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

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Chapter 10: Finale
 

Once we had returned the tour bus to the hangar beneath our home and headquarters, we returned to our respective apartments to get out of our costumes and change into something more casual. Lisa had contacted us over our secured comms channel while we were still in the air and asked us to meet them at a restaurant called Ginger’s in the Upper East Side. Lisa had said that it wasn’t a high class place and that we should just dress comfortably since we were going there to relax and celebrate.

After putting on my hairnet and second skin pendant to hide my more distinctive features, I quickly changed into a pair of black low-rise jeans and a soft pink sleeveless halter top before adding a pair of sneakers and a fleece-trimmed black leather jacket. Picking up my leather purse with my casual antigravity belt inside I left my room to join Leslie who was dressed similarly to me, except that she was wearing white jeans and a matching denim jacket. When we left our apartment to join the others we found them sporting fairly casual looks as well and we all headed down to the garage. Ian and I hopped into his truck while Leslie offered to drive Sasha, Amy, Mai, and John in the cherry red Dodge Dart that she had bought for everyday use.

Ginger’s was a large and fairly intimate looking restaurant, tastefully decorated in earth tones with red curtains and tablecloths, that seemed to sell a large variety of both American and European dishes. When we walked in we were quickly met by a woman with long red hair and green eyes who bore a striking resemblance to Lisa. She wore a simple but flattering emerald colored dress and a genuine smile as she greeted us. “Good evening and welcome to Ginger’s, table for seven?”

“Actually we’re here to meet some friends, our friend Lisa said something about a back room?” Leslie replied for us. “It could be under the name Lisa Leeds.”

“Oh! So you’re the guests of honor then? Lisa said that they were just waiting on you, please follow me.” She turned about and we all followed her through the restaurant to a large curtained-off room in the back where Lisa and the other members of Aegis were already waiting and seated at a group of tables pulled close together to make conversation easier. With them of course were my sister and Jennifer, Ian’s parents and his sister Kim, Blake and Brianna, and much to my surprise Dr. Madison Park and Marcus. The latter was wearing a tank of carbon monoxide on his back and a big grin.

“Smog! Maddie! It’s great to see you both! Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?!” I squealed in excitement as I ran toward the pair to hug them.

“Because we wanted it to be a surprise of course,” Madison said with a grin of her own. “We got into town Friday morning, but I haven’t had much time to visit until now. I temporarily transferred Marcus to the Hyper care unit at Columbia University Medical Center, with his parents permission, so that we would be able to see you all perform in the battle of the bands, but one of my colleagues there asked me to assist with a newly Activated mutant. She had some complications so it was a bit of a mess.”

“Well we’re glad to see you both now. Were you in the audience all three days?” Leslie pressed eagerly as she carefully hugged Marcus.

“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. You guys were awesome, I didn’t have a doubt that you were going to win,” Smog assured us.

Lisa coughed politely to catch our attention as she approached with the slightly older looking redhead who had led us into the back room. “This is my older sister Laura, she owns this place, and she’s the one person in my family that knows my secret. Laura, this is Leslie, Candice, Ian, Mai, John, Amy, and Sasha.”

“It’s good to meet you all,” Laura said with a smile. “Most people call me Ginger though, not a terribly creative nickname, but it stuck and it made a good name for the restaurant so feel free to call me that. Lisa talks about you all like you’re her own kids, though she’s used codenames until now. She’s very proud of all of you, especially her protégé Twilight.”

I was surprised that Lisa talked about us that much, she usually was very careful about the separation of costumed and civilian identities whenever possible. Lisa was actually blushing nearly as red as her hair as she explained. “After Maddie helped me put my life back together and adjust to my powers, I didn’t want anything to do with them at first, I came here to work with my sister and tried to live a normal life.”

“There was an accident and she saved my life and that was when I figured out that she was a Hyper,” Ginger said with a smile. “I had already convinced her to pursue her dream of writing those horrid romance novels and helped her find a publisher, but when I found out about her powers I convinced her that she could do a lot of good with them and save a lot of other people’s sisters, or other family members too.”

“She designed my costume, came up with the name Liberty, and when I met Jason and Nick, it was she who convinced me to work with them and start Aegis. I may be the face of Liberty and it may be my powers that are being used, but the spirit of Liberty, that’s always been her. All the good we’ve done since then, all the lives we’ve saved, well she was the start of it all. That’s not too bad for someone with no powers.” She gave her sister an affectionate jab to the shoulder.

It was Ginger’s turn to blush now. “I just convinced you to do what you already knew you should. Now I believe we’re supposed to be celebrating here. I’ve had the chefs whip up a variety of different delectable dishes and the servers should be bringing them in any moment now. For now though, I have some sparkling cider here so why don’t we pour that and make a toast.” With Lisa’s help, Ginger soon had a glass of cider in everyone’s hand. “Okay I think we’re all set here, so who would like to propose a toast?”

For the moment nobody seemed to know what to say, and then Amy raised her glass. “To RevolveR; for kicking ass, taking names, and looking and sounding awesome while doing it.”

“Hear! Hear!” We all called out, clinking our glasses together. We stayed at the back room of Ginger’s until closing. The food was delicious, and the company was even better with almost everyone we cared for there to share in our victory. We talked, reminisced, traded stories, and we just enjoyed one another’s company. It was nice to just relax and not have to worry about training or missions or whether we would do well at the Battle of the Bands, and I think that we all needed that.

The next morning we were back to our regular training schedule. While we were doing our team exercises Tessily worked with Allison and Jennifer on the elven mental exercises meant to control emotions. Then Jenny, or Savage, as she was called with her new training uniform on, would join her new mentor Twilight in her sessions with Liberty. My sister Allie had also asked to be referred to by her new codename while training, to get used to the idea, so when she joined Tessily and I in our daily training sessions we were both sure to call her Changeling. She was improving with the control over her emotions, though it had only been a few days of training so far, and we were hoping that soon we could have her work on purposely triggering emotional states to be able to call on her various power sets at will. She had a long way to go before she’d have that kind of control and her physical skills would need a lot of work before she could keep up with me or Mahar in hand-to-hand or sword combat, but I hadn’t been that great when I had started either and I knew that she would get there eventually, as long as we all had patience and kept working at it.

After lunch, Leslie, Jennifer, Allison, and I all got dressed comfortably for a day on the town and climbed into Leslie’s Dart to run errands. Our first stop was the Hyper Protection Program office to visit Tara, with the approval letters for our charges from Senator Dixon’s office that Blake had produced at the previous night’s party. Leslie and I were both worried about somebody trying to track them down and they had both suffered enough.

With Tara’s help they both came out of the office with new identities and documentation. Allie was now legally my full little sister, Allison Sarah Graham, and placed in my custody as her only living relative. Jenny had become Leslie’s cousin, Jennifer Marie Thomas, and had been similarly placed in her care. Both had backgrounds meant to give them long term connections to us and to be vastly different from their real backgrounds, to make sure that nobody could stumble upon them either accidentally or with a determined search. It helped though that both of their appearances had changed somewhat since Activating, so Tara was confident that nobody would be able to recognize them easily from photos.

With their new identities and paperwork taken care of we went to the bank that Leslie and I both used and opened savings accounts for them to put their HPP start-up funds into. We wanted them to both start building up money for when they were done high school and we had plenty of funds available for what came next. So we spent the rest of the afternoon shopping for new clothes for the pair, trying to get them a good start on a decent wardrobe, and Leslie started buying the things that she and Jennifer would need for their apartment as well. I also had to buy some things for Allie’s room and Leslie and I wanted to make sure that both girls had cell phones in case of emergencies and so that they could talk with Ian’s sister Kim, who they had become fast friends with over the past three days.

Allie and Jenny were both exhausted by the time we got home and ordered in some pizzas for dinner. Neither of them were used to all of the training yet and we had been running around all afternoon once we had finished lunch. Our day wasn’t over yet though, and after we had finished eating we started setting up the new apartment for Leslie and Jennifer and moving their stuff in. I was really glad that these apartments had come furnished, because I didn’t even want to think about the hassle that would have been involved if we had had to buy and move in furniture as well. We tried to get it done as quickly as possible and save our wards some effort by Leslie using her strength and speed and me using my telekinesis.

Once we had finished doing what we could with Leslie’s and Jenny’s new apartment, Allie and I headed home, though my poor sister was so tired by that point that I telekinetically carried her there and into her bedroom. Then, while she started getting into one of her new nightshirts and preparing for bed, I started putting her clothes away, hanging what needed to be hung in the closet and folding the rest carefully and putting it in her dresser. She was very nearly asleep as I finished the former and was about to start on the latter. She was also laying on top of her blankets so I telekinetically lifted her as gently as I could, pulled her blankets and sheets aside, and then placed her carefully back on the bed to cover her up. As I tucked the blankets around her she looked up at me and gave me a sleepy smile. “I still can’t believe that this is all real.”

“Believe it Sis, you’re here with me now and I’m going to do my best to take care of you,” I told her, giving her a kiss on the forehead. “You deserve better than what you had growing up, a real family that cares about you.”

“You didn’t have to do that, y’know take me in and all. Leslie didn’t have to do it for Jenny either. But you took us in, made sure that we could stay with you and now you’ve bought us all those clothes and stuff. Why…” she began to ask uncertainly.

I carefully brushed a strand of hair from her face and smiled at her. “I could say it’s because you’re my sister, and that you’re the only blood relative I have left. That is part of it, maybe even most of it, family is important to me and I don’t want to abandon you when we just found one another. There’s more than just that though. When we met you and Jenny Dr. Park said that the two of you reminded her of us when we had to leave the Ward. We could see it too.”

“Is that because I looked like you when we first met?”

“No Allie,” I said with a shake of my head. “You see, just like you I Activated in the hospital, my body completely changed, and my mother reacted much the same way your foster parents did. My mother was abusive too, though it was mostly emotional abuse. When they took me to the ward I felt like my whole life had turned upside down, I had dangerous powers that I couldn’t hope to control, and I was really miserable for a while. Leslie tried to be the friend I needed, she had been there a while before I showed up and her whole family was killed because of fear of mutants, just like Jenny’s. We were both getting close to eighteen and wouldn’t be able to stay there much longer, but we had no family, nobody to turn to, and nowhere to go.”

“I guess I can see where we would remind you of that then,” she agreed.

“That was when Aegis showed up,” I continued after a brief nod. “They offered us a place to stay, training to control our powers, a purpose, a chance to be ourselves and take control of our lives, and most importantly a family. You and Jenny are years younger than we were, so when Dr. Park pointed out your situation and told me that I was your sister, I couldn’t not give you the same opportunity, the same family that was given to me. I know that Leslie feels the same too. Jenny may not be biologically related to her, but if anyone could understand what she’s going through and how much she needs family and friends right now, it’s Leslie.”

Allie nodded sleepily and then her eyes opened just wide enough to regard me again as she asked, “Does that mean that we’re going to be members of your team too?”

“If that’s what you want to do when you’re eighteen then we’ll be glad to have to, but you’ll have a lot of training ahead of you Sis. For now though, you’re my sister and I just found you so I don’t want you in any danger.” I could see her protest coming and quickly cut it off. “I know Amy is the same age as you and Jenny, but her circumstances were special and there was no way to prevent her from following us and trying to help anyway so we tried to make sure that she would be as safe as possible. She will be a full member of the team when she’s eighteen, but for now she’s just a trainee and she has a lot of rules to follow.”

“What kind of rules? Jenny and I can follow rules too,” she pointed out eagerly. “Ever since Smog showed us that video of you in Coney Island and introduced us to your website Jenny and I have been wanting to do what you do.”

I let a sigh slip out as I looked at my sister, she looked so young and vulnerable at that moment, but I also knew exactly what both she and Jenny had been through and I wanted to be honest with her. “Firstly, Amy needed to convince her guardian to allow it, meaning you and Jenny would have to convince Leslie and I that you would be responsible out there and not a danger to yourself or anyone else before we’d even consider it. Second, Amy has to follow orders at all times. Third, Amy was a probationary member until she proved herself by training hard, learning what she was taught, and following her rules, and she is still going to remain a trainee until she’s eighteen. Fourth, once the school year starts next week she will be homeschooling with Sasha as her teacher, and the two of you will be doing that with her regardless. She also isn’t allowed to do anything on her own, she has to stay in contact, or where we can keep an eye on her, at all times, unless I give the order to leave. Her job is usually evacuation of civilians, she doesn’t engage hostiles unless she is directly attacked or told to. Being a superhero is a lot of work Allie, and not as fun and romantic as the media makes it out to be. It’s also very dangerous and we’re trying to minimize that danger for her.”

“We can do all of that, and we’ll be careful not to put ourselves in danger, Candy. We’ll be the best trainees that we can and maybe we can help Amy out as roadies too.”

“Maybe we can revisit this topic once you and Jenny are in better control of your powers and emotional states, so we know what we’re dealing with,” I suggested diplomatically. “Until then we’ll be training you hard so you get that control.”

“Okay Sis, we’re going to work so hard,” she said drowsily, barely able to keep her eyes open.

“I know you will, but right now you’re going to sleep, you’ll need your rest.” I kissed her softly on the forehead again and went to finish folding her new clothes and placing them in her dresser. She was asleep within minutes and by the time I had finished my task, I too was ready for bed.

For the next week we planned on training the girls as hard as we could, since the next week when school started they would have their lessons with Sasha until lunch and only have the afternoons to properly train. They started off their mornings with Elven focusing exercises under Tessily’s tutelage while the members of RevolveR were doing our teamwork exercises. After that all members of RevolveR went on to our individual training sessions on our own since we knew what we were doing by now while Changeling and Savage started intense physical and combat training, my sister learning the Fae fighting style and swordplay from Tessily, and Twilight’s protégé was learning martial arts under Blackout’s watchful eye.

After having lunch, something Allie and I enjoyed with Tessily, it was on to powers training for the girls. On one side of the large training room Tessily and I worked with my sister, while on the other side Twilight and Liberty were working with Twilight’s protégé. For the most part, her powers were pretty simple and they were trying to teach Savage to use her heightened agility, razor sharp nails, and increased durability from having an iron skeleton to her advantage. They also discovered that she had Category two strength as well, she needed to if her body was to support all the extra weight from Iron bones. As a result they were trying to help her gain some control over both that strength and her surge healing ability as well.

As for Changeling, I had my sister deactivate her inhibitor collar during those afternoon sessions so we could get a feel for her various forms and the abilities that came with each. In addition to the focusing exercise that Tessily was teaching the girls to control their emotions I also felt that it would be a good idea for her to be able channel those emotions at will to access her different power sets as needed. I thought that maybe acting lessons in combination with the focusing exercises might help with that so for the first half hour of our afternoon sessions I had her doing some exercises that had been suggested by Riff’s mother, the former Broadway actress and current singing and acting coach, to channel specific emotions to make acting more believable.

The girls did work very hard at whatever we put them to and both were showing a marked improvement over their emotions by the time we had completed Friday’s training. With some concentration my sister was even able to summon specific mood-related forms at will, though she would need to work on mastering her powers for each of those forms and that was going to be a long process. She was taking just as naturally to the Fae fighting styles as I had, and was picking up some snippets of the language as well, so I had to wonder just how much Fae blood we had.

As for her specific forms, we had discovered thirteen unique forms so far. Although many of them gave off some sort of aura as part of her powers, there didn’t seem to be anything obviously consistent powers-wise between them except that she seemed to be a Category four in every state. Each form had a different power that was somehow related to the emotional state itself, or concepts that my sister associated with them in her subconscious mind. The different states that we had discovered so far were fear, anger, confidence, happiness, shyness, excitement, frustration, guilt, determination, courage, anxiety, jealousy, and confusion.

Dr. Park had been right when she had first told me that my sister’s Fear form was as inhuman as it was terrifying. In that form her hair and skin were both pitch black, seeming to absorb all light like a black hole, rather than reflecting it. The only light was the dark red glowing of her eyes. She was intangible in that state and emitted an aura of pure terror that seemed to affect anyone within a range of about twenty feet.

Anger was almost as frightening as fear. Both her hair and eyes were crimson in color and her entire body could erupt into flames. She seemed able to turn it off and on and could control the flames with a form of pyrokinesis, but when she had been in the hospital and had taken that form she had been reacting out of pure rage and destroyed her hospital room even worse than I had before someone had managed to knock her out with a tranquilizer gun.

Her Confidence form looked like me with its blue skin and pink hair and the similarities didn’t end there. Her power in that form seemed to be telekinesis, so at least we had a good idea of how to train her in that form. It was my hope that helping her to master the telekinesis of that form might help her to control the powers in some of her other forms as well, such as Anger’s pyrokinesis.

Her happiness form made Changeling look like a young Tessily, which I personally thought was cute and sweet. In that form she seemed to have increased speed and agility, which would lend itself well to her physical training. It also made it the logical form for her to use in a hand to hand or sword fighting situation.

Shyness brought us a bit of a surprise. With her brown hair and eyes and slightly mousey body language in that form I had feared that it might be her default form, or perhaps a mild mannered secret identity. She had never tried using powers in this form either, so when she turned invisible it was a bit of a shock to all three of us. It wasn’t true invisibility though, more like a camouflage ability that let her blend into her surroundings.

I was already familiar with Excitement of course, with her neon blue hair and eyes. Her power in that form was definitely super speed, she was even faster than Twilight. It was also like she had chugged down ten gallons of expresso whenever she took that form. She couldn’t seem to hold still and she constantly moved and spoke a mile a minute, making it very hard to get her to focus on her lessons.

Frustration was very similar to Anger, except that both her hair and eyes were a bright orange and the aura that she could generate was electricity rather than flames. This form would probably be just as dangerous as Anger as well if she didn’t gain proper control of that electricity. I really hoped that teaching her to control the telekinetic powers of her confidence form would carry over to those two more dangerous forms as well.

In her Guilt form my sister had plum-colored hair and dark brown eyes and she seemed to be able to shrink. She was able to get down to about two inches tall with some intense concentration and I could see both uses and dangers with that ability. It only seemed to allow her to shrink and return to her original size though. All attempts to get her to increase her size had been a bust.

Determination was another surprise. In that form my sister had bright golden hair and eyes and a near blinding aura of the same color that spread out to a ten foot radius around her. She had injured her ankle when she had taken that form the first time, but had refused to stop training for the day. Then what looked to be a serious sprain healed before our eyes. It wasn’t just her though, as the few bruises that I had been sporting had healed as well. It was an ability that she had no control over, she couldn’t even consciously turn it on or off, and it healed herself and anyone else within her aura with the speed and power of a Category four Regen.

Changeling’s Courage form had white hair, blue eyes, and a pair of large feathery-looking wings made from some sort of golden energy. The only real ability that she seemed to have in that form was being able to fly, not that she had much success at first while getting used to her new energy-based appendages. Still, I was the only member of RevolveR who could fly without a skybike at the moment and I could see where that form could be useful for scouting in the future.

Her last three forms seemed fairly simple powers-wise. Anxiety had Black hair with red streaks and violet eyes and she could create seismic vibrations, making whatever she was concentrating on shake violently. Her jealousy form bore moss green hair and eyes and her only power with it seemed to be Category four strength. And then there was Confusion, the form that so resembled me in my disguised form. In that form she could generate an aura of light that distracts anyone who looks directly at it without proper light protection. The victims just stand there staring until she turns the aura off or changes form.

During the evenings Allie and I would have dinner, sometimes with Mahar joining us and then we would either go to band practice or out for the evening with Leslie and Jenny so that my best friend and I could show the girls some of the sights like the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State building, and Times Square. We did a lot of bonding over that time and I was feeling closer to my sister every day.

On Saturday of that Labor Day weekend though things changed up a bit. Tessily and I were halfway through Changeling’s afternoon training session when all of the other members of both Aegis and RevolveR joined us in the training room, all of them in costume. Liberty and Tessily went to join them in the center of the room motioning for Twilight, myself, and our students to follow. Once we were all gathered I looked at Twilight and then down at myself. We were both dressed much like our students in the simple black bodysuits that we usually called training uniforms. “I feel underdressed,” I muttered in an aside to Twilight.

“Can you please tell us what’s going on now?” Rave asked.

Liberty nodded and looked over to the control booth where I noticed Blake In his Prodigy armor giving her a thumbs up. Then she turned back to us and gave an encouraging smile. “We believe that RevolveR is ready for full deployment on missions without Aegis supervision and since we may need you to do just that tonight, you can consider this your final exam. Should you pass we will have a mission for you, if you don’t well we’ll just have to keep training you for a while longer. You’ve only been at this a few months so there’s no shame in not being ready, especially since we’re dropping this on you so suddenly.”

“What do you mean final exam?” Mai sputtered nervously. “What do we have to do?”

“We need to be sure that you are all ready to engage other Hypers in the field, so as your final exam you will be fighting us. We will be acting the parts of mutant terrorists and will not hold back. Your mission objective will be to protect civilians, capture us without seriously harming us, and prevent us from destroying that,” Blackout said as he pointed to the back of the room where a large holographic target appeared on the back wall.

Holograms began popping up all over the room until it resembled a city street with people walking down sidewalks, entering or leaving buildings, and some sitting at a sidewalk café. Prodigy came down from the control room and nodded, “Everything is set whenever you’re ready to start Liberty. The holograms in this room will be just like the real things, appearance, texture, weight, mass, and they can both cause damage and be damaged. If any civilians or the target get damaged, the simulation will end.”

“Can we watch from the control room?” my sister asked.

Liberty shook her head, “No I’m afraid not, because you’re going to be participating. You and Savage will be on our side playing the role of terrorists, or rather terrorists in training. We want to see how the two of you will react in high pressure or dangerous situations and how well you can follow rules and orders. Once the four of you get into costume we’ll get started.”

We headed up to our apartments where I quickly got into my costume and gear. There had been a bundle of cloth waiting outside our door with a little note in Brianna’s handwriting that said, “For Changeling,” so I assumed that my sister was changing into that while I was getting changed. It took her a few minutes longer than me, so I assumed that she was trying to figure out how it was supposed to be worn. It was a simple black bodysuit that covered her from head to toe, with the only openings being those that allowed her hair to fall freely, and the area under her mask which left the nose and mouth exposed so she could breathe properly. Gold-hued ankle boots, gauntlet style gloves and a sash added color to the outfit and over her heart there was a stylized golden C with fairy wings sprouting from it. She also had something that looked like my stun sword hanging from the sash.

We stepped out into the hall to find Twilight and Savage in costume as well. “Wow, it feels weird wearing something like this, the latter was saying as we joined them. Savage was dressed in a similar black bodysuit as my sister’s but with a form fitting tan sleeveless leotard over top, knee high combat boots and fingerless gloves of the same color, a utility belt, and a pair of golden bracers covering her forearms. Over her heart atop the tan of her leotard was a black cat symbol with slash marks beneath it.

Once we had returned downstairs, and Changeling and Savage had been taken aside to instruct them in their weapons and whatever strategy had been cooked up, the battle was on. It was eight against six and they were all going to be going all out, but we had mission objectives and we couldn’t seriously hurt any of them, not that I wanted to. This was not going to be easy. At least the rules stated that if one of our opponents was contained or knocked unconscious they would be out of the game.

As soon as the buzzer to begin the exam rang I began issuing orders. “Rave start evacuating civilians! Everyone else choose targets and try to disable without hurting them, heavy hitters first! I’ll get some altitude and try to coordinate and contribute from the air!” I shot up into the air to see Rave already opening multiple portals and telling people to get through them to safety. Prodigy unloaded a cloud of missiles at me and I barely managed to get a TK shield up in time to absorb the damage. “Sorry about this Prodigy,” I mumbled. Then I telekinetically took his armor apart around him and tossed him toward Rave as I called out, “Catch!” He was hit by one of her glow bracelets and encased in foam before even hitting the ground.

Riff was going toe to toe with Liberty, but so far he seemed to be on the defensive, until Twilight came racing out of a shadow at full speed and decked Liberty hard enough to shake the entire training room. Liberty staggered, but managed a counter punch which was caught by Riff’s force field as he stepped in the way, knocking her back with a counter-punch of his own. At the same time Twilight dove into Riff’s shadow to reappear from Liberty’s, hitting her hard enough from behind to send her to the floor in a heap.

Two heavy hitters out, now were was Silver Spirit? I had a feeling that I knew exactly where he was, or at least where he was going. He had probably turned invisible and was going after the target. I quickly put a TK shield around the target, absorbing the energy blast that seemed to come out of nowhere. That was when two things happened. The first was Decibel hitting the area the blasts had come from with a high pitched sonic shout, and the second was Savage leaping at a group of holographic civilians.

Silver Spirit fell to his hands and knees as he reappeared and began throwing up, until Decibel delivered a solid punch to knock him out. Meanwhile the civilians promptly vanished and Starbright appeared, blocking Savage by forming a solid light riot shield and following it up with a flash bang. Suddenly something big hit my TK shield from behind. It was a truck and, even as its mangled remains fell to the ground, Changeling in her Jealousy form was hefting another vehicle to toss at me.

“Shit!” I muttered as I noticed that the remains of the truck were falling toward a pair of civilians. Quickly I reached out with my mind snatching up both them and the sedan that my sister had just tossed at me, suddenly very glad for all that time I had spent training to lift, move, and manipulate multiple objects at once. I was nowhere near feeling strained yet, but I was having a hard time keeping an eye on the rest of the battle with my attention divided between keeping my own TK shield up, flying, protecting the target, snatching up the vehicles that Changeling was tossing like softballs, and defending civilians.

Rave ushered the civilians beneath me into a portal and called out over our secure comm frequency, “Evac completed.” Without civilians to worry about I dropped the vehicles, tossing the one that Changeling had just thrown back at her while silently praying that she would move in time and trying to get my attention back on the battle as a whole. Starbright had her hands full with Savage, using a solid light staff to fight the younger mutant. Savage was blocking with a pair of energy shields that had emerged from her bracers and occasionally punching or firing sparkling pellets at her from those same bracers when the opportunity presented itself, forcing Star to constantly dodge.

Decibel was targeting one out of a group of Phantasms with another sonic attack, Blackout had canceled out Riff’s force field and seemed to be overwhelming him, while Tessily was firing enchanted arrows at the target and apparently hoping to bring down my TK shield. I had just enough time to take that in before I noticed my sister coming at me in her winged form with a gold-colored version of my stun sword humming in her hand. At least she had avoided the sedan.

I drew my own stun sword, activating it, and it hummed to life with a pink glow as I parried Changeling’s attack and started issuing orders. “Riff, get some distance between you, Blackout’s powers will stop working on you if you get out of range. You and Star need to switch partners, she’s got the training to take on blackout but she’s not durable enough to keep hitting, or taking hits, from Savage’s iron bones. Twilight, give Decibel a hand he’s got the real phantasm covered, illusions can’t fool his sonic sense. Phantasm can’t use his intangibility and his illusions at the same time so he’s vulnerable right now and the real one has a shadow. Rave, take on Tessily, but do it from a distance; intercept her arrows, send them somewhere harmless, and try to incapacitate her.”

My sister wasn’t very experienced at swordplay yet and since she was the only one left who could take me on this high in the air I was able to keep an eye on things as I countered her attacks and started putting pressure on her. Much to my pleasure she was keeping her emotions under control and even though I was starting to overwhelm her she kept on doggedly fighting and searching for an opening. Her wings seemed to be mentally controlled since I had tried giving them a tap with my weapon and she was still airborne, not that I was surprised since they were energy based rather than actual physical wings.

Twilight had come to Decibel’s aid, appearing from the real Phantasm’s shadow from behind to fingerflick him into unconsciousness, and Star was now taking on Blackout in a martial arts battle and seemed to be an even match for him even without her powers. Riff had his force field back and was about to attack Savage, who was going to Blackout’s aid, when she suddenly stopped, dropped to her knees and called out, “No! I won’t do that! I surrender!” My brows rose in concern but I didn’t have time to think about it as I was trying to keep an eye on Rave’s battle with Tessily while trying to keep my sister on the defensive without actually hurting her too badly. I had already stunned both of her legs and her left arm so they were hanging uselessly as she stubbornly continued to keep fighting.

Rave had been doggedly intercepting Tessily’s arrows with hastily generated portals and keeping a good distance between them, but now my Mahar was out of arrows and drew a silver version of my stun sword as she attempted to close the distance between them. Rave tossed one of her bracelets at her, but the Fae princess deftly dodged it, until Rave opened up a portal and the bracelet flew through it to hit Tessily from behind and encase her in quickly hardening spongey foam. I quickly turned my full attention to my sister only to find her shaking her head violently. “No way Blackout! I’d rather surrender!” She broke off from our fight and flew down to the floor, where she promptly collapsed from her currently useless legs.

There was only Blackout left and as we all converged on his fight with Starbright he sighed and raised his hands in surrender. “Congratulations. You all pass, welcome to the big leagues.”

Once we had gathered everyone who had been injured or knocked unconscious in one place, and Rave had Tessily and Prodigy de-foamed, my sister had changed to her golden-haired Determination form for its healing aura. It still took her some time to change forms, but it wasn’t bad for only five days of training and she was showing a marked improvement on her emotional control. That healing aura was something else though, within ten minutes everyone was conscious, on their feet again, and feeling like a million bucks.

“You all did well out there, we’re proud of you,” Liberty stood up to tell us all once we had finished watching the battle on the big screen in the situation room. “You did everything that you should have in that fight and you were careful to not seriously hurt any of us, though with my invulnerability that couldn’t have been easy. Still, remind me to never fight the two of you at the same time again, at least not seriously.” The last was said with a good natured laugh as she looked toward Twilight and Riff.

“Why did you surrender?” I asked my sister and Savage.

“I gave them orders that they refused to follow,” Blackout answered in their stead. “We wanted to see how they would react in a real fight, and if they could follow orders, but we also wanted to see if they had the sense to know when not to follow orders. I told Savage to use her iron claws when she backed me up with Starbright and then I told Changeling to switch to her Anger form.”

“I didn’t mind attacking the holograms like that, but it’s different when there are real people involved. Mai could have been seriously hurt if I attacked her like that and I won’t do that just to win,” Savage said with a deep frown.

“Me either,” my sister agreed, looking down at the floor. Changeling’s Anger form was possibly her most dangerous, and the one she seemed to have the least control over so far. People could have gotten seriously hurt, either us or any of the members of Aegis unconscious on the floor.

“The point was to see if they could control themselves under combat conditions and whether they knew what lines not to cross and they both did wonderfully,” Silver Spirit said. “If they had tried to follow those orders we would have known that they needed to learn that lesson and measures would have been taken to prevent them from going through with it.”

“We had Sasha keeping an eye on both of them while cloaked. If it looked like they were going to go too far or lose control she would have rendered them unconscious,” Prodigy assured us.

Liberty turned to smile at both Changeling and Savage. “Neither of you has had much training yet, but you both handled yourselves well out there. You followed all of the reasonable orders, you didn’t panic or lose control, you fought smart, and you didn’t give up even when you knew that you were fighting more powerful and experienced opponents, but kept looking for openings to exploit. You both need a lot more training of course, but you passed your test too. If Syryn and Twilight allow it you can join Rave as probationary trainees. For now that means mostly training and observing missions from the tour bus, but you may sometimes be asked to help with evacuation or other tasks, depending on the situation and that will be Syryn’s call.”

I wasn’t too sure about that and neither was Twilight when we had brought up their interest with the members of Aegis earlier that week. They had proposed a test to see if the girls would be able to handle it, but I hadn’t expected it this soon, and I had been a little preoccupied earlier with our own unexpected final exam. Still, I could keep them both safe in the tour bus until I thought that they were ready, or a task came along that I thought that they could safely complete. I looked over to Twilight who appeared as torn about her protégé as I was about my sister, but she finally sighed and then nodded. With a sigh of my own I spoke up. “You girls know the rules. If you can’t follow them or the orders I give then you will be out until we’re sure that you can. Do you both understand?”

“Yes ma’am!” the pair responded at once, their faces brightening up with grins that reminded me far too much of myself and Twilight.

Liberty cleared her throat and everyone’s attention fell on her once again as a picture of members of the Right Hand appeared on the main display screen. “Now that we have all that out of the way, I would like to discuss tonight’s mission. Since we exposed the connection between the Church of the Purity of Adam and the Right Hand over a week ago the FBI, HAA and CIA have been putting on the pressure, by raiding their compounds and seizing their assets. They have never been this vulnerable before and the plan is to hit all of their remaining compounds tonight in one massive raid. Superheroes and various organizations will be hitting all of their compounds nation-wide simultaneously tonight in an effort to take them down for good.”

The view on the screen changed to a map of the U.S.A with red dots spread out on it, off to the side was a list of the various compounds that the dots indicated with all of the information that was known about them. Once we all had a good look over it Liberty continued her briefing. “Aegis will be taking down their location in Washington DC, it’s listed as a church but we believe that there will be a secured Right Hand Bunker hidden beneath it, just as there was with most of the churches that have already been raided. The HCU will be taking down a similar location here in New York City. As for RevolveR you will be taking this location in New Jersey. It’s listed as a warehouse so we don’t think there will be much to worry about, it could just be storage for weapons and equipment, but we wanted to make sure that you were mission-ready in case there are any surprises there.”

“And here when you said mission I thought we were going to save the world, or at least New York, but it’s only New Jersey… really who wants to save Jersey?” Starbright said with a laugh.

“I guess that anyone from Jersey… might want to save it,” Riff shot back, much to everyone’s amusement.

“Enough you two,” I told them trying to hold back a laugh of my own. “So when is this going down?”

“Synchronize your watches everyone, because this op is set to go down at exactly eight o’clock east coast time,” Blackout informed us. “We’ll all need to be in position to start by then so we should all move out.”

We ate dinner on the tour bus during the flight to New Jersey. It wasn’t much, just some frozen pizzas and burritos from the freezer, but it would do until we could eat something more substantial after the raid. It was as our cloaked ship approached the warehouse from above that I realized that whatever they were using this place for it wasn’t storage, or at least it wasn’t at the moment. The lights were on and there were a lot of cars outside, very expensive looking cars. “What the fuck are all those fancy cars doing outside a warehouse on the outskirts of New Jersey at this time of night?” Rave muttered, echoing my own thoughts.

“What’s the time Sasha?” I asked our android manager, agent and current pilot.

“It is currently thirty seven minutes before our mission is set to commence,” she answered as she set the autopilot to hover in place.

“That is not what we were expecting to find here. I’d like to know a little more about what’s going on in there before we go jumping in. Rave open a portal so Sasha can get down there. Sasha stay cloaked and try to find out what’s going on, can you relay what you see and hear down there to the bus’s main view screen?”

Sasha’s eyes blinked several times and then she smiled and nodded. “I’m patched in now. I will monitor the comm channel but I will not be able to respond verbally if I am to remain unnoticed.”

“Reconnoiter and try to find out what’s going on, but be ready to return to the bus by ten minutes to,” I told her. She nodded again and stepped through the portal Rave had provided before going stealth.

We watched through Sasha’s eyes as she carefully made her way inside where there was a large crowd of expensively dressed people, there were people dressed more normally as well, but they had a dangerous look to them and Sasha had connected several of them to Interpol files on known terrorists that she brought up on screen for our benefit. “Terrorists and the idle rich? I’m not sure that I like where this is going,” Twilight said, her face twisting into a frown.

Sasha carefully maneuvered through the crowd and people dressed in tuxes carrying trays of champagne and hors d'oeuvres. She had almost reached the front of the crowd when a voice boomed out, “Welcome everyone and thank you for attending tonight’s auction. We will be getting underway soon, but until then please enjoy the food and champagne and have a good look at tonight’s merchandise. Each is useful in their own way and I’m sure that those of you who win will be very happy with your purchases.”

The man was standing at a podium on a raised platform that served as a stage and off the side of the stage there were seven people looking straight ahead with terror in their eyes. They all wore metal collars, ratty and filthy clothes, and held up signs as they stood completely unmoving. The first was a girl that couldn’t have been older than twelve who had fire erupting from her head in place of hair. The sign in front of her read, “Item #1. Impervious to fire and heat, can generate fire from any part of her body, and manipulate it at will.”

“Omigod they’re selling mutants,” Decibel muttered, clenching his fists.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” my sister added as she buried herself in my chest and started to shake.

“Do you think they’ve been brainwashed? Or maybe they’re under some sort of mind control?” Riff asked.

“It is the collars, they are plugged directly into their central nervous systems. They allow complete control over the wearer and cannot be removed without serious injury.” The words scrolled across the screen as Sasha inspected the back of the girl’s neck. Then, as she inspected the others from behind, more text made its way across the screen. “Each collar is different and meant to work with or be resistant to the wearer’s individual powers. They have a Tinker somewhere.”

“That does explain the Right Hand’s gear,” Starbright grumbled. “We can’t let those people be sold. Is there any way to disable the collars or knock them out so they won’t be forced to fight us?”

“I shall try to find out,” the text scrolling across the screen replied.

Sasha moved back in front of the captive Hypers from the front and inspected the cards in front of them. The one beside the girl with the flaming head looked to be maybe a year or so older and they resembled each other enough in the face for them to be sisters. She was beautiful, even in her current condition, and had long black hair with long golden horns emerging from her forehead and wrapping around her head to just above and behind her pointed ears like a tiara. Her eyes were bright crimson and full of fear, and she had a spaded tail and a pair of bat-like wings sprouting from her back. Her sign read, “Item #2: Category four regeneration. Can create and manipulate hellfire, fly, see auras, drain spirit energy through intimate contact, and has elevated hormone and pheromone levels.”

The others included a metalmorph of some sort, a guy who could increase or decrease his size and mass, an Energy Manipulator with heightened strength and speed, a woman who can change into a gaseous form, fly and control wind, and a man with electric powers. The last of the seven was very familiar to me though. “Oh my God! That’s Tendril from H8!” Then I realized the time. “Sasha we have 14 minutes until go time and HAA and FBI forces are probably already on route with local police to back us up. We need to figure out our game plan. Do you see any security?”

The screen focused on a group of four massive metal forms behind the stage. They were either robots or some sort of power armor, ten feet tall and bristling with weapons. “Well I guess that this isn’t going to be easy then,” I muttered. “What about disabling the collars?”

“They are shielded against EMPs. I could force them open and remove them, but only one of them is a Regen and the damage to the others could be substantial.” I frowned as that message crossed the screen.

“What about my healing aura? If you got them all to me fast enough I could heal them,” Changeling suggested.

I sighed as I considered the situation and tried to come up with a plan. Not only were there the captive mutants to consider, but there was also those robots, any Right Hand goons that might be around, and all those guests. I wasn’t going to put it past those guests being armed either, especially the terrorists wanted by Interpol. Those rich people could be armed too, or at the very least would likely have bodyguards with them, and drivers waiting in the cars. We would need to incapacitate them all at once, hope that it took the Hypers down too, and then worry about the robots and anyone still standing. Finally I said, “Okay Sasha, when I give the signal Rave is going to open up a portal. I’ll need you to come through, monitor things from up here, and coordinate with the government agencies. Here’s what we’re going to do…”

It was one minute to eight and the time had come to put the plan into action. Police and government vehicles were inbound and barricading any possible escape routes. “Showtime everyone. Rave open up a portal. Sasha as soon as that portal opens get through it and then we’ll send in Decibel for the first stage.”

“On it Syryn,” Rave said with a nod. The lines and patterns on her skin began to glow a bright green as the portal opened and almost as soon as it formed Sasha was through and heading for the cockpit to begin coordinating and observing. Decibel didn’t wait for the order, he jumped through the portal, it closed behind him and a moment later we all heard the high pitched sonic shout, despite our comms being turned off in preparation. The monitors showed the scene below in the parking lot as windows exploded and when the shout finally ended we snapped our comms back on. “Status Decibel?”

“All the regular humans in the warehouse are taking a nap Syryn, and I think I can take out the last Hyper standing with a focused… shit, robots!”

“Team two, get in there and support him, shades mode on, Star open up with a flashbang and try to take out the sensors on those robots then everyone else hit them hard and take them down fast. Try to disable the Hypers and not hurt them too bad, they’re not in control of their own actions,” I said. “Rave, portals please. You, Changeling, and Savage will be with me. Stay away from the main fight, our job is to get those people out of there and into custody and to provide support if needed. We’ll check those in the parking lot first in case any of the drivers managed to resist Decibel’s sonic attack.”

Changeling had already shifted into her Jealousy form as I had instructed and as soon as the portals opened we were all rushing through. There were a few in the parking lot that had resisted the full effect of Decibel’s attack, and four of the cars’ engines had started. I reached out with my mind, lifting them into the air. Panicked drivers jumped out of them to be foamed by Rave, disabled by my sister’s stun sword or shot by Taser pellets from Savage’s bracers. With them out of the picture, I returned the cars to the ground and we began pulling other drivers from the vehicles, securing their arms and legs with zip-ties, and placing them together in an empty area of the parking lot.

Once we had taken care of those in the parking lot I made my way to the open doors of the warehouse and began telekinetically bringing people outside for the trainees to secure and place with the others. The battle inside was hectic. One of the robots was down, smashed into mangled pieces of scrap, probably by Twilight and she was hard at work at doing the same to a second, hitting it as hard and fast as she could and then jumping into the shadows when it tried to fire its weapons at her, only to reappear from a shadow somewhere else nearby and going at it again. The other two were trying hard to take down Riff with Gatling guns, his force field was holding for the moment and Starbright and Decibel were doing what they could now that Decibel had knocked out the last Hyper, but their powers weren’t really suited to taking down something that heavily armored.

“Switch up!” I called out. “Decibel and Star start dragging people outside to Savage and Changeling for containment, Rave help me send one of those robots somewhere else so I can I take care of the last one and then help the others outside.”

Decibel and Starbright each grabbed the closest person and started hauling them off to the doors and Rave opened a portal before doing the same. With one hard telekinetic shove I threw one of the robots through and started disassembling the other’s weapons the instant the portal closed. Twilight and I had nearly finished with our partners and the warehouse was mostly evacuated when the floor beneath us suddenly exploded outward. Both robots were destroyed in the blast and I had barely managed to cover Twilight and myself in a TK shield to protect us. Riff was knocked aside and his force field flickered and died as he hit the floor. “Riff!”

“I’m okay Syryn, but I won’t be using my force field for a while,” he replied as he got to his feet shakily. “I’ll help the trainees to get people out of here. I think the rest of you are going to have your hands full with them.” Two mutants were emerging from the hole in the floor, both of them collared. One was absolutely huge, seven and a half feet tall and built like a professional wrestler with jet black skin that glinted like metal. The other was a small woman who was glowing a bright gold color and made the clan mark on my shoulder itch in response.

“Shit, a magic user. Twilight, you take the big guy I’ll try to handle the mage. Decibel and Starbright, They came up from a basement of some sort, I need you to get down there and take out anyone who may still be down there. Be careful we have no idea what else they might have down there.” With the orders given we all jumped into action.

Twilight hit hard and fast enough to cause a shockwave and her opponent staggered and threw a punch of his own that Twilight barely avoided by jumping into his shadow. Decibel and Star practically ran into the warehouse and jumped into the hole in the floor as I tossed the mangled remains of one of the robots at the mage. She tossed the metal aside with a wave of her hand and came at me fast, conjuring a sword in her hand as I put up another TK shield and drew my stun sword, taking to the air to try and get some distance between us now that I had her attention. I could feel her working more spells and then she rose into the air to pursue me as I could see some sort of change in the glow surrounding her.

“Did she just put a shield spell? Shit, well there goes my advantage if she can magically copy everything I can do. I’ll have to hope that I can out power and out-think her,” I thought acidly as I parried the thrust from the mage’s sword and took a swing for her neck that was blocked by whatever shield spell she had used. I was going to have to try to overwhelm her and doing that in the warehouse could be dangerous for my teammates and anyone still inside. “Let’s take this outside Twilight, there are still people in here. Let’s take the side door so we’re not endangering the trainees.”

“Side door?” my best friend asked, momentarily confused before what was visible of her face lit up in a grin. “Oh yes, the side door.” She ducked a punch that her opponent threw at her, grabbing his arm and using his momentum to throw him through the side of the warehouse. “Damn this guy might be nearly as strong and invulnerable as Liberty, this won’t be easy without Riff to help me tag team him,” she grumbled as she sped through the hole in the wall giving chase.

I flew out after her and took to the sky with the mage in pursuit only to see a robot falling, passing through a portal and vanishing. “Rave, was that…”

Rave appeared through a portal and was standing in mid-air watching both me and Twilight in our respective battles. “Yeah I’ve had that thing falling through portal after portal since you threw it through that first one, until I found a better place for it. I think I just found one, and by now it should have enough momentum built up to do this… Twilight, incoming!” A portal opened roughly thirty feet above Twilight and as the robot fell through she managed to disappear into the shadows before the impact hit her opponent with enough force to shake the earth and create a sizable cloud of dust and debris.

I didn’t have much time to pay much attention as I was making a hard push at my opponent, she was not an experienced swordswoman and that inexperience was showing as I pushed her back, getting several hits on her shield spell. The problem was that with her other hand she was casting offensive spell after offensive spell, each powerful enough that I had my plate full keeping my TK shield stable enough to deflect or absorb the attacks. I was peppering her with as much debris as I could spare the attention to gather, but that shield spell was powerful. I needed to be able to get a major hit or two if I wanted to end this fight anytime soon.

Below me the dust had settled and there in the thirty foot crater that remained, amidst the scrap metal, Twilight’s opponent was still standing, though shakily. She went on the offensive hammering him with punch after punch, a blur as she used her super speed to avoid his own blows and hit him from every possible angle. “Shit! This guy will not go down!”

“We got all of the people out of the warehouse Syryn,” Riff’s voice said through my earbuds, “Savage and Rave think they can help take that big guy down without putting Savage in too much danger, it’s not a bad idea and Savage might not be as strong as Twilight, but her iron bones combined with that strength might help.”

“Do it, but be careful,” I replied with a sigh. “Decibel and Star, what’s your status?”

I absorbed another fireball spell and reinforced my TK field as Star’s voice came over the channel. “There was some kind of small lab and containment cells down here with a few Right Hand goons guarding them. They’re down and gagged so they can’t take the tooth, and there don’t seem to be anymore captive Hypers down here, we’ll bring the goons out to the authorities and then come help you if you need it.”

“Okay, I was hoping for a distraction, but I have another idea,” I replied with another long sigh. ”Hey Changeling, are you still in your Jealousy form, and if so how’s your pitching arm?”

I could hear the eagerness in my sister’s voice as she responded. “I think I can help you out there.” Suddenly a luxury car hit my opponent from behind, visibly weakening her shield. I pressed my attack as a second luxury car followed the first, draining the shield spell even more. My opponent was getting tired and I snatched both cars from the air before they could fall too far, to either side of her as another spell hit my TK shield and even as I reinforced my shield I smacked the two cars together with her between them, finishing off her shield spell. I quickly moved in again, my sword arm darting in to disable her spell casting arm and then her sword arm in quick succession.

I had to snatch her out of the air telekinetically and as I lowered her, myself, and the remains of the two cars to the ground I looked downward. Below me Twilight was still beating on her opponent with determination and speed while Savage would jump in from a portal to deliver a punch or two of her own before diving back into the portal and then repeating the process. They had him down on one knee now and with one double fisted overhand strike Twilight was finally able to send him to both the ground and dreamland.

The police and various government agents in attendance had things well in hand, moving those involved with the auction or the lab/prison beneath into vans that had been brought for that purpose. The HAA wanted to take custody of the Hypers, but they had been victimized enough already and I didn’t want those collars in the hands of anyone that might misuse them. They may help Hypers sometimes, but at other times they seemed just as eager to blame us for things like what had happened at the warehouse. The agent on site, a weasel of a man with brown hair who had introduced himself as Agent Wells didn’t seem happy about it, but with all the other agencies involved and the fact that the Hypers had technically been hostages he didn’t have much choice but to place them in our custody to receive medical attention.

A call to Dr. Park revealed that she and Smog were still in New York for a few more days so, once we had the mutants sedated and contained as best we could aboard the tour bus, we headed back home to New York City. Once we had arrived at Columbia University Medical Center’s Hyper Care ward she spent most of the night and well into the morning removing the collars, luckily without any serious damage. My sister’s Determination form helped them to recover quickly and completely and soon they were resting peacefully and recovering from their ordeal.

Most of the former captives were able to be released by Sunday night and we made sure to visit with all of them to make sure that they had access to proper counselling and that they had somewhere to go. Most of them had lives that they were eager to get back to, even Tendril. She had thought long and hard about her life after our battle with H8 and wanted a normal life for a bit. She had had a run-in with the Right Hand the month before and been their unwilling captive ever since and had even more time to think, since that had been the only freedom she had had. Now she had decided that she wanted to go back to school and try to use her powers to help others as a part-time hero.

The only real problem was the two minors. They were sisters, and both were probably going to need new identities since one had once been a boy and they were the grandchildren of Reverend Marcus Wright, the popular Television evangelist, founder and head of the Church of the Purity of Adam, and the man known as Cardinal to the members of the Right Hand. To think that he had treated his own flesh and blood that way, though as another mutant child of a member of the Right Hand I could certainly sympathize with the pair. Their Grandfather had escaped, leaving the country before the night of the raid, but I hoped that he would be captured soon now that he was on Interpol’s most wanted list.

I was a bit concerned about what would happen to the pair, since they had no other family, and both had appearances that would make it hard for them to blend in, but the mage that I had fought against had offered to take the pair in. They and she were both from California and she was a teacher at a school where they could learn how to control their powers. They would be leaving the next day, after a visit from Tara at the HPP to sort out the new identities, so that they could be at school for the start of classes.

All in all things had gone as well as they could with that raid. We had saved those mutants from a life of slavery, put a lot of really bad people behind bars, and helped to take down the Right Hand, hopefully for good. So yeah, the day was saved, and we had made the world a better place. That is what superheroes do isn’t it?

It’s been six months since that last raid that took down the Right Hand and a lot of things have changed since then, mostly for the better. First of all, my dream has finally come true, RevolveR released our first album two months ago and our first single Little Big Bang is already double platinum. We’re going to be starting our first big North American tour soon and we’re all looking forward to it, especially Mai. She found something on the internet about someone with her cousin’s name being involved in illegal experimentation on Hypers, apparently the victims including her cousin had escaped and she was eager to go looking for her.

My personal life has been going pretty well too. My sister and I are getting along great and we spend a lot of our free time either with the band or with our Mahar Tessliy. We had decided to make her adoption official, of both me and my sister, so now we both have a mother who we are more than happy to call by that name. Ian proposed last month and we’re thinking of having the wedding sometime next spring. We may even have a double wedding with Mai and John, and I don’t know who’s happier at the thought of planning the wedding, my Mahar or Ian’s mother.

As for the team, we’re doing well and building up a good reputation among the super set. Changeling and Savage have joined Rave as both roadies and trainees. They’re doing well and my sister is starting to get a good grip on her powers, all of them. She’s almost as good as I am with a sword now too, and we’re both still progressing under Mahar’s tutelage. Oh well, I have to go, we just got word that mutant terrorists are holding Times Square hostage, it seems that a superhero’s work is never done.