The cautions given here are for events described in the long background portion in the middle of the piece.

I could have told this story without all that background info, but she was visiting family, and catching up on everything related to them.

**********

As short a time as a week ago, I thought everything was just as it should be. I was a young male in my junior year of high school, a strong member of our track and field team, and I was doing pretty darn well in my classes, only one B grade in the previous semester.

It was the beginning of May, spring was in full bloom, then my life turned upside down overnight or so it seemed. How? I mutated.

My name was Michael Jonathan Winston, Jr. When I came out of the semi-coma I was in during the mutation, dad told me that if I had been a girl, I would have been named Melissa Jasmine. It seems, whichever way I came out, momma figured I'd end up being nicknamed MJ.

Over a period of about 72 hours, my body changed quite drastically, I went from the 5'11" runner and honours student to this darn near tiny little slip of a girl, maybe 5'3" tall and 130 pounds. I'm not big, but I'm rather busty now, about a D cup, and my butt literally fills my new jeans.

The oddest part about me, I think, is my hair, it looks almost tie-dye, a mix of black, red, blonde, auburn, chestnut and silver. It looks WEIRD! The women at the salon my older sister drops into now and then tried to colour my hair three days ago, and the colour literally wouldn't take. I'd arrived just after they opened at 10 AM, they thought it was a fluke, so they tried three more times, then gave up at closing time, 8 PM.

My skin is close to bronze in colour with a slight golden undertone, my eyes are hazel, mostly brown, but angry me turns them flame red.

I suppose I could gripe and whine about the whole situation, but what would be the point? It happened, and it can't be changed.

I didn't know it, but there are some members of the family that are mutants, most of them live in the Oakland - San Francisco area.

Dad sat down with me two nights ago and told me about mom, how she had been a super herself and had died when I was four years old. She was a low level 4 TK with mid level regeneration, mid level brick, mid level energizer, and low level exemplar powers.

She'd backed up to a solid ten foot high stone wall and a villain slipped in behind her, then used TK to drop the wall on her, crushing her under the heavy stones. It caught her totally by surprise, she had just started to turn around before the wall hit, and she couldn't see him to hit him.

On Friday, Dad and I will be catching a plane in Louisville so we can go to our cousins in California, Dad wants them to check me out first.

**********

It cost Dad nearly $1200 US to get us discounted flights to San Francisco and return a week later. Dad wasn't very happy about the cost, but when I showed him that any other flights would have cost from $826 to $1282 per person, he shrugged and paid for the tickets online.

We were at Louisville International Airport before 4 AM that Friday morning, the flight would be leaving at 6 AM. If everything went as it was supposed to do, we would land at San Francisco International at 4:20 PM EDT (1:20 PM PDT), with one stop in Atlanta.

I grumbled to dad that it seemed pretty weird to go to another airport on the way, what ever happened to non-stop direct flights?

We had everything we needed, now we had to wait for an hour before we could check our bags for the flight. I wasn't in the mood to do anything at that point, heck, I'd had maybe three hours of sleep earlier, so I was quite happy to get some snooze time in a chair.

**********

Dad got all the stuff sorted out just after 5 AM, he actually let me snooze until 5:30 AM, initial boarding calls were announced at 5:45 AM.

We had to wait for all the first class and business class people to board, then dad and I ended up being squeezed into the economy seats. Some big guy, I mean seriously overweight, had already grabbed the window seat, I ended up in the middle and dad was by the aisle.

I'm not sure what was going on, but the flight was delayed by several minutes, then at 6:07 AM, we were going down the runway.

I dozed for about 90 minutes or so before the stewardesses starting serving breakfasts. Dad and I both grabbed a tray plus a coffee, I like mine with just a little sugar now, dad takes his with some cream and two sugars. Breakfast wasn't too bad, I guess, three breakfast sausages next to a slightly runny egg, two slices of toast, hash browns, choice of white or whole wheat, dad and I both picked whole wheat.

I tell you this, and I swear it's true, those hash browns were just godawful, I left mine on the plate after one taste, dad did the same. Dad, my older sister and I went down to New Orleans three years ago, and we had some really good hash browns down there, BIG difference!

Once breakfast had been cleared, I decided that more sleep sounded good and I was soon back in the land of dreams.

**********

I didn't wake up, except to use the toilet once, until dad nudged me awake after they announced we would be landing fairly soon.

We were still up pretty high, but it was fairly obvious we were descending when the plane dropped through a thin layer of clouds.

It was just dad and I for this trip because my older sister Rebecca is in her second year of university and she couldn't get any free time. If this had happened just a year ago, my little sister Savannah would have been with us, she died two days after I turned sixteen.

It's hard to not end up crying when I remember Savannah. She always had a smile, she was a sweet young girl, but something went truly and horribly wrong when she mutated at the age of thirteen two years ago. There were dozens of tests done in at least five hospitals and two clinics run by and for mutants, and not a single one of them could explain why she ended up the way she did, an empty, lost shell of a girl.

She lived for almost a year in that state before a sudden unexplained power surge on her ward caused her to have a major heart attack. A team of doctors and nurses fought for over eleven hours to save her, but they were unsuccessful, and the machines were all turned off.

Dad looked over just as the plane touched down and noticed that I was crying. When he asked why, I whispered, "Savannah."

That was all the explanation he needed, he knew how close I had been to Savannah, we'd played together since she could toddle.

**********

We didn't get out of the terminal for almost an hour, a lot of that was spent waiting for our bags; they finally showed up, which was nice.

We had just exited the terminal building when someone waved at dad and yelled, "Hey, Mike!" Dad looked over, waved and within a minute or two, dad and I were surround by several members of our family. We took a moment to get introductions sorted.

Wow, I actually met my great-great-uncle Jack, he's a super, mostly retired nowadays, he was Jumping Jack Flash in the super group that's been based in the San Francisco and Oakland area since the 1940s. His main ability was to be able to teleport from wherever he had been standing to another spot within about one hundred feet, then he'd spread his hands and trigger his Flash Bang attack, a real stunner. He was pretty tough, a mid-level brick, able to take a fair bit of thumps, but only to a point. He had low level TK abilities, mostly to bring items to him from a short distance away, but he was also able to use his TK to figure out ways to create things, and sometimes they even worked.

Like I said, though, he's mostly retired now, although he still tinkers with stuff using his TK abilities. He's 93 years old, I think? He was married to Rosemary Browne in late '42, Jenny came along less than a year later, followed by James and Robert. Rosemary was a great mother, her kids, even though they were fairly poor, felt like they had everything they needed. Breast cancer claimed Rosemary in '63, she was 38.

His daughter Jenny carries the mutant genes, but she never actually mutated, she's a strong-minded woman, she raised five kids on her own. She fell in love with a soldier who had returned from Korea several years before she met him. They married as soon as she was eighteen, then the babies started popping out, all five born between the end of '62 and the first few months of '67, including twin boys. He was called up for Vietnam and served about half of a two year enlistment before he was killed in battle, leaving her with the five little ones to raise.

Her father stepped in, he knew just how much she had loved Will Jackson, so he helped her with the kids and pulled in a few of his friends who had wives to help, too. Jenny's brothers James and Robert also helped, both of them stayed mostly single for many years.

Robert had undergone his own mutation when he was fifteen in early '63, but could pass as a normal except for his eyes. Since he didn't have any mutation characteristics that were significant, he stayed out of the superhero business and lived a fairly normal life. Like Jenny's husband, Robert was drafted for Vietnam, managed to survive two two year enlistments and returned home physically okay but mentally broken. Once he was back home, he lost himself in the bottom of any bottle he could find, until he drove his car off a cliff while drunk and speeding in '75.

Jenny's brother James had, like her, missed out on the mutation lottery and started a farm that stayed in business throughout his life. He never married, although he did have relationships with women now and again; he worked hard, long days in the fields for fifty-seven years, but with no children of his own, the farm ended up being handed over to William, Jr., Jenny's oldest boy last year. Will was 52 years old at the time.

Will, Jr., was another one that the mutation lottery seemed to have sidestepped. It didn't matter to him, he was happy enough doing odd jobs for several years, then ran a small but hard-working landscaping business with ten workers until he retired in 2012.

While James had owned and managed the farm, a lot of the work had been done by Mexicans and Native Americans, he paid them well. When Will started managing the farm, he politely told the workers that he wasn't going to change anything, except he might hire more people.

Will had always had a bit of trouble getting close to people, and thus had never had a long relationship with anyone, so he had no kids.

Sherry was Jenny's second child, her only girl, you might say that Sherry got pampered and befrilled as a child, but she loved it. Sherry came along in June of '64, nineteen months after Will, Jr. was born. Sherry was courted by and eventually married to Doctor Everett Wilson in '84.

Doc Wilson was a veterinarian, specifically a large animal veterinarian, although he could handle smaller animals like dogs and cats, too. His major line of work was treating illnesses and problems in horses and cattle; with lots of big farms nearby, he was kept busy all year round.

David and Danny were Jenny's identical twin boys, born October 30,1965. They grew up with a rather strong fondness for Halloween, what can you expect from boys born so close to that day? Both enlisted in the Navy in early '86, and both kept re-upping, David eventually reaching the rank of Captain in '05 after more than eighteen years of service. Danny had had a bit harder time, but was a Commander at that point.

Both stayed in the service, Danny was killed in a battle off the shores of Iran in the Persian Gulf in 2007. David was still serving at that time, he was told in January of '08 that he was being considered for his next rank, then ended up on a patrol run along the southern shores of the Mediterranean starting in March of that year. He was still patrolling there in June when a rocket launched from the Libyan shore landed less than ten feet away, blasting a fairly big hole in the deck of the ship and peppering him with fragments, one of which ripped his throat open.

No one on the ship had been expecting any kind of attack at all, the loss of the Captain was a huge mess that someone would have to handle. At that moment, it looked like that particular job would fall to his second in command, a Commander by the name of James Walmer.

Jenny's last child, Richard, was a sickly child until his mutation kicked in during the summer of '84, he was seventeen years old. When he saw his new self after the mutation had finished changing him, the newly changed girl freaked out in a really big way, using high level TK powers to smash up a lot of things in the house, then ran out to her older brother Will's car and drove out of there at very high speeds.

The car was found two days later, parked not far from the Golden Gate Bridge. People who had been crossing the bridge that early morning recalled seeing a girl standing on a railing she should not have been able to reach over the deepest part of the water, then she jumped.

There were people who were down at ground level, who saw her jump, that tried to reach her in an effort to save her. One of the would be rescuers, a man named Barrett Welland, told reporters that "The girl kept shoving us all away without ever touching us. You could see that she wasn't even trying to breathe, and wasn't swimming, either, she was just letting the current pull her out and under."

The first EMTs were on the scene in seven minutes, but it was already too late, the transformed Richard had been pulled under by the current. Another would-be rescuer pointed out over the water, and some of them finally managed to pull the girl out, she wasn't breathing at all.

The EMTS did manage to get her breathing again, her heart was still pumping, although it was quite a bit weaker than normal. She was taken to the nearest medical center, put on life support and monitored round the clock. Just over eleven months after she jumped, the family's funds ran low, almost wiped out by the costs of trying to keep her alive; with no financial aid in sight, they finally pulled the plug on May 15th, '85.

So Sherry was the only one of Jenny's children to have children of her own. Two years after she married Doc Wilson, Sherry gave birth to identical female twins, both weighing five pounds, eleven ounces. Sherry named the two girls Liza Jean and Lila Joan.

Sherry was in a car accident a year after her twins were born. The accident was severe enough that she required a blood transfusion, and this is where fate struck a nasty blow: the blood transfusion triggered an immune system reaction, she eventually recovered, but when tests were done afterward, it was discovered that the new blood had somehow damaged her reproductive organs, she would have no more children.

Liza and Lila were about as normal as two little girls could be, right up until both began to mutate at the age of fourteen, Lila first, Liza about three hours later. By the time the changes had finished, both girls were just short of being fourteen year old bombshells, 5'8", 145 pounds, 36D bust, 23" waist, 34" hips, with wavy copper blonde hair falling to their lower shoulders. The two girls had never been separated for more than a few minutes at any time, for them, just a glance or two would be like most people having a serious conversation about something.

Both girls ended up being mid-level exemplars, level three regens, level three healers, mid level mixed energizers, the external being specifically electric shocks. Both are also speedsters, this seems to be tied to their exemplar traits, not energizer based.

With electrical use of their energizer trait being their primary attack, and their being identical twins, they were soon dubbed the Tesla Twins.

Well, that gives some idea of the "cousins" we have out west, but the weird part is that, in truth, my mother was an illegitimate baby. Her mother Avonna had been in a relationship with Jenny's brother James back in '78 and found out she was pregnant after the relationship ended. She never told James about momma, whose name was Samantha, James only found out when dad told him momma died in early '04.

Avonna, like Robert, had a lifelong battle with the bottle, and also like Robert, she lost her life while driving drunk and speeding in '99.

What most people didn't know about Avonna was that she was a second generation mutant, with very minor powers. Avonna's father had been a mutant with fairly strong TK abilities, he was also a low level exemplar, mid level energizer, a low level brick and a low level regen. Avonna passed on the gene that carries the ability to mutate to my momma, who became a third generation mutant, her powers being similar to Avonna's father's, with the main differences being that she was a mid level brick and a mid level regen. She called herself Lady Electra.

Life in central Kentucky was quiet for the most part, although momma occasionally raced off to Louisville or Lexington to help her super friends. She and dad bought the farm just south of Bethlehem the year before I was born, and dad paid off the mortgage in full six years ago.

I told you earlier that I'm a mutant, well, I'm a fourth generation mutant, we came out to Oakland to discover my powers.

**********

Anyhow, Old Jack was there waiting for us outside the terminal, as was his daughter Jenny, now 72 years old, Jenny's daughter Sherry, and Sherry's twin daughters, Liza and Lila. We ended up going to Old Jack's house to stay, as he had bedrooms to spare.

Old Jack also had a nice big chunk of land not too far from Oakland itself, a bit over 5,000 acres all told, and he and some other supers had built a big underground area for training purposes, high end exercise equipment and rooms for powers testing for new mutants like myself.

Even though she hadn't lived in Old Jack's house for over 50 years, Jenny headed right into the kitchen and started cooking up a storm. Sherry laughed and waved at Liza, Lila and myself to get in there and help Jenny out, Sherry said she would do some house cleaning.

I'd never learned to cook, so it became a hands on lesson as Jenny showed me how to prepare the meat, wash and cut up the potatoes and then tear the husks off some of the first corn crop of the summer, remove the tassels and wash the cobs before dropping them in a pot to boil.

The meat turned out to be buffalo from some guy Old Jack knows in Arizona, he sends meat express delivery to Jack fairly often. What did surprise me was that Jenny turned on the oven, pulled out a frying pan, dropped a bit of lard in it and started frying up small chunks of the meat. She'd add lard and fresh meat every now and then, put the cooked meat into a tray, cover it and place it in the oven to stay warm.

I asked her if i could sample a small amount of the meat as I'd never had buffalo/bison before, she said it was fine and used tongs to grab a bit, then put it on a napkin on the counter. I washed my hands again just because, then used a fork to pick up a bit of the meat and taste it.

Wow! it was pretty good, with a stronger flavour than beef. Jenny said that a piece of bison has about 2/3 the calories of a similar cut of beef.

I watched as Jenny tended the pots. Once the food was all cooking, Liza and Lila set the table for seven and we waited.

Eventually, it was all done, each item in a dish on the table, everyone sat down, Old Jack said a brief grace and we all started eating.

My metabolism seems to be a lot faster now, I'm pretty sure I had three servings of corn and potatoes and two of the meat, it was that good.

**********

Saturday was spent doing basic physical testing, both offence and defence, to see what I could handle. It turns out I don't hit very hard in a purely physical sense, but I can take quite a bit of "punishment" before it becomes too much for me to handle.

I also had to do a lot of running, some of it in circles, some back and forth in straight lines, I'm definitely not used to running.

Sunday was a day to relax, Old Jack was a stickler for not working on the Sabbath; after the workout the day before, I needed the rest.

On Monday, we were back to the testing, this was to check for other powers. Old Jack and his friends code named Red Blade and The Boulder Bull threw all kinds of stuff at me and I had to defend myself without using anything physical. That was a whole lot of fun, not!

I did find out that I seem to have various kinetic abilities, standard telekinetic for one and electrokinetic for a second. With the telekinetic, I need physical items to use those abilities, but the aero and electro seem to be part and parcel of my energizer powers. At the start, when it came to the electro and aero sides, I was drawing from the electromagnetic field of the planet and throwing it at them, then at some point, Red Blade started throwing pyro attacks at me while the Bull threw his double electro attack at the same time.

It got pretty busy in there for a while, I figure about one out of every three attacks they threw actually hit me, it all adds up eventually. It took a while, but I did start matching them shot for shot, and at one point I was even throwing five attacks to four from the two of them.

I'll bet that surprised them, that one little slip of a girl was not only matching both of them, but actually proved to be faster on the attack.

Well, that lovely demonstration showed off my kinetic abilities, but it also made it clear that I'm a fairly strong brick and I have regeneration abilities, too. Yeah, I was pretty worn out after all that, but within twenty minutes, there wasn't a burn or scar visible anywhere. Wow!

There was another surprise, too, I'm not sure where I drew it from, but I hit Red Blade with an aerokinetic attack that knocked him down. When we were finished for the day, he said that he'd never seen air used in that fashion before, I said I thought of it after watching a tornado.

The day before dad and I flew out here, we'd had a big tornado bounce through the area about ten miles south of our farm. It just missed Frankfort, dropping to the ground about a mile or two west of there, then it pretty much turned Waddy into a disaster zone. It hit ground two more times before it was too far away for us to see it clearly, those drops being just south of Shelbyville and just north of Simpsonville.

Dad likes to watch birds and animals, he's had at least one set of 10x binoculars in the house since I was a baby. I think he bought a set of 18x binoculars at one point, but he forgets where he puts things sometimes and he hasn't seen that pair for over three years now.

Anyway, I explained my thoughts about the aero shot I did, and Red Blade and The Boulder Bull both agreed that it could be useful.

Tuesday was a different bit of testing, they wanted to see if I had any evasion abilities, I laughed and told them to give it their best shot.

It's a darn good thing we were doing that in a space that's built to take really serious physical impacts, because they started throwing various attacks at me a second or two after that and kept it up for nearly two hours. This was how I learned about my warper power, which seems to be the most common one of the lot for warpers, yeah, it's a teleport. With me, it seems it's limited to line of sight, the closer, the better, so I spent that whole time using that power to bounce myself all over the room, from one spot to another, back and forth, up, down, you name it.

I think they managed to hit me maybe half a dozen times over that two hour session. They were impressed. Me, I was just worn out.

A good solid lunch took care of that and then the testing turned to discovering just how well my regeneration would hold up under repeated attacks. That session wasn't quite as long, but by the end of it, I felt like someone had hit me over and over with a redwood trunk.

You wouldn't have it known it, though, maybe half an hour or so after we stopped, everything except for the broken bones was just fine. Those took a fair bit longer, but by the time I went to bed on Tuesday night, even the broken bones were as good as new. Whew!

By their reckonings, I'm an exemplar 4 (they didn't tell me, but they'd brought another super with them on the Monday, I never actually saw her, but she used her psi abilities to get a good read on me, which was how she was able to gauge my various kinetic abilities. I'd gone through some kind of scan device on the Saturday and info from that was how they determined my exemplar level.

So they told me I was an exemplar 4, then they said I was a regen level 4, a brick, warper level 3, specifically teleports.

What had them wondering was how I managed to have three different kinetic powers, the TK is the weakest, but the others aren't too shabby. Using the TK, I can lift just over 200 pounds (about 90 kg using the metric system), with my control being "fine embroidery". The electro is fairly powerful, but not insanely so, and can generate lethal arcs; the level of control for the electro is about the same as when shooting a gun, not spectacular, but then, I didn't like dad's guns all that much, ya know? The aero is the midline of the three kinetic powers I have, roughly equal to about a 60 mile wind gust, and the control needs lots of work before it will be effective. I have lots to learn about using these powers.

So my kinetic abilities roughly come out to Tk2d, Ek3c and Ak3b according to some info Old Jack had from Whateley.

Honestly, though, just having these abilities is totally new to me, I need to learn about them and how to use all of them effectively.

So now you know a little bit about me. Oh, between Old Jack, Dad and I, we decided that my code name should be Stormwall. Even though the TK is physical based rather than energy, it can get pretty intense depending on what I end up using in a TK based attack. The others, the electro and aero, have effects that are often equated to moderate or powerful storms, and I'm a brick, so Stormwall seems appropriate.

Dad mentioned a place called Whateley tonight, it's somewhere in the wilds of New Hampshire, he says I should go there for training.

Sorry for the delay on posting this part, I was stuck at one point in the piece and my muse was apparently on a long vacation.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to post more pieces fairly soon, but I need to find a new place to live, that's much more important right now.

**********

Well, as they say, life goes on, and on Wednesday, it was back to the training, but this time it was purely physical. They had me lifting weights on various machines, running as fast as I could around a one mile underground track circuit, jumping jacks, toe touches, stuff like that.

I'm definitely a girl when it comes to ordinary physical stuff, I know I didn't impress them while using the weight machines. Yeah, I can lift a bit over 1000 pounds if I really want to do it, but that takes a bit of effort. Heck, there are several mutants out there that go way beyond that.

The running was nice, it seems my being an exemplar has me in very good physical condition, and I ran a mile in 3:45 without breathing hard. They had me do it again, pushing myself as much as possible, and that time I almost broke through a three minute mile with a 3:04 time.

So I can dead lift a fair bit of weight, I'm very fast on my feet, my best mile as a boy was 4:01, and I'm very, very flexible. I found the jumping jacks, toe touches and other exercises to be rather fun, being able to jump, bend, twist, roll, etc. will help if I ever have to fight.

Well, the training ended about 2:30 PM, everyone met in the house and we had a big lunch, I definitely needed it at that point. Jenny had been staying over the last several days while I had been training and had been preparing and serving most of the meals in the house.

What I hadn't known was that Old Jack, my dad and a few others were working on getting my IDs changed, and dad had contacted the nearest office of the MCO to inform them that we would show up at the office in Lexington some time next week to get sorted.

Lunch today was buffalo burgers, she made patties, each about eight or nine ounces and grilled them on the BBQ at the back of the house. We had baked potatoes and corn on the cob with the burgers, I demolished three burgers, five cobs of corn and two baked potatoes.

Hey, what can I say? A girl using as much energy as I seem to be doing lately has to eat enough to let that energy rebuild itself, ya know?

Either Liza or Lila suggested that we go into Oakland and do some shopping, they whined at me until I agreed to go with them.

**********

Well, I had a nice shower after the meal and dressed in a denim skirt, a Rolling Stones t-shirt and a pair of comfortable running shoes with bobby socks. The skirt was snug, but not overly tight, I'd be able to take it off and put it on easily enough if I ended up trying on any clothing.

I decided to play it safe and wore the deerskin cap Dad made for me a few years ago, it's big but it covers my hair which is good. It may look a bit odd in California when the temp often hits the high 60s/low 70s F, but I don't think it would be a good idea to have my hair be visible.

I wasn't expecting it, but Dad handed me $350 so I could buy things if I found items that I wanted. I gave him a big hug and he blushed.

Liza, Lila, Sherry and I walked out to Old Jack's ten year old Suburban, where we were met by another woman, the mutant Slingshot; she has this nasty attack using her TK where she gathers about five thousand bits of metal about the size of ball bearings and slings them at a target. I think her actual name is Eliza May or something like that, she's from somewhere down in Mississippi or Louisiana.

She was one of the extra supers that were brought in to help test me in the process of discovering my abilities. She's a one-shot pony, her TK 3e is pretty good, but beyond that, she's a level 1 exemplar, level 2 regen and level two internal energizer, which she uses as a protective shield. If it weren't for that shield and the regen, she'd be in trouble in a serious fight, I think, although I could be wrong. I am sometimes.

Anyway, Slingshot ended up behind the wheel, Sherry in the other front seat, and Liza, Lila and I were in the seat behind them.

**********

We ended up going to the Bay Street mall in Emeryville. Slingshot parked the vehicle; once we were out, she remote locked it and we were heading into the mall itself. We wandered around for a bit, had some soft drinks and relaxed before we hit American Eagle Outfitters.

I liked the logo jogging pants they had and picked up three, one burgundy, one green and one grey before we checked the skirt section. In the skirt area, I ended up trying on two skirts, a black denim one and a light brown corduroy one, and decided to buy both of them.

We wandered through the t-shirt section, I picked up two red/pink and white tie-dye t-shirts and a couple of other t-shirts.

Oh boy, we've only hit one store and I've already spent about half of the money that dad gave to me earlier. Yikes!

We went to H&M next, I found a pair of pants that I liked and three long sleeve shirts, those items killed another $70 of the money from dad.

I spent about an hour wandering through the racks and shelves at Barnes & Noble, eventually finding new books from a few series that I'd been collecting since I was nine. I'm not sure where the other four went while I was in there, but just after I exited from that store, Liza and Lila appeared, grabbed me by the arms, then started walking through the mall, eventually pulling me into a well-known shoe store company.

We were in Aldo's for about thirty minutes, and I found a pair of nice, sleek low platform shoes that just were begging for me to take them, so I shelled out $65, leaving me with about $10 out of what Dad had given me earlier.

We did wander through Aerosoles as well, but I didn't see anything there that I wanted or needed.

It was nearly 6:30 PM by the time we left Aerosoles, so we headed out to the parking lot. My three bags were joined by about ten more belonging to the other four girls, then we climbed in and headed back to Uncle Jack's home.

I've never shopped as a girl before, so I was a wee bit worried about how Daddy would react over my spending all that money.

**********

We arrived back at Uncle Jack's home about forty minutes later, each of us grabbed our bags and headed into the house.

Dad was standing in the doorway of the living room, looking into the kitchen where Jenny could be seen toiling over the stove.

"Ummm, hi, dad, ummm, I spent almost all of what you gave me," I said in a soft voice as I nervously glanced at him. As I said earlier, I had no idea how he might react to my spending almost all the money, but a quiet chuckle and a hug from him caused my fears to vanish.

I took my new clothes up to the room I was using and put them all away, then headed back down to the kitchen to help Jenny. It was a bit less than an hour later before the meal was completely ready, I set the table as Jenny called everyone down for dinner.

The meal consisted of totally yummy venison steaks, baked sweet potatoes and peas, with a strawberry cheesecake for dessert. Once again, I ate heartily, putting away two steaks and three of the potatoes, along with some peas and two servings of that scrumptious cheesecake.

After the meal had ended, I sat in the living room with Daddy and watched the movie Armageddon on DVD, then wandered off to my bed.

**********

Thursday was more training, this time a bit of everything, and the day passed rather quickly thanks to staying busy.

Now it was Friday morning and Dad I were making sure that we had everything for our flight back to Kentucky this afternoon. I had been putting items in suitcases and removing them for an hour, finally I felt like everything was where it needed to be, so I closed the three suitcases, two of which were given to me by Liza and Lila, then we lugged them all down to the front hallway, dropping them near the door.

The next two hours passed as we ate a quick lunch and goodbyes were said to one and all.

Dad loaded our bags into the Suburban, I climbed into the seat behind him, joined by Liza and Lila, and Slingshot rode shotgun. She would be driving the vehicle back to Uncle Jack's once we were safely on the plane and heading home.

Dad had opted for a mid-afternoon flight, to be safe, we were at the airport just after 1 PM, checking in our bags.

I hadn't realized it when we left, but I had forgotten that deerskin cap back in the house.

**********

Dad had just taken his bags off the conveyor and was reaching for the last one of mine when I was grabbed from behind by someone.

A baritone voice not far from my left ear stated, "You're coming with me, we can't have unknown mutants running rampant in here, can we?" as the person pulled on my arm and started half-dragging, half-hauling me toward a doorway along the far wall of the corridor.

Liza and Lila were not happy, Liza yelled out, "Just who the heck do you think you are that you can do this to my cousin?"

Lila stepped forward, her eyes gleaming dangerously as she cocked a hand forward, ready to shock the unknown male. "Answer her now."

The male, still trying to drag me off, turned partway around and snarled, "I'm with the MCO, this mutant needs to be detained."

Dad apparently had a better viewing angle, as he asked, "Then why, sir, are you not wearing your uniform and where is your badge?"

The male faced forward and started to pull me along again, saying, "In the office, I was headed there when I saw this freak."

I twisted around, catching the expressions on the faces of Dad, Liza and Lila, they wanted to take this guy down hard. I shook my head, saying, "I'll go with him for now, you guys go find the head of MCO here and bring them back to that office ASAP."

None of them liked it, but they couldn't come up with a better option. Liza took off at a dead run, headed for the airport's main offices.

**********

The male pulled me into the office behind that door. The space wasn't very big, maybe twelve feet on each side, with two doors on the left wall and two more on the right wall. One door on the left was slightly open, someone could be heard talking quietly in the room beyond it.

Against the back wall of the entry room I saw two large leather couches with a rather solid looking end table sitting between them.

The guy continued to pull me across the room until we were near the couches, then shoved me at one of them. I whacked my left knee off the front of the couch, then lost my balance for a moment and my head hit the cheap wall behind the couches, leaving a head-sized hole.

I was dizzy for a few seconds, then shook it off, using one arm to push myself up from the wall, then turned to face the man.

"Do you normally commit assault upon US citizens?" I asked. "Mutant or not, I'm still a US citizen."

"You're a damn freak just like any other mutant, we should throw you all out of the country like the trash you are."

I shook my head, then giggled as I saw my dad and Lila standing in the doorway from the corridor, they had obviously heard everything. I wasn't sure if they had seen what happened, but that was soon cleared up when dad said, "You had no need to treat her like that."

"Why not? She's a mutant, I'll do whatever I think is necessary to deal with an unknown mutant. Got that, buster?"

It seemed that Liza had been lucky, as she came running into the room followed by three people all in MCO uniforms. Interestingly, it seemed that the lone woman was in charge; she sighed, then questioned the guy next to me. "You dragged this young woman in here, McCallan?"

The man, who had just been named by his superior, replied, "Yeah, she's an obvious mutant, I thought she might be a risk to others in the airport, so I detained her, then brought her in here so I could hold her for immediate deportation."

Dad snarled, "Do I need to tell you that he physically grabbed her without even speaking to her first, then started hauling her off without saying why? Do I need to add that doing that while not wearing his uniform and without his badge makes it a clear case of assault? Perhaps you might want to know that when he hauled her in here, he threw her at the couches there, causing her to hit her head on the wall?"

Lila stood up straight and tall, fury quite evident on her face as she hissed, "And what the hell is this about deporting her?"

Dad continued, "Furthermore, we've just spent the last week having her go through initial testing at Jack Faraday's farm. We've also started the process of changing her IDs, as she was male before the mutation occurred, and we have contacts in Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky, that I am sure would be quite willing to give you a fairly detailed history of our family, as would Jack and the rest of the family here. Oh, we'll also be meeting with someone in the Lexington office of the MCO next Thursday to get her mutant card finalized."

The woman's jaw dropped when dad mention Old Jack, she asked, "You're referring to Jumping Jack Flash?"

Dad nodded, smiling a bit as he replied, "Yes, indeed, Chief Agent Cargill," after a quick glance at her badge on the front of her uniform.

Cargill grinned at dad, saying, "My grandmother's sister was a teammate of his from '45 though to '78, she died protecting the Bay Area."

Cargill then turned to face McCallan again, scowling at him. "I have no choice but to suspend you, McCallan. You acted inappropriately, especially since you were not in uniform at all, thus you had no right to detain the young lady. Further, you deliberately assaulted her by first physically grabbing her, then by throwing her once you had brought her in here. You're damn lucky that she doesn't appear to be harmed."

Cargill then turned to me, smiling as she asked, "Are you sure that you are fine, child?"

I replied in the affirmative, at which point she stated that we were free to go, but that we might be needed if McCallan faced any charges.

I smiled, saying, "Thank you," to her as dad, Liza, Lila and I headed for the gate where dad and I would catch our plane to go home.

Again, it's been a fair while since I've posted anything new for this story. That darn muse keeps throwing other ideas at me, blame her!

After we were allowed to continue on our way, dad and I headed for our departure gate at a brisk walk.

We still had most of an hour before the plane would be there, so we relaxed in a cafe for a while over two hot coffees and fresh doughnuts.

I got the occasional stare from other people and one guy looked like he was about to cause a scene at one point. Just as I was ready to get up and leave to avoid anything happening, one of the men who had been with Chief Agent Cargill told the guy to can it and settle down. When the guy became even angrier, the MCO officer bluntly told him that he couldn't handle a fight with me, and if that were true...

I turned to face the jerk and smiled sweetly at him, having heard the entire discussion; he dropped bonelessly into his chair, white as a sheet. Perhaps he realized just how close he had been to having his butt handed to him by what he would call a "little slip of a girl"?

It's kind of funny that I'm far more capable of dealing with stuff like that now than I was as a 5'11" athletic male just a few weeks ago.

I settled back into my own chair and dad and I finished off our little snacks before picking up our bags and walking to the departure gate.

We were waiting at the appropriate gate when a warning came over the PA system that our flight would be delayed for a while. Dad asked an airport staff person what was going on and was told that there had been an air rage incident a short while ago on the flight.

Apparently, some guy up there had bitched about not getting served as fast as he thought he should be, and when one of the stewardesses made a polite comment to him that they were working as fast as they could, he slapped her tray out of her hands, then slapped her.

That brought a rather fast response from a pilot of the same airline who was heading in to pick up his flight and several passengers. The idiot all too quickly found himself pinned to the floor, then in handcuffs as an off duty LA police officer, returning home, was also on the flight.

Dad and I watched the plane land and taxi close to the terminal, then several airport security and police officers ran out to the plane. They returned about ten minutes later with the guy being pulled along by one of them, two others having grabbed the guy's items from the plane.

The rest of the passengers from the flight then left the plane, heading into the terminal building to go their separate ways.

We had to wait another twenty minutes before we were allowed to board the plane, then wait again before it left the ground.

I must have been tired or something, because it was only a few minutes after the flight started that I fell asleep curled up in my seat.

I slept through the whole flight, dad had to thump my shoulder twice before I woke up enough to understand we would soon be landing.

Oh, drat, we're only in Atlanta right now. Damn airlines that won't do a direct flight but instead send you completely out of your way!

I used the time on the ground to use the facilities, then curled up in my seat again just as the plane leapt into the air once more.

I didn't completely fall asleep this time, but I was dozing for a good part of the flight, waking briefly every now and then.

Eventually, we touched down at Lexington's Blue Grass Airport, and within twenty minutes, we had our bags and were ready to leave. We had just stepped out of the terminal, and were about to walk over to dad's truck, when we heard someone behind us call out, "Mike!"

We turned around, at which point my dad laughed. The woman calling us was casually known in local super groups as "Light 'Em Up Lisa". Her actual first name was Lisa and her particular ability was to create a variety of light effects that could dazzle and confuse people.

Dad and I waited for her to catch up to us, and she joined us as we walked to the three year old light blue GMC Sierra 3500HD Dad had bought two years ago for use on the farm. The truck has an extended cab with a back seat and a decent length open bed behind the cab.

We don't have a big farm, but there is still plenty of work that has to be done every day, like feeding two dozen dairy cattle, four steers and a dozen goats, plus cleaning out the stalls, feeding the half dozen chickens in their pen and collecting whatever eggs they've dropped. The cows have to be milked, too, then let out into the main pasture to graze during the day. We also have one hundred acres in wheat and rye.

We would have turned northwest to go home, but Lisa politely told dad that we were expected at the Lexington super group's headquarters.

Dad shook his head, laughed, shrugged his shoulders and we skirted the northern edge of the city for a while. We eventually reached an area that looked to be slightly more run down than it should be, but that was simply a facade, the whole place was beyond specifications.

There were four warehouses fairly close together, two on the north side of the road, two on the south. Lisa directed dad into the lot for the second one on the north side. We parked at the side of the big building, then entered through the employee entrance, heading to the offices.

Although the building looked like your usual warehouse on the outside, on the inside, it was anything but usual. There have been attacks against supers in the area often enough that any super group here reinforces their place to be as secure as possible if an attack happens.

Dad has known about the group Lisa is in for several years, as Mom used to be one of the leading members of the group. Granted, I didn't find out about it all until just before we went out to the west coast a week ago, so it was interesting to see the place for myself.

I didn't get much of a chance to look around at that point, as Lisa's "boss" entered the office and greeted us politely but somewhat stiffly. We soon learned that he felt that he was at fault for my mother's death, he had been busy fighting off three super villains when it happened.

Dad and I talked with Bart "SteamRoll" Larsen for about an hour, with Lisa just sitting off to the side listening to the three of us talking.

SteamRoll, you ask? You ever seen one of those roller vehicles they use to do the asphalt on a road? Well, he's like that when he fights. He curls up into a tight ball and literally rolls through his opponents, lashing out with a rock hard fist or elbow as he passes through them.

He also has the ability to "vent" steam, which he self-generates and expels through his mouth fairly often as he rolls along.

It took a good chunk of that hour before we managed to have him see that he was no more at fault than my mother was at the time.

The last ten minutes of the chat was a run down of the various tests they wanted to do to determine any further abilities I might have. Dad passed over the info Jack and his people had put together and Bart spent a few minutes examining that information quite intently.

"Exemplar 4, Regen 4, Warper 3, primarily sight range teleports, brick, plus various kinetic abilities. Holy shit, girl!" Bart whistled.

Lisa perked up at that point, "What kinetic abilities, Bart? Anything interesting?"

Bart chuckled as he turned to face Lisa, "If you call TK level 2d, Electrokinetic level 3c and Aerokinetic 3b interesting, heck, yeah!"

Lisa grinned for a moment, looking at me, "What specific types for Electro and Aero, Melissa?"

I shrugged, replying, "Lightning strikes that can be lethal if a direct hit, compressed wind effects that can push people or things around."

Lisa nodded, "The lightning will make you a dangerous opponent. Being able to use wind effectively will help, but you obviously need training."

I winced briefly, Old Jack had mentioned that I needed to work on my kinetic abilities to make them more effective in fights.

I smiled for a moment, "I can also pick up about 90 kgs of loose small items and throw them with my TK fairly hard and fast."

Bart and Lisa both nodded, then Bart stood up, saying, "We'll be testing you starting tomorrow, you'll be staying here for now."

Dad frowned for a moment when Bart said that, then asked for a bit of privacy. I knew he was calling home to tell Rebecca we were fine.

That was the start of a whole lot of intensive training of my abilities, training which lasted through most of that summer.

I did end up meeting someone at the MCO office the Thursday afternoon after we returned home and received my Mutant ID card.

Bart, Lisa, and a few other members of their group, including a guy called Tank, put me through my paces and were present when I went into the MCO office that day. I'd already improved the kinetic abilities a bit, mostly in the sense of controlling them. My TK had been upgraded in that one week of training to Tk3e, my Ek to 4e and my Ak to 4c. I still needed to work on that one a fair bit, winds aren't easy to control.

By the time mid-August arrived, Bart's group was having a hard time keeping me from laying them all flat in a fight. My kinetic abilities had been coming on in leaps and bounds over the summer, thanks to all of the work put in on them, and Bart's team was in rather rough shape.

Leaps and bounds? Well, yeah, my Tk now was 4f, my Electro 5e and my Aero 5d. That's a lot of change in three months of training.

Bart had called in the other superhero group in the area, run by a woman known as "Machine Gun Kate". She was a rather strong tank for the most part, but had the ability to morph her forearms into the aforementioned machine guns with an endless supply of bullets.

I have to admit getting through Kate's guns wasn't easy, but before the summer ended, I was hitting her most of the time with my lightning. She didn't like that very much, as the lightning strikes, if they did hit, would disrupt her guns, meaning she couldn't use them after that.

Even with Kate's group helping Bart's out, the nine supers were still a rather ragged bunch on that last day of training.

Dad and Mrs. Carson, the headmistress at Whateley, had been talking all summer, and had agreed I needed to go there ASAP.

I spent a few days at home, relaxing if you can call it that by doing the usual farm tasks as needed.

Then, on a late summer Thursday afternoon, I boarded a train in Lexington that would take me most of the way to the school. I would have to change trains once, taking a second one to the small station at Dunwich, New Hampshire, where I would be met by a staff member.

The ride on the first train was a long one, nearly seventeen hours, so I took whatever opportunities I could to grab some sleep. The switch to the other train involved a wait of a bit less than an hour, as the train was running late, so I grabbed a Coke to drink and a muffin to munch.

The second train ride, once it arrived was shorter, about four hours or so, then we were pulling into Dunwich, New Hampshire.

A few other kids got up from seats in the carriage, grabbing bags from the overhead racks, then moved toward the doors.

One of the boys apparently thought he could get in on me, he sidled over and tried to chat me up, which I found trite but amusing.

"Hey, you're a pretty girl! My name is Barry, you going to Whateley, too?"

I laughed, a low, sweet chuckle that he thought was meant to be encouragement. "I'm Melissa Winston. Yep, I'm Whateley bound."

He smiled, moving a little closer, then tried to put his arm around my shoulders. That was going a little too far, I thought, so I smiled again, this one not so sweet, and spun around, twisting his arm up behind his shoulder. "Listen up, bucko, I like girls, not boys. Leave me alone."

Maybe it was my day for bad luck or something, because that was when a voice called out, "Students for Whateley Academy?"

I gave Barry one last look that made my intent quite clear, then released his arm, turned and faced the woman who had just spoken. She was standing there, covering her mouth to hide what I thought might be a smile as she waved us all toward a bus outside the station.

The ride to Whateley from the station didn't take very long. When we arrived, I was told to go to Poe House and see Mrs. Horton.