Question From Tractors to Tractor Beams

It was a little disorienting watching the police question each other before they even got to my family. Apparently the first police officer arrived, on foot, chasing a mouse eared boy who had stolen his car and terrorized a bus full of civilians. The next set actually arrived to pick up Bell, and the third group came in to investigate the mutant terrorist turned kidnapper.

"Okay so where is the little stray?"

Officer Jeffries had come over to dad. He was an old friend, picked me up when I had run away, always came when dad called in a stray. He'd take them down to the police station to wait for whoever was supposed to take care of them.

"She's not here."

"What?"

"I haven't seen her since the supervillain showed up and we all passed out," dad was looking worried now. He didn't like the thought of a scared little girl in the clutches of some evil mutant.

"Can you give me a description of her?"

"Brown hair, hazel eyes not that you could tell beneath her massive glasses, her face had a slightly odd shape, it seemed to come out more around the mouth than normal, but again you can't tell very well with the glasses. She was Anne's height but probably older. She spoke English well enough to understand us but she definitely wasn't fluent, her first language was French and she defaulted to that when surprised or nervous," I stated. I had spent the most time with her it only made sense that I would describe her.

Everyone was staring at me.

"I spent the most time with her," I mumbled.

"Abby you spent at most an hour with her," Anne said.

"Yeah, you spent twice that long with the date Charlie set you up with last week, what does he look like," Alice said, following some hidden signal from Anne.

"He-hem, if we could get back on topic would everyone agree that that is a good description of the girl?" Officer Jeffries asked, raising an eyebrow at our antics. He was used to coming over and only talking to dad, I guess he wasn't expecting to be derailed by something as simple as a description.

When everyone agreed that it was a good description of her, minus the stuff about what she looked like without glasses as I'm the only one who saw her without them, officer Jeffries went over to the other police to speak with them about the girl. I'm pretty sure they thought we couldn't hear them but we could.

"It appears the villain took the girl who I was sent to pick up."

"Why?"

"I don't know but from how the family describes her reactions, I think the supervillain was after the girl from the start. She was scared of something and was jumping at shadows for most of the night," officer Jeffries was nervous, having a supervillain kidnap a kid you were supposed to pick up can't look good on your record. Even if the supervillain was there before you you had a chance to get to the kid.

"So we know the goal was to kidnap the kid. From the reports there were two kids on the bus. One of them dragged the other off. The one who attacked was a mystic who used some strange magic. I think your kid might be a sacrifice for some dark ritual planned by this mouse eared assailant," this was the policeman who'd arrived on foot looking for his car. He was the only one of them who had seen the supervillain, if only for a brief moment.

I thought back to the moment when the supervillain arrived, he was yelling at Bell, but not in an unfriendly way. He had seemed genuinely worried about her, from the tone of his voice.

"We should look up the language that he was casting the spells in, he said 'Osti de Tarba-something' before the spell hit according to eye witnesses," said the officer who had gotten his car stolen, like Jeffries he was trying to save as much face as possible given the events that had transpired.

At the words for the spell Charlie perked up a little and mumbled to himself, "Two native French speakers in one day what are the odds."

"What do you mean?" I asked dragging my attention away from the police. They were interesting but Charlie seemed to have the more relevant information at the moment.

"The policeman over there just swore in French. People tend to swear in the language they are most comfortable with which means his first language is probably French."

Did it mean something that both Bell and the supervillain spoke French? If I told the police they would either draw a connection between the supervillain and Bell or think they had come from the same place.

An image swam before my eyes. It looked like Bell, but at the same time not. For one this was a boy, a boy with mouse ears, a boy who otherwise looked pretty much identical to Bell down to the glasses. A boy who had burst into their home.

Bell wasn't being pursued she was being protected. The supervillain wasn't her stalker he was her brother.

If she told the police they would treat them both as villains. Especially if Jeffries noticed anything strange about how my parents were acting. I couldn't let that happen, Bell might have manipulated us but she had been looking for help, not looking to harm. She was a scared little girl who needed every bit of solace we could provide, I was going to give her one last piece if only so the police would be thrown a little off the trail.

It was a good thing I came to that decision because by the time I wasn't lost in my own head the police were leaving. To give there statements to everyone on the manhunt.

I'm sorry Bell but I couldn't help your brother, maybe next time we meet I can make it up to you.

Just then officer Jeffries poked his head in, "hey John is your pick up in the shop, 'cause I don't see it out here."

Never mind Bell we're even, next time we meet your going to tell me what the heck is going on. What am I thinking about, I'll probably never see her again.

Breakfast the next morning was… interesting. Instead of the usual conflict sparked by Anne and Alice, they ganged up on me.

"So, no officer Jeffries to distract us this time, how did you describe Bell so well," Alice started, giggling when she realized she had rhymed.

"Like I said I spent the most time with her-"

"Nope! Not getting away with that one. Dad spent the most time with her, you waited outside the bathroom while she showered so you weren't with her there. As in you couldn't see her to make observations."

This was a surprise coming from Alice. She and Anne must have planned this out, including prepared speeches, last night. Am I really predictable enough that they come up with a response for what I was going to say the night before? Probably but I'm allowed to be insulted at the implication anyway.

"Well I spent the most time with her where you could actually see her any way. We also spoke in the bathroom for a bit so I knew her better."

"More like she knew you better the way she had you tripping over your words," Charlie couldn't resist getting a shot in. Chris just sat there a little confused at what was going on, he wasn't used to having to pay attention to our conversations at this point in the day. It looked like he was catching up until Charlie said his piece. He was the one person in the room who might be on my side… I was doomed.

"Let's make a deal, if you can describe the date you had last week as well as you described Bell we will let you off the hook."

Admittedly the date was more interesting than my date that night. He took me out to fancy restaurant and then to a carnival. The restaurant had good food and a wait staff that was pretty enough that it was probably the reason he had chosen it, it wasn't hooters but they clearly chose their waitresses based on the photo more than the resume. The carnival had plenty of places to go and we got separated more than once, unfortunately he found me all three times.

"Um, he had hair?"

Both of my sisters started laughing and Charlie face palmed. "Well I'll have to tell him he doesn't have a shot now."

"Not arguing the point but why?"

"Abby, the guy I set you up with was bald. He shaved his head to look more like some idol of his."

I could feel the blush even if I wasn't going to admit I had it, "Admittedly you've set me up on so many dates that all the guys kinda just blurred together," I said haughtily. I've gotta stop making those bets. Charlie and I had long ago established a system for bets, when you lost the other person got to set you up on a date. I knew why he got smarter too, at one point I didn't have anyone badgering me for a date with him so I put a flyer up at school that said, 'come to room 301 at lunch to participate in a classical literature quiz competition. The winner gets a date with Charlie Berkins the school basketball star. Anyone may apply, one entry per person, the first to complete the quiz with all answers correct wins.' Needless to say his girlfriend at the time was furious, she also got all of the answers wrong, most people did, who knew that Through the looking glass and The Marvellous Land of Oz would be considered obscure. Oddly enough a guy won that date. That didn't go over well, I'm better friends with him than Charlie is at this point.

"Okay so next time I'll set you up with an intellectual. Someone who will be able to hold your attention better than the waitress."

"He told you that?"

"How you noticed your waitress had Alice in wonderland in her pocket and you asked how she like the book and then spent ten minutes trying to explain the story to her when she said she didn't get it? Yes he told me, he wasn't sure whether to be insulted at your lack of attention or overjoyed at having two babes argue over him."

"What?" I asked shocked, "we weren't arguing over him, I was trying to explain the mathematical concepts that Lewis Carroll put into the book."

"Over as in over top of."

"How is that interesting?"

This came from all four of us at once. I think mom and dad were confused as well.

Then I remembered the provocative way the waitress would flounce whenever she needs me to explain something in simpler terms. This time I didn't resist the blush, "trust me you're not old enough to be thinking about that."

"Oooooooh, come on," now it was old versus young though, the only way those three ever won an argument with either of us was by getting the other on their side. That was probably why Anne and Alice always played us against each other.

While I distracted them with completely logical arguments, Charlie mouthed 'chores' to our parents. Dad broke us up and got us to go out to work on the farm. On our way out of the kitchen he grabbed Charlie and I by the shoulders and said in full over protective dad voice, "You will be explaining how an argument was attractive to me once the everyone else is distracted. And none of the big fancy talk you get from your books that you use to confuse me."

Dad came out after us, he went to the garage at the back of the barn like always. During the summer the garage held the minivan that mom drove us to school in, now our only form of transpiration. Dad wasn't going there for the minivan though, he was going in there for big John, our tractor. All of our neighbours made jokes about 'little John' having a John Deere tractor. At one point they thought of getting rid of it just to stop the jokes, but the old thing was basically a part of the family now.

Everyone was a little unsure of the schedule right now. Chris had been given double chores for the week for messing with Bell's stuff, but where was the extra work to be applied? Personally I though doing all the work for the chickens would be a good start, Chris hated the chickens. Or maybe the chickens hated him, I was never sure of the dynamic.

The farm wasn't exactly large. The corn field we looked after was pretty big, but we didn't really own that, if the banks had there way we never would. What we did own was a small section of the land with a few farm animals, chickens and goats mainly but we did have one cow, and a big vegetable garden.

All in all after breakfast the morning was uneventful. Once we had worked out the schedule for the next two weeks everyone was to busy to ask questions. The teasing would continue as soon as Anne and Alice could spare a breath, but for now I was safe.

I lifted up some of the bags that Charlie was supposed to have filled with grain, only to find that they were more than a touch to light.

"Hey Charlie!"

"Yeah?"

"Why are you skimping on the feed bags?"

"I'm not, they're just as full as normal!"

"They don't feel it!"

"You just got off a growth spurt, maybe your stronger now!"

I grumbled that it wasn't supposed to work that way but took the bags anyway. While Anne, Alice, and Chris made sure the animals were fed and taken care of, Charlie and I did all of the support work to make sure that they could be taken care of. That included refilling the feed box every week.

Once chores were done and we were all headed back to the house I felt a buzzing sensation. Like I had before the 'supervillain' showed up and took Bell. I looked around trying to find anything out of the ordinary. There wasn't anything off though. It was strange, I could have sworn the feeling meant something.

Big John was coming up behind me, dad waving to me. He would normally give a ride to whoever was furthest from the house when he was riding back. I stepped a little off to the side so I could get on more easily once he stopped. The buzzing intensified a little as the tractor got closer, and soon I realized it wasn't slowing down. Dad was no longer waving at me but signalling for me to get out of the way.

I jumped, it wasn't the only option but it was the best from my perspective. The tractor was several yards ahead of me by the time I was back on my feet.

Anne and Alice were ahead of the tractor. I knew for a fact they wouldn't hear him yell over the engine, they would think dad picked me up because I was behind them. I sprinted, if I could make it past the tractor I could get them out of the way.

I past the Tractor almost instantly, must have been closer than I thought, grabbed the girls and got off the road. Seconds later the tractor passed by at full speed.

"Dad's lost the brakes on the tractor," I said, "I haven't seen him turning either so he might have lost steering. I'm going to try to stop big John before dad crashes it."

"What how?" One of them asked, but I was already running towards the tractor. I grabbed a rock from the ground, ran up beside the tractor and tossed it towards the underbelly of the the tractor. There was a terrible grinding noise, whatever the rock hit sounded important. Dad was already removing the keys from the ignition and jumping off. The tractor slowed down, both from whatever damage I had done and from losing engine power.

"What did you do?"

"I don't know. I just tossed a rock under the tractor."

"Why?"

"I-I knew it would slow down the tractor."

"How."

I looked at dad with just as much panic as he was showing and said, "I don't know."


Dad got all of us to help move the tractor into the garage. He had me get the rock out first so it wouldn't break anything on the way in.

After that it was a rather uneventful day, even the conversation about the argument with the waitress went better than expected. My sisters even dropped the whole Bell thing, until dinner.

Mom had made mashed potatoes, cream corn, and baked chicken. Not exactly haute cuisine but home cooked favourites all around. Specifically Anne and Alice's favourites, I wonder if mom was trying to distract them from making fun of me. It didn't work.

"Okay so you can't describe your dates, but how about stuff that happened on them?"

"Oh good one Alice. Why don't you describe the waitress who you had to explain math to?"

"Not what I meant Anne but that idea's better."

"Do I have to?"

"Yes, and Ed told me what she looks so I can tell them how well your stories match up," Charlie said, he was having fun with this as well.

"Okay she had red brown hair that she wore in a ponytail which she brought around to hang in front. When she was standing with her arms at her sides the tip reached to her elbow. Her eyes were somewhere between hazel and green. She had a somewhat pale complexion which burns easily given the sunburn cream she was wearing. Her nose was short and pert which fit well with her round cherubic face. She was about an inch or more shorter than me so she was somewhere between 5'6" and 5'7". She wore the uniform, which seems to consist of a dress blouse which is designed to be to small for her and black dress pants, you could see her bra every once in a while but she kept adjusting it so you couldn't. She was rather slender around the waist and hips and swayed when she walked to show them off."

There was a stunned silence at the table which I tried to use as a way to finish my meal in peace. Unfortunately it didn't last.

"Wha- how- who-…"

"When and where are all you have left, though you know both of those," I said leaning towards Charlie while taking a bite of chicken. Charlie was confused enough to almost stumble off his chair.

"Why is your description of the waitress more detailed than Ed's?"

"He was more interested in in a specific area of her body than the rest of her," I explained.

"Uh…"

"He was more interested in that area of my body as well. One of the reasons I was less than interested in him," I said taking another bite before siting back in my chair.

That shut up Charlie for the rest of the night. He was probably trying to be introspective, seeing if he was as… distractible. That or he wanted to reconsider who he wanted me to go on dates with. His friends were clearly not the guys he wanted me to date anymore.

I was expecting that the conversation last night would have stopped Anne and Alice's obsession with my dates but I was wrong. They waited until both mom and dad were taking drinks from their glasses before asking anything.

"So Abby when did you realize you were gay?"

Both my parents did spit takes while my and Charlie's jaws dropped.

"Everything makes sense now."

"No it doesn't! I'm not gay!"

"Abby, you know we'll accept you no matter what," mom said.

"That would be helpful to know if it were true," I explained with growing frustration, "I'm getting an early start on my chores."

Unlike yesterday nothing interesting happened while we were doing our chores. After I was done I went to the garage to see dad, who was working on the tractor.

"Hey."

"Hey, come to see the damage you did?"

"A bit yeah…"

"Well to bad, because from what I can tell you didn't do anything."

"What?"

"The rock got stuck above the point where the driveshaft turns the wheels. Provided a lot of resistance and made a lot of noise but didn't damage anything beyond regular wear and tear."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I'm still figuring out the problem with the brakes though."

"Mind if I take a look?" I asked, I knew next to nothing about tractors but dad always said a fresh set of eyes was sometimes all you needed. The engine baffled me, like I said I don't know about tractors, the wires caught my eye though. One looked looser than the others, "dad, is that wire supposed to plug into anything."

"Which wire?"

"This one," I said grabbing the wire and following it to the end, where it wasn't plugged into anything. Or I may have pulled it loose. Dad took one look at the wire, sighed at me for pulling it out, and reattached the wire.

"Did it feel like you pulled it loose?"

I shook my head.

"Well let's try it, watch the breaks," he said pointing them out to me, he started the tractor and pressed the brakes. The break pads moved. When he released the breaks the break pads moved again.

"DAD. I THINK. WE. FIXED IT."

Dad turned off the engine, "so it was a loose plug, huh?

"I have no clue. Cars aren't my thing."

* * *

Some time around 6:00 the phone rings. I answer it because I'm closest, even if I know it's probably not for me, my friends call my cell.

"Hey John, we have your truck," officer Jeffries said across the line, he didn't realize that it was me.

"Hi officer Jeffries, I'll go get dad," I said smirking to myself, "hey dad, phone's for you, you'll want to take it too."

I then went upstairs, beckoning to Charlie as I passed the living room.

Once he had reached the landing I got to work on my plan, "I bet that we will get a trip to town tomorrow."

"A little out of the blue, but all right I take your bet. We have pretty even chances since we need parts for the tractor, but dad might not take us into town," Charlie said grinning, he knew that the tractor was fixed, he just didn't know I fixed it so would know. He had probably planned on making the bet but wanted to be more subtle than I was being.

"Head to Anne and Alice's room. We can make plans there."

"You are really sure we'll get into town aren't you?"

"Maybe."

I grabbed my phone then went to Anne and Alice's room where everyone but Chris was waiting for me. Chris would be a good distraction to mom and dad once they were off the phone.

"They found the old truck."

"Yeah so?" Alice asked, she was the least experienced in the ways of our parents and so wouldn't expect the surprise trip.

"So we might get to go into town tomorrow," Anne explained.

"Yeah, I even made a bet on it," I said smirking at Charlie.

"You set me up," he said realizing his mistake on the landing. He looked crestfallen at the prospect of my setting up one of his dates, it hadn't happened for months so he knew I would be out for revenge.

"Yeah, I set you up, that is how it goes," I said tossing Anne my phone, "call up one of your and Alice's friends, tell them you might be out tomorrow."

Charlie was already on his way out of the room. He had a cellphone of his own to use. I carefully monitored the conversation that was happening between Anne and her friend. Not just so I knew where she was going but also so she didn't take up all of my minutes.

From the police station to Charlie's current damsel's house required a bus ride. From what I knew she was a gamer and likely wouldn't want to leave the house to meet him. I smiled as this was turning out better than I had hoped.

Once they were done on their call, I took my phone and headed to my room to make my own arrangements.

Dad decided to surprise us in the morning with a trip into town. It didn't surprise any of us and we all had friends lined up to hang out with. Once the rest of us had piled out of the car Mom drove away with Chris to drop him off at a friend's house. Charlie and the girls ran for the bus stop. Normally Charlie and I would argue over who had to babysit the girls on the bus. This time I had planned ahead, I had a friend waiting nearby so I didn't have to take the bus. I headed in the same direction, and kept going, pausing long enough to to stick my tongue out at them after I passed.

I turned the corner down the street from the police station. Up ahead I saw a shortish male teenage boy. He had a stout build, dark skin, brown hair, and green eyes.

This was the friend I had come to meet. Neither Charlie nor dad would have approved of me meeting him. Charlie because he didn't like him, and dad because neither he nor Charlie had 'vetted' him and we were going to be unsupervised. Given Charlie's tendencies I would think not being 'vetted' by him would be considered a bonus but what to I know. Charlie knows exactly who I'm hanging out with anyway, and why he won't try anything. I wonder what came between them, I mean the date couldn't have been that bad.

"Hey Gram."

His name wasn't Gram, but that was part of the game we played. His name was Richard but he went by Chad. Don't ask me why, I've never understood the reasoning.

"Hey Durandel."

"Hmm. Might be to common."

"You use Gram and call Durandel common? Gram is way more famous than Durandel."

"Gram is a Nordic sword that pops up occasionally because it shows up more than other Viking weapons in legends, Durandel is the French equivalent of Excalibur. We agreed that Excalibur was off the list," I answered. Our game may seem unusual to some but it was a fun way of greeting each other. One of us would name an object from classical literature or mythology and the other would have to name a similar object. Here it was swords but we do other things, like dogs, wives, lords, spears, farming tools. The only stipulation was the reference had to be obscure enough that the average passerby wouldn't get the reference.

"Glad you could come to town. The way you were lamenting the loss of the truck I thought you'd never be in town again."

The police had decided to return our truck after a thorough examination to make sure the 'supervillain' hadn't done anything. I may have gone overboard in lamenting the loss of one of my family's main forms of transportation.

"Mom and Dad decided that it would be a good idea for everyone to come to town while they picked up the truck from the police."

"Well while you're here do you remember the old church?" He waited for me to acknowledge him, there were plenty of old churches in town but it could reasonably be assumed he was talking about the one where he used to go. I nodded wondering what this was about, "well apparently it is haunted now."

"Really?" This was the first I'd heard of this. This was also the first I'd seen of Chad caring about anything paranormal, he wasn't even that interested in the superhero scene, "and we care about this, why?"

"We don't. Paranormal investigators do," Chad said, at this point I'm pulling out my phone to see if any of my other friends are free, "wait, hear me out. You know that group we always make fun of, the Maddison Mystery crew."

"The one with the cute guy you have a huge crush on. Yes, yes, deny it all you want but that doesn't change the fact that you have a poster of him up on your wall."

"Should never have let you see that," Chad muttered under his breath, would not have helped, I knew well before I saw the poster. He then said something he actually wanted me to hear, "well they are checking into the church."

"You want to head down there so you can check out a guy? No thanks," we started walking just to wander around the area. We might end up heading to a bookstore or a library, is what I would say if I had any doubt about us getting to one. Two bookworms decide to hang out downtown, where else would we go.

"Actually I wanted to go down there and make fun of some of my brother's friends. They are the ones who called in the 'ghost.'"

"Which friends, the 'thug life' friends, or the business school friends?" Praying to whoever is out there that it wasn't the three stooges. They thought they were 'gangsta' but quite frankly they were wannabes who latched on to the only person with 'cred' they could find. Of course the only 'cred' Jerry had, had dried up long ago when he had cleaned up his act and gotten a scholarship to the business school at the local college.

"Which group goes around to an old church to look for stuff to wreck."

"Why is your brother friends with them? He has a promising career in business ahead of him, and I know that he hates the whole thug life stuff."

"He thinks he can turn them around, convince them to make something of themselves," Chad was right, that is exactly what his brother would think. For all of his intelligence and empathy Jerry could be an idiot sometimes. He thought there was hope for everyone, and although I agree with him I think that they have to choose to change themselves, not that you can force people to change for the better. Not that he tried to force them to change, no he tried to get them to change by being a good influence on their lives. A good thought but they were just taking advantage of him at this point.

"Too bad you didn't want to go to the church to watch them make fools of themselves," Chad said, smirking for some odd reason, "because we're already here."

"You, you, you Hay Thief! You tricked me into walking to the church," I almost punched him for leading me to the church. I will have vengeance!… okay I get to make fun of people I like to make fun of, maybe the vengeance won't be so dire.

We spent a while watching them set up. We called a few jokes at them, they were used to it by now. When legitimate information on the supernatural was accessible, admittedly through interviews superheroes and villains, people who made claims that couldn't be backed up got razzed.

They didn't care, they were in it for a quick buck on consultation fees, the webshow they did was for publicity. They knew they couldn't prove what they claimed. They could prove that the phenomenon was there though, anyone could do that. If it was a serious problem Mr. Fix would show up or call a proper mage or psychic in to deal with it.

Once they had completed their opening showing the three stooges, who had recognized us, and the 'mystery crew' walked up to the doors of the church.

While they stood their talking about opening the door music started playing, and I felt a familiar buzzing sensation in my head.

"Chad, we should go," I wasn't going to beat around the bush here. If Bell was there things were going to get weird. I didn't want to deal with her right now.

"Ah but the shows just about to start."

"No Chad, I mean it we should go."

"You're just being a sore loser."

"No Chad I'm not. We. Should. Go," I said, exemplifying the point by grabbing his arm and walking away, pulling with each word.

Behind us the Mystery Creeps and three stooges both started to collapse for no apparent reason. Then Chad started wobbling on his feet. We could still hear the music; I could feel the drowsiness pulling at me. We had to get out of here. Chad collapsed and I had to drag him away but we got out of hearing range of the music…eventually.

Once I got Chad awake he was confused, "so you dragged me while I was asleep with one arm?"

"Yeah sure maybe, I was drowsy just like you, I just stayed awake better. The memories are a little blurry," I said not knowing what was wrong.

"Abby, I'm on the school football team. I way more than 200 pounds. There is no way you could drag me along with one arm. I'm not even sure how you pulled me before," Chad said, speaking slowly as to not shock me with some strange revelation.

"Well maybe you were more awake than I thought."

"Even before that Abby. You nearly pulled off my feet when you wanted to leave, if I didn't follow I'm pretty sure you would have dislocated my arm," Chad looked legitimately worried now. I probably did as well, it would reflect what I was feeling.

After that Chad and I split, he went to Jerry's apartment and I went to the library I was hoping to get to earlier. They might have some books to help me. I mean theoretically I could go to the mystery creeps, but then again I was sane.

Once I was at the library I grabbed all the books that seemed relevant to what had been happening to me. It was quite a spread, there were books on the effects adrenaline had on the body, tractors, the physics of biology, psychic defences, I even threw in a judo manual for good measure. Labouring under the pile of books I found a table secluded from most of the library. Some librarians I passed gave me odd looks, these books were not my usual fare. They were probably wondering what story had sent me off searching for such things.

There had to be a reasonable explanation for all of this, if you looked hard enough there was a reasonable explanation for everything.

I started off with the most recent event, me pulling Chad, I could remember the positions clearly. I stood a good two or three inches taller than Chad, I grabbed him below the shoulder, he was a little behind me as I walked away so my arm was in an awkward position. According to the judo manual I should have probably hurt myself. The physics of anatomy book said I shouldn't be able to generate enough force from the position I was in. That wasn't helpful.

I checked the brain chemistry book I'd gotten. I was surprised the library had anything on the topic. The book was fairly simple and didn't give any real details on how things worked. It didn't have anything helpful on how adrenaline affects the muscles of the body.

I grumbled at the book a little about not having what I wanted when someone very distracting walked toward my table. To start with her raven black hair was was done so it was straight on one side reaching almost to her elbow and curled to the point of almost being dreadlocks that barely reach her shoulder on the other. There was also streaks of colours going through both sides, magenta and violet amid the curls and dark green and neon blue through the straight. On her left ear she had six earrings, one for each of the elements along the top and two studs, one black the other white, through the lobe. She wore a tight fishnet shirt that showed off her curves that would be absolutely scandalous if it weren't for the ripped black tank top that hung loosely around her exposed midriff. She wore four belts, all black with silver buckles, two hung high on the left, on on her right, and one went through the belt loops of her shorts. The shorts themselves were a stark contrast to the punk rocker look above them being khaki cargo shorts with three or four visible pockets on each side.

"Quite the eclectic collection you got there," she said as she came up to my table.

"Quite the contrasting look you have there."

"Would one of the books in that pile be a book on basic psychic defences?"

"Yes…"

"Don't believe a word on the techniques, they're all tripe made up by a guy looking for a quick buck," she said lowering her duffel bag to the floor while taking the seat next to mine.

"Then why are you looking for it?"

"Because even if it is full of crock it does have some useful information," then she looked at me her hazels lighting up in recognition, "hey your that girl that was razzing us today!"

"Shhhh!"

We both did our best to look apologetic at the librarian who was passing by. He looked more like a college student in frumpy clothes than a librarian, but he wore a name tag that said librarian on it so it was an easy guess to make.

"Let's start over. Hi, I'm Viridian," she said holding out her hand, "I'm the one women production crew of the 'Maddison Mystery Creeps' as you put it and I agree with you completely on some of the points you made today."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Simon, that's the guy with all of the stupid toys, brought me into this because I am doing my degree in paranormal psychology with a minor in cinematography."

"How…" I started before she cut me off with a hand wave.

"They don't, it is realły hard to get into the field of paranormal studies so I wanted a back up plan."

"Ok, why aren't you on the show if you actually know about this stuff?"

"Simon invited me as a way to try to impress me, he wanted a date. Unfortunately I don't swing that way," catching my look of surprise she said, "don't worry, your a little young for me. Though you should call me once you graduate highschool."

"Okay, but you didn't answer my question," I said recovering from my shock, I couldn't tell if she was hitting on me or teasing me with that last line, though it may have been both.

"Well we tried it for one episode. The episode never aired because it kept turning into arguments between me and Sam. The Eric would get involved because their dating. Then Simon would get involved to try to impress me. It would've been the end of the group if I didn't agree to just do the filming after that. I also do all of the editing, have you seen my version of the show?"

"What do you mean?"

"I have my own version of the show, posted on a different channel. None of them are tech savvy enough to find it, that or they ignore it because bringing up the point might mean losing me and my baby here," she said patting the duffel bag, "I go over everything that they get wrong, show legitimate research that argues against the points that they make, even point out inconsistencies with their theories."

"So you basically take all of the fun out of watching the show."

"Yeah pretty much. That's what I'm doing right now actually, I'm researching some of the phenomena that happened at the church. That is why I'm looking for the book actually. Why do you have the book anyways? It doesn't seem very related to any of the other books. Actually what is the common thread here."

"I have the book for the same reason as you were looking for it something strange happened and I'm trying to figure out what," I said then with a broad sweeping motion over the rest of the books, "all of these are related to strange things that happened to me recently. I'm trying to find rational explanations for everything."

She looked at the books. She examined the wide range of topics, focusing on the anatomy and physics books, then looked back at me.

"Hold out you hand. Just trust me and do it," she said to my questioning look. Instead of trying some palm reading mumbo jumbo, she pulled my arm out until it was full extended and placed a book on my upturned hand, "Now close your eyes and tell me when the weight gets to be a little much, not near dropping it or anything just tired."

I complied, it took about five minutes for my arm to get tired so I lasted longer than I expected to.

"Open your eyes."

I opened them and was shocked to see a stack of books more than a foot tall on my hand. The books were hard cover, broad textbooks, I shouldn't be able hold that much up this easily. I am not to proud to say that I started at the sighted, luckily Viridian was there to catch the pile before it hit the floor.

"You my friend are a mutant. We should probably tell your parents."

I'm not a mutant. There had to be another way to explain it. I can't be a mutant, none of my relatives…

I felt a Buzzing in the back of my head. It was practically mundane how it triggered my flight or fight response at this point. I grabbed the pencil I had been taking notes with and through it in a random direction. It knocked the cellphone out of some guys hand. I may have broken the screen. I could see the number he had been calling, I knew what it was as well, I'd seen it on the news lately, it was the phone number of the local MCO. The buzzing faded.

"Correction, we should get out of here, then find a way of tell your parents without having them freak out."

Viridian grabbed her duffel bag and dragged me out of the library. The sudden change in lighting hurt for a second but I was being saved from a potential H1 mob so I didn't care as much as I should.

"So now that we're away," Viridian said with a conspiratorial smirk, "how about we try to figure out all of your powers."

At this point someone's stomach growled.

"Okay so lunch, then we figure out your powers. Don't worry I'll buy."

Over lunch we talked about all of the weird occurrences that had happened to me recently. From Bell showing up, to her leaving was interesting as we both thought she might be another mutant. The events at the farm were confusing, as half of the powers she wrote down seemed to conflict with one another. At least the church was easy to explain.

"Okay so going down the list, we know for sure that you are an exemplar. We think you might have: a psychic power to do with emotions, a power that deals with knowledge about technology, some kind of energizer to help you speed up, and a multitude of other things because of the variance between all of these events. Grrrnghhh," I'm not sure what the last term was supposed to mean but from the subsequent action it meant 'I'm about to bang my head against the table.'

"Maybe we're looking at it wrong. Maybe my powers aren't causing all this weird stuff and I'm getting into…"

"I'm not going to dignify that with a response," she pulled out a deck of cards, "which card am I holding?"

"Six of swords," I said without looking, "the equivalent to a six of spades in a conventional deck."

"I hadn't even drawn the card yet. How did you guess that I had a tarot deck," she said in shock.

"I don't know."

"How could you not know."

"I simply made a guess."

"How could you-"

"Guess that? I don't know."

"How did-"

"I know what you were going to say? You're being obvious. Look I have to go, my parents will picking me up to go home soon-"

My phone ringing cut me off.

"That's them now. Hey mom, what's up."

"Your father is in the hospital."

"What happened!?"

"He got into a bar fight. In the middle of the day. Apparently it was in the police station all day. His drinking buddy corroborates the story but I still think he's lying."

This was bad. Mom only pulled out the 'big' words when she furious with dad. She had an artificially enlarged vocabulary from helping me learn with big words when I was younger. Eventually she bought me a dictionary because she didn't know the words either.

"I'll be there ASAP," I said hanging up, "Viridian, you have a car can you drive me to St. Mary's? My dad's in the hospital."

As we arrived at St. Mary's there wasn't a thought in my head other than getting to my fathers room. I nearly went ballistic when Viridian stopped me.

"Take this, with how you knew the card you just might be able to use it properly," she said handing me her deck of Tarot cards.

"If not?" I asked while running toward the entrance.

"Then take out the major arcanum and they're great for throwing people off in card games."

She might be right about me being able to use them, but then again we couldn't figure out any of my powers from the anecdotes I told her so maybe not.

The nurse at the desk took one look at me and said, "take that elevator. Down the hallway and on your left. Your brother and sisters are already here."

Charlie and I got this treatment occasionally, it was nothing new. Apparently we looked like gender swapped versions of each other. Personally neither of us saw it. Sure we looked similar but it wasn't like we were twins or anything. The only things that we really had in common was height, eye colour, and hair colour all of which we got from dad. Anne and Alice, now that I could see, but then again they were both girls so were more similar at a base level.

Man the elevator was slow. I'd hate for someone to have to be rushed to surgery using it. Normally I wouldn't be able to get through one internal existential rant to try to distract myself from the huge amount of worry and stress, let alone 2, while only going up 3 floors.

The room which my father was in had several other people in it, mainly police officers. Not exactly the most private location for coming out of a closet. I'd deal with that when the time came though, for now check on dad.

The injuries varied from broken limbs, to minor lacerations. There was no way to tell how some of them happened. One guy had even his ear stapled shut. Luckily dad looked alright. Apart from the arm in a cast, the raised ankle, the bandaging around his torso. And staples in his arm. Did they still use staples to hold wounds closed? Wouldn't it have been better to stitch them?

"How's my little sweet pea."

"Dad, don't ask that when you're the one in the hospital," I said tearing up a little.

"Well when you weren't with your siblings I started to worry."

"I met a friend near the police station, we hung out for a bit then I went to the library. Nothing exciting or dangerous. I even made a new friend at the library."

"Well that sounds lovely dear, but leaving your brother to take care of Anne and Alice alone on the bus-" mom started from behind me.

"Was completely justifiable because he's done it to me on multiple occasions. It isn't like he doesn't watch over them a bunch already," mom had some slightly outdated views about the world. She realized that women didn't have to be caretakers but she still had trouble with the thought of male ones.

As it turned out the 'bar fight' was a riot at the police station. It started when the MCO arrived to take custody of Bell, claiming she was a mutant. The brawl had started when one of the MCO agents attacked Bell and officer Jeffries of all people defended her. It wasn't that officer Jeffries was anti-mutant, quite the opposite really, he was just very conscious of inter agency relations. After it started it was a bit of a free for all though, everyone attacking people over the most minor of past grievances.

After visiting with dad and talking with the doctors for a bit officer Jeffries showed up. Unexpectedly he was relatively unharmed, and he wanted to talk to dad for a bit. We left them to their privacy but I stayed close to the door of the room to try to listen to what they were saying.

"Well John I know your going to be here for a bit…" was all I got before the chatter from the crowd overwhelmed it.

Mom led us off to a quieter section of the floor. It was also quiet a bit more private than anything I'd seen in the hospital. Definitely more private than a room full of police and possibly MCO. I waited to be completely sure that no one was in the area before broaching the subject.

"Hey mom I may have lied to dad earlier," I started.

"You really shouldn't do that dear," mom said about to start on a lecture but I cut her off before she got to it.

"The matter was somewhat personal and I didn't want anyone overhearing. It could ruin our family's reputation and put me at risk if other people found out. I'm fairly certain that I'm a mutant."

"Bad joke dear."

"Would I joke about that with dad in the hospital? You said you'd accept me no matter what and if it's true we could be in a lot of trouble."

While we all pondered the revelation that we could all be attacked if my secret were ever found out. During our somber pondering, and Charlie explaining to our younger siblings why we had to keep this a secret, officer Jeffries walked up.

"Marge I have a question for you."

"How may I help you Mr Jeffries?"

"More of the other way around, I'm on indefinite leave and it's my fault that John's out of commission for a bit so I thought I'd offer my services to help around the farm."

"Well that certainly is a windfall, all things considered."

We went back to dad to talk to him for a bit. We had a good time making jokes about different things, mainly officer Jeffries becoming a farmer but we hit other points as well. At the end mom leaned in to dad and said, "Abby may be a mutant, if she is I'm sending her off to be with your sister. It will be safer for all of us."

I don't think she knew I could hear what she said, though I had probably misheard. My dad didn't have a sister, did he? She had never been mentioned before, but that didn't mean much, we didn't really talk about our extended family all that much.

Once home I explained everything that had happened to mom. I may have excluded the bits where the supervillain was related to Belle but that was mainly guesses.

We decided to test the limits of my strength. This both proved to mom that I was a mutant and helped us determine what my limits were. Things were going great until officer Jeffries walked in on me lifting a 300lb piece of farming equipment, one handed.

"We can explain!"

"You're a mutant, you're worried about what everyone will think, and you haven't figured out what to do yet."

"How did you…"

"You're not the only one who can eavesdrop kid," he said smiling, "you just need to learn to be a bit more discreet."

"So what do we do now?"

We spent hours arguing over what to do about me being a mutant. Since that would be boring here's the cliff notes.

Normally we'd have me tested at the MCO office. That wasn't an option considering dad's current rep there and what they did to Bell. Since we knew I'd be heading out to Seattle anyway, I would probably get testing there.

Problem, you needed an MID if you wanted to fly as a mutant. Which was fine for me as long as I went undiscovered but since we didn't know the full suite of my powers yet we didn't know how easily I'd be discovered, better safe than sorry.

Solution, I get driven all the way to Washington state.

Problem, my dad's in the hospital which leaves only mom to take care of all five of us. We could theoretically all travel to the west coast but school was coming up and the return trip would take to long for them to arrive in time.

Solution, officer Jeffries would drive me there. All the way to aunt Luke's door if that was required.

Problem, no one knew where aunt Luke lived.

Solution, mom called her. No really that's it mom called her. Such an easy simple solution. It really wasn't that hard. Except it took half an hour to convince her.

The next morning Mr. Jeffries and I set out on our completely boring and uneventful trip. Yep nothing happened on the trip nothing at all. There were not a total of 8 traffic jams that puts us more than a week behind schedule. We did not have to switch rental cars at least five times for various reasons, including electrical failures and angry mobs. At no point did we have to walk to the next town over because people thought I was a kidnaping victim. There wasn't a motel that was attacked by H1 because one of the other residents was a mutant. Most certainly of all there was no experimental plane crash which lead to a superhero fight between two devisors.

Anyways after all that nothing happened we got to Seattle.

I walked up the steps to number nine and knocked on the door. At least that is the reality I choose to live in. I am willing to ignore the reality where I pause for about 20 seconds before officer Jeffries yells at me startling me into knocking.

The door does not open immediately but when it does it opens slowly, almost lazily. Behind the door leaned a tall man. Taller than my brother who was 6'2" and still growing. He had light skin, dark hair and friendly blue eyes. He wore a burnt lab coat over jeans and a T-shirt.

"Um, sorry to disturb you. I'm looking for my aunt Luke. Would she happen to be here?" I was rather nervous at the appearance of this large man, he could be my aunt Luke. Maybe he started out as an aunt or wanted to transition to one? It would explain the masculine name.

"Aunt Luke? I don't know anyone here who goes by Luke," he said gesturing to the complex, "Do you have an address?"

I handed him the note. This was getting a little weird. At least Aunt Luke wasn't uncle Luke, as far as I knew. He took a while reading the note, I figure he was reading the directions to make sure I was in the right place.

"Oh, I see the confusion. This is house number 9b you are looking for 9a, go up those stairs over there and you'll find the place you are looking for," he said pointing to a staircase on the side of the house.

I thanked him as he was closing the door and went to the stairs. They were odd, not because of any structural or engineering oddities but because they only lead up one flight of stairs on the three story building. Sure enough the door on the second floor read 9a as the address… how does that work? 9b is the first floor, 9a is the second floor, but there was a third floor. Was that just numbered 9, possibly 9 prime? Maybe 9c? Could the top two fl-

And officer Jeffries yells at me again. Why can't he let me stall to my hearts content when I'm about to meet my estranged aunt for the first time?

Slowly I knock on the door, not knowing what to expect behind it. From what mom said about her she was eccentric shut in. Though the way she described me to her friends I was an eccentric shut in.

The door opened much quicker this time. Both in that the person behind it arrived there quicker and in that they didn't draw out the opening. They instead chose to open the door as quickly as possible.

Behind the door was a short woman. She had light wavy brown hair puffed out around her shoulders. Cloudy blue grey eyes like a lake during a rain storm. Her face was sharp and angular, almost seeming to pull back from the front, which made her nose look even bigger than it already was. Her outfit was consisted of a tight white blouse under grey V-neck sweater vest and a pair of black slacks. The slacks were again rather form fitting except for the bottoms which flared out like her hair.

This was not how I had pictured my aunt Luke.

The woman I had been picturing was taller than me. She had long straight black hair that reached the small of her back. She had the piercing blue eyes that both I and Charlie were famous for at school.

"… Aunt Luke?" This did not make sense. My dad was big. No two ways about it, he was 6'4" and almost as wide. This was supposed to be his sister? She was more than a foot shorter than him and could not have weighed more than 100lbs sopping wet. Also dad had coal black hair and clear light blue eyes.

"Abigail?"

"Yes," we said together, then I continued with, "I've got some things in the car, I'll be right back."

Aunt Luke insisted on helping for some reason. She could barely lift the suit case she grabbed, which happened to be the biggest heaviest one I had. I had all of the other bags up to her door before she reached the stairs. It was kinda funny to watch her struggle with it though.

"Okay that's enough," I said grabbing the suitcase from her and lifting it one handed so I could get up the stairs more easily. I may have lifted her off the ground as well. It's not my fault she didn't let go right away.

"So are you going to tell me what happened on your trip?"

"Nothing!… nothing happened. It was totally ordinary and boring. It's so boring that we should never bring it up again, because I have absolutely nothing to say about it."

Aunt Luke looked shocked for a moment at my outburst, "Ooh Kaaay, then. How about I give you a tour of the house."

Affirming that I wanted a tour was possibly the worst decision I've ever made.

"So here's the front hall. It has a closet where you can keep your shoes, your coats, your hats. If you brought any hats. If you didn't bring any coats we'll have to get you some, it gets cold here even in the summer. A lot of people from the interior look at the temperatures and go 'that's nothing compared to what we get here,' then freeze themselves by not being prepared. Something about dry cold versus wet cold. What was I talking about? Oh right the closet. I don't recommend trying to hide in it, I tried that once and it was a bit small for me. Your way taller than I am, it would be cramped in there for you. Through here we have the living room. The TV is the only one in the house, you are not getting one for your room unless you pay for it. Or make it, your parents did mention you having a new found affinity for machines. Though you would still have to pay for the parts, and the cable or satellite you wanted to hook it up to. The couch over there is great to stretch out on when your watching TV. I guess I won't be able to do that anymore with you around. Nah I'm short enough I'm sure we can both fit…"

She went on and on about every little thing in the house. It was exhausting. How could someone be so chipper. I barely remember most of what she said. Though I do know the lay out of the house now. Each floor has a bathroom, 2 bedrooms and an office upstairs, kitchen and living room downstairs. There I summed up in one sentence something which to her an hour to say. Okay so I might be a bit cranky from the road trip but she still over explained everything.

Once the tour was over I locked myself in my room. I needed some time to myself after that explosion of exposition. I needed to relax so I pulled out Hound of the Baskerville. It was one of the more unusual Sherlock Holmes stories. They were all written from the perspective of Dr. Watson but Hound of the Baskerville was one of the ones where Dr. Watson had an extended period away from his detective friend.

I spent hours reading. Going from book to book, rereading my favourite parts. Never settling on which book I actually wanted to read again. I read quickly before but now I could easily get through most of my books in an hour or less. That was annoying. When I picked up a book I wanted to be able to check out of reality for the evening. I wanted to see the inner workings of the greatest detective in the world. Travel down the rabbit hole to have tea with the mad hatter. Feel the inner struggle between man and beast. Not travel through these amazing worlds and stories whose genius had left there mark on the world for generations to come in less time than it takes to bake a cake.

At some point aunt Luke knocked on my door to tell me it was dinner time. I was hoping dinner wouldn't turn into another one sided conversation.

Dinner was surprisingly quiet. She had made spaghetti with a meat and tomato sauce. No cheese, just the way dad made it. I was betting it was the same recipe as well.

"If you don't mind me asking, why are you named Luke? It seems like an odd name for an aunt to have."

"Oh that? My names Lucretia. I really go by Tia now," she said nonchalantly like everyone named Lucretia went by Luke. I wasn't buying it.

"Come on, there has to be more to the story than that," I almost whined, but the way she was avoiding the topic had me curious.

"Alright, alright, just stop with the puppy dog eyes. It all started when I went off to school. Now if your parents told you anything about me you'll think I mean when I went to college in San Fransisco, but no that's when I stopped going as Luke. I started in elementary school.

"I introduced myself as Lucretia and told them to call me Lucy. Lucretia's not a common name so people started to make fun of me for it. One particular bully said, 'Lucy sounds nothing like Lucretia. We should call you Luke.' The name unfortunately stuck.

"The problem was I didn't care. It didn't get a rise out of me. To the point where my friends started calling me Luke. So I was going by Luke happily for years. Then I moved to San Fransisco to go to college.

"You see San Fransisco is a very progressive place, with many people of abused minority groups being more accepted than elsewhere. In other places my name would have been an anomaly that would have spread through campus gossip quickly. Which is what I expected to happen. Unfortunately people made assumptions about me because of my name. Then when they found out those assumptions were untrue many made other less kind assumptions about my character. It got to the point where it was just easier to go by Tia than it was to have to explain everything over and over again."

"So should I call you Luke, Lucy, or Tia?"

"Dear, I don't think I could handle anyone from our family calling me Tia. Heck I'm not sure if I could handle it from anyone from our town."

The conversation shifted from there on to other topics. Mainly getting me in to see the MCO, what school I would go to, and other things to help me settle in. After we were done I got the first good night of sleep I'd had in almost a month… I mean two weeks, because I in no way arrived later than intended.

I was up first the next morning. Probably because I was used to getting up early for farm work. Or it could be the time difference messing up my internal clock somehow as it tries to adjust for the new time zone. Either way I was up early enough that Aunt Luke wasn't even out of bed yet.

So I did the only logical thing, I started making breakfast. What you didn't expect a teenager to be able to make their own food? Everyone in my family can make breakfast, except for Chris, he was to short to reach the ingredients even with a stool.

It took me a while to find where everything was. I decided on some simple bacon and eggs. Enough for both me and Aunt Luke. I wasn't sure of her schedule but it would be rude to make breakfast for only myself. Besides I'd made enough noise looking for stuff that she was coming down stairs.

"Good Morning," I said cheerfully.

"Mmmmrrraaggh," was the only response I got as she searched around the kitchen for something. Eventually after some grumbling and fumbling around she put a pot of coffee on.

She seemed to cheer up quite a bit when it was ready.

"So… not a morning person I take it."

She laughed at that, a little to hard actually, "I used to be one. Worked on the farm just like you. Then I went to college and my friends got me addicted to coffee. Now I can't wake up without it."

I smiled at her, chuckling at her story. It probably looked a bit forced because she immediately looked uncomfortable.

"Look Abby I'd like to apologize for yesterday…"

"Why?"

"What do you mean why? I clearly did something wrong. A-as soon as you got the chance you locked yourself up in your room."

"Well yeah I was exhausted and hadn't had a good sleep in days. I couldn't deal with the constant cheery talking. What was with that by the way? You don't talk like that normally."

"I was nervous. I get talkative when I'm nervous."

"What did you have to be nervous about?"

"You."

"Me?"

"Yes, you."

"Why?"

"One night a month ago my estranged sister in-law calls me to ask if I could take care of one of her daughters. Who has just manifested as a mutant. With several unknown and untested powers. Who I have never met and don't know anything about. Of course I'd be worried. Arriving two weeks late with barely any contact only let me stew longer."

"At least you had time to prepare. I manifested 2 days before that trip started. I was thrown into the unknown all because of a super villain. I was sent off to live with an aunt I never knew existed. Then went through the worst road trip of my life just to get to her."

We sat in silence for a few moments, then aunt Luke said, "glad we got that off our chests now instead of letting it sit for days. Letting one misunderstanding build on top of another until we hated each other. Only to find out later that we were wrong about each other. Then have it all happen again next week."

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"It's a common sitcom plot."

"Ah that explains it. I don't watch many sitcoms."

"Sacrilege."

"I don't watch much tv at all."

"A teenager who doesn't like TV? Blasphemy," at this point she couldn't hold a straight face anymore. We both broke out laughing at the ridiculous conversation.

"That big case you could barely lift, yeah it is full of my books. The ones I could bring anyway."

"You my dear, have a problem. That problem is highschool. Being the new kid will be hard enough but your a nerd too? Hope your ready to get picked on."

"Shut up! I'll be fine."

"Ten bucks says your singled out by a bully in the first week."

"Your on."

After we finished breakfast aunt Luke got ready for work. I didn't really have anything to do, the paperwork would take a while to get me into a school. So I got ready for a bored lazy day of hanging around the house. It must have been pretty obvious what I was planning since aunt Luke berated me immediately.

"You don't think your just going to lie around the house reading all day do you?"

"Um… maybe?"

"Nope, get off the couch and go change. I heard a little about your powers from your mother and I know the perfect place for you to test them before going to the MCO."

Once I was ready Aunt Luke took me downstairs to the apartment I had mistakes for hers. So I wasn't surprised when the rather tall fellow who lived there answered the door for us.

"Ah Tia, this would be your niece. I met her yesterday, though I did think she would have been here sooner."

Aunt Luke probably thought I couldn't see her signalling him to stop talking about it. Of course I didn't arrive late, nothing happened on the trip. Nothing what so ever.

"Well you said she had some kind of technology based power right? That means she's either a gadgeteer or devisor and both are useful in my line of work," he said chuckling.

"What do you do?" I asked, what I can be curious.

"I'm a supplier for hero groups without a tech expert. I manufacture things like special bullets, amour for their suits, pfgs, anything they could need," he said giving me an odd look, "before you lay into me like your Aunt did it is all strictly above the board. The groups are incorporated and I sell legal devises and equipment to the corporation."

"Lay into you?"

"Yeah once she started, she wouldn't let get a word in edgewise about how I do business. She told me about all of the laws I could be violating and all of the possible lawsuits that could happen. She just wouldn't stop."

"Really? She told me she only did that augh," I ended my thought abruptly when Aunt Luke elbowed me in the side, "What was that for?"

"Nothing dear, I'm sure you two have plenty of work that needs doing, and I have to get off to work. Say hi to Lorry for me."

That was strange.

After Aunt Luke left her neighbour, who has yet to introduce himself to me, took me down into his basement to an elevator. Not that I trusted him initially.

"Before we go down to the lab I'd like to apologize. Some of the people down there are a bit old fashioned. They truly believe that women have no place in the sciences, or in geek culture. They won't admit it but they are quite sexist. The ones here are fairly moderate, mainly because I fire anyone who gets to out of hand."

"Why is your lab below your basement?"

"Not just my basement, the lab runs under the entire complex. I own the land, I had to be a certain distance underground for legal reasons. Seemed a waste to own all the land above and not do anything with it.

"I started off with just the park in the centre, it was much bigger then. At some point I needed extra money and came upon the idea of setting up an apartment building. Terrible idea of course, would cost to much to set up to be worth it.

"Once I was out of debt I decided to take out a loan on the idea, turns out owning a large plot of land and saying you want to develop it makes the banks a bit more generous. Paid back the loan rather quickly, had a lot of disposable income after the first few months of operation. Turns out when you only have to pay for materials and inspectors it is a lot cheaper than the banks expect.

"Could also be that building the complex was faster than expected because I used robots from the lab. Built way beyond standard code, the bots are supposed to build secret lairs. I think what little intelligence they had was miffed at the thought that they were building an apartment building."

"Is he giving you the story 'bout how he set up the complex upstairs," a new voice called to us as we walked around the lab, "oh your a pretty thing aren't you. I'm Lorry, I do everything that the big lug can't be bothered to do."

"It's not that boring of a story, and I'm not tall your short."

Out of nowhere someone jumped onto 'the big lug's back. He took it rather well practically ignoring the weight. He had braced for it before hand, but it was still impressive.

"Lorry get off of me. Since you 'do everything I can't be bothered to do' you can show Tia's niece around."

Lorry it turned out was a rather short woman with what would probably be small breasts on someone larger. As it was her stature increased their relative size quite impressively. Her hair was black blue and purple patches, her skin and lab coat were covered in similar more vibrant patches so something told me it was unintentional. I couldn't see her eyes behind the giant goggles she wore, which, now that I looked closely, also had spots of blue and purple.

"You got it boss," she said with a salute, jumping off the neighbours back. I should really ask what his name is at some point. She then turned around and walked up to me, at which point I noticed just how short she was.

"You're shorter than Aunt Luke," I said dodging a swipe from the recently introduced Lorry.

"I would get you for that but Tia's the one who makes sure the paycheques get signed on time," Lorry stated, "now why are you only coming in now? Weren't we supposed to be here two weeks ago?"

"What are you talking about? Nothing happened, I arrived perfectly on schedule."

"Are you sure…"

"Nothing. Happened."

"Okaaaay, so what are your powers. Your Aunt mentioned that you were a mutant and have powers to do with technology. I'm guessing you are a gadgeteer or devisor."

"We don't know. I haven't been tested yet. I randomly fixed a tractor by accident, by finding a loose wire. Funny thing is no one else could tell it was loose. That is why we are guessing that my power may have something to do with technology."

"Well that's not vague at all. So I'm supposed to show you around now, I'll probably also have to find out where you fit into the lab," she sighed at this, something tells me she wasn't kidding about doing everything around here, "first up is the inspiration zone," she said indicating the walled off area behind her. Through the window I could see a bunch of work tables with rows and rows of tool racks between them. They had everything in there, including a rubber chicken for some reason.

"We employ a number of gadgeteers and devisors. When they come upon an idea that they can't get out of their head they go here to build whatever it is. If you don't have a more useful power your job will probably be making sure whoever is in there is fed."

"So I'll have a bunch of time off?"

It took her a few moments to regain her composure, after falling on the floor from laughing so hard, "honey there's basically always someone in there. The interns all hate working 'lunch' duty because the people in there often refuse to eat. Also you'll be fetching whatever they need for the project."

"Let's hope I fit in somewhere else."

"Moving on, we have the weapons development and production section over here," she said leading me over to another section of the underground lab, "everything here is devoid of components that would severely harm a normal human. Ones that can are kept secure at all times. Testing is on a lower level, with more shielding so no one gets hurt."

This area was much more organized. There were clear assembly lines, work tables, a reasonable number of tool racks. There was even a packaging units, getting stuff ready to be sent to the appropriate hero presumably. There were also multiple areas marked off with black and yellow hazard lines.

"You noticed the walk area, good for you. They are a bit ambitious, the lines for likely danger zone are the red ones."

"Why?"

"So we can tackle oblivious idiots before they get a face full of something dangerous," she said pulling someone back onto the safe path by the belt, "let's go meet the head of this area. We have the slightly racist but reasonable policy of not having gadgeteers or devisors in charge of an area. It's racist because it basically means mutants don't get to be the head of an area, it is reasonable because we always have someone in charge of an area, not going off to build some personal project at random. Well that's not totally true, but it happens a lot less."

"Okay interesting, these weapons all appear to be primarily for disabling people safely though."

She paused for a second, "how did you figure that out?"

"First off you mentioned how nothing could cause significant harm. That makes tons of sense given the fairly open feel of this particular level, you wouldn't want something dangerous being shot off here by accident. So I started looking at what was being worked on, there aren't any guns. The closest is that slingshot thing. Also no ammo or power sources for anything. There are grenades, but they all appear to be gas grenades with… safety valves? Doesn't that make them more dangerous for the user?"

"Custom orders. We recommended against those, but he was scared of shrapnel."

"Anyways after seeing all the measures you took to make sure that none of the weapons that I knew about could be dangerous, it was the obvious conclusion to come to."

"You're smarter than you look."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah you look like a cheer leader. That or a farm girl."

"I am a farm girl. I'm also proud Literati. I will admit to not being the most interested in technology but that doesn't stop me from being a straight A student."

"Woo, your mutation help you in either of those places?"

"Nope. I manifested less than a month ago. And I looked exactly like I do now before manifesting."

"Some people got all the luck."

"You mean having to eat healthy and work hard because of farm life? Or working my ass off to get good grades so I don't have to be stuck on that farm for the rest of my life?"

"Lorry I think you should stop digging this hole. You already went through this with her Aunt," said a man carrying three clip boards, and using all of them. He was very skilled with using a pen to move them about. He had the same patches of colour adorning him that Lorry did.

"As you guessed this is Tia's niece, uh what is your name again? Abby, this is Rick the head of the weapons section of the lab."

"Nice to meet ya, now get out you don't belong here."

"Rick!"

"I heard your conversation, I'm not having a untested mutant of unknown power trying to make weapons. Come back when she has enough experience to guarantee no accidental death rays."

"Has that happened before?"

"Yes."

"Lets go to somewhere safer for untested powers," Lorry said leading me off. She still seemed angry at Rick.

The next area had less caution lines than the last one. It also had a lot more schematics and measurements. Some more detailed than others. Most of the schematics were on walls behind dummies wearing an, often more practical, approximation of what was on the schematics.

"Hey Greg."

"Hey Lorry, this the new girl?"

"Yeah."

Greg gave me a once over while I did the same to him. He was taller than Rick, and most certainly darker, though he did have lighter hair. Unlike Rick he did not have any paint or die splattered over him.

"Why's this the only section where the people aren't splattered with paint?"

"It's not, or rather we weren't spared the assault. We have PFG's and fabric cleaner on hand. Utilities pulled a prank earlier today," Greg said pulling out a tape measure,"you'll need a lab coat to work here, do you mind if I measure you for one right now."

"Uh, sure?"

"Now Lorry is clearly trying to see where you'll fit, what are your powers?"

"We don't know for sure yet."

"Hmm, hard to place you then. Can you sew?"

"Yes, everyone in my family can."

"Well then you'll have a place here if nothing else. Everyone spends some time sewing here. We're not the best place to put in an order for a hero costume of course, but the features we can add are certainly desirable."

"Wouldn't they need armour?"

"Yes but we make formal suits for special events and under-suits, both of which we see ourselves. We make plenty of extra under-suits, they get damaged a lot. Especially the women's ones."

"Why women's in particular?"

"Because men are perverts and like ripping women's clothes off," Lorry chimed in from the side.

"Yes, although I'd put it slightly differently. Especially since some of our clients appear to do it themselves. Can't say that I mind and they like the attention. Now if only they'd listen to us more on design."

"Greg here is a stickler for practical female armour."

"If your going to wear armour wear something that actually works. Not a chain mail bikini."

There wasn't much more to to in the armour section of the lab, at least I wouldn't be fetching for people who'd gone off their rocker.

"Two more places to check out. Any questions so far?"

"How big is this place? Why haven't I heard of it before? How often is this place attacked?"

"Starting with your first question, it's pretty big. You've seen this floor, there are multiple other lower floors. Technically there are 8 other floors, but the lab only goes down 3 more at any given point. Think of it like an upside down building, large base and multiple wings have additional floors," Lorry waited to see if I had any more questions.

"How did he build it all?"

"Sawyer? He didn't really build anything. What he did was he built construction robots that were just smart enough to take a design and turn it into a beyond code working laboratory. Now he loans them out for making secret bases."

"That's pretty impressive."

"Ha, it's more than impressive dear, it's practical. That is what most devisors and gadgeteers don't get. It doesn't matter how impressive something is, if it's not practical there's no point."

"That sounds like a quote."

"It is," a new voice says, "or rather it is a paraphrase. The real quote is the motto of this place, 'it doesn't matter how flashy the tech is, if it's not practical it's useless.'"

"Bit of an odd slogan," I say to the tall dark skinned woman before us. Her hair was curly enough to make it look like a spring, the silver colour didn't help. She also had the odd blue and purple stains all over her lab coat and hair. Odd, I thought utilities were the ones who pulled the prank.

"I see Greg was ready for you," Lorry said grinning, "serves you right for testing those… whatever they were on us."

"It was a smoke screen that released tiny bubbles full of dye with the smoke. When the bubbles came into contact with you they popped covering you with dye, we were testing the distribution in crowds."

"Really? You weren't using it as an excuse to get revenge for the time Rick got you in net that hung you from the ceiling?"

"Should I be worried about working here?"

"Maybe. Depends on whether your a good fit for utilities or not. If you are then you'll be roped into the prank war between Rick and Sam," Lorry says indicating the woman we had been talking to.

"No one has actually tested her correct? Come I've got a table ready."

Sam took us to a table full of bits and pieces of electronic equipment. There were plenty of different pieces but no designs or anything for me to work from. I wondered what they wanted me to do.

"Hey isn't that-"

Same elbowed Lorry before she could finish what ever she was saying, "before you lies your test. Build something from the scrap we have provided."

I look over the scrap and have no idea what to do. I turn to ask them where I should start when my power starts buzzing.

I look at the scrap again, searching for what my power wanted. I don't figure it out until I pick up a small cylinder. My power starts buzzing and I know what to do. I see where it fits with everything else on the table, not all the parts needed but some still have use. The cylinder is broken, not the outside but the inside, I need to take it apart to fix it.

The pieces all laid out before me. What was broken? The two circuit boards with a black box connecting them, there was enough scrap on the table to fix that.

I place the cylinder down to grab the parts I would need to fix it. How would I make the piece though? I had no experience with this sort of thing. Then I saw it, that went there, this went here. I needed tools.

I built put the pieces together carefully then tried to solder them together. Sparks, then fire, bad idea. To little experience. How to set it up, there! I could make something to steady myself.

I grabbed scrap metal from the table, nothing useful just pieces for making coverings and exteriors. Bar here for holding the iron, valve there to limit the solder. Arms go here, here, and here to hold the pieces in place.

One contraption into another I built what was needed to fix the cylinder. Now To disassemble the cylinder. So many ways it could go wrong. Pieces inside were unstable. No one piece, always the same piece. Could I fix that? Yes.

I looked at the piece I had already built. It would work in the new design. I just needed more scrap so I could build the stabilizer. No that wouldn't work it was to big, other pieces would be forced out, which ones? How? Could I reintegrate them?

There, I picked up the cylinder again, stupid to build required parts from scratch when I could use perfectly functioning ones in the cylinder. Instead of forcing them out with the stabilizer build them into it.

The wires were fine, I could hide them in the stabilizer or line them around the outside. The glowing vial was the unstable piece, everything had to fit around that. The bars holding it could go, the stabilizer would support it. No don't remove them now, don't touch the vial. The piston at the back needed to be built in. The two black orbs were the current stabilizer, insufficient, they should be gone. The other electronics could go up the cylinder slightly.

What did I need? There it was in the disc on the other table. Release the pressure plate, disconnect the wire, no more boom. Four rectangular black plates, perfect, now I need wire.

More sheet metal, the stabilizer needed a frame to hold the vial in place.

The stabilizer needed to be built around the unstable component. Build the bottom first. Don't touch it, broken hand bad idea. How to set it up? Drop it here. Connect this here. Do the pieces fit? Yes. Close it quick, don't let it destabilize. Sheer off the edges of the frame, it needs to fit in the cylinder.

Insert cylinder here. That plug goes there. Handle, power source, trigger. The focussing array needs to be altered for the new stabilizer. Nothing major, this goes here, change the angle there. Continue the stabilization for the blast here, end it here. Screw this in place.

"What happened?" I asked as I recovered from a spout of dizziness.

"Well you didn't build something," Lorry said waiting for my crestfallen reaction. When she realized I wasn't going to play her game she continued with, "you fixed a tractor beam that had been giving me trouble for the past week. Not only that but it looks like you improved it."

Really, I don't remember doing any of that. I said as much to Lorry and Sam, they looked worried.

"Well we thought you might be a little out of it when you disassembled an active mine."

"Really I thought she was nuts building a soldering machine."

Flashes of memory came back to me, "if I didn't build a machine to do it something would have caught fire. Hey I thought you said I didn't build anything."

"You didn't the soldering machine fell apart when you took out the new regulator circuit."

"I was quite surprised when she-"

Then they lost me, I had no idea what they were talking about. It sounded like I'd done something super interesting, but all I could remember were bits and pieces. What I did know was that at no point did I think of anything as technical as they were talking about.

"So how did you do it?"

"Sorry zoned out for a bit there, wasn't even sure which of you was talking to me earlier. I'm still a bit dizzy actually."

"Sit, sit. Let's have you recover for a minute before we interrogate you," Lorry said leading me to a chair. The only reason I knew it was Lorry talking to me was because she was also leading. It had to be Lorry leading as Sam wasn't that short.

Once I had a chance to recover they started asking me questions. Lorry was first, "Tell us what you remember."

"Just flashes, images, I knew what was broken and I knew what I needed to do."

"Sounds like the inspiration you were so worried about having to deal with," Lorry said giving me a look for a second, she still had to look up at me, before continuing with, "what else did you do to it."

"I fixed it."

"No you clearly did more than that. You altered key components necessary for the function of the tractor beam. We'll have to build a new one from scratch," Sam stated, rather annoyed at the additional work I had dropped in her lap.

"That was your own fault for putting something from my department on the test table you set up," Lorry berated angrily.

"Your department?"

"Yeah, I'm head of repairs," Lorry proudly puffed up her chest, it made her look like a pigmy owl. I must have said as much because she swatted me with a rolled up piece of paper.

"Back to the questions! What did you do to the core?"

"The what?"

"The glowing blue vial," Sam said impatiently, her hair was bouncing around a bunch.

"It was unstable, so I stabilized it."

"Unstable!"

"If it was unstable it should be to stable now, given the overkill you put into the stabilizer," Lorry said to me while holding back Sam. Something told me Sam had a direct hand in building the… tractor beam?

"It should work, I think."

"It doesn't matter if it works! We still have to make a new one!"

"Then can I keep the one I just fixed?"

"I don't see why not," said the neighbour. He just arrived from out of no where as far as I was concerned.

"What!?"

"Well she wouldn't have built it if you didn't leave it there for her. Also she quite impressively took someone else's invention, repaired it and improved it. As her first ever proper use of her power that was quite impressive."

"Um I have three questions, oh and two from earlier that were never answered."

"Go ahead."

"What did I build? Can we test it to make sure it is safe? Why have I never heard of this place? How often is this place attacked? Lastly what is your name?"

"In order, a tractor beam, yes, we don't advertise, rarely, and Allen Sawyer, though everyone calls me Sawyer."

We left the utilities area to go down to one of the weapon testing levels. There were firing ranges, areas marked as bomb testing, and an obstacle course down here. This place is ridiculous!

Where they wanted to test the tractor beam was a large empty room. It had a viewing bunker off to one side and a room full of props adjacent. The props were for testing any oddities that the lab produced. The viewing bunkers purpose was obvious.

They set up two dummies about ten yards [footnote]ugh I feel so dirty having to use imperial. Yes I know it was designed to be intuitive, an inch is the length of your thumb and all that, but metric makes so much more sense[/footnote] apart. They gave one of the dummies the tractor beam, then set up a mechanism to pull the trigger.

Once we were all in the bunker Sawyer pulled out the switch, "Ready? In 3, 2, 1…"

"… that's it?" I asked. All that had happened was the tractor beam sent out a blue energy stream that enveloped the other dummy.

"That was a safety test to make sure it wouldn't blow up. Now we can test it for real," Lorry said walking out of the bunker. I am right on her heals, if I get to keep this thing I should know how to use it.

Once all the settings were checked out to make sure it worked we basically played with it for the rest of the day. At one point we started a game of freeze tag in the obstacle course, using the tractor beam to tag people. Something tells me there is fairly light work in the repairs section because Sam left fairly early.

Alas all good things must come to an end. Aunt Luke called down to the labs via intercom to get me for dinner. That of course had the problem of no one uses the intercom so it took 5 minutes for people to even notice it. Then they had to find the intercom. Then they had to find us. Well the interns did.

It all went fine until Sawyer mentioned that we hadn't had lunch.

"Do you know what time it is? I expected you to look after my niece! Not starve her! Come on Abby, Lorry lets go get some dinner. You can have as much as you like," Aunt Luke said, dragging us through the door.

"What about me?"

"You? You're paying. I swiped your credit card on the way in."

"Wha- you can't do that!"

"You went the entire day without feeding a mutant of unknown powers and she was trying them out! She could be an energizer who requires vast amounts of fuel. I could make a decent case for negligence."

"Your Aunt is evil Abby. You hear me, EVIL!" Sawyer shouted the last word as we left.

We were able to convince Aunt Luke not to go to the fanciest restaurant that she could find. Instead we found a nice family joint nearby. We did run up the bill pretty high though.

"Was it really fair to Sawyer to do that? We spent a lot of money on food there," I was nervous when I saw the bill. It didn't take much to figure out that this was a semi-regular occurrence from the way Lorry acted.

I don't know what response I was expecting, but it wasn't the pair of tiny ladies laughing so hard they almost fell over.

"Abby Sawyer is rich. We're talking about a millionaire. The only reason he still works in the lab is as a hobby," Aunt Luke explained once she could breath again.

Over the next few days a schedule worked itself out. I would get up early start the coffee and get breakfast ready. Aunt Luke would wake up, drink coffee, eat breakfast, drink coffee, get dressed, drink coffee, and leave for work. While she was getting ready I would change into appropriate attire for the lab, then leave with her as I went off to one of the elevators not in my neighbours basement. I'd work in repairs, as that seemed to be the only section where I was any good occasionally someone would ask my opinion on something more R&D but I didn't get the 'spark' unless I had something to look at, until Aunt Luke got back. The to finish up the day Aunt Luke and I would watch tv sit coms, or more accurately she would force me to be in the room while she watched them and I would read.

Everyone knew that it would be temporary, I started school next week. Oddly enough Friday was the first break in the schedule. It was a day I had been dreading, I was meeting the MCO.

It wasn't all bad though. Sawyer and Aunt Luke were with me. Though that did lead to some problems.

"You can't come in."

"Really? What makes you say that?" Sawyer and Aunt Luke had strange smiles as Sawyer asked the question.

"It's against regulations."

"Oh, against regulations you say? Legally these test aren't aloud to happen without a a parent or guardian present or express permission of said parent or guardian."

"That was overturned…"

"As I recall it wasn't. There were exceptions made for those who had been kicked out by their parents,…"

"Which applies in this case!"

Aunt Luke continued over the officer, ignoring the interruption, "based on the frustratingly common occurrence, but those still made it clear that if there was some form of caretaker they could be present during the tests."

"That still doesn't explain him," the guard said pointing at Sawyer.

"Technically speaking she can have anyone she wants here if it makes her fell safer. Within reason of course, but it is not uncommon for a superhero or mutant relative to be present. Anyone with a vested interest in her safety, like say a prospective employer with whom she is already familiar," where as Aunt Luke had come off as quoting from experience and memory, Sawyer sounded more like he had rehearsed a speech.

"Hmmph."

They definitely weren't happy about it but they let everyone in. Once we were past the guard things were easier. The scientists didn't seem to care one way or another who watched so long as they didn't interfere with the tests.

Which brought us to our first problem. Someone wanted to interfere with the tests. Specifically an MCO agent wanted to pull rank on the scientists. Not the guard at the door, but clearly one of his friends.

"You are not qualified to oversee these tests! Let alone give them. A failure in basic training if you ask me," I hoped the scientist won this fight.

"Qualified smallified-"

"Something your ego could use, but certainly other areas are already small enough. Wouldn't you say Tia," Sawyer cut in.

"Oh I wouldn't know. He's certainly not man enough for me."

The guard went red in the face and took a swing at Aunt Luke. I wasn't having any of that. Before his fist was even half way to her I grabbed his wrist. I don't know what happened next but the guard was on his back. Apparently I flipped him.

"Can you guys explain how I did that?" I asked the scientists. Obviously expecting a joke at their expense they shook their heads, "dang, I was hoping someone knew what happened."

"Yes, yes, stop interfering or I'll sick the little girl on you again. Allow me to introduce myself, my name Dr. Oak but most people call me the professor. I'll be overseeing your testing today."

"Nice to meet you, I'm-"

"Up-up-up. We'll need a code name both for your MID and to keep your privacy during the testing. All session are recorded," the professor explained, "do you have one ready or…"

"Fixer," Sawyer says before anyone can say anything, "it isn't taken, I checked, and, after knowing her for three days, I'm not convinced that there's anything she can't fix."

Ah that's sweet of him to say.

"She couldn't build her way out of a wet paper bag, but she can fix anything."

I take it back.

"I'm okay with Fixer, though you may find more broken things now Mr. Especially once I tell Lorry what you said about me."

I'd only been working at the lab for a few days but it was easy to tell where the real power was. It might just be because I worked in the repairs department, the smallest department because of the low amount of work, but when someone needed something done they went to Lorry not Sawyer. Sawyer was a very hands off boss and Lorry was the only section head with enough time to deal with problems that came up. That or they went to whoever does the books, still haven't figured out who that is yet.

"We'll start you off with the written portion of the tests. That way you can be off in the corner while I deal with office politics. It also has the added advantage of we'll be able to mark it while you do other things," the professor explained as he pushed himself between me and Sawyer.

The tests looked simple enough mainly multiple choice with a few written questions at the end. Then you got to the subject matter, it covered everything. Not only every subject but every level of ability that one could reasonably expect of a teenager, assuming their only examples were dropouts and geniuses.

Okay easy enough, I've done tests before, same principles apply. Focus on what you know and mark the ones you don't. Don't spend to much time on any given question. Go back over when you reach the end so that you don't miss anything. As long as you don't lose marks for it guessing is better than not answering.

Going through it the first time it looked like I had a decent grasp of the basics. In every subject the first several questions were answered quickly without fuss. The second time I went over them I had to out logic the questions a little but they were still easy enough. Every time I went over them the difficulty increased. By the fifth time over the multiple choice questions I just put down my best guess.

The written questions were different but I got through them. Some of them were blank because I had no clue what they were talking about. Embarrassingly one of those questions was on electronics, but my power liked physical things to work with, not theoretical.

I finished rather less theatrically than I started. I had a decent but not ridiculous amount of time left. It wasn't down to the wire or ten minutes after the test began. Theoretically I could have spent more time on it, but I knew I had answered everything to the best of my abilities.

After handing the test over to the test I saw Dr. Oak, with the guard from earlier. Apparently he got to watch anyway. Too bad, here I was thinking that the testing might actually be pleasant.

"You're done? Good. The next test is over here on the treadmill."

The treadmill looked pretty normal. My shoes felt a little loose for this but it would probably be fine. They let me set the starting pace, they said to go for a leisurely walk. They didn't let it stay they for long.

The treadmill kept picking up speed. It was probably supposed to test my endurance or speed. I could feel my shoe loosening as I ran. Annoying but I probably couldn't get them to stop the test. No point in not asking though, "hey could we break for a sec? My shoes-aah-"

I tripped over the shoelace that had come undone. Worse yet I felt my shoe fly off after catching myself on the frame. Luckily someone stopped the tread shortly after I fell.

Turning around I saw that my shoe had somehow hit the guard in the face, along with a… tennis ball?

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You sure cause-"

"I'm fine!"

"Then may I please have my shoe back?"

"Make sure it is tight this time," Dr. Oak suggested, almost keeping a straight face. He had been trying not to laugh at the whole ordeal the entire time.

This time the treadmill kept raising until I fell off. I wasn't able to catch myself as easily, or at all, that time. Then they had me get on it again to test my endurance. I started to hate that treadmill by the end of the tests on it.

"Let's do something a little more relaxing," the professor said as he lead me over to a table with scrap on it, "take the parts on the table and make something."

I heard Sawyer swear in the background as I surveyed the table before me. There was a lot less scrap than at the lab. There were complicated parts that looked like they should go together. As far as my power was concerned I was looking at an empty table. Not even a prickling sensation let alone the normal buzzing.

I still tried though. When shown the fruits of my labour the professor looked at Sawyer and said, "you sure she deserves such a devisory nickname?"

"Like as said before, she sucks at building things, give her something to fix."

"Ooo she could be a postcognition or psychometry based gadgeteer instead of a precognition based one. She looks into the past of an object to see when and how it broke, then reverse engineers the solution," one of the lab technicians was getting way to excited about this.

"No, I've seen her modify stuff that she was fixing so that it works better."

"Well I'm sorry but I can't give her a higher rating than 0 given what I've seen."

"Doesn't matter to much. People who judge based on ratings often miss the diamonds in the rough."

A lab tech rushed over to the professor. He had some papers for him. I was happy. Anything to change the subject, it was annoying how people were always so obsessed with the failings of my power.

"Hmm. It looks like we have something to discuss anyway miss Fixer."

Oh god, I could just tell that people would assume that that was my code name. Stupid sexist culture requiring the feminine prefix on a gender neutral name. It would be fine if people didn't assume gender neutral meant male, but no as soon as you deviate from femininity one little bit people assumed you were male. I've been hanging out with Greg to much.

"How did you cheat on the test?"

"What?"

"You're not in trouble. Everyone cheats on the test. We just have to know how so we can determine your power."

"I didn't cheat though."

"Miss Fixer-"

"Please, can we keep it to Fixer. If we don't people will start assuming that the code name is miss Fixer just because I'm a girl, which is sexist and shows the androcentrisity of our culture," I explained, "heck I wasn't even all that set on the name until you gave me something to be mad about."

"Alright then Fixer you scored 100% on the multiple choice section, and very well on the written. The reason we have the two sections is to tell when someone is cheating. We don't even know the answer to some of the written questions," the professor was clearly being patient with me, explaining the test, "those are there so that we can figure out super intelligences. Your scores on the written test, although very good, do not justify your scores on the multiple choice."

"I answered them all to the best of my ability, then on the ones where I had no clue I took my best guess."

"You guessed at 20 questions. Each with five choices. Yet didn't get a single one wrong."

"They didn't all have five choices. I knew some of the answers were wrong. Also you speak as if I guessed randomly, I took my best guess."

"You inferred some knowledge of the subject material from the question? Well then that is how you cheated, you are clearly a paragon."

"Aren't there many other explanations to that response though Dr. Oak?" Sawyer asked, he looked sceptical at the presumptive assignment of the power.

"Yes, but how many would account for her flipping a trained professional without knowledge of how she did it. I suspected she was a paragon from the moment you said her power only fixed things."

Sawyer seemed disappointed at this, but he didn't disturb the tests further. Eventually the guard came back, he left when I gave him the black eye, he really wanted to watch one of the tests apparently.

Somehow I don't think he wanted to see the strength tests I was doing. Those were pretty boring.

Eventually they set me up in a room with a bunch of ball cannons on one wall. How do o know they were ball cannons? They fired them on me rather quickly. Too quickly in fact.

They called me up to the control room to explain. I arrived to an argument.

"If you hadn't been so petty-"

"I'm petty? Me? You're the one who had to be forced to let me watch her testing."

"A clearly aggravated officer who nearly physically assaulted the girls guardian."

"She flipped me."

"You attacked her aunt."

"Uncle if you ask me."

"That's uncalled for."

"WHAT HAPPENED!?"

"…"

"It seemed like the only way to get your attention," I mumbled after everyone started staring at me.

"We were supposed to test your reactions, speed, and possibly danger sense, as all of the tests we've done for that so far have been invalidated, through dodgeball. The speed and frequency of the balls. But the machine is overdue for maintenance and has been acting up recently. So when the idiot over there decided we weren't shooting them fast enough and set the speed to max… everything broke."

"Now we can't do the test so I guess we'll be seeing you again soon," the officer said with a little to much honey. He sounded like a used car salesman.

"Now, now, I don't see why we can't just fix the machine. I mean you've got a reputable devisor and a person who's so good at fixing things with her 'paragon' trait that she is called fixer," Sawyer said, gleefully offering alternatives to spite the officer.

"Yeah, let me prove to you that I'm a gadgeteer."

The officer protested constantly, but the professor thought it was a good idea. As soon as they opened up the machinery my power went off. Cue another black out, really it's kind of annoying that I don't get to remember much from my power. Though I did remember something special that I built into the cannons.

"Is she done?"

"She's not working anymore is she. What do you say about her gadgeteer powers now?"

"I say that she's either a 1 or a 4, she has the frequency and control of a gadgeteer 1, but the power of a gadgeteer 4. What would you choose Fixer?"

"Charmander?"

"Did we mention that she gets a little out of it when she uses her power?"

"I'll list her as a 1 for now."

"Come on, come on. Let's get the testing done already."

They lead me back down to the room with the actual cannons. The officer was really eager to let the balls beat up on me now that I was not as coordinated. I'll show him, I don't need my exemplar powers to play dodge ball, not anymore at least.

The balls started flying almost immediately. I just let my powers tell me where to go. This probably counts as a danger sense but there's no way I'm telling them about it.

Two steps to the left. A couple paces forward. Nope just a little back and to the right. Wait for it, here.

I stood there balls flying every which way, bouncing off walls and crashing into the ground. None of them got close to hitting me. I was the eye of the storm, unmoved by the whims of fate, free to choose my own destiny. Okay I cheated.

The one thing I remembered from working on the machine was setting it up so it couldn't fire at a set location. That location is where I was standing right now. When I explained that to them the only one to respond was Sawyer.

"What do ya say now professor?"

"Paragon 2, exemplar 3, gadgeteer 4."

On the way back from testing, shiny new MID in hand, Aunt Luke asked me a question that surprised me, "Abby have you gotten in contact with your parents yet?"

"Um no?"

"You might want to call them when we get back, 'cause I haven't called them either."

That call went about as well as you could expect. After an hour of yelling mom asked to talk to Aunt Luke.

"Well kiddo do you want the good news or the bad news."

"There's good news?"

"Yeah, you didn't have any plans so there's none to cancel. The bad news is that your grounded for the week. That means no books, no lab, and no friends after school. I drop you off in the morning then pick you up right after school."

She waited a moment before continuing.

"That being said, there's nothing to stop you from going to the rather impressive library at the school during lunch periods."

School turned out to be St. Anne's academy, an upscale private institution. Way classier than the public school back home. Smaller to, it had a scant 500 people.

The school itself was a single building, three stories in height, with a small athletics field outside. Two hallways on each floor, three rows of classrooms, tending towards dedicated classrooms on the outside with other facilities, such as the library, along the interior. The gym was a separate building on the other side of the athletics field, unfortunately that meant if it was raining you had to walk through the rain to get to class.

Being a private school it had a uniform. I had to wear a white blouse and a grey skirt. Once the 'summer' season was over I would be required to wear a dark red sweater. On the whole it wasn't too uncomfortable.

One of the teachers was showing me around before homeroom, something I thought was rather unnecessary as all of my classes had listed room numbers. There were no oddities in how the rooms were numbered, something you might expect from a more irregular building, so I could predict the position of the rooms based on the lay out of the first floor.

I waited outside homeroom as the teacher was speaking, he was going to introduce me at some point.

"Now class I would like you to welcome Abigail Berkins," that was my cue to enter, "go ahead and introduce yourself Abigail."

Didn't he just do that? Twice, "Um, hey, I'm Abby. I'm from Wisconsin but moved here to live with my Aunt."

I tried to get away after the simplest introduction possible, but the teacher wouldn't let me.

"Since she doesn't seem to want open up does anyone have questions?"

Please, please let everyone fall into the apathetic high school student stereotype.

"Why'd you move?"

So much for that hope.

"I don't feel the need to reveal that information."

"What's your bra size?" Someone at the back yelled.

Before the teacher could speak I picked up a chalk eraser, "may I borrow this for a moment?"

Everyone was confused but the teacher acquiesced. Then I took careful aim, using my power, and tossed it at the pervert. Not hard enough to break anything mind but enough to knock him out of his chair.

"Does anyone have a real question or can I sit down now?"

I was hoping to show that I wasn't going to take this nonsense from anyone. Instead I became the talk of the school for my 'antics' in home room.

Lunch took forever to arrive but when it did I ate as quickly as possible, I wanted to check out the library asap.

When I got to the library there was a librarian shelving books from a trolley. I walked up to see if it was everything was in the Dewey decimal system. Since it was I offered to help. The librarian was suspicious at first but delighted when she found out that I knew the system off by heart.

I spent my lunch sorting mis-shelved books and exploring the classical literature section. Both of the librarians, surprisingly a retired married couple that volunteered at the school, took a quick liking to me.

The rest of the day went by much like the first half, with me completely oblivious to the rumours that were circulating about me. I would find out soon, but not soon enough in my opinion, what the school thought of me.

Before school even started the next day I was accosted by a group of boys. I knew the type. These boys were like my brother, but instead of treating every girl as a gift from God, they thought of them as just another notch for their bed posts. Some probably thought it was their right to violate a woman's body.

I ignored them as much as I could. There wasn't much point in giving into their games. If I turned them down they would either see me as more of a challenge or think I was playing hard to get.

They forced my hand at my locker, surrounding me. There were three of them, one with black hair, two with blond. Only one of the blond ones was taller than me. They all had immaculate uniforms, just messy enough to look like a lazy bad boy without looking like a slob. I bet they put more effort into their appearance than some of the girls.

"Hey beautiful, how about you come with us for a minute. We'll show you a good time."

"Beat it."

"Come don't be like that we haven't even introduced ourselves yet."

"But I already know your names, your Larry, he's Moe, and that's Curly."

"What?" One of them asked while some students who overheard started laughing.

"That's just mean darling."

"It's time for class get out of my way."

"We got time. Come one have a little fun," 'Larry' said reaching up to brush a stray hair from my face. I didn't let him of course.

"Get out of my way, or I'll make you get out of my way."

"Give me a kiss and I'll consider it."

"Okay, but you asked for it."

I reached up for his face like I was about to kiss him, then slammed his head against the lockers. Before the other two could react I elbowed the one to the left of me in the face and he guy behind me in the gut.

That gave me some breathing room, which I used to get into the middle of the hall. With everyone watching there wasn't much that they could do to me. Even if they were inclined to try a teacher finally showed up.

"She attacked us!"

"Really? You're going with that? Really? There are three of you, all well built boys, not as big as the ones I'm used to but you must be pretty strong. You surrounded me, a girl with a rather slight build, and put me up against a wall. You touched without my permission. Forget making a case for self defence I could sue you for assault and sexual harassment if I had half a mind to," hanging out with Aunt Luke had some surprising benefits, including a large amount of knowledge on legal precedent. I don't know why she has this knowledge but it does come in handy.

Once they realized they didn't have a leg to stand on they backed down. They seemed to think they could get away with pulling this stuff on me because I was new.

Guys were on edge around me for the rest of the morning. Something about me having a violent dislike of being hit on. Where on earth they got that idea I don't know. It's completely true, but no idea where they got the idea.

At least it made the morning uneventful. Until I got to English, there was a bit of a fuss when I handed in 3 weeks worth of homework the day after I had been given it.

"How did you finish this so quickly, I haven't even given you a copy of the book yet?"

"Hmm? Oh! I already own a copy of Alice in Wonderland. I've read it a couple of times, so superficial analysis of the symbolism employed by Lewis Carroll was rather easy. I'm surprised you didn't include questions about the mathematic references he included in the book."

The teacher looked confused. I'm not sure whether she was honestly surprised at my interest in classical literature, or if she didn't expect any student to actually take an interest in the subject matter.

Somehow this lead to more stares from my classmates. I don't know why they were so shocked at my interest and knowledge. No one at my previous school found it all that shocking that a nerd was a book worm. It might have something to do with these uniforms, they have the rather unfortunate side effect of showing off my figure.

Not that I'm a prude or anything, I just don't normally wear clothes that show me off. I find that most guys don't realize how shapely you are when you wear looser clothing. Easy way to not get involved with guys who are just in it for your looks.

Given all of the stares I was surprised when lunch was rather peaceful. After I was done eating the library was there for me to read to my heart's content.

Unfortunately after lunch was gym class. We had to go across campus to the other building with a second uniform to change into. It wasn't too bad the guys had loose fitting shorts and t-shirts. The girls on the other hand wore sports bras, duh, and put on the same loose t-shirts but almost half the class seemed to have shorts the wrong size for some reason. Yes I know the reason, I just wish they wouldn't be so obvious about it. There also seemed robe a strange predilection for wearing their hair in tight buns just for this class.

"Abigail Berkins, front and centre!" The gym teacher seemed to think he was a drill sergeant.

"Here sir."

"Now I know you got off yesterday for not having a uniform. It was your first day you didn't even have your schedule yet. So I saved up something special for today, and everyone knows it is your fault," he also seems to take joy in turning student against one another. Who wants to bet he also likes to publicly shame students.

"Since we have a new student we are going to go through the physical aptitude tests that I put you through in the first week. For anyone still standing after that, dodge ball."

The test were pretty standard, running laps, rope climb, step up, etc. We did stuff like this all the back in Wisconsin, though it might not have been standard. I kept having to remember to hold back. The teacher was mildly surprised that I was barely out of breath by the end of it.

"Well since you seem to be in shape you'll be playing dodge ball. I'd say boys vs. girls."

This might come as a surprise but I was the only girl playing dodge ball. It seems I was the only one not give the option to opt out. A few girls thought to try to help me, but most were to tired. Those that weren't were cowed by peer pressure to stay out of it. I guess this was some kind of impromptu hazing.

"Hey, coach," I hadn't bothered to remember the gym teacher's name, didn't seem much point to it, "what's my motivation here?"

"What are you, some kind of actor?"

"No I'm a single person being set up against almost half the class so I can lose for your enjoyment. I want to know why I should even play the game."

"I am your teacher and you will-"

"Stop right there. I know you think you're big, tough, and scary but you haven't given me any evidence of that. You don't scare me. My old gym teacher was an actual drill sergeant not a make believe one. Your aptitude test are the equivalent of a light day from him. You've shown me the stick and it doesn't scare me. If you try to do give me a ridiculous punishment for not playing along I will just go to the principal. Give me a reason to win and I'll actually try, otherwise I'm going to the library."

"How about this, if you can last the rest of class without getting hit, I'll let you take the rest of the week off. But you are not allowed to throw any of the balls, and it's everyone in class vs you."

I looked up at the clock. Almost a half hour left in class. Well no guts no glory, "deal."

It started off simple enough. There was a defined area I was allowed to be in, everyone else had free range about the entire gym. Except for my area, that is important.

The balls at the start were slow and few. Not many people and everyone was tired. But as time went on there were more balls going faster. The game of dodgeball actually gets easier when all you have to do is dodge. Especially with danger sense.

I kept holding back though, it would be unfair to completely break the test. Come to think of it this was probably what the dodgeball test at the MCO was meant to be like.

At about ten minutes to the end of class, I still hadn't been hit. I stayed at the centre of my space as much as possible, maintain distance so that I had time to react. Slightly unnecessary but I'll take every advantage I can get when not going full speed. But that is when I decided to stop holding back. Not because it was getting to hard, it was already at the point where I couldn't dodge without my power. No I decided to get serious because they started taunting me.

"Is that all you got? My grandma could dodge better than you!" Not that taunting.

"Come on let us hit you. These balls could use some love," Gross, trust me he wasn't talking about about the ones in his hands. Still not that taunting.

"This wouldn't be so bad if we weren't losing to a farm girl!" Not meant to be taunting, but I hate sexist assholes like him, so very taunting.

When I heard the comment I stopped moving. Three balls were hurtling towards me, one from behind, one to the left, and one from the front moving a little slower than the others. I ducked under the one from behind me while catching the one to the left, which I then used to block the one in front.

It was time to show them what 'beyond the agility of an Olympic athlete' and 'ability to instantly intuit information and skills' really meant.

Before I had taken care to dodge the balls properly. Now I let my power guide me so that I would just not be there when the ball arrived. I was moving faster than anyone in the room could keep up with. While some of the other students simply dropped their jaws at the fact that I had been holding back others started throwing randomly in a vain attempt to catch me with sheer numbers.

Even the gym teacher could see it was pointless so he decided that it was time for us to get changed.

I had business first though. I walked right up to the guy who had acted so superior. Claiming that it would have been better it I had been a guy.

"Hey, what makes you think you are so superior?"

"Uhh…"

"Is it because I'm new? Because I'm a girl? Because I'm from a farm in Wisconsin?"

"Well…"

"Answer the question!"

"You can't talk to me like that! I'll have you know my family is rich!"

"Oh, you think that makes you better than me? I had more respect for you when I though you were just sexist."

I walked off to the change rooms. Some of the class was shocked at my opinion, others seemed to agree with me. Many of them were confused, I don't know why. Discrimination was supposed to be less of a systemic problem on the coasts.

People avoided me Wednesday morning. Nothing much, just some people walking up to me to have their friends convince them better of it. I heard rumours of me being less agreeable before classes started. Really if people would stop hitting on me I'd be agreeable all the time.

Honestly it wasn't to bad. I'm not antisocial but endless questions by people who are only interested in me because I'm new or pretty is annoying. Classes were getting calmer too. The teachers figured out that I wasn't that far behind and was more ready to answer their questions than most of the other students.

Lunch was interesting. A group of girls approached me out of nowhere, while I was eating my lunch. As in before I vanished into the library.

There were four of them. The first had long dirty blonde hair reaching midway down her back. Her eyes were a deep brown that contrasted well with the paleness of her skin. Her uniform was definitely more open than standard but no one was complaining. Oddly she wore her skirt longer than required, it made an interesting combination of features associated with shyness and assertiveness.

The second one was the tallest in the group, easily looking over the head of the blonde but not quite as tall as me. Her hair was dark and much shorter, not even reaching her shoulders. Her green eyes and freckles made her appear to be one of the 'raven haired beauties' of Celtic folk songs. It was hard to see the rest of her as she was pushing the blonde along while the other two followed.

The third one in the group continued the Celtic trend started by the second one, having shoulder length red hair. The Celtic features ended there though as she had dark skins and bright blue eyes. I don't know what her ancestry was to give her such features but they certainly made her striking. She wore an extra layer compared to everyone, having already adopted the school sweater. Though it was somewhat modified from the ones the sold at the school store, it had buttons while the regular ones were all pull overs.


The last one had light brown hair. It was hard to tell the length because she tucked the end into her blouse. She was the only girl I'd seen around here, other than me, that buttoned her blouse up all the way. She looked a little nervous, with the way she fidgeted and the way her cool* green eyes were darting back and forth.

The tall one was clearly the leader of the group. Or she was the one taking the initiative to come talk to me. She was certainly the one who started talking first.

"Hey, you're Abby right?"

"Yeah. Why do you ask?"

"We heard about the incident in gym class. You were so awesome," she seemed excitable.

"Which one?"

"What?"

"Which incident. There's multiple points which could be called incidents."

"The one where you told off Godrick Rightfellow," now it was the brunette at the back speaking, she was a bit calmer.

"Who?"

"He goes by Rick."

"Still not ringing a bell."

"The rich guy," the blonde said finally chipping in of the conversation. I didn't know who wanted to be here less, the blonde or the brunette. The redhead had said less so far but still felt more like a more active part in the conversation.

"Oh. Him. I just wanted to let everyone know why I stopped holding back."

"We heard you went off on him, ranting about how he was inferior to everyone else in the room," the tall one was still excitable.

"If by rant you mean I asked him why he thought he was superior to me, and got annoyed when he was to nervous to even talk to me then yes I may have ranted."

"I heard you took him down a notch. Insulted his family even," the red head said. I like rhymes ok.

"I heard she slapped him for insulting her family."

"Really, I heard it was the other way around."

"No one slapped anyone! I just asked him why he thought he was so superior."

"Really?" They all asked, mildly disappointed.

"He was being sexist. He said it would have been better if they weren't losing to a girl. I took offence. I don't particularly care that he is rich."

"Oh," more disappointment.

"Can you at least tell me your names? We've been talking for like five minutes and no one has bothered to introduce themselves."

"Oh I'm Jess," the tall one, "this is Allison," the blonde, "that's Betty," the brunette, "and Lexi," the read head.

"Cool," there was no way I was getting to the library at this point. A girl can dream but it wasn't going to happen.

"Let's work through the rest of the rumour mill while we're here," Jess said excitedly. She seemed like more of a gossip than the rest of us, "does anyone have one they'd like to start with?"

"Is it true that your previous gym teacher was a real drill sergeant?" Betty asked.

"Yeah, way back in the day. He's retired now, he just needed to do something so he got certification to teach in schools. Said he wanted to keep shaping the country. "

"That must have been so hard on you."

"He was pretty hard on us. He never went to far though. His past almost got him in trouble a couple of times."

"How so?" Jess was ever eager for whatever information she could get.

"Any complaints about him being to hard on us that made it to the school board were taken as an excuse for investigation. A military drill sergeant is supposed to be hard on you. Heck they are supposed to break you so they can rebuild you, if the media is to be believed. Thing is all of that breaking people, lead to a good knowledge of how far he could push people without breaking them. Our school was the cream of the crop as far as local sports competitions were concerned."

"Oh cool! Is that why you were so good at dodge ball?"

"Y-yeah," should not have shown off that much…

The rest of lunch continued like that with Jess excitedly asking questions about the rumours while I disillusioned her about various thing in my life. The others chipped in with their own questions of course, but it was clear that Jess was the driving force behind the conversation.

As it turns out Betty was in my gym class. I didn't notice her because she was one of the girls who kept their hair in a bun, it completely changed her look. We were in the middle of an argument when we arrived.

"Your going to get in trouble."

"Nope."

"You will."

"It was his idea."

"Berkins! Where's your uniform!"

"I'm wearing it."

"Your gym uniform!"

"Can you say anything without yelling? Yesterday you said I could have the rest of the day off if I could avoid getting hit. Your not going back on your word are you?"

"There is no way I'm letting a student lallygag and layabout all class."

"Who said anything about lazing about? I plan on work all class," I said walking over to a corner. The gym teacher followed me, right as he was about to start talking I let my shoulder bag drop to the floor. It was heavy enough that it shook some of the objects on the ground around me, "I've got three weeks of homework to catch up on. I'm taking advantage of your idea to get through it."

He couldn't find a good way to argue against my point. I must have looked out of place in the gym. I had multiple books open around me, some were reference sources others were text books, one was on formatting written text so that it was easy to read. There were two piles of paper next to me, one for the work I had done, the other for the stuff I was doing next. I had a borrowed a clip board from the library pressed against my legs to give a decent hard surface to write on. Lastly I was using my backpack as a cushion against the wall.

Some people tried to mess with me, but soon found it unreasonable. People who thought they could step on my books soon found themselves falling backwards for their trouble. One person charged me, only to find himself blinded an eraser, and blindsided by someone with the same idea.

After they had figure out that they couldn't get close to me they tried acting from a distance. Several balls came flying at me only to be caught left handed as I kept working undisturbed.

I'll give this to the gym teacher, once he figured out that he couldn't scare me and I was actually going to use my free time productively he was helpful. Anyone who was to obvious in their attacks got in trouble instantly. Apparently people thought because of my treatment yesterday they could get a free ride to bully me today. Not the case.

After class I was approached by more than just Betty. Some of the more sporty girls were trying to recruit me.

"Can you play goalie tomorrow?"

"Nope. I've got the rest of the week off and I plan to use it. I got a decent chunk of homework done today but missing three weeks means I've got a bunch left."

We all went our separate ways after class, with a bunch promising to meet me after school. Unfortunately for me most of them wanted to come over to visit, or have me visit them.

"No really, I'm currently grounded. I'm not aloud to have friends over," I explained again.

"Come one you can weasel your way out of it."

"Yeah, come on, live a little."

"I'd rather not give my aunt a bad impression of me. Now I'm going to go to where she picks me up," I said walking away, the small crowd following in my wake.

"Why doesn't she pick you up at the parking lot?"

"Do you see how busy it is here?"

"Yeah…"

"Now look a half block down that way," I said point in the direction we were headed. It was still busy but there was a bunch less cars, "where do you think it is easier to pick someone up."

"Over there."

"Now imagine we turn the corner here so we're no longer on the same road as the school," I say as I take a right down the street where Aunt Luke picks me up.

"Okay so you walk a bit for traffic convenience I get it."

Out of nowhere Jess stops walking.

"Hey you okay," I ask after turning around to the the disturbance. She has this weird look in her eyes.

"We shouldn't be here."

"What are you talking about Jess? My Aunt is just up ahead," I say pointing her out. She's actually walking up to us now.

Everyone looks at Aunt Luke and more than half of them freeze up like Jess.

"Hey Abby, are these your friends?"

"Yeah let me introduce you, this is… uh guys are you alright?"

I don't know why but everyone is staring at me and Aunt Luke. Some are even doing the whole look at one then the other routine.

"Yeah we're fine-"

"Completely fine-"

"But it's getting kinda late-"

"Yeah, our parents might be here by now-"

"We should get going-"

"Don't want to get into to trouble-"

Like their words they were literally stumbling over each other to get away from us. Except for Betty and Lexi who seemed to be dragged along by the crowd.

"That was odd."

"Yes, yes it was," Aunt Luke said rather unconvincingly, "Now come on, we should get home kiddo."

"Oh no, you don't get to dodge the subject that easily. What was that about? Why is everyone scared of you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about dear," Aunt Luke said while ducking into the car, "they all seemed to realize that they were late for something."

"At the same time, right when you show up. They were scared of you for some reason and since I'm living with you I think I have a right to know."

"Can we talk about something else?"

"What do you want to talk about?"

"Anything else."

"Something we've talked about before?"

"Sure."

"You won't be evasive."

"Why would I be?

"It's something you've been evasive about before."

"I don't have much choice here."

"Do you like Sawyer."

"Of course I like Sawyer dear. He's my neighbour, my friend, and my landlord."

"Yes but do you like him."

"I don't know what you are talking about."

"Well you are obviously physically attracted to him, given how you reacted when I mentioned you talk a lot when nervous."

"How is that indicative of my attraction to him?"

"It's not really, but consistent signs of nervousness around him are. Something you wouldn't want him to know about. Especially since you 'lay into' him with frequency."

"You heard about that huh. That exemplar brain of yours gives you great deduction skills."

"Yeah it does, but that was wild speculation."

"You just guessed?"

"Yep."

"Dang it."

"But I already knew I was right."

"How?"

"You admitted you found him attractive earlier."

"That's going to get old fast."

"What?"

"Having to watch my word constantly around you. I do that enough at work."

"Where do you work?"

"Uh uh. No. You got one free topic I was being evasive about not two."

"Okay here's a question that's on topic, why don't,you ask him out?"

"Because he's obviously dating Lorry. I'm surprised you haven't noticed."

"He's not dating Lorry."

"Yes he is."

"No, he's not."

The conversation devolved into a pointless argument for the remainder of the ride home. Neither of us had evidence to support our claim, and we were both sure that the other was wrong. It was more playful with us than it might be elsewhere, but I could tell it was a little strained from Aunt Luke.

*cool in this case referring to the colour descriptor of cool, not 'oh her eyes are so cool' but 'that colour is calming and possibly reminds me of colder temperatures'. It is generally used with blues but that does not mean it can't be used for other colours.

I thought what ever caused everyone to freak out yesterday would pass. Instead it appears to have spread. Everyone in the halls, not just the people who saw Aunt Luke, stopped talking when they saw me. They all tried to give me a wide berth.

One guy who backed into me looked like he wanted to beat me up until he saw who I was. Then he ran away with his tail between his legs.

Before class a fight almost broke out over who had to sit next to me. The winner had to jump over three desks to get to the last desk that wasn't near me.

It was like I had the plague. I couldn't even ask anyone what was going on. As soon as I tried to talk to someone they would find an excuse to run away.

I was somewhat resigned to it by lunch. Then I was surprised by someone actually approaching me. She was tall and graceful, probably a senior from how she had filled out her uniform. Speaking of her uniform, it didn't leave much to the imagination. The skirt was as short as regulations would allow and her blouse was possibly a size to small. Her long light brown hair was done in multiple braids that reached down to almost her waist. Her eyes were a somewhat familiar green colour that I couldn't place.

"Hey you seem a bit down."

"Not really. Just confused. Everyone's avoiding me and I can't figure out why."

"Well I'm not avoiding you. I'm Brittany by the way."

"Abby, nice to meet you."

"Likewise. I have a mutually beneficial proposition for you Abby."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, everyone is avoiding you because of some nasty rumours that have been spread around. Regardless of the validity of the rumours they are hurting your reputation. So here's the deal, you join the Cheerleaders, I take care of all these nasty rumours."

"No thanks, cheerleading's not really my thing."

"Oh? Have you ever tried it, or are you saying that because you're playing to the stereotype of being a nerd? It can be really fun you know."

"I have tried it actually. My brother convinced me to. He thought I could use more friends. I could have stayed on the squad, it's just not for me."

"Maybe you'll find it different here," she said, grasping at straws in my opinion.

"I don't think my Aunt would let me join," considering it was illegal for mutants to enter sporting competitions.

"Well you should try asking her."

"I would but I don't think I should."

Growling in frustration she said, "You'll regret not taking up my offer when you had the chance," oddly she seemed more disappointed than angry.

After she left I almost got to the library undisturbed. I didn't expect anyone privy to yesterday's incident to ever approach me again. It might help if I knew what happened but no one involved was willing to talk about it. Aunt Luke changed the subject if it came up and everyone else ran scared when I approached them. The way they acted you'd think I showed off a new power or something.

Anyway, that is why I was surprised when Lexi caught up to me in the halls.

"Hey Abby. What you up to?"

"Oh the usual, I've eaten lunch so I'm headed to the library. Get some work done, maybe read for a bit."

"Cool, mind if I join you."

"Sure, come on."

The library was nice, we talked for a bit making sure to keep quiet. I was getting through a decent portion of the work that had been assigned so far. I might have some stuff ready for tomorrow depending on how productive gym was.

On the way to gym there was a bit of a surprise.

After Lexi and I had parted Betty turned up out of nowhere. I say that like we're not going to the same class but she still surprised me. Which is why I jumped a foot higher in the air than appropriate. I probably over reacted, nothing ever seemed to surprise me anymore.

"Oh hey Betty."

"Hey. I saw who you were talking to earlier. Just thought I'd tell you to watch out, not all is what it appears to be."

"What?" I didn't get a chance to ask anything else as Betty rushed ahead for gym. She was always one of the first to arrive for some reason.

She was probably talking about Brittany. Popular girl talking to the new girl only happened when they wanted something. In my limited experience. Aunt Luke's sitcoms were probably more accurate. All high-schools are different and all perspectives unique.

Well I already wasn't taking up the offer so it shouldn't matter to much.

Everyone had learned there lesson from last class. I was left alone and able to get more work done than I had expected.

After gym I decided to just keep my stuff with me instead of dropping it off in my locker. A change of pattern for me, but it wasn't like I couldn't carry everything.

Finally, finally Friday. The last day of being grounded. Once school was over I would be free to spend the weekend however I wished.

As was becoming normal people avoided me on,my way to my locker. Unfortunately that didn't last.

"So here's the new girl. Abby was it?"

I ignored him.

"You really embarrassed me with that whole speech in gym class."

"Really? Who are you again? I don't remember."

"What!"

"Also could you step back a moment, I'd like to open my locker."

He just stared at me like I was some kind of mad woman.

"Alright but don't say I didn't warn you," I said stepping out of the way as I opened the door to my locker. A flood of ping pong balls enveloped my would be interrogator. Then a water balloon came flying out to strike him in the face.

"You okay?" I asked. He had fallen on the floor.

"You knew that would happen didn't you? You're some kind of witch!"

"Wow throwing medieval insults now are we? I'm an intelligent woman so I must be a witch. Of course I knew they were there. I could see a multitude of colours through the cracks into my supposedly empty locker."

"Where are you going!?"

"To find some buckets." I said waving him off.

The teacher who eventually came to see what the fuss was about was surprised to see me show up with a trash can. He didn't expect me to want to clean up what ever had happened. From hearing only one side of the story he thought I put them in there some how.

Considering the note on the inside of the locker, something no one had noticed at the time, it didn't look like I did it. Someone was trying to get to the new girl. The note read, "How about some holy water for the devil's daughter."

"Anyone know what this means?"

Either no one knew the answer or everyone was to scared to answer. Hard to tell with the reaction they gave. Nervous head shaking could be because of me or because of the note.

Having dealt with a prank in the morning I was carrying all my books everywhere, I didn't trust the locks at this school anymore. The locker wasn't the only near miss today either

Classes went well even if there were a couple close calls. People barrelling down corridors to narrowly miss running into me. Some careless people almost spilled books onto me. One pie flying at me from out of nowhere, missing my face by inches.

The math teacher was almost as surprised as my English teacher was when I handed in my homework, including what he had assigned yesterday. He was more impressed that I managed to catch up on the concepts without help.

Lunch was surprisingly peaceful with me actually making it to the library without incident.

"Sick? You can't be sick! We need you on Monday to help with the new shipment," one of the librarians said. She was on the phone with someone, after hanging up she spoke to the other librarian, "Oh what'll we do now? The delivery men won't help and all of the other teachers are either busy or can't be bothered to help."

"Could I help?"

"Oh Abby girl, you gave me a bit of a start there. You don't even know what you'd be helping with."

"Sounds like sorting books and packing shelves, exactly what I've been helping with for the past little while."

"Oh no, no. We can do that ourselves, but we're old. We don't have,the strength to bring the crates in."

"Shouldn't the delivery men help with that?"

"Hah not likely."

"They don't like the school,they call it pretentious."

"Well I can help if you need me to. I'm stronger than I look, all those years working on the farm," I said smiling, not letting on to the real reason I was so strong.

It still took some convincing, but they agreed eventually. It helped that the delivery was supposed to happen around lunch.

The rest of the day passed as uneventfully as the morning. A.K.A a lot of close calls where to the point where it felt like the other students were targeting me for some reason. Maybe it had something to do with this whole 'devil's daughter' business.

The end of the day rolled around so I got ready to leave. I hit a snag though, there was a huge crowd outside the school.

I pushed my way through the crowd, complaining the whole time about people randomly stopping in the middle of the road, only to stop and stare like the rest of them.

In front of the school was a tank. There is no other way to describe it. Then again tank was the perfect word for a weapon mounted on a vehicle. The barrel looked oddly familiar though. The vehicle itself was big, bigger than big John. Though I describe it as a tank it did not have treads, instead it had to enormous rear wheels without visible front ones.

It was clearly made by a devisor or gadgeteer. A number of antennae protruded from every available surface. Some were clearly taking readings of the area, while others were meant for in coming and outgoing transmissions. You could see where they added random bits and pieces to every available surface, constantly upgrading the ridiculous machine.

Whoever built it also had a slightly outdated sense of style. The thing was gaudy with an outer layer of gleaming silver chrome covered the chassis. Where there weren't antennae there were gleaming metal spikes. Lights flashed and danced along veins interconnecting various important looking points.

As I stared the door suddenly popped open, and Lorry stepped out.

"Abby get over here. Your Aunt says your punishment's over so the boss wants you working. You gotta catch up on that week you missed."

"You have got to, or you've got to. 'Gotta' is not a word," I said rushing up to the tank.

"Yeah, yeah, keep talking like that and I'll have you giving every vehicle in the fleet a tune up."

"Including this thing? I might not mind," I said rounding the side of the tank and going to the door. The interior was every bit as kitted out as the exterior. The seats had those X-shaped seat belts you see in racing cars. The dashboard was covered in screens and dials, probably related to the array of sensory equipment outside. There were wires hanging everywhere, connecting different devices and disappearing into the walls. Whoever had done the fancy work outside clearly hadn't gotten a say on the interior.

"This old thing? It's a glorified hand-me-down forklift."

Then it clicked, I knew where I had seen the barrel of the cannon before, if on a much smaller scale.

"I might want to work on it anyway. I fixed the other tractor beam."

"Oh no you don't. The other tractor beam was actually broken, this one is in reasonable repair. We don't know what will happen if you try to fix what ain't broke."

"'Fix what isn't broken.'"

"Wow, something's really got you in a huff today. What's the problem? Not making friends?"

"I was, or I thought I was. Then they all started avoiding me yesterday. The ones that tried to keep with me were all pressured away today," I had seen both Lexi and Betty try to come over and talk to me at different points in the day, only to have someone else suddenly grab them and pull them away into a different conversation.

"Did something happen?"

"No they all just started acting weird on Wednesday when they saw my aunt."

"Oh that…"

"You know something, don't you?"

"Eh heh heh… that's between you and your aunt. Maybe we should talk about something else."

"Okay, are you and Sawyer dating?"

"What!?"

"Car."

"What? Oh!" And suddenly we were flying. We didn't crash, lorry just hit a couple of switches and we bounced over the incoming smart car. "For your information no, we are not dating. One he's not my type, two I don't date anyone I work with, and three he has his eyes on someone else."

"Oh that's too bad. Aunt Luke has a crush on him and the only reason she hasn't acted on it is she thought you two were dating."

"… Sawyer has a huge crush on your Aunt."

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking."

"Create a convoluted whacky plan that ends with them admitting there love for each other?"

"No. No, why? Why would we do that? I was thinking we get them in a room together explain the situation and get them to go on a date."

"Ahh but that's no fun…"

"You're the one who got Aunt Luke addicted to sit-coms aren't you…"

Okay so school was bad but it was better than being thrown around by this guy with the tail. That being said I did throw him first. How was I supposed to know the guy with grabby hand on my but was a super villain.

… You're probably wondering how this all started. Not much to tell really.

Saturday started out odd for me anyway, I woke up after Aunt Luke. Lorry wasn't kidding when she said she'd have me giving a tune up to the entire fleet. I had worked late into the night fixing up every minor problem on all of the vehicles.

"Do you want to come grocery shopping with me today?"

"Why does that feel like a loaded question?"

"Probably because I'm going through food more than twice as quickly since I started looking after you."

"So you want me there to carry all of the heavy stuff for you? Sure I'll help."

So that's how I ended up with half of a shopping list at a grocery fight a super villain. I was barely holding on using my paragon abilities.

Just as one of his punches went into the shelves beside up we heard two voices speak at the same time.

"Abby-"

"Bro-"

"-what are you doing?"

I turned to see Aunt Luke standing there with a girl that looked surprisingly like the guy I was fighting. They both had light blond hair, hers was long and bound into a ponytail where his wasn't styled, or brushed. They were both tallish, she was slightly shorter than me where he was slightly taller. They both wore trench coats, dress shirts, and slacks, though she filled hers out more nicely. Possibly most obvious of all they both had tails.

"Defending myself from a lecher," I told Aunt Luke.

"Ew bro that's gross, she's only like 14," she said disgust clear in her voice, "anyway we have to go thanks to the ruckus you cause. You sure you'll be fine grabbing our stuff Ms. Berkins?"

"Of course, it'll be fine. Now go before the other customers get suspicious."

Just like that they were gone. Running through the store over the shelves. Things calmed down after a bit. It was almost like people were used to supervillains over here on the coast. Or it could be that the police showed up, called it a minor incident, took statements, and left. If the no one was hurt and the police didn't seem to bothered why worry.

"Aunt Luke who were they."

"We can discuss that later. Once we are out of the store."

We ended up buying a ridiculous amount of food. Way more than was on the list. The reason was obvious, the 'sister' of the pair said it outright. We were going to deliver their groceries as an apology for me blowing their cover. Okay it probably wasn't quite like that but that is what it felt like.

Aunt Luke's car just didn't seem as interesting after the lifer yesterday. I almost walked past it looking for the ridiculously gaudy Chrome.

"You were asking about those two before, I know them through my work."

"Are you going to tell me what you do to be involved with mutants?"

"Hmm… nope."

"Can I ask them what you do?"

"You can try but they won't tell you. Now come on, we need to get the monkey twins their groceries."

As it turns out they 'monkey twins' weren't to far away. Just a couple of blocks away, waiting for us at a bar.

"Thanks again for doing this for us ms. Berkins, you've been a huge help."

"It was my pleasure. It wasn't just your brother causing the disturbance," Aunt Luke said indicating me.

The female monkey twin gave her brother a meaningful look. When he didn't do anything she stated, "don't you have anything to say to… actually we haven't been introduced."

"Better stick to codenames. I want to keep my niece out of the business."

"I understand completely, it's not the kind of thing you want kids getting into."

"Speaking from personal experience?"

"Yes but we didn't have a choice. Anyway, I'm Monkey See and this is my brother Monkey Do. Who has something to apologize doesn't he?"

"Oh right. I'm sorry for groping you in the store. I was reaching for something with my tail and-"

His sister hit him up side the head midway through his excuse, "Don't try to excuse yourself for being perverted. Learn some self control. I didn't catch your name dear."

"I'm… uh," I started then looked over at Aunt Luke.

"Stick to your codename dear. It is safer that way."

"Fixer. I'm Fixer."

The twins stared at us for a moment before Monkey See asked, "Are you sure you're trying to keep her out of the business? 'Cause with a name like that…"

"She's a tech head."

"Oh that makes sense."

"Come on we'll buy you lunch," Monkey Do said indicating the bar.

Nothing else really interesting happened during the weekend until Lorry and Sawyer showed up so we could all talk.

"Cutting straight to the point, Sawyer you like my Aunt, and Aunt Luke you like Sawyer."

"Wah! That wasn't part of the plan!"

"The plan was convoluted. Lorry is not dating Sawyer, by the way."

"What am I supposed to do now?"

"You got them in a room together."

"Yeah but I have a table reserved at a fancy restaurant for their date."

"That's fine, if they decide to go on a date this soon after finding out that they like each other they can still use the reservation."

"If I may ask, what were you planning in the first place?" Sawyer questioned.

"I was going to get you guys to be closer then set you up on a blind date."

"What were you going to do in the quite likely scenario that one or both of us refused to go on a blind date?" Aunt Luke followed up.

"Meh, I'm pretty sure that either Abby or I could find a girl for her to go out with instead."

"What? Why would I want to go out with a girl?"

"Hmm? I'm sorry I thought you were gay. Did I read that wrong," Lorry said with clear surprise. Everyone else in the room was nodding along with her assessment of my sexuality.

"Really? Why does everyone jump to that conclusion?"

"Has it lead to problems at school?" Aunt Luke asked.

"No. People would have to be around me for more than a minute to be able to judge me."

"Yeah, what is affecting her school is your reputation Tia," Lorry said, receiving a hard look from Aunt Luke, "I haven't said anything, but you might want to tell her the whole story before she hears the wrong side of it."

"I wanted to keep her safe from my work."

"Yes but not telling her could put her in danger," Sawyer said stepping into the conversation.

"Okay, sit down Abby this is going to take a while."

It wasn't as simple as me sitting down of course. Everyone sat down and got comfortable, Lorry even grabbed snacks. Then Aunt Luke was ready to start.

"I moved here for a job," she started, "a nice cushy office job at a firm that had scouted me during college. I was going to be auditing smaller businesses making sure they weren't being embezzled by there employees or actual accountants."

"Wait your not a lawyer?"

"What? No, of course not. What ever gave you that idea?"

"All of the legalese you used on the MCO."

"That's just… something I had to familiarize myself with. Do you want to here the story or not?"

"I want to here it."

"Good. Being an auditor wasn't my dream job, I don't imagine anyone wakes up one day going, 'I know, I'll spend the rest of my life carefully inspecting accounting records to find subtle mistakes that lead to thousands of dollars being stolen.' It was a satisfying job that I enjoyed to some extent. I kept moving up the ranks, I hit a bit of a glass ceilings of course, the industry is run by old white males. I was high enough to pick and choose my clients though. I had ones that were standard, ones that I had been auditing for years, but I also made sure to take one new clients.

"I really wish I could say that this was a new client, but it wasn't. This was a client I had been in charge of for years. Everything seemed in order, the business looked fine and as far as I was concerned everything was above the board. I was on a first name basis with the CEO. That in itself was nothing special, I'd met plenty of CEOs and CFOs, the company's weren't big enough to have much buffer room between the boss and the accounting room floor. He was a nice guy too, perfectly polite, impressed by my skill. He asked me out for drinks once, needed someone to talk to. I had to turn him down, mixing business and pleasure and all that, but it was a nice offer.

"Then a few weeks later his business hit the news. Turns out what he wanted to talk about might have been the fact that he was a freaking supervillain. The whole business was a front for his operation. Our company came under fire and they needed a scapegoat. So why not that upstart girl who had been his go to auditor for years. 'She must have been in on it,' they said, 'who wouldn't notice a the illegal activity on the books.' No one pointed out that the books were in code and looked to be perfectly legal even to the police.

"I was out of a job within the week. They are supposed to give two weeks notice but they locked me out of the building the day after they kicked me out of my office. No one would take a job application from me either. I had enough to get by for a few of months, but nearing the end of that period I was getting desperate. Especially when my landlord threatened to evict me."

"Not me. She hadn't moved here yet," Sawyer added.

"Yes I couldn't afford this place yet. Just as all hope was lost I got a phone call. Turns out the supervillain CEO had heard about my plight and got in touch with some friends. Those friends were the Syndicate, a vast organization of supervillains who looked out for each other.

"They made me an offer, 'Work for us. Many super villain organizations need auditing.' At first I wanted to refuse, who would willingly hand their soul over to the devil just for a little money. I could find other work. Then they told me the pay, I'm not saying you should be a supervillain but don't ever believe someone who tells you crime doesn't pay.

"It wasn't as simple as just showing up to a new office building though. I'd be working as an independent contractor outside the syndicate organization, it seems that people don't always trust the internal auditors. Something about 'not paying a bunch of crooks to rob me twice.' They helped me set up a contract. Surprisingly the smear campaign that the company I had worked for set up worked for me now. Word had spread that I was good at what I do and discreet enough to keep quiet. In fact I already had a few prospective clients.

"The smear campaign had some other unexpected consequences. The syndicate has a registry of supervillain names, which is helpful for those that can't go to the MCO. I was put into the registry as I already had a name, even if I didn't choose it myself. I hold the rather dubious title of the Devil's Bookkeeper."

"Wow thats so cool," I said, "wait how many connections do I have to the super hero/villain scene?"

"Not as far as we know. Unless you've got some back home you haven't told us about," Lorry said looking at both Sawyer and Aunt Luke who were shaking their heads.