A Warning
Whateley Academy, Tuesday Sept 4th, 2007
Devon Roth slowly walked the distance between Doyle and Kane, fully aware of the armed security guards who walked beside him. His two escorts were there to make sure he went straight to the campus security office and didn’t make any detours.
At the same time, Devon was also quite aware of the ache in his arm, which was wrapped up with bandages. Even after the doctors cleaned up his injury, gave him a shot for the pain, and used some kind of magic to speed up the healing, he could still feel it where that freak teacher had torn him open.
Devon shuddered at the memory, feeling shocked that she’d been able to hurt him so easily. After all, he’d chosen the codename of Iron for a reason. His PK shell usually made him as tough as iron, protecting him from getting hurt. In fact, this was the first time that Devon had been hurt since manifesting as a mutant.
When they reached Kane hall, the security guards led him to a hallway and then to a door with a sign that read ‘CHIEF DELAROSE’.
“Here you go, tough guy,” One of the security personal said. “The Chief would like to have a word with you.”
Then, as the security people left, the other one commented, “I can’t believe this kid thought he could just jump a teacher…even one like her.”
Devon scowled at that, then made a brief attempt to straighten his school uniform a little before he entered the room. The office was not large and ornate, like his father’s was. His father’s office was designed mostly for show, to impress the people he did business with. However, the office that Devon stepped into, was clearly meant as a place to work.
The desk had several stacks of paper piled up around the edges, along with several more folders that seemed to be placed at random. However, Devon’s attention went to the gruff looking man who sat behind the desk, and who was fixing him with a hard stare.
“Devon Roth,” Chief Delarose said, not taking his eyes off Devon. “It’s only the first day of classes and you’ve already attacked one of your teachers. That doesn’t sound like a very good start to the school year.”
Devon knew that he was in a lot of trouble for what he’d done, but he couldn’t resist sneering a little anyway. He could hardly believe that this school would make someone like HER into a teacher. She was a freak and a supervillain, so it wasn’t like he’d attacked a real teacher.
“I forgot to take my medication,” Devon offered, having already explained that to the doctors at Doyle. With all the chaos of moving to Whateley and starting up at the new school, it had completely thrown him off his usual routine, and he’d forgotten to take his medication once…or a dozen times.
“Yes, I know about your condition,” Delarose said, sounding like it didn’t matter. “Without your medication, you become prone to impulsiveness and violence.” He looked at his computer, then back at Devon. “My job is to take care of the incident paperwork and decide whether or not you’re a threat to the people in this school. Mrs. Carson will be the one who decides what happens with you.”
Though Devon was worried, he still gave Delarose a defiant look. He was sure that they couldn’t do anything too bad to him, especially since the only thing he’d done was fight off a supervillain. After all, since that freak was a villain, and she’d injured him, it would be easy to blame the whole thing on her. His father was a high-end lawyer with a lot of influential friends, and once his father was done, not only would this school apologize to him, but they’d have to fire that deformed freak as well.
“Attacking any faculty or staff member is a serious offense,” Delarose said, still fixing Devon with his gaze. “However, you should be aware that you made another mistake as well, one that could result in even greater consequences.”
“What’s that?” Devon asked, becoming curious over the way Delarose was acting.
Delarose smiled faintly, and it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “Not only did you attack a teacher, but you attacked the Imp. Out of all the staff and faculty on campus, she is among the top five that you LEAST want to have angry at you.”
Devon gave the security chief a skeptical look. “She doesn’t seem that tough…” However, the throbbing ache in his arm reminded him that the Imp had gone through his PK shell, as though it hadn’t even been there.
“Oh, the Imp isn’t especially powerful,” Delarose admitted, his eyes still remaining locked on Devon. “However, she is creative.”
“Creative?” Devon asked, feeling a little confused. “What do you mean?”
Delarose gave that faint smile again, which made chills go down Devon’s spine. “When the Imp has a grudge against someone, she doesn’t go after them physically. Instead, she gets…creative. She attacks their reputations.”
Devon blinked at that. “She attacks their reputations?” That hardly sounded very threatening.
“She humiliates them,” Delarose explained. “She completely destroys their reputations and turns them into laughingstocks. More than one hero has retired after she was done with them.”
Before Devon could fully absorb this, much less respond, Delarose opened up a folder and removed a large photo. Without a word, he set it down on the desk in front of Devon. It was a picture of a man in a white spandex costume with blue trim.
“Slipstream was a hero,” Delarose said, tapping the picture. “And he’s the earliest example I have of the Imp’s creative revenge.”
“What kind of revenge?” Devon asked curiously.
“From what I understand,” Delarose continued, “Slipstream pulled her tail…rather violently. She retaliated by slipping him a strong laxative, right before a large publicity event. By the next day, the local media had renamed him Skidmark, and that was probably the most polite of his new nicknames. He retired and left the public eye less than a week later.”
Delarose pulled out a second photo, of another hero, who was dressed in a mostly red costume. “The Crimson Kid,” the security chief said. “She destroyed his reputation as a hero, then his civilian reputation, before giving that identity to several of his enemies. He’s been in hiding for over a decade.”
Another picture went down, this time of a gorgeous woman with long black hair, that had to be nearly seven feet in length. “Ms. Tress was a villain with prehensile hair. The Imp snuck in while she was asleep and shaved her bald, then left her to the mercy of her own victims.”
Several more photos went onto the desk in front of Devon. “Stratosphere. The Harlequeen. Polarstorm. The Provoker. Jack Rabbit. Most of them are more powerful than the Imp, but all have earned her personal enmity, and have had their reputations destroyed as a result.”
Devon stared down at the pictures, then demanded, “Why would you hire a villain like that?” His mind raced, and he was sure that his father would be able to sue the school into bankruptcy for that.
Delarose was silent for a moment, before answering. “I’ve been assured that in spite of her previous career, the Imp is highly qualified as an art teacher.”
“But she’s a villain,” Devon spat out contemptuously. “She hurt me…” He held his bandaged arm up in demonstration, though Delarose didn’t seem impressed.
“She was a villain,” Delarose agreed evenly. “As are several of the other staff and faculty.” That caused Devon to pause. “The Imp is simply more open about her previous career than the others.”
Devon gulped, suddenly wondering about his other teachers, and trying to guess if any of them had been villains as well. It was hard to imagine. At least the Imp looked like the villain she was, which made her easy to identify.
“Your injury was a result of the Imp defending herself from your attack,” Delarose reminded him in a cold tone. “You’re lucky that she held back, or you might have lost your entire hand.”
“What?” Devon blurted out in surprise.
Delarose scowled at him as he continued, “The Imp has retired from her previous career and has promised to obey Whateley rules. That being said, there are dozens of ways she could show her displeasure without overtly violating any rules, or leaving any evidence of wrongdoing on her part.” When Devon gulped in understanding, Delarose added, “If I were you, I would make a sincere apology to the Imp, and hope that she doesn’t hold a grudge over your unprovoked attack.”
For a moment, Devon remained where he was, frozen by the realization of what the chief of security had just told him. Though he hadn’t said it in those exact words, the meaning was clear. If that freak decided to come after him, security wouldn’t do anything about it.
“So, what happens now?” Devon asked with a deep scowl.
“Now,” Delarose said as he stood up. “I escort you to Shuster Hall, where Mrs. Carson is waiting to talk to you.” He stared at Devon with a grim expression. “You remember that I mentioned a list of faculty members who you don’t want angry at you…”
“Yes,” Devon cautiously answered.
“Mrs. Carson is number one on that list,” Delarose stated with a faint smile, though it was not a pleasant one. “And at the moment, she is very unhappy with you.”
Devon stared at Delarose with a sinking feeling, along with a growing suspicion that his father wouldn’t be able to help him this time.
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Duct Tape and Games
Emerson Cottage, Wednesday Sept 26th, 2007
Fixx stared across the table at his two opponents, then down at the cards in his hand. He was currently playing Xombie Horde, a card game that Doorstop had brought. The whole game was silly, but surprisingly fun.
“I equip my Zombie Enforcer with Infectious Rot,” Fixx announced as he played a card. “And I’m feeding a brain to my Zombie Chihuahua, to heal him for ten points.”
“Not bad,” Doorstop said.
Fixx watched Doorstop, a friend and fellow Underdog. At the moment, Doorstop was looking kind of smug, which probably didn’t mean anything good for him.
Doorstop placed a card onto the table. “I play Call of the Revenant, which lets me bring any zombie in my graveyard back into play. I pick my Ghoulish Ballerina.”
“I don’t think so,” the third player said. Cerberus dropped a card of his own onto the table. “Worm Food. Return any zombie to the graveyard.”
“Damn,” Doorstop exclaimed in annoyance.
“There’s no way I’m gonna let you get your ballerina back,” Cerberus pointed out. “But while we’re here, I’m putting my Overzealous Survivalist into play, along with a Kaboom Stick.”
Fixx chuckled at that. He was probably going to lose now, but that was all right. With an easy grin, he played his next card, which activated one of Doorstop’s traps. The next thing he knew, he was being overrun with a group of Hungry Shamblers, which killed off his only living resource, and even worse, sent his Zombie Housewife to the graveyard.
Since Fixx was probably only one turn away from losing the game, he leaned back and glanced around the rest of the common room, absently wondering if anyone else would be interested in joining them for the next game. The room was fairly full at the moment, so there would probably be someone.
Tektonix, Bunsen, and Wendigo were all watching TV, and none of them were likely to join the game. Aegis was talking with Broadsword, and the conversation seemed to be fairly lively, though Fixx couldn’t hear what they were talking about.
Cerberus suddenly announced, “I attack with my Overzealous Survivalist, and my Gorilla Ghoul…”
“I’m out,” Fixx said, dropping the rest of his cards onto the table.
“Wait,” Doorstop exclaimed, staring at Fixx’s cards. “You had Thriller Dance in your hand this whole time?”
“Yep,” Fixx responded with a grin. “I just didn’t have the right chance to use it…”
“Too bad for you,” Cerberus told him. “You could have won the game if you had.”
Fixx shrugged. “Maybe.”
Just then, Fixx noticed Iron stepping into the room. Iron paused to look around, and quickly realized that all the seats were taken, so there was no place for him to sit.
“Move,” Iron commanded Doorstop in an arrogant tone. “I need that chair.”
“I’m still using it,” Doorstop protested.
Iron grabbed Doorstop to lift him out of the chair, but Doorstop remained where he was. There was a look of surprise on Iron’s face, then one of determination before he tried again. Iron was obviously using his PK strength to try lifting Doorstop, but the boy still remained where he was, not budging an inch.
Fixx burst out laughing. “You know, you can’t move Doorstop if he doesn’t want to move. That’s his power…”
Of course, Fixx didn’t bother pointing out that the weakness with Doorstop’s power was that one good punch was usually enough to take him out and turn off his power. Being immovable would have been a great power for a brick, though it wasn’t nearly as useful for someone who lacked that kind of sturdiness.
Iron glared at Fixx, obviously not happy about being laughed at. That didn’t surprise Fixx though, because Iron always seemed a bit full of himself, though sometimes he was worse than others.
“I don’t need to hear from a devisor who thinks that duct tape is the pinnacle of technological advancement,” Iron said with a contemptuous sneer.
Fixx just shrugged at that, not the least bit bothered by the insult. He’d heard it all before, especially from the other kids in the labs. As far as being a gadgeteer and devisor went, he was on the low end of the spectrum, and about as low tech as those powers could get. There was no point in getting upset by the simple truth.
“Never underestimate the power of duct tape,” Fixx responded with a cheerful grin. “Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.”
Iron scowled, and without warning, shoved Fixx, who fell backward in his chair and landed on the ground. Instantly, several people responded.
Aegis stepped forward, asking, “Do we need to have a talk about picking on people who can’t fight back?”
At the same time, Cerberus suddenly had two identical clones appear, one on each side of him. The three of them glared at Iron with cold expressions.
“Hey, calm down,” Fixx said as he got back to his feet. “No fighting in the dorm…”
“You’re pathetic,” Iron announced, the contempt still clear in his voice. “This is a waste of my time.” And with that, he turned and left the room.
“Well, that was fun,” Doorstop commented wryly.
“Yeah,” Cerberus agreed. “And knowing Devon, he’ll probably come back in ten minutes or so to try it again.”
Fixx just grinned. “No problem. I can take care of that.”
Cerberus and Doorstop both gave him skeptical looks. “How?” Doorstop asked. “No offense, but you wouldn’t stand a chance against him…”
“Who said anything about fighting him?” Fixx responded with a chuckle. Then he reached into the satchel that almost always hung from his side and pulled out a roll of duct tape. “Duct tape. The solution to all of life’s problems.”
Fixx left the common room and went to the hall where he lived, just in time to see Iron disappear into his room. With a cheerful grin, Fixx tore off a foot long strip of duct tape, then went up to Iron’s closed door.
“This should do nicely,” Fixx mused to himself, right before sticking the strip of tape across the door and the frame, taping the door shut.
Along with being a gadgeteer and devisor, Fixx had another power, one that seemed to be an extension of his devisor ability. He could bend the laws of physics a little, amplifying the properties of any material he worked with. In this case, he could make duct tape much stronger and sticker than it would be normally.
Fixx gave a loud knock on the door, then stood back. It only took a couple seconds before Iron’s voice called out from the other side, demanding, “Who is it?” Fixx didn’t answer. A couple seconds later, the door began jiggling as Iron tried opening it, but the enhanced duct tape held it firmly in place. Iron began yelling and making threats, but Fixx just smiled and walked away. Iron might be able to break the whole door down, but he wouldn’t be able to break through the tape until the enhancement wore off.
When Fixx returned to the common room and the table, he cheerfully said, “The problem has been fixed. Now, are you guys up for another game?”
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Just a Girl at Heart
Whitman Cottage, Wednesday Oct 3rd, 2007
The girl awoke to the annoying sound of her alarm going off. With a snarl, she turned off her alarm and sat up in bed. The room was still dark, though she could see in it as clearly as if the lights had been turned on. She had exceptional night vision, which was one of the only good things to have come out of her mutation.
She glanced over at her new roommate, Mina Maxwell, just as Mina was climbing out of bed. As soon as Mina turned on the light, she cheerfully said, “Good morning…”
“Bite me,” the girl responded, fixing her roommate with a glare.
Mina wasn’t bothered by that. She never was. Mina was one of those cheerful and optimistic girls who always got on her nerves. And what was even worse, was that Mina was a pretty. Thankfully, she wasn’t one of those exemplar girls or she would have been completely intolerable. As it was, she was a very cute girl with shoulder-length brown hair and a smattering of freckles that made her look adorable.
The girl waited where she was until Mina ran out the door to the showers. Only then did she reach under her covers and pull out the stuffed rabbit that she slept with every night. Missus Flop had been her childhood companion back when she’d been a little girl, though she’d put the rabbit away once she got older. However, once she’d manifested and found that she really needed a friend, Missus Flop had been pulled off the shelf and put back to use. Of course, she didn’t dare let anyone know about Missus Flop, not even her roommate.
“There you go,” the girl said as she put Missus Flop into her dresser where she would be safely hidden until it was time for bed.
Once, she silently reminded herself, she’d had a real life. She’d even had a real name. Back then, her name had been Colleen Thompson, though nobody had called her that for a long time. That made sense though, because she wasn’t Colleen anymore, and never would be again. Now she had a new name, one that suited her a little better.
After a minute, the former Colleen left her room to go take her own shower. As she stepped into the hallway, she saw Porcelain, who lived in the next room over, and gave a polite nod. Porcelain nodded back, cracking her porcelain skin in the process, in a way that looked painful. However, Porcelain never complained about any pain, so the girl never said anything about it.
When the former Colleen reached the showers, she took a quick glance around the room to see who was present. A couple girls were already in the stalls, but there were two others who had just finished up with their showers.
Bethany, AKA Drama, or more commonly known by the derisive nickname of Drama Queen because of her attitude, gave her a look of disapproval. She was used to people looking at her like that, though that didn’t mean she liked it.
“Watch it,” she snapped at Bethany, who quickly hurried out of the room. Once Bethany was gone, she grumbled, “I don’t know how Porcelain puts up with that bitch.”
“Porcelain doesn’t have much choice,” Stryff answered. “But at least she’s immune to Drama’s powers. You know what Drama did to Mina when they were rooming together…”
“Yeah,” the former Colleen responded with a scowl.
The girl felt sorry for anyone who had to room with Bethany, but at least Porcelain didn’t have it as bad as Mina had. All that Porcelain had to worry about was Bethany’s bad attitude. Back when Mina had been rooming with Bethany, the bitch had used her powers to manipulate Mina’s emotions and even control her a bit. That was why Mina had been moved into her room just a week earlier.
She looked Stryff over, noting that the blue-skinned girl was using two of her arms to dry herself off with a towel, while using her other two arms to brush her hair. Between the extra arms, the dark blue skin, and the red eyes, Stryff looked just as scary as she did. It was no wonder the two of them got along as well as they did. Both of them had to deal with the same kind of problems, at least for the most part.
“Later,” she told Stryff, before stepping into an empty stall.
While the former Colleen showered, she thought about Stryff and how lucky the other girl was to still have a family. When Stryff had manifested, her family had remained by her side, helping her deal with her changes and all the problems that came with them. She hadn’t been nearly as lucky.
She thought of her own mother, a ‘pillar of the community’, who never missed a Sunday service, or a chance to let other people know that she was a better person than they were. When she’d manifested as a mutant and began to change, her mother had been quick to point out that this was her punishment from God, for being such a wicked girl. Her mother had told her that her heart must have been full of darkness, and that if she’d really been the good person she pretended to be, and had truly accepted God, then this never would have happened to her.
Her father hadn’t been any better. He was a firm atheist and didn’t believe that she was possessed by the devil or doomed to Hell. Instead, he thought she was just a dangerous mutation, and a cancer cell in the human gene pool, who shouldn’t be allowed to spread.
She thought that it was ironic, that her parents, who hated each other and had never agreed on anything for as long as she could remember, had finally found one thing that they could agree on. That she was a monster.
If it hadn’t been for a sympathetic neighbor who’d learned about her situation and sponsored her for Whateley, she had absolutely no idea where she would have been. At the very best, she would have been living on the streets. She didn’t even want to think about where else she could have ended up, like an unmarked grave.
The girl finished her shower and left the stall, letting the next girl take her place. Then she went over to one of the sinks and began to dry her hair. Her eyes locked onto her reflection and she scowled a little more deeply, feeling another stirring of bitterness and resentment.
Her skin was pure black, the color of tar, and a pair of yellow eyes stared back from those dark features. A pair of horns grew from her forehead and curved back, being a perfect match for her long devil’s tail. She really did look the part of a dark-hearted monster from Hell, just like what her mother had called her.
Darqueheart turned away from the mirror, wrapped her towel firmly around her body, and made her way back down the hall to her room. When she stepped inside, she saw Mina was already back and mostly dressed. At that moment, her roommate was pulling up a pair of mix-matched socks. One was bright yellow while the other was pink with red hearts all over it.
“You and your socks,” Darqueheart said.
“I like fun socks,” Mina said a little defensively. Then she pulled out a red and gold bow and began tying it into her hair. “Besides, I’m stuck wearing a boring uniform all day, so I need some personal touches.” Then she gave Darqeueheart a cheerful grin and added, “Not all of us can look as distinct as you do. Some of us actually have to work at standing out.”
Darqueheart was about to snap at Mina for mocking her, but the other girl looked like she was just being friendly and didn’t mean anything bad about it. After a couple seconds, Darqueheart nodded and turned to get her own clothes. Maybe Mina wasn’t that bad…for a pretty.
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Something to Prove
Crystal Hall, Thursday Oct 4th, 2007
“So, who was it this time?” John asked.
Chris Matthews finished setting his dinner tray down at the table and looked across it to his best friend John Homer. John was a slender black kid, about the same age as him. And at the moment, John was giving him a curious look.
Feeling self-conscious, Chris reached up and felt his eye. His black eye. Thankfully his regeneration was working, or he would have shown up to dinner with a lot more than just the black eye. He expected that by the time he was done eating, that would have vanished the same all his other bruises had.
“Dump Truck,” he grudgingly admitted as he sat down. “He was messing with Ribbit… You know, that green kid from Twain…”
“And you decided to jump in and play hero,” John responded wryly. “Again.”
“Someone had to do something,” Chris responded defensively.
John just gave him a look of amusement as he ate a French fry. “Look, dude, you don’t always have to fight. There are other ways to solve problems…”
This was a familiar discussion and Chris rolled his eyes at that. “And sometimes you have to fight.”
“True,” John admitted, though Chris couldn’t really imagine John fighting. John was too laid back and easygoing for that. “I just think you jump into it a little too quickly at time… I mean, it’s like you’re trying to prove something…”
Chris scowled at that, feeling uncomfortable with just how accurate John’s words were. Though Chris would never admit it, he did have something to prove, even if he wasn’t quite sure what. He’d spent his entire life trying to prove it…to prove that he was good enough. That he was tough enough. That he was worthy. He’d pushed himself as hard as he could, throwing himself into every opportunity to prove himself, but to his shame and frustration, it was never enough.
“You’re imagining things,” Chris responded in annoyance. He didn’t want to talk about this, even with his best friend.
Suddenly, John exclaimed, “Damn. Look at that ass…”
Chris didn’t bother turning to look. The last time John had said that, he’d been staring at Jericho. How John could look at that eyesore Jericho, much less stare at him, Chris had absolutely no idea. However, in spite of that decision, Chris found himself turning to look anyway, out of curiosity of nothing else. To his relief, he saw that John had been referring to Cinderella, the cute blonde girl from over in Poe.
“Not bad,” Chris said with a nod of approval. “Are you going to ask her out?”
John chuckled at that. “Naw. Cindy and I are buds, but I don’t think I’m her type.”
“Then maybe I’ll ask her out,” Chris said, only to see John smirking at that.
“Yeah,” John agreed. “You should…” Then he chuckled again, though Chris didn’t see what was so funny. Did John really think she was that far out of his league?
Chris grimaced, once again reminding himself that he had something to prove. With as many fights as he lost, he knew that he’d really have to work hard if he wanted to prove that he was worth dating. As it was, he had no illusions about his reputation, and doubted that any girls in school would want him right then. That just meant that he’d have to work harder. He’d have to show them what he was really made of.
Instead of saying anything, Chris turned his full attention to the food in front of him. After taking a few good bites, he asked, “Did you hear about Cauldron and what she did to Bunsen?”
John chuckled at that. “You mean that potion that turned his skin purple? Nope. Didn’t hear about it.”
“You’re in some magic classes with her,” Chris said, giving John a curious look. “Did you hear why?”
“Bunsen was badmouthing her potions,” John answered with an amused look. “Well, magic potions in general, but I guess I can understand why. I mean, the dudes a major chemistry nerd, so he thinks magic potions are just cheating…”
“Ah,” Chris responded, nodding in understanding. “Sort of like that thing with gadgeteers and devisors.”
Just then, a shadow fell over the table and Chris looked up to see Silo standing there, trying to look intimidating. Since the older boy normally stood eight feet tall, that didn’t take much effort.
“Hey, what do we have here?” the large boy asked with a smirk. “Aegis and Voodude…a couple fags on a date.”
Chris glared up at Silo, tensing up and preparing to fight as he did. He didn’t know why Silo had decided to try messing with them, but he certainly wasn’t about to just sit there and take it.
“Ah, but I wish that were true,” John responded cheerfully. “But unfortunately, Chris here is as straight as an arrow, so I just don’t have a chance with him…”
Silo blinked at that, obviously surprised by John’s reaction. “Listen fag boy,” he started
“You have till the count of three to back off,” Chris stated, looking up at Silo.
Chris was charged up and glowing with his golden aura, ready to kick Silo’s ass…or at least, to try his best. He knew that he probably wouldn’t be able to take the older student, but he was certainly going to do his best. There was no way that he’d just sit there while some jerk screwed with his best friend.
“Can you hold it right there for just a second,” John said cheerfully, making Chris and Silo both look at him in surprise. “I want to get your nose just right.”
John had something in his hands, a little clay doll that he was currently molding. He gave Silo a thoughtful look before making another adjustment to its face.
“That should do it,” John announced, right before he held up a long needle, that had to be four inches long.
“What the hell is that?” Silo asked in confusion. “I knew you were fag, but playing with dolls…”
“Yep,” John responded. Then he held the needle point right against the doll’s crotch and just smiled up at Silo with an almost evil expression. “It’s a voodoo doll.”
Silo stared down at John for a moment, then at the doll. His eyes locked onto the long needle and where it was placed, and for a moment, he almost looked worried, though he quickly covered it up.
“I’ve got better things to do than waste my time with some pansy wimp,” Silo exclaimed dismissively, before turning and walking away.
Chris watched the boy leave, feeling relieved and disappointed at the same time. Sure, he probably wouldn’t have beaten Silo, but he would have liked the chance. If he tried hard enough, he was sure he could have managed to win. He would have been able to show everyone how tough he really was.
After a few seconds, Chris relaxed his power, sat back down, and turned his attention back to John. “You threatened him with a voodoo doll?”
John just shrugged and put the needle and doll into his backpack. “I told you dude, you don’t always have to fight.”
Chris snorted at that and pointed out, “You threatened to stab him in the nards.”
“Naw,” John responded with a chuckle. “Total bluff. I’d need to get some of his blood if I wanted it to actually work.”
“Well, that was still pretty ballsy,” Chris told him with grin. “But I have a feeling that I’ll have to deal with him sooner or later.”
John rolled his eyes. “You just have to prove what a badass you are…”
“You know it,” Chris told him with a grin, trying hard not to think about his earlier encounter with Dump Drunk and how that had worked out. Or how all his other fights had ended. “I know I’m great, and sooner or later, everyone else is going to see that too.”
When they were finished eating, Chris said goodbye to John and made his way back to Emerson. He was relieved to see that his roommate was gone, because at the moment, he wanted a little time to himself.
John’s accusations about him trying to prove something still rang in his ears. And though Chris would never admit this to anyone, he knew how true that was. He did have a lot to prove, and he’d been trying to prove it for as long as he could remember…to his friends, to his classmates, to the Future Superheroes of America, to his parents, and especially, to himself.
Chris stared at the framed picture that rested on top of his dresser. It was a simple photo of him and his parents, taken several years ago. He’d been playing soccer at the time and had just scored the winning goal. They’d been so proud of him.
“I want you to be proud of me,” Chris whispered.
He had absolutely no doubt that his parents loved him. They showed it all the time, regardless of how well he did in sports or school. And when he’d manifested as a mutant, they’d still accepted him without question or hesitation.
His birth parents hadn’t wanted him, but his mom and dad had. They’d chosen him, had taken him home, and made him a part of their family. And not once had they ever given him reason to think they regretted that decision.
Chris wanted to…needed to prove that he was worthy of their love. That he deserved to have them as parents, even if the only one he really needed to prove that to was himself.
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Like a Peacock in the Dark
Poe Cottage, Thursday Oct 11th, 2007
Lina Samhurst stepped out of the shower stall, letting out a sigh of contentment. After the day she’d had, a long hot shower was just what she needed to relax her aching body. She especially needed it after survival class, and everything that Mr. Anderson had put them through.
While Lina dried herself off, she glanced back at the shower stall, feeling a stirring of regret over the fact that she couldn’t use the ‘special’ features in the shower. Unfortunately, the extra ‘something’ that she’d been given by her spirit, meant that her body wasn’t really compatible with the hydroflux equipment. Lina was quite jealous of the other girls who could use it, especially when they bragged about how great it was.
A few minutes later, Lina put on the smooth and silky robe that her mom had sent her. It was mostly blue and green, with bits of purple scattered through it, so it matched her hair almost perfectly. The fact that her robe was covered with pictures of peacocks only made it all the more perfect for her.
Lina was about to leave when another girl came in and paused, looking self-conscious. Of course, Lina wasn’t surprised by that reaction, not from Danica. After all, Danica was only a part-time girl and didn’t use the girl’s facilities all that often. In fact, she was probably having to fight against a lifetime of conditioning about how she wasn’t supposed to go into the girl’s restrooms or locker rooms.
“Oh, hey Lina,” Danica greeted her just a little awkwardly.
“It looks like you’re having one of THOSE days,” Lina pointed out.
She knew that Danny Franks spent as little time in his Danica form as possible, so probably wasn’t all that happy at the moment. Danica just nodded, looking a little dejected.
“You could say that,” Danica responded with a sigh. “And to make it worse, my sister put some catnip toys in my room…and Wihinape wanted to play with them.”
Lina bit back a laugh and tried to keep from smirking. Instead, she said, “That sucks,” trying to sound as sympathetic as she could.
But as Lina looked at Danica, she couldn’t help but thinking about just how hot the other girl looked. The cat-girl thing was pretty exotic, but she had a really nice body. Before Lina realized it, her body began to respond. Then Danica noticed the bulge forming in front of Lina’s robe, and they both stood there frozen for a moment in awkward silence.
“I…should get going,” Lina blurted out in embarrassment before rushing out of the bathroom. She hurried back to her room and promptly locked the door behind her. “Damn,” she grumbled, quite aware of her erection. “I just had a hot shower, and now I need a cold one. How the hell do guys live with these things?”
Once Lina had calmed down a bit, and so had her extra part, she got dressed again. Though she would have preferred to just lounge around in her robe, she didn’t think it would be a good idea to wear that to dinner.
It didn’t take Lina long to get bored of hanging out by herself in her room, so she made her way down to the common room to see who was there. Shawn and Breakdown were the only other people in the room, but they were caught up in a conversation and she didn’t want to interrupt.
Lina found a nice spot on the couch and began flipping channels on the TV, hoping she could find something good. It wasn’t often that she was able to call dibs on the remote, so she wanted to take advantage of it while she could.
A couple minutes later, Shawn and Breakdown left, then Danny came into the room. Lina gave him a curious look, since he’d obviously changed back to his male form since she’d seen him in the bathroom. She blushed at the memory.
“Hey,” Danny said as he took a seat. He gave her a self-conscious smile, clearly remembering their earlier encounter.
Lina felt her spirit stir within, and he wasn’t happy about Danny’s presence. Or it would have been more accurate to say that he wasn’t happy about Danny’s spirit. That wasn’t a surprise though because she had a peacock spirit, while Danny’s was a cougar. It was only natural that her spirit would be wary of a predator, even one who hadn’t made an aggressive move.
When Lina looked over at Danny again, she noticed that he was watching her, and that he had a bulge in the front of his pants. He turned bright red, realizing that he’d been caught. She could sympathize.
“Don’t worry about it,” Lina told him sympathetically, having dealt with the same kind of unconscious reaction herself such a short time ago. “I know you can’t really control that kind of thing…”
“Yeah,” Danny responded, obviously still embarrassed. “I guess you do.” Then he gave her a wry smile. “I guess that must be really weird for you.”
“You have no idea,” Lina told him with a sigh. Then she gave him another look and added, “Actually, I guess you do.”
Danny nodded in reluctant agreement. “I guess we both have spirits of the wrong sex.” He shook his head and looked around. “But that seems to be pretty common around here.”
Lina chuckled, though there was a little bitterness in it. “Well, there aren’t a whole lot of us flipped avatars, but I know what you mean.”
“I don’t know how Kayda handles it,” Danny admitted. “Being a girl ALL the time. It’s weird enough just being part time…”
“I have THIS all the time,” Lina said, gesturing down towards her crotch. Fortunately, it was behaving itself and remaining flaccid. Of course, Danny was really hot and sexy as a girl, but did absolutely nothing for her now that he was a boy.
“At least you can hide it,” Danny pointed out. “Most people outside Poe don’t even know about it.”
Lina scowled as she reluctantly admitted, “That doesn’t always work.” At Danny’s curious look, she explained, “I used to have a best friend named Diedre. We practically grew up together, and were total BFFs… Then I manifested and grew this…THING.” Lina grimaced. “And I suddenly started to like girls instead of guys…” She closed her eyes for a moment.
“What happened?” Danny asked gently.
“I tried hiding it,” Lina told him with a bitter smile. “I figured, all I had to do was keep it in my pants and no one would know…” She let out a snort. “Well, I started crushing on Diedre, which was pretty freaking weird. I mean, she was my besty, and suddenly, I really wanted to jump her bones. Then, one day when I was over at her place, I kind of…got really hard. She saw the bulge, and demanded to know what it was, and…”
Lina paused at that, tears forming as she remembered the look of horror and disgust on Diedre’s face. Her best friend, the girl who’d been almost like a sister to her, had called her a perverted freak. Lina winced at the memory, and at the ache in her heart that hadn’t gone away, even months later. She hadn’t seen Diedre again since then.
“I’m sorry,” Danny said a little awkwardly.
“Not your fault,” Lina assured him. “Just one of the joys of being me.”
“I understand,” Danny replied with a sigh. “Having powers is really cool, but some of the things that come with them really suck.”
Lina snorted at that, tempted to make a joke about sucking, though she bit back on it. Danny might have either gotten offended or got the wrong idea. Now, if Danny had still been Danica, that might be a different situation entirely.
There were quite a few changelings around Poe, people who’d changed from one sex to the other. However, there were a lot fewer of them like her, ones who were left somewhere in between. She wasn’t quite a girl anymore, but wasn’t really a boy either. Danny kept bouncing back and forth between the two, which meant that he could probably understand her situation a bit more than people like Alyss or Martina.
“Since I’ve got you here,” Lina abruptly said. “Do you have any advice on how to make these things behave?”
Danny squirmed a little, obviously uncomfortable with that topic. Or maybe, he was just uncomfortable about talking about it with her. “Baseball,” he said, though his tone suggested it was more question than answer. “Think about baseball.”
Lina laughed at that. “Well, if anything can bore me enough to make it go down, it would probably be baseball…”
Just then, Jinx and Rose came into the room, caught up in a conversation about one of their classes. Lina glanced at them, feeling self-conscious about the conversation she’d just been having with Danny, and hoping that they hadn’t heard.
“Hey,” Jinx greeted them a few seconds later. “What are you two up to?”
Lina and Danny quickly looked at each other, then simultaneously answered, “Nothing.” They looked at each other again, then started to laugh.
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Monkeying Around
Whateley Academy, Friday Oct 19th, 2007
“Welcome to Thunderdome,” Mischief yelled out gleefully. “Two mutants enter. One mutant leaves…”
The crowd of students cheered and hollered at that pronouncement. Monkeywrench looked around. There was no dome, just a bunch of students forming a ring around him and his opponent. They were all close enough to watch the action, while keeping their distance enough to avoid getting caught in it.
Monkeywrench then looked at Mischief, who was standing on top of a platform, dressed in an outfit that looked like it had come straight out of Mad Max. She even had shoulder pads that were made from chunks of car tires. He glanced down at himself and the loud Hawaiian shirt he was wearing. It was an awesome shirt, his favorite, but he still wished that he’d known about the whole Mad Max thing, so he could have dressed up too.
After a few more seconds, Monkeywrench turned his attention to the girl who stood across from him. She was a petite black girl, with her hair pulled back into pigtails. Trixie was his opponent du-jour, and in spite of the fact that she looked cute and harmless, he knew better than to underestimate her.
Just a couple days ago, he and Trixie had gotten into an argument in the labs, and things had escalated until they’d finally challenged each other to a duel. It probably would have remained small and private, except for the fact that they’d asked Mischief to be the referee, and she’d gotten a little carried away, as she often did. However, that was fine with Monkeywrench, because doing things this way was a lot more fun.
The furry boy grinned at Mischief, who grinned and waved back. Then he gave an exaggerated bow to Trixie, just like in those old martial arts movies.
“In this corner,” Mischief called out loud enough for everyone to hear her, “weighing in at who the heck cares, our own chunky monkey, the banana-fana-fo-fana, MONKEYWRENCH!”
There were cheers and applause from the audience as everyone got into the spirit of things, as well as a couple boos, which Monkeywrench ignored. He waved to the audience, grinning broadly as he did so.
“And in this corner,” Mischief continued, gesturing towards Trixie. “Weighing in and four hundred… No, SIX hundred pounds…”
Trixie glared at Mischief and yelled, “I do NOT weight that much…”
Mischief just grinned and blew her a raspberry. “The tiny titan of tricks…TRIXIE!”
There was another round of cheering and applause, with a few obligatory boos thrown in. Trixie just grinned and bowed, enjoying the attention.
Mischief let this go on for a minute before loudly announcing, “LET THE CONTEST BEGIN!”
“This should be interesting,” Monkeywrench told Trixie as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a banana. “And in case you were about to ask, yes, this a banana, and yes, I am glad to see you…”
“I think you need some newer material,” Trixie told him.
Monkeywrench laughed. “Says the girl with her own line of whoopee cushions… I’ll have you know that I’m as fun as a barrel full of… Well…me.”
With that, Monkeywrench pulled the pin from his ‘banana’ and tossed it into the empty space between the two of them. A moment later, it exploded into a thick cloud of yellow smoke, and his nose immediately caught a strong artificial banana scent.
In a gruff gone, Monkeywrench announced, “I love the smell of bananas in the morning…”
The thick smoke continued to spread out, though the color changed from yellow to brown, and the smell changed from banana to rotten banana, and then to something even more vile. Monkeywrench had been expecting this and immediately held his breath, though some of the audience began coughing, gagging, and moving back.
“Ewwwww,” Mischief exclaimed, holding out a folding paper fan and waving it back and forth to push the smoke back. “That was nasty… It smells like monkey farts…”
Monkeywrench just grinned. “I knew I shouldn’t have had that double bean burrito for lunch…”
“You call that a fart?” Miasma called out from the audience. “That was nothing…”
“Don’t you dare,” Mischief warned him.
“Gross,” Trixie commented, using her hand to try waving the smelly air away from her. Then she smirked at Monkeywrench and asked, “Is that all you’ve got, Fuzzybutt?”
“What?” Monkeywrench asked her with a grin. “You think you can do better?”
Trixie just responded with a smug look. “Watch me.”
The girl held out her own weapon, a green metallic sphere the size of a tennis ball. From where he stood, Monkeywrench could see that she’d even painted a Mr. Yuck face on it. Then without any further words, Trixie tossed the sphere right next to where he’d thrown his banana. A moment after landing, it exploded into a noxious green cloud.
Monkeywrench was hit with the horrific, gut-wrenching stench, that was worse than anything he’d ever smelled before, except perhaps for Miasma. He immediately began to cough and gag, as did everyone in the audience that caught the scent. He clamped a hand over his nose and mouth, though his eyes still burned. With a grimace of resignation, he held up a stick with a white flag on it and began to wave his surrender.
Mischief gagged and waved even harder with her fan as she called out, “I declare Trixie the winner of the stink bomb duel.”
“Damn, that stuff is nasty,” Monkeywrench gasped out, giving Trixie a thumbs up and a nod of approval.
Trixie just grinned. “Not bad, but you’ve got a long way to go if you want to beat the master…”
Monkeywrench just laughed at that, quite happy with how things had turned out, even if he had lost. He’d had a lot of fun, and that was what really mattered. After all, this was WAY better than his old school since he never could have done anything like this back there. It was at times like these, that he was thankful he’d manifested as a mutant. Sure, he might look like a monkey, but at least his life wasn’t boring anymore.
“I’ll say one thing for that girl,” Monkeywrench said while holding his nose. “Trixie really does make the best stink bombs.”
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Lunch Date
Boston, Saturday Oct 20th, 2007
Maxine Granger calmly strolled down the sidewalk, keeping a close watch on her surroundings without looking like she was. She wanted to make sure that there were no signs of trouble, or of anyone following her. After that incident in Berlin, Maxine was especially careful to make sure that this trip away from campus didn’t become a repeat.
“Without Melissa,” Maxine quietly mused to herself, “this trip should be a lot less eventful.”
With a faint wry smile and a shake of her head, Maxine thought about her hyperactive roommate, who was a natural born trouble magnet. Maxine never knew what to make of the other girl, who alternately annoyed and amused her, not that she’d ever admit to the latter.
Then, Maxine turned her attention back to the business at hand, and promptly stopped to tie her shoe. While she was doing this, she glanced into the store window beside her. The whole window was reflective enough that it almost could have served as a mirror. In fact, Maxine could clearly see her own face staring right back at her.
Maxine was pretty, in a fine-featured and delicate way, almost like a doll. Unfortunately, she was also a little small for her age, petite as she liked to think of it, which made her appear a little younger than she actually was. Thanks to a side-effect of her mutation, she also had pointed ears and long magenta hair, which gave her an almost elven appearance. That had caused a little confusion as she’d been mistaken for being one of the Sidhe students on campus on several occasions.
Looking like this was useful, because people always underestimated her, but it could be incredibly frustrating too. For one thing, nobody took her seriously, and for another, boys overlooked her almost entirely, seeing her as a ‘little sister’ or someone to protect, but not as a potential date.
However, Maxine didn’t dwell on her reflection or the frustrations caused by her appearance. Instead, she was using the reflective surface of the window to look behind her. This was a trick that her father had taught her before his unfortunate death. To her relief, there was no sign that anyone was tailing her.
Once Maxine was sure that nobody was following her, she slipped through the door of a small café, then made her way towards the back corner. There was already someone sitting at the table, a man in a nice suit, with dark hair that was starting to turn grey.
“Maxine,” he greeted her politely, gesturing for her to take the empty seat. “I’m pleased that you were able to make it.”
“I had to ditch a couple of my classmates,” Maxine responded. “And our upperclassman escort.”
The waiter came over and poured a glass of water. Maxine took a sip, fully aware of how they must look to the wait staff or anyone else who saw the two of them sitting together. Most people would make the false assumption, that the man sitting across from her, was her father. They had no idea that her dad was dead, having been killed a year ago by some overzealous hero. And if they’d known who her current companion really was, most people would have rushed out of the café as quickly as they could.
Maxine’s companion was a semi-retired supervillain known as Focus, who was not only her mentor, but also her sponsor to Whateley Academy. Focus was the one who paid for her tuition, and even gave her a decent stipend for spending money.
“How do you like your new school?” Focus asked politely. “Are you getting along with your roommate?”
“School is fine,” Maxine responded. “Very strange though. My roommate is…interesting.”
“Interesting good, or interesting bad?” Focus asked curiously.
Maxine smiled wryly before answering, “Both.”
Melissa was very good at keeping Maxine on her toes. If Maxine didn’t pay attention, she might end up the victim of another of Melissa’s practical jokes, such as when she’d found her bed short sheeted, or woke up in the middle of the night with a hand full of shaving cream.
“I suspect my roommate may be insane,” Maxine commented. “Then again, her role model is the new art teacher, a retired villain called the Imp.”
Focus suddenly looked more interested. “The Imp teaches at Whateley?”
“You know her?” Maxine asked.
“I’ve worked with her on several occasions,” Focus responded, looking faintly amused. “The Imp is one of the best in the business, and in spite of her normally eccentric behavior, she’s surprisingly professional while working.”
That surprised Maxine a little, because she had a hard time imagining the Imp being professional. Then again, she had a hard time imagining that woman as a teacher too.
Maxine nodded, and continued updating her sponsor on how things have been going at school. “I’ve decided to join one of the clubs on campus, and am currently a probationary member.”
“What club is that?” Focus asked.
“They’re called the Masterminds,” Maxine started, wondering how she could explain what the group was about.
However, Focus nodded in approval. “The Masterminds could be a useful club for you.”
“You’ve heard of them?” she asked in surprise.
Most of the students on campus didn’t really know about the Masterminds since the club didn’t officially exist. She certainly hadn’t expected someone from off campus, who’d never even attended Whateley, to know about them.
Focus took a sip of his drink, before explaining, “The last student that I sponsored at Whateley, was also a member. Her membership provided a number of much needed benefits, including practical experience in the business. I expect the same will be true for you.”
“I hope so,” Maxine admitted. “So far, I’m not really impressed by the other members.”
“I doubt if many of them have your experience prior to joining…Ironworks.” Focus said.
Maxine scowled at that. “I’m not using that codename at Whateley. I don’t want anyone there to know…”
“That you’ve already been active in the business,” Focus finished for her, before giving her a thoughtful look. “Establishing a second identity could be quite useful. I hope you that you’re able to continue that…Lodestone.”
Maxine smiled faintly. “Me too.”
Focus stared at her for several long seconds before musing, “You know that your father once worked for me, for over a year…”
“Yes,” Maxine agreed.
Focus had told her this before, during the meeting where he’d offered to take her under his wing, and to sponsor her at Whateley. Her dad had never mentioned Focus, but then again, he’d rarely mentioned any of his employers by name. He’d always just referred to his employer, whoever it was at the time, as ‘the boss’.
“Frank Granger had no special powers, gimmicks, or skills,” Focus said, talking to himself more than Maxine. “He was low-tier hired muscle, what many would call a minion or a henchman. However, he was hard-working, diligent, and professional. Those traits are hard to find in that profession, and I respected that about him.” His eyes went back to Maxine, and he continued, “You are smarter than your father, and much more powerful, but I still see much of him in you.”
“Thank you,” Maxine said a little awkwardly.
“You have a great deal of potential,” Focus told her with a serious expression. “You are intelligent, level-headed, and powerful, which makes for a potent combination. I want to see you reach that potential, which is why I have invested so heavily in your future.”
Maxine bowed her head. “I appreciate everything that you’ve done for me, Mister Focus.”
The truth was, that if it hadn’t been for Focus, Maxine had absolutely no idea what she’d be doing now, or in her future. When they first met, several months ago, she’d been focused on taking care of her father’s unfinished business, collecting on the debts owed to him, and dealing with his unresolved grudges. Focus was the one who made her realize that she needed to start thinking about her own future, and who’d offered her several opportunities she’d never considered.
“Why don’t we order,” Focus suggested, picking up the menu and only glancing at it before closing it back up. “We can continue our conversation while we eat.” Then he smiled faintly before adding, “I recommend the lobster roll. I became somewhat addicted to the lobster rolls here when I was meeting up with Michelle, the last girl I sponsored.”
Maxine nodded at that but continued looking through the menu. There were several interesting looking items, but she decided to go with Focus’ recommendation. After all, he was the one paying for the meal, along with her education, so it didn’t hurt to humor him.
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A Brotherly Visit
Whateley Academy, Saturday Oct 27th, 2007
Doug Kelly grinned as he flew through the air, seven feet above the ground, while riding a massive sword as though it was a surfboard. The sword, which was seven feet long and a foot and a half wide, was the source of Doug’s codename of Broadsword.
“WOO HOO,” Doug yelled out, not only as an exclamation of how much fun he was having, but also to draw the attention of anyone nearby. After all, this was pretty damned impressive, and he wanted everyone to know it.
Unfortunately, it was Parents Day, and soon, the whole campus would be filled with family members. Doug knew that he wouldn’t be able to get away with a joyride then, which was why he’d taken advantage of the opportunity to do it now, when it was still early and nobody had yet shown up.
Doug knew that his window of opportunity was running out, so he started back towards Emerson, slowing down as he did so. It was one thing to speed around the campus borders at high speed, but he’d been warned several times not to do so where other students might be walking. If he accidentally hit someone with his sword, he could slice them in two. Fortunately, the one time he did have an accident like that, the person he’d run into had been a PK brick.
As Doug flew across the courtyard, he saw a couple cute girls in the distance so made a slight detour to bring himself closer to them. Coming to a stop, he gave them a cocky grin and announced, “Hello, ladies…”
“Go away, Doug,” Vulpine said, her three fox tails twitching behind her. “I don’t want to deal with you today.”
“Ditto,” Cauldron added a moment later, giving Doug a look of annoyance.
“Come on,” Doug said, hopping off his sword and then picking it up by the handle. He casually slung the massive blade over his shoulder, acting as though it weighed nothing, which it didn’t. He was a warper and could manipulate the gravity and momentum of himself or anything he touched, which was how he flew his sword around…and wielded it. “You don’t need to be like that.”
“Like what?” Cauldron asked. “Smart enough not to fall for some cheesy pickup lines?”
“That isn’t very hard,” Vulpine told Cauldron with a grin.
Cauldron chuckled as she suggested, “Maybe you should go hit on Darqueheart for a bit. She might appreciate the attention.”
“She’s…not my type,” Doug responded carefully.
Though he didn’t want to admit it, Darqueheart scared him a little. She had GSD that gave her pure black skin, yellow eyes, horns growing from her forehead, and a devil tail. All in all, she looked pretty intimidating. And on top of that, she had a reputation of being…prickly when it came to the ‘pretties’ around campus. And even though Doug wasn’t an exemplar, he considered himself handsome enough to earn her dislike.
“Well, I’d love to hang around and chat with you girls,” Doug said with a cocky grin, “but I’ve got to go get ready for my visitor.” He gave the girls a wink, then casually walked away with his sword still slung over his shoulder.
Once Doug reached Emerson, he put his sword away where it would be safe. While he liked the idea of showing it off to all the people who were coming to visit Whateley, he also knew that it would be awkward to carry around all day, even with his power.
A short time later, the first bus load of visitors arrived on campus. Doug was waiting near the parking area and watched it come on. He was disappointed that HIS visitor wasn’t on board, but he didn’t have to wait much longer. When the third bus arrived, a familiar figure stepped off.
“Hey Mark,” Doug called out and waved to his big brother.
Mark was average height, with an athletic build. He looked fairly plain, except for his red hair, which was the same shade as Doug’s. Mark saw him and waved before coming towards him.
“So, this is your school,” Mark said, looking around with interest. “I think Mom and Dad would have liked it…”
“Yeah,” Doug agreed, losing his smile at the reminder of their parents, who’d been gone for several years now. Mark was the one who’d practically raised him, and was the only family member he had left, besides their grandma, who wasn’t all there anymore.
“Come on, bro,” Mark said, putting his arm over Doug’s shoulder. “Why don’t you show me around. And while we’re at it, are there any cute teachers?”
Doug chuckled at that. “Not really. I mean, they’re teachers, so they’re all old…”
“Ah, too bad,” Mark told him with a grin. “I remember my first crush on a teacher. Mrs. Blevens had the biggest rack…” He held his hands out in front of his chest to indicate how big. “I swear, we had bets going on about whether or not she was hiding watermelons under her sweater…”
With a chuckle and a smirk, Doug said, “Then maybe I’ll introduce you to Mrs. Ryan. She teaches costuming class…”
Mark gave Doug an amused look and asked, “So, are you making yourself a costume?”
“Of course,” Doug responded, puffing himself up and bragging, “And its WAY more awesome than yours…”
“No way,” Mark protested in mock offense. “My costume is the absolute best. I designed it myself.”
“Exactly,” Doug pointed out with a smirk.
Doug led his brother across campus towards Emerson, so he could show off where he lived now. As they walked, he pointed out the buildings and even a few of his classmates.
“That’s Knockoff,” Doug announced, pointing to one girl, who was standing beside a woman who looked like an older version of her. In a conspiratorial voice, he added, “Her mom is some kind of villain…”
“I don’t see many villains who look like that,” Mark commented, giving the mother an appreciative look. Then, as he looked around at some of the other students, he added, “Or kids… Damn, I don’t remember the girls being quite so well built when I was in school…”
“There are a lot of exemplars around,” Doug responded with a shrug. “I’m really popular among them, you know.”
“Of course you are,” Mark responded, giving Doug a noogie. “You’re my little bro. Of course the girls like you. Not as much as they like me, but enough…”
Doug rolled his eyes. “And when was the last time you had a date?”
“I’m married to my work,” Mark told him in a cheerful tone. “Yep, the old ball and chain. And she’s always got a headache…”
Doug gave his brother an odd look before saying, “You are so weird.”
“So,” Mark asked just as they reached Emerson. “You still have that huge-ass pick sticker?”
“Of course,” Doug told him proudly. “My sword is my trademark.”
Mark just gave an obviously fake cough. “Overcompensation.”
Doug glared at his brother. “You’re just jealous because I’ve got a wicked sword, an awesome costume, and I even have a better codename than you.”
“In your dreams,” Mark said, grinning as he did so. “I am the mysterious…the awesome…the incredible…”
“Blowhard,” Doug finished for him, earning a glare from his older brother. Then before Mark could respond, he asked, “So, are you still going to be around tomorrow? If so, we can go to Boston…”
“Afraid not,” Mark said apologetically, though a moment later he grinned cheerfully. “I’ve been doing a bit of fishing, and I think I’ve hooked a big one. Now, I just need to get back tomorrow and real him in…” He held his hands wide, as if showing how big the metaphorical fish was.
Doug’s eyes widened with excitement. “You’re taking down a supervillain?”
“Okay,” Mark admitted. “Ya caught me.” He held his hands together, only a few inches apart this time. “It’s not a supervillain per-se…” At Doug’s look, he shrugged. “Okay, he’s only a little fish. He’s a mobbed-up money-launderer, but if I can reel him, I can use him as bait to get some bigger fish…”
“Oh,” Doug said, feeling much less impressed by that.
“As much as I’d love to stay and hang with ya bro,” Mark told him, “I do have to get back soon.” He gave Doug a wink and cheerfully added, “Someone has to protect Buffalo from these evil art dealers.”
“Art dealer?” Doug responded skeptically. “Really?”
Mark shrugged. “It sounded better in my head.”
“LAME,” Doug told him. “You might as well just stay here and chase after our art teacher…”
“Naw,” Mark responded dismissively. “You already told me the teachers here aren’t all that hot, so it wouldn’t be worth my time.”
They stopped just outside of Emerson, and Doug pointed to one of the windows. “That’s my room, right there…”
“Fairly easy to sneak out of,” Mark commented with an amused. “A pretty short jump…especially with your powers. Not a bad setup…”
A moment later, Doug suddenly noticed his roommate Kyle, AKA Doorstop, coming walking to the cottage with two hot chicks. They were both older than him, and were probably exemplars, which surprised Doug a little since Doorstop was an Underdog, and not exactly good with the ladies.
“Hey, Doug,” Kyle greeted him with a self-conscious smile. He gestured towards the woman, saying, “This is my sister Bekka, and my mom…”
Doug’s eyes went wide as he looked over the two women. Bekka looked like she was about twenty, with long brunette hair, while Kyle’s mom only looked to be about ten years older.
“Hi,” Doug said with a friendly smile.
Before Doug could say anything, Mark flashed them a cocky grin and announced, “Hello ladies…”
“Oh my God,” Kyle exclaimed, giving a worried look to his mom and sister, both of whom seemed vaguely amused. “So THAT is where you get it from…”
“So, did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?” Mark asked Kyle’s mom, while Bekka laughed and Kyle just looked mortified.
Doug just stared at his brother for a moment, not sure whether he should take notes or not. If nothing else, Parents Day wasn’t going to be boring, especially with his brother around.
The End
Scales
Home Montana, Friday July 27th, 2007
Sapphire stared at her reflection in the mirror, depressed by what she saw. Some people, or admittedly, MOST people would say that the girl who stared back was very pretty, but not her. Never her.
She reached up and ran a hand over her cheek, watching her reflection copy the movement. Her skin was soft and smooth. Weak. Disgusting. WRONG.
And then there was her hair, which was a brilliant blue color and went down to her shoulders. That length was impressive when she considered the fact that she’d only had hair for a month. At least she liked the color, though that was only because it was the same color as her scales. Or, more accurately, the same color that her scales used to be.
A tear ran down Sapphire’s cheek. She tore her eyes from the mirror and then looked down at her shoulder where a small patch of scales remained. They’d lost their brilliant blue color and had become dull, almost as though they’d given up.
“My scales,” Sapphire whispered, touching her scales, some of the very few that she still had. One of the scales immediately broke loose and fell off, just like all the others had. “No…”
Sapphire winced and choked back a sob, though she wasn’t surprised.
She’d already known that even these last scales would soon be gone as well. After all, she’d been losing her scales for months…among other things.
The last time that Sapphire could remember being normal, had been over four months ago. That had also been the last time she’d shed her skin, which was one of the few things she wouldn’t miss. After she’d shed her skin, something had been wrong with her scales. Instead of being fresh and bright, a few patches of them had been dull…and loose. Shortly after this, they began to fall out…and that had only been the start of her nightmare.
Over the last couple months, Sapphire’s entire body had changed in shocking and horrifying ways. At first, it had only been her scales, but then she lost her tail. Unlike her beautiful scales, it hadn’t fallen off, but it had changed, splitting into two and forming into a pair of legs. Now, she’d lost her tail and was left with these two weird legs instead. Ugly, awkward, and clumsy legs. She hated them.
“No tail,” she muttered bitterly. “No scales. No claws…” She held out her hands, staring at the fingernails which fell short of the small claws that she’d once possessed. “No…me.”
Sapphire stared at the mirror again, glaring at it bitterly. That wasn’t her in the mirror. That was some stranger. Some…pretty.
For a moment, she was tempted to punch the mirror…to break it so that she didn’t have to look at that pretty. However, she restrained herself…barely. It wasn’t that she was afraid of injuring her hand, which she wasn’t. However, she was afraid of damaging the mirror. This was the only mirror that they had in their house, and Mama wouldn’t be happy if it was broken.
After a few seconds of fighting the temptation, Sapphire turned and walked away from the mirror. She grimaced with each step, desperately wishing that she still had her tail so she could move right.
Mama had told her that she’d get used to having legs, that all she needed to do was practice using them. Sapphire was skeptical about that, especially since she didn’t really want to get used to legs. She wanted her tail back.
“Sapphire,” her mother’s voice said from the doorway.
“Yes, Mama?” Sapphire responded.
Her mother slithered over, being graceful in spite of her large body and long tail. Sapphire was immediately envious.
“How are you doing?” Mama asked, gently putting her hand on Sapphire’s shoulder.
“I HATE it,” Sapphire blurted out. “This is all wrong…” She gestured down at herself.
“I know it isn’t easy,” her mother told her with a sigh. “But it will get easier with time…”
Sapphire bitterly spat out, “How would you know?”
The giant snake woman let out a sigh and lowered her body to be on Sapphire’s level. “I didn’t always look like this,” she reminded Sapphire. “Once, long ago…I looked similar to how you do now… For me, it was very difficult to lose my legs and grow a tail…but eventually…I got used to it. Now, I can’t even remember what it felt like to have legs.”
Sapphire lowered her eyes, feeling guilty for snapping at her mother. “I know, Mama…”
“Things will get better,” her mother promised, wrapping the end of her tail around Sapphire’s shoulders in a gentle hug. “I promise.”
The girl nodded, not believing her mother but not bothering to argue. It wouldn’t do any good.
“I’m going to go out for a slither,” Sapphire started to stay. “I mean a…walk.”
“Don’t be too long,” her mother said with a worried smile.
Sapphire didn’t answer as she turned to leave the house. Technically, it was more of a cave than a house, though it was hard to tell that from within since all the walls were flat and painted. When she stepped out of her home, she was in a large tunnel, one which served as the true ‘main street’ of the town.
The town of Home had once been a ghost town, completely abandoned until the founders bought the property, renamed the town, and then made it a sanctuary for those with GSD. Before long, they’d excavated numerous tunnels and living chambers, so now, more of the town was located beneath the surface than above it.
Numerous chambers branched off from the main tunnel, most of which were decorated to resemble the fronts of houses or businesses. Her own home was similarly decorated, almost looking like the front porch of one of the houses on the surface.
Some of the neighbors were out and about, giving Sapphire odd looks as she walked past. She winced at the attention, knowing what many of them had to be thinking.
“This was a bad idea,” Sapphire told herself, wishing that she’d stayed inside. “Maybe I should go upstairs for awhile…” Upstairs was what many of Home’s residences called the surface level of the town.
But in spite of that idea, Sapphire didn’t head upstairs. Instead, she walked a circuit around the tunnels, continuing to get odd or judgmental looks from many she passed. Even Mary, whom she’d been friends with since they were little, took one look at her and hurried off in the other direction.
When Sapphire had finished her round and was nearly back home, she saw her neighbor, Mrs. Toad, standing out in front of her own house. As far as Sapphire knew, there was no Mister Toad and never had been, but the older woman was called this because of her bloated body and warty green skin.
Mrs. Toad glared at Sapphire with an expression that was a mixture of jealousy and anger. “You don’t belong here,” she exclaimed bitterly before spitting out the insult, “Pretty…”
Sapphire winced at those words, especially since Mrs. Toad had always been nice to her…until she’d changed. Ever since then, Mrs. Toad, like many others in Home, had turned against Sapphire, telling her that she was no longer welcome there.
Without saying a word in response, Sapphire rushed to her own door, shaking from the emotion and desperate to escape her neighbor’s attention. As soon as she was inside her own house with the door closed behind her, she let out a sigh, though it did little to make her feel better.
“Why are you crying?” Sapphire heard.
She looked up to see her sister Opal, who looked like a smaller version of their mother, but with white scales instead of black. Sapphire felt a tinge of envy at the sight of her little sister, resenting the fact that Opal still had her tail and scales while she’d lost all of it.
“I’m not crying,” Sapphire lied, her voice a little sharp.
“Why don’t you go play with Ruby and Emerald,” their mother suggestede as she slithered into the room.
“But…,” Opal started to protest, until a pair of black scaled hands gently pushed her towards the door to the next room.
“Go,” their mother insisted firmly. Once Opal was gone, she hurried to Sapphire and wrapped the girl in a hug. “It’s all right honey…”
“No, it isn’t,” Sapphire protested tearfully. “It isn’t all right. It’s never going to be all right again…”
“Things will get better,” her mother promised. “Your new school will help you, and I’m sure you’ll make many new friends.”
Sapphire whipped at the tears on her cheeks. “I’m just a pretty now… Everyone here hates me…”
“They don’t hate you,” her mother told her with a sad smile. “But some people have a hard time…being reminded that outside of Home…that they’re the ones who are different. Some people don’t like that reminder.”
“Mary won’t even talk to me anymore,” Sapphire pointed out quietly. “And Mrs. Toad told me I don’t belong here…”
Sapphire’s mother gave her another gentle hug, then said, “Wait here… I have something for you…”
“Something for me?” Sapphire asked in surprise and curiosity. Then her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Is it more pants?”
Instead of responding, her mother just smiled and quickly slithered out of the room. She came back a minute later with something in her hands, though Sapphire couldn’t make out what that something was. At least not until her mother stopped and then held it out.
Her mother held out a blanket… No, Sapphire quickly realized, not a blanket. A cloak. There was a hood. But what really caught Sapphire’s attention was the color… The whole cloak was a brilliant sapphire blue, the same beautiful shade that her own scales had once been.
“Mama,” Sapphire started, not sure what to say. She moved a little closer and got a better look at the cloak, then gasped as she realized that the whole thing seemed to be made from scales… “Are these…?”
“Your scales,” her mother told her. “I saved them…as many as I could…and I used them to make this for you…”
Sapphire’s hands shook as she took the cloak from her mother and quickly put it on. She pulled the hood up over her head and then pulled the cloak tightly around her.
“My scales,” she whispered, feeling nearly giddy at having her scales back, even if they were no longer attached to her body.
“No matter what you look like,” her mother told her with a smile, “you’re still my beautiful little Sapphire… You’re still the same little girl who hatched from that egg all those years ago…”
“Thank you, Mama,” Sapphire said, grabbing her mother and hugging her tightly. “Thank you…”
Sapphire smiled as she continued to hug her mother, absolutely loving her new cloak. For the first time in months, she actually felt like herself again.
--------------------
Of Stryff and Games
Whitman Cottage, Sunday Nov 4th, 2007
Stryff smirked as she looked around the table, not even watching the cards as she shuffled them. Since she had four arms, she was able to shuffle two decks at once, and she did so with as much flair as she could. The other girls were suitably impressed.
The girl who’d once been known as Claire Babich, and who still was among her family, knew that she was quite a sight. With four arms, blue skin, and red eyes, some people might mistake her as some kind of fiend from Hell. In fact, there were a few people back home who’d done exactly that.
Of course, none of the other girls at the table were the least bit bothered by Stryff’s appearance, which was no surprise since most of them had their own issues that way. In fact, of the four girls currently present, Mischief was the only one who could pass as normal, and ironically, she was probably the strangest of them all.
Stryff stared across the table at Mischief for a moment, chuckling as she did so. Not only did that girl brag about slipping a whoopie cushion under a super villain, but she was also the head of a super villain fan club. Of course, the villain in question was the Imp, who wasn’t like any other villain that Stryff had ever heard of before. However, she was still a villain and there was the principle of the thing.
To Stryff’s left was Darqueheart, who looked even more demonic and frightening than Stryff herself. She had black skin, horns which grew out of her forehead and curved back, and she even had a devil tail.
And then, to Stryff’s right, there was Porcelain, a girl whose entire body looked as if it was made of white ceramic. When she was motionless, as she was at the moment, she resembled a statue or overgrown porcelain doll. However, as soon as she moved, the ceramic began to crack and she became a thing of nightmares. Porcelain looked like she could be the monster in some cheap horror movie, not that Stryff would ever tell her this.
“Stop showing off with the cards,” Darqueheart said in annoyance.
“I think it’s cool,” Mischief disagreed, watching Stryff’s hands with an expression of fascination.
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” Stryff admitted. “After I grew my extra arms, the doctor gave me some exercises to help me get used to using them…and help me build a bit of control. Shuffling cards was one of them.”
“A reasonable exercise to improve your coordination,” Porcelain said with a nod of approval.
Stryff nodded back. “Yeah, the extra arms really made me take a hit to my dexterity score.”
She smiled faintly at the Dungeons and Dragons joke, thinking of her brother and how he loved that game. He’d even talked her into playing a couple times, though it had never really been her thing.
“Read em and weep,” Stryff announced as she put the now fully shuffled cards onto the table in two separate stacks.
“This isn’t poker,” Darqueheart pointed out. “And you still have to pass the cards out…”
“Nope,” Mischief grinned, “It’s Bunnies of the Damned…”
Mischief pointed to the box that the game had come in, indicating the cover art. There was a picture of two cartoon rabbits, one of whom was wielding a flaming chainsaw while the other had an axe that was dripping blood. In the background, there was the shadowy silhouette of third rabbit, one with horns and a devil tail, very similar to what Darqueheart possessed.
“Where do you keep finding these games?” Stryff asked as she began dealing the cards from one of the two decks she’d shuffled, making sure everyone had five cards to start with. The second deck was the special action stack, which they would draw from as they played.
“Its made by the same people who made Xombie Horde,” Mischief bragged.
Stryff looked at her hand, taking time to examine each of her five cards. Three of them were cartoon pictures of rabbits, similar to the ones on the cover of the box. One was a cute and innocent looking bunny with a knife hidden behind its back, another was of a stuffed rabbit that had been torn up a bit and had some of the stuffing leaking out, while the last one was of an evil looking bunny holding a grenade. Her final two cards were weapon cards, containing pictures of a fireball and a trident.
“I’ll start,” Mischief announced, placing one of her cards down onto the table in front of her, face up. “I play Cinnamon Bun…with plastic caltrops…”
“I think those are supposed to be Legos,” Darqueheart pointed out.
Porcelain didn’t say a word as she placed her own card onto the table in front of her. It was a picture of a rabbit with a mohawk and lots of gold chains, with the words ‘Mister B’ printed on the top of the card. Then she added another card to the space in front of her, one which looked like a giant pillow…with spikes sticking out.
“My turn,” Stryff said, placing her stuffed rabbit card onto the table. “I play Ragged Rabbit.” At least, that was the name printed at the top of the card. “And I’m giving him a trident…”
“I play Ghengis Bun,” Darqueheart announced upon her turn. “And I’m using a raisin cannon to shoot Porcelain…”
“I don’t think those are raisins,” Mischief exclaimed with a giggle.
Stryff laughed at that, suddenly reminded of old times, back before she’d mutated. Back then, she and her friends would sometimes steal some beer and cigarettes from their parents, then hide out and play poker. It had been a lot of fun, but she knew that she’d probably never see any of them again.
Her eyes went down to her hands, to all four of them. She might be a bit of a freak, and she’d lost nearly everything because of that, but she didn’t really mind. Truthfully, she was better off without her old life.
For nearly as long as Stryff could remember, she’d seen the path her life would take. She probably would have dropped out of high school, maybe getting knocked up first. Then would have come welfare and a series of bad jobs, leaving her trapped in a crappy trailer park for the rest of her life. It had happened to her mom, her aunt, and a lot of other people she knew. In fact, her friend Tina, whom she’d grown up with, had already gotten pregnant.
Manifesting as a mutant had changed everything for Stryff. Sure, she’d been run out of her hometown, barely escaping ahead of the Humanity First mob, but she had power now. She had magic…and opportunities that she’d never imagined before.
Now, Stryff would never have to become trapped in some trailer park. Of course, she couldn’t go back to the one she’d grown up in even if she did want to, which she most definitely didn’t. The last time she’d seen the place, it had been in complete ruins…courtesy of an accident with her power. There was a reason she’d taken the name Stryff.
But by some miracle that Stryff still didn’t understand, her family had all stuck by her. They could have run off and abandoned her, which had happened with some of her classmates, but instead, they’d had her back.
Stryff remembered how her geek of a brother had risked his own life to distract the angry mob so she could get away. Her mom had abandoned her job, her trailer, and nearly everything she owned to get Stryff to safety. And her dad, whom she’d usually only seen every other weekend while growing up, had managed to hook her up with Whateley.
“Who knew a mechanic had connections,” Stryff muttered to herself with a chuckle and a shake of her head.
Fortunately, it turned out that one of her dad’s customers was a mutant who’d told them about Whateley and how they could take care of the normally expensive tuition. That was something her parents would never be able to pay for themselves.
“Your turn,” Mischief exclaimed, getting Stryff’s attention. She’d been a little lost in her thoughts and had missed a couple moves in the game.
“Okay,” Stryff said, drawing a couple cards to replace the ones she’d already played. She glanced at her new options, then placed a card down in front of her. “I play Bunzilla…and I give him a fireball…”
“Appropriate for a kaiju,” Porcelain observed. “I believe kaiju creatures are known for breathing fire…”
“Fire,” Mischief agreed. “Atomic breath. Toxic gas farts…”
“And that is the reason I’ve never been interested in giant monster movies,” Darqueheart said.
Stryff just grinned. “Well, instead of attacking, I’m drawing a special action card…” She looked at the card and then grinned. “It looks like I get to steal someone’s weapon…”
“Not fair,” Mischief protested in mock offense.
“That is within the rules,” Porcelain told Mischief.
“My brother would probably like this game,” Stryff commented, earning a couple curious looks since she rarely talked about her family. “He’s into this kind of thing…”
Just then, there was a noise from the side as someone new entered the common room. Stryff looked up to see Diamondback entering the room, trailing her like snakelike tail behind her.
Stryff went silent, turning her attention away from the snake girl but not losing track of her presence. It wasn’t that Stryff had any problems with Diamondback…or even her GSD. From what Stryff knew, the other girl was actually quite friendly, though they’d never really spoken. That was the issue. Stryff had always been wary of anyone she didn’t know well, and even more so since her manifestation, which often made her come across as extremely shy.
For the next few minutes, Stryff continued playing the game, aware of the snake girl in the room and barely saying a word. Once Diamondback finally left, she relaxed a little and turned her full attention back to the game at hand.
“And another action card for me,” Stryff said, drawing the card and then looking at it. She glanced from her new card to the ones she had sitting on the table and grinned before slapping down the new card and exclaiming, “BUNZAI!”
“A fortunate draw,” Porcelain said. “I believe that lets you win the game…”
“Yep,” Mischief agreed. “That lets her attack with all her bunnies at once, and she has enough to win…”
“Another game?” Darqueheart asked as she began picking up her cards.
“Sure,” Stryff responded with a grin, making a show of cracking her knuckles and stretching out all her fingers. “I’ll shuffle…”
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Tricks of the Trade
Whateley Academy, Thursday Nov 8th, 2007
Abigail Preston crouched down behind a bush, carefully watching her target. She snickered as she did so, though clamped both hands over her mouth to keep from being overheard and giving the game away.
The target of her attention was a simple square box which sat out in the open where anyone could see it. It was eighteen inches in length, width, and depth, colored a bright yellow, and wrapped with a red ribbon.
“He should be here soon,” Abigail muttered, having carefully chosen this exact place and time. After all, she’d watched her target for nearly a week to see his routine, so she knew that he came this way every day at this time. “And there he is…”
Abigail spotted her target, the large boy named Buster. Buster was a typical thug and bully, the kind of person that she really didn’t like. And to make it worse…at least for him…he’d chosen to pick on her last week. Or at least, he’d called her a couple names, then took some of the supplies she’d been bringing home from her lab and threw them. She still remembered the way he’d laughed at her when he’d done this.
“Let’s see who will be laughing now,” Abigail whispered as she gleefully rubbed her hands together.
Buster saw the package and quickly went to check it out. Abigail saw him look at the note she’d left on the package, though she hoped he was smart enough to read it.
PROPERTY OF ABIGAIL PRESTON. DO NOT OPEN!
Of course, even if Buster did read it, he’d have no idea of who she was, which was intentional. Nobody at Whateley called her by her real name, not even her closest friends. However, she’d used her real name on the box because even Buster wasn’t stupid enough to open a box labeled ‘property of Trixie’. At least, she didn’t think that even he would be that stupid, though she could be wrong.
“Three,” Abigail began counting down with a giggle. “Two…”
She hadn’t even reached one before Buster tore open the box, clearly ignoring the warning that she’d placed there…just like she knew he would. That was just like putting a big red button on something, and then putting a sign warning not to push it. Sooner or later, someone like Mischief…or herself, she had to admit, would come along and push it, just to see what would happen.
POOF!!!
The present exploded and an instant later, Buster was completely hidden within a thick cloud of glitter. Abigail burst out laughing, especially as the cloud cleared enough so that she could finally see Buster within…and the confused look on his face.
Everyone on campus knew that Abigail made the absolute best stink bombs, but they always forgot that she made other things too. She was a gadgeteer who specialized in ALL practical jokes, not JUST stink bombs.
Abigail was especially proud of her ultimate glitter bomb. She’d custom made the glitter out of a special material that really held a static charge. That stuff would cling to Buster and hang around for WEEKS…
She laughed even harder as she imagined his frustration in trying to get rid of the glitter. In fact, the only way that could have worked out better would have been if he’d opened the present in his dorm room.
Suddenly, the sound of clapping came from behind Abigail. She snapped around and was surprised to see a teacher standing there, and not just any teacher, but the most impressive AND intimidating teacher on campus.
“Not bad,” the Imp said as she stopped clapping.
The Imp stared out at Buster, who was hurrying away from the package, desperately trying to brush the glitter off of him. Something which Abigail knew would be almost useless because she designed that stuff to stick around.
“From the color and shape of that box,” the Imp continued with a grin, “I assume that you’ve been watching the Smurfs…”
“What?” Abigail asked, surprised that any teacher would catch the source of her inspiration from something like that. Then she defensively admitted, “Jokey is my favorite…”
The teacher leaned forward and in a conspiratorial tone, said, “Mine too.”
Before Abigail could think of how to respond to that, the Imp turned and started to walk away. This surprised Abigail, who’d expected to at least get lectured from the prank, not complimented over it. Of course, she knew that Imp was different from most teachers, but this was still unexpected.
Abigail shook her head, took one more look in the direction where Buster had gone, then quickly hurried away in the opposite direction. Buster had been too distracted to look for her, but sooner or later, he’d figure out who was behind that present and then he’d come looking for revenge.
“That’s gonna be fun,” Abigail told herself as she gleefully rubbed her hands together. She’d have to be ready with a full arsenal of stink bombs and other things to chase him off. “Maybe I can trade Monkeywrench something for some of his banana peel grenades… Those things are hilarious…”
A short time later, Abigail reached the labs and her work station, which was still covered from the materials she’d used to make her glitter bomb present. With barely a thought, she brushed it all off the table to make room, then began to look at what she should make next.
“Brick grade whoopie cushion?” Abigail asked herself. Her last one had been all right, but it hadn’t held up quite as well as she’d hoped and had blown out. Now, she had ideas for how to improve them. Then she shook her head. “Maybe a new brick grade joy buzzer…” She grinned at that one.
Other ideas quickly ran through her mind, many of them improved versions of other inventions that she’d already tested on other people…usually Monkeywrench or Mischief. Those two were always good for showing off to since they could appreciate her work.
“Pie bomb?” she mused aloud. That one definitely had possibilities. “Super silly string?”
Of course, there were always the stink bombs which she’d become famous for. However, she’d done them so often that there was a risk of them becoming boring and predictable. She needed something else. Something…extra.
“Maybe a bigger stink bomb,” she considered. “Or maybe I should just make it even stronger…” That idea definitely appealed to her. “But how?”
Abigail was a gadgeteer, not a devisor, so there was a limit to what she could do, especially since she wasn’t even a high level gadgeteer. Still, she was good at figuring out how to get what she wanted out of her pranks, so she just needed to figure out an even better base for her bomb.
“Let’s see,” she asked herself thoughtfully. “What’s the smelliest, stinkiest thing I can think of…? Besides my stink bombs.”
The answer to that one was obvious. Miasma. His stink was almost as powerful as her best stink bombs. Almost. But what if she could take his stink, use it as a base, and then somehow amplify it…
“Fixx,” Abigail exclaimed in excitement.
If she could somehow get Fixx to amplify Miasma’s stink… She burst out laughing, loving that idea, even if there were several reasons it wouldn’t work. Still, it gave her some ideas. Some brilliantly awesome ideas…
Then there was a sudden flash of insight, one powerful enough that Abigail fell off her chair and tumbled onto the ground. She barely even noticed. She had an idea. No, she had a BIG idea… The kind of idea that every devisor and gadgeteer hoped they could get because they drove all the best discoveries.
“I’VE GOT IT!” Abigail exclaimed, jumping to her feet and laughing maniacally. “I’M GONNA MAKE THE MOST POWERFUL STINK BOMB IN THE WORLD!”
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True Grit
Schuster Hall, Monday Nov 19th, 2007
Hugh Pryce sat at his desk, patiently waiting for class to start. He was always early to his history class, not because he loved history or anything like that. He just didn’t want to risk being late and getting yelled at by his teacher.
Mr. Williams was intimidating…even more so than Hugh’s roommate, Boojum. Boojum might look like something out of a horror movie, but he was actually pretty nice. The same couldn’t be said for Mr. Williams, who liked to intimidate and even insult his students, especially the ones with GSD.
With that thought, Hugh absently scratched at an itch on the top of his bald head. He was always itchy, at least a little bit. It was a side-effect of the skin condition that was caused by his GSD. His skin was a greyish color and had the texture of rough sandpaper. This might be relatively minor as far as GSD was concerned, but it still visibly marked him as a mutant and made him a target for people who didn’t like mutants or people who looked different.
Hugh glanced to the desk at the front of the classroom, then towards the door. Mr. Williams hadn’t arrived yet, so class wasn’t about to suddenly start. After a moment of consideration, Hugh reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic sandwich baggie which was full of fine sand, then dumped the sand out into the middle of his desk.
“Let’s see,” Hugh mused, staring at the sand and concentrating on it.
He could feel all the tiny grains in his mind, and after a few seconds, they began to shift and move. A few seconds more and he now had a small sandcastle in the middle of his desk, one that was only a couple inches tall but which looked quite nice. Hugh would have been proud to make one like that on the beach, if he’d done it the old-fashioned way.
“Miss Imp said I should practice making art with my sand whenever I can,” Hugh thought aloud. “She said it would help me learn to control my powers better…” And he had to admit, making sand sculptures instead of just moving it around, was helping him learn better control over his powers.
Hugh was a terrakinetic, a type of specialized telekinetic who would only move various types of stone and rocks. Unfortunately, he was not a very powerful terrakinetic. In fact, he was only rated as a TK-1, which meant that if it hadn’t been for his GSD as well, he probably wouldn’t even be at Whateley.
While he could move rock with his mind, he couldn’t move anything very large. The larger the rock, the harder and more unwieldy it felt to his mind. The smaller the stone, the easier it was for him to move, even if there was much more of it. He could move a cup of sand around with relative ease, but a single rock with the same mass, was extremely difficult to move at all.
Hugh continued playing with his sand, both practicing with his power and killing time until class started. The sandcastle reformed into a cube, then a pyramid, followed by a tiny copy of the sphinx. And as he practiced, he only paid half-attention to his classmates as they filled the seats around him and began chatting.
A moment later, a voice cautiously asked, “Grit?”
Hugh looked up upon hearing his codename and was startled to see Stryff standing there. She was an attractive but odd looking girl, with dark blue skin and hair, four arms, and red eyes. Like his roommate Boojum, Stryff’s GSD made her look a bit intimidating, though her usual shyness tended to dull the effect.
“Here,” Stryff said, holding out a pin.
The pin had a symbol which resembled a smiley face with horns and a tail, and Hugh immediately recognized it as Miss Imp’s symbol. Pins like this, from Miss Imp’s fan club, had been popping up around campus recently.
“Um, thanks,” Hugh responded.
“Put it on,” Stryff quickly told him. “I’m giving one to everyone…”
Hugh’s eyes widened at that. “But Mister Williams…”
Stryff smirked at that. “I know.” Then she moved on, handing out more pins.
For a moment, Hugh just stared at the pin, knowing that it would be a bad idea to wear something like that in class. At least, it would be a bad idea to wear it in THAT class. Last week, Mr. Williams had seen another student wearing one of those pins, and he’d yelled at the boy.
But then, Hugh looked around and saw that almost everyone else was now wearing one of those fan club pins. He hesitated a few more seconds, then pinned the decoration to the front of his uniform.
“He’s coming,” Doorstop suddenly called out.
Everyone dropped into their seats and put on innocent expressions, or at least most did. A few of the other students had smirks which they weren’t even bothering to hide.
Mr. Williams stepped through the door and entered the classroom, looking just as imposing as usual. The teacher was a large man, standing about six foot three, with a stocky build which made him seem even larger.
Hugh quickly scooped his sand back into the sandwich baggie and then stuffed it into his pocket. The last thing he wanted to do was get caught ‘goofing off’ in class, or at least, not in this class. Mr. Williams wasn’t as tolerant about that kind of thing as some teachers.
“Get your homework out,” Mr. Williams instructed in a gruff tone as he walked towards his desk. He paused at the front of the class to look over the students, a serious expression on his face. “Pass it to the front…”
There were grumbles from some of the students, Hugh included. Mr. Williams liked to give homework over the weekend, and often more than what Hugh thought was reasonable. Of course, Hugh wasn’t the only one with that opinion.
Suddenly, Mr. Williams froze, his eyes locked on Achoo, who was sitting up front. “WHAT…IS…THAT?” he demanded, pointing at the front of Achoo’s uniform.
“Um…,” Achoo stammered for a moment before answering. “A pin.” Then he added, “It’s from the Imp’s fan club…”
Mr. Williams’ face suddenly turned bright red, though it wasn’t from embarrassment. He was angry. No, not just angry. He was pissed.
“TAKE THAT DAMN THING OFF!” Mr. Williams snarled, stomping forward and then yanking the pin off of Achoo’s uniform.
“HEY,” Achoo protested before staring up at Mr. Williams and then cringing back in his seat, looking afraid.
Everyone stared at Mr. Williams, surprised by his overreaction. But then, the teacher looked around again, trying to regain some semblance of control and dignity. But instead, his eyes went wide and he quickly looked from one student to the next, seeing that nearly everyone was wearing one of those pins.
“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?” Mr. Williams yelled, so furious that he was nearly frothing at the mouth.
“What the hell?” someone called out. “They’re just pins…”
“JUST PINS?” Mr. Williams spat out. “THAT EVIL FREAK GOT TO YOU! SHE GOT TO ALL OF YOU!”
Mr. Williams was yelling even louder, growing larger as he did so. The teacher increased in size, reaching seven feet tall and then eight. It only took a few seconds before his head contacted the ceiling.
“Holy shit,” Teke exclaimed from beside Hugh. “He’s freaking out…”
At that moment, Achoo let out a loud sneeze, and a second later, a ball of green slime suddenly shot out across the room. It narrowly missed Mr. Williams and then splattered into the wall behind him.
Even though he hadn’t been hit, that still seemed to infuriate the teacher even more. Mr. Williams grow larger, enough so that he had to hunch over to even fit in the classroom. He lashed out, kicking his desk which flew back and smashed into the wall.
“He’s going rager,” Hugh gasped, jumping to his feet and looking around nervously. He wasn’t the only one to get out of his chair. Some of the others were already moving towards the door.
“COME OUT AND FACE ME, YOU UGLY BITCH,” Mr. Williams yelled. “I KNOW YOU’RE HIDING AROUND HERE SOMEWHERE…LAUGHING AT YOUR LATEST PRANK.”
“I don’t know about anyone else,” Doorstop exclaimed, “but I’m getting out of here…”
Hugh didn’t need any more encouragement than that, and immediately began rushing towards the door…along with more than half the class. As he escaped the terrifying teacher, he let out a sigh of relief. He’d always known that Mr. Williams could be a bit scary, but this was beyond anything he’d ever imagined.
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Head in the Clouds
Poe Cottage, Sunday Nov 25th, 2007
Emily Tran stood girl’s showers, silently letting the water run down over her body. The water was cold but she couldn’t simply turn the knob and warm it up. The nearest shower stall was over six feet away and the water wasn’t coming from any stall anyway.
“Hey, Downpour,” Lina called out to her, her voice gentle in spite of her clear annoyance. “Can you turn it down a bit? I’m trying to dry off…”
“Sorry,” Emily muttered without any real feeling.
Her eyes went up to the cloud above her head, the one that was hugging the ceiling of the room and was currently raining down, right on top of her. The cloud was nearly always there, but the rain came and went with her moods.
Emily considered her powers to be more curse than ‘power’, as did most other people near her. The ever-present cloud above her head made most people avoid her, even when it wasn’t raining, though that was hardly the worst part of her mutation, merely the most visible.
The worst part of her mutation wasn’t her powers, but a simple side-effect to the change in her body and brain chemistry from being a mutant. Specifically, the medications which once helped to control her depression, no longer worked on her.
There had been a time when Emily had been able to live a semi-normal life, in spite of her depression, but that was long since over. Now, it ruled her so-called life. Now, she just wanted to curl up and die…and she would have been able to do that if everyone else just let her.
Emily continued staring up at the cloud, letting the cold rain run down over her face and body. She tried to feel it…to feel something besides that empty spot in the middle of her very being. Sometimes it almost felt like something important…something crucial was missing from her.
“If she can’t control her powers,” Rose grumbled, “then why don’t they have her in Hawthorne?”
“She doesn’t mean it,” Cindy exclaimed, glaring at Rose.
After a moment, Emily looked at Rose, or Iron Rose as she was called. Emily didn’t remember Rose’s real name, nor honestly, did she really care. In fact, it was hard for her to care about much of anything, even the fact that she was getting soaking wet.
Then, Emily thought about something she did care about…at least a little bit. Or more specifically, someONE. Vulpine, the cute fox girl who she shared a few classes with. Emily hadn’t told anyone that she had a bit of a crush on Vulpine, because she knew that nothing could ever come from it since Vulpine wasn’t into girls…much less one like her.
“I’m sorry,” Rose said, sounding sincere. “I didn’t mean that…”
The tall and bald Hispanic girl looked a bit guilty, which was no surprise. Everyone in Poe walked on eggshells around Emily, acting as though she was fragile and might break at any moment. It was probably a little more accurate than she wanted to admit though.
Emily nodded faintly before looking away, the rain slowing down and then stopping as she did so. She had a bit more control over her powers than most people realized and could make her cloud stop raining whenever she wanted…though she usually just didn’t have the energy to bother. What she couldn’t do was make the cloud go away entirely.
Suddenly, Cindy asked, “What are you doing?” She wasn’t looking at Emily, so clearly wasn’t speaking to her.
“I’m checking the shower for any tricks,” Victory answered from just outside the closest stall. She just stood there, examining the inside. “With Jade and Beltane going at each other, it pays to be careful.”
“I can’t blame you there,” Cindy said with a shake of her head. “When two practical jokers go to war with each other, all us innocent bystanders get caught in the crossfire…”
“I wouldn’t call you innocent,” Lina commented with a snicker.
Rose snorted, then told Victory, “Good thinking. Nobody wants to find neon green cockroaches in their shower…”
Emily didn’t say anything during this exchange, though she listened to the conversation. After all, Jade and Beltane had been pranking each other for about a month and nearly everyone in Poe had seen at least seen some of the results, if they hadn’t actually been caught in the middle, herself included.
While the others were busy discussing the latest prank, Emily quietly dried herself off, then wrapped her towel around her body. Without saying a word, she slipped out of the showers, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before someone came to check on her. She’d barely had a minute alone, ever since the…incident…in the showers.
There was only a short walk to her room, but Emily was unable to make it without incident. She was only halfway there when someone came running down the hallway, laughing loudly.
“What…?” Emily blurted out in surprise as Jade ran past her, being followed by a cloud of…bubbles.
Before Emily could make sense of what she saw, Jade was already gone along with all the bubbles. This was obviously another battle in the prank war between Jade and Beltane, just one of many. But to have this happen so soon after that conversation in the showers… She quickly looked around, wondering if Jinx was nearby, though she didn’t see the other girl.
When Emily reached her room, she was not at all surprised to find her roommate absent. Breakdown…Pamela, still hadn’t returned after going home for Thanksgiving, though she’d probably be back in time for dinner.
With that, Emily looked up at the square devise that was installed on the ceiling of their room. This was a devisor grade dehumidifier, which wasn’t much larger than a smoke detector, though it immediately absorbed all the moisture out of Emily’s cloud…keeping it from raining in their room. If it hadn’t been for this dehumidifier, she knew that there was a good chance that she would have been in Hawthorne.
After the dehumidifier had been installed, it hadn’t even lasted two days before Pamela had torn it apart to figure out how it worked. That had been annoying, which resulted in a minor rain shower or two in the middle of their room. But admittedly, ever since Pamela had put the thing back together, it had been working even better than before.
Emily continued staring up towards the ceiling, but not at the dehumidifier. Instead, her attention was on her ever-present cloud, which immediately began to thin out until it was little more than a wisp.
Once Emily was done watching her cloud, she finally turned her attention to getting dressed. She would have been fine just plopping down on her bed and staying there for half the day, but she knew that it wouldn’t be long before someone came looking for her. The other girls wouldn’t leave her by herself for very long.
It didn’t take long for Emily to get dressed and ready for the day. She even had enough energy to brush her hair…a few times. It was relatively nice looking, at least compared to the days when she didn’t bother.
Emily looked to her door, expecting someone to come barging in, though she knew that was ridiculous. Everyone who kept an eye on her always knocked first, though of course, if she didn’t respond soon enough, THEN they’d barge in. She couldn’t blame them for that since she had given them reason to worry about her.
Instead of waiting for someone to come check on her, Emily decided that she might as well get it over with on her terms. She let out a sigh, then left her room and started for the common room. Since a lot of her classmates and fellow Poesies had yet to come back from Thanksgiving break, there as a good chance that she might actually have more privacy in the common room than in her own.
Emily stepped into the hallway and glanced up, seeing that her cloud was quickly reforming now that the dehumidifier was no longer present to drain the moisture. In mere seconds, her cloud was back to its normal dark color, looking as though it was about to break open and start pouring on her again at any moment.
As soon as Emily reached the common room, she was disappointed to hear a couple voices coming from inside. It looked like the room wouldn’t provide the privacy she’d hoped for. She was about to turn around and go back to her own room, when she realized that the voices belonged to Jade and Beltane…and they were arguing. Almost in spite of herself, Emily paused just outside the doorway to listen.
“YOU WERE THE ONE WHO STARTED THIS,” Jade loudly accused. “YOU MADE ME WEAR JERICHO CLOTHES! THAT’S UNFORGIVABLE!”
“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” Beltane demanded in an equally loud voice, just shy of actually yelling. “YOU STARTERD THIS WHEN YOU THREW THAT PIE AT ME…”
“Pie?” Jade asked, sounding confused.
“You know,” Beltane pointed out. “The one you had that flying Hello Kitty doll throw in my face…”
Emily peaked into the room and saw Jade staring at Beltane with a look of confusion on her face. “That sounds awesome…but I didn’t do that…”
“Well, I saw your little doll myself,” Beltane responded, standing there with her arms crossed. “And I certainly never dressed you up in Jericho clothes… Even I’m not cruel enough to do THAT to someone…”
For a moment, the two girls just stood there, glaring at each other. “But, if that wasn’t you…” Jade finally said.
“And if it wasn’t you,” Beltane added at almost the same time.
“Then who…?” Both girls demanded simultaneously.
Suddenly, Beltane’s eyes went wide in realization. “You’ve got to be kidding me…”
“What?” Jade demanded, still watching Beltane suspiciously, as if not quite believing her innocence.
Emily didn’t blame Jade, because she didn’t believe it either. Not of either of them. Both girls were too well known as pranksters, especially after they’d spent the last month going after each other like crazy.
“Who,” Beltane asked carefully, “has the ability to make it look like you were wearing Jericho’s clothes?”
“Besides you?” Jade pointed out with a raised eyebrow.
“And the ability to make me see a flying Hello Kitty doll?” Beltane added a few seconds later. “Who has the power to trick both of us…AND motivation to prank us?”
Beltane waited a few seconds until she saw the look of realization in Jade’s eyes, then both girls simultaneously exclaimed, “ABSINTHE.”
“Absinthe?” Emily quietly asked herself, thinking of the green-haired elf girl. “Gwen?”
Gwen was an illusionist, able to make people see things that weren’t there…like pretty butterflies. She was also sneaky…AND she liked to fight dirty, as Centurion and his friends had found out in their recent arena match.
“We both pranked Absinthe,” Beltane pointed out to Jade. “So, if she retaliated and made both of us think the other one did it…”
“That jerk,” Jade exclaimed with a look of surprise, which quickly turned into one of appreciation.
Emily’s eyes went wide as she listened into this. Gwen pranked the two biggest pranksters in Poe and then tricked them into going after each other? All those pranks that had been going on for the last month… All the times that she and the other Poesies had been caught in the crossfire… All of that had been because of Gwen?
“That…does sound like something she might do,” Emily admitted.
She thought about all the pranks… The paint filled water balloons… The cockroaches in the shower… Bubbles in the hallway… All that chaos and insanity… To think that Gwen had caused all of that, just by pranking Jade and Beltane…
A faint giggled escaped from Emily’s throat, nearly surprising her with the unfamiliar sound. This whole situation was so ridiculous…so funny…
“Of course, you know,” Jade loudly proclaimed with an evil grin on her face, “this means WAR!”
With those words, Emily burst out laughing. She laughed harder than she had in…in longer than she could even remember. Above her, the dark cloud began to lighten and fade away until only a few faint wisps were left. The cloud remained like this for the next two hours.
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Care Package
Emerson Cottage, Sunday Nov 25th, 2007
Collin Reynolds stepped into Emerson, a box clutched firmly in his hands. This was a care package that his aunt had sent him, delivered by a rather unexpected messenger.
“Only Aunt Kelly could get the MCO to deliver her packages,” Collin chuckled to himself.
As soon as Collin got to his room, he was going to call his aunt and thank her for the care package, and of course, tell her about the events of the day. But considering who delivered the package, she probably already knew all about the big event…and had known well before him.
“I can’t believe they let the MCO into the school,” someone said from a short distance away.
Collin looked over and saw that it was Gauntlet, talking to Cagliostro. Both of them looked upset, even a bit angry. Normally, Collin wouldn’t care if they were happy or not, but he had a feeling that he knew which way their conversation was going and he didn’t like it. A few seconds later, his suspicion was proven correct.
“And I can’t believe they let that Absinthe girl come here,” Cagliostro responded with a sneer of contempt. “It’s bad enough that she works for the MCO, but now, she’s bringing more of those bastards to the school…”
Gauntlet nodded agreement. “Maybe we should tell her that she isn’t welcome around here…”
Collin clenched his teeth and that and glared at the two other boys. After all, they were talking about his girlfriend, Gwen, who’d already had more than enough trouble from bullies like these. Then, he felt a brief moment of guilt as he remembered that he had once been one of those bullies.
Back in Collin’s old school, he’d taken offense at one of his classmates, a boy named Adam. Adam had never done anything to Collin, or even anyone else. However, Adam’s dad was an MCO agent, so Collin had believed the worst about Adam and had attempted to make his life miserable.
“I wouldn’t even think about it if I were you,” Collin snarled at the two boys.
Gauntlet smirked. “Do you think you’re going to stop us?”
“I’m good at stopping people,” Collin responded, activating his power.
A moment later, the ground around them all began to shimmer, indicating that Collin’s power was active. Gauntlet and Cagliostro quickly realized that their feet were stuck to the floor, caught in his ‘flytrap’.
“But I don’t need to stop you,” Collin pointed out. “The worst thing I could do would be to let you go after Gwen…” He chuckled. “Trust me, it wouldn’t go good for you…”
He knew that first-hand. Collin had tried chasing Adam several times, but the other boy had been much better at running away than Collin had been at chasing. It hadn’t been until much later that Collin realized that he was the one who’d been lucky. Adam might have been good at running away, but as it turned out, he could be pretty vicious when cornered.
Collin’s relationship with Adam hadn’t been a good one, and he knew that it had been his fault. He’d assumed that Adam was a jerk and a bigot…so had bullied him. He’d been so self-righteous…so sure that he was the good guy. It had been so easy to justify that bullying, to ignore the fact that he was the real jerk.
But then things changed in ways that Collin never would have imagined. Adam had manifested as a mutant and then changed…transformed into someone else entirely. Afterwards, Collin hadn’t even recognized his old victim, and before he knew it, he’d fallen head over heels for Gwen. The same Gwen that these two wanted to bully.
Collin released the two boys, letting them move their feet again. “Keep away from Gwen,” he warned them again.
“Or what?” Gauntlet responded with a sneer. “You’ll come after us?”
“She’ll send her dad after us?” Cagliostro asked. “I’m not afraid of the MCO…”
“No,” Collin answered as he began walking off. “She’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself…” Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “But she does have backup if she needs it…”
“Whatever,” Gauntlet snorted.
Collin shook his head, suspecting that those idiots would have to learn this particular lesson the hard way. He would have thought that after that arena match with Centurion and his crew, people would know better than to piss Gwen off. She might not look all that dangerous, but she liked to play dirty.
When Collin reached his room, he stepped inside and was relieved to see that his roommate wasn’t there. He got along great with Fixx, but he wanted a little privacy for his phone call.
The box was dropped right onto Collin’s bed, then he grabbed his phone from the corner of his desk where he’d left it. It was easy to spot since his desk was almost entirely clean, with only the phone and his laptop resting on top of it. This was quite a contrast to his roommate’s desk, which was nearly buried under rolls of duct tape, bottles of glue and oil, and various other items.
Collin turned his attention back to what he was doing and quickly made the call. A few seconds later, he announced, “Hey, Aunt Kelly… Thanks for the care package…”
“You’re welcome,” his aunt’s voice said from the other end. “I thought it might be useful…”
“Yeah,” Collin nodded in agreement, in spite of the fact that she couldn’t see the gesture. “This stuff looks awesome…”
With that, he opened the box and began pulling out the contents. First was a bag of chocolate chip cookies which looked delicious. Aunt Kelly liked to bake, especially when she was stressed from work, and she always made some tasty cookies.
“The cookies look good,” Collin said. “I can’t wait to eat them…”
“Just let me know if you want more to share with your friends,” Aunt Kelly said with a chuckle. “I can always send more cookies…”
Next came a belt with six pouches on it, each of which was already filled. Throwing stars, handcuffs, a Leatherman multitool, and a few basic medical supplies. There was even an extendable baton which would give him a nice reach advantage against his opponents in BMA.
“And thanks for the utility belt,” Collin told her. “This would have been really useful during our team match last week.”
“I thought you could use some holdouts,” Aunt Kelly told him, her voice serious. “You can’t always rely on just your powers. Sometimes, it pays to have a few other tricks up your sleeve too…”
Collin nodded again, happy to hear his aunt’s advice since she knew what she was talking about. After all, she was a superhero back in Seattle, so she had to deal with that kind of thing on a daily basis.
“I was a little surprised about how you delivered this stuff,” Collin admitted. “I never would have expected the MCO to bring me holdouts…”
Aunt Kelly chuckled from the other end. “True, that would normally be rather unexpected. However, Agent Wylann is a little more trustworthy than most MCO agents, and when he told me that he was planning to visit Whateley… Well, it saved me the cost of mailing the package…”
“How practical,” Collin commented wryly.
There was a long pause, which made Collin momentarily wonder if the call had dropped. Then, his aunt spoke, her voice serious. “There’s something I needed to talk to you about…”
Warning bells rang in the back of Collin’s mind. “What is it?” he cautiously asked.
“Slippery,” Aunt Kelly answered grimly.
“Slippery?” Collin asked, about to ask what was slippery until he realized that she wasn’t talking about a what, but a WHO.
Collin remembered Slippery, a supervillain who’d caused a lot of trouble for him and Gwen, back before they’d both come to Whateley. The man had kidnapped Gwen…and tried to kill her.
“What about him?” Collin asked, keeping his tone even.
There was another pause before Aunt Kelly responded, “He escaped from custody last week. And since you were the one who caught him, there’s a chance, however slight, that he might try to get revenge…”
“WHAT?” Collin blurted out, his heart feeling like it was about to jump up into his chest. “How the hell did he get away?”
“We’re not sure,” Aunt Kelly admitted. “But he is called Slippery for a reason…”
Collin took a deep breath, trying to stay calm, or at least, avoid freaking out. “And you think he might come after me?”
“It’s unlikely,” Aunt Kelly quickly assured him. “Slippery has a history of being pragmatic so he’s most likely to go to ground for some time. However, there is always the possibility that I’m wrong…and I wanted you to know so you could keep an eye out…”
“Damn,” Collin muttered, still feeling worried in spite of his aunt’s words. “He wouldn’t know that I was at Whateley…” He was trying to comfort himself. “And the school has good security…”
“Precisely,” Aunt Kelly told him. “Even if Slippery was interested in revenge, you’re still safe at Whateley.”
His eyes widened slightly in realization. “That’s why you sent me the holdouts…”
“Yes,” she admitted. “If there is any chance that he does come after you, I wanted to make sure you had every advantage I could give you…just in case.”
“Thank you,” he told her again.
After this, they continued talking for several more minutes. When the call wound down and was coming to an end, Aunt Kelly told him, “Take care, Collin. Keep an eye out for threats…and not just Slippery. The world can be a dangerous place for mutants.”
“You take care too,” Collin relied with a chuckle. “After all, you’ve got a lot more villains gunning for you than I do.”
Once Collin hung up, he carefully set his phone back down, shaking just a little as he did so. Slippery… He’d thought that he was done with Slippery, that he’d never have to see that villain again. But now… Now, it might not be as over as he’d thought.
“Gwen,” Collin muttered a few seconds later.
He wasn’t the only person who Slippery might have a grudge against. She’d been involved in his capture as well, if only because he’d been caught because he went after her. If Collin was at risk, then so was Gwen, which meant that he had to warn her right away…if her dad hadn’t already done so.
Collin took a deep breath, then strapped his new utility belt around his waist. He’d have to learn how to use everything in it, especially the throwing stars and the baton, and he’d have to learn fast…just in case.
“I can’t forget these,” Collin said, picking up the bag of cookies.
His next step was to find Gwen, assuming that she was done visiting with her dad. Collin had to talk to her about Slippery, and just as importantly, he needed to make sure she tried one of his aunt’s cookies. She was going to love them.
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That Voodoo That You Do
Crystal Hall, Monday Dec 3rd, 2007
Jon Homer sat at his favorite table in the cafeteria, though he barely paid any attention to his lunch. Instead, he was looking around, watching his surroundings and appreciating the pleasant scenery.
“You know,” Jon commented. “I love being at a school with so many exemplars…”
“You’ve said that before,” his friend Chris pointed out wryly. “But some of those exemplars aren’t exactly attractive…”
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Jon reminded him with a smirk. “And I have quite the eye for it.”
Chris rolled his eyes, which amused Jon quite a bit. He decided not to tell Chris that he looked especially cute when he rolled his eyes like that. Somehow, Jon didn’t think that Chris would take that as the compliment it was.
“And speaking of beauty,” Jon continued with a smirk as he leaned forward. “Have you asked Darqueheart out yet?”
“What?” Chris blurted out in surprise, turning bright red as he did so.
“Come on,” Jon chuckled as he pointed out, “I’ve seen you looking at her. Definitely an exotic beauty.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Chris awkwardly protested before quicky changing the subject. “I’ve looked all over but haven’t been able to find the pendant…”
Jon frowned at that, feeling both annoyed and disappointed. “Too bad…”
Chris was adopted and had no idea who his birth parents were, so Jon had decided to help him. He’d put a lot of work into making that pendant for Chris, and he’d invested most of his stored essence into it…making a magic item that could actually track down any of Chris’ blood relatives. Jon had given him the opportunity to learn where he’d come from, but unfortunately, the pendant had been lost…along with that opportunity.
Jon shrugged, then apologetically told Chris, “If I still had some of the leftover material from making the pendant, then I’d probably be able to track it down…” He shook his head, almost regretting the fact that he kept a tidy work bench and always cleaned up after himself. “Unfortunately, I don’t have the materials or spare essence to make another one. At least not for awhile.”
“That’s all right,” Chris told him. “You already helped me more than I ever could have asked for when you gave it to me… I just wish I didn’t lose it.”
“At least you know that you have a blood relative somewhere around campus,” Jon pointed out. “You might even be able to find them some other way…”
Chris had a thoughtful look on his face before he nodded and agreed. “Maybe…”
“But of course,” Jon pointed out with a chuckle, unable to resist teasing Chris a little, “that might make dating a little more complicated. You never know if any girl you date might be your long-lost sister…”
Chris gasped with a look of horror on his face which only made Jon laugh. “I’m just messing with you, man… I’m sure you won’t have to worry about something like that…”
“Damn,” Chris said with a shake of his head. “I sure hope not.”
Jon chuckled again, then finally turned his attention to the lunch that he’d been ignoring until then. The two of them continued talking while they ate, though Jon also kept track of his surroundings.
“Oooooh, nice ass,” he mused to himself, once again thankful for the number of hot exemplars. “I wouldn’t mind getting to know him a little better…”
Eventually, they finished eating and Chris hurried away, saying something about Monkeywrench and possible holdouts. Jon watched his friend leave in a hurry, then took his time putting his coat back on and leaving the cafeteria so he could head to his next class.
As soon as Jon stepped outside of Crystal Hall, he pulled his coat tight and tried not to think about how miserable the cold weather made him. He was a California boy, born and raised, and before that, his family had a long history in N’Awlins. He was not suited to these cold New Hampshire winters.
For a brief moment, Jon considered using a little magic to warm himself. It wouldn’t be difficult, though it would require a few materials like a figurine…or voodoo doll as most people would call it, and a doll sized sweater. However, he quickly discounted that idea, just as he did every other time. His grandma always told him to never waste precious magic on something he could do without magic, so if she found out that he’d used magic to keep himself warm instead of just wearing a jacket, she’d box his ears but good.
Jon muttered a quiet profanity at the cold, then continued heading to his next class. He started walking across the quad, taking the time to look out for any attractive students.
There were a few cute boy and girls, though most of them were wrapped up in jackets, which unfortunately, hid their figures. Still, this was Whateley, so there were always a few exemplars and bricks around who weren’t bothered by the weather and who continued to dress as though it was the middle of summer. The very sight brought a grin to Jon’s face.
But then, Jon spotted three guys walking straight towards him. He recognized the boys, knowing them mostly by reputation, though he’d had the misfortune of meeting them before.
“TNT,” Jon muttered in annoyance. Nitro, Truck, and Tee-Kay, three well-known bullies, and ones who seemed to take a particular delight in messing with anyone who they thought might be gay. “It looks like my lucky day…”
Unlike most of the other Poesies, Jon made absolutely no attempt to hide who and what he was. He didn’t care if the entire campus knew he was pan, though that openness did come with a few problems, such as these three.
Jon reached into his pocket and pulled out a bronze pocket watch, or at least, what looked like one. However, the insides didn’t contain a single spring or sprocket. Instead, the insides held a mixture of other things that Jon had carefully prepared.
This ‘watch’ was Jon’s gris-gris, a powerful talisman that had been spelled with protective magics. It wasn’t a traditional gris-gris by any measure, but Jon was not a traditional practitioner. He didn’t know if this would do much against those three idiots, but it was the best he had at the moment.
“I always hate this part,” Jon mused as he pressed his thumb against a sharp edge on the ‘watch’. It didn’t take much pressure to draw blood, only a couple drops, but enough to count as a blood sacrifice. “That should do it.”
Jon could feel the magic coming to life and swirling around him. But in spite of that, he still held his breath, carefully watching Nitro, Truck, and Tee-Kay to see their reactions. To his relief, they paused and looked around with confused expressions on their faces before they wandered off in another direction.
Jon smirked and put his ‘watch’ away, feeling much more confident than he had a few seconds earlier. “Works every time.”
Normally, Jon’s gris-gris helped protect him from hostile spirits and magic, but it did have this additional feature, a ‘nothing to see here’ effect which could briefly divert attention away from him. There was a reason he was able to be so open about his sexuality without fearing the bullies, and this was it.
Jon continued to watch the three boys leave, making sure that none of them came back in his direction. Just when he thought it was safe to continue on, he suddenly noticed that the other people in the quad were starting to turn around and give gasps of surprise. His eyes followed theirs.
“What the…?” Jon blurted out, his eyes going wide.
Floating in the air above the quad, there was balloon, like one of the ones he often saw in parades, though a bit smaller. This one was about seven feet tall and looked like Hello Kitty. And what was even more surprising was the fact that this balloon was holding a giant pie above its head, one that had to be ten feet across, and which was definitely NOT a balloon.
The Hello Kitty pulled back its arms as it prepared to throw the pie, and at that moment, Jon got a good look at the filling. It looked like it was some kind of cream pie, but the colors of the cream… Orange, and purple, and green… It was bright and garish, almost as if someone had taken one of Jericho’s outfits and made it into the pie filling.
A moment later, the Hello Kitty threw the giant pie, sending it flying through the air. Jon saw the obviously intended target, Gwen from back in Poe. The green-haired girl stood there with her mouth hung open in surprise before she seemed to realize that it was coming straight at her.
Jon clamped a hand over his eyes because he couldn’t bear to watch. However, he spread his fingers and watched out between them anyway, because he simply couldn’t look away. Then the pie hit with a wave of garish custard, which splattered more than a dozen bystanders.
After seeing this, Jon quickly looked back up at the balloon, which still floated there, and realized that this wasn’t quite over yet. He wasn’t sure why, but he suspected that there was more to come. So, with a muttered profanity, he reached back into his pocket for his watch again and hurried out of there as fast as he could.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Jon said, glancing back and seeing the Hello Kitty balloon explode, releasing a cloud of confetti over the cream covered crowed. “A very bad feeling.”
The End