fears before kissing me again and wrapping his arms around me.

He pushed me down onto the bed, raining soft teasing kisses down on me; my earlobe, my neck, then ever downward to kiss, lick and suckle on each of my hardened nipples in turn. I felt so hot, and it was like my every nerve was on fire as he teased each nipple just enough to make my head fuzzy with growing pleasure before moving on to the next. He gazed up at me and I shivered in pleasure, just from the look of love and desire on his face and then he was kissing again, moving downward toward my navel before the kisses continued travelling ever-southward. He kissed each of my thighs, his fingers tracing along the folds between my legs with a gentleness that sent electric shocks running up and down my spine.

I wanted to do more, but he shook his head and smiled that dazzling smile of his up at me from between my legs when I tried to do so. “No, just lay back and enjoy it. This is your first time and I want you to enjoy it. I want is to be special for you. We can try other things later, but this time it’s all for you.” He began to lovingly lick and nibble between my legs pulling at the folds of my nether-lips as he softly caressed my thighs. My breath came in quick short gasps, interspersed with little moans of pleasure, as I squirmed beneath his ministrations, the feeling of pleasure that seemed just out of reach slowly building until it felt that my whole body was alive with it, an explosion waiting to happen.

His tongue moved ever so slightly upwards to trace my clit in slow circles, licking and flicking along the sensitive nub and I couldn’t hold still, gasping in quick hiccoughs of pleasure. Licking gave way to suckling and little nibbles and then everything turned to bright white light. I screamed out in ecstasy, gripping the sheets of the bed tightly in my clenched fists as my back arched and I gave myself over to the agonizing pleasure that had ever so briefly become my entire existence. Then it was over and I slumped to the bed, my muscles feeling like Jell-O as I mentally bathed in the radiant warmth that infused my whole body.

I stared at Ian in a daze as I laid there breathing heavily with every nerve in my body singing the most beautiful melody. He knelt between my legs, a finger idly tracing the flesh of my inner thigh as he gazed down at me again uncertainly. “Are you still sure you want this Candy? We could stop right now and I’d understand.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that so I just shook my head at first, giving him what I hoped was a reassuring smile. My voice caught a bit as I finally managed, “No… please… I want this Ian.”

Ian carefully rolled the condom over his hard and slightly twitching member and leaned over to kiss me passionately as he entered me for the first time. There was a short sharp pain at first, but I was fairly wet by that point so soon that brief pain gave way to pleasure as he made slow love to me. The way he held me, kissed and caressed me, and spoke softly to me as we moved our entwined bodies together made me feel like the single most important person in the universe. It made me feel both powerful and vulnerable at the same time and I found that I liked it.

I had fallen victim to two more incredible orgasms, even more powerful than the first, and each time Ian had come as well as, while I screamed out in ecstasy I had lost control of my empathy and subsonics, sending him over the edge right along with me. “Ummm sorry about that, I kinda lost control of my powers there those last two times,” I apologized with a blush when we were done.

“Ummm wow, that was amazing, I had no it was so intense for you girls. You don’t need to apologize for that,” he told me, reaching out to caress my cheek as he stared at me. Afterward we just laid there in one another’s arms for a while. Neither of us said much, there wasn’t really much that needed to be said that we hadn’t just shown one another through our bodies. Instead we just savored the afterglow and the presence of the person that we were in love with; kissing, caressing, and cuddling contentedly. I admitted to myself then that I was indeed very much in love with Ian Smith, and I thought, I hoped, that he felt the same for me. It was to those warm thoughts that I fell asleep in his arms.

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Author's Note: Here's chapter 9 of Syryn's Song. Thank you as always to all my readers for the comments, kudos, and thinking that my work is worth reading. Also thanks to the Big Closet team who work tirelessly to give us all a wonderfully supportive venue to read and post TG fiction ~Amethyst.
 

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Chapter 9: Little Big Bang
 

I awoke slightly confused by not being in my own bedroom, but I quickly recalled the events of before I fell asleep and smiled as I happily gazed at Ian’s naked form asleep beside me. “Who could ever forget a night like that?” I murmured to myself as I looked around the room. I hadn’t had much interest in the décor the night before, since I kind of had other things on my mind at the time, so I took a quick look around. Ian’s room, much like the rest of his apartment, was much tidier than one would expect from a bachelor, the only clothes strewn about were those that we had shed last night in our mutual passion. It wasn’t overly furnished or decorated since it was just where he slept, most of his waking hours at home, or those spent entertaining guests were spent in the living room. There were clothes hanging in the closet, the bed itself, a dresser and a nightstand with an alarm clock on it that read 6:23.

I half wanted to curl up and sleep beside Ian for a little longer since the night before we had decided to forgo our morning training sessions for the day to ensure we had a good night’s sleep before a brief pre-finals band practice. It was a Sunday so none of us had felt too bad for wanting to have a bit of a lazy day before having to put our game faces on for the last day of the Battle of the Bands. Still I didn’t want my sister to wake up without me there. Allie was clinging to me uncertainly like I was a dream she feared forgetting when she woke up, and I wanted her to know that her big sister wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was she.

So I leaned over and softly kissed my lover, whispering softly in his ear, “Ian honey. As much as I would love to stay here snuggled with you all day, I really should get back to my place, Allie needs me.”

Ian turned around sleepily to caress the side of my face and plant a toe-curling kiss on me before speaking. “I know babe, I’ll take what I can get for now, she needs you more than I do. I hope you don’t have any regrets about last night, because that was the most amazing night of my life.”

I shook my head and smiled at him. “No, no regrets at all. You were everything a girl could hope for and more, and it was my decision, one that I’m very happy I made.”

“Good, because I would never want to do anything that you would regret. I know it may still be a little early in our relationship, but damn do I love you. We’ve only really known each other for the summer, and half of that we weren’t even dating, but you’re sweet, kind, beautiful, funny, honorable, determined to do the best you can at everything you do, and we have so much in common. Best of all you’re you, and I can’t help loving everything about you. Now go, your sister needs you.” He gave me one last kiss and a playful smack on the bottom.

For a moment I just laid there beside him my heart fluttering wildly in my throat as what he had just said hit me. “He said it! He said the L word!” I knew that I was in love with him, but I had never dared hope that he really felt the same for me. I bit my lower lip slightly trying to hold back the tears of joy as I attempted to calm my racing heart and get my mouth working properly. I didn’t want to stammer what I was going to say next. Then with a bit of a sniffle and wiping away an errant tear I leaned forward to kiss him one more time. “I love you too Ian, try to get some more sleep lover, because we have a big day ahead of us.”

“You too babe, we’re going to need you at your best today.” He held my hand in his for a moment before kissing me one last time and just stared at me for a moment, as if trying to etch the moment into his memory before he reluctantly let my hand go. “Sleep well, I know I will.”

With that I grudgingly found my nightie and panties, put them on, and left his room to put on the pink silk bathrobe and collect my bathing suit, both of which had been hastily left on his couch the night before. Then, taking a brief moment to place his acoustic guitar carefully back in its case, I slipped out of his apartment and down the hall toward my own. Once there I took a brief hot shower before putting my nightie on once again and climbing into my bed with Allie, my arm wrapped around her protectively as I drifted back to sleep.

It was just after eleven o’clock when I awoke again to the smell of frying bacon. Allie wasn’t in the bed, so after firmly clamping down on the brief surge of fear and worry that accompanied that realization, I climbed out of bed, put on my robe, and made my way out the bedroom door. Nobody was in the living room, but I quickly found Allie puttering around in the kitchen alongside Jennifer and Leslie. “Mornin’,” I called out to the trio.

“Not for much longer, it’s almost noon Candy,” Leslie retorted with a grin. “We thought that we’d whip up a good brunch so our star could start her day off right.”

“Yeah, you were sleeping so soundly that I didn’t want to disturb you when I got up, and I wanted to do something nice for my big sister,” Allie agreed as she flipped pancakes on the flat grill.

“Thanks girls,” I offered with a smile, shaking my head a bit. “I’m not a star though, we’re a band and we all contribute equally. If anything I think Riff is the star, I mean did you hear the reactions to his guitar solos?”

“Candy, with your looks and voice you were bound to be the headliner, that’s what we planned on going it and none of us will resent you for it. Sure we’re all really good at what we do, we work well together, and Ian gets the crowds amped up with his solos, but people are expected to cheer out at guitar solos, especially when they’re as mind blowing as Ian’s. When you’re singing though, it’s like they’re all in awe of you,” my best friend explained. “Have you been looking at our website, or the site for the battle of the bands at all?”

I looked down at the floor, hands clasped behind my back as I scuffed the floor with my fidgeting foot. “I’ve kinda been too afraid to see what they’re saying.”

“Educate her please, will you Jennifer?” Leslie asked her protégé, before adding, “Allie and I should be finished with brunch in a few minutes”

Jennifer grinned at me as she grabbed my hand and guided me to the kitchen table. “Aside from the inevitable anti-mutant assholes the response has been pretty great. The first day was all about Rave’s big introduction, the songs, your voice, and Ian’s guitar solos. Yesterday though was huge, RevolveR was the only band to actually benefit from that trick of giving you an entire set of songs that you were unfamiliar with at the last minute. You all played solidly despite the unfamiliar songs and meshed well together, but the big thing was your voice and your vocal range. You floored everyone, especially when you finished up with that Evanescence song. Hell, there are already mp3s of all those songs making their rounds on the internet. If you don’t believe me, try reading this.”

Jennifer slapped a copy of the New York Times Sunday edition down in front of me and quickly opened it to the music section. There on the first page of the music section was the headline: RevolveR Shoots for the Stars at Day Two of the Battle of the Bands. The article talked about the solid performance we had given as a group, despite the curveball that all the bands had been thrown, but then went on to talk for most of the article about my “superhuman range” and vocal talents and how we were the stand-out favorite from day two. It even referenced a few comments from the Battle of the Bands website. The comments had said I was using “mutant powers” unfairly in the competition, but both those running the event and the writer of the article were of the opinion that there was nothing power related at all, I simply had a very good voice and I wouldn’t have the range and control over it that I did without training it just as hard, if not harder, than any other lead singer.

One thing I hadn’t known was that after Day One the group organizing the Battle of the Bands had actually brought in a mutant whose abilities let him know if other mutants were actively using powers and what type. Sensor had a very good reputation as a neutral observer nation wide and was paid well for his services. He had been employed in courtrooms, police interrogations, talent contests and a variety of other things. He had been watching us all from backstage the whole time and cleared me of using nothing but my telekinesis, Starbright of only using her light powers, and Riff his force field. The others hadn’t used any of their powers that day, except for Rave during her introduction of us and the set-up and take-down. He had stated both on the website and in an interview that none of these powers would have had any effect on my singing or our performance as a whole since he could see that I was only using the TK field to allow myself to fly.

“Umm… wow, I didn’t realize they had someone watching us yesterday,” I managed to get out as Allie and Leslie joined us from the kitchen. “This is exactly why I don’t want to use my empathic abilities in a show until we’re well established, and only then rarely, after telling people exactly what to expect first. I wanted it to be our music and my voice that makes us big, not my ability to make people feel things.”

“Well now that’s the case, we’ve been cleared of any wrongdoing and the fans are loving us. Our social media pages for the band have jumped by over thirty thousand subscribers since last night,” my best friend said as she snatched the newspaper and placed a plate of bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs, pancakes and melon slices in front of me. “Now eat up, we still have to practice and get ready before the show starts at three o’clock.”

We took our time eating brunch, talking about how things had gone so far and what was ahead of us today. It was nice to just spend that time enjoying a good meal with my sister, her best friend, and my own best friend. I was hoping that even after Leslie and Jennifer moved into another apartment in the complex that we could make this a regular Sunday thing, even if it was breakfast instead of brunch. It could only have been better if Tessily were there.

We were headed toward our studio for practice when Mai pulled me aside, half dragging me into hers and John’s apartment as John and Ian went to join our waiting audience. Leslie gave Mai a curious look, raising her eyebrow slightly before following us in. “What’s up Mai?” Leslie asked once she had slipped inside and closed the door behind her.

Mai’s eyes were on me though as she grinned, “Okay Candy, dish! How was it?!”

“How was what?” Leslie asked, giving me a confused look.

“Her first time with Ian of course,” our Japanese friend said with not one iota of doubt on her face.

“She and Ian had sex?! When did that happen?!” Leslie was gaping at me now.

“Come on Candy, we want all the deets,” Mai pressed.

I was probably turning bright lavender from the blushing as I awkwardly looked anywhere but at my friends, the floor seemed good so I went with that. “Ummm… I couldn’t sleep last night so I was thinking about going for a swim, but I heard Ian playing his guitar so I went to talk with him and he started teaching me to play.”

“What instrument was he teaching you to play?” Mai waggled her brows suggestively.

“The guitar,” I answered firmly. “He was so close and it felt so nice having him that close so I kinda, maybe started kissing him and things got a little heated so I wanted more.”

“You made the first move?!” Leslie spat out, gaping at me.

I nodded, still staring at the floor to hide my blush. “Yeah, but every time we were going to go further he kept asking if it was really what I wanted and felt ready for. He’s so sweet and romantic. Anyway we took it to the bedroom after that and… well…” I couldn’t finish that sentence and my blush intensified.

“And you knocked boots, did the deed, bumped uglies,” Mai listed off, teasing me mercilessly.

“We made love,” I clarified as adamantly as I could. “It wasn’t something dirty, it was nice and he made me feel special.”

“I’ll say he made you feel special. I felt it, twice,” Mai said with a knowing smirk.

“Oh my God, you and John…” I started to ask before trailing off, completely mortified.

“Relax Candy, it was just me, John is a sound sleeper. John slept through the whole thing. But the walls can be a bit thin here, our bedroom is right on the other side of the wall as Ian’s and apparently you’re a screamer. That being said, I know just how ‘special’ he made you feel, at least those last two times.”

Leslie’s head swung from staring at Mai, to me, and then back to Mai again. “You felt it?”

Mai nodded, grinning at me. “Ian must be great in bed. Candy lost control of her empathy and the voice thing after a while, and as much as our girl here likes to keep her powers under control at all times, that’s saying something. Don’t worry about it too much Candy, I’m just teasing you mostly and giving a friendly warning about maybe using the pillow to your advantage in the future, not that I minded going along for the ride. I’m just glad that you’re finally to the point where you’re feeling comfortable enough with yourself and Ian to do that.”

I wrapped Mai up in a hug, though I could still feel the flush of my embarrassment bright upon my cheeks. “Thanks Mai, I… ah… appreciate the warning, and you trying to tell me somewhat privately. I’m glad you pushed me to go out with him that first time. When I left this morning he… he told me that… he loves me.”

Leslie and Mai both squealed in excitement, nearly smothering me in hugs. “See I told you that you two were perfect for one another, did you tell him how you feel too?” Mai’s voice asked from beside my ear as she and Leslie held me and I savored the moment.

“I told him that I loved him too,” I admitted as the pair released me and then crushed me once again.

After we had all sufficiently calmed down we went to join the others in the studio. “Sorry girl talk,” Mai explained as we entered the converted apartment and made our way to the instruments.

Sasha stood up, holding out her hands and motioning for us to wait a moment. “Before you all begin I feel that I should tell you that we have been getting a lot of followers on the social media accounts, and a large amount of activity and messages through the website as well since your performance yesterday. Included among those correspondences were offers from representatives of three separate major record labels to get you under contract. I am afraid that after speaking on the phone this morning with the representatives though, that as your agent and manager I have decided to turn down these offers.”

John dropped his drumsticks, quickly fumbling to catch them before they hit the floor. The rest of us just stared at the android until Mai blurted out, “We have offers from three major record labels and you refused all of them?! This could be our big break!”

“You already had your big break yesterday and you have made the most of it, or you would not be receiving these offers,” Sasha gently corrected her.

“So why did you turn them down?” I asked, figuring that she must have had pretty good reasons for doing so.

“Several reasons,” Sasha admitted. “Firstly, their offers were significantly smaller than the standard rate for the industry and I feel that because you are mutants you are being undervalued.”

“In other words they were trying to lowball us,” Ian said with a derisive snort. “And they were hoping that you would be a pushover and that we would be too eager to sign on with a major label to negotiate.”

“That was my conclusion as well,” our agent agreed. “Secondly, they loved your sound, particularly Syryn and Riff, but they wanted you to ‘drop the mutant gimmick’ and adopt a more mainstream image.” Sasha even used the finger quotes.

“So they want us, they just don’t want us to be us,” I spat out in disgust.

Amy was absolutely livid. “No fucking way! I know that I’m not an actual member of the band and I shouldn’t really have a say, but we can’t let that go! Candy has exposed herself for this, and you’ve all put in way too much work to be told that you have to become some cookie cutter band and pretend to be something you’re not in order to succeed.”

“Not to mention that anyone who recognizes Syryn’s voice, or your sound, from the Battle of the Bands could put two and two together and peg you as mutants. And without the masks you’d just become a big target,” Brianna pointed out. “They’re essentially asking you to out yourselves.”

“If those are their opening offers, I’m glad you refused Sasha. What are our options then?” I asked.

“We either wait for more realistic offers, or we invest the money and effort into starting our own record label,” she explained. “There are risks and challenges to each of these, but for you I think the best option is to start your own label and cut out the middle man. It would allow you full creative control over your image and final product, a fair percentage of all profits, and we could do most of the work in house and set up a postal office box as the address for the corporation. We already have a recording and practice studio here, I am programmed to handle the business aspects of such a venture, I could manage any digital and online distribution, and for manufacturing and distribution of completed physical media forms such as CDs, we could contract them out to a reputable distribution company.”

This wasn’t a decision that I wanted to make on my own, nor should I have. This was something that we all needed to decide together as a band, as a team. I turned to the others, not just my bandmates but all of our weird and wonderful family that were present to watch us as well and asked, “What do you all think? I’m leaning toward saying ‘fuck the establishment’ where it concerns the music industry. I’d like to do our music, our way and be who and what we want to be. We’ve already got a developing fan base and exposure as we are now and I think we can succeed on our own if we put the effort into it, especially with Sasha handling the business aspects. It’s not just my choice to make though and I want to know what you think. All of you.”

Amy was the first to speak, calling out exuberantly, “Fuck the establishment! If three of those vultures have circled already that means that RevolveR is doing something right. You don’t need them, it’s they who need you, and they fucking know it. I vote that we don’t mess with a good thing and that RevolveR stays as is.”

Allison looked at me uncertainly for a moment before grinning like an idiot, “I’ve only been here a few days, but you’re my sister and I want what’s best for you. You were my hero as soon as I first saw you, even before I knew you were my sister and these guys are trying to hustle you. Nobody screws with my sister, so I say fuck the establishment. You don’t need them anyway.”

Jennifer looked like she wasn’t sure what to say, but an elbow from my sister prodded her onward. “When my family was killed I thought I had lost everything, especially when I Activated and woke up in that hospital. I thought I’d be there forever and I was all alone, but Dr. Park, Marcus and Allie showed me I wasn’t. Then you and Leslie came and took me and Allie in, even though you barely knew us. It’s weird, but sometimes I feel like I have a family again. It’s big and kinda weird at times, but a family. I agree with Amy and Allie, start your own label and don’t give those bastards another offer, they had their chance and blew it. Nobody messes with my family.” The last was said with such fierceness in her eyes that I thought it was no wonder Smog that had decided to call her Savage.

“I shall not tell you what to do hanun lien, you need to be your own person. If it were me though I would not trust someone who would rather change who I am than embrace me for it. I would make my own way. A person’s self-identity means nothing if it is so easily subdued. Sometimes, especially in this world, one needs to stand behind who they are and not give ground to those who would attempt to make them seem lesser than they are,” Tessily contributed. I smiled at my Mahar and nodded as I tallied another vote for starting our own label.

“You know,” Ian muttered as he absently strummed his guitar, “It was always my dream to make it big and land a recording contract with a major label, but now it seems like it would be more of a nightmare. Screw ‘em. We’ve been doing our own thing our own way until now and, if the Battle of the Bands is any indicator, we’re doing pretty damn well so far. I vote that we make our own label, so we can keep doing our own music our own way.”

Leslie grinned at me, “Hey, you’re my BFF and I’ll always stick by you. We started this shit together in New Haven and we’ll finish it together, our way, no matter where that takes us. Fuck the establishment!”

Mai was frowning, but seemed to shrug it off quickly. “I’m like Ian, I wanted to make it big in the traditional way, getting signed by a major label. You know what though, any label we’re on is going to be a major one, even if it’s our own, because we’ll be doing it together and when we do something together we rock. It was also my idea in the first place to push us along the path we’re on now. I know most of you weren’t sure about it at first but you stuck with it and look at us now. We’ve done everything we set out to do. We got Candy a little payback, knocked the douchecanoes out of the competition in the first day, and now we’re going to the finals. And we’re damn well going to win, so you know what, fuck the establishment and long live RevolveR!”

John leaned over to plant a steamy kiss on his girlfriend. Then, once he had come up for air he said simply, “I couldn’t have said it better myself. Fuck the establishment and long live RevolveR!”

Brianna and Blake had remained silent thus far, but Brianna now turned her attention to her brother, some hurried whispering passing between her and Blake before she nodded and added her two cents. “Blake and I think you should stay free to be yourselves and make your music your way. We would be willing to invest the start-up costs associated with creating your own record label, as a gift. The money would be yours, no strings attached and no repayment expected or desired, but I have one condition. Since I was responsible for your look, I want to become your permanent Artistic Director. That means I want creative control with anything associated to your look. I want to design any changes to costumes, future looks, album covers and such. You would all have your input of course, but I’d like you to trust my artistic and fashion sense.”

“And I want to be your Technical Advisor,” Blake quickly put in. “I’m already designing and maintaining all of your gear and vehicles and such, but I think I could help out with other things as well, like set-up security concerns at live shows.”

“Those jobs would have been yours regardless,” I said with a laugh, though I was fighting back tears from the generosity of our friends as I, and the other members of the band wrapped the pair up in a group hug. “You two have really helped us to get to where we are now, and I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather have doing those jobs. We’ll trust the two of you and Sasha to handle the logistics, and we’ll handle the music.” The others heartily agreed and we were in a very good mood as we began our short practice.

My good mood lasted until we arrived in the sky above Sullivan Hall aboard the tour bus. Down below us, gathered in front of the building, and harassing those waiting in line, were protesters bearing signs saying things like “Hypers Go Home”, “Mutants are Abominations”, or my personal favorite, “Syryn Sold Her Soul to Satan.” The latter had a picture of me with horns drawn on it. I groaned as Sasha showed us scene, zoomed in from the tour bus’s external cameras.

“I am so glad that Allie hasn’t deactivated her collar so she could spend the whole weekend with the same look,” I said with a sigh of relief. “At least with her blonde and blue-eyed confused form she fits in. I fear what could have happened to her down there without her collar if someone made her angry or afraid. Even just being excited would have been a problem. That electric blue hair and eyes stand out and she can’t control her super speed at all yet. And what about Jennifer? What if someone notices her fingernails?” I looked on worriedly trying to see if I could spot the pair.

“Chill out Syryn, they’re fine. Jennifer’s been keeping her hands hidden in the pocket of her hoodie and they’re with Lisa and the others, and Riff’s family too,” Twilight tried to reassure me. “Lisa just texted me. They’re already inside and making their way to their seats.”

“Damn, those protesters have all the doors covered,” Decibel muttered, gesturing to several of the screens.

“Are they really stupid enough to think that that will stop us from getting inside? We have a freaking teleporter.” Starbright put in, frowning at the screens that her boyfriend had pointed out.

Rave snorted disgustedly, in a very unladylike manner that Brianna was trying to ease her out of. “Well if they are, I’ll be only too happy to disappoint them.”

“I don’t think they’re trying into keep us out, just make their presence known,” Riff said with a shrug. “They’re opportunists, and us being in the finals is big news, so they’re trying to make us and any other Hypers uncomfortable while getting exposure for their cause. Sure they’d probably attack us if we were stupid enough to enter the usual way, but hurting us isn’t their whole purpose.”

“Well it’s about time we got backstage,” I said with a nervous sigh. “Rave if you would be so kind?”

“You got it Syryn.” The green light of her eyes and the patterns on her skin flared briefly and then turned a steady bright emerald as a portal opened. We all stepped through, arriving backstage where the other two bands were lounging around and stage hands were at work preparing for when the curtain rose. There was a nervous energy in the air as we and the other bands waited and tried not to let on to one another how tense we all really were. This was it, the finals would be starting any time now and only one of us would go home the winner.

Finally it was time and the show began. We stood offstage watching Black Malice and Drunk Uncle play their sets. They were good, they deserved to be in the finals, but almost all of their material was cover songs, they only had one original song between them. They did manage to get a generous amount of applause though, and as we were preparing for our set I found myself wondering if we should have planned some cover songs too. All of our songs for today were originals, would that work against us somehow?

“Too late to overthink it now Syryn,” I muttered to myself. “It’s time to do this, our way with our songs.” We finished the set-up and headed off stage so Rave could do her introduction once the curtain rose again.

Once we had cued the stagehands that we were ready the MC walked up to the stage addressing the crowd. “And we now come to our final band of the night, the final band of the final round of this year’s Battle of the Bands. They gave us a hell of a show yesterday and should need no introduction by now, but I think you’ll find that they’ll get one anyway,” he said the last with a chuckle before walking offstage as the curtain rose.

Rave stood there, mid air atop one of her teleportation discs and grinning like a maniac. “You heard the man, this is the moment you’ve all been waiting for and I’m not going to disappoint you. So here now for your listening pleasure, from right here in New York City… They wowed you yesterday and they’re gonna blow your minds tonight… Lets hear a big round of applause for the one, the only, RevolveR!”

The crowd burst into applause and the atmosphere was electrifying as Rave opened the portal and we stepped through onto the stage and to our positions, waving enthusiastically for the crowd. We had to let them calm down a bit before I tapped on the mic in my costume. “Thank you Rave for such a great introduction, and thanks to all our fans who came out to cheer us on today! We are so excited to have gotten this far and to be playing in front of you today. You didn’t come here to hear me talk though, you came here for the music!”

There was another roar of applause and I had to raise my hands to the crowd to let them know I wasn’t finished talking just yet. “I’m sure that many of you have noticed the protestors outside. I know I did, and I saw the signs, and what they said. So this first song is for anyone who’s ever been looked down upon, bullied, or made to feel worthless just because they’re different. Remember, whatever your shape, size, gender, sexual orientation, skin color, intelligence, or physical abilities; you are a beautiful person and don’t let anyone ever convince you otherwise.”

Decibel started setting down the beat on the drums and Twilight jumped in on the organ almost immediately with the slow, sad, and languid tempo. Riff and Starbright began to fill out the melody on guitar and bass and I just let it wash over the audience, floating slowly and steadily to the front of the stage before I let the words of the first verse slip sorrowfully off my tongue, being very careful to hold back my empathy and subsonics to let my voice itself convey those emotions. I didn’t want to use that ability during a performance yet, and not just because it would be wrong to use my emotions to manipulate them. I wanted our audience to feel the music, hear the words, and let those alone resonate with them because the message was important and not because of how I felt.

Some people play at being sharks
They prey on those alone or sick
Their biting seems to leave no marks
But how can people be so thick?
All the scars are deep inside
Each day hiding them gets harder
Then one day it’s suicide
And bullies get away with murder

I remembered far to well being on the receiving end of that kind of treatment, how my friends and sister had suffered through it as well. I thought about the protestors outside and allowed the sadness and disgust at all of it be heard in my voice as I sang. I let that final word hang, dropping like an accusation, as the interlude began and then when the tune slipped into the chorus I beseeched my listeners to hope as I rose further into the air and the words flowed from between my lips.

A single candle in the night
It doesn’t really seem so bright
But stand up tall and hold it high
So that others see your light
You might find not everyone’s so heartless
When that one candle is a sign
To call more candles in the darkness
And together you will shine

I let the final word carry, keeping that hope alive in my heart and my voice as long as I could before the next interlude. Then as the next verse began I thought of my mother and how much her words and actions had hurt me since I had Activated, about her connection to the Right Hand and the Church of the Purity of Adam and all that mindless hate that they stood for. I would stand against that hate whenever I could and try to help heal the hearts and minds of others who had suffered it. I would protect those victims whenever I could. I poured all of that conviction, and the hurt that had spawned it, into the next verse as I reached out my hands.

They say you’re a freak, they say you’re a loser
They call you so many hurtful names
Whoever they are they’re just an abuser
Don’t be a victim to their games
You’ve heard their side, now hear my side
It doesn’t matter what they’ve said
We may all be different on the outside
But in the end we all bleed red

I let the message and the words slowly ebb away, wanting the audience to know where that kind of hate could lead. I took a quick breath, taking the opportunity to calm the feelings boiling up inside me before the chorus began again and I once more put all the hope I could muster into those words and my voice.

A single candle in the night
It doesn’t really seem so bright
But stand up tall and hold it high
So that others see your light
You might find not everyone’s so heartless
When that one candle is a sign
To call more candles in the darkness
And together you will shine

The next verse was more insistent and it was the real message that this song was meant to convey. We are all people and we don’t need to allow others to make us feel like something less. With friends and family at our sides we can, at the very least be accepted and together we are stronger. I conveyed my own confidence and belief in the message through those words as I started to sing them.

Who you are, where you come from,
Who you love, the color of your skin
It doesn’t matter, you’re still someone
And what counts is what’s within
Take it from someone who’s been there
Just hold high that candle’s light
There are others with a light to share
And together things can be alright

I took another good quick and silent breath of air as I now floated over the first two rows of the audience, briefly touching raised hands, a little simple human contact to let people now that I wasn’t just some strange looking woman on the stage, but real, a person just like them. Hoping that I could change just one person’s life with a little human contact and the lyrics of the song, I reluctantly floated back to the stage and broke into the chorus one last time, hoping that that would be the case.

A single candle in the night
It doesn’t really seem so bright
But stand up tall and hold it high
So that others see your light
You might find not everyone’s so heartless
When that one candle is a sign
To call more candles in the darkness
And together you will shine

Yes, together we will shiiiiine…

Facing the audience, imploring them with my voice and my eyes as I held that last note I finally, hesitantly let it fade to nothing as the others brought the song to its conclusion, the melody growing ever more silent until it had faded completely, leaving only silence.

Silence gave way to applause, and dozens of hands in the audience holding up the tiny flames of lighters, and I had to wait until it had died down a bit before floating back down to center stage and addressing the crowd again. “Thank you everyone! That was called Light the Darkness and our next song is the first song that Twilight and I ever wrote together. It’s called In the Shadows and I hope you enjoy it.”

Twilight began to play that amazingly haunting melody letting the organ take the forefront as Starbright, Decibel and Riff jumped in to fill it out. The melody was slow and filled with loss, hurt, and uncertainty. It pulled at the heartstrings making them ache in sympathy. When Twilight had first played it for me it made me feel her pain and allowed me to voice my own. In that moment was when she had become my best friend and as I shifted into a soprano and slipped into the lyrics of the first verse, I remembered the pain that had brought us together and I poured all of that sorrow and pain into the words.

It looks like my secret is finally out
Of this I have no doubt
There’s no way that your love will last
My heart breaks like glass
I retreat to the shadows of my mind
Hoping that I might find
A little darkness where I can go hide
And put reality aside

I held back the tears that threatened to make their presence known, keeping myself together as I took a breath and waited out the brief respite for my voice before starting in on the chorus. I wasn’t the same person I was back then and this pain had faded with time and a family who really did care about me. I thought about Tessliy, Allie, and all of the others out there in the audience and confidently began to sing the chorus.

Take me or leave me, I come as I am
Whether you accept me, I don’t give a damn
This book has a cover that blatantly lied
A hidden treasure awaits you inside
You just need to reach out, and if you hold my hand
To set aside our differences, then you‘ll understand
Because there is a light that nobody knows
Down deep in the shadows

A slight smile anointed my lips as I finished the chorus. I took in a mouthful of air before closing my eyes and singing again. This verse I was more animated as I floated toward the audience, projecting my voice to near its limit and letting it and my body language to show the hurt, anguish, and fear of loss that my mother had put me through when I first Activated.

Your lips are moving, but there’s no sound
My heart drops to the ground
And I just cannot hear what you’re saying
But I start crying
One look at your face, tells me everything
And I stop breathing
You claimed to love me, where’s that love now?
Did you disavow?

I carried the last note for several long seconds as Twilight and the others played on. Then I spread out that my hands as if to push away that last verse and put it behind me as I took a quick breath and launched into the chorus again.

Take me or leave me, I come as I am
Whether you accept me, I don’t give a damn
This book has a cover that blatantly lied
A hidden treasure awaits you inside
You just need to reach out, and if you hold my hand
To set aside our differences, then you’ll understand
Because there is a light that nobody knows
Down deep in the shadows

I finished the chorus with a flourish and, after a brief pause to refill my lungs, I gestured to myself filling my voice with the hurt, pain, and loss again as I stared to sing the next verse and rose into the air again, above all of those feelings.

I may look different but it’s you who’s changed
Loyalties rearranged
I don’t fit in the box you set up for me
Oh why can’t you see
Whether our skin is black, white, or blue
What’s inside is true
And if you can’t take all that is me
Please just leave me be

Another short breath and I floated downward, toward the crowd. I had come a long way since that song had been written and now it only served as a reminder that I needed to be myself and be happy with who I was and the family that I now had. I had gotten on with my life, and I was determined to keep doing so, so as I threw my voice and determination, being careful not to use my empathy or subsonics, into that last repetition of the chorus I began to smile.

Take me or leave me, I come as I am
Whether you believe me, I don’t give a damn
This book has a cover that blatantly lied
A hidden treasure awaits you inside
You just need to reach out, and if you hold my hand
To set aside our differences, then you’ll understand
Because there is a light that nobody knows
Down deep in the shadows

As the band began slowing the rhythm and the sound of Twilight’s organ began to fade I softly sang, “Deep down in the shadows,” one more time slowly and softly letting it fade away until the music ended.

There was another silence as the song ended and the audience seemed uncertain of what to do for a moment, and then the applause began in earnest. I waited until it had died down slightly before smiling brightly at the crowd and holding my hand over my heart in the excitement and wonder of the moment. “Thanks everyone! Our next song is another original piece, in fact all of the songs that we’re playing today are. This one is called Moving On.”

Moving On was another gothic rock song, but less haunting and more hard and edgy than In the Shadows. Riff, Decibel, and Starbright all started in on the slow and steady melody, setting the pace before Twilight joined in on her organ, punctuating the rhythm and adding the Goth to the rock as the song began to speed up and I began to sing the first verse.

I trusted you to hold me tight
To keep me safe within your arms
You disappeared into the night
Ripped out my heart, left only scars
You tried to turn it all around
By accusing me of treason
Your heresy the only sound
Your every word is poison

I shouted out that last word of the first verse in my powerful soprano as I rose upward, thinking of all the pain, rejection, and betrayal that mutants suffer everyday by those we love and who claim to love us. Save Riff, everyone in the band had suffered this, as had my sister, Jennifer, and so many other mutants out there. The melody slowed and the strains of the organ became softer making way for bass, guitar and the steady beat of the drums as I softened my voice as we eased into the chorus with something like hesitation.

Hell is a long way down
And I’m sure you’ll find your way
Don’t let me stop you now
I should have known you’d run away
Look at me and see your lies
I am the truth you cannot face
Your craven heart I so despise
I’m moving on past your disgrace

My voice dripped with disgust as I sang those lines and held that last note. Once again the tempo increased as the organ came to the forefront and I let my voice become harder again, tinged with hurt and betrayal.

I must admit you got me good
A betrayal I could not foresee
And though I didn’t think I should
I bared my soul for you to see
You had me fooled and I believed
That you could really love me
‘Twas you who made the choice to leave
Was meant to hurt but set me free

My voice softened as I closed my eyes, spreading my arms wide and letting hope slip in as I sang the last note and the music started to slow again as we slipped into the chorus.

Hell is a long way down
And I’m sure you’ll find your way
Don’t let me stop you now
I should have known you’d run away
Look at me and see your lies
I am the truth you cannot face
Your craven heart I so despise
I’m moving on past your disgrace

There was less disgust and more resignation as I finished the chorus this time. We can’t really change how people feel about us, we only control our own actions, just as they control theirs. As we entered the next verse the music and my voice became louder, harder, and more insistent than any of the verses before while not straying from the original music. We’re here, we’re proud, and we’re not going anywhere.

Oh I don’t cry about it now
I’m better off without you
I think I’m ready to allow
Myself to try to love anew
I don’t need you anymore
I’ve shed enough tears for you
About time you know the score
It’s over now and we are through!

I shouted out that last line and instead of carrying the note this time I ended it abruptly, allowing the strains of the organ and steady strumming of the guitar stay at the forefront until the music once again slowed and softened into the chorus. Where the first time the chorus was meant to sound hesitant, this time it was steady and sure.

Hell is a long way down
And I’m sure you’ll find your way
Don’t let me stop you now
I should have known you’d run away
Look at me and see your lies
I am the truth you cannot face
Your craven heart I so despise
I’m moving on past your disgrace

I let my voice softly fade as the music continued along its path, the melody of the chorus repeating and fading slightly more with each repetition until the last notes rang out and the concert hall erupted into applause.

“Thank you, thank you!” I called out once the applause had dissipated. “And now, for our last song of the night, here’s our own little party anthem, Little Big Bang!”

I looked toward Starbright and grinned as she and the others dove straight into the hard rock beat of the song. This was a new one and we had been working to get the kinks all worked out of for over a week now. Star and I had worked on the lyrics together while Riff and Twilight had come up with the music and we were all pretty happy with the way it had turned out. Before the first verse could begin as the song was really starting to wind up I floated over to Star and together we sang:

Little big bang
Little big bang boom!

The music jumped right into high gear as the “boom” left our lips and we were both grinning like idiots as we felt the energy of the song and started dancing on stage. As our bodies were beginning to move to the music I began to sing the first verse.

My mood is pretty bleak
I don’t feel very well
It’s been a really long week
And work was hell!
But now I’m seeing the light
And I’m done with the grind
‘Cause it’s Saturday night
And I need to unwind!

Star joined in with me and we half shouted and half sung the last line, bumping our hips together as we finished and the beat changed to the chorus, still hard rock, dominated by Riff’s guitar but pumping and pulsating with Twilight’s keyboard as well. Star and I gave each other a wink and I gestured outward to the audience as the two of us jumped into the chorus.

Hey it’s Saturday night so turn the music on!
Down a drink, prepare to party ‘til the break of dawn!
You can’t resist the rhythm when the Syryn calls!
So turn up the volume ‘til you’re shakin’ the walls!
Hit the dance floor; get your hands up baby!
Start to move your body like you’ve just gone crazy!
Shout it so loud that they hear you in Japan!
“Let’s get this party started with a little big bang!”

The stress of performing in front of others was gone as Star and I just let ourselves dance to the music as we sang and she played her bass. At the words “get your hands up” I shot my arms into the air like a drunken lunatic. By the time I started to sing the next verse the crowd was on their feet and really getting into the song.

The party’s just startin’
When I finally arrive
My adrenaline’s pumpin’
And I’m really feeling alive
I’m feeling the music
No time for small talk
Because it’s party time
And I’m ready to rock!

Once again Star joined in on the last line, singing/shouting along with me as we danced and played to the crowd close to the front of the stage. Before we jumped into the chorus again I shouted out, “Hey everybody! This is all about the music today! So if you all feel like dancing, get up and dance!” Star and I jumped into the chorus again as more people began to get to their feet, dancing to the music.

Hey it’s Saturday night so turn the music on!
Down a drink, prepare to party ‘til the break of dawn!
You can’t resist the rhythm when the Syryn calls!
So turn up the volume ‘til you’re shakin’ the walls!
Hit the dance floor, get your hands up baby!
Start to move your body like you’ve just gone crazy!
Shout it so loud that they hear you in Japan!
“Let’s get this party started with a little big bang!”

Star and I finished the chorus leaning back to back, stopping for just a brief moment to take a breath and then we were dancing again as she and the others plowed into the next verse and I let my voice ring out to join them an instant later.

I hit the dance floor
Put my body in motion
And the party erupts
Just like an explosion
At the centre of it all
I’m just doing my thang
All eyes on me
I’m the little big bang!

Fireworks burst in the air above us as I sang out the word explosion and I gestured out to the audience, trying to draw their eyes toward me as I shimmied and shook as sensually and seductively as I could to suit my on stage persona. I think I succeeded with more than a few of the men in the crowd and I had to stop myself from actually giggling as Star jumped in to sing the last line with me.

Hey it’s Saturday night so turn the music on!
Down a drink, prepare to party ‘til the break of dawn!
You can’t resist the rhythm when the Syryn calls!
So turn up the volume ‘til you’re shakin’ the walls!
Hit the dance floor, get your hands up baby!
Start to move your body like you’ve just gone crazy!
Shout it so loud that they hear you in Japan!
“Let’s get this party started with a little big bang!”

This time some of the people in the audience were raising their hands when we sang out those words, causing Star and I to smile and wink at one another. After another brief pause for air we were dancing side by side once again as the others started playing the last verse and I waited for the right second to add my voice.

When the party is over
Hell I don’t mind
‘Cause somewhere out there’s
Another party to find
There’s another party down the street
And I show up with the gang
Then it all starts again
With the little big bang!

Star jumped in for the last two lines this time, singing the words alongside me as our voices synched together just right. Practice makes perfect and the two of us had been working hard on making our voices work well together. Another hip-bump as we danced and we took a quick breath before singing the chorus one last time.

Hey it’s Saturday night so turn the music on!
Down a drink, prepare to party ‘til the break of dawn!
You can’t resist the rhythm when the Syryn calls!
So turn up the volume ‘til you’re shakin’ the walls!
Hit the dance floor, get your hands up baby!
Start to move your body like you’ve just gone crazy!
Shout it so loud that they hear you in Japan!
“Let’s get this party started with a little big bang!”

With the chorus seemingly ended Star and I halted our singing as the music continued waiting for the last three punctuations in the song and with each pulse of the music we sang one more line.

Little big bang!
Oooh little big bang!
BOOM!

As we shouted out that final word the song suddenly ended, a massive fireworks display exploded over the stage in a myriad of colors and shapes, and any of the crowd who hadn’t been on their feet already had stood up to wildly applaud. Star and I high-fived and turned to the crowd and then we all raised our hands in the air and took a bow. ”Thank you very much! You’ve been a wonderful audience!” I called out as the curtain fell. We turned off our mics and unplugged our instruments, beginning the take-down as Rave and Sasha came out to join us.

“Omigod! That new song was fucking awesome! You played it even better here than in the studio!” Rave said with a grin before hugging each of us in turn. She managed to calm down after a few minutes though and we all got to work packing up our gear and moving it through the portal she had created back to the tour bus. It didn’t take too long to finish and then we were backstage with the other bands again nervously waiting for the audience’s votes to be tallied. The first two days there had been special judges, but today it was all about the popular vote of those who had been watching in the seats.

It seemed to be taking forever and Star, Twilight and I were all pacing nervously as Sasha, Rave, and the guys looked on. “Don’t worry, win or lose we gave it our best and we had those people on their feet. I think that count’s for something,” Riff pointed out.

“I suppose you’re right, it doesn’t really matter, it’s just that the suspense is killing me,” I groaned in protest.

“Well I don’t think we’ll have to wait much longer, the curtain is rising,” Decibel said, gesturing to the curtain in question. Then the stage hands were shooing us and the other two bands onto the stage where the MC was already waiting, envelope in hand.

“We have had a great competition this year,” the MC started out saying. “All three of these bands are winners, but alas only one can take first place and the prize that comes with it. Without further ado, placing third, from New Jersey, Drunk Uncle!” He walked over to the band and handed them a plaque and a small envelope. Then he turned back to the audience again waiting for the applause to die down while the tension thickened around us.

“And duking it out for first and second place are two bands from right here in New York City; Black Malice and RevolveR! Both of these bands really brought their all this year as I think they are both winners, but in first place, and winners of the 2013 Battle of the Bands, RevolveR!”

“Omigod I can’t believe we won!” I thought as Star, Twilight and I squealed in excitement, hugged each other, and jumped up and down. Riff and Decibel showed just a bit more decorum as they merely high fived one another. We waited as the MC gave a plaque and an envelope to the members of Black Malice and then there he was handing us a trophy and a giant cheque for two thousand dollars. I may have spaced out a bit after that, I mean it’s not everyday that your wildest dream comes true.

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Author's Note: Here's the final chapter of Syryn's Song. Thank you as always to all my readers for the comments, kudos, and thinking that my work is worth reading. Also thanks to the Big Closet team who work tirelessly to give us all a wonderfully supportive venue to read and post TG fiction ~Amethyst.
 

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Chapter 10: Finale
 

Once we had returned the tour bus to the hangar beneath our home and headquarters, we returned to our respective apartments to get out of our costumes and change into something more casual. Lisa had contacted us over our secured comms channel while we were still in the air and asked us to meet them at a restaurant called Ginger’s in the Upper East Side. Lisa had said that it wasn’t a high class place and that we should just dress comfortably since we were going there to relax and celebrate.

After putting on my hairnet and second skin pendant to hide my more distinctive features, I quickly changed into a pair of black low-rise jeans and a soft pink sleeveless halter top before adding a pair of sneakers and a fleece-trimmed black leather jacket. Picking up my leather purse with my casual antigravity belt inside I left my room to join Leslie who was dressed similarly to me, except that she was wearing white jeans and a matching denim jacket. When we left our apartment to join the others we found them sporting fairly casual looks as well and we all headed down to the garage. Ian and I hopped into his truck while Leslie offered to drive Sasha, Amy, Mai, and John in the cherry red Dodge Dart that she had bought for everyday use.

Ginger’s was a large and fairly intimate looking restaurant, tastefully decorated in earth tones with red curtains and tablecloths, that seemed to sell a large variety of both American and European dishes. When we walked in we were quickly met by a woman with long red hair and green eyes who bore a striking resemblance to Lisa. She wore a simple but flattering emerald colored dress and a genuine smile as she greeted us. “Good evening and welcome to Ginger’s, table for seven?”

“Actually we’re here to meet some friends, our friend Lisa said something about a back room?” Leslie replied for us. “It could be under the name Lisa Leeds.”

“Oh! So you’re the guests of honor then? Lisa said that they were just waiting on you, please follow me.” She turned about and we all followed her through the restaurant to a large curtained-off room in the back where Lisa and the other members of Aegis were already waiting and seated at a group of tables pulled close together to make conversation easier. With them of course were my sister and Jennifer, Ian’s parents and his sister Kim, Blake and Brianna, and much to my surprise Dr. Madison Park and Marcus. The latter was wearing a tank of carbon monoxide on his back and a big grin.

“Smog! Maddie! It’s great to see you both! Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?!” I squealed in excitement as I ran toward the pair to hug them.

“Because we wanted it to be a surprise of course,” Madison said with a grin of her own. “We got into town Friday morning, but I haven’t had much time to visit until now. I temporarily transferred Marcus to the Hyper care unit at Columbia University Medical Center, with his parents permission, so that we would be able to see you all perform in the battle of the bands, but one of my colleagues there asked me to assist with a newly Activated mutant. She had some complications so it was a bit of a mess.”

“Well we’re glad to see you both now. Were you in the audience all three days?” Leslie pressed eagerly as she carefully hugged Marcus.

“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. You guys were awesome, I didn’t have a doubt that you were going to win,” Smog assured us.

Lisa coughed politely to catch our attention as she approached with the slightly older looking redhead who had led us into the back room. “This is my older sister Laura, she owns this place, and she’s the one person in my family that knows my secret. Laura, this is Leslie, Candice, Ian, Mai, John, Amy, and Sasha.”

“It’s good to meet you all,” Laura said with a smile. “Most people call me Ginger though, not a terribly creative nickname, but it stuck and it made a good name for the restaurant so feel free to call me that. Lisa talks about you all like you’re her own kids, though she’s used codenames until now. She’s very proud of all of you, especially her protégé Twilight.”

I was surprised that Lisa talked about us that much, she usually was very careful about the separation of costumed and civilian identities whenever possible. Lisa was actually blushing nearly as red as her hair as she explained. “After Maddie helped me put my life back together and adjust to my powers, I didn’t want anything to do with them at first, I came here to work with my sister and tried to live a normal life.”

“There was an accident and she saved my life and that was when I figured out that she was a Hyper,” Ginger said with a smile. “I had already convinced her to pursue her dream of writing those horrid romance novels and helped her find a publisher, but when I found out about her powers I convinced her that she could do a lot of good with them and save a lot of other people’s sisters, or other family members too.”

“She designed my costume, came up with the name Liberty, and when I met Jason and Nick, it was she who convinced me to work with them and start Aegis. I may be the face of Liberty and it may be my powers that are being used, but the spirit of Liberty, that’s always been her. All the good we’ve done since then, all the lives we’ve saved, well she was the start of it all. That’s not too bad for someone with no powers.” She gave her sister an affectionate jab to the shoulder.

It was Ginger’s turn to blush now. “I just convinced you to do what you already knew you should. Now I believe we’re supposed to be celebrating here. I’ve had the chefs whip up a variety of different delectable dishes and the servers should be bringing them in any moment now. For now though, I have some sparkling cider here so why don’t we pour that and make a toast.” With Lisa’s help, Ginger soon had a glass of cider in everyone’s hand. “Okay I think we’re all set here, so who would like to propose a toast?”

For the moment nobody seemed to know what to say, and then Amy raised her glass. “To RevolveR; for kicking ass, taking names, and looking and sounding awesome while doing it.”

“Hear! Hear!” We all called out, clinking our glasses together. We stayed at the back room of Ginger’s until closing. The food was delicious, and the company was even better with almost everyone we cared for there to share in our victory. We talked, reminisced, traded stories, and we just enjoyed one another’s company. It was nice to just relax and not have to worry about training or missions or whether we would do well at the Battle of the Bands, and I think that we all needed that.

The next morning we were back to our regular training schedule. While we were doing our team exercises Tessily worked with Allison and Jennifer on the elven mental exercises meant to control emotions. Then Jenny, or Savage, as she was called with her new training uniform on, would join her new mentor Twilight in her sessions with Liberty. My sister Allie had also asked to be referred to by her new codename while training, to get used to the idea, so when she joined Tessily and I in our daily training sessions we were both sure to call her Changeling. She was improving with the control over her emotions, though it had only been a few days of training so far, and we were hoping that soon we could have her work on purposely triggering emotional states to be able to call on her various power sets at will. She had a long way to go before she’d have that kind of control and her physical skills would need a lot of work before she could keep up with me or Mahar in hand-to-hand or sword combat, but I hadn’t been that great when I had started either and I knew that she would get there eventually, as long as we all had patience and kept working at it.

After lunch, Leslie, Jennifer, Allison, and I all got dressed comfortably for a day on the town and climbed into Leslie’s Dart to run errands. Our first stop was the Hyper Protection Program office to visit Tara, with the approval letters for our charges from Senator Dixon’s office that Blake had produced at the previous night’s party. Leslie and I were both worried about somebody trying to track them down and they had both suffered enough.

With Tara’s help they both came out of the office with new identities and documentation. Allie was now legally my full little sister, Allison Sarah Graham, and placed in my custody as her only living relative. Jenny had become Leslie’s cousin, Jennifer Marie Thomas, and had been similarly placed in her care. Both had backgrounds meant to give them long term connections to us and to be vastly different from their real backgrounds, to make sure that nobody could stumble upon them either accidentally or with a determined search. It helped though that both of their appearances had changed somewhat since Activating, so Tara was confident that nobody would be able to recognize them easily from photos.

With their new identities and paperwork taken care of we went to the bank that Leslie and I both used and opened savings accounts for them to put their HPP start-up funds into. We wanted them to both start building up money for when they were done high school and we had plenty of funds available for what came next. So we spent the rest of the afternoon shopping for new clothes for the pair, trying to get them a good start on a decent wardrobe, and Leslie started buying the things that she and Jennifer would need for their apartment as well. I also had to buy some things for Allie’s room and Leslie and I wanted to make sure that both girls had cell phones in case of emergencies and so that they could talk with Ian’s sister Kim, who they had become fast friends with over the past three days.

Allie and Jenny were both exhausted by the time we got home and ordered in some pizzas for dinner. Neither of them were used to all of the training yet and we had been running around all afternoon once we had finished lunch. Our day wasn’t over yet though, and after we had finished eating we started setting up the new apartment for Leslie and Jennifer and moving their stuff in. I was really glad that these apartments had come furnished, because I didn’t even want to think about the hassle that would have been involved if we had had to buy and move in furniture as well. We tried to get it done as quickly as possible and save our wards some effort by Leslie using her strength and speed and me using my telekinesis.

Once we had finished doing what we could with Leslie’s and Jenny’s new apartment, Allie and I headed home, though my poor sister was so tired by that point that I telekinetically carried her there and into her bedroom. Then, while she started getting into one of her new nightshirts and preparing for bed, I started putting her clothes away, hanging what needed to be hung in the closet and folding the rest carefully and putting it in her dresser. She was very nearly asleep as I finished the former and was about to start on the latter. She was also laying on top of her blankets so I telekinetically lifted her as gently as I could, pulled her blankets and sheets aside, and then placed her carefully back on the bed to cover her up. As I tucked the blankets around her she looked up at me and gave me a sleepy smile. “I still can’t believe that this is all real.”

“Believe it Sis, you’re here with me now and I’m going to do my best to take care of you,” I told her, giving her a kiss on the forehead. “You deserve better than what you had growing up, a real family that cares about you.”

“You didn’t have to do that, y’know take me in and all. Leslie didn’t have to do it for Jenny either. But you took us in, made sure that we could stay with you and now you’ve bought us all those clothes and stuff. Why…” she began to ask uncertainly.

I carefully brushed a strand of hair from her face and smiled at her. “I could say it’s because you’re my sister, and that you’re the only blood relative I have left. That is part of it, maybe even most of it, family is important to me and I don’t want to abandon you when we just found one another. There’s more than just that though. When we met you and Jenny Dr. Park said that the two of you reminded her of us when we had to leave the Ward. We could see it too.”

“Is that because I looked like you when we first met?”

“No Allie,” I said with a shake of my head. “You see, just like you I Activated in the hospital, my body completely changed, and my mother reacted much the same way your foster parents did. My mother was abusive too, though it was mostly emotional abuse. When they took me to the ward I felt like my whole life had turned upside down, I had dangerous powers that I couldn’t hope to control, and I was really miserable for a while. Leslie tried to be the friend I needed, she had been there a while before I showed up and her whole family was killed because of fear of mutants, just like Jenny’s. We were both getting close to eighteen and wouldn’t be able to stay there much longer, but we had no family, nobody to turn to, and nowhere to go.”

“I guess I can see where we would remind you of that then,” she agreed.

“That was when Aegis showed up,” I continued after a brief nod. “They offered us a place to stay, training to control our powers, a purpose, a chance to be ourselves and take control of our lives, and most importantly a family. You and Jenny are years younger than we were, so when Dr. Park pointed out your situation and told me that I was your sister, I couldn’t not give you the same opportunity, the same family that was given to me. I know that Leslie feels the same too. Jenny may not be biologically related to her, but if anyone could understand what she’s going through and how much she needs family and friends right now, it’s Leslie.”

Allie nodded sleepily and then her eyes opened just wide enough to regard me again as she asked, “Does that mean that we’re going to be members of your team too?”

“If that’s what you want to do when you’re eighteen then we’ll be glad to have to, but you’ll have a lot of training ahead of you Sis. For now though, you’re my sister and I just found you so I don’t want you in any danger.” I could see her protest coming and quickly cut it off. “I know Amy is the same age as you and Jenny, but her circumstances were special and there was no way to prevent her from following us and trying to help anyway so we tried to make sure that she would be as safe as possible. She will be a full member of the team when she’s eighteen, but for now she’s just a trainee and she has a lot of rules to follow.”

“What kind of rules? Jenny and I can follow rules too,” she pointed out eagerly. “Ever since Smog showed us that video of you in Coney Island and introduced us to your website Jenny and I have been wanting to do what you do.”

I let a sigh slip out as I looked at my sister, she looked so young and vulnerable at that moment, but I also knew exactly what both she and Jenny had been through and I wanted to be honest with her. “Firstly, Amy needed to convince her guardian to allow it, meaning you and Jenny would have to convince Leslie and I that you would be responsible out there and not a danger to yourself or anyone else before we’d even consider it. Second, Amy has to follow orders at all times. Third, Amy was a probationary member until she proved herself by training hard, learning what she was taught, and following her rules, and she is still going to remain a trainee until she’s eighteen. Fourth, once the school year starts next week she will be homeschooling with Sasha as her teacher, and the two of you will be doing that with her regardless. She also isn’t allowed to do anything on her own, she has to stay in contact, or where we can keep an eye on her, at all times, unless I give the order to leave. Her job is usually evacuation of civilians, she doesn’t engage hostiles unless she is directly attacked or told to. Being a superhero is a lot of work Allie, and not as fun and romantic as the media makes it out to be. It’s also very dangerous and we’re trying to minimize that danger for her.”

“We can do all of that, and we’ll be careful not to put ourselves in danger, Candy. We’ll be the best trainees that we can and maybe we can help Amy out as roadies too.”

“Maybe we can revisit this topic once you and Jenny are in better control of your powers and emotional states, so we know what we’re dealing with,” I suggested diplomatically. “Until then we’ll be training you hard so you get that control.”

“Okay Sis, we’re going to work so hard,” she said drowsily, barely able to keep her eyes open.

“I know you will, but right now you’re going to sleep, you’ll need your rest.” I kissed her softly on the forehead again and went to finish folding her new clothes and placing them in her dresser. She was asleep within minutes and by the time I had finished my task, I too was ready for bed.

For the next week we planned on training the girls as hard as we could, since the next week when school started they would have their lessons with Sasha until lunch and only have the afternoons to properly train. They started off their mornings with Elven focusing exercises under Tessily’s tutelage while the members of RevolveR were doing our teamwork exercises. After that all members of RevolveR went on to our individual training sessions on our own since we knew what we were doing by now while Changeling and Savage started intense physical and combat training, my sister learning the Fae fighting style and swordplay from Tessily, and Twilight’s protégé was learning martial arts under Blackout’s watchful eye.

After having lunch, something Allie and I enjoyed with Tessily, it was on to powers training for the girls. On one side of the large training room Tessily and I worked with my sister, while on the other side Twilight and Liberty were working with Twilight’s protégé. For the most part, her powers were pretty simple and they were trying to teach Savage to use her heightened agility, razor sharp nails, and increased durability from having an iron skeleton to her advantage. They also discovered that she had Category two strength as well, she needed to if her body was to support all the extra weight from Iron bones. As a result they were trying to help her gain some control over both that strength and her surge healing ability as well.

As for Changeling, I had my sister deactivate her inhibitor collar during those afternoon sessions so we could get a feel for her various forms and the abilities that came with each. In addition to the focusing exercise that Tessily was teaching the girls to control their emotions I also felt that it would be a good idea for her to be able channel those emotions at will to access her different power sets as needed. I thought that maybe acting lessons in combination with the focusing exercises might help with that so for the first half hour of our afternoon sessions I had her doing some exercises that had been suggested by Riff’s mother, the former Broadway actress and current singing and acting coach, to channel specific emotions to make acting more believable.

The girls did work very hard at whatever we put them to and both were showing a marked improvement over their emotions by the time we had completed Friday’s training. With some concentration my sister was even able to summon specific mood-related forms at will, though she would need to work on mastering her powers for each of those forms and that was going to be a long process. She was taking just as naturally to the Fae fighting styles as I had, and was picking up some snippets of the language as well, so I had to wonder just how much Fae blood we had.

As for her specific forms, we had discovered thirteen unique forms so far. Although many of them gave off some sort of aura as part of her powers, there didn’t seem to be anything obviously consistent powers-wise between them except that she seemed to be a Category four in every state. Each form had a different power that was somehow related to the emotional state itself, or concepts that my sister associated with them in her subconscious mind. The different states that we had discovered so far were fear, anger, confidence, happiness, shyness, excitement, frustration, guilt, determination, courage, anxiety, jealousy, and confusion.

Dr. Park had been right when she had first told me that my sister’s Fear form was as inhuman as it was terrifying. In that form her hair and skin were both pitch black, seeming to absorb all light like a black hole, rather than reflecting it. The only light was the dark red glowing of her eyes. She was intangible in that state and emitted an aura of pure terror that seemed to affect anyone within a range of about twenty feet.

Anger was almost as frightening as fear. Both her hair and eyes were crimson in color and her entire body could erupt into flames. She seemed able to turn it off and on and could control the flames with a form of pyrokinesis, but when she had been in the hospital and had taken that form she had been reacting out of pure rage and destroyed her hospital room even worse than I had before someone had managed to knock her out with a tranquilizer gun.

Her Confidence form looked like me with its blue skin and pink hair and the similarities didn’t end there. Her power in that form seemed to be telekinesis, so at least we had a good idea of how to train her in that form. It was my hope that helping her to master the telekinesis of that form might help her to control the powers in some of her other forms as well, such as Anger’s pyrokinesis.

Her happiness form made Changeling look like a young Tessily, which I personally thought was cute and sweet. In that form she seemed to have increased speed and agility, which would lend itself well to her physical training. It also made it the logical form for her to use in a hand to hand or sword fighting situation.

Shyness brought us a bit of a surprise. With her brown hair and eyes and slightly mousey body language in that form I had feared that it might be her default form, or perhaps a mild mannered secret identity. She had never tried using powers in this form either, so when she turned invisible it was a bit of a shock to all three of us. It wasn’t true invisibility though, more like a camouflage ability that let her blend into her surroundings.

I was already familiar with Excitement of course, with her neon blue hair and eyes. Her power in that form was definitely super speed, she was even faster than Twilight. It was also like she had chugged down ten gallons of expresso whenever she took that form. She couldn’t seem to hold still and she constantly moved and spoke a mile a minute, making it very hard to get her to focus on her lessons.

Frustration was very similar to Anger, except that both her hair and eyes were a bright orange and the aura that she could generate was electricity rather than flames. This form would probably be just as dangerous as Anger as well if she didn’t gain proper control of that electricity. I really hoped that teaching her to control the telekinetic powers of her confidence form would carry over to those two more dangerous forms as well.

In her Guilt form my sister had plum-colored hair and dark brown eyes and she seemed to be able to shrink. She was able to get down to about two inches tall with some intense concentration and I could see both uses and dangers with that ability. It only seemed to allow her to shrink and return to her original size though. All attempts to get her to increase her size had been a bust.

Determination was another surprise. In that form my sister had bright golden hair and eyes and a near blinding aura of the same color that spread out to a ten foot radius around her. She had injured her ankle when she had taken that form the first time, but had refused to stop training for the day. Then what looked to be a serious sprain healed before our eyes. It wasn’t just her though, as the few bruises that I had been sporting had healed as well. It was an ability that she had no control over, she couldn’t even consciously turn it on or off, and it healed herself and anyone else within her aura with the speed and power of a Category four Regen.

Changeling’s Courage form had white hair, blue eyes, and a pair of large feathery-looking wings made from some sort of golden energy. The only real ability that she seemed to have in that form was being able to fly, not that she had much success at first while getting used to her new energy-based appendages. Still, I was the only member of RevolveR who could fly without a skybike at the moment and I could see where that form could be useful for scouting in the future.

Her last three forms seemed fairly simple powers-wise. Anxiety had Black hair with red streaks and violet eyes and she could create seismic vibrations, making whatever she was concentrating on shake violently. Her jealousy form bore moss green hair and eyes and her only power with it seemed to be Category four strength. And then there was Confusion, the form that so resembled me in my disguised form. In that form she could generate an aura of light that distracts anyone who looks directly at it without proper light protection. The victims just stand there staring until she turns the aura off or changes form.

During the evenings Allie and I would have dinner, sometimes with Mahar joining us and then we would either go to band practice or out for the evening with Leslie and Jenny so that my best friend and I could show the girls some of the sights like the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State building, and Times Square. We did a lot of bonding over that time and I was feeling closer to my sister every day.

On Saturday of that Labor Day weekend though things changed up a bit. Tessily and I were halfway through Changeling’s afternoon training session when all of the other members of both Aegis and RevolveR joined us in the training room, all of them in costume. Liberty and Tessily went to join them in the center of the room motioning for Twilight, myself, and our students to follow. Once we were all gathered I looked at Twilight and then down at myself. We were both dressed much like our students in the simple black bodysuits that we usually called training uniforms. “I feel underdressed,” I muttered in an aside to Twilight.

“Can you please tell us what’s going on now?” Rave asked.

Liberty nodded and looked over to the control booth where I noticed Blake In his Prodigy armor giving her a thumbs up. Then she turned back to us and gave an encouraging smile. “We believe that RevolveR is ready for full deployment on missions without Aegis supervision and since we may need you to do just that tonight, you can consider this your final exam. Should you pass we will have a mission for you, if you don’t well we’ll just have to keep training you for a while longer. You’ve only been at this a few months so there’s no shame in not being ready, especially since we’re dropping this on you so suddenly.”

“What do you mean final exam?” Mai sputtered nervously. “What do we have to do?”

“We need to be sure that you are all ready to engage other Hypers in the field, so as your final exam you will be fighting us. We will be acting the parts of mutant terrorists and will not hold back. Your mission objective will be to protect civilians, capture us without seriously harming us, and prevent us from destroying that,” Blackout said as he pointed to the back of the room where a large holographic target appeared on the back wall.

Holograms began popping up all over the room until it resembled a city street with people walking down sidewalks, entering or leaving buildings, and some sitting at a sidewalk café. Prodigy came down from the control room and nodded, “Everything is set whenever you’re ready to start Liberty. The holograms in this room will be just like the real things, appearance, texture, weight, mass, and they can both cause damage and be damaged. If any civilians or the target get damaged, the simulation will end.”

“Can we watch from the control room?” my sister asked.

Liberty shook her head, “No I’m afraid not, because you’re going to be participating. You and Savage will be on our side playing the role of terrorists, or rather terrorists in training. We want to see how the two of you will react in high pressure or dangerous situations and how well you can follow rules and orders. Once the four of you get into costume we’ll get started.”

We headed up to our apartments where I quickly got into my costume and gear. There had been a bundle of cloth waiting outside our door with a little note in Brianna’s handwriting that said, “For Changeling,” so I assumed that my sister was changing into that while I was getting changed. It took her a few minutes longer than me, so I assumed that she was trying to figure out how it was supposed to be worn. It was a simple black bodysuit that covered her from head to toe, with the only openings being those that allowed her hair to fall freely, and the area under her mask which left the nose and mouth exposed so she could breathe properly. Gold-hued ankle boots, gauntlet style gloves and a sash added color to the outfit and over her heart there was a stylized golden C with fairy wings sprouting from it. She also had something that looked like my stun sword hanging from the sash.

We stepped out into the hall to find Twilight and Savage in costume as well. “Wow, it feels weird wearing something like this, the latter was saying as we joined them. Savage was dressed in a similar black bodysuit as my sister’s but with a form fitting tan sleeveless leotard over top, knee high combat boots and fingerless gloves of the same color, a utility belt, and a pair of golden bracers covering her forearms. Over her heart atop the tan of her leotard was a black cat symbol with slash marks beneath it.

Once we had returned downstairs, and Changeling and Savage had been taken aside to instruct them in their weapons and whatever strategy had been cooked up, the battle was on. It was eight against six and they were all going to be going all out, but we had mission objectives and we couldn’t seriously hurt any of them, not that I wanted to. This was not going to be easy. At least the rules stated that if one of our opponents was contained or knocked unconscious they would be out of the game.

As soon as the buzzer to begin the exam rang I began issuing orders. “Rave start evacuating civilians! Everyone else choose targets and try to disable without hurting them, heavy hitters first! I’ll get some altitude and try to coordinate and contribute from the air!” I shot up into the air to see Rave already opening multiple portals and telling people to get through them to safety. Prodigy unloaded a cloud of missiles at me and I barely managed to get a TK shield up in time to absorb the damage. “Sorry about this Prodigy,” I mumbled. Then I telekinetically took his armor apart around him and tossed him toward Rave as I called out, “Catch!” He was hit by one of her glow bracelets and encased in foam before even hitting the ground.

Riff was going toe to toe with Liberty, but so far he seemed to be on the defensive, until Twilight came racing out of a shadow at full speed and decked Liberty hard enough to shake the entire training room. Liberty staggered, but managed a counter punch which was caught by Riff’s force field as he stepped in the way, knocking her back with a counter-punch of his own. At the same time Twilight dove into Riff’s shadow to reappear from Liberty’s, hitting her hard enough from behind to send her to the floor in a heap.

Two heavy hitters out, now were was Silver Spirit? I had a feeling that I knew exactly where he was, or at least where he was going. He had probably turned invisible and was going after the target. I quickly put a TK shield around the target, absorbing the energy blast that seemed to come out of nowhere. That was when two things happened. The first was Decibel hitting the area the blasts had come from with a high pitched sonic shout, and the second was Savage leaping at a group of holographic civilians.

Silver Spirit fell to his hands and knees as he reappeared and began throwing up, until Decibel delivered a solid punch to knock him out. Meanwhile the civilians promptly vanished and Starbright appeared, blocking Savage by forming a solid light riot shield and following it up with a flash bang. Suddenly something big hit my TK shield from behind. It was a truck and, even as its mangled remains fell to the ground, Changeling in her Jealousy form was hefting another vehicle to toss at me.

“Shit!” I muttered as I noticed that the remains of the truck were falling toward a pair of civilians. Quickly I reached out with my mind snatching up both them and the sedan that my sister had just tossed at me, suddenly very glad for all that time I had spent training to lift, move, and manipulate multiple objects at once. I was nowhere near feeling strained yet, but I was having a hard time keeping an eye on the rest of the battle with my attention divided between keeping my own TK shield up, flying, protecting the target, snatching up the vehicles that Changeling was tossing like softballs, and defending civilians.

Rave ushered the civilians beneath me into a portal and called out over our secure comm frequency, “Evac completed.” Without civilians to worry about I dropped the vehicles, tossing the one that Changeling had just thrown back at her while silently praying that she would move in time and trying to get my attention back on the battle as a whole. Starbright had her hands full with Savage, using a solid light staff to fight the younger mutant. Savage was blocking with a pair of energy shields that had emerged from her bracers and occasionally punching or firing sparkling pellets at her from those same bracers when the opportunity presented itself, forcing Star to constantly dodge.

Decibel was targeting one out of a group of Phantasms with another sonic attack, Blackout had canceled out Riff’s force field and seemed to be overwhelming him, while Tessily was firing enchanted arrows at the target and apparently hoping to bring down my TK shield. I had just enough time to take that in before I noticed my sister coming at me in her winged form with a gold-colored version of my stun sword humming in her hand. At least she had avoided the sedan.

I drew my own stun sword, activating it, and it hummed to life with a pink glow as I parried Changeling’s attack and started issuing orders. “Riff, get some distance between you, Blackout’s powers will stop working on you if you get out of range. You and Star need to switch partners, she’s got the training to take on blackout but she’s not durable enough to keep hitting, or taking hits, from Savage’s iron bones. Twilight, give Decibel a hand he’s got the real phantasm covered, illusions can’t fool his sonic sense. Phantasm can’t use his intangibility and his illusions at the same time so he’s vulnerable right now and the real one has a shadow. Rave, take on Tessily, but do it from a distance; intercept her arrows, send them somewhere harmless, and try to incapacitate her.”

My sister wasn’t very experienced at swordplay yet and since she was the only one left who could take me on this high in the air I was able to keep an eye on things as I countered her attacks and started putting pressure on her. Much to my pleasure she was keeping her emotions under control and even though I was starting to overwhelm her she kept on doggedly fighting and searching for an opening. Her wings seemed to be mentally controlled since I had tried giving them a tap with my weapon and she was still airborne, not that I was surprised since they were energy based rather than actual physical wings.

Twilight had come to Decibel’s aid, appearing from the real Phantasm’s shadow from behind to fingerflick him into unconsciousness, and Star was now taking on Blackout in a martial arts battle and seemed to be an even match for him even without her powers. Riff had his force field back and was about to attack Savage, who was going to Blackout’s aid, when she suddenly stopped, dropped to her knees and called out, “No! I won’t do that! I surrender!” My brows rose in concern but I didn’t have time to think about it as I was trying to keep an eye on Rave’s battle with Tessily while trying to keep my sister on the defensive without actually hurting her too badly. I had already stunned both of her legs and her left arm so they were hanging uselessly as she stubbornly continued to keep fighting.

Rave had been doggedly intercepting Tessily’s arrows with hastily generated portals and keeping a good distance between them, but now my Mahar was out of arrows and drew a silver version of my stun sword as she attempted to close the distance between them. Rave tossed one of her bracelets at her, but the Fae princess deftly dodged it, until Rave opened up a portal and the bracelet flew through it to hit Tessily from behind and encase her in quickly hardening spongey foam. I quickly turned my full attention to my sister only to find her shaking her head violently. “No way Blackout! I’d rather surrender!” She broke off from our fight and flew down to the floor, where she promptly collapsed from her currently useless legs.

There was only Blackout left and as we all converged on his fight with Starbright he sighed and raised his hands in surrender. “Congratulations. You all pass, welcome to the big leagues.”

Once we had gathered everyone who had been injured or knocked unconscious in one place, and Rave had Tessily and Prodigy de-foamed, my sister had changed to her golden-haired Determination form for its healing aura. It still took her some time to change forms, but it wasn’t bad for only five days of training and she was showing a marked improvement on her emotional control. That healing aura was something else though, within ten minutes everyone was conscious, on their feet again, and feeling like a million bucks.

“You all did well out there, we’re proud of you,” Liberty stood up to tell us all once we had finished watching the battle on the big screen in the situation room. “You did everything that you should have in that fight and you were careful to not seriously hurt any of us, though with my invulnerability that couldn’t have been easy. Still, remind me to never fight the two of you at the same time again, at least not seriously.” The last was said with a good natured laugh as she looked toward Twilight and Riff.

“Why did you surrender?” I asked my sister and Savage.

“I gave them orders that they refused to follow,” Blackout answered in their stead. “We wanted to see how they would react in a real fight, and if they could follow orders, but we also wanted to see if they had the sense to know when not to follow orders. I told Savage to use her iron claws when she backed me up with Starbright and then I told Changeling to switch to her Anger form.”

“I didn’t mind attacking the holograms like that, but it’s different when there are real people involved. Mai could have been seriously hurt if I attacked her like that and I won’t do that just to win,” Savage said with a deep frown.

“Me either,” my sister agreed, looking down at the floor. Changeling’s Anger form was possibly her most dangerous, and the one she seemed to have the least control over so far. People could have gotten seriously hurt, either us or any of the members of Aegis unconscious on the floor.

“The point was to see if they could control themselves under combat conditions and whether they knew what lines not to cross and they both did wonderfully,” Silver Spirit said. “If they had tried to follow those orders we would have known that they needed to learn that lesson and measures would have been taken to prevent them from going through with it.”

“We had Sasha keeping an eye on both of them while cloaked. If it looked like they were going to go too far or lose control she would have rendered them unconscious,” Prodigy assured us.

Liberty turned to smile at both Changeling and Savage. “Neither of you has had much training yet, but you both handled yourselves well out there. You followed all of the reasonable orders, you didn’t panic or lose control, you fought smart, and you didn’t give up even when you knew that you were fighting more powerful and experienced opponents, but kept looking for openings to exploit. You both need a lot more training of course, but you passed your test too. If Syryn and Twilight allow it you can join Rave as probationary trainees. For now that means mostly training and observing missions from the tour bus, but you may sometimes be asked to help with evacuation or other tasks, depending on the situation and that will be Syryn’s call.”

I wasn’t too sure about that and neither was Twilight when we had brought up their interest with the members of Aegis earlier that week. They had proposed a test to see if the girls would be able to handle it, but I hadn’t expected it this soon, and I had been a little preoccupied earlier with our own unexpected final exam. Still, I could keep them both safe in the tour bus until I thought that they were ready, or a task came along that I thought that they could safely complete. I looked over to Twilight who appeared as torn about her protégé as I was about my sister, but she finally sighed and then nodded. With a sigh of my own I spoke up. “You girls know the rules. If you can’t follow them or the orders I give then you will be out until we’re sure that you can. Do you both understand?”

“Yes ma’am!” the pair responded at once, their faces brightening up with grins that reminded me far too much of myself and Twilight.

Liberty cleared her throat and everyone’s attention fell on her once again as a picture of members of the Right Hand appeared on the main display screen. “Now that we have all that out of the way, I would like to discuss tonight’s mission. Since we exposed the connection between the Church of the Purity of Adam and the Right Hand over a week ago the FBI, HAA and CIA have been putting on the pressure, by raiding their compounds and seizing their assets. They have never been this vulnerable before and the plan is to hit all of their remaining compounds tonight in one massive raid. Superheroes and various organizations will be hitting all of their compounds nation-wide simultaneously tonight in an effort to take them down for good.”

The view on the screen changed to a map of the U.S.A with red dots spread out on it, off to the side was a list of the various compounds that the dots indicated with all of the information that was known about them. Once we all had a good look over it Liberty continued her briefing. “Aegis will be taking down their location in Washington DC, it’s listed as a church but we believe that there will be a secured Right Hand Bunker hidden beneath it, just as there was with most of the churches that have already been raided. The HCU will be taking down a similar location here in New York City. As for RevolveR you will be taking this location in New Jersey. It’s listed as a warehouse so we don’t think there will be much to worry about, it could just be storage for weapons and equipment, but we wanted to make sure that you were mission-ready in case there are any surprises there.”

“And here when you said mission I thought we were going to save the world, or at least New York, but it’s only New Jersey… really who wants to save Jersey?” Starbright said with a laugh.

“I guess that anyone from Jersey… might want to save it,” Riff shot back, much to everyone’s amusement.

“Enough you two,” I told them trying to hold back a laugh of my own. “So when is this going down?”

“Synchronize your watches everyone, because this op is set to go down at exactly eight o’clock east coast time,” Blackout informed us. “We’ll all need to be in position to start by then so we should all move out.”

We ate dinner on the tour bus during the flight to New Jersey. It wasn’t much, just some frozen pizzas and burritos from the freezer, but it would do until we could eat something more substantial after the raid. It was as our cloaked ship approached the warehouse from above that I realized that whatever they were using this place for it wasn’t storage, or at least it wasn’t at the moment. The lights were on and there were a lot of cars outside, very expensive looking cars. “What the fuck are all those fancy cars doing outside a warehouse on the outskirts of New Jersey at this time of night?” Rave muttered, echoing my own thoughts.

“What’s the time Sasha?” I asked our android manager, agent and current pilot.

“It is currently thirty seven minutes before our mission is set to commence,” she answered as she set the autopilot to hover in place.

“That is not what we were expecting to find here. I’d like to know a little more about what’s going on in there before we go jumping in. Rave open a portal so Sasha can get down there. Sasha stay cloaked and try to find out what’s going on, can you relay what you see and hear down there to the bus’s main view screen?”

Sasha’s eyes blinked several times and then she smiled and nodded. “I’m patched in now. I will monitor the comm channel but I will not be able to respond verbally if I am to remain unnoticed.”

“Reconnoiter and try to find out what’s going on, but be ready to return to the bus by ten minutes to,” I told her. She nodded again and stepped through the portal Rave had provided before going stealth.

We watched through Sasha’s eyes as she carefully made her way inside where there was a large crowd of expensively dressed people, there were people dressed more normally as well, but they had a dangerous look to them and Sasha had connected several of them to Interpol files on known terrorists that she brought up on screen for our benefit. “Terrorists and the idle rich? I’m not sure that I like where this is going,” Twilight said, her face twisting into a frown.

Sasha carefully maneuvered through the crowd and people dressed in tuxes carrying trays of champagne and hors d'oeuvres. She had almost reached the front of the crowd when a voice boomed out, “Welcome everyone and thank you for attending tonight’s auction. We will be getting underway soon, but until then please enjoy the food and champagne and have a good look at tonight’s merchandise. Each is useful in their own way and I’m sure that those of you who win will be very happy with your purchases.”

The man was standing at a podium on a raised platform that served as a stage and off the side of the stage there were seven people looking straight ahead with terror in their eyes. They all wore metal collars, ratty and filthy clothes, and held up signs as they stood completely unmoving. The first was a girl that couldn’t have been older than twelve who had fire erupting from her head in place of hair. The sign in front of her read, “Item #1. Impervious to fire and heat, can generate fire from any part of her body, and manipulate it at will.”

“Omigod they’re selling mutants,” Decibel muttered, clenching his fists.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” my sister added as she buried herself in my chest and started to shake.

“Do you think they’ve been brainwashed? Or maybe they’re under some sort of mind control?” Riff asked.

“It is the collars, they are plugged directly into their central nervous systems. They allow complete control over the wearer and cannot be removed without serious injury.” The words scrolled across the screen as Sasha inspected the back of the girl’s neck. Then, as she inspected the others from behind, more text made its way across the screen. “Each collar is different and meant to work with or be resistant to the wearer’s individual powers. They have a Tinker somewhere.”

“That does explain the Right Hand’s gear,” Starbright grumbled. “We can’t let those people be sold. Is there any way to disable the collars or knock them out so they won’t be forced to fight us?”

“I shall try to find out,” the text scrolling across the screen replied.

Sasha moved back in front of the captive Hypers from the front and inspected the cards in front of them. The one beside the girl with the flaming head looked to be maybe a year or so older and they resembled each other enough in the face for them to be sisters. She was beautiful, even in her current condition, and had long black hair with long golden horns emerging from her forehead and wrapping around her head to just above and behind her pointed ears like a tiara. Her eyes were bright crimson and full of fear, and she had a spaded tail and a pair of bat-like wings sprouting from her back. Her sign read, “Item #2: Category four regeneration. Can create and manipulate hellfire, fly, see auras, drain spirit energy through intimate contact, and has elevated hormone and pheromone levels.”

The others included a metalmorph of some sort, a guy who could increase or decrease his size and mass, an Energy Manipulator with heightened strength and speed, a woman who can change into a gaseous form, fly and control wind, and a man with electric powers. The last of the seven was very familiar to me though. “Oh my God! That’s Tendril from H8!” Then I realized the time. “Sasha we have 14 minutes until go time and HAA and FBI forces are probably already on route with local police to back us up. We need to figure out our game plan. Do you see any security?”

The screen focused on a group of four massive metal forms behind the stage. They were either robots or some sort of power armor, ten feet tall and bristling with weapons. “Well I guess that this isn’t going to be easy then,” I muttered. “What about disabling the collars?”

“They are shielded against EMPs. I could force them open and remove them, but only one of them is a Regen and the damage to the others could be substantial.” I frowned as that message crossed the screen.

“What about my healing aura? If you got them all to me fast enough I could heal them,” Changeling suggested.

I sighed as I considered the situation and tried to come up with a plan. Not only were there the captive mutants to consider, but there was also those robots, any Right Hand goons that might be around, and all those guests. I wasn’t going to put it past those guests being armed either, especially the terrorists wanted by Interpol. Those rich people could be armed too, or at the very least would likely have bodyguards with them, and drivers waiting in the cars. We would need to incapacitate them all at once, hope that it took the Hypers down too, and then worry about the robots and anyone still standing. Finally I said, “Okay Sasha, when I give the signal Rave is going to open up a portal. I’ll need you to come through, monitor things from up here, and coordinate with the government agencies. Here’s what we’re going to do…”

It was one minute to eight and the time had come to put the plan into action. Police and government vehicles were inbound and barricading any possible escape routes. “Showtime everyone. Rave open up a portal. Sasha as soon as that portal opens get through it and then we’ll send in Decibel for the first stage.”

“On it Syryn,” Rave said with a nod. The lines and patterns on her skin began to glow a bright green as the portal opened and almost as soon as it formed Sasha was through and heading for the cockpit to begin coordinating and observing. Decibel didn’t wait for the order, he jumped through the portal, it closed behind him and a moment later we all heard the high pitched sonic shout, despite our comms being turned off in preparation. The monitors showed the scene below in the parking lot as windows exploded and when the shout finally ended we snapped our comms back on. “Status Decibel?”

“All the regular humans in the warehouse are taking a nap Syryn, and I think I can take out the last Hyper standing with a focused… shit, robots!”

“Team two, get in there and support him, shades mode on, Star open up with a flashbang and try to take out the sensors on those robots then everyone else hit them hard and take them down fast. Try to disable the Hypers and not hurt them too bad, they’re not in control of their own actions,” I said. “Rave, portals please. You, Changeling, and Savage will be with me. Stay away from the main fight, our job is to get those people out of there and into custody and to provide support if needed. We’ll check those in the parking lot first in case any of the drivers managed to resist Decibel’s sonic attack.”

Changeling had already shifted into her Jealousy form as I had instructed and as soon as the portals opened we were all rushing through. There were a few in the parking lot that had resisted the full effect of Decibel’s attack, and four of the cars’ engines had started. I reached out with my mind, lifting them into the air. Panicked drivers jumped out of them to be foamed by Rave, disabled by my sister’s stun sword or shot by Taser pellets from Savage’s bracers. With them out of the picture, I returned the cars to the ground and we began pulling other drivers from the vehicles, securing their arms and legs with zip-ties, and placing them together in an empty area of the parking lot.

Once we had taken care of those in the parking lot I made my way to the open doors of the warehouse and began telekinetically bringing people outside for the trainees to secure and place with the others. The battle inside was hectic. One of the robots was down, smashed into mangled pieces of scrap, probably by Twilight and she was hard at work at doing the same to a second, hitting it as hard and fast as she could and then jumping into the shadows when it tried to fire its weapons at her, only to reappear from a shadow somewhere else nearby and going at it again. The other two were trying hard to take down Riff with Gatling guns, his force field was holding for the moment and Starbright and Decibel were doing what they could now that Decibel had knocked out the last Hyper, but their powers weren’t really suited to taking down something that heavily armored.

“Switch up!” I called out. “Decibel and Star start dragging people outside to Savage and Changeling for containment, Rave help me send one of those robots somewhere else so I can I take care of the last one and then help the others outside.”

Decibel and Starbright each grabbed the closest person and started hauling them off to the doors and Rave opened a portal before doing the same. With one hard telekinetic shove I threw one of the robots through and started disassembling the other’s weapons the instant the portal closed. Twilight and I had nearly finished with our partners and the warehouse was mostly evacuated when the floor beneath us suddenly exploded outward. Both robots were destroyed in the blast and I had barely managed to cover Twilight and myself in a TK shield to protect us. Riff was knocked aside and his force field flickered and died as he hit the floor. “Riff!”

“I’m okay Syryn, but I won’t be using my force field for a while,” he replied as he got to his feet shakily. “I’ll help the trainees to get people out of here. I think the rest of you are going to have your hands full with them.” Two mutants were emerging from the hole in the floor, both of them collared. One was absolutely huge, seven and a half feet tall and built like a professional wrestler with jet black skin that glinted like metal. The other was a small woman who was glowing a bright gold color and made the clan mark on my shoulder itch in response.

“Shit, a magic user. Twilight, you take the big guy I’ll try to handle the mage. Decibel and Starbright, They came up from a basement of some sort, I need you to get down there and take out anyone who may still be down there. Be careful we have no idea what else they might have down there.” With the orders given we all jumped into action.

Twilight hit hard and fast enough to cause a shockwave and her opponent staggered and threw a punch of his own that Twilight barely avoided by jumping into his shadow. Decibel and Star practically ran into the warehouse and jumped into the hole in the floor as I tossed the mangled remains of one of the robots at the mage. She tossed the metal aside with a wave of her hand and came at me fast, conjuring a sword in her hand as I put up another TK shield and drew my stun sword, taking to the air to try and get some distance between us now that I had her attention. I could feel her working more spells and then she rose into the air to pursue me as I could see some sort of change in the glow surrounding her.

“Did she just put a shield spell? Shit, well there goes my advantage if she can magically copy everything I can do. I’ll have to hope that I can out power and out-think her,” I thought acidly as I parried the thrust from the mage’s sword and took a swing for her neck that was blocked by whatever shield spell she had used. I was going to have to try to overwhelm her and doing that in the warehouse could be dangerous for my teammates and anyone still inside. “Let’s take this outside Twilight, there are still people in here. Let’s take the side door so we’re not endangering the trainees.”

“Side door?” my best friend asked, momentarily confused before what was visible of her face lit up in a grin. “Oh yes, the side door.” She ducked a punch that her opponent threw at her, grabbing his arm and using his momentum to throw him through the side of the warehouse. “Damn this guy might be nearly as strong and invulnerable as Liberty, this won’t be easy without Riff to help me tag team him,” she grumbled as she sped through the hole in the wall giving chase.

I flew out after her and took to the sky with the mage in pursuit only to see a robot falling, passing through a portal and vanishing. “Rave, was that…”

Rave appeared through a portal and was standing in mid-air watching both me and Twilight in our respective battles. “Yeah I’ve had that thing falling through portal after portal since you threw it through that first one, until I found a better place for it. I think I just found one, and by now it should have enough momentum built up to do this… Twilight, incoming!” A portal opened roughly thirty feet above Twilight and as the robot fell through she managed to disappear into the shadows before the impact hit her opponent with enough force to shake the earth and create a sizable cloud of dust and debris.

I didn’t have much time to pay much attention as I was making a hard push at my opponent, she was not an experienced swordswoman and that inexperience was showing as I pushed her back, getting several hits on her shield spell. The problem was that with her other hand she was casting offensive spell after offensive spell, each powerful enough that I had my plate full keeping my TK shield stable enough to deflect or absorb the attacks. I was peppering her with as much debris as I could spare the attention to gather, but that shield spell was powerful. I needed to be able to get a major hit or two if I wanted to end this fight anytime soon.

Below me the dust had settled and there in the thirty foot crater that remained, amidst the scrap metal, Twilight’s opponent was still standing, though shakily. She went on the offensive hammering him with punch after punch, a blur as she used her super speed to avoid his own blows and hit him from every possible angle. “Shit! This guy will not go down!”

“We got all of the people out of the warehouse Syryn,” Riff’s voice said through my earbuds, “Savage and Rave think they can help take that big guy down without putting Savage in too much danger, it’s not a bad idea and Savage might not be as strong as Twilight, but her iron bones combined with that strength might help.”

“Do it, but be careful,” I replied with a sigh. “Decibel and Star, what’s your status?”

I absorbed another fireball spell and reinforced my TK field as Star’s voice came over the channel. “There was some kind of small lab and containment cells down here with a few Right Hand goons guarding them. They’re down and gagged so they can’t take the tooth, and there don’t seem to be anymore captive Hypers down here, we’ll bring the goons out to the authorities and then come help you if you need it.”

“Okay, I was hoping for a distraction, but I have another idea,” I replied with another long sigh. ”Hey Changeling, are you still in your Jealousy form, and if so how’s your pitching arm?”

I could hear the eagerness in my sister’s voice as she responded. “I think I can help you out there.” Suddenly a luxury car hit my opponent from behind, visibly weakening her shield. I pressed my attack as a second luxury car followed the first, draining the shield spell even more. My opponent was getting tired and I snatched both cars from the air before they could fall too far, to either side of her as another spell hit my TK shield and even as I reinforced my shield I smacked the two cars together with her between them, finishing off her shield spell. I quickly moved in again, my sword arm darting in to disable her spell casting arm and then her sword arm in quick succession.

I had to snatch her out of the air telekinetically and as I lowered her, myself, and the remains of the two cars to the ground I looked downward. Below me Twilight was still beating on her opponent with determination and speed while Savage would jump in from a portal to deliver a punch or two of her own before diving back into the portal and then repeating the process. They had him down on one knee now and with one double fisted overhand strike Twilight was finally able to send him to both the ground and dreamland.

The police and various government agents in attendance had things well in hand, moving those involved with the auction or the lab/prison beneath into vans that had been brought for that purpose. The HAA wanted to take custody of the Hypers, but they had been victimized enough already and I didn’t want those collars in the hands of anyone that might misuse them. They may help Hypers sometimes, but at other times they seemed just as eager to blame us for things like what had happened at the warehouse. The agent on site, a weasel of a man with brown hair who had introduced himself as Agent Wells didn’t seem happy about it, but with all the other agencies involved and the fact that the Hypers had technically been hostages he didn’t have much choice but to place them in our custody to receive medical attention.

A call to Dr. Park revealed that she and Smog were still in New York for a few more days so, once we had the mutants sedated and contained as best we could aboard the tour bus, we headed back home to New York City. Once we had arrived at Columbia University Medical Center’s Hyper Care ward she spent most of the night and well into the morning removing the collars, luckily without any serious damage. My sister’s Determination form helped them to recover quickly and completely and soon they were resting peacefully and recovering from their ordeal.

Most of the former captives were able to be released by Sunday night and we made sure to visit with all of them to make sure that they had access to proper counselling and that they had somewhere to go. Most of them had lives that they were eager to get back to, even Tendril. She had thought long and hard about her life after our battle with H8 and wanted a normal life for a bit. She had had a run-in with the Right Hand the month before and been their unwilling captive ever since and had even more time to think, since that had been the only freedom she had had. Now she had decided that she wanted to go back to school and try to use her powers to help others as a part-time hero.

The only real problem was the two minors. They were sisters, and both were probably going to need new identities since one had once been a boy and they were the grandchildren of Reverend Marcus Wright, the popular Television evangelist, founder and head of the Church of the Purity of Adam, and the man known as Cardinal to the members of the Right Hand. To think that he had treated his own flesh and blood that way, though as another mutant child of a member of the Right Hand I could certainly sympathize with the pair. Their Grandfather had escaped, leaving the country before the night of the raid, but I hoped that he would be captured soon now that he was on Interpol’s most wanted list.

I was a bit concerned about what would happen to the pair, since they had no other family, and both had appearances that would make it hard for them to blend in, but the mage that I had fought against had offered to take the pair in. They and she were both from California and she was a teacher at a school where they could learn how to control their powers. They would be leaving the next day, after a visit from Tara at the HPP to sort out the new identities, so that they could be at school for the start of classes.

All in all things had gone as well as they could with that raid. We had saved those mutants from a life of slavery, put a lot of really bad people behind bars, and helped to take down the Right Hand, hopefully for good. So yeah, the day was saved, and we had made the world a better place. That is what superheroes do isn’t it?

It’s been six months since that last raid that took down the Right Hand and a lot of things have changed since then, mostly for the better. First of all, my dream has finally come true, RevolveR released our first album two months ago and our first single Little Big Bang is already double platinum. We’re going to be starting our first big North American tour soon and we’re all looking forward to it, especially Mai. She found something on the internet about someone with her cousin’s name being involved in illegal experimentation on Hypers, apparently the victims including her cousin had escaped and she was eager to go looking for her.

My personal life has been going pretty well too. My sister and I are getting along great and we spend a lot of our free time either with the band or with our Mahar Tessliy. We had decided to make her adoption official, of both me and my sister, so now we both have a mother who we are more than happy to call by that name. Ian proposed last month and we’re thinking of having the wedding sometime next spring. We may even have a double wedding with Mai and John, and I don’t know who’s happier at the thought of planning the wedding, my Mahar or Ian’s mother.

As for the team, we’re doing well and building up a good reputation among the super set. Changeling and Savage have joined Rave as both roadies and trainees. They’re doing well and my sister is starting to get a good grip on her powers, all of them. She’s almost as good as I am with a sword now too, and we’re both still progressing under Mahar’s tutelage. Oh well, I have to go, we just got word that mutant terrorists are holding Times Square hostage, it seems that a superhero’s work is never done.