There was a port in each of our necks called a modifier, that allowed someone to plug in via a USB cable—old school, I know—and adjust power-ratings. Their modifiers had been installed during childhood. Mine was installed by Father in Nevada, and in doing so, he had unlocked my mimic power.
Father’s most recent invention was the ability to access their stats remotely, rather than have to manually plug in each time. This saved a ton of time, and I hadn’t quite utilized it in a battle, but it was something I was planning to do in the future.
“Michelle, stop horsing around,” I said, not quite in my drill instructor tone, but definitely with a little edge to my voice.
“It’s like surfing,” she said as she again moved through Chloe’s soundwave.
“Grace is warming up,” I reminded her.
I saw Grace, her eyes the color of pearls as she controlled Chloe’s body. I wanted Grace to be more capable of operating through someone and use their powers, which was why we were running this test.
Veronique and Stella stood nearby, waiting for the mock battle to start.
In the distance, I could see Ingrid in her beast armor lifting boulders that Stella had used her vector manipulation abilities to unearth. The young beast morpher had really been working on increasing her strength, I had noticed that working out in her beast armor mode had definitely added some extra bulk to an already buffed out form.
It also transferred over to Tulip, the monster she transformed to when she fully took her transformation.
I should have been used to Ingrid in her beast armor mode, but it still looked incredibly strange for the thin girl to have this huge body with muscles, talons, pulsing veins and exposed bones with a little head on top, almost as if she was wearing an oversized costume.
Michelle raced over to me. “What am I supposed to do, Gideon?”
“You’re with Dorian,” I reminded her.
“Yep, and let’s stay clear of the fight,” Dorian said after she appeared in a purple flash.
“Ready,” Chloe told the two, her eyes completely white.
Grace sat on the ground with her legs crossed beneath her, almost as if she were meditating. She was still in her base form, but her hair was dark now, her face gaunt.
“Run along,” I told Michelle, which she snorted at before disappearing.
I walked over to Grace’s side, watching as Chloe nodded at Stella and Veronique.
The metal vampire was the first to attack, going for an ‘instakill’ by trying to drain Chloe. Her hand only glowed red for a moment before she was swept off her feet and thrown backward.
“Careful with her,” I told Grace.
I couldn’t really tell if she was listening to me or not, but I did notice her cheek quiver, which I took as a confirmation.
Chloe rose into the air with a whooshing sound.
An ear-piercing noise had me on my knees in a matter of moments, my hands on my ears, the sound having the same effect as a dog whistle on steroids. Even weirder, I couldn’t even technically hear the sound.
It was just like a sword made of air stabbed through my head.
One minute, my brain was rambling as always, the next it was scrambled with sound frequency.
On the ground now, I blinked my eyes open, cringing as I saw a nearly translucent sphere blast out of Stella’s palm.
It hit Chloe, tossing her into a small bunch of trees.
Veronique, blood on her teeth, threw her hands down at the ground, stripping metal from the soil. The bits of metal twisted together amidst a steady stream of dust and debris, forming a hoverboard of sorts.
She hopped on and made a beeline for Chloe.
Once I was on my feet again, I took off toward the two, hoping to intercept them if things got too out of hand.
Chloe shot out of the trees, her body encased in Stella’s vector sphere. I backpedaled for a moment as Chloe was launched into the sky, to the point that she was just a small dot above.
I turned just in time to see Stella twist her wrist in a way that made me feel she was ‘cutting off’ the sphere.
One look up confirmed it.
Chloe was free-falling now, whipping around in the air as Grace tried to use Chloe’s power to stop her from hitting the ground.
Shit.
I saw Chloe come down, the gravel and dirt erupting all around her.
“No!”
I ran toward the small crater, my heart leaping into my throat.
As the dust settled, I caught Chloe hovering, a vibration emitting from her throat strong enough for me to actually see, waves of energy moving to the ground.
I looked back to see Grace bent forward, her hands on the ground, her dark hair in her face. She was her true self now, a brunette, thin, her hair a bit stringy.
Grace’s head shot up, her eyes still white, and Chloe blasted off into the air, a sweeping percussive sound coming from her that took Veronique’s soon-to-be surprise attack out of the fight.
The metal vampire had been standing along the perimeter, metal bits floating before her, ready to cut Chloe down, only to be met by bulleted bits of sound which had Veronique running, trying to avoid each blast as it slammed into the dirt, kicking up dust.
“Enough!” I said. Stella was now using her vector powers to lift a pillar of stone from the earth.
The pillar lowered, just as Chloe descended to the ground. Grace’s eyes opened once Chloe was grounded, and the sound manipulator stumbled forward.
I ran to her, helping Chloe stabilize herself.
“You okay?” I asked, offering her a hand.
“What happened?” she asked through deep breaths.
“A lot. Do you feel okay? How was it?”
“I was just… it was like I was trapped behind a waterfall.”
“That’s where I put your mind,” Grace said as she came forward, now back in her beautiful blond form. “I thought it would be easier than watching what was happening as a silent observer.”
Her ability to change her features made it so Grace did not look vexed at all. There was no indication that she had been in a pretty serious fight with two powerful supers. Veronique approached, an ornery look on her face.
“Whatever that last move was,” she said in her stilted way, “that was a bit terrifying.”
“Veronique, scared?” I asked as we turned to the area near the small pond on our property, where Fiona’s remains were buried. “Nah, I don’t believe it.”
We saw Dorian and the young speedster going at it, Michelle swiping with wooden knives, Dorian teleporting just in time.
“I’m going to help Michelle,” Veronique said.
She trotted down to them, announcing herself. Dorian paused for a moment as Veronique instructed Michelle on proper blade usage, which wasn’t the first time over the last month that I’d seen her do this.
All of them were trained soldiers, well, sort of. Grace wasn’t, but the others were. And of the lot, Veronique had put in the most time when it came to hand-to-hand combat. Dorian was a close second, followed by Chloe, Stella and the younger ones.
As Veronique showed Michelle better ways to go in for a knife attack, Grace turned to me, her voice appearing at the back of my head.
We need to work on your telekinesis, she thought to me.
“Great,” I told her aloud. “You’re off the hook, Stella. Make sure Chloe is okay first, and then help her inside.”
“I’ll be fine, Gideon,” Chloe said as Grace and I moved to Ingrid’s boulder area. The beast girl (no, probably not the best thing to call her) was still lifting boulders, holding them, and carrying them to quadrants she had set up in the ground.
Looking back toward the house, I could see the damage done by the CBGs over the last several days of training. A few uprooted trees, scorches in the soil, craters, blackened spots of grass.
I’ll tell Stella, Grace thought to me, reading my mind before I could even tell her to have Stella smooth out the area, to cover our tracks.
It was still uncomfortable to think that half of my thoughts may have actually belonged to Grace, but there really was nothing I could do about that by now. Maybe one day, after all this settled, I’d hire a therapist to help me process all this.
Or just ask Grace to do a mind wipe.
Sometimes it’s better to be stupid.
“Ingrid,” I said as we approached. “Care if we join you?”
“I was just finishing up.” Ingrid’s hair was pulled back, a bead of sweat trickling down the side of her head. Her cheeks were red too; she’d definitely been doing some heavy lifting.
“Great,” I said as I started to sit.
“Do it standing,” Grace told me. “You need to be able to do this on your feet, where it can be harder to concentrate depending on the situation.”
“Got it,” I said as I focused on one of the rocks.
As usual, I had four powers on deck: Grace’s psychic and shifting powers, Father’s healing, and Jules’ power negation abilities, the latter from the former bad hombre current wanderluster who I’d fought once and who’d walked away from all this.
“You ready?” Grace asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I told her as I focused on the boulder in question. It started to quiver, and as I did every time this happened, I felt like Luke Skywalker about to lift his X-Wing out of the swamp.
I didn’t know how heavy the boulder was, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was in the five hundred to a thousand-pound range. I didn’t normally go around guessing the weight of inanimate objects, but it was big, easily the size of a dresser.
“You’re not focusing,” Grace told me.
“I am focusing.”
“You are suffering from an acute case of inner monologue.”
“Dammit, that’s just how I think!”
“He thinks too much,” Ingrid said, turning to the house.
As she moved, her form began to morph, her arms first, then her torso, her legs. She was in the uniform that Vince Porter our armor designer had made her, and it was a wonder she was able to morph in the thing, but it worked.
Speaking of Vince, I needed to give him a call at some point, but there would be time for that later...
“Now you’re thinking of Vince,” said Grace.
“Shit,” I mumbled as I focused on the boulder again.
The big gray bastard began to shake, but that was about it.
Focus, Writer Gideon, Grace thought to me. You can do this.
Chapter Nine: Boom!
So I never quite lifted the boulder, but I was able to move it some, which was good enough for me. All that heavy lifting definitely worked up an appetite.
Luckily, dinner was yumtastic as always (steak, grilled corn and mashed potatoes), and the rest of my night was spent lifting smaller objects with my mind, things like pencils and notebooks.
Start small, right?
I had actually used my telekinesis before, but it was under a time of duress, which I was starting to notice kick-started my abilities. Probably something to do with adrenaline and not second-guessing myself.
Dunno.
Eventually I was able to lift Michelle, the young super pretty giddy about floating in the air.
And I thought I was done for the night by the time I retired to my bedroom, only to find Dorian waiting for me. The punk rock teleporter rested on my bed, one leg crossed over the other.
“Are you ready to try teleporting?” she asked, her dark bangs falling into her face.
“I sort of have a headache,” I started to tell her.
“Come on, you can heal yourself.”
“Okay, you’re right,” I said as I took a seat next to her.
She leaned over and kissed me. “You have to be able to move quickly, just in case.”
“What do you mean ‘just in case?’”
Dorian’s expression darkened. “You know what I mean. Things can happen to any of us, which is why Father took samples of all of our blood a month back.”
“I remember that.”
“Anyway, you should try teleporting,” she said, placing a hand on me.
Before I could respond, we appeared in the sky above our huge-ass crib, two channels opening up allowing me to take Dorian’s teleportation or energy ability.
“What the hell!?” I shouted, wind blasting past my face, my lips flapping.
“Teleport us, Gideon!” she cried out, a wicked smile on her face.
“Shitttttttt!”
Boom!
We appeared in the night’s sky again, falling to the ground a second time, Dorian’s hand squeezing mine.
“Teleport us!”
“My god, Dorian!” I shouted as I took her teleportation power.
Boom!
We were in the sky again, freefalling, stars twinkling around us, cold air whisking past me, Yours Truly on the verge of a heart attack.
“I… I…!”
“Just think of a place!”
Boom!
“Dammit, Dorian, this is so fucked up… aahhhh!”
Boom!
Back to the top of the sky, descending toward the earth.
Even with the terror surging through me, I was quickly starting to realize that Dorian wasn’t going to let up. She would keep doing this until I…
Boom!
“Fuck it, let’s go to the ground!” I shouted, imagining our training space.
One purple flash later and we appeared there, Stella standing off to the right, using her power to smooth out the soil.
The vector manipulator raised an eyebrow in my direction and snickered, her face lit by the moon.
“Not funny,” I told her as I got my bearings, my stomach doing all sorts of somersaults.
“Let’s go again,” Dorian said, squeezing my wrist.
“Hold on!” I yanked my wrist away. “We can go again, but at least let me understand how this works first. You just think of the place?”
“Yes, well, sort of. It’s harder long distance and to places we haven’t been before. But you should be familiar enough with this space to be able to teleport here.”
“You realize I could have teleported us halfway underground, slicing our bodies in half, right?”
“I would have stopped you from doing that…”
“How?”
“Come on, don’t you trust me?” she asked, squeezing my wrist again, her nose scrunching up.
Boom!
We appeared in the sky, the world coming at me fast as I thought of a place and…
Boom!
I definitely was getting a feeling like I was riding the same roller coaster ride over and over again.
“Here we go!” I shouted, the two of us taking shape in front of Stella, my unhinged ass stumbling forward. I tripped over my own feet and almost slammed into the ground, saved at the last minute by Stella’s vector cushion at just the right time.
“Thanks,” I told her as I stood, dusting myself off, getting my bearings. “I think I’ve had enough,” I said as Dorian squeezed my wrist again.
Boom!
We were back in the sky, falling toward the earth, the cold air pushing past and Dorian yelling for me to teleport to the ground.
“Got it!” I said, imagining the place we were just standing and mentally going there, my body appearing alongside Dorian’s in a matter of seconds.
I whipped my hand away from her.
“You don’t want to go again?” she asked, a mischievous grin on her face. “It’s fun…”
“Fun?” I shook my head at her. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got the hang of it…”
“What? After two times?” Stella asked. “Three?”
“How many times would I need to teleport to the ground to show you that I’ve got the gist of this exercise?”
“At least five more times,” said Dorian, looking to Stella for confirmation.
The vector manipulator playfully counted her fingers. “Ten. I think ten.”
“Ten?” I asked the bot
h of them. “Ten, and you’ll leave me alone?”
“You had something better to do tonight?” asked Stella.
“I was planning to try to write a little more of How Heavy Book Two…”
“Is that your book about the transgender elf who has a relationship with a dragon?”
“It’s a dwarf, and what’s with the skeptical face?” I asked Stella. It wasn’t exactly bright outside, but I could see her reflection from the moon and the stars, a bluish hue cast over her face.
“Nothing,” she said. “Ten more teleports and you can go back to writing about your troll.”
“Dwarf!”
“Good plan,” Dorian said, slapping her hand around my wrist.
Boom!
Chapter Ten: Undercover Missionaries
Action, action, action.
Real life doesn’t move the same way that books read, with most “action scenes” in real life reserved for a select few, many of whom are placed into these scenarios unwillingly.
All this to say: I’ll spare you from having to read about my sci-fi writing ass toiling away in front of a computer for several hours before bed, falling asleep in my chair, waking up to find Chloe standing in front of me in a nighty, being led to bed and serenaded back to sleep, waking, working on my shapeshifting, eating some yummy breakfast, getting the shirt delivery, and packing our uniforms, spare glasses, my bolo tie and a few undies and socks.
“Everyone ready to go?” Clarence asked, now wearing one of the pink Manchester Missions shirts.
Michelle burst into the living room and did a quick spin. “I love this shirt!”
Even though I’d ordered a small one for her, she was wearing one of the XL versions, which went all the way down to her knees. The young speedster was in a pair of shorts as well, making it look like she was naked under the shirt.
Dorian was also in her shirt, one that fit more appropriately, and she was also wearing a long-sleeved number underneath to cover her tats. Near her, still seated on the couch, was Veronique, who wore her shirt tucked into a pair of jean shorts, her hair in a braid that matched Stella’s. They really looked like twins, Stella next to Veronique, also in a pair of jean shorts.
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