/================================\
|       TEAM INFINITY            |
|Robert Marney, robyrt@marney.org|
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This story is copyright (c) 2002-2004, Robert Marney. All rights reserved.
The most current version can be found at http://robyrt.coolserver.net/ti.html.
Last Update: 7/27/2004, revision notes


           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
         Ted Kavalec     hsa_wash
Mars     John Tyler
         Matthew Alnora  hsa_dulles
Tao      James Sazuki
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 frust