My Super Secret Life…Potentials-11 The Start.

*Sam Chase…………

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

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

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

“Sure you kids all look wiped out.”

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

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

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

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

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

“No offense Faith no offence.”

“Yeah-okay.”

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

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

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

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

“Everything okay Vana?”

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

“Well if I can help just ask okay?”

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

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

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

“Oh well sonics are pretty rare actually.”

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

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

“So will you?”

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

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

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

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

“No worries girlfriend we’re good.”

“We are?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean girlfriends.”

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

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

“Me too.”

“Really, but…”

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

“Uhm…yeah.”

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

“Huh?”

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

“What’s that?”

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

“But what about your thingy.”

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

“Shifted?”

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

“Graft?”

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

“So you’ll have a real hoohaw?”

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

She seriously blushes at me saying that word.

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

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

“Mess with your head?”

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

“Jim?”

“Cougar.”

“Oh….”

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

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

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

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

“What?”

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

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

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

“Ah know and the worse thing.”

“Worse thing?”

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

“Really?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But then again given where she had gotten out of?

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

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

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

There’s a couple of nods.

*Vana…………

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

Unless he’s got a shine for Samantha.

Really? She’s a boy? Or was a boy?

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

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

But it was all like fake and not real and stuff so…and this is a lot better than a cell waiting to get killed.

I head straight for my shower and get out of my things and stuff and just stand there under the water.

Okay kind of nice with no one to yell at you to get out of the shower.

Endless hot water too, it’s something I guess that Sam’s dad invented with a laser do-dad that heats the cold water in the shower head according to the temperature that was set. Yes a serious luxury especially compared to home.

I soap up and enjoy myself not in like a kinky way but just a long, long shower.

But during that the evil wizard fight keeps playing through my head.

Asguardian?

What did he mean by that?

I get out and I dry off another weird thing too the towels here are soft like terry cloth but suck water off of me like a car shammy. So it’s sort of just patting myself dry. There’s even a laundry chute for the towels and bedding.

From what I was told settling in laundry is free, house keeping does towels and bedding but we have to do out own clothes.

I’m okay with that. It’s not like I wasn’t spared the work back home and stuff.

I get into some fresh underwear nothin fancy I’m a cotton girl and that’s okay by me I’ve never really known anything else. I go over to my desk and press the button to raise the flat screen and the keyboard and touch pad and I start looking up Asguardian.

There’s a lot of stuff, a lot of entries. I get comfortable and start lookin and doin some research. I might have the Fed accent and all but I wasn’t too bad a student.

I’m learnin as I go about all this Asguardian stuff…Aesir and Vanir…

Vanir that’s me sort of right?

There’s Freyr and Freya and all sorts of other gods and boars and Valkyries it all seems so strange and yet the way I am? Did they design me after all of this?

I’ve got my head full of ideas and stories and stuff when I head ofta bed.

…………………… Ma dreams are messed up. I go through a mixture of vids I’ve seen on the stuff I looked up to strange words and things being said, stuff I never hear before and then there’s the fight and that demon thing called Grendle and the fight with the majik man and seeing Cody getting impaled.

Then the demon’s got me all of a sudden and I wake up with a cry in my Alpha side and I rip the sheets I’m entangled in to shreds.

I’m panting and I almost fall out of bed on my way to the bathroom and end up washing my face with cold water then looking at myself in the mirror.

Like this…I’m as male as it gets without actually becoming or getting guy parts. Big shoulders, taller, muscles on muscles or it seems that way to me. It doesn’t take a whole lot of flexing to show rippling muscles small breasts, just into being a B-cup but I’ll likely need a special bra just because of my size and all.

I head to my closet and get changed it’s nearly dawn and I could shift down but I just…it sort of feels easier to deal with things like this right now.

Panties then just sweat pants and a hooded sweat shirt…no, no bra or even a t-shirt I pull on my sneakers and grab my debit card thing and slip it into my panties. Their tight enough on me this way it’s not really going anywhere and I head out with my keys and I hook them to the necklace ribbon thing with my student ID’s…yeah they actually made me three cards for all three states of me.

I go for a run and it feels good. As much as I hate to admit it before things went south on me and all that on the base back home they kinds had us doing stuff like army types do and while I’m in Alpha state I’m not all bouncy and stuff like normal and jeeze Beta state forget it unless I was seriously strapped down.

But I like this just like this all this power and muscle and sleekness and it feels different than going fast in a car this, this is how horses must feel. I’m fast too, muscle doesn’t just slow you down like some people think but it can make you faster because when you’re like me the way they teach you to do this is to push with your strength as you run.

Here in Sanctuary I must be going at least as the same speed as say the buses here. Or as fast as someone pedalling a really good clip on a bike.

I kinda feel free and I even take a few me-cuts by jumping off flights of outside steps and I even jump a few things hurdle style like the odd garbage can and newspaper machine or bench as I clear it and the hedge and make it into Common’s park.

They call it Common’s I guess because it’s man made but designed to actually bridge the bulk of downtown with the school and Sanctuary east and west. It’s pretty big too with lots of different areas with names and stuff and there’s public recreation stuff too. Actually given the money Sam’s father has it might be a better park than in Ark City itself.

Speaking of which I see Sam jogging and I’m catching up with her in no time flat then pull up beside her and slow down.

“Mornin.”

She looks over to me surprised I think because I just came up on her from out of the blue. She smiles though like it’s not a bad thing to see me. “Morning Val, out for some exercise?”

“Naw, just couldn’t sleep is all I still got lots going on up in the screw-box.” I give her a look though raising an eyebrow. “Val?”

“Valkryie, you kinda fit that.”

“Oh okay, actually that’s better than Vanir. No I just couldn’t sleep after all of that yesterday and woke up shifted and keyed up.”

“Gotcha, I can get that.”

“Really? The trans thing?”

“No…well maybe…but just life stuff for me being who I am and stuff.”

Okay…it takes me a minute to process that and I do get it after a minute. She’s not just some rich kid; she’s the second generation child of two of the Ark Angels. That’s gotta come with a lot of baggage.

“’kay gotcha.”

“You okay though?’

“Yeah, I think so it’s I think I jus gotta find my footing first.”

“Makes sense, you got your class stuff yet?”

“Nope, kinda waiting on the guidance office and everything but that’s kind of swamped with stuff after the whole bridge thing.”

“Yeah, and we’re likely the only school with an actual whole wing of the school hospital that’s all about therapy and stuff.”

“We do, I mean like a school hospital?”

“Meta’s and anthros aren’t just needing special care but there’s a lot of people that can do things that are medically oriented.”

I’m looking at her a little confused. “Like people with like healing touch…?” My fingers feel, I feel odd just sort of thinking about that.

“Yeah there’s those and stuff but like other people too. Say you have a meta that can create light and focus it into laser like levels.”

“Okay…”

“Now think of all those things we use lasers for medically.”

“Okay but we have those in hospitals.”

“But not in clinics, or small places out in the boonies, Through Halo we can take them out there and stuff and there’s all sort of other things too.”

“Like?”

“People with healing factor, we can’t really use their blood because of it healing and feeding and taking over but we can with those people volunteering develop cures for things by exposing them and using them to create anti-bodies and screening them out.”

“Wow…” I’m actually impressed and like I said I’m not stupid despite the accent but this is kinda bigger stuff than most and I’m kinda getting it.

I look Sam over. “So what are you going for?”

“I’m trying to get to where I can head a farm team.”

“You wanna play baseball?”

“No, I want to set up an Ark Angel based super team someplace else, maybe in some other part of Ark City even.”

“Oh not something normal?”

“This is my normal Val. I’ve had bad guys trying to kill me since I was born, I grew up in this fight and have lost friends over it and family I’m in ad deep as it gets. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to do things my own way.”

“Your own way?’

“No offense to my Aunt Victory but I want my own command.”

“So you’re classes are going to be all based on that?”

“Actually I’m going to be double majoring in engineering and taking music on the side.”

“Double majoring isn’t that a college thing?”

She nods. “I skipped a few years of school.”

Oh so she’s a genius too.

Actually that does make sense her dad is a mega genius type and her mother is supposed to be too. I think that I read some place that a lot of the AA’s are really smart and talented like crazy and that’s their biggest strength.

I look at her and blush a little. “Ah don’t know how my federation schooling is going to hold up at all.”

“Well they likely had you set out for testing when you got here so…” she reaches and takes my ID’s and her eyes get this funny look and a swear for a second I see numbers and stuff reflected there.

“Well it say’s here that you’re passable in Alliance Levels of Math and English for the ninth grade levels though barely. You did great on some of the other stuff like gym and domestic arts.”

“Yeah, we we’re all jus taught the basics of being literate and all I mean not like boys do. I could read as good as any girl I suppose and that’s just enough fer romance books and homemaker magazines and recipes an such. But I always was a fair cook and I had good marks in presentation and all but sewing was my weakest and I can knit fer shit.”

“I can’t sew at all but I can cook some but what is presentation?”

“Oh that’s house keeping and how to look pretty.”

“What!”

I grin. I knew that’d get her. “Women aren’t really looked favourable on unless they know how to look like a lady and then you are expected t’know how to keep a house.”

“That’s so fucked up.”

“Yeah, kinda…I do agree that housekeeping should be taught though in schools like cooking and stuff like the basics.”

She actually has this look on her face and she smiles. “Just a sec.” She takes out her smartphone but her hands, thumbs don’t move and I know she’s doing a bunch of stuff but it’s so fast that I’m jus seeing screen flickers and she’s only like doing it for a minute or three before she’s done.

“Congratulations Val.”

“On what?’

“I put the idea out there and Dad thinks it’s a good one so there’s now a mandatory class in what he’s calling Real Life 101.”

“What’s that?”

“Like you kind of said it’s basic cooking and cleaning and changing tires, simple fixes and how to do banking and job apps and resumes how to find an apartment and check a lease and stuff like that.”

I’m blushing. “Wow…I’ve never…I’m not used to contributing like that…he wasn’t mad?”

“Nope and heck I’m going to sigh up for it too.” Sam smiled.

“Yeah you’re not going to be in regular classes but I’m kinda glad though Sam I don’t know a lot of these things either.”

“Yeah it’s a good idea, so you know what you’ll be interested in taking Val?”

“Well I’m not exactly sure besides I’m in The Guardian Project but I haven’t gotten my training schedule for that either.?”

“Oh well you’re with me then too. It’s still getting formalized and stuff. I didn’t know that you were signed up for it.”

I stop and form my sword. “It’s not like I’m designed for being a fry cook Sam.”

She stops and takes a few breaths. “You can be whoever you want to be. You could be Thor and still work at a fast food place if you wanted to.”

I laugh. “Aye, verily maiden wouldst thou doth want fries with that?”

We both start laughing until my darned body demands food with a loud growl- gurgle.

Sam looks at me. “Hungry?”

“Aye starved.”

“How about we head over to the food hall and check out what the offerings are there.”

“Actually that sounds like a good idea and I need to get things too since I own next to nothing so I need to do some shopping.”

Okay it’s really cliché and stuff but Sam completely gets this look on her face and she perks right up and looks at me. “Ooooh shopping I love shopping!”

“Good because I have no idea what fashion for here is and I need like things that fits all of me.”

“Oh good point. C’mon we can take a look at classes while we eat and then we can go shopping on the mainland.”

“Okay, okay…”

Sam’s already ahead of me and I start moving to catch up. It’s so odd to have a friend like her…Then I’ve just smiling because it clicks that Sam is actually a friend.

*Cody…………

I went home from the whole debriefing and talk and while the food there was good it really wasn’t enough and after getting hurt and everything else I really just wanted to get home and actually do the wounded animal thing and curl up somewhere.

My instincts were taking me out of there and I just had to go before I got any more short tempered with people and said some stuff that I shouldn’t have because I was hungry and tired and I get more feral when I’m like that.

So I jumped again.

It’s not really a just either it’s like a tunnel of darkness like being in a negative and everything slows down to nothing but it’s also like a tunnel too because I can see this sort of direct line between me and where I want to go even through objects.

And it sort of ramp thing too so me being that high was kind of not an issue as I sort of slid down it, inside of it and made my way home…but I’m not like running inside of it either it’s like I’m sort of being floated then sucked out to the point of where I want to go like a vacuum tube in a warehouse.

Maybe it’s some kind of like controlled wormhole like thingy?

So I’m not smart like that but I do read a lot of science fiction and watch it on TV a lot. I’m just guess but I imaging that I’ll find out soon enough.

I pop through in the backyard and it takes a second to get my head around the fact I just did like twenty miles in seconds and I head in the house and I take off my sandals and it feels better to get out of them. I still wear then even if dad goes around barefoot all the time outside.

He’s way more comfortable being himself than I am.

I’ve got the house to myself right now and checking the calendars data log Mom’s out with my sisters and doing dance practice then swimming before getting home. Dad’s still at work and will be until seven.

Food…it almost sort of takes a bite out of me I’m that starved…maybe jumping home didn’t help that. I head into the kitchen and open the fridge and the cupboards and I grab a two five hundred mils of chocolate milk and I kill one right off and I grab an apple and then some other stuff…bread…Jiff peanut butter…I make three one slice fold over sandwiches and eat them between bite’s of apple.

And I’m careful; I shook out the bread slices from the bag. I don’t care if my family is used to it and that dad just does stuff I don’t want my fur in other peoples food.

But once I have something working away inside my stomach I get one of my sweat shirts and pull it on and some rubber gloves and I make some supper.

Hamburger we have lots in the house with me and dad but I take some liver and puree it into goop and pour it into the burger and then add some garlic and some nutmeg and then an entire bottle of Heinz 57 sauce and a little bit of molasses and some dark soy and a bunch of oatmeal and some crushed up crackers and I make a meatloaf.

Yeah the Heinz thing is mine, it’s this sort of ketchupy thing imported from earth and I kind of like it and it’s actually pretty good in a meatloaf or in burgers better than on it actually.

I switch out my gloves and scrub some potatoes and put them on a sheet tray and set everything for about when they’re going to be getting home and I head to the shower.

I get a good long hot shower and I use the trimmer attachment too and that’s this water safe vibrating brush that has this combing edge on it that’s a trimmer too and I use both and get my fur to this one millimetre level and while that’s really thin enough to see skin under it my healing factor will fur me back out to two to three millimetres by the time I’m awake and I’ll be back to my full centimetre of fuzz by midnight.

That’s also why I have long hair, I had it shoulder length when my powers kicked in and it keeps growing back that long.

My and Dad’s shower is separate from the others just for out stuff and it have a really nice set of turbo fan jets for drying off that work pretty good and I head off to my room and I fall on the bed and just crash.

I have dreams and they’re not that nice, thankfully I did get some serious out of it time before my brain rebooted into nightmare time. Well not nightmares just memories of today’s stuff and then my own stuff going on from before I was brought in and stuff and it all kind of blends together and culminates with me getting impaled on the tree.

I wake up and the house is busy or sort of and I hear mom and my sisters and I think Dad’s home because mom’s said honey a few times and I smell supper. Meatloaf and baked potatoes. Yeah…oh yeah that’s just about perfect right about now.

I slip out of bed and pad down the hall only to get sort of tackled and hugged by my little sisters and they start asking me questions about today. Mom jumps in too. “So who’s the girl? I saw you come to her rescue and…did you teleport?”

“Uhm…their name is Drew and they’re a friend mom nothing more…and yeah they were going to get shot up and stuff and it just sort of happened.”

I look at Dad who’s sitting on the floor his back to the couch with a can of beer in his hand and watching stuff on TV. “You never said that you can do that?”

He looks at me. “I can’t that’s a trick that’s all yours.”

“Oh.” I sit down. I’d sort of give mom a hand but she actually likes her space when she’s in the kitchen.

Dad…he’s bigger than me and he is all black furred and we both have claws and cat like tails but we also have canine traits too. He’s also dangerous he actually used to be a “super-villain.” He sort of started out like me but he wasn’t really brought in young he had to live and survive on his own and being a feral mutant and not an anthro it took only a couple of serious fights with the cops before he got the whole label put on him.

But he’s not exactly innocent either…feral instincts, claws, healing factor, boosted strength and reflexes and endurance…when he went off he really went off.

It’s so weird having him home and with a job actually as a teacher here and one of the instructors and stuff too. Yeah he’s got sentencing stuff and all that but still.

And it’s just kind of nice to just sit with him and just chill out and be our meta-caline selves together.

I got a second chance and so did my whole family and I do plan on making the most of it.

There’s a break on the TV from the game dad was watching and the news is playing bits of the whole deal at the bridge and the fight with the power armor guys and Drew’s getting some coverage. She…they…look good even though they’re not in uniform and stuff…she’s still got some anonymity as despite someone having caught what they did saving them on camera there’s apparently been no progress tracking who they are down.

And of course The Ark Angels aren’t saying anything about what had happened and then there’s the thing with me grabbing her and teleporting it and out.

My mom and my sisters cheer when I did that and dad looks at me.

I just shrug. “It doesn’t feel that fast to me.”

“You should talk to Doc Winters about it.”

“Yeah, I’ll wait until assessment.”

He shrugs and we just kind of watch TV and eat supper all there on and by the couch and I just kind of lounge in that feeling of being home.

*Drew…………

I thanked Avery and Sam for dropping me off at my house and I head inside and I’m alone with both parents out and working and doing stuff and I just head to my room and turn on a music file on my stereo on low but just something to kill the silence and I go to bed.

I falter a bit getting undressed but I do and I get into a pair of pyjamas so I don’t have to see myself and I crash.

If I didn’t hurt so much I’d be up from the bad dreams, the freaky dreams…my body hurts and my arms and my shoulders are screaming at me and the muscle strain I put on myself and it’s just mixing up with everything else and I hurt it’s like this mixture of light all over throbbing and specific even more painful stuff and cramping too.

I keep remembering trying to catch those people and then the power suits flying at us and having nowhere to go and then Cody wrapping me up and…he jumped us out of there and saved my life, our lives really and I still remember his arms…him against me and I shiver because…I’m not gay…right? I mean he had to and it’s like hormones messing me up and stuff or something but I shouldn’t be having these thoughts right?

Then there’s seeing him getting impaled and all the blood and the spray and I’ve never seen that much blood before and there was that guy and there was a monster there a real honest to god monster there and…

The cramps hurt pretty bad.

I think I screamed freaked out from my nightmares when dad touched me. I have a killer head ache too.

“You okay?”

(Sniffle.) “No…”

“You’re on the news.”

“Bad?”

“There’s some pretty accurate close ups.”

“Shit.”

“No one’s been able to I.D. you though.”

“Well that’s good yay for changes.” No…not yay and I’m being sarcastic.

“You think you can eat?”

“I ate before.”

“When?”

“Back at the whole debriefing thing.”

“That was a few hours ago.”

“Really? I must have been really out of it.”

“You would be you’re changing.”

“Again…!?” My voice starts cracking on me.

Dammit, dammit….just dammit!

I sit up and I’m still hurting and aching. “Yeah…what are we having?”

“Your mother’s ordering take out.”

“Soup would be nice.”

“I’ll see if they have soup.”

I hug him and it feels good and then I’m getting embarrassed again because well I’m…I’m hugging him like I’m a little kid, well not just like a little kid but a little girl.

Dammit…

He leaves and I sit there for a bit and then grab my blanket and wrap myself up in it more like to sort of shelter me from life than being cold and I sit in front of my computer and start looking things up.

Me…today…

I watch the footage and look at the online comments.

“Oh…great they ones that aren’t freaking out and calling me a mutie freak are saying I’m super hot.”

I get up and creep to my mirror.

“Shit.” Yeah I’m changing more because apparently being a hero is me being a heroine because I looked the way that I did on camera and that’s a flying girl saving people and that makes me hot.

And the way that my powers are it’s making me change even more.

I look down my bottoms…I have to sort of push my boobs…aching boobs down with my forearm to look but it’s still there.

“Thank god for that.”

It still sucks though it really, really sucks and I chew on my bottom lip and head back to watch and read my impending doom.

And cry.

I hate crying but ‘I’m a girl’ and girls cry…shit, shit, shit.

It’s all sorts of horrible knowing this and watching it and reading it and stuff but it’s like watching a car crash and I just can’t keep myself from doing it and I’m doing it right up until my sister shows up and she looks in on me.

“Eeew fuck Drew you look like shit.”

“Gee thanks.” My voice cracks again.

Nancy sniggers at me.

“It’s not funny.”

“No, it’s not you’re a freak and you drug all of us into it with you.”

“It’s not my fault.”

“No, it’s not but you just couldn’t take off like all the other freaks out there could you…no you have to show off all the time and show this off and become some kind of super hero freak and wreck my life.”

“You’re an effing geneist Nancy honestly I’m not giving two shits about wrecking you’re life. The way you were headed you might have been up there on the bridge when the shooting happened and as far as freak goes you really don’t know…this could happen to you too we share the same DNA.”

“Fuck you Drew.”

“Get the fuck out!” I lose it and scream at her and it’s all goddamned girl voice and she screams in rage at the stuff I said about the same time as I did and we sound like two sisters throwing a bitch fit at each other and she slams my door.

I think I hear dad but I’m too busy hurling myself onto my bed and losing control of my feeling and bawling harder than I’ve ever cried in my life.

Thankfully I’m left alone and I cry whatever the heck is wrong with me out and just lay there staring at the wall for awhile before getting up once I hear Nancy blasting her music in her room and I figure she had it out with our parents or dad at least and I head downstairs.

I don’t see dad but I see mom. And she’s looking at me and there’s this sort of semi-soft look there. She’s not an emotional person, she just isn’t but when she is nice or sort of nice it’s because she is trying.

She’s got some pills in her hand. “Here, these will help.”

“What are they?”

“Some are menstrual relief tabs and this one’s a muscle relaxer for the other cramps and the other’s a pain killer.”

I take them; she’d never give me something that would hurt me she’s not that kind of person. She watches me and heads to the kitchen and I follow and she gestures for me to take a seat at the table while she heats up the leftovers.

I don’t know what to call the kind of food I’m eating but grocery store take out? Roasted chicken and roasted potatoes with butter and herbs usually I’m not into this kind of stuff but the rosemary smells good and they have that almost browned fried look and the first one was crispy and butter and soft inside so I get some more of them. There’s veggies too and they’re mixed together but its beans cut into halves and long baby carrots and peas in the shells but still edible but they have these little peas in there and it’s like a nice garden mix and they’re really good.

And she reheats my soup in the take out bowl and it’s just for me and its chicken noodle with these really fat egg noodles. I’m actually hungrier than I thought and I eat supper and I actually have an appetite.

She does the dishes and she doesn’t really talk much but she’s there and she’s looking at me and the conversation actually ranges just around the food and the place she got it from. Sterling Market…apparently it’s a semi-high end kind of grocery chain place where the do catering but take out catering too.

Then it’s about my classes and what I’ll be taking and the fact that I can actually learn not just the powers stuff but if I take all the pre-req classes I can go onto to take the college level classes without having to enrol in college so if I study hard I could get a big head start on things.

Actually that does sort of semi-appeal to me. Though I’m actually thinking about actually taking art classes and stuff and mom’s very practical being just the way she is…heck dad’s an engineer. I’m not sure if I want to do that kind of stuff.

Though honestly I can see Nancy doing something like what I’m thinking about but doing that typical coaster arts degree.

She’s never really been a good student or responsible.

Actually even if I minored in art it’d still be okay. I really don’t know what I want to be yet and right now I’m having a hard time just being me.

“Here try this too.” She says setting down this big slice of a very fancy looking chocolate cake in front of me and a coffee. “Cream? Sugar?”

“Uhm…just milk like you do.”

She blinked for a minute then gave me one of her mom sort-of-there smiles and she sat and ate cake with me and we had coffee.

It’s cliché as hell but….Omigawd chocolate! I swear it did something to my brain that helped the funk I was in be not so bad. Okay I know mom actually making an effort helped a lot and the medicine too and I was likely bottoming out blood sugar like or something was happening too but the cake, the chocolate actually tipped the scales inside me from suck to okay.

I get up and I look at her and I hug her. It’s not long and I am just as uncomfortable as she if doing it and stuff so we sort of break it pretty quick. I look at her. “Uhm…mom…thanks for this…it helped.”

She looks at me and she’s sort of serious again and she extends her arm to me and we shake hands for the first time in my life. “I watched it Drew, I watched you save someone’s life and face down something that’s just plain wrong. I hated them trying to kill you but I’m…I’m proud of you.”

…..Oh.

Oh I’m about to waterworks again and I’m saved by her letting go and going to her office. “Take a long soak Drew with some Epsom salts it’ll help with the soreness.”

(Sniffle-voice crack.) “Okay…”

I head up to my room and here in the new house we all have our own bathroom and I get one ready with the bottle of the salts that she must have left here and I switch off my computer and change my stereo file to something nice…like something kind of…I actually log into the net and do the radio channels for some light popular rock and dim the lights and go for a long soak.

Okay that did help.

I get my hair blow dried and head off to bed…as much as I feel not sucky I’m still really feeling all of it and it’s more like bone tired and drug out than like it was before.

I fell asleep dreaming of some coffee shop with a band playing so light rock and chocolate cake.

*Quinn…………

I slept through most of the whole day recovering from stuff with the whole thing at the bridge. Chris and Sasha came in to check on me and we talked a bit about what happened but they pretty much just let me recover.

I do remember Aerin being in my room a bit and reading while sitting on the floor in like the Lotus position?

But morning wakes me with the smell of coffee and I focus on the ring and take form.

It’s plenty strange doing it I concentrate and pour myself through the ring like a filter but also like when I step into people to help them.

The world goes yellow light and vanishes as I’m on the astral plane and it’s this mist below my feet and white tinged violet clouds above me and I have to concentrate on being me, the way that I used to feel before the accident and as I get more and more solid the astral fades away and I’m me.

Or I’m ecto-me.

I look like I’m utterly white from my skin to my eyes and my hair and well I’m naked so I get dressed and that’s hard too. I’m solid but about as solid as one of those ballistic gel targets and I’m not really strong at all either it’s pretty dependent on the whole gel-ectoplasm thing so about twenty pounds in my limit.

I head down stairs and get hugs and I head for the coffee.

As it turns out I can eat, and eating is actually easy. The ecto stuff mimics me and it does something sort of psi and breaks down what I eat and beams it to me as food energy through the ring.

Don’t ask me how it’s magic, actual real magic so its way out of my league.

But the freedom is so nice to have especially just doing little things.

Sasha hugs me. “So what’s the plans today?’

“I was thinking of going into campus and looking around but also to exercise my projection time too.”

“Good idea, I think there’s a psi section in the library if you wanted to check it out, I’ve never been but you might find it useful.”

“I’ll try that, but I’m going to swing by the food hall first and see what’s there to eat. I kind of feel the need to be around others some without getting pulled into them. Though I might try to see if Mark’s around.”

“Mark?”

“The guy with the powers I jumped into on the bus.”

“Oh okay I met him at the debriefing. Have fun but don’t push it you’re still recovering Quinn.”

I roll my eyes but you could never tell since their all white like the rest of me. “Yes mom…”

She actually smiles at that and it’s a pretty big one. “Good now that my authority’s been established…”

We both laugh and I hug her and give her a peck on the cheek.

I’m not getting into all of that stuff with her yet mostly because I’m chicken to right yet but her and Chris both of them have taken me in and have been taking care of me and seriously…it means a lot.

I head out and just try to enjoy this, feet it and take it all in as much as I can.

It was a longer walk that I thought but also I’m learning and walking…and learning to walk…it’s different because I don’t weigh that much, I’m ecto-gel not water gel so I’m only about fifty pounds so it’s like a whole other thing to learn how to walk and then there’s the way that everything looks when I really look at it.

Everything alive has this sort of shimmer to it, this odd kind of look that is sort of like wearing three-d glasses until you stare at things and after a few minutes I’m seeing their aura.

Metas and stuff have much brighter or stronger ones than normals and they are colored differently too. I have no idea what it means at all but still. Just walking and seeing and looking its very strange. It’s seriously neat but it’s seriously strange.

I find the food hall and I can feel Mark…like a familiar scent or something and I follow it until I see this Girl this great looking girl in a pair of sweats and a hoody with pretty big boobs looking at the food.

“Mark?’

She stares at me with this oh shit look.

I lower my voice. “It’s me Quinn. What’s going on?”

She drops her tray on the counter and she bails running out and away from me.

What the hell?