/================================\
|       TEAM INFINITY            |
|Robert Marney, robyrt@marney.org|
\================================/


This story is copyright (c) 2002-03, Robert Marney. All rights reserved.
The most current version can be found at http://robyrt.coolserver.net/ti.html.
Last Update: 8/7/2003, complete story version 1.0


           MAJOR CHARACTERS
           ================
Alias    Real Name       Online Handle
--------------------------------------
Space    Sarah White     soccerluvr
Time     Ben Eldinson    -=34GL3-3Y3=-
Power    Rick Hughes     evilken
Mind     Timothy Walker  twalker1229
Reality  Alex Brene      trickhat
Soul     Lia Chin        purplelia46
(n/a)    Ted Kavalec     hsa_wash
Mars     John Tyler      NumberOne
(n/a)    Matthew Alnora  NumberTwo
Tao      James Sazuki    NumberThree
Lily     Jill Reddings   naturegirl13


PLOT OUTLINE
============

1. Rick / Lia - September 28, 2002
2. Timothy / Alex - September 30 to October 1
3. Ben / Rick - October 8-12
4. Sarah / Timothy - October 19
5. Timothy / Sarah - December 24 to January 12, 2003
6. Alex / Ben - January 12 to January 28
7. Ted / Rick - February 5
8. Lia - February 17 to March 8
9. Sarah / Lia - March 8 to March 14


CHAPTER ONE
===========


My name is Richard Hughes. My parents call me Richard, my friends call me Rick, my enemies call me Power. The last one is perhaps the most appropriate, 'cause power is my stock in trade -- but I'm getting ahead of myself. My English teacher says to start off with something that will grab your attention, even if it doesn't make sense, but my friend Ben says to begin at the beginning, and I have no intention of letting the teacher see this, so here goes, from the beginning, which was a cloudy night in late September.

We're all heading back from Jonah's party, way out in the middle of nowhere. Somehow, I end up driving five people home, because I had the van. I'm not usually soft-hearted like this, but I figure it would just create more problems if I left them behind. Should have left earlier -- but of course now I'm glad I didn't. Anyway, I was driving the van, and the new girl Lia had grabbed the front seat early. She's smarter than she looks, but doesn't talk much -- your typical shy Asian stuff. In the back seats are the rest of them: Alex, Sarah White, Timothy Walker and Ben Eldinson. The only one of those I know well is Alex, who looks so respectable and serious it's no wonder he gets away with all the crazy stunts he does. I'm not a big fan of his friends, but hey, to each his own. It was about midnight, so those of us who weren't completely dead were still hyper. Behind me, Sarah was trying yet again to strike up a conversation with Timothy. Now there's a guy I don't understand: the girls all love him and he just brushes them off. He insists he's not gay, of course, but that doesn't mean much, of course. So I pop in a techno CD, get on the road, and wham! this truck comes barrelling through the intersection ahead of us, clips a guardrail and flips over, right in the middle of the road. We're doing, like, 50 here, there's no way I can get out. So I decide, it's now or never, even being a freak is better than being dead. (Hey, I'm already halfway there, so... but I'm getting out of hand here.) 

I push my hands in a big forward shove motion: Ryu from Street Fighter if you must know. Yeah, I'm a total geek, get over it. You'll get my excuse later. I'm panicked and I don't get to practice much, so I don't even think of anything but a straight-up blast. The windshield liquefies, the asphalt cracks, the truck scrapes forward a bit and barely moves at all, and I think, My bad. Nothing to do but keep doing it, slam on the brakes, and hope the truck disintegrates or something. Just then Lia flashes white, like really blinding message-from-God white, and slumps forward, and then things start getting really freaky. I start going crazy, and then I go all icy cold, calm to the extreme: there I am, in this van that's still going 35 barrelling into a truck, about two seconds to live, and I'm wondering if Lia is hurt, maybe I blew the windshield the wrong way or something, so I turn off my blast and look over to check, and then we're not dead anymore and the truck is behind us. I wasn't concentrating too much, but with the whole action-hero cool-under-fire thing going on, I realize that somehow the truck started spinning, just fast enough to let us through, and I'd better pull over before a cop comes through.

So I stop the car, unbuckle my seatbelt and everything, reflexively take a look where the rearview mirror would be if it weren't in a million pieces all over the hood, and the calm is gone. Just like that, maybe it was seeing my van trashed that did it. The windshield's splattered across the hood and the road behind us, the back half of Lia's seat is gone like it was sliced with a knife, Alex is practically embedded in the middle seat behind me, and Timothy in the way back is going crazy and trying to open the window. Everybody's freaked out, but nobody looks hurt, so I ask Lia if she's all right, and she looks at me like I'm some kind of alien from Planet Zorg. It takes me about a second to figure out why, and then I realize I used my powers in front of her. "Shhhh!" I say, "Are you hurt? There was some kinda flash, do you have glass on you?" She shakes her head, breathes deeply, says, "I'm fine. What did you do!?" I lie, hating myself but doing it just the same. "I don't know. That was a pretty rough ride; everybody OK back there?" This to the rest of the van.

A chorus of yeses, some more shaky than others, but four of them anyway. Alex comes up with the first bright idea he's had all night: "Everybody outside. That way we can explain everything, and maybe see if Rick's van needs to be fixed." Everybody gets out, although Timothy and Ben in the back take a while to do it. What are they talking about, I wonder. They can't possibly have been looking at me... but it's best not to take chances, so I shoo them outside with the rest.

Alex is a natural leader and all that junk, but he's scared out of his mind just like the rest of us, so he swallows and clears his throat before he starts talking. "I think we all owe each other an explanation. Some pretty strange things happened in that car, and I think we have the right to know what was really going on. One rule, first: nothing about this is going outside of this car, period. We have enough problems without somebody's tongue slipping and landing us all in real trouble, OK? So let's get started." An awkward pause, so Alex has to make the first move himself. "All right. For those of you who don't know me" -- a nod at Lia, although it's a safe bet Ben doesn't know him either, 'cause she's the girl -- "my name is Alex, and I'm a shapeshifter. This is the trick I used in the car." He kinda... melts... and in a couple seconds he's three inches shorter and completely encased in steel, except for, like, his eyes and nose and stuff. We're all astounded, I see, except Ben and Sarah for some reason, maybe they saw him do it. Well, duh, since Sarah was sitting next to him at the time, right behind Lia. Sarah taps him on the shoulder and sure enough, it's genuine metal, it clangs and all. After a few seconds he changes back to normal, and he's wincing a little. Could be just the pressure of being a mutant freak, or maybe physical pain, doesn't matter.

Now I thought I was the only one around with some freaky power, so this just about blows my mind. Of course, Alex can't just leave it at that -- it woulda been good enough, but nooo, he's got to show us all exactly what we're getting into -- so he does a second transformation, and this time he's an exact copy of Sarah, down to the hairstyle and clothes and everything. Still wearing his ring, though, maybe he missed it. I'm still impressed a year later when he does the change-into-other-people trick, and seeing it for the first time I was just, like, Wow! Sarah leaps about two feet in the air and backs away, Ben raises an eyebrow (I'm thinking, is he stoned or something? What's his problem?) and the rest of us pretty much have our mouths hanging open. When Alex speaks, it's almost Sarah's voice, but not really. "Not perfect, but rather a good job, if I do say so myself." He can move, he can talk, he could probably fool my English teacher. I see some great slacking-off opportunities here; good thing I don't have his power, or you could kiss my grades goodbye.

"You guys are the first people I've showed this to besides my parents in first grade," says Alex. "They told me never to change where people could see me, for obvious reasons. Of course, now that people have seen me, there's no harm in telling you the rest..." He trails off, rubbing that ring of his and looking for someone else to start talking. The rest of us are all too scared to talk, so he nudges Sarah and whispers something, and she begins her explanation.

Little Miss "I'm on the cheerleading squad, watch me be happy" Sarah White is in fact ALSO a mutant with a power that makes slacking off in school easier. She takes out a locket she wears around her neck, holds it out, and opens a gateway for us, some kind of portal to an alternate dimension, straight out of the latest B-rated sci-fi movie. To us, it's just this black door-sized rectangle hanging there in space, until she reaches into it, rummages around, and comes up with her math book and calculator. Ben is kind of edging his way around our little circle while she does this, trying to see what a gateway looks like in reverse -- I'm still not sure, and I don't really care. Whatever. Alex is interested in whether her parents know she can do this. Surprisingly, the answer is no; maybe they just assume her room is clean enough or something, because she can always find stuff when she wants to. Whereas if I forgot my math book, I can maybe bust a hole through the side of the school and walk home, but that's about it.

This is getting boring. To cut a long story short, this happened to be the mutant 20th anniversary reunion and I wasn't informed. Each of us is actually a mutant, with powers that have varying degrees of coolness. Actually, our little discussion cleared up a lot of our personality quirks: Timothy's "a natural" with the ladies because he can read their minds, and Ben just happens to be able to see the future, which is why all the pranks Alex tries on him never work. Lia does some weird probability-changing stuff even she isn't sure about (the white flash I saw was her directing my blasts to just the right spot to start the truck spinning, totally on autopilot), and Sarah has her little pocket dimension thing I told you about. Trust a ditz like her to have, like the coolest superpower ever, and then fill it with hairspray and sparkle pens and stuff. 

And then there's me of course. Like every kid my age, I played Street Fighter and then went around imagining I was Ryu and throwing fireballs at people. Only one day, I really did, and burned a hole through my bedroom door. Mom really didn't want to believe I was a mutant, so she pretended it never happened and I went to the park and practiced in my spare time. It's been about ten years, and I'm still kinda shaky on what exactly I can do; it's not like I can, you know, ask somebody how to work this. Plus, I don't have something generally useful like the others; sure, if anybody tries to beat me up, I can fry them with Terry's Burning Knuckles attack from the latest video game, but it's not like that happens much. I scare 'em off first.

Now that we all know Ben is, like, this super genius fortune teller dude, we're pretty open to what he has to say, and what he says is that we don't just remind him of the X-Men, we should BE them. You know, like, fight evil and everything, live in a mansion in upstate New York with a bald super-smart mentor and his alien princess. I wish. So we become a super hero team -- Team Infinity, pretty cool name for a bunch of geeks and losers like me -- and we agree to meet tomorrow night. Meanwhile, we pile back into the van, start the car up again (at least it works), and try to figure out how to explain it to my mom and dad. I just can't think of something that will please them, so I have to tell them the truth, or at least most of it. I wasn't lying, not really. I said I used my powers to save us from a car crash, and it blew the windshield out, and that's true as far as it goes. Anyway, Mom was so happy to see me alive, I guess, that she didn't care about the car. Dad was a little less pleased; hey, he's not exactly my biggest fan, so when I trash the van I can expect a little talking-to. But even he couldn't argue with what I did, not when we all would have died otherwise. He asked if anybody had seen me do it, and I had to say yes, but I said it was only Lia and Ben that knew anything. (I would have said just Lia, but I thought since Ben knew everything already, he could figure out what to say to my folks if anything like this happened again.) Now you know, and the rest of the story is in someone else's more capable hands.

* * * *

LiveJournal user purplelia46 [Lia] wrote on 2002-09-29:

Welcome to my LiveJournal, everybody. Hope you enjoy the stay. Not that any of you will be reading this. I fully intend to keep the whole journal locked up until it can no longer be concealed.

Last night, I got home about midnight, in a car which was probably in violation of state safety regulations even before the front windshield broke. Because obviously I have so much sense, I decided to create a LiveJournal and write it down. Not the smartest thing to do, but really, I'm afraid of forgetting what happened.

Party last night at Jonah's place was a lot more fun than I expected. I wasn't even going to go, I didn't really know anybody except Rick and Becky, I'd probably just hover around the drinks and get fatter than I already am. -.- But somehow I ended up in Rick's van with five other people, my parents really worked up after I called them a half-hour late to say I didn't know when I'd be home, having a blast. Maybe somebody spiked the punch or something. I probably made a fool of myself. Hey, at least I met some new people, like Timothy. He's, well, the most distinctive thing about him is that such a nice, good-looking guy isn't already taken. From what I heard, he's gone out with every girl in the grade once or twice, then dumped them flat. The general consensus is that he's either gay or just waiting for the perfect mate, but he vehemently denies the first, so we keep trying. Off the subject. Jonah's karaoke machine is high quality, because nobody really cares how bad a singer you are as long as you're funny.

Come to think of it, I gess I really was funny. At least to some people. Becky is so nice to me, I really don't deserve it. Except for certain comments, a smack upside the head for her about those. Keep quiet, will you? ^.^

We weren't even on the Parkway on the way back home when the car crashed into an overturned semi. Well, almost crashed, and that's the real reason for this entry. I thought Rick was sullen and quirky just because he's a gothy, geeky kind of guy, nothing wrong with that in principle but not very endearing when you're trying to make new friends. He's a mutant, the kind straight out of a comic book that you never ever expect to happen in real life. I kept repeating to myself, Rick throws fireballs, Rick's got crazy mutant powers, but it took a while to sink in. That's how he broke his windshield, he vaporized it by firing a blast to push the truck aside from the driver's seat.

What's even crazier is that I think I may have had something to do with it. Nobody has ever given any indication that I was a mutant like he was. I mean, I know, I've read the statistics, it's just as likely to happen to me as the next guy, but you think, at least you would know who you are, right? Wrong. I've been told that I have mysterious extraordinary powers tonight by a mind reader, a crystal ball reader, and an X-Men reader (Rick, you see), within the space of ten minutes.

So who am I? Pretty much everybody in the car except me saw me give off a sort of white flash, I couldn't get a more accurate or detailed description. It's not like this happens every other week, I mean my mom says I sometimes seem to glow but that's different. I don't even know what I did. Ben (Eldinson, one of Rick's buddies) says that I unconsciously directed Rick's energy field, blah blah blah. I'm not even sure I really am a mutant, for that matter. After all, it's not like the others know exactly what they do in the first place either, so yeah. The easiest explanation is that it's Rick doing something he didn't know he was doing. There's no evidence to support the existence of my magical probability powers in theory, let alone with me. But even Alex seemed to take it seriously, and he's seen a bit more of the nitty-gritty world than I have, I suspect. Gave me a couple questions: Have you ever been in the hospital? No, but my life isn't really all that exciting. How often do you win at poker? I can't play poker, but I do well at card games in general. I'm just the master of Capitalism from summer camp, is all.

More on this later. I have to go, my mom is banging on the door. Bye!


CHAPTER TWO
===========


I woke up last night - well, I suppose it was technically this morning - from a nightmare. I was in school, walking along between classes with a few girls like I always do, and suddenly my friend Alex was there in front of us. He pointed a finger directly at me, the paladin in righteous anger and warning, and we stopped. He called in a stern, judging voice, "Timothy Walker, you are a mutant. All of you, look at him for who he is. He's been controlling your minds all along!" I tried to run, but I kept falling into more and more friends, stepping away from me, cold to me, and then I was falling down to the floor as they all backed away, radiating disgust and envy and fear, but it never really arrived, and then I woke up.

You see, some people dream in color and some in black and white, but a blind man never dreams in color. Normal people don't dream other people's emotions, but I do. It wouldn't be nearly as real to me otherwise.

* * * *

"In other news, the serial killer calling himself Annihilator has struck again at a gas station in Prince George's County, killing four and backing up traffic all along the outer loop of the Beltway. Police have definitively linked the attack to Annihilator, who posted another threatening note to the police tip website shortly after the attack. Police are questioning witnesses as we speak, but warn that details of the killer's vehicle or methods may not be forthcoming. Citizens are advised to keep on the lookout for a tall, long-haired white male, age approximately 30, wearing a red jacket. The killer is hypothesized to be a mutant and should be considered armed and highly dangerous. If you have any information, do not approach him; instead, contact the police on their website or toll-free phone number..."

I clicked the radio to another station, letting the mediocre rock music overpower my worries, and shuddered a little involuntarily. Annihilator was like a five-year-old's idea of a serial killer: he made sweeping threats, dared the police to catch him, and made statements online like "My power is supreme!" All evidence pointed to his being a mutant, much as I hate to admit it. With him turning up in the neighborhood, there couldn't have been a worse time to form Team Super Heroes, or whatever it was. The guy sounded like a villain out of a comic book, and was already raising some anti-mutant hysteria in the populace. Not that it would make much of a difference what the rest of the world felt about mutants if word got around about my abilities; my life would be ruined anyway. Every day I pray to go unnoticed as much as possible, maybe rescue a few cats from trees with my mind or something, but as far as it concerns me to be at peace with all men. It looks like that might not be possible, which is why I'm here at all: if I have to use my powers, I might as well keep it a secret, and there's nobody better for keeping secrets than small insecure groups like us.

By this time I was nearly at Alex's house, which was in a way richer district than I had thought. There was certainly no way for me to know: he never hosted parties or anything, didn't wear super-expensive clothing, and he drove a VW Bug for Pete's sake. Regardless, his house was about one step down from having a gate on the driveway, if you get my meaning: one of those huge new monstrosities with a big backyard and practically enough space to play volleyball in the foyer. I park the car, a little late for a Monday evening event but not too much, and notice that most of the rest of the crew is here before me.

Alex opens the door and invites me in like the perfect host. He leads me downstairs to this gigantic, mostly unfurnished basement; apparently the house is so new they haven't had time to make it into anything more than storage space. There's six folding chairs arranged in a circle in the middle of the floor, four of them occupied. I survey the position for a moment, then take a seat between Rick and Alex. I'm not best buddies with either of them, but Alex is a pretty cool guy, and I didn't want to give the wrong message by choosing the seat next to Sarah. As I sit down, I put on a careful smile and shoot a glance at her: she's a little wistful, but is hiding it very well. There's a touch of revulsion in her too, and as I realize that, I get some first-hand experience with the "rueful expression" you always hear about. I guess this is what it's like to be a freak. Sarah's not sure if I'm manipulating her mind, so she doesn't trust me, not really. I've got to find a way to turn it off or something. It's causing me nothing but trouble these days.

I thank Alex for letting us all stay here, and ask where his parents are. Apparently, they're away for the week on some business trip or other, and aren't at home much in any case, so he basically has free run of the place as long as nothing in the house gets hurt. I recall that the whole place is spotlessly clean; maybe Alex's mom is a neat freak or something, or Alex is just paranoid. Not like it's hurting anybody, so I let it pass. 

The doorbell rings, and he rushes up to get it. It's Lia, of course, the only one left from the van that night. Alex shows her the chair, and she gives him a nervous smile, and a quick sheepish glance at me. That can mean only one thing, but I don't want to scare anybody else today, so I nudge Alex surreptitiously as he gets back into his seat and give him a significant look. He tells Lia, "Thanks for coming. I was afraid you might not show up." with ever so slight a stress on the "I", to make it obvious that I haven't told him anything. This gets a slightly bigger smile, and she relaxes a little. Not too much, though, she's afraid of what the rest of us can do. Still thinks she doesn't really have powers, I suppose. Well, only Ben knows what her real potential is, but he was the one who discovered that she was a mutant in the first place, so I have to trust that he knows what he's doing.

Alex begins, "Welcome to the first meeting of Team Infinity." There are no snickers at the name as there were the first time I proposed it, so I feel a little better. He continues: "I want to thank you all for being here on such short notice, but you'll have to get used to it. Ben and I have been talking some things over, and we think we should at the very least have regular meetings, once a week after school or something, where we can talk things over and maybe, I don't know, do team stuff. Somebody help me out here, I'm not exactly the world's greatest planner." In the back of my mind, I notice that Sarah is looking at him, almost to the point of staring, but Lia is looking at me as usual. It's a weird feeling, especially since your average girl can't look away from me for at least a few seconds. Sarah's carefully controlling herself, too, I'm not quite sure what she's feeling, which is like someone turning their face away for a normal person. Something's up with that girl; I've gotta find a way to ask her or her friends about it without making a total fool of myself. "Speaking of which, Ben has a little surprise for us: team uniforms." 

Ben takes over smoothly. "Sorry I couldn't get spandex suits to order, but this is a lot cheaper and easier to hide than your average hero costume. By the way, in case any of you were wondering" -- this with a short look for Lia and Rick -- "this is what we are, a team of superheroes." He produces custom-printed blue tee-shirts, and passes them out to each person as he talks. "It sounds cheesy, but there are some things to do when you have super powers that just make sense. Secret identities for example: we can't go around fighting crime as a bunch of mutant high-schoolers, we have to be a team with codenames, leadership, strategy, and a uniform." My shirt is handed down, and I have to admit that whatever else Ben is, he's a fairly good graphic designer. The front of the shirt has a small logo where the breast pocket would be, with the infinity symbol and the words "Team Infinity" in white. I flip it over, and on the back in large block letters is "MIND". Ben has my size exactly, and the shirt is kind of snug, but I guess it has to be if you're going to be wearing a real shirt over it.

"Now, just for my own personal satisfaction, everybody get up, put the shirt on, and see what's on everybody else's backs. It's like telling each other your names, except we already know these." Ben isn't sure he's doing it right (he's fine, stop worrying, Ben!), so he looks at Alex, but Alex gives him a thumbs-up in return and puts the shirt on. We kick back our chairs and indulge in some good-natured jostling to see everybody else's names.

Alex. "Hey, what's with 'Reality'? Why don't I get something cool, like 'Power' or 'Space'?"

Sarah. "Oh. 'Mind'. I should have known. Gee, Ben, your creative juices are really flowing today!"

Rick. "What the heck is 'Reality' supposed to mean anyway? I always suspected you were really an alien from the planet Saturn."

Me. "Cool logo, Lia. 'Soul', I like it... Come on, this is supposed to be fun. You just got a free shirt, be happy!"

Ben. "No, you don't get to pick your own name. They're supposed to be vaguely connected, and sufficiently ambiguous that even if they learn our codenames they won't be able to tell our real names without meeting us face to face."

Lia. "Thanks, Ben." It's like a lightbulb goes off above her head as she realizes what this means. "Or should I call you Time?"

Here Alex breaks in, saying, "And Lia gets the prize for the first to add two and two. We're a real team now, and that means that while we're wearing the uniform, we use only our code names, and we always act as a whole team. Remember how often Spiderman gets beaten up because he gets cornered in a dark alley? They can't corner Team Infinity, unless one of us does something stupid and goes off by himself. So I can't say 'Hey Sarah, how's the math homework going?' like I would at school. Well, that's not really a good example, since when we've got the uniform, we really shouldn't be talking about math homework, but the point is, I have to call her 'Space' now." He throws up his hands and offers a rhetorical question. "You get the picture, right?"

"All for one and one for all, yeah, yeah, yeah," Rick says sarcastically with a wave of his hand. "So when do we get a chance to put all this verbal hand-waving to real use? Who knows, maybe the Joker will show up next week. The way things have been going lately, I wouldn't be a bit surprised." He doesn't like Alex, or maybe he just doesn't like Alex's new role as "Reality" -- there's already a tangible difference between the two, both in Alex's own mind and in everybody else's.

A flash of Reality's anger washes over me, as hot as a lighted fuse and just as brief; it's all I can do to keep from flinching, from the raw emotion and the anticipated outburst to follow. A long time ago I would have wondered why nobody else had a reaction, and even now I have to remind myself occasionally that they have no idea what's going on behind the voices. I think it helps being a friend if you don't know what he's thinking, but I'm not sure. But enough about me, and more about him: it was in that moment that I knew he would be a great team leader, as he took Power's verbal abuse with barely a muscle moving, his face getting more serious if anything. He said slowly, "Well, you may have your wish, because I think we have our first case already. Time?" Ever so slight a stretch on the 'our', or perhaps he just meant to say it that way, but I think it's the former, since everybody else seemed to notice.

Time swallows, gets up, and launches into one of his famously boring monologues. "Today I happened to be at the new computer lab at school, looking around idly, and I saw a lot more than I expected. To put it bluntly, guys, Annihilator's next target is that lab, and he's coming tomorrow afternoon. From there, the future for the CS lab diverges into two major paths. First, Annihilator arrives after school and starts wrecking things, killing people, you know the drill. The police know this is a likely target, but it'll still take about five minutes for a squad to arrive, and by that time, the lab is in ruins and he's ready for them. Regardless of whether he escapes, a couple officers die."

Alex is looking and feeling positively grim, as he should be; he's heard it before. Rick looks strangely elated, listening eagerly while trying not to be obvious about it; I don't know why. Perhaps he wants to use his powers, perhaps he wants personal revenge on Annihilator, perhaps he's just sorry for being such a jerk to Alex. Space is wringing her hands in frustration: her heart is in the right place, but she doesn't see what's coming next like Soul, who is looking as if she's getting her only lecture for a quiz tomorrow. The scariest part, however, is Time. He's afraid under his voice, and I don't know what it means, aside from something bad no matter what path the future takes. I hope not to hear his next words, but they come anyway.

"Second, the killer arrives on schedule and we're there to stop him. We take him down and think up a reasonable alibi in five minutes, without giving the police any evidence of our powers. It's going to rely a lot on luck, much as I hate to say it, but we're the only people who can possibly have the power to stop him within five minutes, so we have no choice. Fortunately, I have a plan..."

* * * *

Tuesday is a very "interesting" day at school, in the same way that a foot-long cockroach is a very "interesting" kind of animal. I can't seem to keep my mind off Team Infinity. For the first time in a while, I feel really exposed, like I have a big sign on my backpack that says "Beware of Mutant". Fortunately, it's all in my head, so the most I get is some sympathetic looks from the girls. They can tell I'm nervous, of course, and they're sympathetic, of course, so it doesn't really mean anything. My parents always said not to let your anger show, calm yourself down, and everyone will behave nicely back to you. I always thought that that sort of thing was just a good axiom, but it strikes me that for me it is a self-fulfilling prophecy, as when I'm angry the rest of the class is angry as well. I wander through the day in a daze until lunch, where I sit down between Alex and Dave. I note that Alex is having trouble concentrating on schoolwork as well, and he's definitely received some bad news recently. I don't ask him what it is, of course, since I never like even appearing to be extra perceptive, but I make a note to find out as quickly as possible. He is a friend, after all. Dave, on the other hand, is even more obnoxious than usual, and our lunch period featured some unusual banana-and-lunch-bag shenanigans that are too sophomoric to repeat here. Suffice it to say that by the time Tuesday afternoon rolls around, I've completely forgotten about our plan.

By some miracle, I pass Lia in the hall as I'm leaving, and ask where she's going. "The computer lab," she says with an absentminded smile for me. Then it registers, and a distinctly mischevious "Why, where are YOU going?" follows. It's a long time since I've been embarrassed, so I beat a hasty retreat to my locker. Only later did I realize that she was nearly unaffected by my powers. An extremely important and surprising piece of information: if Soul can really use her power to somehow counteract mine, I could have a chance to talk to a girl without unintentionally altering her emotions. You know you've got some real relationship problems when the thing you look for most on a first date is the girl calling you an idiot to your face, 'cause you're sick and tired of the same "oh, you're so sweet" smile from anybody with two X chromosomes. Of course, this isn't about me, it's about the team in general, so back to business - me getting a friendly poke for forgetting our meeting.

It looks like Lia had been sent to find the rest of us as well, since she and Rick are still out by the time I get there. Alex takes one look at me, says "You remembered the shirt, right?" and directs me to a computer next to Sarah, without getting up from his seat. While surfing the Internet, he talks at the rest of us as we come in: "Everybody get your shirt on. You've all got your jobs to do, and remember, when he walks in, everybody stand up and get into formation. Space, you cover for Mind while he gives the bad guy a mental beatdown. Power, you don't draw attention to yourself, just keep yourself and Soul from getting hurt. I'll take him head-on, buying Mind some time and hopefully getting this over with quickly. Time, you can take care of yourself, right?" No affirmative is expected or needed. There's far too much nervous anticipation going on, even from Time, who should logically be just as worried as the rest of us; I try to calm myself (and by extension the rest of the crew) down, and though it doesn't work as perfectly as it did by accident two days ago, nobody's going crazy and nobody's forgetting the plan.

Rick has only been seated for a few seconds when, a little ahead of schedule, the villain walks in through a different door than the one we used, one that opens directly onto the parking lot. The team, alone in the lab, is positioned so that some of the computers make a partial barrier between us and the door, so that we have places to hide and dodge when he attacks. We've all seen the photos on the news, seared into our brains, but he's even more imposing in reality. Annihilator, "The Killer Mutant" as they call him on the local news, is the perfect stereotype of a disgruntled white guy, with long blond hair and muscles that were probably amazing ten years ago, and still show generously through his unzipped leather jacket. He hasn't shaved in a week (probably because he's on the lam from the law), and it's hard to imagine this guy having any more powers than a punk with a crowbar, if you aren't me that is. I can feel his arrogance, the complete one-hundred-and-five-percent confidence in himself, the urge for destruction that is no longer fun even for him but rather a need to be fulfilled when convenient.

Once before I had met a man with an incurable mental disease, and I never want to repeat the experience again. While our opponent wasn't quite that far down, the most charitable way his condition could be classified was "enjoying attention from others." It was really a fanatic lust to be known, from the media and the general public and the policemen who live in fear and awe of him. We all get up, although my response is more automatic than anything, and I frantically try what I've never tried before: consciously manipulating another mind.

An ugly feeling, really, knowing you're working two steps away from a person's soul. If you ever get the chance to try it, don't. It didn't help that it was the first time I'd tried it, and I had no idea if it would work. I don't dare try anything damaging, since I'm not sure if my powers can be focused on someone or if I have to include people in a sphere around me. So I stick to the plan: enhance the image as much as possible that Annihilator is a classic supervillain and we are superheroes. I wish I could do something substantive to attack him, but this is the best Time and I could come up with on short notice, so I say my prayers and extend my "will" as far as it will go, focusing my mind on my opponent. Am I imagining it, or is that a wild, stereotypical evil laugh bubbling up within him? Can't take any chances, have to keep the pressure on. In front of me, Time puts on his glasses and Space takes her locket out from under her shirt, while Reality takes off his ring and Power places his feet slightly apart, probably something or other in martial arts. Don't ask me, my attention was definitely not on him at the time. I had more important things to worry about, such as an imminent danger to life and limb.

"Behold, I am Annihilator, the instrument of your doom!" He gestures with his left hand, and the computer Space had been sitting at explodes as if someone had tossed a grenade into it. I take an instinctive step back before I realize what's happened: Space, locket held in front of her, has created a doorway in front of the machine, at an angle so it catches all the shrapnel directed toward the team. Notably, no shards come back at Annihilator, but there's a pillar of smoke on the table and a tinkling of glass as a stray metal shard finds its way into some unfortunate guy's monitor. Within a second the danger is over and the doorway closes. I'd never thought it through, but Space's gateway things look just like you'd expect from a one-way door: totally black in front, a perfect mirror from behind.

Annihilator looks in disbelief from Space to the computer and back again, then bares his teeth in a challenge. I squeeze off a quick prayer: "Lord, thank You for Ben Eldinson." His plan was working like a dream: under my influence, he wasn't even fazed by the appearance of another mutant or a group facing him instead of running away, but he actually wanted a battle!

Reality is on the ball, staring into the killer's face without so much as a quiver of his jaw. He plays his part to the hilt, too, starting off with, "Allow me to introduce us." With a finger pointed to each of us in rapid succession, so fast he's obviously practiced the timing to get all our names in order without leaving Annihilator a chance to think, he continues, "I'm Reality, and these are my teammates Space, Time, Power, Mind, and Soul.

"We're Team Infinity, and we're here to stop you."

"At last, a challenge to my illimitable power! In gratitude, I will kill you slowly, one by one!" Annihilator raves; he throws up his hands, and we all tense. Another gesture, and several more machines explode like firecrackers, one by one flinging themselves at us in a million pieces each. The horrible noise breaks my concentration long enough for me to see what's going on. Soul has found the perfect place to hide, ducked behind a chair, while in front of him Time, glasses on to cue the team in that he's using his superior brain instead of his time-sense abilities, ducks and twists so that nothing hits him, making adjustments for each explosion as its shards hurtle by millimeters from his face and arms. Power shouts, "Raging Storm!" and pounds both fists into the ground. By his feet, the floor tiles crack and raise up in a perfect circle around him, while around him there is a haze of blue-white sparkles as dust motes cross the circle and are separated into their component atoms. As I glance, about half of one machine's disk drive goes straight for his nose, but a foot away, it turns into a shower of silvery blue dust, spreading around the edge as it shatters into ever-smaller pieces from Power's blast. Power is shocked and awed: he doesn't really know his abilities either, which surprises me. This stuff he's doing is on instinct, but it sure does look impressive, even by comic book hero standards. (I guess we are going by those standards now, anyway.) Reality morphs into the metal form I saw the other night in the van, except curiously smaller this time, and the metal bounces harmlessly off him, except for one piece, which embeds itself in his shoulder. My view of the team is cut off by Space, who quickly steps in front of me and extends her doorway to catch the shrapnel from two more exploding computers, and then there's nothing for me to do except continue doing my job, and praying that I live to eat dinner tonight. It's all any of us can do.

Annihilator has got the message by now that nothing short of a direct attack will stop us, so he lowers his hands and yells out something that sounds pleasantly villainous. "First rule of the villain's epic battle: Show your might. I will punish your impudence, right here and now!" He reaches out towards Reality, squeezes his hand... and nothing happens. Reality, being metal, isn't even in pain, he's simply missing a chunk of what used to be his vital organs. Enraged, Annihilator raises both hands and prepares another strike. The rest of us are rooted to the spot, the plan gone horribly wrong. Reality was supposed to confront Annihilator directly and deal with him while the bad guy was still blowing up machines, not face him down and lose within fifteen seconds!

Annihilator lowers his hand, and at that exact moment, Reality's metal body vaporizes. It's like it sublimated directly into air, not a trace left and a wind rushing out from where he had been. We're at a loss, even Ben. I guess he's not the hero with nerves of steel he made himself out to be, I think regretfully. But I have no time to plan our next move; it's his turn to control the situation.

"Second rule: Pick on the weak. Soul! Get up and face me!" She gets out from behind the chair just in time to meet his gesture, casually contemptuous. She flashes white, the first time I've ever seen what must be her power, and utters a short choking scream. Red blossoms under her shirt on top of the heart, and she clutches her chest and falls backwards as Annihilator turns his attention to the rest of us. She's in anguish, and it's hard to think, but not dead yet. Not dead yet, thank God! There's only one chance left: has Time thought of something while our first plan dissolved, and can he get it to us before we all die? We all look at him, but his eyes are only for Power. His lips move; no sound comes out, but we all know the word is "Go."

As Soul fell, Power went wild. He's in the grip of a wild, suicidal anger, which even Annihilator can see. He steps forward and says, in a thick rasping voice, "Third rule: Fight the hero in single combat." If looks could kill, Reality and Annihilator would have shared the same fate at that moment. I seize my chance, make a last-ditch effort, and something... twists... the way it shouldn't in the killer's mind.

He smiles, a horrible, unfeeling, arrogant smile, and says, "Take your best shot."

Only a guy as well-versed in cheesy Street Fighter duels as Power is could have come up with such an appropriately bad comeback. "One shot is all I need, murderer. Captain Corridor!" The last is a scream, and he thrusts one open hand at his opponent's feet.

WHAM. A column of searingly bright blue light blazes into existence in front of Power, starting somewhere below the floor and ending somewhere above the ceiling. Annihilator is knocked three feet into the air and hurtles backward *fast*, straight into one of the support beams of the room, wired with the power lines and Internet connections of half the lab. The beam breaks like balsa wood, Annihilator is enveloped briefly in electricity before he breaks the lines, and he yells like a wounded animal. His arc ends as he hits the floor just short of the next row of terminals. Smoke rises from the circular hole in the ceiling, the lab's monitors go out with the power lines cut, and a police car pulls up in the parking lot at top speed with siren running.

"Shirts off, people!" snaps Time. "Look frightened and shell-shocked! I'll handle it from here." As we take off the impromptu uniform, I relax my mental concentration and the emotional state of the team comes flooding back to me. Apparently, the big hero Mind is calm and focused as he battles evil, but plain old Timothy Walker has trouble staying awake in science class, and is definitely not equipped to handle this sort of situation.

As fast as I remember Lia, Rick is there before me. He's drained, wearing someone else's jacket over his Team Infinity shirt, and feeling desperately for a pulse. The blood has spread almost too far to bear to look at it, but then Rick exults: "She's alive!" Impossible, flat-out impossible, but then again, who knows what her mutant ability really does? If anyone could survive having her heart explode, it would be her, and I can verify that she's alive and unconscious, but I can't believe she would make it to the hospital. Sarah has sat down in a convenient chair, a swirling mass of emotions she has no hope of controlling or even expressing at the same time. I can't help her now, not with Lia bleeding to death on the floor in front of me.

Behind me as I bend over, trying to think of something, the police officer is hearing Ben's tale. Annihilator attacked, and we all hid from him; the only one of us he could find was Lia here -- Rick interjects, "She needs an ambulance! Somebody call an ambulance!" -- and in his rage, he started destroying everything in the lab. One of his explosions hit the support beam he was standing next to, the power lines caught him, and he's down for the count; miraculously, out of five people present, four aren't even scratched and the other is still alive.

The officer looks over Rick's shoulder and realizes there is no more time to question witnesses. He licks his lips nervously. "People, you four have just become the only survivors of an attack by Annihilator. Five, if the girl makes it to the hospital; she's lost a lot of blood, but he somehow missed her heart." Rick and I glance at each other: not a miracle after all, but that flash somehow shifted Annihilator's impeccable aim that had precisely detonated computers and vaporized Reality just seconds before. Rick is now disconnected: too much information in a short period. He'll cry himself to sleep tonight or something, but for now he's just recording what he experiences, on autopilot. Ben is telling us to move aside, make way for the stretcher: they brought an ambulance along, how convenient.

In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, Ben explains our alibis, and concludes: "Well, that was a close call if I ever saw one. We almost lost a couple team members."

Our jaws drop, and Sarah shouts: "What?!?" The rest of us echo her sentiment: how can Ben be so callous about Alex's death, even if he knows Lia is going to live? For his part, Ben shakes his head, takes off his glasses, and then the realization hits him. He explains what he had noticed with his superfast brain, but the rest of us had been too busy with our own problems to see.

"While Annihilator prepared his second, more powerful attack, Reality already knew what to do. What you three saw in action was the backup plan: if Reality was to come under direct attack, Power would take over and cut our losses by any means necessary. Just before Reality "exploded", he transformed into air, heavily compressed air but much less mass than his true form. Since air is basically invulnerable to our enemy's power, Annihilator succeeded only in scattering Reality's particles across the room. We talked a little about our powers, so I know that when he's in a non-sentient state like the air or his metal form, he can still transform back, but it causes an extraordinary amout of pain, increasing with the mass he has to add to make up his true form. The shock was so great that he was unable to coalesce by the time we left. However, since he'll rematerialize somewhere near his center of mass, he should be back at school by the time the police leave. The only trick is finding a time to do so without a police officer finding him out, but that's his problem, not ours."

Sarah is overjoyed, and I have to confess, so am I. Victory in our first battle, against all odds, Team Infinity takes a licking and keeps on ticking. I thought two friends were dead, and they're both going to be fine. I thought my life was down the tubes when somebody found out about my powers, but I'm feeling more alive than ever, with a group of friends who know what I am and still like me. Annihilator won't wake up until he's in mutant prison, under special sedation to prevent the use of his powers, and by fighting him we may have saved dozens of people's lives. In a word, "Wow."

* * * *

LiveJournal user trickhat [Alex] wrote on 2002-10-01:

People, please ignore this if you don't understand it. You really don't need to know, it's not like my life is completely ruined or anything.

First team event was a rousing success, or so I hear. I wasn't able to be there for the big moment due to unforeseen circumstances. I suppose I was a little cocky, expecting certain people to be confused when they weren't or expecting people to know things they didn't. I don't like hurting other people, and I have a little experience with being hurt myself, but nothing like this. Took me quite a while to get back to normal - more mental shock than wounded pride, actually, but I always thought I was better, faster, more skillful than this. I feel kind of guilty as a leader now - I wonder what certain people think. I'm sure - well, I hope - Timothy knows my reasons; I'm not sure how much Ben told him.
Not sure what I'm going to do about Dave. He suspects something is up, I'm sure of it. Maybe I could ask Timothy. Oh wait, he wouldn't know either. Grah!


CHAPTER THREE
=============


Hi, folks. Due to lack of anyone willing to do this chapter, which is frankly the most boring one in our entire little saga, this is Ben Eldinson, better known as Time. Actually, people call me "Eldinson" more often than anything else, but that doesn't sound nearly as cool, so it gets the proverbial axe in favor of "Time." Before getting into the meat and potatoes of the story, I should explain a little about myself.

My day starts at 6 AM, when I get up, wolf down breakfast, pack a lunch, and head to school. Like the rest of the team, I'm forced to show up by 7:30 at the front door of John Hancock High School, five days a week, and then listen to the experts tell us we need 8 hours of sleep a night. Stop whining, my parents tell me. You could get plenty of sleep if it weren't for those stupid video games, they say. When are you going to do something useful with your life? They have no idea what I'm really doing, of course, which is training to be part of a superhero team by improving my hand-eye coordination. For me, that's more important than it sounds.

You see, I have two mutant powers, the one making the other possible. First, my brain runs at a hyper-fast rate, nearly 60 times faster than a normal human's. I don't notice this most of the time because all the extra resources are tied up with my other power, the ability to literally see the past and the future. When I look at a chair, I see the chair in three dimensions, but also extending forward and backward in time, for a variable length depending on the object's motion and the "temporal weather" of the area. For example, I can tell what the forest was like five years ago or will be five years from now at a glance, but my computer monitor is too unreliable for me to tell any length of time at all.

When I put on my glasses, a mental block kicks in and I "shut my eyes" to my time sense, freeing my extra mental capacity for direct access. It's like living in a different world, one where it takes several "seconds" to blink, let alone move your hand - but I have so much time to choose the right course of action that I can dodge bullets simply by noticing his finger tightening on the trigger, visualizing the trajectory of the bullet, and starting to duck just before the bullet fires.

Anyway, I slog through school, then take the bus home. When I need to work something off, I cut through a section of forest with glasses on, trying to go at top speed without cracking any twigs or leaves. It gets easier than it sounds with practice, but it's not like my life is going to depend on it even if it was difficult. I get home, collapse in my chair, and start up the latest reflex-based computer game: fighters, shooters, Tetris, you name it. Only online play is even remotely a challenge, because I have to deal with slow servers and actual humans, but I'm still way too fast, so it's more like work than straight fun. Without glasses, I can relax and enjoy the game, of course, but then I start losing and it's bad for my image. The challenge isn't interpreting visual input - I can fire up Street Fighter and see a punch coming five seconds away - but learning the precise finger control needed to react that fast when my nerve impulses have a fixed speed limit.

Anyway, after my daily practice, I move on to doing some homework, worrying about my social life, talking on the Internet -- you know, all the things normal teenage guys do. I love the Internet: it's much easier to ignore people, much easier to erase a first impression, much harder to pity people in general. Much better than real life if you ask me. I have some friends in real life, sure, and one special situation named Kristin. However, that particular can of worms is one that I will not open at this time, even with a captive audience consisting of you, the reader. And so we reach the actual story, which as usual begins with me.

* * * *

About a week after our team's battle with Annihilator, I was sitting in math class, totally bored out of my skull as usual. I was actually wondering if there would be anything happening in our next team meeting, which was still a highly informal affair, basically a chance for our self-appointed leader Alex to check up on the rest of the team and make sure nobody was running into mutant-ability-related problems. Now don't get me wrong, I have no problems with Alex leading the team; it's certainly not a job I could do myself, much as I help him out. I prefer to think of myself as the power behind the throne, not exposing himself while still being able to do what he wants. Same game plan I follow in real life, when I have the luxury of doing so. Thus, it came as that much more of a surprise when I was called out of class because my mom wanted to talk to me.

I had absolutely no clue what was going on, and I know better than to engage in fruitless speculation without adequate data, so I kept my glasses off. It's the little things that make the real difference in people's lives, when all is said and done. If I hadn't had my time vision available at that moment, I don't know what would have become of Team Infinity. But fortunately, I closed the door softly behind me, looked over, and saw not my mom, but a woman I'd never seen before.

I looked a little into the past, and saw some of the most vivid recent events in her life. Notably, last Sunday night she had robbed a jewelry store, destroyed all electronic records of her presence, and walked calmly out: her work for the month. Needless to say, this piqued my curiosity, so I looked a little deeper. I'm told by reliable sources that when I take a good look into the past or future, it looks like I'm visually scrutinizing someone, like I'm trying to tell them they have a mustard stain on their pants or something. Of course, I am giving them a closer look, but I don't really care about what they look like at the moment. Who needs appearances, when you can have the real thing?

We were alone in the hallway, except for random passersby who don't really count anyhow. Before she had the opportunity to introduce herself (and I could see the expression of surprise on her face), I knew that she was an evil mutant like Annihilator, and substantially more dangerous. To explain a surprising statement, instead of blowing things up physically, she does it mentally, somehow using her mind to incapacitate at a distance and erase their memories afterward. I also gathered that she was the leader of yet more mutants, somewhat like my own team but for the purpose of creating mayhem, havoc, and some quick cash, and that she had somehow discovered our team and planned a contest between our two groups, again for no particular reason other than to have fun injuring a few innocent bystanders. With this in mind, I turned to face her as she opened her mouth. (See, I told you I can think quickly when I need to.)

"Sorry for the deception, but I needed to talk to you, alone. My name is Venus. I understand that you are Ben Eldinson, one of the five people responsible for Annihilator's recent defeat?"

I played it safe. Until she at least told me her name, I couldn't know what her game is or how much I could accidentally have revealed to her mutant mind powers.

"I'm Ben, yeah. But what do you mean, 'defeat'? He just went crazy and blew himself up - more like self-defeating, if you want my opinion."

She was visibly annoyed, probably because she had something else to do. I couldn't concentrate on what it is; her future was changing too fast at the moment, meaning this discussion was important to what she'll do later today. Nice to know I warranted that much attention on her personal scale. She snapped, "Don't play the idiot with me. We have information that shows other mutants were involved besides he."

How much do they know, I wondered. Putting on my glasses to figure it out from previous hints she may have dropped would be too suspicious, so I had to fly this one by the seat of my pants. "This is patently ridiculous. No matter how much you overestimate me, there's no way I could have beaten him alone, with other kids to protect while I did it. What are you suggesting?" I asked.

"You're not being honest with me. Whatever you're trying to conceal, it won't work, so tell me what I need to know now and save us both some trouble."

If I had to guess about my facial expression at this point, it would be "rolling of the eyes and weary sighing". In any case, I had no patience left for her intimidation and secrecy. Besides, even an experienced rogue mutant couldn't be immune to surprises, so I wanted to give her one. "Cut the trash, Venus. I know what you're going to say. You want to match the five members of your little club of second-rate supervillains against the bunch of kids who beat Annihilator and left in a hurry, show them what it really means to be a mutant, show them who's boss in this neck of the woods. Unfortunately for you, I'm the last person you should have gone to in order to issue your challenge. I'm not about to hand you free information by telling you why, but I can tell you that in a week we'll be in top shape, ready to turn the tables on you guys with ease."

Now this came as a shock to her, I noted with no small amount of satisfaction. Her eyes narrowed with perfect suspicion; obviously she'd had a lot of practice being suspicious, something I suppose comes with being a career criminal. "You can't be a telepath, or I would sense the ability in you. No, the telepath used a delicate mindprobe to sense me as I entered the building, then fed the information to you, presumably more expendable," she mused. An idea struck her, and she continued in a quite different tone, "Is this the way you want to be treated? Just a go-between for your classmate who thinks he's more important just because he found me first?"

I didn't get much of an opportunity to use a condescending smile back in those days. Still don't, but that's beside the point. However, this was the perfect opportunity for such a smile, as I proclaimed, "Lady, you couldn't be more wrong if you tried. If you want to make a formal challenge, send Alex Brene a message tonight. We'll be there, and us six -- Team Infinity -- will decide whether or not to accept your gauntlet. I have a hunch we will."

"Well then, my Olympians are ready and waiting. Wait, you said six? The police indicated there were only five!"

"Wrong again. And I thought mentalists were supposed to know everything. Thanks for the advance warning." With that, I went back inside, feeling great and leaving her spluttering. With good cause, I think; it was one of my more successful postcognitive-ability moments. I was beginning to think that today might not be so bad after all. The only thing that remained was to convince Alex and company to get their butts in gear and train to beat someone and put the team really on the map.

* * * *

As it turned out, the team was less than enthusiastic. Lia in particular, being new to the school with all that implies, wanted to make a good impression on her teachers, and had trouble accepting that she wasn't going to fail her physics test no matter how much she slacked off. A slight exaggeration on my part, actually, as she did have about a seven percent chance of failing, but good enough for government work as my mom always says. As usual, I had to sic Timothy on her to get her to tell us anything, much less support her position. It's always fascinating to watch Timothy at work. He's not insanely attractive by any standards, and had spent less than four minutes that day on personal hygiene to boot. (Four minutes is simply my approximation based on the condition of his clothes and hair as he walked down the stairs. I wouldn't discount less, he's getting sloppier as he gets more powerful in other areas.) Without even being consciously aware of it, he delivers a one-two knockout punch to the ladies: he reads their minds to determine how he should act, and then shifts their emotions to be more responsive and favorable to him. Of course, how much of this analysis is itself colored by his influence I'm not sure, but I do admire him on a professional level quite apart from how cool he is as a person. At one point, he even put his hand on Lia's shoulder, something she usually shirks from with the standard shy Asian girl aversion to physical contact. He didn't manage to convince her to be gung-ho about the whole fighting evil mutants thing, but at least got her to come back for some impromptu training sessions this week, which I suppose is good enough.

The rest of our new Team Infinity was sort of receptive, as I predicted. I must be getting better at reading people without the aid of postcognition or something similar. Rick wanted to show off his powers some more, of course. If you pricked that guy with a needle he would explode into big shards of ego when it comes to anything he enjoys, and there's nothing he likes more than blasting fireballs at people. Well, maybe wearing black and feeling sorry for himself, but I digress. I approached Alex earlier than the rest 'cause he's the leader, and he gave it the go-ahead for strategic reasons which I can understand but don't think are really necessary. He just doesn't know what I know about ourselves and the Olympians, and he never will. That's why I try to keep him updated as much as possible, even when he may not want to be reminded of his duties. Too bad, he'll just have to deal with it. Alex convinced the aforementioned Timothy, who took all of ten seconds to convince Sarah and then worked with Lia for a while so we could make it unanimous. Timothy's a great guy and all, but I think he's a wee bit spoiled by his powers. Sarah, like approximately half the school's female population, has a mild to serious crush on him, so training with him after school for a week, or just being in his presence for extended periods, was a no-brainer. On the positive side, that's one person I won't have to nag about being on time.

I gave the team a little pep talk. Depending on how much we trained and some other factors I couldn't put my finger on, we had about a seventy-five percent chance that night of beating the Olympians next week. So with that in mind and a reminder for everybody to be here tomorrow, we adjourned to the next item on the agenda, which included several bowls of popcorn and Alex's big-screen TV.

The next day being reasonably nice outside, we wandered out of the house and started work. The first training session's agenda was to determine the extent of our powers, which were disappointingly raw and unrefined, except for Alex and I of course. Space was surprisingly adept at finding anything she put into her gateway at a moment's notice, or even making it drop out of the gateway by itself, but getting her past a rectangular vertical opening just big enough to fit a backpack in took some work. With a little questioning, I discovered she had some rudimentary abilities to change the size and shape of a gateway, so I set her to work trying to fit gateways around various parts of Alex's car. To keep her happy, she'd also be working with Mind, who wasn't sure how much he could do consciously or if he could even read emotions at all beyond his natural unconscious abilities. When Reality saw my little arrangement, he tsked a little at me but let it slide, obviously because he saw how I killed two birds with one stone. The two of them wanted to spend some time together, but any budding romance would quickly be quashed as she found out how creepy it is to have your emotions manipulated while you watch.

The other two I had to attend to were Power and Soul - as it turns out, another potential couple in the near future, possibly because of the time they were going to be spending together. Reality forced Power to admit that he really didn't have any idea what he was doing with his abilities, just riding on instinct like the rest of us. He's working in a nice open field, blasting away until he finds out how he really generates rings of fire around his feet. When he needs a real target in a couple days, it would be mighty convenient to have Soul as test dummy, but I really doubt he'd intentionally shoot at her. I don't have to be an empath to see how much he likes her - can't tell what he sees in her, but it's probably not my business. Oh well, I'll see if Alex is willing to get shot at a little, it won't hurt him. Soul herself is another problem case for us. She's incredibly shy and doesn't want to admit to herself that she even has mutant powers at all, so I didn't tell her how much power she has. Of all our team, I'm not exactly the one with the most impressive powers, or even the most raw potential, although I do have some things I could expand on and I'm working on those. That honor goes far and away to Soul. You see, a little precognitive scrutiny revealed that her power somehow tinkers with reality itself, altering probabilities and causing minute shifts at the precise location to make the difference in a chain reaction that ends up looking like magic. Like Mind and me, she does it all the time, without thinking about it, and by all evidence has done so for as long as she can remember. She doesn't have one spot of acne, has never been sick a day in her life, is a star student, and several other small things I could name that are all easily coincidences except that they aren't. Given the proper training and ability to focus and/or enhance her powers, she could use those small shifts (which are accompanied by white flashes like the one I saw in the car crash or against Annihilator) to take us all down in different, unexpected ways without raising a finger. Nobody in the team can give her that kind of training, but it's a definite future possibility for her, so I wonder what will come out of the woodwork, if anything, to give her the information she needs to face the Olympians and more.

Alex and I really didn't have anything we could do to be productive, so I did some research on mutant powers in general and the Olympians in particular while Reality helped the others attempt to stretch their limits. A productive day, but nothing to write home about. I saw signs that first day that worried me - the probability of us emerging victorious was growing steadily smaller, and I wasn't sure what I or the other team members were doing to make that happen. Plus I did a little homework on the side. It was going to be an interesting week.

* * * *

When Saturday rolled around, we had been training for a week - but I use "training" figuratively. I had overestimated the group's enthusiasm, failed to provide sufficiently attractive training ideas, or something else which escapes my grasp, but our prospects of a clean victory were less than forty percent, with a significant minority of the other 60% being "utterly crushed". Not a good prognosis, but not one I was about to tell anyone but Reality. We showed up as promised, in an unused section of the parking lot behind the discount warehouse, and so did the Olympians.

All in all, rather more of a ragtag group than I expected, comfortingly like our own. There were five of them, ranging from one young recruit who could easily still be in school like us to a balding man in his sixties whose power, as far as I could tell from his history, involved some kind of telekinetic ability to sculpt metal like clay. After giving each of them a once-over in my "normal" vision to get a sense of their past, I flicked the glasses on and started talking to the team as fast as I could figure out concrete details. Perhaps twenty meters away "Venus" was doing her equivalent, reading our minds and telling her team what she saw.

Her strategy was, again as expected, rather grandiose and not well thought through: perhaps Soul's power coming out at a moment of crisis (I wouldn't know, she was out of my field of vision at the time and nobody else can remember for sure) but more likely Venus' inborn stupidity. Ordering each of her teammates to attack the one whose powers seemed closest to their own, she started walking slowly forward towards Mind and left Soul alone. A stroke of luck on our part that didn't need any mutant powers to happen: since Soul wasn't really sure what her power was in the first place, Venus dismissed her as not having a controllable power at all and thus not worthy of serious consideration. Soul hadn't gained any shattering insight in a week of practice, save perhaps that her fellow teammate Rick might be dateable after all, and so it's hard to estimate her impact on the battle since even I can't tell how or when she was influencing events. Consequently I will ignore her just like everyone else. I suppose I might have felt pity for her at the time, but now I don't bother anymore.

I still had my glasses on, thankfully, when she gave the order. I settled into a combat-ready position and waited for my opponent, the kid Venus insisted on calling Mercury, to arrive, and with my copious free time I watched the others fight their battles. No sooner had Venus closed her mouth than a lightning bolt shot out of the relatively clear sky halfway between Power and his match, a fairly nondescript white-collar worker whom no one would normally suspect of going by the name of Jupiter. The names were very handily symbolic, I suspected, as this Jupiter proceeded to make the lightning lance out in a line between them, obviously the line to cross if Power wanted to do battle. He opened his trenchcoat and ran forward, yelling something inane from one of his video games while some kind of energy trailed behind his outstretched hands. Much as he annoys me, Power is the man for the job when one is up against lightning bolts, and so I left him unconcerned that he would find some way to duel in a pyrotechnically spectacular fashion.

Keeping one eye on Mercury, who had run almost to the street at the end of the lot and was starting to run at me, I checked how Space was doing. Curse that fool woman! She hadn't listened to my warning not to touch her opponent, the vampiric-looking old man Pluto, and had instead procured a staff of some kind from her gateway and was attacking him with it. He obviously wasn't as old as he looked, as he neatly sidestepped her hasty attack and grabbed the staff. He grabbed her face with both hands, and the two of them disappeared nearly instantly into the ground, presumably into a gateway like the one Space controlled. I didn't have time to calculate her chances, because at that moment Mercury revealed the extent of his powers.

I knew Mercury's special ability involved some kind of running, and from the name I guessed that he was simply a faster runner because of some quirk of leg muscles, streamlining, et cetera. It was one of the few times I have ever been completely wrong, as I missed both the genesis of his gift, a localized gravity field in front of him that both propelled him forward and deflected away air and oncoming objects, and the extent of it, which I estimated as about one hundred seventy-five miles per hour.

You have no idea of how terrifying it is to be in the world I live in with glasses on, a world where nothing ever moves at more than a crawl including myself, and to see someone running towards you as if they were walking in real life, far faster than you're used to seeing cars pass on the freeway. Trust me, I never want to see it again. His power kicked in instantaneously but only when he reached a dead run, showing that he, like us, had developed a mental block to prevent him from activating his super speed accidentally.

He planned to simply shoulder by me with enough speed to knock the wind out of me, then circle around the block for another pass and finish me off. Fortunately, Venus hadn't thought through my power, assuming that I simply thought faster than the average bear. She (and by extension Mercury) didn't anticipate the total control over my motions and top-of-the-line natural speed that I can produce when I have all the time in the world to do it. I thought fast, like I always do, and jumped right into his path.

A well-trained human can react to a given stimulus in one-tenth of a second; since Mercury was obviously used to being fast, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for my calculations. That gave Mercury about twenty-five feet from the time I started leaping to the time he noticed I was doing anything at all, and another hundred feet (less than a half-second) to do something about it. He started frantically braking, putting his gravity field behind him to get him back down to a more manageable speed. I was pleased he reacted so quickly instead of doing the idiotic thing, which would have been continuing to run forward and killing us both in the collision.

We connected with a thud that was much more painful for him than me, as I was expecting it and could soften my fall, plus my fist connected with his torso by quick thinking on my part and a healthy dose of luck. My glasses were knocked clean off, and so the few seconds I saw stars while waiting to regain my senses were only seconds instead of minutes. I got up before he did, but not by much; he grabbed a hand painfully at his chest to indicate a broken rib.

At that point, I became immersed in the rush of a close battle, the feeling of power that comes from being tested to the limit in a contest of skill. It's the andrenaline high I get from playing the very best competition in video games (well, my only competition), and what I presume star athletes feel on the field. I shook myself off, grinned like a maniac, and crooked a finger at Mercury to say "come here" in a parody of the scene from the Matrix. Yes, I know I'm unoriginal, but the opportunity was too golden to pass up. He rose to the challenge and we flew together, not at his full speed of course but just as deadly. I hadn't had a good old-fashioned fistfight since I got suspended for beating up that gang of bullies in eighth grade. (Only the fact that I had been taking karate lessons at the time prevented me from having to reveal my powers in that instance.) Without the glasses, Mercury actually stood a chance at close range, and so I planned to see what tricks he had up his sleeves while keeping an eye on the others.

As expected, but still a disappointment, Venus was now gloating over Mind's crumpled form to my right. I didn't expect him to be able to handle an experienced telepath anyway, just keep her busy long enough for the rest of us to do our work. A flash from over Mercury's shoulder as I dodged his punch heralded an energy blast from Power, as he parried Jupiter's lightning strike by creating his own bolt next door and diverting both right behind him. He clenched his arms, whipping dust about his feet, as he prepared for a counter-move while Jupiter still vainly tried to steer the lightning back to his foe. That battle was going well. Space and Pluto were still nowhere to be found, but I didn't expect Space to be able to take on Pluto on literally his home turf. Unfortunately, a vicious gut punch from Mercury I had to take the brunt of forced my head down so I couldn't see how Reality, our only member who could possibly have had experience with fighting other mutants, was doing against his assigned Olympian.

I'm not one to fight with honor, as Mercury quickly became aware of when I delivered a nice old-fashioned karate chop to his throat, punched him in the solar plexus, and swept his feet out from under him for good measure. I was going to kick him in the stomach as he collapsed on the ground, but decided not to waste my time and delivered a curt "You lose" to him as I walked off (rather painfully, I hate to admit) to deal with the other Olympians before they meddled in Power's fight or something.

While searching for my glasses, I almost fell into Pluto's gateway as he came back up, carrying an unconscious Space with him. He came out faster than I expected and, throwing the girl aside, reached for me with a satisfied grin. I managed to avoid his grasp, but only by throwing myself backward, and as I wasn't used to doing anything quickly without my glasses, there was no way I could avoid him forever. I yelled for help, and fortunately Power answered, calling, "Get down!" (Perhaps too fortunately, but perhaps not; I didn't have time to ponder whether this particular stroke of luck was Soul's work, another reason I was wishing for those glasses more than ever.) Getting down was an easy trick for me - I simply stumbled off my feet instead of catching my balance. To keep Pluto from following me down, I used my feet to fling Space's staff, still on the ground where she'd left it, toward his face. The Olympian reflexively grabbed the staff with both hands and chucked it at Power, just as I'd hoped he would.

Wrong move on his part, of course. Power had finished charging up and released a tight wave of sound at about waist level in all directions, so powerful you could see it ripple the air like a mirage. Pluto was hit in the back and was knocked off his feet; he landed hard with blood trickling from his ears. My ears felt like they were going to bleed when I heard the small portion that reached me, too, but I got back up. Jupiter, the old fool, had also been hit, and Reality had dispatched his opponent and avoided the shockwave, leaving Venus as the only remaining Olympian with four of us still standing. We all winced in anticipation as the sound wave hit the nearest cars, shattering some windows that I was thankful had no owners inside.

The situation didn't look too good for our telepathic friend; in fact, I suspected her pride was seriously hurt. Certainly my future vision revealed that she'd have some serious logistical problems getting four team members home, even without the property damage Power's blast had caused and for which the police would likely hold her responsible. Plus she still had to defeat us. So she grimaced, gestured, and took us out one by one with a mindblast.

Power was the first; his body went slack and he dropped as surely as if he'd fallen asleep. I was next, and although I understandably don't remember much of the incident, I'll describe it as best I can.

Getting hit by a mindblast is a lot like being bored. You know that feeling of apathy that comes upon you when you've been doing a repetitive task for too long or are trying to put off something and just wasting time, the feeling that you really can't get any work done 'cause you can't concentrate on anything? Imagine that, intensified a hundredfold, to the point where you're literally unable to think of anything. You lose muscle control simply because you're not paying attention to whether you're standing up or not. If it hurt when I hit the deck, it certainly didn't register at the time.

I woke up, as best as I can estimate, about five minutes later. Venus and her friends were gone, and Reality had the rest of the team already loaded up in Power's van. He hustled me in, slammed the door, and we peeled out at teenage-hooligan speed just as local security arrived. Not as successful a mission as I'd hoped, especially considering that I had to explain how the whole thing went to Space and Mind, but it could have been worse.

I suppose I should have recognized that my powers hadn't exactly been fully developed at the time. There was a lot I could have done had I had the foresight and speed to do it, and I don't doubt Reality felt the same way. But at least the Olympians wouldn't be bothering us any time soon, and I had convinced the others, except of course for Soul, that we should make this superhero thing a regular event. As Winston Churchill put it, "Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result." Like a good little boy, I'll close the chapter with a teaser: Little did I know that there was going to be quite a bit more shooting going on in the near future.

Something I should look into, actually. I'm usually quite good at predicting the future. The best, in fact.

* * * *

LiveJournal user evilken [Rick] wrote on 2002-10-10:

A very productive day today. Unlike most days, which are complete wastes of my time. Not only did I discover I wasn't having that Spanish quiz today after all, so I wasn't totally screwed, I got myself two good CDs and something to do over the weekend besides play GTA3 over again. Really surprised me, I wasn't being, you know, all that serious or anything. But apparently we're going over to the movies - me, Kev, Lia, and her friend Becky, and maybe Jake and Bryan too, but Jake doesn't think his parents will let him. No surprise there, I don't know why he keeps asking, they've practically banned the Discovery Channel over at his place...
[journal entry edited for relevance --Editor Ben]

* * * *

LiveJournal user evilken [Rick] wrote on 2002-10-13:

My week has just been getting better and better. Plenty of compliments on my new trenchcoat, at least from the people who matter. It's not like I care about the people who didn't like it anyway. What do they know? So after school on Friday, I got to relieve some of that stress on Spanish - test today, totally failed, you know the deal. Today I got to practice my accuracy on Alex, which I really shouldn't have had fun doing but rocked anyway, totally awesome. I'm a bad person and I know it, shut up. Way better than Thursday, where I couldn't hit Lia with a brick wall even when I got mad and actually tried to. She's definitely got something going on, and it's not just 'cause she's so cool. I love being around her, even doing this kind of boring stuff, and it's always fun to let loose every once in a while. I'm not sure if she's got an LJ yet or if she's even reading this at all - if she is, I might have to be a little more secretive about it. I'm not usually the complicated plot kind of guy, but I can keep a secret when I have to.

Friday night was also the coolest ever. The movie wasn't anything special, something Becky was really dying to watch. Becky's actually surprisingly cool for someone with her kind of friends. Nice people and all, but way too normal. Plus I had the perfect seat, between Lia and Kev so I could snicker with him or spend time around her. Lots of fun driving Kev home afterwards, too, music blaring out the windows rocketing along the Beltway at a speed that was way too high, whatever it was. 

Saturday there was some awesome Team Infinity action going on. The guy comes at me with his lightning bolts and he's all, "You can't touch me," and I can see what he's doing. It's really natural, I've probably done it a couple times myself by accident, just give the ground a little nudge and zap. So I do some of my own, mess with his aim a bit, and then bust out a standard, no-frills Dhalsim-style ball of fire at him. Nothing special, just seeing how he'll react. He's got nothing new to show me, he just runs out of the way and almost fries me with some more lightning before I can remember and do the same myself. I need something that he can't dodge, but a Sonic Hurricane is the best thing I can come up with that I remember even vaguely how to do. I warned everybody, but the other guy was pretty stupid and didn't see it coming, so I took down two of them at once. Pretty great if you ask me, especially considering our high-and-mighty fearless-leader only managed one. Who's your daddy? Yeah, me, that's who. I really should shut up and get offline, have to do homework tonight, ugh. Hope it's not too painful.


CHAPTER FOUR
============


Tuesday, November 19th was a pretty ordinary day for me, up until I got to Alex's place. The only really significant thing was that I got to spend some quality time with Lia and Becky, who are pretty cool people once you get to know them. Since it was a Tuesday, we had our weekly team meeting after school, but Lia had something to do for drama, so we agreed to have the meeting after dinner. The guys all went over to find somewhere to eat, and since Lia doesn't have a car of her own, I stuck around so I could drive her to Alex's. As it turned out, they only needed her for a couple scenes, so the three of us just discussed various things for a while. I got to needle Lia about Rick a bit, but I think she's used to it by now. The two of them make a pretty incongruous couple, but he obviously hangs on her every word but is too awkward to tell her so and she's fine with that whole kind of thing, so it's not my business to interfere.

I overheard one of the drama techies muttering, "Heck, Sarah's here more often than Wilbur is, and she's not even in the show," which was funny because it was true. So I made a point of noticing them at that moment; the expression on his face as his buddy said, "Oh, hi, Sarah, how are things going?" was priceless. Becky says I've got a mean streak, but I'm perfectly harmless. Really.

I think Lia and I are on pretty good terms, actually. She doesn't look like the kind of person who'd have fun doing anything but studying, but when she's around friends she opens up. It's great for all of us, really, being able to relax and have fun with people who know you're a mutant. You don't feel like you have to hide anything you don't want to hide.

Did I mention we decided the shirts were unworkable after we fought the Olympians? Ben was kind of disappointed, but he'll get over it. They weren't exactly the coolest designs ever. Instead, Alex found us all little things we could take on or off while remaining unobtrusive. I've got my hair ties, Alex has a ring, Rick got a pin for his trenchcoat, Timothy got our logo embroidered on a polo shirt. Fits our personalities a lot better, as our group really isn't the uniform type.

That doesn't mean we don't stick together, though. We still meet Tuesdays after school at Alex's place. When his parents are there, we usually just hide out downstairs and goof off while somebody searches the net for anything we could do, see if we can find any more mutants with maybe some more experience who we could get in touch with. Timothy says he's working on controlling their minds so they won't notice and we can practice even around them, but I don't think he's quite ready for that yet. It's all bluster, at least I hope so.

I don't know why he calls himself Timothy, though. He seems to me to be the kind of person who'd want to go by Tim: easygoing, good-looking, charitable, not a science whiz but a nice guy all around. I suspect it's because he wants to keep some distance from the rest of us. He's afraid of what he can do. A lot like Lia, actually, except that she doesn't always have her power on. At least she's not flashing all the time, which is good for our sanity as well as hers. I kind of feel sorry for them, not having the option to forget that they're mutants and enjoy life as normal for a while.

Timothy asked me out three weeks ago, by the way. Naturally I said yes: I didn't have anyone at the moment, and it's hard to find someone whose company for a casual date you will enjoy more than his, for obvious reasons. Bear with me, this will be on topic eventually. Over dinner, he explained that there were exactly two girls who knew about his powers, and one of them was, well, Lia. I can see why he wouldn't want to open that can of worms: Lia has her own problems, about three of which are named Rick. I'm not a big fan of his, we're like completely opposite on everything that matters. But back to the subject at hand. Apparently he felt he could trust me, which is good to know especially considering the source, and so he wanted to talk to me, with his power off. He'd been working on it, he said. Go ahead, I said. He nodded and started looking at me intently.

It was kind of weird. You know the old adage that you don't know how much you miss something until you're deprived of it? That was definitely the case here. It was as if someone had been holding a lightbulb behind him all the time, and they just dimmed it slowly to zero. In about ten seconds, he was in the harsh light of normal humanity. I started noticing his five-o'clock shadow, the annoying way that he rubbed his nose when he was nervous, the dispassionate way he was examining me as if I were a fly under his microscope. The same expression he uses for almost anyone female, I realized.

Suddenly the amazing Timothy had faults, but I kept my face carefully controlled, because I realized with a shock that he was still a nice guy. In lit class, I was reading about Dorian Gray, who was perfect on the outside but unspeakably evil on the inside, and only this one picture of him reflected what he was like on the inside. It was like finding Timothy's picture, and discovering it wasn't any more hideous than the rest of us. Sure, there were a couple warts here and there, but no blood of the innocent like I expected.

"I see," I answered carefully. "How well do you think this is working?"

Timothy was understandably a bit frustrated at me. "How am I supposed to know?" he demanded. "You tell me, how does Dorian Gray look now that the spell is lifted?"

I let out a little gasp, and was glad to see him smile a little. I realized my mistake the next second: he couldn't read my mind, I had just forgotten that we were in the same lit class. So I put up a hand to forestall him and said, "It's working quite well, thank you. You know, you're not such a bad guy, even without the powers. They must have kept you honest, I suppose."

"It's my parents' achievement, really. I thought they couldn't refuse me anything, but when it came down to it, they found a way around it. I really didn't want to go get in trouble, and so they never had to tell me I couldn't. Smarter than he looks, my dad is."

"Most parents are." And with that, we had started a real conversation, among equals. Timothy turned out to be surprisingly insecure on the inside: he knew people liked him because of his powers, and he'd kept that knowledge hidden in a little corner of his mind for a long time. Ben forced him to admit to it that night in Rick's van, and ever since then he'd had that question of how much was him being a good person and how much was only his manipulation gnawing inside him. I kept having to reassure him that he hadn't done anything wrong more than the rest of us have, he just didn't get in trouble with anyone else for it like we do.

We've got a serious relationship going now, to cut a long story short, based on the fact that I'm basically the only person he can talk to who doesn't stand in awe of him all the time. Although I wouldn't be quite so cold-blooded about it, Timothy points out that my new standing among the rest of the girls has helped me tell which ones are my friends and which ones just want to use me to get to him. I didn't tell him that the real situation was a little bit more complicated; I think he knows more than enough about me already.

So I've been helping him get a little more used to being an amateur empath. He's quite clear on that point, actually: he doesn't have magical mental powers, all he can do is read and influence your emotions. It's a bit difficult to wrap your mind around the idea that he's got to learn how to use and refine his powers just like the rest of us do: he can make you feel angry or depressed, sure, but it takes a lot more than that to defend yourself against another mutant. If you're on the soccer team, there's a place for drills and a place for real games, and it's the same for us. We spend a lot of time just learning how to control and extend our abilities, and when we have the chance we spar a little, mostly against Alex - Reality, I should say - because he can take a lot of punishment. (More punishment than the rest of us can dish out, Mind would add.)

Alex continues to fascinate me. All I really knew about him before forming the team was what I heard from my friends, that he was always pulling pranks of some kind or another, always a troublemaker who did everything he could to annoy the teacher but was a pretty decent student otherwise. When he's Reality, self-appointed team leader, it's almost like he's a different person. I don't need an empath to tell me that he's always concerned about the rest of the team; somehow he sees us as his responsibility when we're in his house and under his direction. He's strong-willed, covers up his sense of humor, and demanding of both the rest of us and himself. I wonder if that's just because he imagines that's what a good leader is like, or if the use of his powers somehow changes his outlook on life? There's certainly no love lost between him and Rick, they're always acting like twelve-year-olds over anything they can find to make into an argument. And yet when it matters, Rick is always doing what he should be doing, and at school, they're solid friends. I just don't get it, but I suppose I don't have to get it, I just have to work with it.

* * * *

At our next Tuesday night meeting, the 26th if you care, a bit after it ended, we were all doing some general relaxing and hanging out when Lia called Rick over to Alex's computer, where she'd been checking her email. She thought it was spam, but he quickly verified that it was real.

The message was short, inviting her to join an IRC channel, #topten on hsa.gov, tonight at her convenience, and giving the requisite passwords. It could have been just a con, except that the mail actually had come from mailinglist@mad.hsa.gov, which traced back to the website of the US Government's Homeland Security Agency, Mutant Activities Division. The HSA was infamous in mutant circles, at least the ones we'd found, always trying to catch any mutants they could get their hands on like the cops are always after the mob in those Mafia movies. Being a mutant isn't technically illegal, but using our powers is considered assault with a deadly weapon under federal law, which is a price tag nobody's willing to pay. So we were all worried that the HSA had gotten wind of us after our battle with the Olympians. Ben tried to console us by saying that if they knew all of our identities, they'd have come straight here, and the email was probably just to convince Lia to give the rest of us up. Of course, that didn't really comfort anybody except Ben, but we let him say it anyway. That's just how he is.

We all gathered around the computer and watched over Lia's shoulder as she logged on. Ben was positively itching to get his fingers on the keyboard, but Lia wisely didn't let him. As it turned out, the HSA had no interest in mild-mannered everyday Lia Chin. They wanted Soul. 

Instead of copying-and-pasting the IRC chat logs, I'll give you a short summary and some of my impressions. The channel #topten gets its name from the fact that it's supposed to be a chat room for the ten most powerful mutants in America. One of the ten had recently "left the list" (a term we shortly figured out was a euphemism for "died"), and Soul was one of the five top candidates for his replacement, so she was allowed on the channel not only so that she would be introduced to some of her peers, but so that the HSA's top telepath could find her and read her mind to see how powerful she really was, in order for the final decision to be made.

When the telepathy bit was mentioned, Timothy got predictably excited. He wanted to find out anything he could about how he could defend himself against people like Venus, and there was probably some insecurity about the breadth of his own abilities mixed in there as well. Lia asked a couple casual questions, and lo and behold! The man himself showed up. He introduced himself as Matthew Alnora, employed by the HSA as a "mutation research engineer".

He added as an afterthought, "I also happen to be the most powerful telepath on planet Earth." We'd seen something like that coming, since his username was NumberTwo.

Soul suddenly flashed a little, not as bright as usual but definitely noticeable, and NumberOne logged on at that moment. Seeing the situation, he gleefully shared with us what Alnora was leaving out: he'd become the most powerful telepath by systematically killing all his opposition fifteen years ago, back when he was working in the Department of Defense, to prevent any of them from defecting to the Communists. That was our first warning that we were playing in the big leagues. In fact, six of the top 10 were either in prison or wanted by the FBI: not a particularly surprising picture, considering that power corrupts, but still quite a grim one.

NumberOne himself was a very interesting online personality as well. He introduced himself as "Mars, god of war", for starters. He was arrogant, sarcastic, always cracking jokes, always telling us things that the rest didn't want to tell, seemingly unaware that he was doing anything wrong. When Alnora prodded him, he was even willing to recount fun details about his own life and powers. This also had the side effect of cutting short the many questions Lia had, like how he could possibly be more powerful than a telepath with a government carte blanche behind him.

The way he explained it was all perfectly reasonable. He had become aware of his powers at a very young age, like the rest of us, and one day in his mid-twenties he woke up and decided he never wanted to grow older ever again. In his own words, "So I did. This was in 1845." Every day he gets up and erases all traces of the past day's aging from him. Sometimes, when he pulls an all-nighter, he forgets, and he's not sure how much he could control going backward in age without losing his memories, so he estimates his age at around 30 here in 2002. This guy had the Fountain of Youth working for him, and he just brushed it off like it wasn't important.

It really wasn't important, in context. You see, Mars can alter reality as he chooses. Anything he can sense (which is anything less than a few hundred yards away, an excellent range honed by centuries of practice), he can change, by pumping energy in or out at the subatomic level. He's practically invulnerable, because every time he gets hurt, he simply restores himself back to his condition before it happened, as an instinctive reaction. The only people who could possibly touch him were Numbers Two and Three: Alnora, who apparently had a truce going with him, and the recently deceased James Sazuki, whose shoes Soul was attempting to fill. Of course, she'd come in as number ten, not number three, but that's only to be expected. I didn't think she was anywhere near in the same league as these guys, but I suppose being lucky can come in extremely handy if you can make it happen all the time.

The most interesting bit I haven't related yet was Lia's reaction. She'd always felt a little depressed, as if she wasn't holding up her end of the bargain for the team, since she didn't have anything she could do other than stand around and hope her power triggered to help us out. Being told she was one of the top fifteen people being watched by the United States Government for extremely dangerous power levels was too much for her. She just couldn't believe it. We all stayed back, except for Rick: much as I wanted to help her, we'd all fought this battle ourselves at some point or another, trying to deny how different we were and what that meant we had to do. As the Bible says, "To whom much is given, much shall be required." Or at least I think that's the right quote.

She shoved Rick away and turned back inside herself, going on the Internet to escape the rest of us. Timothy gave us some significant glances and the five of us retreated upstairs to think things over. Ben, as always, looked at the stuff nobody else would bother to mention. He wanted to know if the HSA would break up the team. Alex responded grimly, "They'll have to catch us first." I can't think of a more telling measure of how much we trusted him and each other than the fact that there were no complaints about that. We'd rather do what we could as a team than live our lives in obscurity alone. I don't know how the rest of them thought it through, but as for me, I'd already had a taste of the intoxicating wine of helping others. Volunteer service had nothing on this, the chance to save people's lives while finally using my God-given resources to do a job only I could do.

Ben was extremely tense, fidgeting. Timothy asked him what was wrong. It pained him to admit it, but we finally squeezed out that he didn't know what would happen. "Something bad," he said. "Something very dangerous. That's all."

It was then when a black, shiny new SUV pulled into Alex's driveway. We looked out the window, but didn't recognize the license plates, and no one stepped out of the car. I remember hearing footsteps on the stairs, I assume from context they must have been Lia coming to warn us, but I didn't know what they were at the time.

And then my mind was not my own.

You know how when some people get drunk, they act like a completely different person? They forget everything they knew, have all their restraints removed, and act totally on whatever instinct the alcohol brings out in them. Being possessed by Mizuno (that was his name, or rather I thought of it as my name) was a little like that, except that I wasn't out of control, I was working according to a precise plan. It was simply his plan, not mine. I felt his probing thoughts, boring deeper into my subconscious and my memories, trying to figure out what to do. I was on my knees, my vision clouded in a haze of pain, and then I shook it off and stood up, a terrible smile on my face.

"Sarah?" asked Timothy, suddenly afraid. "What's wrong?" Ben took a look outside at the van, looked back at me, and his eyes narrowed. "She's being mind-controlled. Watch out!" he snapped as he darted for the glasses in his pocket. The rest of the team backed away, still too confused to do anything.

I saw my eyes follow Time's hand to his pocket, remembered what those glasses meant for his fighting ability, felt myself opening a gateway above me and dropping my staff into my hand. I made a thrust, caught him square in the chest, bowled him over and his chair with him. Mizuno inside me was thrilled at my ability to handle the staff, and spent a few seconds twirling it just to show off, an evil grin still on my face. Reality took command, the presence of a threat bringing him into leadership mode. His voice was deeper, more powerful. Scared, I think, or at least Mizuno thought so. "Everyone outside!"

The rest of the team had one thing going for them: Mizuno didn't have access to my thoughts, or even most of my memories, without taking extra time he didn't have. So when Soul pulled open the door and it slammed me into the wall, he assumed she was telekinetic or extraordinarily strong or something. With the extra time that bought us, the team was ready in R's backyard (the front door was already to the side of the house, so Mizuno was easily led out of the way of prying eyes) by the time I caught up to them.

Mizuno tried to open a gateway, but couldn't; my hand and brain jabbed futilely at the empty air. In retrospect, it was a simple mistake: he'd forgotten that I can't open two gateways, and I already had one open in portable form inside my locket. Irritated, I snapped the locket off its chain and got my powers working. Mizuno played around with the gateway a bit: moving it around, making it bigger, wrapping it in a tube around the trunk of a nearby tree. The last of those was another very strange sensation, as I didn't know I was able to bend it at all. It's like discovering you suddenly had a tail: you've never used your tail muscles before, but it takes hardly any mental effort to do so. I brought the gateway back and moved things around in it a little, bringing one particular item to the front so I could release it at a moment's notice. Everyone else watched in horrified fascination, although Time was absent. Too bad, he'd undoubtedly want to take notes on "my" discovery, I thought with the back of my mind, on a level Mizuno hadn't bothered to take control over.

With no warning I compressed the gateway into a six-inch sphere and threw it like a Frisbee directly at the rest of the team. "Watch out!" cried Soul, who knew just how deadly my projectile was: since it couldn't accommodate an entire person, it would simply tear a perfect circle through their chest, and since my mind was behind it, it could be deflected in any direction to ensure it didn't miss. Reality, showing his usual reluctance to back down, dodged out of its way at the last second, while everyone else backed off a bit to give him room to maneuver. 

Mizuno had caught us all totally by surprise, except for me of course, and I wasn't exactly helping the team at the time. Instead of following Reality (who could move much faster in the proper shape) and leaving me open to attack, the sphere exploded in shards of glass and metal. Pieces of the computers Annihilator had blown up and my gateway taken in, actually, now expelled with the same momentum they had coming in, which was quite a lot. Alex took the brunt of the blast, his face and torso bleeding in a dozen places, but the rest of the team took their fair share of cuts on arms and shoulders from covering their heads insinctively. The gateway now swerved downwards to follow Reality, as I twirled my staff, laughing in pure delight at the chaos I was causing.

Pain exploded into the back of my head. My right arm went limp, I dropped the staff, and a quick kick to the back of the knees sent me sprawling. Time had snuck around behind me, put his glasses on, and was delivering a precision beating with reflexes my staff skills had always had trouble against, even when I didn't have to deal with possession by an evil mutant. All the thoughts left my head in a rush with that realization, and I blacked out for a few seconds. When I came to, I heard Time scream the way I must have been screaming a minute earlier, a scream that quickly stopped as Mizuno took hold of him instead.

Mind ran up to me, broadcasting his fear and concern to me as he approached: in the excitement, he must have forgotten to hold back his powers from their usual wide area of effect. "Are you all right?" he asked as he gathered me up in his arms.

I didn't bother to answer. I always hated that question: if you need to ask, of course I'm not all right. Instead, I answered with something useful for a change. "Time's been possessed. Knock him out!"

Timothy glanced over my shoulder to Time, and opened his mouth to speak, but seeing his services needed elsewhere, laid me down gently and got up just in time to catch Time, who had already been discarded. By quick thinking on Time's part, he still had his glasses on when he was possessed. Unable to interpret the torrent of information coming from his enhanced brain, Mizuno left him for someone more inviting. The next one up was Power.

I knew the look in Power's eyes, the same look that I had been on the other end of just a moment ago. After my attempt to get back on my feet was countermanded by superior orders from my splitting headache, I decided to use my staff to help myself up. While doing so, I saw the next battle transpire.

Alex had had quite enough of going on the defensive, and he certainly wouldn't regret causing Rick to spend the night in the hospital "in the line of duty", so he showed us he meant business. We'd only seen it a couple times before, in practice, but it was still extremely impressive. As Reality swung his fist, a long sword grew from his arm, his muscles expanding to deal with the increased weight. Unable to dodge, Mizuno panicked. He drew deep into Power's subconscious, looking for anything he could latch on to. He quickly found it, the same weapon that had protected him from Annihilator's preliminary blasts, the Rave Storm or something, I forget the name. It was like a column of shimmering blue-white energy around him. The sword vaporized at its touch.

Even if I had been able to help, this fight was Reality's alone. There was nothing I could even think of doing that wouldn't either kill both of them outright or simply annoy them. So I watched in amazement, Mind and Soul watching anxiously at my side, as the sword reformed into a giant, vicious-looking spike and his body flowed upward to become long and thin. He jabbed downward from above the column, and Soul winced and looked away in anticipation. I grabbed her hand and was not surprised to feel Mind's hand on my shoulder turn into a clawlike grip as he felt the force of her emotion and that of the two combatants.

Another bright white flash, right beside me, heralded the development of something new. The metal spike too dissolved, hissing and crackling as it melted into liquid, then flash-heated into gas, disappearing into thin air right above Power's head. He looked like he was on fire.

"What is he doing to himself?" asked Time, horrified, as he got up. I was wondering much the same thing. He put the glasses back on for a closer look and was vastly relieved to tell us that it somehow wasn't affecting him or his clothes: he'd created a tight energy field around him, one powerful enough to destroy anything it touched almost instantly. "It's taking all his concentration to keep his shield going," reported Time. He yelled to Reality: "Back off! Make him lower the shield!"

In less than two seconds, Reality was back in human form some distance away from Power, flowing smoothly into his normal shape (without the damage from my "grenade", of course). The shield winked out just as Time had predicted, as Power sent a line of flame burning across the ground, jumped into the air, and blasted himself over our heads like some kind of human rocket. 

Instead of attacking from above, however, he swerved and crashed into the side of the house. Time started moving the exact fraction of a second this course of action had become apparent and threw himself at Reality with a wild yell. Still worked up from the battle, Reality became a large birdlike animal and jumped upwards, catching Time and bringing them both to the ground with a crash.

That turned out to have been a stroke of genius on both their parts. Mizuno, showing the same logic he had before, had abandoned Power for Reality - apparently trying to work his way up the power chain. Unfortunately, Mizuno was only used to working with human brains, not a creature who wasn't even remotely human. Reality twitched a little on the ground as his mind was invaded and gave out a croaking sound, but didn't change to human form, and the enemy left him for easier prey as he had Time.

Another stroke of good luck occurred. Actually, there was a flash from Soul, so I don't know how much real luck was involved, but that's immaterial. Mind, the obvious next target, had also hit upon a way to defend himself. As he told me later, he linked his mind as fully as he could with Time's, letting the extra information wash over him, filling his mental capacity to the brim and beyond. I had been telling him he didn't know his own strength, but this proved it. What I know is that their heartbeats and breathing synchronized, their faces took on the exact same dazed and painful expression, they both tore their glasses off even though Mind had contacts and was simply grasping empty air. They both staggered under Mizuno's attack, clutching their heads in the same way, and then it was over, and they fell over together, Mind knocked unconscious by the physical and mental effort and Time dragged down with him by the last vestiges of their mental link.

Only Power and I were available to look at what happened next, since Reality was currently hiding from Mizuno as a field of petunias. Our gazes turned to Soul, and we were both on our feet and heading towards her when Mizuno finished taking control of her mind. Instead of looking at us, however, she was distracted. She didn't even notice our presence, and with a gasp of pain, spread her arms open wide.

All hell broke loose within a ten-meter radius of the girl. The grass under our feet caught fire. A passing bird shot straight up into the air faster than it could have dived down at us, doing a miniature barrel roll. Lightning leapt from Power's fingers and looped back into himself, electrocuting him in clear defiance of what I'd learned in physics class. Mind tripped over a shoelace and fell in such a way as to retie the thing as he hit the grass, now frozen solid. My staff slipped out of my hand and hit Power in the face; his lightning bolts turned to beams of laser light shining out from him as he was hit, burning holes in leaves and house alike as the rest of us dodged them. I felt a wave of exhaustion greater than anything I'd ever known come upon me, and I fell asleep.

When I woke up, there was a black SUV wrapped around the telephone pole two houses down from Alex's place. Reality's doing, as he explained to us. Apparently, the sleep effect was triggered by Soul in Mind's brain, and affected everyone human in the vicinity. Reality, not having a brain per se at the time, had simply guessed when the battle would be over, transformed back into his human self, and dragged us back inside for some rest. Mizuno had already escaped on foot, so he trashed the guy's car instead. Something like that, it didn't really matter.

There was an IM waiting for Lia downstairs, from Mizuno, informing us that he no longer wished to do battle with so powerful a group of superheroes. I didn't think we'd been the victors, but apparently he thought otherwise. Lia just looked down and covered her face in her hands. She was crying. I wanted to help, but Timothy was already there with the kind of comfort only he could provide. This was one emotional roller coaster I didn't want to interfere with.

And that's the story. I'd learned more from one attack than my weeks of training, and the team would never be the same. That night I asked God to help Lia handle what had happened. She sure could use some divine intervention about now, I thought.

* * * *

LiveJournal user twalker1229 [Timothy] wrote on 2002-11-30:

Teenage angst time. Excuse my rambling, but I need to get this off my chest.

I feel really bad about lying to my teammates, Sarah in particular. She doesn't deserve to be treated like this. I think I'll tell her the truth the next time I can get her alone for a few minutes. I'd been meaning to ask her about that lit assignment anyway.

I told Sarah and the others that I managed to prevent Mizuno, or whatever his real name is, from attacking me by linking my mind with Time's, and he just couldn't handle all the information. That wasn't precisely true. Scratch that, it's not true at all. I can't think nowhere near that fast, especially when I'm shaken up with no visible target.

Mizuno, well, possessed me the same way he did everyone else. Only I'm a mentalist, and so is he. There was no hesitation to learn what my powers were, no time lag between him gaining ascendancy over most parts of me and him using me like a well-tuned instrument. It was Mizuno that decided to link with Time. I think he was under the impression that when we linked up, he would be able to control Time and have the benefit of what he assumed was his super speed without the unintelligible brain, as well as keeping me from interfering. Not that I could interfere, of course.

People overestimate me all the time, I'm used to it. He had some way of keeping his mental guard up that prevented me from using my standard methods of control when he was taking over someone else, and those five seconds he spent in control of my empathic ability taught me more than a week of self-taught experimentation with Sarah and Ben.

It feels strange to have all my villains for teachers. But I guess it makes sense, when you look at it the right way: if there are other good empaths out there, they certainly wouldn't come knocking on my door, so I have to take what I get. I'm a lot more sure of what I can do now. For instance, I think I've got the whole limiting emotional effects to one specific person thing down, which was a real problem back when I couldn't turn it on or off. Now I might actually be of some use to the team. Wouldn't that be a surprise!

If Ben was here, he would say that I've been great use to everyone simply because they all overestimate me. I never liked being the one everyone looks to, and it usually gets me attacked all the time because anybody would be scared of a real mentalist. Not like me, of course. I'm a rank amateur. I'm just doing what I can, trying to do better but not sure I'm doing enough to make a difference.

Hey, at least Sarah likes me. It's good to have someone to talk to, and she *is* pretty hot. My parents would like her, I think. I wouldn't get far without her these days, I've got so much on my mind. Kind of ironic, isn't it? The mental wonder boy is overwhelmed by too many thoughts. That's just the way things go sometimes.


CHAPTER FIVE
============


My mother always told me to be careful what you wish for, you might just get it. Now I know how that feels. I don't know how many times I've wished I wasn't a mutant, that I was just an ordinary guy who didn't have to worry about all this, but now that my mutant power has been suppressed, all I want is to have it back. It figures.

Today, as far as I can tell, is Sunday. Friday afternoon I was captured by General Laskin's forces. I woke up Saturday morning with a splitting headache and a complete lack of mental powers. I was in a holding cell with nine other mutants, apparently the latest batch of captures. Sarah, Alex, Ben and Jill were with me, as well as Zeke, the young Olympian called Mercury whom we'd fought what seemed like years earlier, and several others whose names I can't recall. We spend all our time in the cell, except when we're marched out to demonstrate our powers under carefully controlled conditions.

I don't know how long this is going to last. Laskin's guards have crammed his base full of neuroscramblers which prevent our powers from being used at all. Most of us can function like normal human beings without our powers, but Ben has to go around blindfolded because his power is so heavily linked to his sense of sight that with the one gone, the other doesn't work either. He's still as annoying as ever, especially since now I can't tell if he's being sarcastic or not. Hey, I'm not used to working at a disadvantage here.

Our current "escape plan" involves trying to find out if Lia's ability is affected by the scramblers, since it's unconscious in the first place. This involves putting her in as much immediate, gut-reaction danger as possible. The disturbing thing, and the main reason I wish I was an empath again, is that she seemed to be more gung-ho than the rest of us are about this when we asked. She's changed lately, but I don't know whether it's from Rick's influence, or Mizuno's influence, or even the HSA telling her how powerful she was. She's hard, grim, even fatalistic at times. I only wish I knew, so I could help. Sarah tells me to relax, there's nothing I can do about it. She doesn't really understand. Maybe Alex would, he's got his own bond with Lia that comes out of his duty, but it's highly unlikely that I'll get a chance to talk to him alone.

Lia isn't in our cell, and neither is Rick. Why? Because they haven't been part of Team Infinity for quite a while now. They've been here longer than we have, or at least they're in a different cell, I'm not sure. We get to see them only in passing, which doesn't help my efforts to help Lia any. I keep running that scene over and over in my head, trying to figure out where we went wrong. I don't have to be an empath to know that Alex is doing the same thing. The only one who seems unconcerned is Ben, and he won't tell me why. Maybe it would upset the future or something, I wouldn't know. I know it makes no sense, but I can't help feeling that I did something wrong.

* * * *

Rick left the team two weeks ago. He hadn't been to the last couple meetings, and when he had been there, he'd been getting more and more angry, more contemptuous of all the rules and drills Alex and Ben set up for us. I admit, I wasn't fond of all the procedure myself, but I trust Alex to know what he's doing, I suppose. And because I do, Sarah does, and that's half the team right there. This time he showed up late, mad as a hornet, ready to blast down the door if Alex didn't open it quickly enough. 

He announced, in his typical short style, that he didn't need us anyway. There was nobody who could touch him, he said, except maybe Venus, and the rest of us couldn't beat her either, so she didn't count. I'd felt some of the backlash of his emotions, was getting worked up myself. How dare he up and leave us, the only people who really understood him? It was on the tip of my tongue to say, "I could probably stop Venus, and I can stop you, too, any time I want," but it wouldn't have done any good. I noted that this announcement wasn't a shock to Lia at all. She didn't approve of his reasons, but she had allowed her feelings for him to overcome that disapproval.

He left in a storm, and nothing Alex could say could convince him otherwise. The slam of the door echoed through the house. We all looked at each other; no words needed to be said. We weren't leaving.

But then emotion bubbled up in Lia, and she stood up. She looked, not at Alex, but at me. "I'm going after him," she said, making a silent request of me to explain what she didn't have the heart to say herself. I let a little understanding flow into her; she nodded slightly, then hurried upstairs. He was waiting in the car to drive her home.

"She had to go," I said to the other three of us. "She can't give him up."

"In fact," added Ben beneath his breath, "she has a good chance of saving his life. In fact, she may be his only hope."

There was a twisting feeling in my stomach, dread at what I knew could happen but was powerless. I had no idea how Ben coped with knowing this kind of probable future about everyone, all the time. Just one was one too many for me.

Alex was angry, intensely angry. Sarah was in emotional shock, her feelings warring between relief that she wouldn't have to deal with Rick anymore and trepidation over what this meant for the rest of the team, the relationships she had thought were so solid but were just as fragile as anything else. Ben was deep in self-pity. Perhaps he'd seen it coming, at least seen parts of it, and not told Alex because he didn't think it was important or he didn't know the import of what he saw. In any case, he was in a little too much self-pity. I raised him back up to a safe level, calmed Alex down a bit. We needed them both able to make rational decisions. I couldn't do something of the same for Space without risking too much; her emotions were still in turmoil.

"I saw it coming all along," Ben said. His lips tightened, his voice started to choke but he held it back. "I saw him drifting steadily away, and I couldn't do anything about it. I didn't even tell you." There was no response from the rest of us, except a gentle prompting from me to continue.

"Before the end of the month, Power is going to be attacked and captured by some kind of organized non-mutant group. If he was with the team, we would have had a small chance of helping him resist. Now that he's gone, there is no doubt remaining. The only way to change this future is currently in his car.

"With Soul around, anything can happen. She bends the fixed rules that allow me to see through time. If enough of her power is used at the right time, the two of them will escape. We have to be on hand to pick them up before our unknown adversaries can try again."

Alex added, "If not, we'll have to go after them. Regardless of how much I like Power, I wouldn't wish a kidnapping out of the blue, probably with hostile intent from what we've experienced in the past, on anyone. Although if I understand Time correctly, we should be watching our backs ourselves."

Ben absently rubbed his glasses in his pocket as he nodded in assent, looking at Alex with the faraway look that indicated he was delving deep into the past, or the future. "The larger of a group we're in, the better chance we will have of resolving the whole situation in a satisfactory manner."

"It's decided, then. This meeting is adjourned. We all need some time to think this over. Be careful not to tell anyone else about this." Alex stood up, and so did the rest of us. A wise decision on his part, only slightly aided by my mental promptings. Sarah would probably be up till all hours of the night on IM, trying to work things through. The last thing she needed right now was someone to meddle in her private feelings, which is exactly what I'd do, so I left quickly.

* * * *

Two weeks later, this Tuesday, things had had a chance to die down a bit. Rick wasn't blindly mad at us anymore, but he stuck by his position that he was quite capable of taking care of himself and his own abilities, especially considering what he'd learned from Mizuno. I noticed he avoided my glance when he saw me in the halls. Of course, even if he'd been perfectly normal on the outside, I would have felt his sense of guilt, his determination to steer by his own oar rather than Alex's, and the gentle, calming effect that Lia had on him whenever she was in his eyes or his thoughts. It simply struck me that he was broadcasting it to the world at large instead of keeping it bottled up inside as he normally does. As to whether that was a good or bad sign, I won't hazard a guess; I've learned to be considerably more cautious about predictions based on inferences since getting to know Ben. Anyone would, really.

Lia hadn't been showing up to any meetings either, but her motives were considerably different. I guessed that she knew how vulnerable she was out in the open, but she couldn't abandon Rick, partly for his sake and partly for hers. So she did the only thing she could do under the circumstances: go with him instead of us. I had understood from the beginning, and a few words in private with Alex made sure that she was allowed to go about her business without worrying about the four of us doing anything to disturb the situation. Rick was in a tenuous situation, and I lacked the skill and the inclination to make life easier on him with a little emotional shifting. "There are some things man was not meant to know," says the writer of the grade B sci-fi movie; while obviously God meant me to have this ability, since I have it, I agree with the spirit of his argument. Things would be easier for all of us if I just stayed quiet, gathering information in case I did have to step in. So I did.

Anyway, Tuesday night our meeting ran overtime. We were filming a scene for Sarah's video communications class. Said scene turned into a comedy fairly quickly, which was natural considering the people involved. The other people in Sarah's group left, we finished the scene, and then did our usual team business. I was halfway through convincing Sarah that Alex (with a suitably altered face) was her long-lost brother when a new person came into my mind, like a pinprick of emotion, sharp and small.

She (definitely a she, men and women have distinctive emotional patterns) was walking - no, running - along the sidewalk in front of Alex's house, and her thoughts surged in time with her heartbeat, whipping around and around in a cycle, driving her to a frenzied state of fear, anxiety, hopelessness, and frustration. The very recipe for bad news. I just hoped it wasn't our house.

I put a hand to Sarah's mouth, interrupting her confused question as my attention began to drain away from the two of them. "I think I hear something," I said, and they all knew what I meant. It would be closer to say that I felt something, but as Ben would say, the advantage of preciseness in this case was outweighed by the semantic benefits of "keeping quiet," i.e. controlling your thoughts. Keeping the manipulation going on Alex and Sarah, locking it down into a known pattern of feeling I could project onto them, I focused on the new girl.

She in fact ran right by Alex's house, and had almost but not quite left my presence entirely when she stopped and turned around. Although I didn't notice it at the time, I wouldn't have been able to sense her from that distance if she hadn't been radiating her emotions so strongly that I could pick them up anyway, as a stronger light will illuminate more area. By this time we had all fallen silent, my hand still raised, and we heard the doorbell ring.

Everyone started talking at once, and Ben put on his glasses to do some quick figuring. "Who is it?" asked Sarah.

Before I could answer, Ben interjected, "She doesn't know about Alex, she found us on her own. That's why it took so long for her to find the right house." I simply nodded, able to follow Ben's reasoning except for the part about the gender of our mysterious guest. Seeing my objection in my face, he added with a mischevious smile, "You never listen to guys like that. Of course it had to be a girl." Alex chuckled and Sarah looked away, unsuccessfully hiding her smile behind her hand.

"But seriously," asked Alex, "who is it?" The doorbell rang again. I responded, "Don't worry, she's not here to harm us. In fact, she needs our help, the team's help, but I'm not sure why or how she thinks we can provide it."

"In that case, let her in by all means," was his answer. "Let's take a closer look at her and see if Team Infinity can offer our services."

"I'll handle her. I'll try to calm her down, take her mind off her troubles so that she'll be coherent enough to tell us her story." With that, I was up the stairs. I opened the door and looked into her eyes, amethyst eyes strikingly unusual for her chocolate brown skin, and they caught me. Held me there like a tongue-tied schoolboy. My mind, already open to her in preparation for my job, flooded into hers for an instant, and I felt her emotional state all at once as if I were standing on both sides of the door. She gasped involuntarily, our minds rebounded back into their proper places, and I knew she had felt the same thing.

"Uh... hello. Please come in." I stammered, not sure what I'd done or how. From connections that still lingered I felt her presence, felt that she had been running for what seemed to her like a long time, that her left shoe was untied and she didn't care. She looked around, faintly surprised to see a normal upper-class home, and took her shoes off.

"What's your name?" I asked, being gentle, amplifying her trust for me a little and dampening her anxiety.

"Li--Jill. Jill Reddings. I'm looking for Team Infinity."

"Well, Jill, you've found them. Mind, at your service. The rest of the team is downstairs. This way." I extended my hand.

"I knew it was you. Thank you so much!" She clasped my hand as if she were drowning and I had just thrown her a life raft. I didn't want to disturb her emotional state too much, especially not after that weird little moment at the door, so all I did was keep her at a coherent level, following Ben's advice. And if you've got to follow someone's advice, Ben is a good one to ask, I think.

She collapsed in my chair, partly from mental and physical exertion, partly from melodrama, and I got my first good look at her from the outside. Jill was about our age or a little older, of medium height and wore a ragged sweater and jeans. Her hair was looking a little the worse for wear, but was a good choice of hairstyle, set up to frame her heart-shaped face and those eyes. When she smiled, as she began to do now, it was her eyes that smiled first. A good sign, although I was keeping close watch on her mental state and was therefore not surprised when the smile rose to fruition on her lips.

Instead of letting Alex speak first, Ben softly asked her name. There was less hesitation when she answered this time, but the two of us could still detect it. "And what were you going to say?" he asked, taking off his glasses.

She hesitated before answering. "Lily. James always called me Lily. But I'm not her anymore. I'm just Jill now. It's my real name."

"I see." Alex nodded thoughtfully, then remembered his duties as the host and team leader abruptly. "Well, this is Team Infinity at the moment." He shot a glance at Ben, who gave him a thumbs-up discreetly, and continued, "I'm the team leader, Reality. My friends call me Alex.

"You've already met Mind, and these two are Space and Time. Soul isn't here tonight." No mention of Power, but it was on everyone's mind, except for Jill's, of course. "So, what can we do for you?"

"I-I just need somewhere to hide, that's all. I've been living in New York for a while, but... I was unable to stay. There are certain people who would rather I was not around. James had many enemies. I found a little out about you from some friends - you're more well-known than you suspect - and I thought you could help me."

"James?" Alex asked. "Why did you have to leave New York? And why us, in particular?"

"It's a long story." Clearly she didn't want questions asked. Unfortunately for her, this is not the way we do things. Ben could tell us some of what we were getting into, but Alex wanted to hear it from the source.

"Most stories are," he responded. "Come on, if you can't tell us, why bother telling as much as you have?" His smile was in the best of intentions, but did little to assuage Jill's intrinsic distrust and reluctance to reveal her secrets. She started her story anyway, haltingly but in control of herself now.

"My parents abandoned me when they realized I was a mutant. I was seven years old then. I was sent to a couple foster homes, but nobody wanted a kid with my kind of special needs. Eventually James picked me up, raised me like his own daughter. He wasn't the nicest person on the planet, but he always did right by me."

"James?" asked Ben. "You mean James Sazuki? Third most powerful mutant in America?"

"Yes. Or at least he was. He called himself Tao because he believed he was tapping into the primal energy source of the universe. For all I know, he could have been. What I know is that he somehow managed to hold down a regular job in New York and still find time for us.

"Once I was old enough to assume some responsibility, James found the twins, Patrick and Gina. They're actually a good representation of most of us: they could be leading normal lives if they hadn't been revealed to be mutants. They're not even dangerous. All they can do is sense electric fields - he sees them, she smells them. They needed a good home, where they could be taught that they really were like everyone else in the things that mattered.

"Unfortunately, they'd only been with James and I for about a year before he... he..." She stopped, her voice broke. The pain of James' loss was still too near for her. I laid a comforting hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off. She'd regained her faculties on her own, without my help except by my mere physical presence - a good sign that I hadn't done any permanent damage to her.

"I'm OK, thank you. James had been obsessed with extending his abilities. He'd been drawing more and more energy into himself, in waves he could barely control that buffeted everything around him. I'm not sure why. One day, he left to go to work, and on the six o'clock news there had been an explosion at the power plant where he worked. He loved to take the twins there - it was so much fun for them to see the generators, like going to a fireworks show." She sighed and shook her head. "But that's over now.

"When I heard the news, I feared the worst, but I had to be sure. I caught a cab to the remains, and I knew James was gone. The news told you that the explosion took out the equivalent of four city blocks. But what it failed to mention was that everything within a ten-meter radius of where James had been standing was gone. Not destroyed, not vaporized, removed from this plane of existence entirely.

"I couldn't take care of the twins myself, but I made sure they found a home with a family who knew they were mutants but agreed to keep quiet about it, never say a word to them. It's as much as I could do under the circumstances."

"So now you're here," said Alex. "You thought we could find you a place to hide while you got back on your feet."

"If you want to put it that way, yes. I don't know, maybe I could help out your team for a while, too..."

"Well, if you're willing to undergo some testing, we can hopefully determine that part. Finding you a place to live could take a bit longer, but for the first few days, you can stay here." Alex was always generous, especially for a good cause. Besides, both Ben and I had given her the proverbial thumbs-up. One good thing about being an empath, you don't have to give hand signals. When he wanted to know whether Jill was saying one thing and meaning another, I sent a little packet of trust or distrust to him, answered his question before he asked it.

Jill offered her profuse thanks, and allowed Alex to show her around his place, but not without casting a look at me over her shoulder. She'd fallen for me, bad. Nothing I couldn't handle normally, but there were extenuating circumstances with this one that might make it a little tricky. I needed to discuss this with someone, and besides, the meeting obviously wasn't going anywhere at this point, so I caught Sarah's eye as she rose to go with the two of them and motioned her off to the side to talk with her.

I cut her opening question short by undoing the mental pattern I'd created to mimic a brother-sister bond between Sarah and Alex. She stopped with an open mouth, scratched her head for a second, then realized it was my doing. "Well, I suppose it worked, since I don't even know what you were doing. Something about Alex?"

I explained my methods briefly, not wanting to waste time in small talk that she would undoubtedly be curious about later anyway, and got to the real question: "So, what do you think of Jill?"

"Jill? She's all right, I guess. Probably I'll like her more when she's had a good night's sleep and fixed her hair. But why ask me? It's not like I know more than you do."

"You'd be surprised. Girls pick up on a lot of things guys don't, even me. I simply don't look for them."

"I suppose so. I don't have to tell you how she feels about us, though, do I?" This with a half-smile on her face. She sat down and I pulled up a chair next to her.

"No," I answered ruefully. "However, this is rather a special case.

"Somehow, I've created a mental bond between us. You know my sensing abilities decrease with distance, but I know her every whim as if I were standing next to her, concentrating on her. She feels my emotions to some degree, too - I didn't know I could do that."

"Wait a minute. She can sense your emotions? Doesn't that mean she gets some sense of everyone's emotions, since you know what we feel?" Sarah was curious, and more than a wee bit envious. I decided to keep talking, though, to see what she really felt about all this.

"Yeah, it does. It's like she's piggybacking on my empathic ability. It certainly would explain the increased feedback between us - we clarify and enhance our images of each other's emotional state."

"Is she already a mentalist of some kind? I assume you would have told Alex if she were."

"No, that's not it. I don't know what her power is exactly, but it's on or potentially on all the time, like Ben's glasses or Reality's precise self-identity. This... effect... happened the first time I saw her, as I opened the door. I was acting on instinct, so I could easily have been tapping into something I don't know how to do consciously."

Sarah nodded. This was familiar territory for her. She had, in fact, come up with a new idea. "All right. What if your mental link is simply your powers making a constant, subconscious connection to her brain? You're not trying to take on her emotional state like you did with Mizuno, but the reverse: making hers more like yours!"

"You may be right," I said, sobered by the thought. (So was she, of course; I hadn't bothered turning off my power for the moment, it took a lot of concentration.) "I guess Jill and I have a kind of connection that the two of us will never share."

"What do you mean?" A tinge of apprehension in Sarah's voice and mind. She hadn't thought about it that way, but when she did, the implications were disturbing. "Why not?" she asked after a small pause.

"To be blunt with you, I fear I may have done permanent damage to her mind, replaced part of her emotional makeup with my own. I was using more power than I thought I had, Sarah. I don't want to tell her, of course, and I can't be around her all the time, of course... I wonder how I could test this. I hope I haven't done anything I can't reverse."

Alex came down then and informed us that his parents were going to be home tomorrow, so we started helping him clean up the place. He mentioned in passing that Jill was going to be with him at school tomorrow, a "friend from out of town". As we moved chairs back to their proper pristine locations in the basement, he asked quietly, "Anything I should know?"

I licked my lips and cleared my throat, uncomfortable. Sarah knew what was up, though, and gave me an elbow jab in the ribs and a corresponding jab of irritation and urgency at me on the emotional level, so I talked. "She and I have forged some kind of mind link. We can tell each other's emotions at long range, for sure. I think I may have changed her emotional makeup permanently to allow this."

Alex got an expression on his face that was a combination wince, curse, and grimace. Not that I could read the face that well, but I knew what it was anyhow. "That's bad. What are you going to do?"

"What I need you to do," I answered, pointedly avoiding the question, "is to watch her. If she behaves unusually when I'm not around - I'm sorry, but I don't know exactly what, it could be anything from confusion to restlessness - and then snaps back to her 'normal' self as I approach, we may have a problem."

"We'd better not," he muttered under his breath, and Sarah and I prepared to leave.

As I was driving her home, Sarah commented, "You know, you may have gotten yourself in a lot of trouble, Timothy."

"Jealousy! Good to see you can still feel some genuine negative emotions towards me!" I said, trying to defuse the situation. "But don't worry. I think everything is going to be fine. Besides, even if I could repeat the mind link process, I'm not sure I'd want to. It certainly would be unhealthy for me to know anything more about you." This with a mischevious smile.

She gave up and smiled back, then laid her hand on top of mine. She didn't want to press the subject, and I was more than a little thankful. The last thing I wanted was for something to happen to her. Not that I wished evil on Jill or anything, just that, well, the situation was a little different, that's all.

* * * *

The process of unraveling our mental connection took longer than I thought, but after two days of spending all my free moments working on it, Jill was back to being the same girl she'd always been. She understood why I had to do it perhaps better than I did; I wouldn't discount it, since she knew my emotions at the time. She's smarter than she thinks she is, especially with people. One thing was for sure, I'd made a new friend.

While Jill turned out to be a very nice girl all around, a little experimentation revealed that she would only be put at risk as a new member of Team Infinity. Her ability to influence and accelerate or retard the natural growth of plants was certainly fascinating, but even Ben couldn't see where it would come in handy against, say, the Olympians, or even the small-time robbers and killers we worked on when business was slow. Certainly her fate was not as a teenage superhero.

Ben did point out one ray of hope for the future: she could work for her passion, mutant rights, in the field of politics, either as a noted expert or as a lawmaker herself. She certainly had the right personality to be a politician: smooth, charming, intelligent, good in front of a camera, trustworthy, and able to lie with a perfectly straight face. Of course, Ben refused to give out exact probabilities, as they're understandably more difficult to tell the farther ahead something is and this was the farthest he'd stretched his precognitive abilities yet with something as unpredictable as a human, but it made her day. She spent lots of time at Alex's house (she'd charmed his parents, who agreed to let her stay until she could find somewhere else) making plans for the future. As "payment", Alex's backyard now contained a stunningly beautiful garden, with every flower she could find from the surrounding area transplanted and encouraged to grow.

We had just begun to settle in, and went out to see the second Lord of the Rings movie together after school on Friday. Lia and her friends had already planned something of their own, so it was just me, Sarah, Jill, Ben, Alex, and Alex's friend Amy. On the way to the theater, in the parking garage, Ben gave us the signal for "impending danger." Wary, we stepped out of the car, the four of us team members deploying in a loose circle around Jill and Amy, Ben surreptitiously reaching into a pocket for his glasses.

Before we knew what hit us, we were out cold. I learned later that they had been waiting for us with some sort of tranquilizer weapon, had shot us before Time could get his glasses on or Reality could change form so that we had no advance warning. Laskin had done his homework, or at least had highly trained and well-equipped people working for him.

They also apparently had a mentalist with them, as was obvious when we compared notes. Based on Laskin's procedure with our fellow inmates, Amy probably woke up at home on Saturday morning, convinced that the movie had been sold out and the outing rescheduled for next week. That meant there was no fuss from anyone who wasn't already being controlled by armed guards and denied powers by the neural inhibitor field impulse things, or whatever they were called. I'm not too sure about that name, as the only tech-savvy prisoner with us is way down at the other end of the holding area.

I told you about our "plan", such as it is, already. I'm not sure why I'm writing this down at all, except that I feel I should remember the situation in case there are some unforeseen repercussions later on. The natural caution I get from being around Ben, I guess. At least when we get out I'll have some great stories to tell Lia and Rick.

Assuming Rick ever comes back, of course. Or even that Lia does, for that matter. Sometimes it's difficult to have faith in humanity like Alex does, but I try. At least I have him and Sarah around to talk to. Sometimes I think our team is the only thing that keeps me sane.

* * * *

AOL Instant Messenger conversation on 2003-01-08 between users soccerluvr [Sarah] and CrYpToMaNcEr [Ellen]:

CrYpToMaNcEr: Hi!
soccerluvr: hi
soccerluvr: blarg, feeling down today
CrYpToMaNcEr: What's wrong?
soccerluvr: guys are stupid
CrYpToMaNcEr: And this is news because...
soccerluvr: him in particular
CrYpToMaNcEr: Ah.
CrYpToMaNcEr: What is it this time?
soccerluvr: he introduces me to this girl he feels like he's known for forever.
CrYpToMaNcEr: Yeah, it's like, What am I supposed to do?
soccerluvr: what could he be thinking?
soccerluvr: usually he always says the right thing
CrYpToMaNcEr: It could be just a rough week for him. Maybe he's not thinking straight.
soccerluvr: well, i know that already, hehe
CrYpToMaNcEr: You know what I mean.
soccerluvr: yeah
soccerluvr: i don't know what to do
soccerluvr: i know he's not one of those fickle guys
CrYpToMaNcEr: Well then, why worry?
soccerluvr: you have a point
soccerluvr: you know we're not exactly the most star-struck couple
soccerluvr: maybe I'm letting that face cloud my judgment
CrYpToMaNcEr: Can't say I blame you ;-)
CrYpToMaNcEr: But seriously, just keep an eye on him. It should be easy to tell after a few days.
soccerluvr: i guess so
soccerluvr: i should keep my worries to myself
CrYpToMaNcEr: That's what I'm here for, dear *pat pat*
soccerluvr: thanks
soccerluvr: dinner, back later
CrYpToMaNcEr: No problem. Bye.
soccerluvr: bye


CHAPTER SIX
===========


On most Sunday afternoons, I'd be relaxing on the couch, letting the sunshine stream down on me as I curled up with a good book, or I'd be playing outside in the sun. Today, I was trying to get everyone around me to shut up as I waited for what might be my only chance to break out of mutant prison. Not the ordinary, evening-news kind of mutant prison that looks like any other maximum-security place except with neuroscramblers and HSA-trained guards, but something that had obviously once been a research facility, and was probably in violation of half a dozen laws besides the kidnappings they'd perpetrated to get us all here.

To deal with the situation, I'd been keeping myself permanently in fearless leader mode. It took a lot of effort, but paid off, as nobody else in the cells was doing it. There were three cells, ten people each, nearly full with the arrival of our group. I was fortunate enough to be in the middle cell with most of the team; Power and Soul were to our right, closer to the monitoring room and front door, while I'd never heard of anyone in the cell to our left, but through conversation had made contact with their spokesman, a guy named Ross with a deep bass voice and a plan for escape better than our previous "wait for Soul to do something."

Everybody was unnaturally quiet in my cell, because I was trying to concentrate, so the other two tried to cover for us with loud jokes and conversations. Rick even wedged himself halfway through the door before one of the guards kicked him back inside. I was in the far corner, lying down, already obscured by Space and Time sitting in front of me, waiting for the moment that might come and might not. One of the neuroscramblers had broken down, and it was being checked for repairs. Fortunately, someone in Ross's cell was versed in neuroscrambler design (I didn't ask where he got his information), and soon everyone knew that this particular model was likely to put a surge through the system when it came back online. For once, Soul's luck had nothing to do with it, and the surge came, flickering the neuroscrambler system off for only an instant. Half a dozen mutants went crazy, in all three cells, as they felt their abilities come back to them and then gone before they knew they were there. The guards leveled their weapons, and everybody shut up. Fortunately, they never thought of taking a headcount. I was gone.

You see, I've never been particularly attached to the body of Alex Brene. I've given myself so many small tweaks over the years to get to a body I'm happy to be in that I'm not sure what my original state was. When the power flickered, I did the only thing that would circumvent the neuroscramblers and the guards at the same time: transformed myself into air. Without a brain or eyes, I was running on autopilot, based on what the expert in the next cell had told me about the neuroscramblers' machinery and my knowledge of their locations. I'd warned everyone that I was a shapeshifter, so nobody was alarmed when writing on the wall of our cell appeared saying "Going well, don't say anything". Where I had been laying was a bundle of darts, which Timothy threw at each of the neuroscramblers in turn; each sank soundlessly into the device as it reached its target, turning back into air. Now that I knew the position of all the scramblers (since of course I knew where my own body was), I could get to work. I spread my mass out along the ceiling as an extra layer of tiles, then once I had had a chance to drift through into the scramblers as convenient air molecules, I added mass inside them until they broke off the wall they were mounted on, breaking their power lines and undoubtedly tripping alarms in the control room.

Without the support of forward-thinking mutants among the prisoners, the guards would have recaptured us then and there. But because we'd spread the word, everyone was trained not to make any sign that their powers had been restored. The only exceptions were the handful that suddenly regained critical senses (like Time, who gave an involuntary yelp as his sight was restored to him), and Ross and Rick, who set to work immediately. By the time the guards arrived a few seconds later, there was a wall of energy in front of the cell doors and the wall between Ross's cell and mine had crumbled into dust.

I attempted to return to human form, but as the guards opened fire on me I thought better of it and became a horde of bouncing metal balls. While the guards were shielding themselves, Rick turned off his field while I bounced inside, then flicked it back on; I was quickly back to normal in my old position, my center of mass close enough to allow me to become something as compact as a human, albeit with a good deal of pain.

When I mention the pain involved in shifting form, people assume that it's painful to have your body be dissolved before your eyes and reformed into something entirely different. It's not, of course, because by the time your body is dissolved, you no longer have the human-specific pain circuitry to feel it. What hurts is increasing my total mass. It's a kind of pain that the English language doesn't have words to describe because normal people never experience tapping into the energy inherent in space, absorbing it into themselves as mass, and then displacing existing objects with it. I'm probably not justified in calling it painful in the first place, since I can't feel pain while I'm transforming, but rest assured that it's an extremely unpleasant sensation. Decreasing my mass, now that's the ordinary kind of painful - like chopping a finger off and having it instantly cauterized.

So anyway, there I was, back into Alex Brene's body, ready to break out of prison, knowing I had to get twenty-six mutants out of the complex before they could set the scramblers on us again, or just shoot us down. A little more weight on my shoulders than usual, but nothing I couldn't handle. It was like I'd done this before - and maybe I had, many times, rehearsing it in my mind until I had everything perfect. "Nobody move! Ross, get that wall!" I barked, and Ross pushed through the mutants in my cell to get to the wall dividing us from Power, Soul, and the six who shared a chamber with them.

Ross, hearing that there was a bonafide leader with the inmates, had immediately offered his services because he knew they would be useful. He had some kind of connection with the entropy of things about him, could slow it down or speed it up at will. The concrete dividing wall was at least a foot thick, but within five seconds it had started to crack and chip, and crumbled down within twice that. One girl, who had been leaning against that wall, leaped back in surprise. I had no time for marvelling at others' powers, so I shifted my gaze to the next cell over. "Power, we need your hel--"

He cut me off rudely. "I'll keep them busy," he said as he turned away and towards the guards, who were attempting to bring in some weaponry more effective than the darts which were simply disintegrated by his field. The field disappeared, Power picked up a middle-aged man still paralyzed with fear by his collar and threw him towards what used to be the wall between our cells, and turned his hands into flamethrowers. I hope he doesn't kill them, I thought, but that wasn't a decision I could influence anyway.

"Everyone, quiet please! We don't have much time," I yelled over what was rapidly becoming a cacophony of confused people, some holding others back from stopping Rick's savage assault on his captors. Timothy, catching my cue, quieted everyone down and riveted their attention on me. It was time for my speech.

"Hello, fellow mutants. I'm Reality, leader of Team Infinity. My team and I" -- I gestured at the rest of the team, who had gotten into formation behind me, including Soul -- "could be the reason you're here in the first place, but even if we aren't, we're going to get you out. All you have to do is move quickly and follow directions.

"Now, has anyone here used their mutant powers to attack someone?" Plenty of people raised their hands. Too many. So I improvised. "Anyone here a mentalist, or ever fought a mentalist?" Just my team, Mercury from the Olympians, and a girl from Rick's cell who shyly identified herself as Tina. "Right. We know they've got a mentalist on their side. Tina, your job is to keep track of him. If he goes after us, goes to inform his superior, anything." She nodded, biting her lip. "Ross, take down the wall opposite the guards. It's the outside wall of the building." He was already working. "All right, everyone. Our destination is the garage and the main gate, all the way across the complex. We'll stop by the testing chambers to pick up whoever's in there, and leave. No missions of revenge will be tolerated.

"Those of you who aren't confident about using your powers in a safe, predictable, nonlethal manner, don't try to help. My team has the situation well in hand." I paused, then added, "Relax. We do this sort of thing all the time." A little white lie to help morale couldn't hurt, I figured. As the wall crumbled, the building shook and pieces of charred ceiling tile flew at us. Power didn't wait to get close to me, but just yelled over the head of the crowd: "I'm out of tricks. We have to move fast!"

I just nodded my head, letting the challenge to my authority slide. The wall was gone, its ruins exploded in a brilliant flash of light at a gesture from Power, and we started running. "If you can't keep up, have someone carry you!" I called over my shoulder. Guards were already pouring out of the buildings, spurring my refugees with andrenaline and fear. Power drew energy into himself for a moment, then unleashed a laser from his fingertips, burning the guns out of the hands of the nearest set of guards as he ran with us.

A tug at my shirt, and Jill had caught up to me. "Electrical power is coming from that way," she said, pointing to a squat, separately fenced building off to our right. "Anyone good at destroying power generators?" I asked to the mob behind me. An affirmative shout was a stroke of luck on our part. I didn't care what this guy's power was, I cared about the confusion that removing electricity from the complex that I'd heard belonged to a Colonel Laskin would get me. "Space, you protect him. Get moving!" She took off in the direction I pointed, one hand dragging her companion along and the other fixing her hair. Ahh, how I love having someone around who followed orders and did them well.

I dispatched Time, Ross, and Brandy to rescue whoever was having tests conducted on them at the moment. Brandy, a telemarketer with a sunny disposition, was completely unused to this kind of work, but I figured her flexible exoskeleton and superhuman strength might come in handy. Power was, as usual, busy delivering near-fatal energy and sound blasts to any guards he could find, and was consequently dragging a little behind the group. That left me, Mind, Soul, and Tina as mutants who could conceivably be useful in a fight. 

We'd barely passed the next building in the complex before Tina yelled out a warning, then gasped for breath and fell to her knees under a mental assault from Laskin's resident mentalist. "Faster!" I yelled to everyone, and prepared to hand over the reins to Soul and somehow find and incapacitate our new adversary without the benefit of a human brain, but Timothy laid a hand on my shoulder, stopping us in the middle of our ragtag band, still surging forward.

"I can handle this," he said. With a smile, he added, "Yes, I'm sure. I'm a lot better than I was last time, I promise." I nodded and let him go. He stood over Tina, feet planted firmly in the ground, eyes closed, one hand on her shoulder.

"Power! Mind's going after their mentalist. Protect him!" He nodded and switched his focus to a sniper peeking out from the edge of a building, whom he promptly flattened with a lightning bolt. I derived a certain pleasure from being able to order him around again, I'll admit, but for this kind of brute force work, he really was the best man for the job. I would have been a fool not to use him, and he a fool not to cooperate; it was the best chance he had of saving his own skin.

An explosion, inside the building that had housed the testing chambers. The team I had dispatched came back, Brandy carrying one unconscious mutant over each shoulder and Ross covering himself with a sheet of metal that he strengthened against enemy fire with his power. Time gave me the thumbs-up sign, glasses on, before turning and catching a dart aimed for him out of the air, then throwing it back. Ross knew where he was going, and scurried directly to the garage.

An electrical fire rose from my other direction, the power generator behind me. Space and her companion were successful, but had their hands up to a squad of guards. I nodded at her, allowing her to use her last-resort option. Maybe she caught my eye, maybe not, but I was pleased that she chose the fastest way of getting out of trouble. To one side of the guards a locomotive appeared from her gateway, ran them down, and raced right back into the gateway to be reused. They hurried to rejoin us.

We reached the garage, whose door locks Ross made short work of. Only a few government-issue vehicles hotwired later (one man was obviously a car thief before he was picked up, but knew we weren't about to turn him over to the "authorities" here), we were on our way out the main door. Soul had the brilliant idea of finding a map inside the glove compartment of our staff car, then sending everyone in different directions before dropping their passengers off. I thanked Ross and the rest of my non-team helpers, told them how to contact us over email, and sent them packing. My car contained only my team, so it was of course the last to leave. With a flash from Soul, one of Power's sound wave blasts toppled some nearby trees, crushing the gate just as we rolled through. Guards fired at us as we made our escape, of course, and although they were considerably better shots than that type are in the movies and comic books, it didn't really matter, as Space collected all their darts handily into her gateway. Mission accomplished. My first big command, a rousing success - what with the abundance of people to carry others who'd been wounded, we had not a single casualty and caused a good deal of property damage to Laskin's base. If Laskin was his real name, of course. Frankly, it was thrilling, and it had every right to be.

We returned to our homes surprised to find that our parents hadn't been wondering where we were. In fact, the mentalist Mind had fought was apparently a master of illusion: we all had different excuses, all very reputable. My parents weren't home, as usual, but a message had been left on our answering machine informing them that I was in fact playing Laertes in a school production of Hamlet and would be spending my entire day at school with the rest of the cast. Behind every cloud there is a silver lining, I suppose, and that bit of humor served to lighten my mood a bit after the trials of the last week.

* * * *

I wished I could talk to someone about this sort of thing. My parents were both career people, and as such were almost never home when I was, or if they were, they weren't interested in going through someone else's problems after their day at work. We slept in the same house and they paid my allowance, but that was about it, these days. Of course I loved them, but I couldn't exactly start telling them everything, especially since I didn't want my mom to be worrying that I was getting myself into trouble as a mutant vigilante. Having to keep quiet about her son being a mutant was already hard enough on her.

That left my friends. I had plenty that were good for normal stuff, but not this. So I called up Lia, and she came over to my house and watched Smoke Signals (she said I had to see that movie, and I would rather have engaging conversation about movies than nothing at all), and we talked about life being a mutant, particularly a powerful mutant. There's a special weight that she felt on her shoulders, just as I did, the kind that officials in the State Department get - there's nothing quite like knowing that you have more power invested in you than any man should have, and you don't have the superhuman judgment to go along with it. We're both rather sober people, unless I'm forcing myself to be funny, and I think that has something to do with it.

We kept in touch over Instant Messager for the next couple weeks, since we didn't have any classes together at school. I always greeted her when we passed in the halls with a smile and a greeting of "Feeling lucky?" which served as a good indicator of her mood: she would respond with anything from a glare to a smile to a cheery reply of "No!" At night we'd discuss things that only the late hour and the impersonal nature of IM would make possible. Not just being a mutant, but being a high-schooler as well. I learned (sworn to secrecy, of course) that she really wasn't sure about her relationship with Rick. The way she explained it, she didn't exactly think he was the be-all and end-all of guys, but he practically worshiped her. I knew that much - it was obvious on his face, when he forgot to be dark and stoic - and so I was able to explain his behavior to her when she gave me the proper context. Rick felt the need to protect those he loved, an impulse much older than the fantasy novels he'd learned it from, and would rather take the small consolation of being around Lia than risk rejection.

Lia expressed surprise that Rick and I should be so compatible in thinking and yet bitter enemies. It took me the better part of an hour, from midnight to 1 AM, to explain that the two of us weren't really enemies at all. It was Reality that Rick couldn't stand, because he hated all authorities put directly over him and because I had more skill than he, but Alex was just fine. I did not mention that I feared Reality, and not Alex, to be the real me. Lia had taught me in bits and pieces what it meant to be a follower, and I thought I was ready to try it. Unfortunately, there was no one available to step up to leadership of the team, and so I settled for learning what I could of how the other side lived.

Over the days, it became increasingly apparent that Lia's parents were suspicious of her activities. They weren't thrilled at the idea of her having a boyfriend at all, and because she tended to be secretive and shy, they started covertly monitoring her activities. From the bits they managed to overhear or read, they thought they divulged that Lia had been in a relationship with both Rick and I at one point or possibly both at once. And so they panicked. She was sent to her room when she got home after the team meeting that Tuesday, and called me. Somehow they had discovered that I was a mutant, although they weren't sure what, exactly, I did, except have their daughter over to my house with other strange boys once a week.

I thought it over. Timothy was the obvious asset: with his sterling reputation and silver tongue, no mental powers might be necessary. But I had to come, since I was the mutant freak Lia'd been hanging out with, and all three of us would be too much. Also, I admit a certain fondness for being right and displaying that fact dramatically, and the truth is almost always right. So I drove over alone, and because it was Lia, I arrived just as Lia was beginning to confront her parents. Mr. Chin was in favor of slamming the door in my face, but Mrs. Chin's hospitality and Lia's evident surprise to see me won out. "I wonder if I could have a word with you?" I asked.

"Lia has told me some of what you told her, and as it is with anything you try to piece together without knowing the pattern from the start, in some things you are right and in some you are wrong." Mr. Chin opened his mouth to speak, irritated at my wordiness, but I plowed ahead. "I have indeed had several extensive conversations with Lia here, but no more than she would have with, say, her friend Becky. If we seem a little too familiar, well, we spend a lot of time talking to each other, and plenty of time beyond that practicing together as part of the team." Nothing about Rick, Lia would have to speak for herself, except where it concerned me.

It wasn't working. A little more bluntness. "Mr. and Mrs. Chin, I'm telling you this because I think you can be trusted with my secret." I paused a little to let that sink in; they would pay attention to the next few sentences, and those would get them hooked for the real thing. "You were right that I am a mutant. By how we reckon such things, I'm quite a powerful one. In fact, I lead a team of six mutants from John Hancock High. When there are criminals that need to be stopped, especially mutant ones, we try to get there before anyone gets hurt, take care of business, and leave before the police get there. We train our powers and our teamwork skills at my house every Tuesday night."

Mrs. Chin was the obstinate one this time. "What does that have to do with you and Lia?" I swallowed and shot a glance at Lia, who was looking away. She'd opened up in the time she'd been at Hancock, but around her parents she was still the same shrinking violet I remembered from September. Perhaps a good thing, in retrospect.

"Lia is part of my team, part of Team Infinity, one of our greatest assets. In fact, her test results came back from the HSA last night. She's the tenth most powerful mutant in the United States, Mrs. Chin." I kept my voice as serious as possible, and I think she believed me, because she'd always wanted to believe that her little girl was better than all the others on her block. If she had to be a mutant to have incontrovertible proof of that, for her that was not too high a price to pay.

Mr. Chin was a different matter, demanding proof. He had a quite different suspicion when I spun my story, that it was simply an elaborate lie designed to convince him that Lia should be allowed to get in trouble without his knowledge and approval, a story too convenient for the two of us to be true. I said quietly, "You might want to sit down," and when he had (albeit grudgingly), I turned myself into Lia as best I could.

I surprised even myself with my skill - of course I could do Lia, I'd spent enough time around her to know how she carried herself, and besides that, I'd taken the time to memorize the smaller body, face, and voice features of every team member in that part of my memory that was reserved for the shapes of things I could turn into. But the clothes I had expected to be a problem, as the looser the clothing, the more difficult it was to associate with the rest of my body; apparently my practice had paid off. Both parents were open-mouthed, and Lia gasped a little to see their reaction.

I quickly transformed back into my normal form, except with a purple shirt (Lia's favorite color) instead of the red one I had been wearing when we entered. "The official name for someone like me is a metamorph," I explained. "A shapeshifter. I can change my physical form to anything, or anyone, I wish. While it comes in handy for just about any circumstance, I can't hope to match the area of effect, speed, or breadth of scope of Lia's power." Here I looked at her. She'd been practicing her part, just in case.

"I get lucky." She took a coin out of her pocket and said, "Call it, Mom." Her mother shrugged and said, "Heads." She flipped the coin and, sure enough, it was heads. The second time, she called tails, and it was tails. Mr. Chin called "Edge" and it landed on its edge, which set him back on his haunches for a moment, so she turned to me. "Alex? Care to call it?"

"All three," I responded with a vicious grin. Smiling back, she flipped the coin. It landed on the edge of a coffee cup and with the tiniest bit of a flash from Lia's seat, the center of the coin popped out from its edge in three pieces. One piece landed heads up, one tails up, the circular edge section landed on its side, and the extra piece splashed into Mr. Chin's coffee. The two of us allowed the two of them to digest that for a moment; it was an easy task, given that the result had surprised the two of us as well.

Back to seriousness, Lia concluded, "The more random something is, the easier it is to change. I don't do it consciously, I just turn on my power and good things happen. For example, let's try that coin trick again." I called all three, but she slipped a little when flipping the coin, and it landed square in my left eye. I winced, we both laughed, and she said with an unusual twinkle in her eye, "That's what you get for asking the impossible." I declined to comment that the coin had struck my face with the tails side pointing outward and eventually landed on the floor heads up. Two-thirds there, with a completely different method. That's what made Soul so powerful: she was never the same twice.

All things considered, the Chin family took the news very well. It's one thing to shun those dangerous troublemaking mutants, quite another when your daughter is foremost among them. They'd heard enough scientific studies to know that Lia couldn't help being who she was, only try to hold her power in check, which she assured her parents she was already doing. However, I think Mrs. Chin will be keeping a sharp eye on her for the next few weeks to watch for any strange flashes of light. We didn't tell them that the flashes were merely a psychological byproduct of tweaking probabilities and energy levels, a little of her power "leaking out" from its intended source. Already they weren't as bright as we remembered them, and with enough training, only the mightiest exertions of Lia's abilities would trigger a flash. She was dangerous enough when she didn't know what she was doing, but now that she can control at least when she does things and we can't tell, she really deserves her #10 spot.

It's good to have a friend who you can tell practically everything. When that friend just happens to be your claim to fame among the mutant community, it gives your ego a bit too much of a boost, I think. In fact, as we spent time together, tossing out theories about how our powers worked and the real potential of our fellow team members, I thought of a couple very scary ideas indeed. But that is not my story to tell, it is hers.

* * * *

LiveJournal user -=34GL3_3Y3=- [Ben] wrote on 2003-01-23:

Feeling depressed lately. Today was not a good day, and tomorrow isn't going to be a good day either. I guess it's my curse to know that unless something really unforeseen occurs, tomorrow is going to suck exactly as much as I expect it will. I'm going to wake up late, rush to school, find I've forgotten to write my English paper, and spend the rest of the day sulking until I get a chance to trip Dave up as he rushes by me in the hall after sixth period. Actually, depending on circumstances, Dave may not get tripped and he'll just get mad at me, and my day will go downhill from there. You'd think that this would create an interesting time-related paradox. For instance, how can I forget to do the English paper when I know I'll have forgotten to do the English paper tomorrow morning? Haven't I just been reminded of it? Well, my vision doesn't let me see every eventuality, of course. The likelihood of me simply hanging around on LJ for another hour, then cheerfully going to bed and waking up with all thought of the paper driven from my mind, is quite high at the moment. So bleh.

In other news, should I ask Kristin to the Valentine's dance? She'll probably say no. She doesn't even know I exist outside of the chemistry lab, for Pete's sake. But she is one of the most beautiful girls I've ever had the pleasure of laying eyes on, and I'm sure I could get Sarah or Timothy to give me a quick heads-up on basic facts about her friends so I don't feel like a total fool. There's really no reason not to, except that if I do, she'll say no and never speak to me again. I don't like playing for this kind of stakes. She's important to me, and because my whole outlook will be shifted depending on whether I ask her or not and how she answers, my precognitive abilities can't give me a helping hand. It's impolite to stare, although I probably do that too much, just trying to get a sense for the kind of person she is by looking into her past. I'm a harmless geek, anyway. Maybe I will ask her after all, just to get the whole thing over with. Wish me luck!


CHAPTER SEVEN
=============


Yes, sir. That's the latest report on Team Infinity. Everything we have on the group and then some. I had Alnora check them out, sir; they're doing the standard playing-at-superheroes act.

No, sir. The camera in the squad car wasn't working that day, and the backup wasn't pointed in the right direction to catch anything useful.

I'm sorry I couldn't get you those pictures, sir. I have physical descriptions in the report from the time I met them, it's the best I can do.

Sir, we do have a positive ID on the leader. His name is Alex Brene; he goes by "Reality". He's in his last year of high school, sir. He says he's eighteen, the papers say he's eighteen, but he's a highly skilled metamorph. He could easily be older, especially given the circumstances. But I trust him, if not on age then on what counts.

Why do I trust him, sir? It's quite simple: I know he exists. We have reason to believe he revealed his "normal" form to me, for starters. Despite my efforts to apprehend him, he didn't have the team's empath erase my memory, and he hasn't impersonated me or any other HSA agent that we know of, not even to erase the files on his team.

Well, he knows a good lawyer, sir. A very good lawyer, one who's managed to weasel out of anything we can pin on these guys, down to the most minor offenses. However, Alex - er, Mr. Brene - does seem to have a remarkable respect for the law and a tendency to attract and apprehend renegade mutants.

Yes, sir, of course, "except when those laws apply to him". I think it says something for him that he has a mutant like Soul under his command - you've heard of Soul, haven't you, sir? - and he has yet to commit any crime more serious than destruction of public property without it being justifiable self-defense. He's more dedicated than most of the new recruits we get in here, sir. He even saved my life once.

The full details on that are in your report. I took the liberty of adding a few pertinent details to the preliminary abstract I filed last week.

* * * *

Because of recent mutant-related riots in New York City over the weekend, when the tip came in from our anonymous hotline that the mutant sharpshooter Minerva was in town, I was the only agent available for the job. Fortunately, it only took a couple hours of Internet searching and questioning to find out where she was. Apparently, she could be contacted in person on Wednesday night at the amphitheatre of the local university. This was the perfect news: since she was being so obvious about her whereabouts, I could not only call for some local police backup if I needed it, I had a good chance of catching the Mutant Activities Division's number one target, a group of kid vigilantes calling themselves Team Infinity. The "team" had never been defeated away from home and thus never caught, but the HSA had a good bit of information on them in the files, so I checked those out in case I needed to target specific individuals quickly. Always good to know your enemy, my boss tells me, and it's especially true when your enemy could have six-inch claws on his feet as well as a pistol at his waist.

I spent most of Wednesday getting the necessary authorization to use the HSA's newest, best toy from the Department of Defense: a neuroscrambler that, by interfering with specific brainwaves, would prevent 99 percent of mutant powers from being used. That, plus a new-model dart pistol which would cause unconsciousness within seconds, should be enough to convince Team Infinity to give up quietly, I thought. So I walked into the drama building next to the amphitheatre Wednesday night (no shows going on, thankfully, and not a soul around) rather confidently, in a blue suit and carrying the neuroscrambler in a briefcase. Our predictions were correct: I had barely been in there twenty seconds before what sounded like the whole six-man team came tromping down a staircase behind me. I turned around smoothly, opened the briefcase, and flicked the "on" switch as they came in the device's range.

About two seconds later, I flicked the switch off again and back on several times, finally giving up. The thing was dead somehow, and at the worst possible moment. Even prototypes weren't supposed to fail like that - curse those ivory-tower techies and engineers! I couldn't back down now -- the boss would have my head! -- so I had only one recourse: bluff my way out and hope the team still had some shred left of obedience to authority. "Hello. Am I correct in assuming you six are members of Team Infinity?"

A couple of the kids glance at one of them, a tall blonde respectable-looking chap in a high school letter jacket with an infinity-symbol ring on his right hand. "Yep, that's us," he says. "Anything you want to tell us, or just glad to see your friendly neighborhood superheroes?"

I swallow and take a step forward. Come on, Ted, you've faced more danger than this and come out of it alive, says one part of my mind. Its more sarcastic cousin replies, Yeah, but not much more. I say, successful at keeping my voice under control if not my thoughts, "The former, actually. My name is Ted Kavalec; I'm an agent for the Homeland Security Agency, Mutant Activities Division." I whip out my badge in anticipation; most criminals, mutant or no, usually demand your credentials before they'll give you the time of day.

"HSA. Not good." snarls another one in a black trenchcoat with an infinity-symbol pin on the lapel, clenching his fist. I'm aware that there is no love lost between the mutant committee and my division, so this is no surprise. On the other hand, I think I know who this one is, and he's one of the more powerful team members according to the files, so I'd better watch my step. Letter Jacket flicks a glance at Trenchcoat, which shuts him up, but I keep talking to avoid having to answer any questions.

"I'm putting you all under arrest for destruction of public and private property, assault with a deadly weapon, and various other crimes. I suggest you come quietly, it'll save you a lot of trouble in court." I move my hand unobtrusively to my sidearm in its holster, one eye covering possible team members in ambush or escape routes.

Letter Jacket turns his head to whisper with the guy on his left, another typical pimply-faced high-schooler wearing a homemade Team Infinity tee-shirt. I can't make out most of it, but the last sentence is "He's a friend, for now at least." A response is quick after that from Letter Jacket, who says, "OK. I hate having to do this, but we're on an important job right now, with a tight schedule." He flips out his watch with a flourish and continues, "You have thirty seconds to decide you really don't want to arrest us after all, or Mind here convinces you the hard way. Your choice... for another twenty-five seconds."

The first rule of being an HSA agent is: Never back down, unless you have no hope of winning. Without the neuroscrambler, there was no way I could make a decent escape, much less apprehend all six of these guys, if they didn't want me to. So I held out my hands and admitted defeat. "Okay, you win. For tonight at least, we have a common cause anyway - catching Minerva. I could prove useful to your mission, or a rather annoying witness when we finally catch you.

"So, are you too proud to accept the help of a trained professional, or what?" I'm fairly proud of that speech, actually: it gets the concepts across in terms a teenager could understand. Letter Jacket, a smile on his face, nods and shakes my hand. He offers to introduce me to the team members, but I ward him off, asking, "Let me try to identify you guys. I should know you from the HSA files anyway."

To Letter Jacket. "You're obviously the leader, so that makes you Reality, the metamorph. Good to meet you."

His friend Trenchcoat is also easy to place. "Dark hair, trenchcoat, short fuse... that makes you Power, who shoots energy and sound waves, no?" A nod and a predictable glare. Even the team's enemies know about Power's short temper.

Next to Power is a short, quiet Asian girl: "And you must be Soul?" She gives me a surprisingly warm smile, obviously didn't expect me to notice her. "Well, Soul, the HSA doesn't actually know what your mutant ability is, but your potential is off the charts. We assume it's useful, since you always show up with the rest of the team." She gets a mischevious glint in her eye, obviously not about to tell me if I don't already know.

Now that I know one girl, the other is a cinch to identify. I point a finger. "Space, with what appears to be access to an alternate dimension. Your power is also fascinating to our research boys, but I'm sure you don't want to hear me talk about that one."

I'm on a roll here -- won't the boys back at the Agency be impressed to hear this one! As long as I can put the right spin on it, of course. "A friend, for now, isn't that what you said? That makes you Mind, the empath." 

A few of the team members laugh behind their hands and the guy replies, "It's good to know the almighty HSA doesn't have us totally pegged yet. I'm Time, in case you haven't guessed. By the way, do your files actually tell you what my powers are?"

"Hmmm... Sorry, Mind, but your abilities are relatively well documented; we have a couple mentalists in our employ who were able to sort things out from examining your victims, er, opponents. Time, on the other hand, we suspect has some sort of precognitive ability to see a few seconds into the future."

Another big smile from the guy now correctly identified as Time. "And I thought I couldn't be underestimated any further! Oh well, I might as well inform you that I have both precognitive and postcognitive abilities, and they reach a lot longer than a few seconds. Plus I have some related tricks up my sleeve that you may get a chance to see if you watch very closely."

Reality breaks in here, obviously still good-natured but even more obviously the team leader, still focused on the mission. "Now that our introductions are over, what can you do for us, Mr. Kavalec?"

"Ted is fine, I don't really care. And aside from being reasonably able to protect myself with this," as I draw my dart pistol, "I have some information on Minerva that you might not be aware of."

"Minerva?" asks Space. "Is she a new recruit or something?"

By way of explanation, Reality adds, "We're here on a challenge from the Olympians. We've beaten them before, so we were wondering what trick they had up their sleeves this time. A new member would certainly explain things."

I open my mouth to correct their error, remarkably at the same time Time opens his. "You've been tricked," I say at the same time he mutters, "We've been tricked." I continue unperturbed, "You're actually facing Minerva, a former member of the Olympians who left shortly before you met them. She's also been dishonorably discharged from the military and a half-dozen civilian jobs, so she's not exactly the most stable personality. I'm here on an anonymous tip that she'd be here, but she may have friends."

The team shut up rather quickly when I started becoming useful; a sign of a well-trained group. For a bunch of high-school kids, they certainly have their act together, something I feel is due in large part to team leader Reality. He asks, "Is there anything else you can tell us? What she's going to be using to kill us, for example?"

"As a matter of fact, I'm intimately familiar with her weapon. You're looking at it." I hand my dart pistol to Time, who whips out a well-worn pair of glasses to investigate. "It shoots darts filled with a toxin that causes unconsciousness within seconds, even against mutants with a weird metabolism. The design is a new one designed to be accurate at rifle range while keeping the size of a pistol, and for someone with sniper training like Minerva, that was recommendation enough. We think she picked one up on the black market a couple weeks ago; she used it to rob a grocery store on Sunday night, for sure."

"A well-built weapon," says Time, pulling off his glasses. "And there are no serious problems with the neuroscrambler, it's just got a busted power supply. Should be easy to fix, as soon as you get it out of Soul's range." He grins at me and at Soul, but she doesn't hear us, already engaged in a side conversation with Power. Is this a possible clue to Soul's powers or just a red herring to distract my attention from Time's ability to analyze machinery he's never seen before in a matter of seconds? I need more time to consider, but with an antsy sharpshooter waiting for us, time is in short supply.

"I don't normally condone an aggressive course of action, but Minerva is obviously waiting in ambush at a specific spot, i.e. behind the amphitheatre, and she's too well-trained to be flushed out of her hiding spot without a good reason."

Power adds soberly, "Plus it's probably illegal to attack Minerva unless she fires first, unless you want to send Ted out to apprehend her alone, which may not be such a bad idea." 

Mind rolls his eyes -- it's good to know at least one of them is on my side, or perhaps he just dislikes Power -- but declines to comment, instead noting, "Well, Reality, there goes the 'turn into a flock of pigeons and peck her eyes out' idea, ehh?"

Reality sums up the situation. "Well, we've been in traps before, and it's six against one, and we know what we're facing, so we just have to go out there and do it. Don't use your powers until she fires, in case she's confused on whom to shoot first." I cough loudly behind my hand; he turns to me and says ironically, "Right. Seven on one. Space, will you keep James Bond here out of trouble, please?"

Space has caught Mind's ironic humor, or perhaps vice versa, considering Mind is an empath after all. "Anything for you, Alex. I'll make sure I cut the shield extra close."

The team arrays themselves in a clump, with me and Space in the back, and walks out into the performance space of the amphitheatre. Reality puts up a hand to stop in the middle of the stage, and we all look around nervously.

The "thunk" sound of a fired dart makes everybody jump, including me and a couple birds over in the trees nearby. There's a flash of white light somewhere in the team to my right, and Soul crumples, clutching her shoulder. Everyone turns their head to look, but only for a split second, as Reality calls them back to order. "Team Infinity, defend yourselves!"

If I had a notepad, I would be scribbling on it furiously, because here is Team Infinity in action as no federal agent has ever seen them. Reality plants his feet in the ground and a metal skin grows over his body within a couple seconds. I had no idea he had such fine control over his shape-changing powers, but that certainly explains why the paper-pushers in the Agency rate him so high on the threat list. Power, next to him, takes a step away from the team, throws the trenchcoat to the side, and sets himself on fire, which lends a kind of surreality to the whole thing because the fire doesn't look very hot or threatening, and doesn't appear to affect his clothing, but is obviously the best this guy can think of. Maybe it's an energy-gathering state for a projectile attack or something.

Time stays where he is, but puts his glasses on and glances at Soul. Mind is in a crouch, watching Time to see if he can find out where Minerva is. Apparently Minerva's emotions don't stand out at this range enough for Mind to detect her. Space drags me back, almost to the door, pulls me close to her by my suit collar, and grabs a heart-shaped locket from around her neck. She holds it out with one hand, undoing the necklace with the other, and suddenly there's a whirling globe of mirrors around us, only a few inches from the pair of us. She wasn't kidding when she said extra close, so I assume this must be her shield: a portal to an alternate dimension, constantly changing shape and location so it can provide coverage from dart shots without Minerva being able to compensate for it. I've seen footage of a gateway from one of our captured mutants, and this is definitely what one looks like from behind: since nothing enters backwards, it's like a perfect mirror, and maybe a little brighter from some of the light rays that get through the gateway as it changes shape. The feeling of being so close to a power that would slice me in two if I stumbled into a gateway as it opened or closed makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, but I'm determined not to show weakness in front of this bunch, so I stand my ground and make sure my pistol is ready.

With another thunk, the mirrors disappear and Space crumples beside me, a dart in her shoulder. The timing for that shot was so close that the back half of the dart was chopped off by the gateway as it spun and is now removed from this plane of reality entirely. I knew Minerva's mutant power made her an excellent shot, but not THAT good, and apparently neither did the rest of the team, who glance over their heads at her.

Time shouts, "There!" and points at Minerva, barely visible behind a stand of trees at the other end of the amphitheatre. He suggests immediately, "If it's OK to show the HSA dude, we'll mindmeld and take the stairs while you guys try a frontal assault." Mind nods, and is already moving to the door as Reality gives them the thumbs-up. I hold the door for them and fire off a couple ineffective shots in Minerva's general direction to give the impression of a retreat.

While I'm doing so, Reality and Power are already moving in a rather more impressive fashion than our flank attack. Power takes a running jump in her direction, and on his way up is caught by Reality in the form of a giant birdlike creature, and they're off. As I close the door behind the three of us, leaving Space and Soul where they lie out of necessity, Minerva takes another shot, this time at Reality, who throws Power forward at one of the last rows of seats before losing control of his flight path and taking a nosedive into the ground.

Fascinated, I keep watching from the doorway as Power throws a jet of some kind of energy behind him like a rocket, propelling himself forward so he clears the amphitheatre proper and lands right in front of Minerva. As he lands, he puts his hands together and sends her flying into the nearest tree with what I identify as a low-frequency shockwave from the rumbles I can feel in the floor. Mind is already at the foot of the stairs, so I let the door slam and follow them.

The two pause at the foot of the stairs to get their bearings and have a little discussion. They're some distance away from me, but not bothering to lower their voices, so I can still hear them. Maybe they just forgot, maybe they intended me to hear: you can never tell with a mentalist around. Time says, "Should we show this guy?"

Mind answers, "We have to. She just took down Reality." It seems strange that neither one appears to care that a third team member has been shot, until I realize Reality's shapeshifting ability will make short work of any wounds he has incurred as soon as he wakes up. Mind turns to me and announces, "Today's your lucky day. You're the first person outside the team to see our mindmeld."

I nod automatically, thinking: Yeah, right. Everyone knows a mindmeld requires two telepaths, and neither one of them fits the bill. They do the standard Star Trek-like mindmeld thing, then Mind notices my skepticism, which has to be as obvious as a strobe light for him. "Quick, say something random," he says. I shrug and say the first sentence that comes to my mind, wondering what trick they have up their sleeves.

To my surprise, all three of us say "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country" in perfect unison. "How did you do that?" I ask, suddenly curious.

Time answers smugly, "Rather easily, in fact." "Don't believe everything you read!" puts in Mind, naturally, and Time continues. "I read your lips and he reads my mind. Just a parlor trick, but it demonstrates the effectiveness of our technique, n'est-ce pas?"

I certainly can't let them see how astonished I am that something approaching a real mindmeld has been achieved by one two-bit empath and one amateur precognizant, so I say, "Let's go." They affirm and head up the staircase in their attempt to flank Minerva from the rear, Time whipping out a pair of glasses. As I follow them up, pistol at the ready, I wonder why they took so long showing off for me. Obviously, one or the other of them knows something I don't know, but lacking a way to ask without looking uninformed, I keep my mouth shut and follow.

Sure enough, at a landing halfway up the stairs, the two teenaged vigilantes run into Minerva, coming the other way. She's a bit scuffed, reloading her pistol as she goes, and has apparently been running. It's obviously her, as her mutant "power" gives her huge, supersensitive eyes (barely covered by her oversize sunglasses, which shield her from bright light and prying eyes) and the specialized brain hardware to translate that into world-class vision. How Power managed to avoid getting shot by a lady whose mutation enhances her marksmanship ability off the scale is another matter entirely, and I'll get to that one later. For now, she fires a shot at each of them, and to her surprise, they both dodge.

I duck back to a position where we can't see each other, but I can see the two heroes. Any lingering doubts about the "mindmeld" have been removed, as Time has been observed to dodge bullets in this fashion using his future prediction ability and Mind has not. However, Minerva has seen something I couldn't, perhaps some miniscule delay between the two's reactions. Unlike most villains, she goes for the fastest target first: from her military training or hubris at her powers, I'm not sure, but neither one is especially good for their (and by extension my) chances of victory. She unloads the rest of her clip except for two shots in a precisely measured pattern at Time, who dodges the first three and runs smack into the fourth. Given the reports on Time, only another mutant could have predicted or anticipated his movements fast enough to catch him with a weapon as slow-firing as a dart pistol, so I have another tidbit of information: Minerva's been practicing on moving targets, and she's better than we thought.

Time crumples and Mind grimaces in pain. Minerva shifts her aim to her second opponent, and I decide my time is up, so I lean around the edge of the door, ready to shoot. Fortunately, Mind has bought me some time: she grabs her shoulder in the same place Time was hit, then her head in confusion, moving her aim slightly off the empath. Feeding emotions to an enemy is always a good offensive tactic, and Mind just happened to have someone about to fall unconscious ready at hand to project into Minerva's mind for that extra bit of confusion.

Time drops to the floor, and Mind's trick stops working, but as Minerva regains her composure, she's knocked down the stairs headfirst with a thunderclap as Power runs up behind her and zaps her from behind. She rolls toward me, firing at Power as she gets up, and now I see how he managed to avoid being hit in the first place: the whole "lighting self on fire" trick wasn't just a preparation for a kinetic energy blast, it's actually a self-defense field that disintegrates the dart before it reaches him. While her attention isn't focused on me, I drop her with my own pistol.

Mind, who had dropped to his knees by the effort of channeling Time's mental trauma to Minerva and is still feeling a little woozy, says, "Thanks. That was a close call." I smile and tell him, "I've had closer. You still had two team members left, and she was down to one shot in the clip against three people anyway." Still, behind the bravado, he can tell I'm impressed.

Carrying Minerva's limp form between us, Mind and I meet Reality at the foot of the stairs, who is not even ruffled -- metamorphs have a tendency to comb their hair and brush their teeth automatically when transforming back into their normal forms, it comes in handy when one oversleeps -- and he takes the weight from both of us with ease, meaning he's obviously got more muscles than he had ten minutes ago. Although he'd demonstrated his ability to change form selectively just a few minutes ago, it still impresses me, as that sort of thing gives trouble to even the most experienced metamorphs in our files. I wonder how old he really is, and where he picked up that trick - something our research department should definitely look into.

As we leave the building, he says, "Thanks for the assist, Mr. Kavalec. If you ever need something done in the future, give us a call and we'll be glad to help you out." Power adds that their team is probably less likely to get angry calls from citizens than a pack of HSA agents, a point I could debate if I had time. As it is, the important thing is getting Minerva to a protected facility before she wakes up, and fixing that neuroscrambler while I'm at it.

I do have a parting shot for the kids, though, after Minerva has been deposited in the back of the squad car: "Anything but turning yourselves in, eh? Everybody has to follow the laws except you, because you're working for the good of humanity or something? Doesn't sound very heroic to me." I don't wait for an answer and instead drive off. Let them mull it over for a while, and maybe I'll get results.

And that's the real recommendation I have for Team Infinity: I actually expect results from them, both in their line of work as heroes and as responsible citizens. They may not be ready to face the consequences of their actions, but then again, most kids have that problem already!

* * * *

LiveJournal user evilken [Rick] wrote on 2003-02-05:

Quick update today, have homework to do. Yeah, I'm still doing homework, 'cause I'm a loser. Gotta keep my grades up or my parents will kill me, it's, like, the one thing they care about. So anyway, last night Alex tells us we've got a job today, I mean today today, not yesterday today, you know what I mean, and it's this big rematch against the Olympians. I thought that was pretty cool, was looking forward to springing some of my new tricks on the whole crew, cheered me up right quick. Today though, we drive over - well, I drive over, it's always me, don't know what they did without me being truck driver, Alex doesn't even pay for the gas - to the university and not only is there no big battle, there's the HSA! One step away from the General if you ask me. Plus their agent dude did nothing but get in the way, steal my thunder, and then try to arrest us. Puh-leeze. Like a scrawny suit guy like him is going to be able to touch me if I don't want to do something, no matter what fancy equipment he has.

So he insists on tagging along, and we come out and it's not even a real fight, it's this one lady with a sniper pistol, like in Halo where you get 3 headshots for an easy kill. She got Soul and Space before we got to respond, and then we go into action. The rest of the team is still packed in a close area, so I take an airlift from Reality, then airdash myself out the rest of the way across the theater thing to where she's hiding. She obviously hadn't done her homework, since she fell for the super-obvious shockwave blast as I landed, but at least she could take the heat. I figured, hey, we have plenty of time, you know? So I just put on my shield, let her waste a few shots until she finally got the message, then followed her into the building as she tried to make her escape. She couldn't even get past Time and Mind by the time I got there, and I was all set to finish the job properly when the agent dude steals my kill and pops her with another of those dart guns. Nothing really new, just your standard lopsided six-on-one battle. I would've liked to make it six on two, but Reality wouldn't let me. Sometimes I still feel like just blowing him up where he stands, it would be soooo satisfying. He gets on my nerves, can you tell?

And that was basically my day. When am I gonna get a chance to show anybody but Lia what I'm really capable of? Ben won't listen, he's got his precious little ranking chart and nothing's gonna change it. I'm part of the team again, but that doesn't mean I have to like all the team members. That ain't written nowhere.


CHAPTER EIGHT
=============


Another Friday night, another several hours spent in the bedroom of one Alex Brene with the door locked, just in case his parents arrived early. Becky pointed out to me the other day that I should totally start claiming Alex and I were making passionate love to each other, just to see the expression on his face. "What are you going to do? Chop me up and feed me to your dog? Sorry, all you have is a goldfish. Looks like I'm safe, then!" she said, teasing me. I'm glad she managed to defuse the situation with a little humor (at least I hope it's humor), but I can't help feeling guilty because I wouldn't tell her what we were actually doing and she knew it. Oh well, another thing to whine about to Alex, I suppose. He'd find it funny, or at least make an effort and smile for my sake.

Actually, once I thought about it for a bit, my father probably thought that too. He was too polite to say he thought our meetings were, shall we say, not entirely business-related. That's how he'd put it, too; dry humor is his stock in trade. He hasn't said anything, though, and it's good to know that my secrets are safe with him, even if they are the wrong ones. Alex's parents, on the other hand... even Alex has no idea what they're thinking, and maybe they're not thinking anything at all. They really don't care what that boy does, unless he causes property damage or gets arrested or something. Not a way of life I'd enjoy, but Alex sure seems to have turned out all right.

It seems so long ago that Ben handed out code names to us, bestowing "Soul" upon me with some glimpse of the future that he never told me. It must have been the future, though, because he told me I was the team's most powerful member weeks before the HSA confirmed it. I chose not to believe him, then, preferring to think that my power was unreliable, unhelpful, and generally of no account. I told myself, I'll keep coming to the Tuesday night meetings, because my friends are there. It was a comfortable way to live. Becky loves to tell me that ignorance is bliss, and for her, I suppose it is. She doesn't even know that I'm a mutant, and I like it that way. Mostly it's the fun of having a friend I can hang out with and feel normal, but I think that just a little, I'm afraid that our friendship will suffer if she learns who I really am. I've gone over this with the rest of the team; predictably, Rick was all for letting her in on my secret, as he would never dare to question Becky's integrity, because she's such a close friend of mine. Alex advised against it, though, on the presumption that more secrecy is better; when I asked Ben, he shook his head and said that telling me would only make the final result worse. If I told her, he said, it had to be out of trust; anything else would come back and haunt me. And with that, I left the matter. Another subject to ignore, to put in the dark file cabinets of my mind and hope it doesn't fester back there.

So anyway, back to the topic. Friday night. Alex's room, which by now I could close my eyes and reconstruct as if it were my own. Particularly the east wall, with three posters: a favorite band, a swimsuit model whose name I never cared to learn, and the X-Men, with Cyclops in the lead. With careful probing I had gathered that the last was a sort of wry joke at himself, after reading his old comics and realizing how much his role as Reality tried to mirror Cyclops' compassionate leadership, how easily Rick fell into the role of Gambit, the loner allergic to orders who stays despite himself. He avoided the question of who I was, joking that I was Jean Grey, Cyclops' girlfriend with just enough power to make herself a target but not enough to save the team when everyone depended on her. He couldn't mean that, but it was no use asking him further, at least until I'd gotten him in the proper mood to talk, and that tended to happen only late at night on IM.

Tonight, as usual, I stared at that poster, concentrating on the X-Men's features, their costumes, what it meant about the two of us and our mutant friends, and above all not thinking about what Alex was doing. I just activated my power, drawing in as much as I could until he said to stop or I collapsed, and hoped he didn't make too many mistakes. Tonight, he said, we were close. He'd got the design down at long last, all he needed to do was transform successfully. We'd only have one shot at what he was planning to do, so he needed my power to add a bit of luck on our side, a little boost to make sure he didn't shift slightly and kill me in the process.

A couple weeks ago, Mind and Time had unveiled their "mindmeld" ability, a relationship that combined Mind's powers as a mentalist and Time's unusually speedy brain to mimic a true transfer of thoughts. Time, receiving impulses from Mind and sending back orders to use his empathic powers in whatever way was necessary, acted for both of them, combining their best traits in a union that everyone at the #topten IRC channel said shouldn't have existed in the first place. If all went well, Reality and Soul would do something much the same tonight: a transformation requiring both of us to put forward our utmost skill.

But that's what he had said last night, when he tried only my left hand. It was still sore.

I dragged myself back to the poster, refusing to think, keeping my power "on" as best I knew how. Sometimes I could control when it happened, sometimes not. Sometimes I flashed white, sometimes I didn't. (Ben theorized that the flash was due to a spontaneous generation of matter-antimatter pairs around me, their rate of random appearance and subsequent annihilation fantastically accelerated by my power.) "Lia," said Alex, "I realized what went wrong last night."

"What?" I asked, shifting slightly to look at him. He was taller than I was - no surprise - and as he looked down, the lamp cast one side of his features into shadow, turning it a beautiful dark skin tone. Think about random things, that was the key. Pure observation, no desire to do anything but sit there, breathing in air still warm from the heater. But I was still curious to hear the answer.

"I wasn't using my spatial sense, Lia." I raised my eyebrows, daring him to explain himself. "When I transform, I'm holding the position of my own body. I can't get perfectly aligned with something unless I'm touching it, or it's rotating in three dimensions in front of me. I need to become aware of the object as fully as possible, memorizing its position in space and holding on to it. If I just go on my mind and guesswork, it won't be effective.

"So it looks like Becky may have something to talk about after all." Becky? I wondered. What does Becky have to do with this? I was totally confused, but didn't get a chance to grasp his meaning before he bent down and kissed me, hard. He pressed me against him and I wasn't sure whether to congratulate him on a brilliant idea or slap him for not telling me ahead of time. Even boys without the spatial sense that metamorphs use to transform can tell you that they know even the slightest movement of a girl they're kissing. Still, I was about to decide on the slap, but before I could make a move, he started melting.

Shocked, I reached instinctively for the part of my mind that controlled the use of my power, drawing in more than I ever thought I could. More than Mizuno had drawn, for sure. The rug slipped out from under my feet, I felt a shuddering pain through my whole body, and I fell backwards, onto the bed, mouth open to cry out.

I hit the bed and from the sound of it, I weighed at least three hundred pounds. It wasn't a bad guess, actually; Alex had told me that he'd be gaining a lot of mass during this transformation. I felt like I wanted to slap the boy, and I felt close on its heels a trepidation that I'd get slapped by Lia. Confusion ensued, but at the speed of thought, a euphoric realization that the transformation had been successful, and then the confusion was redoubled. I was thinking my own thoughts, and I was thinking Alex's thoughts too.

"So this is Armor," I said, and it was with my voice, and with Alex's soft traces of a Southern accent. It had worked, and Alex and I basked in the realization for a few seconds, controlling the urge to jump for joy. It was more difficult than either of us suspected, controlling our emotions; I realized that it was a positive feedback loop, my emotion being felt by Alex, who responded with his own emotion, which I sensed, and so on. Or maybe Alex realized it; it was getting harder and harder to tell the difference.

I knew it was me that wanted to stay where we were, exploring our new symbiotic relationship with Alex using and adding to my brain with his own thoughts, and I dangled the bait before him of being able to explore my memories, if only I would call them up. (Given time, I suspect he could access my memories as well, but since our brains were structured differently, he would have to relearn how to access his own memories, which would simply take up too much precious time even at the speed of thought.) However, he was adventurous as always, and I moved to the window and opened it, barely able to climb out.

Being part of Armor wasn't like wearing a regular suit of armor. Alex had built himself around my body, strengthening my bones and muscles to support the extra weight on them, with a complicated device worked into the helmet to excite my neurons to receive Alex's thoughts. Armor existed only as a design in the HSA's classified files, as a normal powered suit designed to be worn by a telekinetic, who could manipulate the helmet to provide forcible protection against mental attack. They never reckoned that it could be recreated by a metamorph, let alone modified to work with the one mutant who could support the machine perfectly with a routine exercise of her power. They also happened to be unaware that Reality had raided their files, since their chief mentalist Alnora had declined to tell them that they were being spied on by an extremely clever metamorph.

All this information I learned in a fraction of a second, and I noted it distantly as I squeezed myself through the window, leaping out of the third floor in the darkness, falling swiftly until I decided (Alex, I think, giving me the knowledge of Armor's capabilities) to fly. My feet felt a pressure on them, but no heat, and I rocketed upwards at what I estimated as twenty miles per hour. An extremely good speed for this kind of boot jets, I noted. I left no trail behind: since the fuel was coming from Armor directly, which was really Alex in a different form, he simply reabsorbed it and transformed it into fuel.

We spent an enjoyable evening listening to each other think, sometimes flying, sometimes running, once shouldering right through a tree. Whenever Armor needed to do something out of the ordinary, we would requisition Lia's and Alex's powers in tandem to have it change and reform better than it was before. I had read poems about magical nights next to a beloved under the stars, but even without the rose-colored glasses of love, those couldn't compare to the wonder of walking in someone else's shoes, and in your own, acting as one because you were one.

When Alex was standing before me, and I was left with what felt like a roaring silence in my head, I smiled and said, "Next time, tell me before kissing me, OK?"

He promised he would, and drove me home despite my protestations. No romantic tension for us; we both knew the situation better than we could have guessed when we started talking online, before I heard rumors of Armor's development and before we knew a symbiosis like this was possible. I wanted to try it again as soon as possible, I never wanted to do it again except in the direst need: good old conflicting feelings this time, not someone else's thoughts sharing my space. I avoided questions from my parents, saying only that Alex had finished the project he was working on, and that he would show it to the rest of the team on Tuesday. It took me a long time to get to sleep. I wanted to talk to someone and try to make sense of everything, but Becky and Alex were both out of the question, so I had to go it alone.

* * * * 

That Tuesday afternoon, we showed Armor to the rest of the team. They were, to put it simply, horrified. I avoided Rick's gaze, and sensing my reluctance, so did Alex. That was fine, though; with my admittedly conflicted feelings for him, and Alex's quite different take on the situation, any time Rick was brought up in our thoughts the emotions were too tangled for us to untie even with two brains. So we put up with Ben's rampant curiosity and Sarah's joking mood, while Timothy (who was obviously just as unsettled as Rick, but for different reasons) took Rick upstairs to explain the situation to him. He wouldn't admit it to my face, but it didn't take a mentalist to know that he was jealous. It was sweet, to know that he wanted to be close to me like that, but it was still... well... Rick. But enough of that.

I avoided Rick in the hallways for at least a week. When he finally caught up with me, I thought he was going to say something terrible by his expression, but his face twisted with the effort of keeping his words from popping out and he continued in a voice as normal as he could make it, "So, you and Alex. I should have guessed."

I had feared this much was coming. I protested, but knew it would do no use. I tried reason: "Don't you think Becky would have told you, even if I didn't have the guts to?"

"She did," he pointed out wryly. The beginnings of a smile flickered at the corners of his mouth, but he quickly suppressed them. Oh well, I thought, it was worth a try. I didn't know how to answer Rick except by telling him the truth - but maybe I shouldn't say anything. That would be far easier. Still, I think I owed him that much. I was silent for a moment, and Rick made as if to leave. I knew his emotions were gathering up inside him. Before long, he would burst, and I didn't want to be around when it happened.

"Wait." He stopped for a moment before turning around, doubtless a technique he adopted from the grade-B movies he loved to watch. "Rick, I know how you feel, but there's nothing I can do to change what's happened. Alex and I are friends, and I'd like to think I'm your friend as well."

Taking hold of himself, he swept his cloak around him. He looked me in the eyes and nodded to know he got the message, then favored me with a ragged smile and an attempt at humor. "Well, from what Becky's told me, I'm up to be *that* kind of friend anytime." He left, but I knew he'd be back. I only hoped he'd be back like he was before. Just close enough for me to feel his solid, reassuring presence, but not close enough to create problems. It's a fine line I trod, but I just didn't feel ready to say anything more. Maybe it would all work out. But I doubted it.

I heard from Alex that Timothy had approached him, explaining why Armor bothered him so much. Since we were essentially both working through my brain, he felt our emotions as we felt them - swirling, always threatening to get out of control, often completely contradictory and at war - and it was not the mind of a normal human. It was the mind of a badly damaged schizophrenic, and it went against all his gut feelings. Plus, his emotional control was considerably less effective on Armor: since Alex's brain impulses were being fed into a different brain, he couldn't affect them directly, only attempt to counteract them actively. The long and short of it was that Timothy would work with Armor if he had to, but he practically begged Alex not to do it except in direst need.

Alex remarked that the mere fact that Timothy complained about having to keep active watch on his emotional powers around Armor meant that despite his protestations, our resident empath had grown considerably in power since his battle with Mizuno. Alex suspected that he was able to gather some of Mizuno's methods, counteract them, and then expand upon them to gain the fine control that is the hallmark of a trained mentalist, the control that Venus of the Olympians had feared enough to attack Mind before Reality. "In a few months," wrote Alex over IM, "he will be good enough not only to accomplish his own ends, but to protect the rest of us from mental attack."

It made me think about the rest of the team. Much as I hated to admit it, Ben was turning out to be right. We'd all seen Rick grow in skill and raw power with our own eyes, while Sarah put in far more sweat and tears than he did for the most meager result, like the ability to find things inside her gateway at a moment's notice. If Alex was right, the team was on a fairly even slope from Sarah and Ben, up to Rick and Timothy, with Alex and I at the top. I couldn't help feeling a little guilty, as I was possibly the person on the team who put forward the least effort. I pretended to be practicing, but what could I practice when I had no idea what would happen? All I could do is turn my power on or off and try to put myself in situations where I could think quickly and use anything my mutant ability dropped at my feet. I had no idea how I did what I did, only that by concentrating just so, I could make it happen. It still came unbidden at the oddest of times; old habits are hard to break, especially when I wasn't really trying. Like Timothy, I leaned on my power to keep me going, for fear that when I let it go, I would be revealed as no more than a sham, someone who got through life on the strength of genetics, the easy way. There were some things that I couldn't tell Alex, and this was one of them.

I asked Ben at school on Friday what he saw for me. As usual, he was evasive, claiming I would only get the wrong idea if I were told too many of the possible future paths. Finally, he said, "Soon, your powers will be pushed to their limit and beyond. When matters come to a head, you must not flinch, or..."

"Or what?" Ben was often depressing, but not like this. Cryptic was not a good sign, coming from someone who usually told the future as if he were telling last week's news headlines. Ben swallowed and looked away as he spoke.

"Or Alex will die."

Oddly, I didn't think of the battle or the awful load now placed on my shoulders, but instead of the pain Ben must be experiencing. And he sees this every day! I thought. On impulse, I pulled him to me and gave him a hug. Bewildered, he returned the embrace, and we stayed there for a moment, and I said softly, "It's hard to be a precog sometimes, isn't it?"

All he said was "Yes," but I felt from his body language that it took a bigger toll on him than most of us realized. He walked away, and I hurried to class, thinking of how everyone seemed to be hiding beneath their accepted roles lately. Perhaps it was time for me to find some backbone myself. I only hoped I could do it.

* * * *

I had just gotten onto the subway for home after a movie outing with my friends on Sunday night, having politely refused Rick's offer to travel a half-hour out of his way to drive me home as well as Becky, when I remembered that I had left my favorite pen on the bench waiting for the train to come. Looking around quickly, I saw nobody was looking at me, and so I risked a little exercise of my power. A very small flash this time, which meant either that I was getting better or that only a small change was needed for a noticeable effect. Unfortunately, no pen was forthcoming as the door closed, and the train started moving. The train was jam-packed, so I was unable to find a seat that wasn't between a lady weighing three hundred pounds and an old man who looked ready to explode with fury over some imagined slight.

My semi-random use of power did indeed come in handy, as I was grabbing a rail when the train jerked to a stop just before it finished leaving the station. The doors to the car behind mine opened smoothly, a man in a navy blue three-piece suit and deep red tie walked in, and the train was off just as quickly as it had stopped. A couple passengers swore at the driver for stopping for someone after the train was underway, and a couple more threw frightened glances at their loved ones, realizing what I had immediately thought. The man was a mutant, and one powerful enough to control a train without any outward signs of exerting effort. I made my way back to the car he was sitting in with just a shade too much haste, causing some passengers to look at me suspiciously.

He was switching his Washington Post for today's Wall Street Journal when he noticed me. "Hello, can I hel--" He took a second look, and started his sentence anew. "Soul! How nice to finally meet you in person!" He grabbed my hand and shook it. I'm afraid that I almost fainted. I'm not usually a flighty person, but I've always been afraid of being exposed and shunned as some kind of mutant freak, one reason it was difficult to tell my parents about my power except with Alex there to prevent me from backing down. Besides, there should be nobody outside the team who could recognize us on sight; Timothy took care of that after each of our missions.

The man rose from his seat instantly, seeing I was about to fall. A strong hand on my arm steadied me, and when I was able to focus my eyes again I noticed that not only was he looking at me with concern, but several other passengers as well. I must have made a noise or something. He took a quick look around, then dragged me down to the seat beside him so we could have some measure of privacy.

"Wait a minute," I said. "How do you know my name?" Since he knew me but Timothy hadn't worked on him, he must also have access to the HSA's IRC channel. A white male from the HSA's ten most powerful mutants list - that could only be four people, and I had a sneaking suspicion I knew which one it was. Of course, I preferred to appear ignorant rather than have him assume I knew too much, though, so I kept all signs of recognition off my face.

"Come on, a bright girl like you should have figured it out by now. Here's a hint!" He proffered me a monogrammed handkerchief, with which I promptly blew my nose. Clogged sinuses are pretty much the exact opposite of a dignified appearance, but the whole fainting like a schoolgirl bit had already put me at the bottom of the dignity barrel, so I figured one more little concession wouldn't hurt. The monogram was JT, which was the clincher.

"Mars." My voice was steadier than my thoughts, which were still whirling. Was this the moment I would be put to the test? One on one, against the most powerful mutant in the country?

"Right you are, Soul. Although frankly, I think I might go back to being John Tyler for a while. All this supervillain posturing is really a drag. I bet you know just how it feels. Here you are again, off to save the day with your ragtag band of high-schoolers. Tell me, are you considerate enough to do all the work yourself, or do you let them risk their necks and clean up afterward?" His eyes sparkled with merriment. He was poking fun at me, completely relaxed. Not a bad conversationalist, either, and nice enough to keep his voice down so no one else could hear us well enough to realize what we were talking about. Still, he was a little too arrogant for my tastes, and I needed to save some face badly, so I decided to see just how far his cocky attitude extended into reality.

"Actually, I'm not the team leader. Reality is. He's a metamorph, and I daresay nearly as powerful as I am."

I had the satisfaction of seeing him draw back a little, on the defense. But his calculating expression soon shifted to amusement, and he was back to his old self again as he said, "Nearly as powerful? Think one-hundredth of your power." He paused, studying my face, which was a mask of skepticism that the disparity between Alex and I, who only a week ago had stretched our powers to new heights together, could be so great. He quickly divined the source of my skepticism, though. "Oh, you haven't been on IRC lately. Alnora has his new results up. You're third place!"

I could only whisper "Third..." as control of the situation slipped more and more out of my grasp. Mars was piling information on me too fast to assimilate, and his unshakable self-confidence only made it worse. He probably saw it as giving me a little ego boost, showing that I was more powerful than I suspected. To cover for myself for a bit, I asked, "So why don't you just attack me, if I'm so powerful? One day I could be a threat, you know."

No laugh this time, just a smile. "Actually, I was thinking of doing that sometime this week. Since your team is in school this week, would Saturday afternoon be good?" I had yet to stammer out a reply when he announced, "This is my stop!" and motioned me to get out of my seat to allow him to pass. I did so, shaking my head as he opened the doors with a thought and walked right off the moving train. He flaunts his power, I thought, daring me to match him in brazen self-display, knowing his confidence will serve him well. I suspect that if he could, he would have flown off like Superman; instead, he hovered a few feet above the ground as he shot past the train tracks, over the freeway, and to his destination.

The tabloids picked up a "mysterious flying man" the next day, with "exclusive photos" that told me nothing I didn't already know. I had a date - Saturday - and now I had to get the team ready. Fortunately, we had a leader precisely for these occasions.

* * * *

Friday night, I was unable to sleep. Even a couple sleeping pills did no good, and I stayed up until the small hours of the night doing nothing but surfing the Internet aimlessly. Ben's words kept ringing in my mind, and Alex's advice: "Get some sleep, Lia. Against Mars, what we're going to need more than anything else is luck, especially since our most powerful team member is likely going to be our adversary's first target. Take care of yourself!"

I checked the IRC channel on a whim, and Alnora informed me that Mars planned to attack us tomorrow morning. When I told him that we had, in fact, arranged the whole thing, he was understandably upset. He didn't like having the first- and third-place slots on his list fight it out. Not only would he lose a valuable opportunity to study the prime of mutant power (since both of us were now in the Washington area, Alnora could examine us telepathically from HSA headquarters), but in this kind of a fight, innocent bystanders could be hurt. A lot of innocent bystanders. I wasn't sure whether his promise to make sure that all civilians would be out of the way when we fought was intended to be a threat or not, but it eased my heart a little. I fell asleep nearly three hours after I had planned, still feeling no better about the whole situation.

* * * *

Rick parked his van a considerable distance away from the site of the battle, a public park mysteriously empty despite the fact that it was a perfectly serviceable day. OK, an overcast day, but I knew there would still have been a crowd of admirers had Alnora not stepped in and cleared the area. He wouldn't stop our fight for some reason - perhaps the HSA higher-ups had put some regulations around legal use of his mind control - but he could make sure it stayed a family matter, so to speak. Mars was waiting for us, with a picnic basket and his usual suit and tie. As we arrived, he looked up and carefully took off his suitcoat, and switched ties for a black one instead of the red I'd seen him wear. "My fighting clothes," he explained, as soon as we were in earshot. "Red is my favorite color, but I used black in my very first serious battle and it's stayed with me ever since."

Our team was attired in similar outfits: not good enough that we'd have wasted money should they be damaged, but respectable and indicative of our personalities. I was, of course, wearing purple, a commemorative shirt from a  Washington cultural fair or music festival or something. I love purple, and unlike Mars, I didn't have to worry about whether my tie would change color when I regenerated. Actually, I'd rather regenerate with different clothes than not at all, but that's beside the point.

As per the plan, we moved to encircle him. He was still talking, not out of nervousness (that had, I suspect, been bred out of him long ago) but simply to pass the time. "Now, I know a lot of villains like to bore you with talk about their awesome and unbeatable power, so I won't. I prefer to let my actions speak for me, as they say. I don't need to be reminded that I'm the best, so I'll refrain from doing so to you, I hope. In fact, just to see what all you have planned, I'll let you strike first. Give me all you got, and see how long it takes before Soul steps up to the plate, that's what I'm going to do."

As an afterthought, he added, "Of course, if you decline to attack, you can just concede defeat, we'll all eat a couple sandwiches, and I'll deliver you to the hospital with only minor injuries. A broken bone or two apiece, we'll say, to make it look like you put up a good fight. You can even claim nefarious tactics on my part, I don't mind." He held up the picnic basket, making a jest out of the whole thing. Taking a quick look around, he shrugged, pretending to be disappointed. "Oh well, I didn't think you were going to surrender anyway. Besides, this way lets me gain more knowledge about your powers, and every mutant has at least something to commend him."

Time said nothing, merely raised a handgun and pointed it squarely at Mars' chest. He paused, cocking one eyebrow at our adversary. "I'm not wearing armor, if that's what you want to know. My defenses, such as they are, don't have convenient gaps that you can shoot through with what I presume is your genetically superior marksmanship. Although--" Mars was rudely interrupted by a shot straight through his right eye, placed to get to the brain even if the man had an unbreakable skull. He yelled in pain, shimmered and dimmed a little bit as if a cloud had passed over him, and his wound was healed.

Time had shifted his aim, and as soon as Mars started to heal his wound, put another shot square in his heart. Mars choked a little, and promptly healed that one too. Even his tie, blown to one side by a slight wind, was back to its normal straight position. I could see the wheels turning in Time's brain as he emptied the rest of the clip at Mars, who took several bullet hits and then healed again, once for all his wounds. My heart began to sink; if bullets couldn't even slow him down, what hope did the rest of us have?

In all the movies, when someone is out of ammunition, they have to pull the trigger at least three times to make sure that yes, it is out. Time had simply been counting bullets, and as he fired off the last shot (which shattered a kneecap) he was already in position to load in a new clip. I was next to him, so I saw what I don't think anyone else did: as he reloaded, he flicked a switch on the bottom of the clip. With a snarl of anger at being thwarted, he leaped forwards, hurling his gun at Mars as he attacked. Mars caught the weapon neatly in midair, turned it to Time, and fired.

Time, however, had expected this, and cut his jump well short of Mars. By the time the trigger was pulled, he was nearly on the ground, and so was driven downwards instead of blown back as the gun exploded, taking an entire hand with it. Even I jumped at that; I knew Time had some trick up his sleeve, but explosives that powerful had to be illegal, or at least extremely difficult to get as a minor. Of course, less than a second later, Mars was just as he'd always been, although his expression was a little less pleasant. He knew we meant business.

"An admirable try, Time. Unfortunately, that ploy could only work on me once, and someone tried that on me in 1912. I lost my left arm in that fight, and it took me an entire week to attain the concentration necessary to regain it. I spent the rest of the year training, under every kind of pain imaginable, until I had my regeneration down to a reflex. Even decapitation won't stop me now, since as soon as the blade touches my throat I have already started the regeneration process."

"My, aren't we gregarious today?" muttered Time, rubbing the elbow that he'd landed on. An infinitesimal nod from Reality, and Space grabbed her locket, then sent her gateway hurling in a sphere towards Mars. The old grenade trick that Mizuno had invented. I wondered at the use of this, since it had already been proven that most physical attacks were ultimately ineffective against him. Indeed, Mars simply laughed, until the gateway reached him, then stayed there, moving to his center of mass even as he tried to throw himself away. It slowly grew larger, eating more and more of him. He screamed then, an surprisingly pain-filled scream from one who'd just boasted of enduring pain.

His eyes blazed, he gestured with one hand, and a lightning bolt streaked out of the sky directly onto Space's locket, shattering it into a hundred twisted bits of metal. The gateway disappeared without the locket for Space to focus through, and Mars was whole again a moment later. His voice had lost all pretense of humor as their eyes met. "Touch my person with that gateway again, Space, and I will kill you. You have been warned."

Straightening his tie (although it was, of course, unnecessary), he looked around. "Next try?" He was promptly blown off his feet and three yards to his left by a blast of what I suspected to be plasma from Power; certainly the portion that splashed off Mars started fires in the grass where they fell. Time and Mind backed out of the way, and the rest of us moved to re-establish our circle where he got up. "Almost good enough, Power!" he taunted. In answer, Power blasted off with his trademark jets, then called down a lightning bolt on Mars.

Fascinated by Power's mutant abilities, Mars took the bolt head-on, and gave another cry before he regenerated. Then, he smiled again, and said, "Well, if you want an old-fashioned duel, you shall have one!" With that, he copied Power's jets and the lightning strike. Power diverted the bolt away from him, but Mars promptly diverted it back, obviously anticipating the move. Power shoved himself out of the way with another burst of self-propulsion, and a laser shot from the pointing finger of his free hand. Apparently he didn't believe everything Mars said, as our opponent's head was soon falling seperately from his body.

To my dismay, Mars' head soon returned to its rightful spot. Finding self-propulsion boring, he settled to the ground and sent a column of energy upwards beneath Power. My power activated instinctively, prompting Power to twist barely out of its way as part of his preparations for a strike with sound waves to hammer Mars until he could get close to him. The strike never reached him, as Mars countered with another, even more powerful sound wave that overrode the first. I felt a cold knot form in the pit of my stomach, and I frantically reached for my power. Before the attack reached power, a gateway flashed in front of him, absorbing the sound waves, then blinked out and reappeared to send it back at Mars.  Space sat there gaping at what she'd just done. As I'd saved my life a long time ago by altering Power's attack, now I saved his with Space's gateway. She tried moving the gateway, and to her surprise, it worked normally, despite her locket having been blown out of existence. I supposed I must have removed a mental block or something preventing her from using her power except with the locket; I'd have to ask Timothy for the full explanation, and since the result was good, I didn't really care.

This I'll say for Space, she's quick on her feet. The gateway yawned wide behind Mars, and her locomotive crashed into him, grinding him beneath its wheels at fantastic speed and disappearing into the gateway. Or at least that's what it was intended to do; instead, Mars, forgetting his notion of toying with us, annihilated the whole thing, leaving it a haze of dust, before it could return into the gateway. Space's eyes widened; seeing what had happened, the rest of the team leaped to the attack.

Time and Mind rushed to join each other, starting their mindmeld at a safe distance from the rest of the team. I ran in a wide circle attempting to flank my enemy, keeping (or trying to keep, at least) my power on as I ran. Reality flowed to the attack, his form rippling into a thousand different shapes, each presenting a new menace. Mars was momentarily set back on his heels by Reality's attack, forced to regenerate as fast as he could think, save perhaps a laser blast or two to keep Power on his toes. Space was helpless, as any attack on Mars would involve Reality as well. We'd never been willing to take the risk of putting Alex inside the gateway, for fear that he would be unable to sense his body's presence any more and have to rebuild his mass from scratch, an exercise that he might not be powerful enough to perform at all.

Finally, seeing Power create his skin-tight shield to protect against one attack, Mars applied his own shield, forcing Reality to retreat to within a couple inches of him. To show off his power, the shield quickly became a sphere, destroying all in its path, vaporizing Reality's current many-bladed form into its component atoms as it expanded. Mars was thoroughly enjoying himself now, delighted at the prospect of victory using only the powers used against him and his natural regeneration. "Come on, Reality, you've got to have taught your kids more than that!"

Reality reappeared, yelled "Attack!" and promptly transformed into a rocket, which landed right next to me before he transformed back. He looked at me and I knew what we had to do, even as Time called, "Reality! Get into your Armor form right now!" Ignoring the propriety of Ben ordering Alex around, I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around his neck, looking over his shoulder to see how the rest of the battle was going.

It was now Power and Space's turn to show off their two-man attack. Forbidden to touch Mars with a gateway, Space instead flickered it rapidly between Power, who was pouring a long continuous energy blast straight at him, and at different angles around, above, and even below Mars, making protection by anything less than a full shield impossible. At the same time, Mind started a mental assault, doing I don't know what, but it seemed to be working, as Mars was constantly regenerating, his shield flickering.

I didn't have time to see any more, because Reality said softly, "God be with us!" and we formed Armor. The boot jets served us well, and we came down right on top of Mars, with automatic weapons blazing away in my armored hands. Our adversary threw himself out of our path, dusted himself off, and exclaimed "Finally, the heroine steps up to the plate!" He snapped his fingers and created an earthquake, knocking everyone off their feet except for me; a judicious flash of power and the earth under our feet remained solid, with cracks ringing it. Mars, surprised, stopped his attack. I strode forward slowly until I practically looked Mars in the face, and knowing my thoughts, Alex slid Armor's helmet back so my face was clear.

"For the world's most powerful mutant, you're more ignorant than you look," I said, looking up at him with a challenge in my gaze. I knew what I wanted to say, but it was Alex who provided me with the courage to say it. "Our powers are opposites, you and I. You use up the energy around you to do what you want, and I create it to do what I want. You should have known the first time you saw me flash. When you use your power for something major like regeneration, you dim, because you're absorbing some of the light particles around you. When I use mine, I flash, because I'm increasing the rate of particle collisions around me." I smiled, caught by a sudden thought - his or mine, I don't remember. "And I thought physics class was useless!"

"You can control anything you want, except for me. Our powers cancel each other out; whatever you use to attack, I can deflect, avoid, or counteract, and since mine is instinctual, I'm even faster than you are. You can, of course, defeat them," - this with an offhand gesture to the rest of the team that made Rick bristle - "but they don't really count, do they? What matters is that the mighty Mars has been forced to a draw against a whiny schoolgirl."

Mind had indeed kept his promise: he read our emotions, discerned our plan, and ever so subtly tweaked Mars' mind to accommodate it. Mars responded accordingly; he raised his hands and a small piece of flame appeared in each of them; then he moved one in front of the other and they were a gigantic pillar of fire rising straight up from his palms. "You want me to try to kill you? Very well, I won't hold back. It's your funeral!"

He raised his hand, and we were engulfed in flames. For all my vaunted power, I had very little experience with being shot at, burned, attacked with energy bolts, etc. and so I allowed Alex's superior instincts to take over. I remember little of the battle Armor fought with Mars, only that wherever he turned his head, there was another death-dealing weapon in my hand. An impossibly sharp whip that cut him in two before he started feeling pain, a full-fledged missile launcher, a tiny bag of antimatter particles that blossomed into a fireball even Armor could barely withstand, or just an armored foot with more than its weight of force behind it. But for every blow we dealt him, there was another threat coming at us. Everything from the usual assault of lightning, fire, wind, earthquakes and extreme cold, to a physical attempt to rip Alex off of me (which failed only by a small margin as Alex intensified the supports that molded him to my body) or a cloud of impossibly potent acid that required a complete chemical change of Armor's surface and a "lucky" reapportionment of Mars's next wind strike to blow the cloud away. We faced everything, and I learned how it felt to be a champion on the field of battle.

As a stray lightning bolt hit Ben before he could dodge it, causing Space to run to his side and slap up a gateway above the two of them, Mars wiped sweat from his brow (forgetting that he didn't have any physical sweat, only mental exertion) and rasped, "Enough." He folded his arms, sat down, and closed his eyes. Armor's internal sensors went wild. Radiation, thought Alex. No, Alex, I thought back. A nuclear blast forming, right next to us. He's gathering material for a very small but very effective hydrogen bomb, and there's nothing we can do to stop him that we haven't already tried. And then an idea came to us.

"Time!" I shouted. "Space!" he shouted in turn, grabbing her shoulder and pointing. Armor peeled away from me -- I felt the last lingering thoughts of Alex's being pulled away -- to enclose me in an ovoid of the strongest, most radiation-absorbent material he could imagine. Space put her gateway around the whole area, a sphere that cut off all light, making me unsure which closed over first, Reality's shell or Space's gateway. Mars pressed on.

The light struck me first, and then the roar of sound, and then the explosion. I could not tell where the light was from, my own flash or the explosion, but I felt my power being stretched to its limit and beyond as my brain frantically worked to protect me. A... fold... in space opened up around me, everything drawn past me like air over an airplane wing to rush smoothly into the gateway, which disappeared. Two seconds later, I held in my arms the body of Alex Brene. I staggered under his weight and almost fell. I can't feel his breathing! I thought frantically. Was he dead or merely unconscious? I realized that this was what having to create a new body from scratch took out of him: his previous form, the shell, was drifting as individual molecules somewhere inside Space's gateway, where he could not access it. I wanted nothing more than to help him, but I had no choice. I laid him down beside me and lifted my head to see Space's counterattack. 

More swiftly than she had ever dared before except in the most mind-numbing drills in Alex's backyard, a sphere formed around Mars. As soon as it was complete, she summoned the explosion, only slightly diminished by its work destroying Reality and traveling a few meters of space. Because there was no opening, I heard and saw nothing but a silvery globe where Mars had once stood. I knew that Space would keep pouring the explosion through the sphere, from different directions, until not even Mars could regain his form long enough to start another regeneration and he would die. Victory was near, I thought. His most powerful weapon had turned against him.

But like Space, I did not reckon with the instincts of a man who had spent over a century as a warrior, and an extraordinarily powerful and versatile mutant warrior at that. The fold I had created around me instead forced a wedge open in the air above us, pushing the gateway aside as it pushed space itself aside. It took only a fraction of a second for Space to turn off the explosion, but too much of its force had been lost, shooting straight up. The cloud the concentrated nuclear blast hit on its way up was flash-heated out of existence and disappeared as if God had taken an eraser to it. Mars shot up out of the hole in the gateway, leaving both arms and much of his shoulders behind, for the hole was too narrow, as he was propelled into the stratosphere, and triggered his regeneration five hundred feet up. His tie was, as usual, black, and in perfect condition, as he began falling.

Mars had taken several direct nuclear blasts, attacks that should have annihilated him instantly before he had a chance to fully regenerate, and torn a hole in the fabric of spacetime itself to get out. And he wasn't even ruffled. Ben's words came back to me now. "If you don't... Alex will die." He spoke truer than he knew; by the look on his face, Mars was ready to kill all six of us if it meant having his revenge on Space. The girl who had always been the weakest of us, the one whose specialty was in protection and procuring supplies, had showed just how far she'd advanced. Just like all the rest of us, except for me. I knew that it was time for me to see how far I could go. Time to prove Alnora and Alex and Ben and all the others right, instead of wrong, for a change.

Mars flicked a finger at Space, who was thrown twenty feet in the air, came down painfully, and got back up extremely slowly. Power and Time got the same treatment; Mind was already on his knees, with what looked to be a twisted ankle from a stray shot that Armor had dodged. Another finger at me raised me into the air level with him, propelled by Mars's powers creating a gravity well above us that exactly balanced out Earth's pull. (We'd found out he flew this way when Armor's first missile shot detonated above his head instead of going straight; future missile shots were always aimed downward to compensate, as Alex would have said.) "There's one really gratifying thing about being a supervillain, Soul," he told me, bringing me to him and cupping my chin in one hand as he looked into my eyes, searching for something I was too scared and andrenaline-high to figure out. "When you use your full power, you can make it as flashy as you want. And then when you win, you can kill the heroes slowly and painfully." The last words were drawn out with hatred; Mars was only human, I realized, and all this regenerating and exerting of power had taken a toll on him. He pushed me away, and we stood some distance apart on thin air.

Mars, laughing, stretched out his hands, and the world erupted in chaos. I had thought I was facing the fiercest assault I'd ever seen when he attacked Armor with one thing after another, different every time. This was all of them at once. And to make it deadlier, some of them weren't attacking me at all. They were after my friends, my teammates. I closed my eyes, yelled as Alex and Ben had taught us to do when performing a martial arts strike, and opened the floodgates of my power.

I seemed to recede from my body and mind, a part of me distantly watching myself rage against energy and death of every kind, fully aware of what I was doing and how I was doing it. I was ashamed to have ever doubted Alnora, who long ago must have seen the potential hidden in me, saved for the day when I would be just crazy enough, pushed to the brink of despair and removed of inhibitions as Timothy's gift to me before he was knocked out, to let it all go. When the comic books talk of these moments, they describe them as horrifying and yet exhilarating. I can say now that only "horrifying" does any justice to what I experienced. I was beyond exhilarated, I was consumed by my power, matching Mars stroke for stroke whatever happened, stopping his efforts in their tracks or diverting them or even reversing them. Flowers grew under Reality's prone form that a second ago had been razor-sharp blades of grass, and the next second would be a pool of gasoline struck by a match. I had never been this out of control in my whole life, but in the way that mattered, my instincts served me best: true to my boast, I was just as fast as he was, if not faster.

Space later told me she saw me shining as if I were a floodlamp, my power in use so much it was a constant stream of light, while Mars had seemed to recede under a dark haze, over half the light rays that struck his body being absorbed and reused to feed his power. And then Mars stepped up his attack. We warred with our rips in space, with our fountains of pure energy wherever he created them, with all the power that lay in the air and the earth and any other object that was handy. Rubble accumulated on the edge of my functional range, fragments of a thousand things Mars and I had created and in the next instant destroyed. There was nothing he couldn't do, and nothing I couldn't match him in. Space, fatally wounded by a Kleenex driven through her chest at ten thousand miles per hour, rose to her feet and fled from us, perfectly healed. We pushed each other to ever greater heights, and then a black light blossomed in my eyes, I felt pain beyond Armor and beyond anything I had imagined could occur, and I remembered no more.


CHAPTER NINE
============


I was fighting for my life in a firestorm of raw energy, abrupt shifts in the fabric of space that could dislodge my gateway, and the dark clouds and white flashes that heralded a thunderstorm without weather, when I heard the scream. It was as if someone had ripped her heart out: it faded away quickly as she dropped to the ground, landing with the heavy thud that told me she was unconscious, or dead. Smoke rose from her purple shirt, which made me fear the worst: with the kind of power I'd just seen up there, a little charring of the clothing should have been cured instantly, whether she wanted it to be or not.

Around me, the landscape looked like a meteor strike had hit it. Team Infinity wasn't in much better shape. Our leader, Reality, was lying facedown and immobile in the grass, unable to muster the mental energy to change form to something safer. He was in great pain, but still breathing, as Time informed us. We'd always thought he was invincible, that no man could ever seriously take him on if he didn't want him to. He was the strongest of us. Mars had showed us just how far we had to go before we were even ready to fight him six on one, much less beat him. Mind, the only one of us without extra physical protection, had been hit from behind by a twenty-pound chunk of rock in about the third or fourth earthquake and was bleeding a little from his scalp. Disoriented, able only to protect himself from the most obvious attacks, he was fighting a losing battle with unconsciousness. It was difficult for me not to rush to his side and help him up, but that would only have made me more vulnerable, and he wouldn't want that either.

I had been prepared for that Armor thing Reality and Soul had made beforehand, but it was still impressive to watch. When Mars stepped up his attack and Soul rose to the challenge, I had time only for astonished glances; the rest was spent in a last-ditch effort of personal protection. Mars wasn't gunning especially for Soul, but for the whole team. He was toying with her, trying to see just how powerful she really was, and how he could push her over the edge.

You know, I had been a bit of a doubting Thomas with the whole HSA thing. I'm pretty good friends with an mentalist and a precog myself, I know a lot about what they can and can't do. They certainly don't decide power orders based on some mysterious criteria that only they know. But they said Soul was by far the most powerful of us. They said she was one of the top 15 mutants in the country. Then they took a closer look and decided she was number three in America, coincidentally just behind the guy who makes the list and the guy we were fighting. Now, everybody found this just a teensy bit difficult to swallow. Heck, without Mizuno, Soul said she couldn't even tell when she was using her power, much less control it.

They were right all along. The minute she started getting in control of her weird probability thing, she got into Armor, and almost beat Mars. When Reality was disassembled into his component atoms, she wasn't even fazed; she simply kept going even farther. Could she have been lying all this time, or have Mars or Mind somehow changed her, removed the instinctive barriers she built up around herself to save herself from her own power? I sure hope it's the latter. I mean, I'm not exactly Rick's biggest fan, but he'd never lie to us. Lia sure wouldn't, I know that.

So here she was, just having shown us that she could probably take down an army division by accident before she even attacked them, lying in the freshly mowed grass, her shirt slowly starting to catch fire. Mars was, of course, as bright and chipper as ever, his clothes perfectly pressed and his hair impeccable. That little annoying feature of his had stopped bothering me after about the sixth time it happened.

Still standing were me, Power, and Time. Power and I were as far from him as possible, and advanced quickly while he was still exulting in his grand victory in single combat. Time had his glasses on, had something small and silver in his hand, and was running at top speed straight for our remaining adversary. Mars began to lower himself to the ground slowly. He never saw the little geeky guy coming until it was too late.

In all your martial arts training you are taught to let your body's energy out in a yell when you attack, to let it focus you and add to your strength. Time was completely silent, to the extent that when he stepped on a twig it did not break. When he jumped there was a soft swish of the wind on the leaves beneath him, and then a half-second later a crashing boom as the ground exploded: Mars finally realizing he had a new enemy and triggering his equivalent of a land mine, unwittingly playing right into my companion's hand.

I knew my gateway would only hinder his progress. Power shouted, "No!" and I knew he didn't think Time had been hit, but he realized what I did. It was all playing out like the inevitable last scene of a tragedy. He was sacrificing himself to buy us some time. I picked up Timothy and threw him to shelter with a couple judicious placements of a trampoline I had been saving in my gateway for just such an occasion. Power rocketed fast and low, grabbing Reality and Soul by their shirt collars and depositing them in the same place. He didn't land directly in front of me, but beside me, close enough that our eyes met.

I thought that Power hated us for his own reasons. Certainly he despised Reality. But as I saw now, with a flash of insight, he couldn't give us up. He would not abandon us, and he would never, ever abandon Soul. He started gathering force for another blast, a hopeless one but the only thing he could do. I extended my gateway to cover him as well and readied my staff. He was tall, I noticed, tall and surprisingly muscular under that stupid black trenchcoat for someone who played video games and did drama shows. In this arena, he was just as powerless as I.

Once again another team member rose to the challenge against a foe so powerful that we had the edge of desperation in our actions and our voices. There is no one so dangerous as a man backed into a corner, as the adage goes, I think. That boom echoed in our ears because of the total silence that followed it. The force of the explosion carried Time six feet in the air, straight as an arrow up towards Mars' position as he levitated. He grabbed his ankle and pulled downward as much as he could, throwing himself upwards a little bit more. His left fist landed square in Mars' solar plexus, bringing his head down; the fist opened a second later and slammed his nose up into his brain with the flat of Time's palm. There was a dimming of the light around him, and he was as hearty as anyone just afterward.

A small wet slicing sound carried to us, and I realized with horror that the object in Time's other hand was a long knife. He stabbed Mars in the kidney, yanked it out with a twist, waited for Mars to regenerate, then slashed his throat open in a spray of blood. Mars was getting angrier and angrier, unable to respond against physical pain so strong it triggered his unconscious reflex to regenerate constantly. He tried to block the knife, only to have his block cut short by a vicious knee to the groin and followup stab through the heart. I had seen Time at work, and he was fast, and I always knew he had a ruthless streak in him, but even Power cringed at the sight of one guy kneeing another in his sensitive region right before coating his hands with the other man's blood. Mars regenerated time and time again, but the blood remained.

Time tried for a punch to the jaw, but Mars had finally anticipated it and caught his arm. They struggled for a bit, a pure physical strength contest that Mars easily won, so Time simply spun himself around (still in midair, though the two were now falling together), and in one deft maneuver, kicked upward off Mars' arm. With a loud crunch, the arm broke, Mars' fingers opened, and Time went upward a little while Mars slammed to the ground. Our enemy hit the floor and didn't bounce, because he'd been pinned to the ground by a knife thrown through his neck.

Now that the two of them were separated, I erected my gateway between the two of them as fast as I could. It was still only just fast enough to catch the lethal blast of radiation that poured from Mars as he regenerated and counterattacked. He dodged out of the way of my return stroke, made a quick slash across Time's face that shattered his glasses and left a small but incredibly fine cut on the bridge of his nose, floated quickly over to Power, and got his own blast ready. From the expressions on their faces, they both knew who would win this contest of forces. Mars had the energy to do something a million times more powerful than Soul's little friend could ever dream, and the will to do it. He'd done what he came for - beaten the notorious Soul and her buddies - and now had no compunctions about killing those of us still standing, just to prove his point.

When all hope was lost, Power turned not to sadness or fear or resignation, but to rage. He yelled wildly, more out of control than he'd been, I think, since before he met Soul. Time's glasses were gone, and he looked at Power, then at Mars, then back at Power. He fell to his knees, hands clasped in a prayer of thanksgiving.

As the saying goes, there are no atheists in foxholes.

The two unleashed their most powerful attacks at the same moment. They met each other and simply... petered out of existence. Mars' levitation was completely gone; he landed and almost lost his balance, completely flabbergasted. My gateway wasn't there, either. It was as though it had simply left for a moment and would be back when I needed it. We all tried over and over, but nothing happened. Typically, Time realized what had happened before the rest of us.

"It's over, Mars," he said. "You've won the battle, proved yourself better than we are, than anyone is. But you've lost the war. It took you so much energy to defeat Soul that there simply wasn't any left to finish the rest of us.

"Now, without your power, you are nothing. You didn't like being physically powerful, did you? So you didn't think that maybe one day you'd need it. The three of us can easily restrain you until the police get here."

"Wait! How could this possibly happen?"

"You fool. You really don't understand how your ability works, do you?" Time was on a post-fight andrenaline high, and loved to gloat even when it wasn't as warranted as it was now. "You're tapping into the energy inherent in empty space to fuel your manipulations. It's not infinite, it's just big and easy to get. The two of you have drained everything in the immediate area dry. And since Soul can't use her power either, you can bet the HSA will be there with the latest, fully functioning anti-mutant equipment."

Mars seemed to be taking this a little too calmly, so when he jumped at Time, he got a little warning shot from my staff, which fortunately hadn't been destroyed in the battle. He may have been desperate, but he wasn't stupid, so he subsided. Time, meanwhile, managed to revive Mind with a couple slaps to the face, while Power tended to the other two team members. It was quite a shock when I saw Armor for the first time; I can only imagine what it must have been to Rick. With his natural reluctance to open up, I just hoped he'd find some way to communicate his feelings to Lia. But it wasn't my problem, and so I stayed out of it, a rule that most of the rest of the team had a tendency to forget from time to time.

Mind woke up to the news that the battle was over; all he had to do was keep watch on Mars so we could stop any attempt at escape before it happened. He dutifully sat down cross-legged, head in hands, facing Mars, who refused to muss his perfectly pressed suit by doing the same. I was off to the side and behind Mars, positioned at a good distance to make use of my weapon's natural range advantage over Mars' untutored fists. I didn't expect anything from him that Mind wouldn't let me know, but a little extra preparation couldn't hurt.

The HSA arrived in what was probably record time for them: Alnora, knowing any battle involving Mars wouldn't last very long, had probably put the Washington division on red alert when he sensed the impending battle in someone's mind, it didn't matter whose. It doesn't really matter, except that it didn't seem like much of a wait before Agent Ted Kavalec stepped out of an unmarked police cruiser, just as I remembered him: brown nondescript hair and navy blue nondescript official outfit, neuroscrambler briefcase in one hand and dart gun in the other, a smile that didn't quite reach to his eyes, green tie just like the one the agents wear in the Matrix. A good sign, that, as it indicated the guy had some humor left in him.

Ted (everybody called him Ted, except maybe his boss) took custody of Mars quickly and easily. Before getting into the car, he walked over to Reality's prone form, speaking loudly enough that the rest of us could hear, and said, "Meet me back at what passes for your team headquarters. I have to discuss certain things with you. This time it's not optional." And with that, he was off and the local police stayed behind to write up reports and get their evidence. I didn't envy them their job, especially after Mind did his usual tricks with them so they'd forget what we looked and sounded like as soon as we left. That boy comes in more handy than he thinks he does. Certainly after all the adventures we've had, I look at the comic books and wonder how they ever got by without their friendly neighborhood empath!

* * * * 

Ted, not knowing how informed Alex's parents were, simply pulled rank on them without giving any specifics. He also took care to arrive after we did, so that he wouldn't appear to be looking for all six of us at once. This was a good sign: he wasn't going to disband the team, at least. Not that he could stop us short of arresting us, but still, it was the thought that counted, as my old man always told me. So far, the way he'd acted didn't fit the stereotypical description of HSA agents as the bumbling but dangerous police in gangster movies at all. Sure, he was always serious, but this was his job, after all.

He told us as much when we were in Alex's basement, our chairs pulled up to face him in a semicircle. "It is not the HSA's policy to discourage privately operated neighborhood watch groups" and all that. He told us up front the real reason he was letting us operate, though. Quite simply, we tended to win. There was no guarantee that we'd be able to fight Mars to a standstill a second time, now that he was wise to our tricks, but it was a good guess that we could "keep the peace" by taking out the other rogue mutants in our area. The HSA would rather deal with our team, who at least pretended to obey the laws (although Ted never passed up an opportunity to remind us that he could have us all hauled in on miscellaneous felony charges), than waste time and energy on small-time mutant criminals. Or so he said; I got the impression that he had a twinkle in his eye. I'd have to ask Timothy to know for sure.

After he'd established that we could do whatever as long as we were good little kids, he took out a large, heavy cardboard box and gave it to Lia. It contained a dart pistol - identical to Ted's sidearm and fully functional, as Ben verified for us with a quick once-over - and plenty of spare ammunition. We were all wondering at this gift, except for Ben (of course) and Lia. She said only, "Thank you. I don't quite know what to say. Ben?"

Taking his cue, he said, "I can assure you that she'll put this to good use, sir. It's just what she needs." Ted nodded, reminded Lia that the #topten IRC channel was always being monitored by at least one HSA agent in case she had any questions, and indicated that he wanted to talk to Alex in private.

I'm not sure what they said, as I was upstairs being served milk and cookies by Alex's mom at the time and Alex hasn't said much. I only know that it wasn't precisely good news: either it was something bad in the future or something he'd been trying to suppress that he'd known about for a while. Ben was interested in the whys and wherefores, as usual: What did Ted have to say? Why now, instead of in a couple weeks when it would have occasioned less comment? More importantly, did Ted secretly sympathize with us or was he against us, or could he simply not care less?

Timothy was able to answer that last one fairly quickly. Ted was at least nominally on our side, mainly because he felt he could trust our fearless leader, but he wouldn't hesitate to bring the HSA to bear down on us if we got out of line. Someone handy for information, but we shouldn't expect any breaks. You didn't need a mentalist to figure that kind of thing out, but it always helps to be sure, especially when your future is on the line.

When prompted, afterwards, Ben explained about the gift of his gun to Lia. It was simply an avenue of common sense that none of us had thought about. Judging by her performance against Mars, she obviously could exercise some degree of control over her powers now. Her ability was so wide-reaching and centered on what she was doing that it should be a cinch to give her perfect aim with just a little exercise of power. In fact, it even helped that she'd never shot a gun before, since it allowed her to move "randomly" - outside of conscious control and thus more easily swayed by the exercise of her power. Ted still didn't know how she worked, since she was the only one with anywhere near her magnitude of probability control that the HSA or its Russian and British counterparts knew of, and the unconscious nature meant Alnora couldn't probe her mind to determine the full truth of how she did it.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention Jill! Ted was pleased to hear that she'd been keeping below the radar, which meant she could quickly be relocated to a home where she could be monitored by the HSA against anyone who might come after her for some reason, as well as lead a relatively normal life. I was glad to see her out of the picture, for her sake and mine. Yes, I know it sounds callous, but it's the truth, and I really haven't been feeling the need to put a good shine on the truth lately. Timothy drove her to Ted's office in Washington after her things were packed.

* * * *

Lia kept the gun in her backpack. I kept the ammo inside my gateway. Whenever she saw her weapon it seemed to make her world a little grimmer. Some lingering shades of her reluctance to admit her own strength, I suspected, as well as maybe a realization that she had a responsibility she never wanted in the first place. Like it or not, until Mars got out of prison - it was always "until" for her, never "if" - she was the most powerful freelancer mutant in the country. There was no one even remotely close to her power level in the Washington metropolitan area. If anything mutant-related went wrong, it would be ultimately her fault, not Ted's. I know I would have a hard time accepting that I'd suddenly been thrust into a position with so much responsibility for essentially zero personal gain. Timothy adamantly refused to tell me what she was thinking, and probably for good reason, but that doesn't mean I wasn't frustrated. I only wanted to see what I could do; there's always some way, that's my motto.

Ben says he wishes he could take a picture of the two of us, Rick and I, and put us on his wall, the girl in white and the boy in black, back to back, acting both as if we didn't notice the other one existed and as if we wouldn't know what to do without the other. I didn't see it quite that way, and I doubt Rick had even thought that much about the whole thing, but I figured there was no harm in having Ben dramatize things a little bit. Who knows, maybe he was right.

On March the fourteenth, Friday afternoon, almost a week after we'd fought Mars, Timothy and I were in our usual spot: a booth in one corner of the local Starbucks, sipping our frappucinos side by side, the other patrons pleasantly unaware of us or our conversation from just a touch of mental trickery. He had his natural attractiveness turned off, as usual; it was the reason we were there, in fact, to talk as equals the way he couldn't do with anyone else. He was kind of troubled today, though. Maybe a little nervous. I wondered what was on his mind.

"There's something different in the air now, Sarah."

I sniffed. "Well, I don't smell anything except coffee. Nothing new under the sun." 

This brought a smile to his face, cheered him up a bit. The humor in my voice glinted off my eyes as he looked at me, took up temporary lodging in his.

"You know what I mean," he said. "We've all been going through changes lately. Part of it, I think, is that we're just naturally growing up, learning who we are and what we want to do with ourselves." I waited patiently; when he wanted to explain something, he always started from square one, and there was no use changing that. "Especially since Mars fought us--"

"Shhh, quiet!" I admonished him. "Somebody will hear us!" But it was a futile and reflexive protest, and we both knew it. Of course his power was working well enough to prevent us from being overheard. It had to be, since I cared enough to be worried that it wasn't. Just one of the more delightful problems in logic you get from hanging around mentalists, I guess.

He smiled halfheartedly, looked down, and took a sip of frappucino, then continued talking. "Especially since Mars fought us, I feel like we're on the home stretch. I can't think of anything we couldn't tackle right now; we're riding high."

I responded quietly, patting his hand, "That doesn't mean we don't have things left to do, dear. We had to work harder than we've ever worked to do what we did."

"I know that. What I'm trying to say is that the team means a lot to me, especially you. And here we are now, at the end of the age, as Gandalf would say."

"Gandalf?"

"Haven't you ever read the Lord of the Rings? Gandalf the White, come back at the end of the age!"

"Remember, I'm not that stupid." This with a smile. "I don't think Sauron is quite at the borders of Gondor yet, but I think I see what you're getting at."

He paused a little, gathering up his courage, removing the tremor from his voice. He wasn't exactly the most suave of people with his powers off, but this was unusual even for him. I was listening, and he knew it without having to look at me. He raised his gaze from the table and clasped my hand suddenly.

"Sarah, I love you. I mean, you've been the best friend a guy could hope to have. I don't know where we're going, but I'm glad I'm going there with you."

It was all I could do to speak. "Me too." He put his other arm around me and drew me close, shut his eyes, and kissed me briefly, then looked at me with an unspoken question. I nodded.

He turned his power back on and kissed me again. It was much more fun this time.

* * * *

LiveJournal user purplelia46 [Lia] wrote on 2003-03-20:

A very interesting day today. Really depressed lately. Why isn't there anybody else who knows what I feel? I suppose I'll always be alone. Maybe.

Argh, more on this later. I don't feel like writing now.

* * * *

LiveJournal user purplelia46 wrote on 2003-03-21:

So anyway, here's what I was going to say yesterday. Walking home from school in the afternoon, I was having fun, enjoying myself out in nature, with only the road next to me to disturb things. But the road was pretty sparse today. I wonder if I had something to do with that, but I told myself a long time ago that speculation of that sort is futile.

I heard someone calling my name, so I turned around and there they were. The Olympians, back to make trouble. I can't believe that only a few months ago I was scared that Venus would come and erase my mind in my sleep. I mean, she probably could still do it, since Timothy wasn't around, but she couldn't hold a candle to what Team Infinity had become these days. After Mars, everything seems like a waste of time, hardly worth mentioning on LJ. I just think the rest of the guys would be interested to know.

I cut off their little speech wanting a challenge by saying, "You're not ready for a rematch. You're not ready to fight any team that has me in it. I don't care how much more you've trained. Face the facts and leave." They'd spoiled my good mood. It's hard to do that these days, which kind of scares me. I mean, it's not that I don't like having good moods, I just don't like what I know is causing them. Venus sputtered as usual, and I needed to get home, so I looked around for inspiration.

There it was. Our little buddy Mercury, still hanging with his loser crowd. Apparently Alex had failed to talk him into working for the good guys. I called out, "Mercury! Pick a number between one and ten!"

He was confused, and answered with a slow "Yeah, k." I rolled my eyes and asked him what it was - why are people so stupid!? - and it was 7. So I took out my gun, looked the other way, rummaged around for the chapstick with my left hand to get my mind onto something trivial, and shot him seven times.

I put the gun back in the backpack and swung the thing over my shoulder, ready to keep walking without looking back. The tail end of the backpack brushed Mercury's side as he tried to attack me and he went crashing into the bushes in front of me. I jerked involuntarily as he passed, but wasn't a bit surprised. That boy had some potential, at least, even if he was taking orders from someone with the leadership skills of a ham and cheese sandwich.

My mood was by this time thoroughly black. I'd remembered some homework I had to do, and I'd remembered that Mercury had seen a little of what I could do back when he was imprisoned with us. He should have known better than to try a frontal attack, even when my back was turned. Especially when my back was turned; that's the second-easiest side to defend against, next to the very edge of your peripheral vision that you normally don't notice but still gets to your brain. He was still conscious, so I told him to get rid of his teammates, all of whom had one or more perfectly shot darts in them. Mercury had managed to dodge his dart, nothing I could do about it, and at least he was up to take care of this incident before somebody called the cops for the unconscious Olympians on the sidewalk. There would be a cab or some form of transportation waiting for him, I supposed. There usually was, since it would be oh so convenient for me.

A story like that would be a major event in somebody else's life. I held off an entire gang of experienced mutant ruffians with ease and aplomb. But for me, it's just what happened this afternoon, nothing special. Maybe this is what Ted feels. It must be a boring job, waking up and finding some young punk has killed the schoolyard bully by telekinesis again, tracking him down by the usual methods and hauling him in to court-mandated counseling. Only once in a long while does something come up that's worth mentioning. Like me, I think. Ted had my file and decided, Here is my chance to make a start with someone who really matters.

* * * *

LiveJournal user purplelia46 wrote on 2003-03-21:

Reading old journal entries and my previous entry, I realize how I've changed. When I came here, I would never have said that I'm the one who really matters. It would have been the height of arrogance, presumption, everything my mother specifically taught me not to do. But now, I've had the lesson beat into me. "Some people are born for greatness, others have it thrust upon them" and all that. I suppose I still think of myself in the second category, but the truth is that I'm the first. There's no path I took that made me who I am today. I can't even blame fate, because fate is the one thing I can't trust when my power is on. With the knowledge of my power I have to look back on my past and ask myself: How much of that was coincidence? How much was me? That night, what seems like years ago, at the party, it was me. I was introduced to everybody, Becky steered me towards Rick as things were winding down, and he ended up driving everybody home a little too reluctantly. Dozens of chances for my power to activate when no one was looking, or even when someone was - I still don't know what the flash does, but it certainly isn't necessary for me to work. Maybe this is what Timothy feels. He clings to Sarah like she's the last lifeboat off the Titanic. She loves him back, but she can't help that, nyow. It eats him up inside just like it does me. But he has Sarah, he can be sure that at least one person really understands him. I don't have anybody like that.

Rick's a great guy. Becky keeps telling me I really couldn't ask for a better boyfriend: he's caring, he's got a good sense for when I need to be alone and when I need someone beside me, he's genuinely interested when I talk to him, and he thinks the world of me. Actually, maybe that's the reason. It would take so little to make him happy, but it wouldn't be the best for either of us in the end. We're friends, I don't want to lose that, and there is some part of me that doesn't want to lose the shadow over my right shoulder either. But mostly I think he needs to mature a little, and he's not going to do that while I'm around. It sounds callous, it sounds afraid, it hurts more than a little. And that's how I know it's real - if it were my power, things would be fine. Hehe, have to tell Becky about that sometime. It's kinda ironic, when you think about it. Alex would find it funny, too, for that matter. He's just hilarious in general.

Funny, really. I'm always complaining that no one understands me, and here I have Alex, who's literally been inside my head in a way not even Alnora or Mizuno can match. If anyone understands me, he does - but he doesn't say anything. Maybe it's just what I need. He fancies that he and I are in the same situation; our powers are certainly far above the level of the rest of the team and most our enemies to boot. But I know he's just refusing to realize what I'm capable of. When he's working at it, he's nearly invincible, and with only a little bit of pain he can do anything he wants. But in a fight between us, there's no doubt who would win. (Me, of course. We're both invincible, but it won't tire me out to make myself that way.) I'm always on to some degree. I'm trying to turn it off like Timothy, but the habit is so hard to break. At nights, thinking of how things went wrong, I want to let my power rage out of control for just one second, fix all my problems and bring me down a windfall that I alone among all the men on God's green earth could conjure up. Maybe this is what Mars feels. At any time, he could demonstrate his superiority to us mere mortals. But he doesn't, because he doesn't need to. But he says it took him a lot of destruction to get there. His advice to me, direct from mutant prison, like a grandfather to his granddaughter, is to save myself all the trouble he went through, go on a wild exercise of power to push myself to the brink of self-destruction and then draw back, forever confident, forever safe. But I still have enough morals left to shy away from that sort of thing.

Sometimes I fear I am too powerful to handle. Sometimes I fear I'll never become powerful enough.


THE END



CREDITS
=======


Huge thanks to:
*  God, for everything. You da man!
*  My family, for putting up with me while I wrote this and doing the copy editing I really shouldn't need.
*  My visual inspirations: Megan Ross (S), Mike Herring (T), Tim Reichart (M), Brian Bartoldus (R), and Clara Yuan (L), for letting me observe them, intentionally or unintentionally.
*  Austin Marney, Elizabeth Kuhl, and Elisabeth Gorey, for letting me explain this story to them.
*  My English Lit teacher, Mary O'Brien, for letting me write in class.
*  Linh Pham, Mike Lowry, Ryan Murphy, and Meera Fickling, for being the kind of people I love to write stories about; and Ishiwatari Daisuke, Chris Claremont, and Margaret Weis, for creating that kind of characters.