

The Meta Corps:

Dream of the Youth

By Toby Gard

Copyright 2011 by Toby Gard

Smashwords Edition

****

Chapter 1

August 6th, 2010

When he noticed that a hero was chasing them, Sergei Slade knew that he would have to execute Plan B as his massive tank leapt from the 405 freeway and into the parking lot of the Costa Mesa Mall; a dead end. Random shoppers either ran or flew out of Slades way as he left a trail of crushed vehicles in his wake. He made a hard one-eighty to face the freeway, cars piling up as if the tank were a hand running through sand. Slade paused to regain his bearings and held his bag filled with his stolen loot. He smiled and thought of the potential that could work in his favor stemmed from a pair of world-renowned gauntlets.

Slade looked out of the viewport of his tank and saw a yellow, meta-generated force field cover the mall's parking lot. Colorful meta humans, homo validus, born with fantastic powers hovered near the organic blockade. Although unqualified to be heroes, the metas were raised to embrace their inner good, and Slade was their target.

Slade laughed at them. The tank sat dormant.

"In a world of super men, only the privileged can fight." He said.

"Captain Redbird has penetrated the barriers, sir." Slade's wife, Liz said.

Slade nodded and looked up.

"I see him. A red spandex dot with a leather jacket isn't that easy to miss..."

Slade laughed at the hero floating fifty feet away from them. He bit down on his cigar, lowered his shades, and pressed down on the bullhorn button.

"Captain Redbird; the hero with all density and intensity, but no ingenuity. I'm surprised that your power over your own mass doesn't refer to your stupidity as well." Slade's voice echoed off the buildings like sandpaper.

Redbird curled his lip, his greasy hair caught on his unshaven whiskers.

"Said the military brat holed up in his tank..." He growled.

Redbird thought of the piece of the stolen knife in his utility belt. He had half of the hilt and Slade had the rest. Redbird pointed at the tank; his heroism bleeding through by his exaggerated pose.

"Your loot belongs in a museum, Slade! The Blade of the Amber Talon is worth nothing to you!"

Slade looked at Liz with a knowing smile.

"He thinks that that's all we've got."

Liz nodded.

"I say that we let him. What harm is there if we each fight for the whole of the blade? Just think too, if we win and escape, than the EnWol gauntlets should soon make a profitable hmm.... splat on society." She said.

Slade laughed and aimed his canon at the obnoxious hero. Redbird narrowed his eyes and swore. He swooped up into the air and Slade's grin broadened. He snapped and held both the control wheel and his sack of stolen treasures in hand.

"This is where the fun begins. Dive you galoot!"

Redbird looked down at the tank. The front was coughing up bursts of black smoke, presumably damaged when it exploded into the parking lot. Redbird gave a half smile. He flexed his hands from his perch in the air; calling any available resources to help him increase his density. He aimed for the damaged portion of the tank, and dove with a scream. Slade stood up in his seat.

"Yes, come on!"

Liz made adjustments on her console.

"The tank is ready, the weak point is set. Keep aiming at him."

Slade ground his teeth.

"Brace for impact, Liz."

Redbird slammed his shoulder, full force, into the tank. The rear lifted high into the air with Redbird acting as a pivot. Slade laughed like a madman as the tank flipped into the air.

"We have a hit! Redbird is right on target!" Liz yelled. She could feel gravity tugging her to her side, and then upward and back.

"May Gaia bless America, honey!" Slade whooped and flipped a switch under glass. Previously unlit buttons and switches lit up on Liz's console.

The tank tumbled across the parking lot toward the metas and the main road. The people behind the force field skittered back a few steps as the tumbling beast rushed at them. Redbird chased after it, looking for a place to grab and pull it back. He closed in and grabbed hold of an inch thick bar. It instantly tore off and wrapped around his fist like the triangle of a binder clip. The tank came at rest on top of several cars. The heroes arms burned from the weight of the tank. He threw the triangular rod and swore again.

Liz pressed a button as the top of the tank hit the ground.

"Initializing alternate combat mode bravo-uniform-lima now! Sergei go!"

Slade nodded and pulled his portion of the ceremonial orange blade from the sack and jammed it into a slot.

The roof of the tank parted down the middle. Redbird sneered as a sphere emerged from the remains of the tank. It did not seem to have a visible method of propulsion, and the top hemisphere was completely transparent. Slade and Liz peered out from the top.

"It's a funny story, Captain Redbird," Slade said from his megaphone. "The mechanism to release this puppy was caught after a ferocious battle from before I was able to get my hands on it. Yes, you destroyed the main motor, but that can be kludged back together. This baby though, she has the real guns on her. How, you ask? Well, weapons that can cut diamonds."

The sphere hummed as it produced sets of lasers with a brilliant orange glow. Slade took aim at Captain Redbird, itching to use his new toys.

"Now son, if you don't want to be turned into a super dense oil stain on the lot, I would surrender your piece of the blade to me. Got that? If you don't do it, well, I may have to hurt you." Slade said.

Redbird sneered and posed to defend himself. "This keeps getting better and better..."

"I wonder what that is..." Lora Summers stepped over to the railing of the covered bridge between malls and squinted. A yellow dome encapsulated the southeast region of the mall. She looked down to the street below and saw several police cars and flying meta humans speeding toward the scene. Some of the fliers looked like they were made of fire.

Random patches of the dome glowed brighter as it started to shrink. Lora shielded her eyes and put her bags down. She made a nervous laugh.

"Oh boy, that doesn't look very good at all."

The civilians and eager mall patrons looked on as Slade chased Redbird through the parking lot. Those that could practice their meta powers floated outside the force field, itching to help. The others that were able to produce force fields worked to keep the battle in and the innocents out.

Redbird kept an eye on the orb, looking for an opening. He ducked behind a large wreckage of cars, increased his density for a moment and ran at the floating orb from the other end. He felt his footsteps imprint the asphalt and destroy the cars in his way. Slade giggled as he aimed for Redbird, the assisted system promising an accurate shot every time.

Redbird leapt up and he concentrated on his fists, giving them enough mass to make holes in solid iron. Slade moved his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. He saw the whites of Redbirds eyes.

"Die you scarlet snake!"

Slade got a direct hit on Redbird's chest. The top of his costume disintegrated and he fell. He rolled on impact and sprang to his feet. He glanced up at the globe and decided to run around in zigzags to make himself a harder target. He could not get hit again.

Slade was hysterical. He was guffawing, slapping his knees and he appeared to have trouble breathing because of it. Liz stared at him. She cocked her eyebrow and lowered her half moon glasses. Slade turned to her and pointed at the parking lot.

"How did you like that? That sucker actually works!" He clapped and laughed again.

Liz took a moment to glare at him.

"Are you alright?" She asked finally.

Slade caught sight of Redbird dashing away and gave chase.

"Never better, why?" Slade growled.

"You are not quite as... animated. Remember that we don't want to kill him, we just need the remaining part of the hilt."

Slade snorted.

"I'm going to maim him. If he dies than that's his problem."

Redbird ran the parameter of the dome as Slade tried to destroy him. Liz caught a flash in the corner of her eye and glanced up at the force field. She was sure that something was happening. She focused her eyes, unsure of whether she was seeing things or not. She gasped.

"Sergei, the shield is shrinking."

Slade looked up without a word and nodded after a moments study.

"This means two different things," Liz continued. "The metas that are projecting the field are losing their power, or they are compressing it to trap us. My guess is on the latter."

Slade giggled again. He felt his ego grow and it fueled an idea. He took his sights off Redbird and pointed up at the force field.

"Sergei, what are you doing? The force field is a mental projection. The attack may put the metas into permanent shock."

Slade laughed again and set the laser to its full power.

"Brain freeze!"

The lasers combined into concentrated beam and the shield quivered.

The force field metas were in agony. Blood gushed from their noses and ears as they screamed and fell. The mental wall faded away. Slade clapped and hollered. Liz felt a pang of guilt and fear in her stomach.

"Sergei, we are not terrorists." She said. "What would possess you to...?" Liz trailed off. The mass of meta civilians started to swarm the floating orb, including Captain Redbird.

"Hey! What is this?" Slade yelled.

Several angry faces and all colors of the rainbow blocked out the light. Slade both fired his lasers in random directions and rolled to each side to dislodge the metas.

"Unlicensed punks! Get off!"

Liz stood up.

"Sergei, go to plan¬—"

Liz gasped. The orb trembled and sent her to the floor. Slade growled and removed the Blade of The Amber Talon from its slot and hid it on a holster on his leg. The floor glowed a bright orange.

"Elizabeth! Defensive maneuver Tango-Alpha—"

The floating orb exploded.

Lora watched with a terrified fascination as an orange beam of light sliced through the west end of the mall as if it were a sponge cake. The beam vanished and the building moaned as the new top half slid toward the main road. A split second after the beam vanished, Lora started to run towards the ruined building.

An explosion rocked the south end of the mall. Lora could not help but turn to it and scream. She saw that something was rushing at her, but she did not have time to react. The debris bounced off Lora's chest and she fell on her butt. Lora grabbed the debris on instinct. The bridge dipped a little to the west and Lora stood up, unaware that she was cradling the two cylinders that had hit her.

"Gaia's Gadflies!"

Lora looked around to see if she could lend any assistance, and saw a police officer flying toward her.

"Ma'am, let's go!"

The meta officer scooped Lora into his arms and flew up the incline back to the mall's east side.

Lora held her hand out.

"Wait! Cindy! My friend is in there! I'm her only ride back."

"Is your friend a meta?"

Lora nodded.

"Yes, but—"

"Then it's a good thing that she can fly. The west side is no longer safe; we can't go in and get her on our own."

The top half of the mall slid far enough off its base, crumpling the bridge. Lora shrieked and the officer flew out from under the covered ceiling.

As they ascended, Lora watched as the sea dragon inspired bridge crumpled onto the parking garage and palm tree laden Bear Street below. Hundreds of unharmed meta heroes vacated the new opening of the base like a cartoonish swarm of bees in a hive. Lora hoped that her elastic meta human friend, Cindy Richards, had been one of them.
Chapter 2

"Like, great cheese and macaroni, Lora! That was totally intense!" Cindy Richards walked back and forth across the living room carpet. Lora sat on the sofa hugging both her legs and a pillow, bouncing back from her unique shopping experience.

Lora's parents had finished talking to her about the attacks at the mall. Her father, Louie, had said that most go through their lives with a two percent chance of being in an attack like that. Her mother, Serena, said that the safety of those involved, including Lora's, was one of the more important things.

Cindy though could barely contain her excitement over the occurrence and the heroic possibilities.

"I mean, like, how many times does that even happen in SoCal? We got a real super villain attack! It's, like, wow!"

A noise of wet disgust came from the other end of the sofa. Lora's sister, Sarra sat with her laptop, shaking her head.

"Okay Ms. Hero-wanna-be Cindy, look, are you so caught up in the moment that you didn't think about who could have died? The internet says that that explosion killed fourteen people, six metas, and Crystal Court's slide into the street killed another twenty-five. This is after Slade and his wife got away, somehow unharmed, with Redbird babbling on about him.

You can fly and stretch, did you use those powers to save anyone? Better yet, was it a good idea to bother since the bad guy's explosion was caused by the swarm of metas? Most of which could probably conjure up some fire, I might add. When are too many goody-goods too much?"

Cindy frowned.

"Okay, like, that sounds like something a bad guy would say, and I'm not going to let a bad guy with purple hair bring me down." Cindy said her valley girl accent in full force.

Sarra looked up at her golden brown hair creeping into her eyes. She curled her lip.

"My hair hasn't been purple for months now. I stopped dyeing it when I accepted that I wasn't gifted enough to have your platinum shade."

Cindy crossed her arms and looked down at Sarra. Lora stood up and grabbed Cindy's shoulder.

"Hey you guys, come on. Please be good, please? I just had a really scary experience, and I don't need any more stress. I don't want to remember this on top of that in our last few weeks together."

Cindy nodded.

"Yeah, take Lora's advice; she's the oldest, after all."

Sarra closed her eyes. She felt her blood boil with the reminder that she was the youngest of the duo. Sarra forced herself to remain calm; it was hard to be reserved sometimes.

"By a minute or so, sounds pretty typical for fraternal twins." She said through her teeth. Sarra inhaled and cleared her throat.

"Okay fine, I can see that age proclamation and B-F-F's forever is more important than Lora's harrowing experience. Of course, her bouncing back from something like that within minutes is her trademark."

Lora clasped her hands together.

"Our move to San Francisco is a big thing, Sarra. I know that you have friends here that you're going to miss." Lora drew her honey blonde hair out of her face.

Sarra smirked.

"I have enemies that I will be glad to get away from."

Cindy pointed at Sarra.

"Okay, dressed like that, I'm sure you have a bunch."

Sarra sneered. Her shirt said advised to "stop fucking arguing and reboot."

"Like, grow up, Sarra. Don't dress like you're fifteen or something."

Sarra looked at her sister, who nodded in agreement with Cindy.

"That shirt is a little rude, Sarra."

Sarra scoffed.

"Yeah, like a fifteen year old would know what this means." Sarra pointed at Cindy. "Know what, look at you. You always wear the same kind of spandex out like you're obsessed with the gym. Do you think you're Xu Cougar?" She asked.

Cindy wore an athletic short-sleeved top and running capris. She tugged the bottom hem of her shirt.

"What's wrong with my clothes? It's not like; some cotton will stretch with me."

Cindy rocked her leg forward and threw it up across her back. It stretched over her shoulder and she caught her own ankle before it hit her chest.

Sarra rolled her eyes and stood up.

"Yeah, having the ability to touch your own toes is useful, I gotta say."

Lora frowned. She hated how Cindy and her sister clashed. She started to make the move to break them up.

"You guys, give it a rest. Sarra, why don't you go get some soda."

Sarra snorted.

"Don't cast me away like your slave." She said and headed for the kitchen.

Cindy gurgled with disgust.

"She's like, a total brat Lora."

Lora helped Cindy to put her leg down without it going out from under her.

"You need to get to know her, that's all." Lora said.

Cindy nodded and pulled on her hand so that it would stretch a little.

"I have and I totally think that Sarra might work to get me tested in a lab, or something über sinister like that."

Lora looked up to think.

"No, that's silly. Sarra wouldn't do that. Lots of people can stretch."

Cindy shrugged.

"We aren't exactly two peas in a pod, Lora. More like, she's a sour grape, and I'm... I'm, like, some kind of taffy, or something" She sneered and twirled her short hair in her finger.

Lora laughed.

"Cindy, that's picture-perfect." She said.

Cindy smiled.

"Really? Cool! I guess that you would be, umm... a strawberry then."

"Oh, yummy, I love strawberries."

Sarra came out from the kitchen and threw a can underhand at Lora.

"Hey Pinkie, heads up."

The can of soda flew at Lora. She flinched and got ready to catch it, when Cindy came out and did it for her.

"Okay, that wasn't nice, you could have, like, hurt her."

Sarra scoffed and sat back down.

"What-ever!" she said to mock Cindy. She popped open her can and absorbed herself in her laptop.

Cindy gave Lora the soda.

"Freak on a leash, I'll be glad to get away from her." Cindy croaked. "Hey, I'm glad that you and your parents, at least, are finding better things with this move."

Lora smiled.

"Daddy got a promotion to head art director at Maze of Trees. I'm so happy for him, Cindy."

"He's going to help create such fine video games like 'Who's Afraid of the Troll?'"

Lora frowned and looked away.

"I don't know that one, Cindy. Was Dad involved with that one?"

Cindy stuck out her tongue and made a quick raspberry.

"It stunk, like, don't worry about it."

She didn't.

"Well, Orange County won't be the same without my Lora Summers." Cindy said. She stretched her arms out to give Lora a hug. Lora did the same with her non-elastic body.

"Nor will San Francisco feel complete without my Cindy Richards."

Sarra looked up at them and smirked.

"Stretch and Sugar was filmed on location in front of a live studio audience."

Lora broke off from the hug.

"Sarra, would you please stop it? We had a rough day today. Do you know how rude—"

"Lora, shut up. It's how I cope with things." Sarra said without looking at her.

Lora flinched.

Cindy watched the two sisters, Lora deflating and then springing back up and Sarra showing her patented apathy with horrible posture.

Cindy pointed at them.

"I may be, like, a year younger than the both of you combined, but even I know that that was wrong."

Sarra glanced at Cindy.

"Combined?"

"Lora, why do you always do what people tell you to do? Especially from her?"

Lora's eyebrows knitted together and then she giggled.

"What do you mean, Cindy? I like to help out."

Cindy shook her head, her short bobbed hair hitting her face.

"I mean that you're... you're a bit too nice, you know?" Cindy continued.

Lora was confused. She cocked her head as Sarra chimed in.

"Oh, you mean like you're too much of an idiot and I'm too proud, stoic, and mean?"

Cindy pointed at her.

"Like, yeah! You're right for once, Sarra."

Sarra stifled a laugh. Cindy frowned, a little confused, and then her face darkened.

"Hey, wait a second, you..."

Lora held her hand out.

"Hey Cindy, let it go. What do you mean I'm too nice?"

Cindy frowned and sat back down, glaring at Sarra.

"As I was saying, it's not that that's a bad thing that you're nice, Lora, but I noticed that it's gotten you in trouble before. Remember how you dressed up as Sarra that one time and she showed you where Kevin Sherman lived?"

Cindy glanced at Sarra and her widening smile.

"I do remember that." Lora clicked her tongue and shook her head. "The poor boy was promised some... umm..." Lora couldn't help but giggle. She waved her hand. "...you know, of that, but... he was too shy to go through with it."

"So, like, why did you agree to it? Why did you let Sarra take advantage of you for that long?" Cindy asked.

Lora's giggling dwindled and she bit her lower lip.

"Well, she's my sister, and I just wanted to help her out. Dressing up like her sounded really fun too."

Cindy nodded.

"Well, what if Sarra had lead you to, say a serial rapist—"

Both sisters expressed their protest at the last word; both also defended Sarra. Cindy held her hands up, her voice rising to be heard.

"I never said that Sarra had or would, dudes, but I meant that—" A pillow struck Cindy's face. Lora looked at her grumpy sister.

"I'm sorry Sarra." Lora said. Sarra made a rough grunt.

"See," Cindy started and tossed the throw pillow. "Why apologize on her behalf?" She looked up in thought.

"Okay, I guess that was justified, I kinda crossed the line, but still. My point was that... Lora, I love you, but you know, even the clean cut civilian housewife with a flared dress and like, that creepy smile listens to their gut. At least I think they do, they might be zombies at that point, but never mind."

"Eww." Lora said.

Cindy waved her hand.

"Look, it's good to be nice, but don't be overly generous and do weird requests. Find the mama bear in you and learn to say no. Be more assertive! You know, instead of going yes-yes-yes all the time."

Lora's head slumped and she saw the design on her shirt; a family of cartoon cats was walking on a terrain-turned-caption that proclaimed "Whatever It Takes." Lora could imagine a "Say Yes" preceding a comma floating in the pink void above the cats. She sighed and sat down in a seat.

"You know your subservience might be the reason why none of you two have ever had steady boyfriends." Sarra said.

Lora looked at her sister, puzzled.

Cindy scowled.

"Hey, look who's talking, chica. Like, I'm rubber and you're glue. Why don't you tell the audience where your boyfriend is?"

Lora laughed at the throwback. She gasped and stood up.

"That reminds me; I left something in the car from that event, just a second." She left the house and went out to her yellow Bjalla.

Lora had thrown the chrome cylinders in the back seat in her haste to get home, and then forgot about them. She opened the car door and pulled the odd things from the back seat to study them. They were a pair of gauntlets. They collapsed like foam and were as light as, but they gleamed like metal.

Lora marveled at the odd construction as she closed her car up and trotted back to the house. Sarra made a quip as Lora walked back in.

"You know Cindy," she croaked. Cindy smiled at Lora and they waved at each other.

"I think that it should be known that I don't look like some kind of athletic meta hero that tells kids to eat their vegetables. All while collecting green of a different kind."

Cindy frowned.

"Oh no..." Lora moaned. Sarra smiled with mocking cheer.

"Hey there kiddos, I'm C-Girl, and I have the power to hand you my celery sticks! Uh-oh! Who's that I hear? Why, it's the dastardly no-good nick, Professor Lazy Bones!"

Cindy's eyebrows shot up. Sarra tried not to laugh as Cindy approached her.

"He's come to take away our youths abilities to play hearty sports like basketball, participate in invigorating activities such as running on a track field, as well as—"

Cindy punched her square in the shoulder and left. Lora gasped and covered her mouth while Sarra laughed and hissed over the pain. Cindy stomped into the bathroom to get away and calm down.

"Are you alright, Sarra? Do you need ice?" Lora asked.

Sarra's laughter was displaced by her moaning. She rubbed her arm.

"Crap, she can pack a punch. My arm's going to be black."

"I think that just because you can't get along doesn't mean that you two can't keep quiet." Lora said.

Sarra snorted.

"Blah blah blah... Let's all be friends, and this way we'll be fine..." Sarra slumped on the couch.

Lora nodded and looked at the gauntlets. She undid the hinges to put them on.

"Yep. I just wish that I knew how to enforce that a little bit better."

Lora put the other one on and walked out in front of Sarra, who did not care to look up.

"Sarra, these bracelets, well, they found me today and I was wondering if you knew about... them..."

The inner side of the gauntlets glowed and Lora's wrists burned. She shrieked and tried to remove them. Sarra stood up.

"What in the..." Sarra trailed off as her sister fainted.

Lora's wrists rose above her head and brought her body into the air. A white light erupted from the gauntlets and Sarra turned away to shield her eyes. She bumped into the arm of the sofa and fell behind it. An inhuman whine came from Lora; it's pitch escalating.

Sarra looked back and saw both her parents, Louie and Serena, with Cindy behind, rush out to see what was going on. All four of them were too stunned and confused to know how to act.

"What happened?" Serena yelled.

Cindy looked up at Lora's arms and realized what was going on. She started to smile. From Lora's shrill whine came several deep and pulsating tones.

Lora woke up with a gasp and tried to regain control. She felt the gauntlets squeeze her wrists so hard that they were going numb. Bouts of electricity ran up and down her body to replace her clothes with something new. The whine peaked before letting out a larger burst of sound that traveled the house and shattered all the windows.

Lora's odd torment disappeared as suddenly as it had come, leaving telltale changes. She hovered in the air wearing a two-tone one-piece suit. The bodice and the top part of the short sleeves, elbow length gloves, and pants were pink, while the rest of the sleeves and wide belt were yellow. Along with the suit, there was a pair of flat-heeled pink boots with yellow soles and trim. Her hair developed pink streaks and a matching pink hair band. Lora's former clothing was in a pile under her feet.

On the exact instant that Lora had regained control, she worked to rip the gauntlets from her arms. Cindy jumped up.

"Lora wait!"

Her arms stretched like water and wrapped themselves around Lora. A panic-stricken Lora looked back at a grinning Cindy and her confused family. She let her breath out with sharp mewls.

"What in the name of a horrible void is going on?" Sarra said.

Lora nodded and looked to Cindy for an answer. Cindy carefully released her grip and whispered.

"Are those gauntlets the things that you left in the car?"

Lora nodded furiously. Cindy laughed.

"Coolness! Okay, you know how I said all that stuff about saying no to weird things? Ignore it! Know why?" Cindy's voice could not contain itself.

Lora made such a slight jerk of her head that it may have been a shiver. Cindy held her rounded arms out, double her own height, to calm Lora.

"I don't know how you got them from the malls freak out, but those..." Cindy squealed and pointed at Lora's arms. Lora looked at her new accessories.

"Those are the Gauntlets of the EnWol! You're a hero!" Cindy said. She retracted her arms to hold her fists to her chin, and jumped up and down with a squeal. Lora held her head and noticed that she was hovering in midair.

She looked back at Cindy.

"Huh?"

Louie stepped up, his gravely surfer voice strained to its limit.

"Wait, wait, my little girl was caught in a villains trap and is now a meta? Was there some radiation involved in that blast?"

"I wanna be a meta..." Sarra mumbled.

Cindy put her hands on her hips.

"Like, no, I'm a meta. I'm the one with the insensitivity to pain and a vicious heart with a flying, stretching body. I'd be one sick puppy without my elasticity too. Lora's an EnWol now, a..." Cindy searched her mind. "She's a Pink Lemon, as Florence Sanders was first designated."

Louie and Serena exchanged glances.

"Lora's a liquefied flying powerhouse?" Serena asked.

Cindy nodded.

"Of course! Awesome huh? What do you think, Lora?"

Lora was puzzled. She dropped to the floor, tugged on her gloves then looked at the windows with a frown.

Louie followed Lora's gaze and noticed the shattered windows for the first time. His face turned red and he swore as he went to inspect the damage. Lora looked at her flabbergasted mother for a moment and then at the floor. She didn't know the first thing about metas or half of the margin that became heroes. She knew about the EnWol and the Meta Corps branches in the back of her mind, how some people could fly, stretch their bodies, or control some elements, all for good or bad, but not much else.

Lora held her hands up at shoulder length.

"Umm, Cindy?"

Cindy took a step with a wide grin.

"Yes, Pink Lemon?"

Lora looked at her with a puzzled expression and chuckled nervously.

"Oh boy, how do I say this?" She held her chin and then looked at her glove. "Ooo, that feels weird. Okay, I am very grateful that our evolution has given us the mutation and opportunity to become heroes if we want to, but..."

Cindy laughed.

"Um, hello, Lora. EnWol aren't meta, duh."

Lora nodded and touched Cindy's shoulder.

"Oh, I know that, but... well, since I don't have a mutation gene like you do, Cindy, I haven't really concerned myself with it..."

Cindy scoffed.

"Well, Peach, I'm a meta; you concern yourself with me."

"No, Cindy. Well..."

Lora threw her arms to her side and sighed.

"Cindy, why?"

Cindy laughed.

"Why? What do you mean by why? This is the..."

Cindy's smile faded and she recalled seeing the life changing strain of being EnWol. Lora had an idea of what was being presented to her, but she was unsure of the changes at hand. Cindy frowned and picked at Lora's elastic costume.

"Umm...like, if life takes a dump on you, than you learn how to deal with it, right?"

Lora nodded.

"Yep, I guess. If life hands you lemons, you make pink lemonade?" She asked.

Cindy laughed and pointed at Lora.

"Exactly! Yes! So why not take this opportunity to like, totally step up your game and make a difference in this world as a hero. No one so far has given up the chance to be EnWol, you know."

Lora frowned and looked at her parents. Serena shook her head and Louie was too preoccupied with the glass and his temper.

"I don't know, Cindy... Thinking about being thrown into a different world is exhausting."

Cindy took Lora's shoulders.

"I've been working on it, making a name for myself and all. A hero in training could help the newbie, right?"

Lora gave a small smile.

"This is a teensy bit too confusing."

Cindy bumped Lora's shoulder with her fist.

"Hey, it won't be that bad. You might even meet some kind of super hunk. Wouldn't that be something?" Cindy said.

Lora made a genuinely happy smile for the first time since she put the gauntlets on. She took her hair in her hand and twirled it, basking in her own romantic thoughts. Cindy made a sly grin.

"Hey, I know that look."

Except for a slight flush of her cheeks, Lora did not react.

Sarra walked up.

"Hold on, hold on. The Antiquity Channel has said that the EnWol usually put the bracelets on and they immediately turn into goo." Sarra poked her sister. "Lora is still solid," she grabbed Lora's wrist, "and she still has a pulse. Her heart should be gone."

Lora's dreamy look fell and she paled.

"Gone?" She squeaked.

Cindy nodded.

"Hey, yeah, I noticed that. I wonder what's up."

Lora frowned.

"Why do I need to change into goo, Cindy? Sarra? Whomever? That's... kinda yucky."

Sarra motioned toward Cindy.

"I don't know, but Ms. Hero Morph here should. Tell us."

Cindy sneered and looked back to Lora.

"Umm, okay, so the EnWol need to turn to goo to be able to stretch so that they don't get hurt, right?"

Lora nodded. Cindy swept an extending arm out.

"Well, they're all like that. It's a staple power for them; it just needs to happen and stuff."

"You're just stretchy though, Cindy, you can't get hurt like that either way." Sarra said.

Cindy shrugged.

"I could get hurt if I couldn't stretch; I just wouldn't feel it. I would bet that stretching normally would hurt like a salty snail though."

Lora nodded.

"That sounds, right, Cindy. I remember how sick you got when your appendix burst."

Cindy held her stomach.

"Oh, for sure, Lora. That's about as bad as it got. I've totally been sick to my stomach before, but that was really friggin bad."

Lora nodded and looked back at her mother. Serena looked like she was nursing an oncoming headache. Lora dropped to her feet, unsure of how she knew how to stop hovering, and walked over to her mother.

"What do you think of this, Mom? This is, well, pretty dazzling and I'll do my best, but..." Lora asked. She twirled her hair in her finger while slowly grinding her left set of toes on the linoleum.

Serena sighed; she felt her developing migraine worsen.

"Lora, you just turned twenty one. That's technically an adult, so it's your choice. You're a good kid and I'll be pleased with you no matter what you choose to do.

That was a good word that you used: dazzled. I am dazzled by the malls destruction, how you could have been killed; then this hero biz and the windows. Some things are too much, baby and I'm glad that you can keep sane while it happens."

Lora nodded with a smile and thanked her mother. Cindy stretched her arm and clamped her hand on Lora's shoulder.

"Lora, this is a risky business. You might hurt someone; or someone might hurt you if you don't turn stretchy real quick. But think of all the good that you could do for mankind! The first Pink Lemon, Florence Sanders, wearing those very gauntlets opened the door for acceptance with those powers.

Hey, before Florence showed up to help stop Hitler, metas either kept to themselves or the people around them made sure that they kept to themselves. Now they're all over the place because Florence proved that metas are people too. Now they're out in the open, telling everyone about their abilities and pushing an understanding!"

Cindy eyed Sarra.

"Everyone they can trust, anyway." She turned back to Lora and stretched her neck a little. "Like, I think that these are the same gauntlets, they kinda alternate between partners, if I'm right."

Sarra rolled her eyes and her reserve of sarcasm bubbled.

"O fair sis', didn't this meta tell you to refuse weird prospects, to just say no, regardless of it being redacted? Surely this asset was not forgotten in the commotion." She said.

Cindy sneered at Sarra.

"This is, like hardly weird, you idiot!"

Lora got between her friend and her sister.

"You guys please don't start! Please?"

Sarra rolled her eyes with a sigh and walked away. Cindy smiled and lightly backhanded Lora's shoulder.

"Well, you vanquished your first evil, Lora, how did it feel? Wanna do some more?"

Lora looked at the hopeful Cindy; seeing her heart fluttering at the prospect. Lora smiled.

"Would you be able to help me out, Cindy? You know more than I do."

Cindy's smile faded with a sigh.

"I wish that I could. Meta heroes need to have finished high school. I'm barely seventeen, so I have another year to go, a year and a half at the most. "

Lora stuck out her lower lip in a pout.

"Do you still want to do this though?" Cindy asked.

Lora nodded and smiled.

"Well, sure! It sounds like a lot of fun anyway."

Cindy suddenly whooped and hugged Lora. Lora exchanged the hug and noticed that Cindy had hovered almost horizontally.

"Oh cool, cool, cool! Whats the hero name going to be, Lora? Pink Lemon? My EnWol mentor, Helena Christophers in HB is the Dazzling Blaze."

Lora tilted her head back and forth with a laugh.

"What? Oh, I don't know. Pink Lemon is cute. I'll go with that."

Cindy moved back and made an okay sign with her hand.

"A classic, Lora! Good choice! Come on, we need to tell someone at Meta Corps about you."

Cindy turned and flew out the open window. Louie watched Cindy go and slapped his forehead.

Lora, trying to fly, felt herself lift up and ahead. She apologized to her father. Louie pointed outside the window.

"Just go, Lora."

Lora nodded and she flew, putting her arms out in front of her to follow Cindy into the air. Louis was swearing to himself about the glass as Sarra stepped up behind him.

"Now why couldn't you two have made me be able to do that stuff, huh?" She asked.

"Sarra!" Serena warned.

Louie glared at her, the color of his face sharing that of a beet. Sarra shrugged with a curled lip.

"What?"

Serena sighed from across the room and spoke.

"Sarra, I can handle a lot, including you and your sister, but... the move upstate, the glass, the mall, Lora and the EnWol... this is too much, I need to lie down. Sarra, just help your father with the window. Without any smart-ass remarks, please."

Serena left and Sarra looked at her dad.

"So, do you need my Goon to haul the new glass around, or what?"

Chapter 3

Lora had no idea why she knew how to fly. It was one of the things on her mind as she and Cindy flew straight up into the air. To Lora, flying upward was as fun a convertible car top as it screamed down the 405 freeway, which she thought was great for the summer heat. She didn't dwell on it for long.

Lora watched Cindy reach the pinnacle of her trip, and then suddenly dive down, her arms spread eagle and body twisting through the atmosphere. Lora got a look at how high she was and gasped. From 2,000 feet up, she could see for miles. Saddleback Mountain loomed at her left and Laguna Hills to her right, dwarfing before the ocean. Catalina Island was off in the distance, behind the veil of haze. Lora looked south and saw the forests and the populated deserts that south Orange County had to offer beyond Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita. The characteristic blue California sky blanketed the state with its warm embrace.

Lora's breath caught, and she fell after Cindy, letting her newfound instincts guide her. She twirled through the air, laughing up a storm in spite of leaving her stomach behind. She figured that if fighting crime was anything like the thrill of flying, than she was going to have a lot of fun.

The two landed at Cindy's apartment, a half mile south of Lora's current home. Cindy rushed to the door and got her key out, leaving Lora behind.

"Cindy, what are we doing?" Lora asked. A huge grin on her face refused to leave.

A still hovering Cindy shooshed Lora and shoved the door open. It hit the wall with a loud bang, scaring her parents inside. Cindy flew to her room with an excited chortle and slammed that door shut.

Lora peeked inside and saw Cindy's parents, Tina and Norm. They looked at Lora.

"What was that about?" Norm asked. He looked her up and down and pointed at her.

"Is it you that she's spazzing out over, Lora?"

Lora chuckled with her hands behind her back and an uneasy expression as she floated inside. She showed off her wrists.

"Umm, yep. I... I was in Costa Mesa when Sergei Slade attacked and I got the EnWol gauntlets. Cindy was there to see it. I'm unhurt from the kerfuffle, but this still happened. "

"What?" Tina asked.

Tina left her computer and approached Lora.

Norm paled and he looked uncomfortable. He fidgeted. Lora shook her head and placed her hand on his shoulder. He winced.

"Oh, no, no, no, no. I can't stretch, thankfully. I know how you feel about it, Mr. Richards."

Norm paid attention to his breathing and his voice warbled.

"In spite of how squeamish I feel, it being..." he shuddered, "...weird. In spite of that, Lora, I've always, always been supportive of Cindy, her powers and her goal of being a hero."

Lora smiled.

"That's so sweet. I admire that Mr. Richards."

Norm tried to smile, but he grimaced instead. Tina rubbed his back.

"However did you find those, Lora? And isn't stretching a part of being an EnWol?"

Lora shrugged.

"Oh, I don't know. They just flew at me after the explosion, I think. Cindy saw my inauguration, went crazy and brought me here."

They heard Cindy's room door open.

"Okay guys," Cindy said to announce her presence, "I am now Flex Shapeoid!" She showed herself and made a strongman's pose without deforming her body.

Cindy had changed her clothes from civilian to heroic, although, she wanted it to look more like a spy's catsuit than bright spandex. Her new outfit consisted of a dark cerulean, slightly reflective tank top, low-rise jeans, gloves that extended to the elbow, and a pair of combat boots. All topped off with a choker, hair band, and sunglasses.

Tina looked at her daughter from the top of her glasses, an amused smile creasing her lips.

"Flex Shapeoid?"

Cindy nodded.

"Yep. Flex-your-shape-oid. It had a nice ring to it."

Tina and Norm went back to their own computers.

"Sounds a little hard to say." Tina said. "It is spelled with the word 'shape' and the letters O-I-D at the end? If you want to go down that route, you might as well be Stretchoid."

"Eww." Lora said.

Cindy dropped her arms.

"M'oooom! Picking a heroic sounding name is tough! I don't want to fly around with a name like... like Super Girl or something stupid like that!"

Norm chuckled.

"Wasn't it The Resilient Miss Flex last week? It was C-Girl for the longest time before that. What is a Shapeoid, anyway? Is it like a trapezoid?" He asked with a smile.

Lora never failed to notice Norm's own resilience when it came to shrugging off Cindy's elasticity.

"Dad, The Resilient Miss Flex was a terrible name! I couldn't go with that! What is a trapezoid anyway? Is it like a robotic mouse trap?"

"I think it's a shape, some kind of square?" Lora said with faint traces of a valley girl accent shining through.

"What? Flex Trapezoid? Like, really, dad?"

Tina stood up.

"I have a concern, Cindy. Can you tell me where you are taking Lora? You came back in such a rush to change that you left us all in the dark. I'm sure that she's had a rough enough day already."

Cindy's smile broadened and she tensed up.

"Okay, sorry, look. Lora, being EnWol is kinda a big deal, you know that."

Lora nodded.

"Sure."

"Well, someone, a good friend like me, needs to show the newest member of the species where to go."

Lora pursed her lips to the side with mild bewilderment.

"Species?"

Cindy didn't miss a beat.

"So, I'm taking you to see Helena Christophers in Huntington Beach. We could get you evaluated and signed up and everything!"

Lora smiled.

"Oh cool. Yeah, you mentioned her back home too. She stopped a bunch of bad guys from creating a radioactive Pittsburgh."

Cindy nodded.

"We're still waiting for both a result and a movie from that trial too."

Lora nodded, and then stopped, a realization coming to her.

"Wait, I'll get signed up there? But I'm moving, Cindy, I can't do that."

Cindy waved her hand.

"Doesn't matter, the main branch is in San Francisco. Besides, if you sign up at one, you've signed at all of them! You're pretty lucky!"

Cindy lost control of herself. She shook her fists and squealed again.

"Oh, this is so exciting, Lora! I was worried that I wouldn't be able to meet anyone who I knew when I left to be a hero, but now my girl is at the top of the tops!" Cindy screamed again. She fell into a fit of giggles while pitching backward in mid air.

He three of them watched Cindy, slightly puzzled. Lora shrugged as if to say that 'Cindy was Cindy.'

Lora cleared her throat with a smile.

"Well, gee, Cindy, if I didn't know better, I would think that you got a new boyfriend."

"Hey, not in this house." Norm said.

Cindy looked up at Lora from being suspended upside down.

"That would be stellar, grab something that would put a bigger shine on my face than this."

Lora smiled.

"That would be great."

Cindy swished upright and grabbed Lora's hands.

"Well, what are we waiting for? Let's head out!" She started to fly out the door.

"Cindy, stop. You're waiting for me." Norm got up and approached his daughter without pause.

Cindy's arms stretched out as Lora gasped, stumbled and almost fell over. Cindy twirled back, knowing what was coming. She let go of Lora and whined as she hovered near the ceiling, her arms shooting back to normal.

"Oh no, Dad, please, not this time."

Cindy lowered to the carpet and Lora stood by patiently by standing with her feet in a T-pose.

"When you're here, Cindy, you will receive this lecture." Norm said.

Cindy moaned again and let her father speak.

"Not everyone on this Earth is like Lora. There are people out there that would not hesitate to hurt you, especially in places like Meta Corps. There are people that can take you and manipulate you to do their own bidding.

Now, I'm not saying that you're gullible, never, but think about this. What if someone offers to help you learn to be a better hero, or lets you in on some kind of super serum that will enhance your powers without going crazy."

Cindy rolled her eyes.

"Dad, that only happens in the comics."

Norm held his finger up.

"I'm not done. What if you accept and the serum only lasts for so long. To get more, you need to do something for them and before you know it, you've gone and secured a lock for a room that was about to blow up and you only realize it until it's too late. Sure you get your serum, but at what cost?"

Cindy backed away, her face contorted in disgust.

"Gaia, Dad."

Cindy glanced at Lora, herself in mild shock with her hand over her mouth.

Norm nodded, wide eyed.

"Yeah, I know! Where do you think these storytellers come up with the ideas for all the horrid things that Hyper Glass does? Who do you think Sergei Slade looks to for inspiration?"

Cindy rolled her head and used what she learned from a lesson on sneering from Sarra.

"I don't have an addictive personality. I wouldn't take such a serum anyway."

Norm clutched Cindy's arms and slid them down past the cuff of her gloves. He held her wrists

"Look sugar, I'm not for sheltering you in the least, or telling you to be ultra paranoid like my father did me. I'm saying to be careful, be very careful because you could be an accomplice to a headlining villain. I'm sure that your mother and I, and Helena would not be pleased with you if that happened."

Cindy rolled her eyes and puffed her cheeks with a sigh.

"I get it dad. Don't buy the watch from the street vender. I hear this every time I leave the apartment."

Norm looked Cindy in the eye; she could see his fear for her in his. Depending on the day, Cindy took the look as his worry, his shyness poking through or a means to suppress her. On that day of new discoveries, she believed the third option.

Cindy looked up at him.

"Okay Dad, fine. Umm, can we go?" She pointed out the door with one hand, her other stretching arm slunk to the door to open it. Norm nodded and looked the other way; his cheeks flushed.

"Yeah, bye. Your mother and I love you, and we don't want to see you get hurt."

Cindy opened the door with a smile.

"You forget that the doctor said that I can't get hurt, but whatever, see ya, come on Lora."

With a loud boom, Cindy was gone. Lora half trotted, half-floated to the entryway and bid Cindy's parents a goodbye. They did the same and Lora followed her friend to the north, the metaphysical wings on her feet uncertain.

Norm sighed and headed back to his computer. Tina frowned and got up to rub his back.

"Sweetie, Cindy will be fine. Lora's with her, and she has enough sense for the both of them."

"Lora's moving away though, so that's out."

Tina's tone hardened a little; her hands moved to his shoulders.

"There are other fish in the sea, Norm."

Norm smiled and grabbed Tina's hand.

"I know. I hope that Cindy doesn't get a chance to see just exactly what I'm talking about first hand."

Tina rounded Norm's seat to sit back at her computer.

"They'll both be fine, taffy." Tina said.

While still grasping Tina's hand, Norms own arm elongated several feet across the table and he let go. He let it reel back slowly while looking up at the ceiling with a grimace.

"Only my old man. Why did you have to be so stern about this?"

Chapter 4

A cup of hot chocolate held by a long arm floated in front of Lora. A blue flame came from the palm to keep it hot and it was put on the saucer. Lora thanked the arm.

"What do you mean you backed out, Cindy?" The long arms owner, Helena Christophers asked. "I gave you that clamp so that you could learn to slip through it, not let it collect dust and look like some cog out of Victorian era science fiction."

Lora blew some steam from her cup to take a sip; Cindy sat right across from her at the small kitchen table. Cindy held up her hands.

"I know that, but, like, the peephole makes me dizzy when I adjust it for, umm... under three inches? I have to really work to not barf all over myself when I'm, like, half way through. What do I do?"

Helena crossed her arms; they melded and stretched into each other while giving off a hard sheen.

"Did you try and go in by the feet and push that way? The peephole can work both ways; your head doesn't have to be poking out first."

Cindy smiled.

"It does if you want a smoother childbirth."

Lora snorted as she sipped her beverage. She choked what she had down and tried to keep from giggling. Helena glared at Cindy and tried to stifle her own laughter. Cindy just smiled at Helena, seeing through her cracks.

Helena rolled her eyes.

"Can't believe you did that..." She whispered and turned to Lora. Her hair swayed as if it was weighted. It was a very light brown with azure colored streaks here and there.

"So you're the new EnWol on the block, Lora?"

Lora nodded and chuckled.

"Yep, apparently."

Helena nodded and turned to Cindy

"How did you find her this quickly? Trippi can do it in..." Helena shook her head, "...days. This took about three hours."

Cindy shrugged.

"I just walked out of the bathroom and there she was."

Helena's mouth gapped open, and she looked to the ceiling.

"Do I even need to know?"

Cindy shrugged again and mumbled, "I don't know."

Helena went back to Lora.

"Okay, Lora, Ms. Pink Lemon, I'm guessing that by your lack of changing the default colors, you don't know what powers the gauntlets gave you, is this true?"

Lora put her cup down and stuck her tongue out as if to examine it herself.

"Hot." She said and looked at Helena.

"Not really, I'm sorry." She scraped her tongue on the roof of her mouth.

Cindy chuckled, her chin resting in her hands.

"That's totally what happens when you ask The Dazzling Blaze herself to make you some choco." She muttered.

Helena nodded.

"Well, you can obviously stretch and fly. Can you manipulate ice? Fire? Electricity?"

"That last one's awesome when it's done right." Cindy said.

Lora looked into space, puzzled.

"I don't know. How can I check?"

Cindy suddenly had a thought. She butt-in with what she knew in her gut was very important information. She stood up.

"Helena wait, umm, I don't think that Lora can, like, stretch or anything. She's still solid."

Helena looked at her with a sly smile, knowing that Cindy could be full of it sometimes. Helena studied Cindy for her own cracks in her sincerity, and could tell that her apprentice was serious this time. Helena's expression turned from light arrogance to concern. She looked Lora over, instinctually stretching her neck out at a modest length for a better look.

Helena held out her hand and asked for Lora's. She presented her pink-gloved hand with her palm and wrist at an angle with flexed fingers. Helena gripped Lora's hand, unsure of how to proceed. It remained solid when squeezed with some wincing being the only response.

"Darlin' I should be molding your hand like its jelly; pushing fingers back into a sphere and everything. I still feel a bone structure. Cindy, did you see her dissolve?"

Lora's eyes widened and her breath caught.

"Dissolve? Mrs. Helena, what do you mean by dissolve?" Lora asked.

Helena let go of Lora's hand.

"It works like this, when the gauntlets are first put on, they eat away at a person's body and convert it to, well, goopy silver." Helena held her Caucasian arm up and the skin turned into a perfect mirror. "This permanent transformation allows us to stretch and take damage unharmed."

Helena's arm went back to normal.

Lora hesitated.

"Oh..."

Helena flicked her hand up.

"Here, take the gauntlets off and put them back on, maybe it needs to reset. If so, then you should be able to form your clothes subconsciously for modesties sake after converting."

Lora's face flushed and she tried to hide a bashful smile. She tried to ask a question, but it did not come out right against her giggles. Cindy had a wide smile. Helena examined the context and tried to answer.

"No, I'm not sure if you'll be naked or not."

Lora giggled a bit harder; she was too embarrassed to excuse herself. She looked at the gauntlets and decided to face the situation. Her smile abruptly fell as she undid the hinges. She pried them both off and nothing happened. The pink and yellow outfit remained.

Helena nodded and Lora let her tension go with a smile.

"Okay, that's odd." Helena said. "There should be a flash and you should be in street clothes. Put them back on. You should be able to stretch afterward."

Lora looked at the undone gauntlets and gulped. She hesitated.

"Oh, umm... Alright. I'm not sure, but here I go..." Lora put them both on as Cindy and Helena watched without proper sympathy.

Lora secured each of the six latches, and fastened the last one ever so slowly. The three waited for proper results.

Lora looked up and shrugged.

Nothing.

Helena sneered. She stretched out to pull Lora's arm up and examine a gauntlet. Lora let Helena hoist her. Helena found no change in a supposed pliable transformation.

"This is a little distressing, to be EnWol is to be a silver goop, like peanut butter and jelly. You need to stretch Lora. An EnWol without the elasticity is like a jelly sandwich."

"Breakfast?" Lora asked.

Cindy nodded.

"I was thinking about that too."

Helena clicked her tongue.

"No, you know what I mean. I haven't properly eaten in decades. It's the catalyst of being a quality EnWol. I'll let Bronson know about this glitch; you need to stretch, Lora."

Lora made a fake laugh.

"Umm, I'm not too excited about that. The idea of my turning stretchy, it... it sounds kind of yucky really. No offense."

Cindy wrinkled her nose a little bit and Helena nodded.

"None taken. The idea of turning into slime is daunting, I'll admit, but after my first year as an EnWol, I didn't see any other way of living."

Cindy stood up and motioned toward Lora.

"Wait, I want to know why this even happening. Or not happening, what the crap ever. What's wrong?" She asked.

Helena touched her lips.

"I don't know." She caught a grin from Cindy and answered before she got a chance to ask.

"But no, you can't try them on for fun, nothing will happen anyway."

Helena had hit the mark on the head and Cindy deflated.

Lora looked up at Helena with a look that begged for sympathy.

"What do we do, Mrs. Helena?" Lora asked.

An idea erupted from Lora's gaze. Helena turned to Cindy, hands on her hips.

"Cindy, are you joshing me again? Is she really next up in line, or is she just one of your dinky little meta friends?"

Lora grimaced. Cindy shot up, her height stretching up and down a few inches in effect.

"What? No! Of course not! I'm a big kidder, but this is like a new presidential elect. I totally can't joke about this! She is the new EnWol, those are the proper gauntlets for the job. Gaia's gumball, I even saw her transform with the buh-buh-buh noise that those stupid car stereos make."

Helena crossed her arms.

"EnWol need to stretch; that's how the Heroes made the gauntlets. What makes her EnWol and not a normal meta? Elastic metas and EnWol do not share the same fluidity."

Cindy blinked. She searched for an answer and made some croaks as she cut herself off.

"Lora... Lora can fly?"

Helena nodded.

"Uh-huh. So can ninety percent of the metas on the planet. What else?"

Cindy was on the verge of tears and Lora shared the emotion.

"She... she can commandeer ice and lightning? I don't know! I saw the friggin transformation. Lora experienced the thing and got that suit from it. I can't prove any more otherwise. This is totally bogus!"

Helena's gaze went to Lora's bright outfit.

Lora got up to round the table and comfort Cindy; she absentmindedly started to clean up her friends platinum hair. Helena took her arm and Lora stared at her, unsure of what was going on.

Cindy continued.

"I don't know what you want. Literally, like, all of the descriptions of the transformation matched. Sonic boom, flashing light, all that except for the... the gooyification." Cindy said. She wiped her eyes and noticed that Helena was preoccupied. Cindy stood up, trying to figure out what was going on.

"Mrs. Helena...?" Lora started.

"What are you doing?" Cindy finished.

"Don't move, Lora..." Helena took a wad of Lora's sleeve in her fist and walked backward. The suit stretched out across the kitchen with ease. Helena peered at the outfit's detail and Cindy joined her.

Lora stared slack jawed at the distance her costume was getting. Her eyes fluttered.

"What's going on?" Lora asked.

Helena's neck stretched a little and she looked up at Lora while chewing her lip.

"EnWol silver. Both the suit and I are made of the same material. Other EnWol are naturally warm, so this can't be someone else in disguise. Cindy, you were right about her."

Cindy smiled.

"Ha! The Blaze got smoked."

Helena rolled her eyes. She returned to her normal shape and then let her arm stretch back to Lora with the costume.

"This hasn't happened before; it's probably a glitch in Bronson's work." Helena said and brought her arm back.

"How do we fix this?" Lora asked. She smoothed her sleeve out and then tugged it herself.

Helena shrugged.

"Well, if this can't be fixed, than you're going to have to let the bad guys kick your trash if you want to be a Pink Lemon. It doesn't look like you want to finish your transformation though, so I don't know."

"I'd like it." Cindy said.

Helena nodded.

"Yes, I know that you would like it, but you also said that you wanted to be your own hero without the EnWol powers too."

Cindy shrugged.

"Well, I don't mind either way." Cindy trotted back up to Lora and wrapped her arm around her shoulder.

"So, how are we going to test what her offense is if her defense is shot?" Cindy asked.

"I was trained in a self defense class with Cindy by my side. I can fight people away if I really need to." Lora said.

Helena nodded.

"Yes, but how are your long range attacks? Even as EnWol silver, we can't get some people by stretching alone. We have to have a secondary power. Florence can generate electricity, I can shoot fire," Helena's thumb flicked up and a blue flame erupted from the tip, "and Nita Rafaela can control ice. All work to help immobilize a threat for easy capture."

Helena looked to her kitchen cabinets and stretched her arms out.

Cindy nodded.

"Yeah, you gotta have something, Lora." Cindy said. Lora nodded with a frown, a little unsure of herself.

Helena grabbed a bowl, filled it with water, and retracted her arms to set it next to Lora's cup of hot chocolate. Her feet never moved.

"Okay, let's see if I can remember how Nita described this..." Helena drummed her fingers on the table in thought.

Lora studied the water. As it settled, it rippled toward her, like small-scale waves at the beach. As she leaned in for a closer look, the water became more agitated. Lora passed her hand over the water where a bulge followed it.

Cindy started to ask what her friend was doing, when Lora made a much closer pass. The water leaped onto Lora's hand, making the bone-dry bowl wobble across the table. Lora shrieked and stood up so quickly that the chair fell on its back. A shaken Cindy and Helena stared at her, her hand in particular.

Several crackling spikes of ice immobilized her outstretched hand. It clunked onto the table, spreading inches of frost in all directions. Lora's breath caught and she held her chest.

"What did you do?" Helena asked.

Lora shook her head.

"I don't know. It was... attracted to me."

She looked at the ball and felt at a random spire. She gave a nervous chuckle.

"That is a pretty cool trick though." Her fright was poorly disguised.

Helena shrugged.

"Well, that's that then. You and your partner can control ice. Wherever your partner is, anyway."

"What partner?" Lora asked.

Helena put Lora's hand in the bowel and warmed her hand.

"A Pink Lemon needs a Crimson Cherry. The EnWol Duo always comes in pairs, with Jack Ogden being the exception. I don't doubt that you will be getting some help, Lora."

"Do you think that Ms. Cherry will be able to stretch too?" Lora asked.

Helena shrugged. Lora's fingers were free up to the second knuckle.

"Or a Mr. Cherry, it's impossible to say which until we meet them. I don't really know if they will be able to stretch or not. The individual gauntlets have their own power source for each person, so it's unlikely that the glitch would go across both sets."

Cindy chuckled and leaned back in her seat.

"Well, I think it would be cool to be EnWol. Fly around and stretch..."

"But, you do that already, Cindy. You don't need the other pair." Lora said.

The last bit of ice fell from Lora's hand. Helena took the bowel away to dump out the water and Lora flexed her aching hand.

"Well, why not up the ante?" Cindy asked. "Be a legal and true hero, kicking bad guy butt and shocking them silly. I totally think that I would make a good EnWol. Maybe I'll be Lora's Cherry. Going around with her, and fighting. Bam!" Lora jumped as Cindy's fists flew above Lora's head and back.

"Poof! Boom! I bet that I could do it too. You think it will be me, Helena?"

Helena shrugged.

"The gauntlets read off the feelings of the wearer; it depends on Lora's subconscious thoughts and how capable she thinks someone is. This is for compatibility. With her quip about how you can already stretch and fly, Cindy, I doubt that they will show up for you at all."

Chapter 5

"How do you feel about what happened to Lora?" Louie asked.

Sarra stared through the brand new panes of glass leaning against the living room wall, waiting to be installed. Sarra sneered and rubbed her bruised shoulder.

"I had plans today..." She muttered and turned to the window.

Louie nodded.

"Time waits for no man."

Sarra sat cross-legged on the floor.

"Yeah, but the man waiting has plenty of time."

Louie curled his lip. Sarra threw the question back

"How do you feel about what happened to my sister?"

Louie shrugged.

"I'm still processing it; give me some time to mull it over..." He said. Sarra nodded, they shared their answer.

The two sat by the new glass, taking a minute or two to stay cool on the parched August day. The drawback of living closer to sea level in Southern California was the intolerable heat that made itself known for two thirds of the year. This was not a good deal for both Louis and Sarra Summers.

A comet of light flew through the open windows. The light crashed into the new sets of glass, shattering all but one pane. A pair of silver gauntlets formed from the comet in front of Sarra. Both father and daughter looked at them dumbfounded as the glass tinkled to the carpet. None had been given any time to react.

Serena marched out from the kitchen, having heard the crash.

"What on earth is...?"

Sarra grabbed the gauntlets and held them up for her mother to see. Like a switch being flicked, Louie went past furious and into a deep, white-hot ethereal calm. Louie pointed at the new gauntlets, spouting wordless syllables with a smile.

Serena looked at the shattered glass, Sarra, and the gauntlets. She knew how angry her husband was, and she knew what the gauntlets were. Although Serena worked to be a tough woman, relatable to both of her daughters on each of their extremes, the events of the day topped off with a second pair of EnWol gauntlets was too much for her to take. Serena grimaced, turned on her heel, and galloped in another direction.

Sarra looked at her father; he was smiling with a bit too much pleasure for his standards. Sarra could feel the fury radiating from him. She curled her lip, stared at the gauntlets and shrugged.

"In a void, why not? There's been too much shit on this sundae today anyway; let's put the cherry on top."

Louie nudged Sarra with his foot as she undid the first hinge. She glanced up at him and he threw his tape measurer at the last pane of glass, making a hole in the wall as well. Louie looked at Sarra, well past caring. She stood up, mindful of her intense father, and put the gauntlets on. The pair emitted a bright light that spread across her body. Sarra rose into the air and both of her forearms went numb.

Sarra felt odd, she could no longer feel her hands, or tell if they still existed. She looked down to get a better idea, but her intense light washed out all detail. The absolute numbness spread to the rest of her arms and down her torso. She started to panic when the numbness hit both her hips and nose simultaneously. She thought of the worst obscenities as the numbness overtook her entire head.

Sarra blacked out.

Louie watched the progress, wondering if he really, really should have stopped her. Sarra was losing her shape, her limbs merged into her torso in an amorphous blob and then to a perfect sphere. The light faded and Sarra became a mirrored ball with the clothes at her feet. Louie presumed that it was still his daughter.

"Sarra?" He croaked; his anger did not dissipate in the least, but his concern pushed it aside.

The ball rippled at the mention of its name. Louie looked at his reflection and thought 'like father like son.' Sarra was proud of her feminine side, but her own style and attitude swayed her toward male activates. This was enough for Louie to relate with his spunky daughter, and in turn, Sarra with her father.

Sarra regained consciousness right away. She did not know what to do, or what she was. Her field of vision broadened in an unbroken three hundred and sixty degree viewpoint. Sarra felt for her body after realizing that she had become her own pupil. She didn't know how to explain what it was like to be a perfect sphere. If she were to explain it in simple terms, she would say that she was physically whole.

Sarra was getting restless. She figured that she had become EnWol and she wanted her old human shape back. She saw Louie step back as her 'whole' sprouted some lumps. Her field of vision was cut by half as her eyes were put in their proper place. She closed her new eyes to feel the reversion from sphere to Sarra.

Louie watched Sarra's five lumps become her head and extremities; her main glob stretched into her torso. Louie searched for something to say as Sarra's silver body gained some color.

"You okay?" He asked.

Sarra held her hand up. She felt exactly like her old self but with an overwhelming sensation of... softness and fluidity. Sarra opened her eyes and found that she was wearing an exact replica of Lora's Pink Lemon uniform. She curled her lip and hoped that she did not find what she was expecting.

"Shit, my hair isn't pink, is it?" Sarra grabbed a lock of her hair and got her answer. It was hot pink. She looked at her father with a screwed up face. He nodded.

"Two Pink Lemons in the family... The second is mortified more by her hair color than the gooey change."

Sarra moved her arm and a leg. Her body felt like it finished a hard days exercise that was preceded by a good stretch, but bluntly oversaturated and without the discomfort and weariness that comes with it.

She could live with that.

"Two Pink Lemons? I don't want your lemons. What am I supposed to do with those? Let's do Crimson Cherry." Her voice slurred a little, making the S sound like a Z.

Sarra's first thought was of red and purple and she changed to reflect those colors. She looked at her purple hair and smiled.

Louie raised an eyebrow.

"Crimzon Cherry? Spelled with a Z?"

Sarra nodded.

"Yeah, sure. Why not?"

Louie shrugged.

"The world's English teachers are going to hate you... and your mother is going to hate me for letting this happen to you..."

Louie walked off; there was a tipsy swagger in his walk. Sarra could tell that his anger was returning.

"Listen Sarra, I need to lie down. If there are some Orange Apricot gauntlets for me and Violet Plum gauntlets for Serena, than I not only don't want to know about them, I want them destroyed."

Sarra nodded as her father left. She floated in midair and studied her new form. She realized with both a cold certainty and her father's choice of words that she would never be able to change back.

Sarra's old body was destroyed and that was that.

"Well, I leapt before I looked so now I'm stuck, so far so good." Sarra told herself. She looked at the forgotten glass, and felt a hollow cloud cast itself over her.

Sarra could feel a nonexistent heart shrivel up and deflate with terror inside her chest and she was unsure why. She looked at her arm, her 'elbow' hanging loose like a rope. She let it drip to the floor and detach. It didn't hurt. She stepped on the silver goo and her foot reabsorbed it while her arm reformed. Sarra felt her heart knot up and shudder again. A hint of nausea floated in her stomach, even though she knew that it was no longer there.

Sarra continued to analyze her terror based illness, but a rational reason never came up. She knew what was coming. She had daydreamed about being EnWol before, and she knew that it was a one-way trip. Sarra had no idea what was bugging her about being EnWol, since she figured that she wouldn't mind so much.

She shook her head.

"I don't like this..."

Chapter 6

The darkness was absolute. It swallowed any shred of light that was unfortunate enough to enter its perpetual depth. Only a single orange pinprick consisting of four candles shone dimly in the void. The woman in the center sat motionless, diving deeper and deeper into her trance.

Morgan le Fay sat in the meditation room of her New England mansion, taking great care to shut out all distractions and forget that the walls existed. She let her slipping precognition displace her consciousness. Morgan was sure that her foretelling ability, like all the rest throughout the years, both mental and physical, was disappearing; it was not as strong and clear as it used to be.

As if it were desperately trying to keep from falling from a cliff into the void, her vision of the future gave what felt like its last breath. Morgan was both saddened and relieved to see it go. A bleak cloud hovered in a stark blue sky with a person ascending into the dark center. Morgan was unable to make out any details. She noted thin plumbs of rubble flying around the person, some much larger than others. They swirled up into the darkest point of the cloud, coming close to hitting the figure in the center. Morgan looked over to her right and saw a person standing next to her in a yellow outfit. His face was unrecognizable, but unquestionable at the same time.

"Jack Ogden..."

Morgan returned to reality faster than she would have liked. She opened her eyes, listened to her now hard breathing, and stared though the dark blue rose at her feet.

The power was gone and she knew that those remaining would follow suit. She just wished that her late clairvoyance had told her which ones were next.

Morgan sat motionless and reflected on her vision, feeling that the best would have been saved for last.

"Jack Ogden... What is he...?"

The phone rang. Morgan jumped and gazed at it, wishing it would burst into flames. She abstained, knowing that her pyrokinesis was still intact. She let the machine get it. On the fifth ring, Morgan relented. She crossed the room, swept her hand upward to trigger the lights motion sensors, and answered the phone.

"What?"

A nasal voice replied; his congestion enhanced to sickening levels by the low quality of the phone.

"Morgan, its Bill Garner at Hero Corps., psy division. I have discovered that a young resident of ours has an advanced form of telekinesis and I need your help."

Morgan turned around and stared at the four candles.

"Don't several of your residents exhibit telekinetic traits?"

"Of those, over fifty thousand metas in the U.S. have telekinetic abilities beyond simple flight. This one though, a young Anne Redford, she seems to have power that goes off the chart. Morgan I need you to come up here for an expert's opinion on Anne's biology."

Morgan looked through her wall toward the library, where, although she could not see it, she knew that her Ph. D for the study of Psychokinetic power was present.

After all that time in school, I still do not know how my mind... foresaw the future...

Garner cleared his throat and Morgan got back to him.

"What sort of power does this Anne Redford display that makes her worth my attention, Garner?" She asked.

He sighed and Morgan heard some papers rustling on the other line. His voice became flat as he read to her.

"Anne Redford displays various unseen, yet theorized traits of meta human psychic power. Of all the meta humans, the fifty thousand that do show signs, they can only lift themselves with their mind and fly as well as cause a few trinkets at a close proximity to hover. All among a slight rise in their five senses as well.

Five year old Anne Redford can not only propel herself and fly, but she is able to do so more than effortlessly; taking to flying as if she were a feather in a light breeze."

Morgan scowled. She was losing her patience.

"And?"

Garner lost his place for a moment, shocked with Moran's outburst. His voice faltered.

"Oh, ehh, Anne also displays psychic acts that are unfamiliar to our records. Anne can, well, project incorporeal forms of her desire and she is able to tunnel whenever she holds her breath."

Morgan's interest spiked. This was something that not even she could do when her powers were in their prime. She turned on her heel and paced.

"Pass through solid matter? How?"

"I don't know. I can tell you that she can change the vibratory rates of her atoms and simply slide through whatever she wants, but I can't tell you how she does that."

Morgan bit her thumbnail.

"Alright, fine. San Francisco?"

"Yes, you know where we are."

"Of course. I'm going to need a bodyguard. If this Anne Redford can do what you say, than I believe that I'm going to need protection."

Garner snorted.

"We are located in meta hero central, Morgan. I don't think that---"

Morgan interrupted him.

"That is not what I meant by bodyguard, William. I shall see you later."

Morgan pressed the button in the cradle to hang up and released to dial a new number. The phone rang four times and a male voice answered.

"Hello Jack, its Morgan. I need your help with a potential problem and I would love it if my Electric Beaulieu the.... normal meta human could assist me."

Chapter 7

"I totally can't believe that you got the gauntlets, Sarra. What would have possessed the powers that be to have Lora choose you out of everyone else on planet Earth?" Cindy asked as she spun her bottle of diet soda in her hand.

Sarra shrugged.

"Apparently, the powers that be wanted me to be awake at all hours of the day and night. It's kinda nice."

Lora chirped up.

"Helena said that EnWol live off sunlight and have a forty eight hour battery. That keeps them charged up in case of a blackout or underground fiasco." She said.

Sarra snorted.

"It helped when mom and dad yelled at me when I was supposed to be asleep. Lora got off scot-free with destroying the windows last week, yet poor old sissy has to help pay the damage. There goes my own apartment..."

The three sat in the Meta Corps indoor courtyard, waiting for Helena Christophers to call them in for a training session. The modern courtyard had a glass ceiling and a center plateau where some simple concrete benches sat among fourteen trees in a grid. The walls had orange stripes aligned with the columns.

During the week, Sarra had perfected her Crimson Cherry outfit. She adopted a pair of low-rise pants, a tank top, gloves that extended to her elbows, and a choker. The outer layers matched her purple hair and the skintight t-suit became cherry red. Lora was pressed to try some variety for identities sake, but she liked the base uniform that came with every new EnWol transformation.

"You're not upset, are you, Cindy?" Lora asked.

Cindy shook her head.

"I'm a little let down, but yikes Lora. I don't know if I'm ready to be a hero on the field, now that I've thought about it. I want it, but I also think that I would have fallen, like, hard if I got them now. I'm more peeved about Sarra getting them instead of anyone else really."

Cindy stretched out to put her beverage on the ground.

"It's still way stupid. How did they think that you could be, like, a good hero, Sarra? You're a lazy coot that's only used your powers for relaxing."

Sarra cocked an eyebrow.

"Coot? A coot is the male equivalent of a biddy, Cindy."

Cindy rolled her eyes.

"Whatever, what do I know?"

Sarra nodded.

"Excellent question..." She muttered.

Lora got ready to settle a quarrel and sighed with relief when it did not come.

Sarra looked at her waving fingers; the tips stretched a little bit as they were thrown out. She felt like she had grown up easily worn out and wrapped up in rubber bands all the time. After the gauntlets had changed her, Sarra felt supple, flowing, and free. She clenched her fist, her fingers digging into her palm. Despite the appreciated liberation, Sarra neither knew what was wrong, nor know how to ask about it without looking weak.

Sarra pointed at a hovering, cross-legged Cindy with her chin.

"You're the professed expert on heroes, Richards," said Sarra. "I'm just happy that I didn't have to relearn how to walk right out of the box."

Cindy nodded.

"EnWol just work right. You can still do whatever you already knew how to do after the gooey thing. That's good for your guitar playing, I bet."

Lora giggled and hugged Sarra from behind.

"Sarra's a melomaniac. Of course it would, Cindy." She said.

Sarra sneered and phased out of Lora's grasp. Lora went through a watery Sarra and onto the floor. Sarra reformed and cocked her eyebrow.

"A professed and hopeless melomaniac, thanks." She said.

Lora stood up and frowned. She stared at her hands and then her sister, too intrigued to complain about Sarra's new way to be rude.

"Oh."

Lora sounded half-distracted. Sarra was a little disappointed that Lora had not reacted as she had hoped.

Cindy grinned.

"Gaia, I totally wish that I could do that."

Lora inched over to Sarra; her hand was up as if she were hesitant to touch her sister. Sarra took notice and faced her.

"What's your problem? Is it that I escaped your hug?"

Lora jumped, coming out of her entrancement.

"I'm just..." Lora smiled. "I'm just in disbelief that you got to be stretchy." She shrugged her shoulders in time with the last two syllables. Lora took Sarra's hand to reassure her and squeezed it a little to test the sponginess. Sarra pulled her hand away.

"Yeah, fine. What the world wants to know is why you aren't, Pink Lemon." Sarra spat the name.

Lora shook her head without an answer.

"Hey Sarra, she doesn't have be stretchy if she doesn't want to." Cindy said.

The two sisters stared at her. Sarra laughed and then scowled. Her laugh did not sound right; it was like hearing a recording of her own voice.

"It's nice to see a hero sticking up for their kin, but if I'm not mistaken, you're a meta hero nerd and not a sports nut like I had thought. If that's true, than wouldn't you already know that if everything went right, Lora would now be cookie dough?"

Sarra looked at her sister with a sly smile.

"You know, sis, the opportunity might still be available."

Lora bit her lip, thinking of the idea with mild disgust. Sarra smiled.

"Wouldn't you Pink? You're as sweet as cookie dough, so why not live like it?"

Lora slowly shook her head. Sarra smirked.

"Well I had it done and look at what happened. Bite the bullet and become stuffing, I guess. Maybe you could have a chance at being a better hero than me."

Cindy clicked her tongue and waved her hand.

"Oh, what-ever, Sarra. Stop being a brat." Cindy said. Sarra glared at Cindy and saw Helena walk up from behind.

"You stop being a valley girl. You sound like your IQ matches your height in inches." Sarra said. Cindy made a face.

"Can you believe her?" Cindy whispered to Lora. Lora shook her head and pursed her lips.

Helena smiled as Sarra approached her.

"Alright, Sarra, you're going to be the first one up, since this course is for cryogenic EnWol. We're going to have to get a different course for Lora."

Sarra smiled at her cohorts and floated away.

"Cake."

"Good luck, Sarra." Lora called.

Helena glanced back with a supermodels smile and Sarra ignored her sister.

"Okay Sarra, if I understood properly," Helena started as they left, "You are a black belt in Karate, and so your reflexes should be as good as they can get for someone your age."

Sarra nodded, both her grin and brashness spread wide.

"Obviously."

Helena studied Sarra, feeling defiance ooze from her. She toughened her tone and stole a glance at the balconies behind Lora and Cindy.

"You should know then that we are here to check and see how far being an EnWol will take you."

Helena motioned Sarra to follow her and, they disappeared into the building.

"Good riddance." Cindy said. She uncrossed her legs and leaned so far back that she flipped over. She smiled.

"I call that my mermaid dive."

Lora nodded with a chuckle.

"Very cool. Umm, hey, what did you mean by good riddance, Cindy?"

Cindy sneered.

"I think that your sister is stealing your thunder."

Lora stood up. She wobbled slightly as her heels left the floor. She balanced on her toes and held her arms out. Cindy stretched over to grab the nape of Lora's costume and help her up a few inches.

"Don't fight the flight." She said.

Lora giggled and thanked her.

"Umm, okay so, EnWol help each other out; that's why they come in pairs. That's worked super so far, but Sarra is that crazy cards thingy and, like doesn't want to cooperate. With her, umm... attitude getting in the way, she might push you away. Push her back and get your thunder back. Embrace the Pink Lemon name like Florence did."

Lora shook her head.

"I don't think that Sarra would be that bad, Cindy. Maybe a little, but she might get better."

Cindy smacked her forehead.

"Lora, no! There you go doing what Sarra told you again, bonus points for her not even being here. Too nice, too trusting, too much of a doormat, like, total barf, Pink."

Lora looked at her friend, mildly perturbed. Cindy sighed.

"Know what, think about this. After being hit by something big, a more solid EnWol can be stunned. When that happens, they can shatter and it takes a little bit to recover for some mind reason. What if you were stretchy like Sarra and that happened to you. What would she do?"

Lora shrugged.

"She would tell me to wake up and move the fight away while I'm pulling myself together?"

Cindy made a face.

"So not what I had in mind, but maybe, I don't know. My point is that Sarra might be a brat and leave you in the dust. If she's keeping you from doing something by doing it herself, you do it anyway. Except don't steel her thunder either, okay?"

Lora nodded.

"Of course, Cindy. Sarra is... a challenge though."

Cindy patted Lora's shoulder.

"Hey, if you can be more assertive when dealing with bad guys, than it's worth it."

Lora nodded.

"I guess. You know, I'm surprised that you two aren't more friendly, Cindy."

Cindy scoffed.

"Well, just because we both liked to roll in the mud and poke at bugs when we were seven doesn't make us best buds. That reminds me too, I want to know how you'll do out on the battlefield. How will you fight the bad guys?"

Cindy poked Lora's shoulder. Lora looked up at the skylight.

"I don't know. I've been thinking about it but I'm not sure about the overall situation. I still feel sick from defending myself from that... that drug addict from last year."

Cindy grimaced.

"Yeah, the DTC guy, I remember that jerk... that guy... that thing." Cindy spat. She stretched her arms out to shake Lora twice. "You roughed him up pretty good, didn't you?"

Lora grimaced.

"He needed fifteen stitches on his cheek, Cindy. His ribs were broken and so was his arm. It took all I could to talk Daddy out of suing him. Poor guy..."

Lora whined a little. Cindy chuckled.

"Lora, didn't, like, everyone tell you not to feel that way? The crap that guy took made him into an animal, and you defended yourself beautifully when he was becoming more powerful, and... stuff." Cindy stuck her tongue out at her stumbling.

"Umm... Everyone told you that you should be grateful for your black belt. That jerk wanted your purse, and you said no way, buster! What better attitude for an EnWol than to be kind and kick butt for the greater good, right?"

Lora nodded, a sad smile gracing her face.

"I guess so..."

Cindy held her arms out.

"Then why so glum? Lots of metas have the chance to be heroes, but very few can be in the top of the tops. Lora, you should be excited about this, I mean, I would kill to be in your shoes."

Cindy looked a little perplexed, a connection formed in her head.

"This goes back to Sarra too. Now that I think about it, she's probably enjoying this too much. She said that she's a better hero than you are too, well bullhonkey. I don't know the Queen as well as you do, but I know her well enough to see that she'll enjoy the spotlight while pretending to ignore it."

Lora looked in the dirt. She bent down to pick up a leaf and fiddled with it. Cindy pressed her lips together. Cindy sighed and threw her head into her hand.

"I'm not sure if I'm getting through to you, chica, but you know what, you're going to need to get over feeling sorry for yourself, both for hurting people in self-defense and standing up to," Cindy bopped her own head, "hey-what-do-you-know, your younger sister. Gaia knows that you're way too good a person to sock random people.

These guys you'll face are bad, Lora. The horrible, wicked, and evil sort of bad, not so great and hunky that it's bad, bad. They aren't going to care if you tell them to stop, or that you don't want to hurt them. They're like Sarra, but... you know, bad. Bad, bad, bad worse and stuff. Evil."

Lora looked up at Cindy with her hard-to-refuse puppy-dog gaze.

"No one's perfect." Cindy said. "Why not prove it by kicking bad guy butt? Hey, I know what I said too about refusing things so that you don't get into more trouble, but this is pretty different."

Lora looked at her boots dangling back and forth. She just barely whispered the word 'okay' and nodded.

Cindy smiled.

"Promise?"

Lora followed up on Cindy's smile.

"I promise."

"Awesome."

Cindy lightly backhanded Lora's shoulder.

"Hey, you always look at the positives to any situation, so are there any perks for being Ms. Pink?"

Lora looked up and saw some birds soaring in the sky. She gave a genuine smile and her heart fluttered with the birds.

"Flying!"

Cindy laughed.

"Oh yeah. I could not agree more! I've been flying since I was a least six months old, so I am a pro."

Lora nodded.

"I believe you too, Cindy. It's a shame that you can't come along to show me the ropes. I want to improve my flying skills."

Cindy sighed.

"Yeah. I'm sorry about that, Lora. I'm trying so hard to, like, cram everything that I know about super heroing that I can into you until you go."

Lora rubbed Cindy's back.

"It's okay Cindy; I appreciate your efforts here." Lora said.

Cindy shrugged.

"It should be for the best. I haven't finished school yet, so that doesn't help too much. The problem is that the hero part of Meta Corps doesn't care if you can move the Earth from its orbit with a thought; you have to have graduated high school, be 18, and prove that you're comfortable with your powers. I don't have any of those."

Cindy lazily twisted her waist left and right and her arms stretched out a little to coil and uncoil around her. Lora chuckled and floated up.

"You seem pretty capable with your powers to me."

"Thanks, but it's nothing special. Lots of meta grew up with their powers and can do basic things; it's the hero stuff that gets you. Hey, I promise that when I am qualified, I'll fly up to 'Frisco and help you along. I think that we both need each other to be heroes, both EnWol and meta."

Lora nodded.

"Well, it's a good thing that my family and I will live so close to the Hero Corps headquarters."

Cindy nodded. She brought her arms back to normal and grinned.

"Some super boyfriends would be great too."

Lora laughed without a second thought and waved her hand.

"Oh, totally. That sounds wonderful, Cindy."

Cindy giggled.

"Man of steel, woman of rubber; strong personalities to fear! Roar!"

The two shared a laugh together, relishing in the moment for as long as they could.

"Oh, Cindy-bee, I'm going to miss you." Lora said.

Cindy relaxed some and looked at the tiled floor.

"Yeah..."

A thought brushed Cindy's mind. She caught it before it would flitter away.

"You know what Lora, I'm not perfect either. I just got like, so friggin excited about you and the gauntlets that I just got ahead of myself. I didn't even think what you wanted to do when it's over. What do you want to do?"

Lora looked to the sky again for inspiration.

"I want to go to school and get some kind of diploma in either literary studies or creative writing. Afterward, I was thinking about maybe writing some columns in some magazine for starters and see where it goes from there." She said.

Cindy nodded.

"Cool, cool. I guess I got shoehorned into being a hero, unless no one minds that I have super collagen. I don't know what I'll need to get there though. Some sort of study of crime and how it works along with some bad guy subduing training."

Lora nodded.

"That sounds right. I wouldn't know where to start helping you there though."

Cindy shrugged.

"I'll figure it out."

"Oh, well good luck." Lora said.

Cindy smiled and thanked her. Lora bit her lip and felt her heart flutter harder than it had previously. She started to sweat.

"Cindy, I think that aside of my being a columnist, I hope that, well...The really big thing for me is, umm, after I get situated with being EnWol, find a nice boy, and move on... I would really just love to be a mother to someone."

Cindy nodded.

"Lora, that that makes a lot of sense. I support that decision."

Lora smiled, a dreamy look caressing her face.

"Yeah. That would make it all worth it."

Cindy looked around for something. She sighted her nearly forgotten diet soda bottle and stretched out to grab it. Lora stole a glance.

"Oh, the diet soda again Cindy."

Cindy snickered.

"I know what you said, but I can't trade in my soda, Lora. Meditating makes me impatient."

Cindy studied it and shrugged.

"Well anyway, here's some sugar substitute to a happy future."

Lora chuckled and balled her hand as if she had a drink.

"Some sugar substitute for a happy future."

The two clinked plastic bottle and fist and giggled.

The doors exploded with a frost bitten rage.

Sarra flew out and slid on the ground, leaving a reflective trail in her wake. Lora and Cindy got out of her way as she collided with the bench. She glided over the top, splitting in two.

Helena flew out of the ice-covered room.

"Sarra! Calm down! This sort of recklessness can get others killed!"

Cindy and Lora exchanged glances and looked back down.

Sarra, with blotchy chrome patches, reformed in two seconds. She puffed up her body and screamed. Helena flew up.

"What is wrong with you? Calm down!"

Sarra growled and ignored Helena. She jumped up into the air and her fists produced a blue glow.

Helena frowned.

"Great Gaia's grapevine! Lora, Freeze her!"

Lora glanced at Cindy and back at Helena. She pointed at Sarra.

"Freeze her?" She asked.

Helena waved her hand.

"I don't know what she's going to do with her ice! Do it, freeze her!"

Sarra looked at Lora and aimed one of her fists at her. Cindy gasped and moved to get in the way of the flurry. Lora saw Sarra's eyes for the briefest of moments, there was something behind the fury, but she was not sure what.

Sarra released her ice and Lora ducked down to evade the attack. She kept her eye on Sarra and produced her own arctic blast. Lora's beam encompassed her sister, and she grew a strong, one-inch thick casing. Sarra's frozen form dropped from six feet up like a stone.

"Whoa!" Cindy said. "Good shot Pink Lemon!"

Lora flew down and looked at her sister.

"Is she alright? What happened?" Lora looked at Sarra's face; she was livid.

"That was one of the worst things that she could do." Helena said.

Lora screwed her face up.

"How come?"

Helena sighed.

"Think about this, Lora, she can survive the encasing without a problem, but can you? Can Cindy?"

Sarra's prison rocked back and forth slightly. Lora put a finger to her chin.

Helena continued.

"Ice kills, Lora, and EnWol do not kill. Period."

Cindy made a wet sounding scoff.

"Talk about being a mother to someone, Pink." Cindy took a glance back into the training room. "¡Ay, caramba! Hey Helena, like, what happened in there?"

Lora looked inside the room. All of the equipment was covered in ice.

Helena crossed her arms.

"Cindy, what's the first thing that I taught you? Before finding your elastic limits, before showing you how to fly? The very first thing."

Cindy answered without hesitation.

"Look and listen. Failure to do so may not only hurt you, but the lives of innocent people. This includes listening to the one that's training you.'

Helena nodded.

"That's right. Being a hero is not just jumping in, but it's also paying attention to your surroundings and using your observations to right all wrong on the scene. Safety comes first for the innocents, the bad guys and you, even if you are an EnWol."

Cindy chuckled and gave a salute.

"Drilled and on top." She said. Cindy noticed that Helena and Lora were looking at Sarra.

"Umm, guys, I don't think that she can hear you." Cindy said.

Helena nodded.

"Yes she can." Helena stretched her arm and clapped it on Lora's shoulder. She did not look up from Sarra's frozen gaze.

"This goes for you too, Lora. Even if you can't stretch, being an EnWol means that you need to protect everyone and everything from harm, literally. Meta Corps can't handle the pressure and lawsuits from damaged property, ruined lives, or an unjust murder. Unlike the police, we are unable to kill in self-defense since the meta and EnWol are more powerful and more accountable."

Sarra's expression softened to look like her mouth was hanging open a little. Helena wrapped her palm around Sarra and the ice started to melt.

"This is very big stuff ladies," Helena continued. "It's not something to mess around with. People get mad at the smallest slip-ups, and then that's all that they focus on. Our research for enhancing humans by way of meta relies on our good reputation. One little mistake could set us back years. It behooves you three to pay attention, save those in need and be responsible."

Lora nodded and Cindy laughed.

"Hey, it's all I want to live for. Do it right or, like, not at all."

Helena nodded.

"In this line of work, yes. Of course, the exception lies in the case of evil that's physically larger than the tallest building in the area. The property damage is negated, and the city evacuated in order to stop it. Damage caused by the hero in that case is pretty much glossed over."

Cindy poked Lora.

"Hey, how do you feel about that? It shouldn't be a problem for you, but some things still go crazy. Are you up for it?"

Lora gulped and nodded. Cindy smiled and patted Lora's back.

"That's good; you have my support, Lora."

Lora smiled and watched as Sarra left her prison through a small opening as silver ooze. She reformed and yelled at Lora for doing what Helena told her to do.
Chapter 8

A plush lavender horse reared up on its hind legs and galloped about the playroom under its own power. Its owner, a five-year-old girl, watched at it with squealing delight as she hovered in midair above her myriad of toys.

At the entryway, Dr. Bill Garner, Morgan le Fay, and an effortlessly disguised Jack Ogden watched Anne play with the projected manifestations of her imagination.

"Remarkable." Morgan whispered.

The horse made a cartoonish grin and Anne did a back flip in midair. She flew across the room, holding her breath and phasing through her plastic castles and toys as if she were as much a projection as the horse.

"This is her whole world. We found that she does not know why we all don't fly or tunnel on a daily basis. Of course, like all children, she sees the adult world as boring, and usually works to make it more to her liking."

"Of course, the little terrors grow into big monsters that way." Jack intoned. His face had an odd lucidity; his features shifted whenever he moved, bordering on looking like a proposed four-dimensional painting.

Garner nodded.

"The problem is that she wants interaction of equal kinds, but does not understand that she is unique."

"So, she goes all poltergeist and ruins the upholstery then." Jack said.

Garner chuckled.

"Oh yes. It's a pain in the neck to deal with."

Bill Garner was a very lanky man. He was tall, wore very thick glasses, and had a thin brown moustache that matched his receding hair. Morgan noticed with disgust that it sounded like phlegm inhibited his voice, making his breathing sound like a rock scraping over pavement.

Garner continued.

"We believe in the needs of each individual, yet with our young Anne, we directed her toward being a happy young girl. She is free to use her power to her own means and whenever she wants, as long as no one is hurt. This is to help detour being rebellious when she's older. We fear that if she's not content, she could be very dangerous. We try not to let her get away with her wrong doings, but it's a challenge, as her parents will attest to."

Morgan held her thumb and index finger above her lip, as if she were to pinch it. Anne let the horse dissolve. She held her right arm to her side and an animal cracker floated over to her hand. Anne nibbled on the cracker and looked at Garner. She waved at them and sent them each a cracker. Jack absorbed his through his palm.

Morgan nodded and studied the cookie.

"I am intrigued, yes, but a question lingers, Dr. Garner. For what was I brought here, long after I was banished from the Meta Corps daycare?"

Garner pressed his lips together and furrowed his brow. He didn't answer for a moment.

"Why was I brought here?" Morgan asked with a firm tone.

Garner's heart rate increased and it showed through his sudden fidgeting and straining voice.

"I have spent my life trying to explain psychokinesis in the lab. The best thing to come out of it is a form of biofeedback, where one can manipulate part of their brain and an EEG reads the patterns that equate them to a desired function. Some of our metas are labeled as such strictly because of their artificial accoutrements. They are cyborgs.

Anne though, well... Our second most powerful meta next to Anne, Geoff Teslowski, he is able to pick himself up and fly fast enough to break the sound barrier. He has problems lifting anything else heavier than he is with the will of his mind though. He only has a four-foot radius before whatever he's holding drops off suddenly.

Anne displays much of the same skills that Geoff does, but she can project her thoughts like a hologram and tunnel in addition."

Jack scoffed; it was a wet, metallic sound.

"So Anne is a collective hallucination and she's not real. That's not a problem, it just means that we're all mad."

Morgan watched Anne watch them, both with intense curiosity. Anne eyed Morgan's cookie, and Morgan took a bite. Anne giggled.

"What are the limits of her telekinetic force? A person of her stature is unable to lift a sofa by their will alone." Morgan asked.

Garner nodded.

"That's about right. Anne expressed strain when we asked her to lift a 16-gallon tub of water. She could only lift the tub an inch off the ground, and she ended up physically tipping it over. That sent the water flying across the room at an increased velocity."

Morgan stared at Anne. She got bored and flew off, creating a translucent rainbow in her wake.

"You have yet to tell me what I was summoned for, and I can assure you that I was not brought in to suck the marvelous teat of your credentials again."

Garner got close to Morgan, to which she recoiled slightly; his breath smelled of artificial fruit and intestinal acids.

"I want to run some tests on her, but because of a child's aversion to needles, I have yet to get a blood sample. I have several ideas for evaluating her, and I need someone of a higher stature to help explore her powers and create a consumable form."

Jack frowned.

"Yeah, we all know how that turned out, nudge, nudge. I'm still paying court fees." He scoffed and rolled his eyes.

Garner continued.

"I have a high-powered scanner that I would like to have rigged with an inescapable chamber for her. I have tested the scanner and results are positive, yet they take a notoriously long time to complete. Most importantly, Morgan, I do not want her harmed as we work."

Jack stepped up and added to the conversation, his body rippling noticeably.

"So, wait, what do you want Morgan to do then? Trap the girl, build her a cage, or figure the munchkin out for you? She's a doctor, not a steel welder."

Garner wagged a skinny finger at him. Jack stared at him like he planned to set his greasy hair on fire.

"Look you, Anne is the closest that man has ever gotten to ascension by way of a natural mutation. Anne may be our future."

Morgan could not help but have a flashback triggered by Garners statement. She sat on a stage... next to Walter, overlooking an audience as a male barked out promises to the crowd, so very long ago.

"I am the closest that we have ever been to ascension by way of Gaias power, I am your future!"

Morgan warped back and saw Anne approach her with a grin and her full attention.

"Hi! You're scary." She said with a playful grin.

Morgan sneered.

"And you're stupid."

Anne giggled.

"You're funny too."

Morgan nodded.

"Charmed to hear that."

Anne giggled again and floated away. Morgan watched her, inspired by her untimely flashback.

"I require a few days to prepare, for I have my own tests that I wish to run. I have my own inquiries about our Miss Anne Redford."
Chapter 9

August 18th, 2010

"How did that happen? Will you let me see!"

"Jason, stop! Get off! What's wrong with you?"

"Hey, Sarra, it's not every day that your best friend becomes a liquid creature, and I haven't seen you since before it happened. Let me see! I could try to put Meta Corps in court for you for a toxic tort or something."

"Will you just—"

Jason pushed Sarra over. Sarra lost her shape and splashed into EnWol silver on the pavement. Jason frowned and hesitantly bent down to poke at Sarra, thinking her dead 'or something' in his obtuseness.

Across the lawn, super suited Lora and Cindy were carrying the very last of the boxes out to the We-All-Haul truck. It was six in the morning and dawn had just broken. Unless Lora and Sarra wished to fly, the estimated time of arrival by towing the truck was around three in the afternoon if there was good traffic all the way up.

Lora and Sarra were adjusting nicely to being EnWol, Lora was still sketchy about hurting people, regardless of their morality, but she was keeping a note to shrug it off. Sarra could hide her elasticity with little effort, but she was still put off by it. She figured that she was a better person than to sit around and mope about it though.

"I just, like, still can't believe this is happening." Cindy said. She stretched up to place a final box on top of the stack. Lora was floating alongside to help it up; the enclosed space trapped her energy and it made their hair burst up like fiery billows of hay.

"Oh, I know. I wish I didn't have to go, Cindy. You really helped me get used to these new powers. You've been doing it for so long and I just started, I really appreciate that."

Cindy smiled.

"Aw Bubbles, it was my pleasure."

Lora got down from her floating perch and gave Cindy a hug, both unable to help but shed tears.

"Hey you turkeys, get a room!" Jason yelled from outside.

Lora and Cindy broke off as Sarra's red headed friend smiled, looking to Sarra for a high five. Sarra, having resumed her normal shape, just glared at him and left him hanging. Jason frowned.

"You're a bitch, Sarra."

"Well, you're an idiot."

Jason shouted at Sarra.

"You're a freak!"

"You're a psycho!" Sarra retorted.

"I'll miss you."

Sarra bit her lip and nodded.

"Yeah, me too."

Both Lora and Cindy giggled.

Serena came out of the house with Louie trailing behind her.

"Alright ladies," she said while projecting her voice. "The house is cleared out, the glass and the hole in the wall are fixed," she turned to Louie, who just shrugged and avoided her eyes, "and the new tenants want in, so we need to head out."

Lora and Cindy looked at each other, the thought that both that none of them would see each other for a long time sinking in. They started to cry. They gave each other a last hug and wept on each other's shoulder.

They broke off and Cindy started down the trucks ramp. Lora watched her jump onto the sidewalk and fly away. She held her hand out, hoping that Cindy would have seen her off. Lora watched her friend fly away until she disappeared.

Sarra and Jason looked at the house; it looked familiar yet there was something terribly wrong. It was hollow.

"We're going to get a Count Sucirlada on the block, I just know it. That would be awful." Sarra said, avoiding a pun pertaining to the word 'suck.'

Jason scoffed.

"What is it about you girls and vampires? They must feel like sandpaper."

Sarra sighed and rolled her eyes. Louie came up and slapped Sarra's back.

"We'll go north young one, for the witches here will make us blind."

Sarra scoffed and glanced at Jason.

"No kidding."

Louie nodded.

"Yep. Let's go. Are you going to fly or carpool?"

Sarra shrugged.

"Let's see how tired I get."

"If you even get tired." Jason said.

With Sarra flying above and Lora below, the Summers family took one last good bye before they left; the streets of Lake Forest California already looking alien to them.

Chapter 10

"Meta Corps is near the Golden Gate Bridge then?" Lora asked. "Wow."

Sarra nodded and sipped her water.

"Yeah, the Purple Fortune spotted me in the air a while ago. She was a little pissed that no one had told her about us."

"Uh-oh, that's not good. How come she wasn't told?" Lora asked.

Sarra shrugged.

"I don't know. She's going to come by and get us soon though. I want to get better at this. I think she's mad because her powers didn't work back there. Can't always be lucky."

Lora and Sarra sat in their new back yard, taking a break from unpacking. The lawn was bigger than their old one and a wall of trees on the parameter blocked the sun for most of the day. The garden furniture was still boxed up, so the sisters floated cross-legged above the patio.

Sarra drank the last of her water and tossed the cup into the air. She wound her arm back, keeping an eye on the airborne cup, and swung it upward. Her arm made a loud crack and it struck the cup. Lora jumped at the sound. The cup landed in two pieces on the lawn.

"I need to work on that." Sarra said. She stretched her arm out to collect the slices.

"Nice. What else can you do, Sarra?" Louie asked, coming out from the house.

Sarra turned her head almost one hundred and eighty degrees. Lora expressed her repulsion.

"You know, Dad. Run, ride a bike, use a jump rope, get away with evading my taxes, normal stuff."

Louie stood next to Sarra.

"That last one sounds pretty heroic to me." He said.

"Just like getting your hand caught in the cookie jar." Lora said.

"You're not helping." Sarra intoned.

Lora frowned.

"Hey, Sarra, be nice."

Louie cleared his throat.

"Really, Sarra what else can you do? How often does a man's daughter... singular, become an ooze girl?"

Sarra clicked her tongue.

"Please dad, Ooze Person."

"I stand corrected."

Sarra uncrossed her legs.

"Okay, look. Stretching is a given, but with it, I can change my viscosity and solidity. See look, my hand is thick right now."

Sarra drove her index finger into her palm. Although both her palm and finger stretched upward, the back of her hand did not break open. She wiggled her finger.

"Now, I'm going to change how thin my hand gets, and..."

Sarra's glove went from crimson to dark pink. Lora watched the color change until Sarra's finger burst from the back of her hand. Lora gasped and paled. She resisted the urge to ask if Sarra was all right. Sarra's silver dribbled down her hand like water.

Louie nodded nonchalantly.

"That's very disgusting. What else?"

There was a quiver in Lora's voice.

"Boy, I'll say..."

Sarra smiled and put her hand down. Her elongated finger separated from its own hand having merged with the other one. It shuddered.

"Oh, yuck!" Lora turned away.

Louie held his hand up.

"Alright Sarra, you have the potential to be a cosmic horror, we get it."

Sarra laughed. Her 'extra' finger melted back into her hand and emerged back where it belonged.

"I plan to use that to my advantage. How scared shitless would a bad guy be if I went up to them as a tentacle beast? This is going to be an easy job."

"Your mother will be so proud." Louie said with a chuckle.

Sarra put her index finger up and floated out onto the lawn.

"Won't she now? Look at this; I tested my falling durability yesterday and I'm going to repeat it now."

Louie pointed at her.

"You're heartless, brainless and spineless, Sarra. How do you expect to survive the idea of a deadly fall, let alone act on it?"

Sarra put her hands on her hips, her elbows disappearing into her arms in a perfect curve.

"Oh, ha, ha."

Lora clutched her father's arm.

"Daddy, be nice."

Louie curled his lip and nodded; his five o clock shadow and longer blonde Ivy League hairstyle being a clear signal that he was both girls father.

"Deadpan can be a wonderful thing, Lora."

Sarra screwed her face up. She clicked her tongue and immediately flew up into the air.

"Is she really doing to do it?" Louie asked.

"I hope not."

"Hey, I don't think she's gotten hurt since the transformation, so why not? I would like to see how she goes splat. I've never seen an EnWol explode in the lab."

Lora frowned.

"Aren't you concerned that Sarra will get hurt, Daddy? Just by some chance?"

Louie rolled his head and looked at Lora with the same pointed look that Sarra had mastered and abused many times before.

"Aren't you concerned, Lora? We've had silver heroes that stretch, explode, and fly around our whole lives. I don't think that Sarra can be killed by doing anything 'humanly' stupid anymore."

Lora looked inside herself for an answer. She was shocked to find that she was indeed concerned for Sarra, but only in a quiet sense that something might go wrong. On the surface, she knew from studying EnWol, and with bits and pieces of information, that Sarra would be fine.

"I guess I'm not too concerned." Lora said in a small voice. "I haven't flown up to convince her to come down in a panicked frenzy."

"I believe she'll be fine. Thing is, is that I don't know if she believes that herself." Louie said.

Sarra succeeded the house by ten feet. She looked down, noticing her sister and father watching her. Her breath caught, which she thought was odd since her lungs and esophagus were no more. Sarra got used to flying and landing, but she felt reluctant to lose control and fall to prove a point.

This would be easier if I were both suicidal and still made of meat...

"The cyborg clone is ready to take your place in death, Sarra." Louie called.

Sarra rolled her eyes. She held her breath and thought of how she felt the last time.

There was no pain on impact, just pressure; then came the feeling of being spread everywhere, and then finally imploding back at her leisure. Her heart quivered, and she focused on why she still felt physical human emotions when she was no longer human.

Sarra fell to the lawn.

Lora inhaled and Louie's hand dug into her shoulder. Sarra hit the lawn and exploded into reflective goop. She was in the trees, the bushes, and dripping down the wall. A large mass of putty reflecting the sky sat at the point of impact.

"Eww..." Lora moaned.

Louie let go.

"Sarra a la Squished."

Sarra's individual globs wobbled and flew back to the largest portion. The blob grew, and a mirrored Sarra stepped out of it. The remaining lump vanished into her legs and than her foot. Her color came back when she was fully formed, the reflective sheen muted to naught.

"See, I lived through that, so think of the other things that I could survive. That is why I think that I'll be a better hero than my sister." She hid her fear behind her wall of cool.

Louie chuckled.

"Hey, at least Lora will want to get back up on the horse instead of moping like some other hero that was scared to prove a point."

Sarra crossed her arms; they blended in with each other.

"Yeah, because I really look dead."

Louie shrugged.

"Well, you could be an ectoplasmic ghost for all you know. Ghosts are cold, would generate frost, fly around and act like goo. Can you haunt the Spanish tombs up north? I'm sure that the visitors would get a kick out of it."

Sarra smiled.

"You know what guys?" Lora asked with a smile. "Sarra's experience back in Huntington Beach didn't go so well, so maybe she can buck up and learn to be extra super here? I'm sure that there are gyms up here too, Sarra."

Sarra stared at her.

"Umm, sis, where are we? Near the main Meta Corps branch, duh."

Lora looked slightly contested.

"Well, it was just an idea."

Louie stepped out onto the lawn.

"Speaking of which, neither of you have told me about what happened in Huntington Beach. Everyone said that Sarra freaked out and Lora had to contain her. What happened?"

Sarra closed her eyes, her face blank. Lora flew out and put her hand on Sarra's shoulder.

"I don't think that you were really ready then... were you, Sarra?"

Sarra didn't answer. She opened her eyes after a long moment and went inside the house. She didn't look back. Lora and her father kept their distance.

"Something's eating at her." Louie muttered. Lora nodded.

"I agree. I'd talked to Cindy about it, but she didn't think so."

Louie nodded.

"Cindy's nice but she's kind of obnoxious. She needs to either cut the sugar, or switch to decaf."

Lora bit her lip, unsure of how to defend her friend who had done both of the things that Louie had mentioned.

"Umm... could Sarra be moping because she's an EnWol now?"

Louie shrugged.

"I don't know; it seems like something that we've all wanted at one point. I wanted to be either a meta or EnWol when I was younger than she is now, but I kinda grew out of it.'

"I can't figure it out. Why would Sarra feel, umm...?"

"Violated, maybe?" Louie asked.

Lora shook her head.

"No, umm... Why would Sarra feel morose about it, Daddy? Shouldn't she be a bit happier? Sarra's a good person at heart, and she always talks about what's wrong with the world, so why is she unhappy about being given the chance to change it?"

Louie rubbed Lora's shoulder in thought.

"I don't doubt that she wanted to be a meta or EnWol, but it bugs her because... with Sarra, she realized that this was a fundamental change to what she has worked so hard to build up; her own sense of reinforced individuality. Sarra feels that the gauntlets, her flight, her being stretchy and all are a detour from her own personal mission as a human being. Does that make sense, Lora?"

She nodded and thought of how the gauntlets had affected her.

"Yeah. I kind of think that being stretchy is a little icky. I've told everyone who knows about my inheritance that I don't think that I want to be stretchy. I don't think that I need it either."

Louie shrugged.

"Hey, Sarra can survive bullets and explosions. Why not? Besides, you never know. You might get a limb torn off somehow, and where would being stretchy be then?"

Lora frowned, her face paled. Louie chuckled.

"That's the point Lora, think about it. We have metas out there that can spit fire from their palms and hurt people. How do EnWol react? They get a little gooey, flounder around and wait until the fire master gets tired. After that, bam, the EnWol recovers and the fire master is hauled off to prison. That's why EnWol have that power.

Think about this too. You and Sarra, you two young women are going to be around a lot of good metas and bad metas. It's best to face the fact that it's unfamiliar and get used to it. Look at this, how different is Sarra aside of being more flighty, stretchy and bitchy?"

Lora laughed.

"Not very much, daddy."

Louie nodded.

"Yep, that's right. So, think about this too. What if your elasticity comes in late, and you end up like some goo? What are going to do then?"

Lora's smile dropped. She looked at her pink hand and her pinched reflection in the gauntlet. She studied the image and tried to put herself in the situation.

"I think that I would be too grossed out to move."

Louie shrugged.

"Girls gotta move. How are you going to cope in the long run if it happens?"

Lora tapped the metal of the gauntlet, listening to her muffled fingernails clink.

"Well Daddy, if it does kick in, then I'll try to make the best of it because I know that it won't go away. Ever." Lora made a sad smile. Louie patted her back.

"Right back on the horse and kept going without worrying about the mud in your hair."

Lora nodded, her smile returning.

"Yeppers."

Louie pointed at her.

"That's what I like to hear from you. Hey, what powers can you pull off to compensate for the dreaded elasticity?"

Lora looked surprised.

"Me daddy? Umm..."

Lora held her hand up and bits of snow made a wet puff from her hand. It overflowed into the ground.

"I need to work on that." Lora clapped her hands.

Louie nodded.

"Most metas that can control ice can create spikes and impale people with them."

Lora scowled.

"Well, I certainly don't want to do that."

Louie yawned.

"I never said that you had too, Happy. It's a little weird how you and Sarra are attacking with the very thing that can stop you, well, her anyway." He walked back to the door and started inside.

"I'd better go and console your sister. I don't hear her blaring her guitar, so she's probably crying into her pillow." Louie sniffed to clear his nose.

Lora followed her father inside the kitchen.

"I've only seen Sarra cry over movies."

Louie barked a laugh.

"Well, this is obviously very different, Lora. This hero thing is going to shake everyone's foundation to the core. Trust me."

Louie paused and fiddled with a speck on the counter.

"You know, Lora, I felt like Sarra did when I was her age; mopey, sad and lost after coming out of being a teenager."

Lora nodded.

"I can believe that. What did you do about it, Daddy?" Lora asked, a smile gracing her face.

Louie sighed and smiled back at Lora.

"I met your mother and grew up."
Chapter 11

September 2nd, 2010

From the air, the region looked to Lora like a large park with a thin dotting of trees and buildings here and there. The land was about a mile square with the Golden Gate Bridge directly to the north. She was told that most of Meta Corps was under the Presidio district for security reasons. Looking down at the park, Lora realized how well hidden it was.

Lora followed the two people beside her down to the edge of a loose hourglass shaped complex, landing on the crossroads at Lincoln Boulevard and Storey Avenue. Lora chose to hover and Sarra did the same before plopping down.

"Here we are; this is it. It was an experience escorting the newest EnWol." Greta, The Purple Fortune said. Her German accent ran thick.

Lora smiled.

"Hey, no trouble."

A single building with a strong Mexican influence sat in front of them. A steel fence with barbed wire on top flanked it and an infestation of ivy was consuming both the fence and building. A large stone sign that said "Meta Corps. Hero, Earth and Psy Divisions & Historical Fort Winfield Scott. Ex Metas, Scientia pro par" sat off to the side.

Greta's blue suited and pink haired sister, Trippi, stood by the entrance. Greta and Trippi spoke for a moment, and then they both invited Lora and Sarra inside.

"Sarra, who's that?" Lora whispered. Sarra tilted her head.

"Didn't you pay attention in history class at all? Trippi was a Nazi experiment that went rogue. She, with Florence and Clark, helped to take out the Third Reich and win the war. She's part of a monumental reason why metas aren't viewed as freaks today. In this country anyway."

The two entered the small lobby; the wordless sounds of an argument echoed across the high ceiling from nearby.

"I didn't study the war."

Sarra just scoffed.

Trippi and Greta listened to the muffled shouts.

"They're at it again?" Greta asked her sister.

"Ja."

Greta moaned and turned to Lora and Sarra.

"Ladies?" Greta walked in and the other three followed to enter a room twice as large as the last.

The room wanted to look both nice and important, but with a major blemish. The Mexican influence seen outside was just as prevalent with paintings of old world San Francisco alongside those of influential heroes on beige walls. What made the room lose its lustier was that there was electronic equipment pouring from off of the receptionist's desk with a rat's nest of cords to boot. Each machine beeped, hissed static, or had disembodied voices come from out of them.

"Oh, it's my guitar equipment." Sarra muttered, getting a laugh from her sister.

The argument stemmed from two metas. One was the yellow clad receptionist, Rachel Schuyler - or Twist when she gets the rare opportunity to fight crime. Like Cindy, Rachel is able to stretch herself, but she appears to mimic rubber more accurately, like with her skin having a shine, and that it also squeaks when she moves.

The other meta was Levan, who is reported for not being that bright outside of being a competent hero. He's able to mimic other powers for a short time by touching the owner. His only other natural power is to fly, and thus he is usually paired with other heroes that don't mind the team up, as long as he does his job.

"I don't know why you need more proof! I am adorable!" Levan shouted as Rachel caught her breath.

Sarra held her head and moaned.

"1992 called... they want this guy dead..."

Levan had short blonde curls of hair and green spandex under an open denim jacket and jeans.

Rachel glared at him.

"You aren't after you give me chocolate after I told you that I was allergic. Do you think that we would both enjoy my acting drunk and getting so puffed up that I can't move?" Rachel yelled.

Sarra's moan was louder.

Levan blinked.

"Yes. I thought that's why you told me that."

Lora expressed her disgust and Sarra's moan turned to a growl.

Rachel glanced up at her new party. She pointed to the exit and her arm lengthened with a soft squeak as it rose.

"Whatever dill weed, know what, I'm done, scram!"

Levan looked at the exit and started toward it.

"Well you just know that I, Levan the Copier, swear my heart to Rachel, my Miss Twist."

Rachel scoffed and searched for some papers.

"Miss Twist, whatever."

Levan felt his frustration leave him when he looked back at Rachel. He bit his lip. He inched closer and started to put his hand on her shoulder.

"Rachel, you know that I didn't mean—"

"Don't touch me sicko; I've watched you. You're not getting off on me this time."

Levan recoiled and shouted. He stomped away as Rachel got back to work. Trippi muttered something and the two walked forward.

"What was that?" Lora asked.

Sarra smirked.

"I like her."

Rachel looked up at them and smiled, her lips squeaking as they stretched.

"Okay, newest EnWol on the block, sign..." She stretched her arm out to a file cabinet while drawing the word out. She checked a few papers and brought two sheets back for Lora and Sarra.

"Sign here. It's just a first time check in, the legal requirements come later."

They did what was requested, and were led by Trippi and Greta to the inner grounds. A large field sat before them with a wide branching pathway to each building and a baseball diamond off to the side. There appeared to be a statue of two heroes standing on a pedestal in the middle of a fountain. They stood in a proud stance with their hands on their hips.

A baseball game was in full swing in the diamond, and an uproar broke out when a meta decided to fly because he was not fast enough to make it home.

"Sports..." Trippi muttered. She looked at her sister for an agreement, and recoiled slightly when Greta pulled a jersey from her backpack.

"Sports that I am taking over for, sis."

The four walked over to the diamond and Greta ran ahead into the bleachers. She spoke to a slender woman with a chestnut ponytail that was jeering at the opposing team. Her jersey read 'Sanders 82.'

Sarra looked at Trippi.

"So, how's your father then? Has he been let out of prison yet?" She asked.

Trippi gave Sarra a sharp look that terrified Lora. Sarra raised her eyebrows, insinuating an innocent question. Trippis eyes narrowed and Lora came in between them.

"Sarra, leave her alone."

Trippi sneered and looked ahead. The chestnut haired woman's neck elongated upward about two feet and she switched with Greta. She bickered with someone for a moment before abandoning the team.

"Being a know it all is not becoming of you, EnWol." Trippi said. Sarra just scoffed.

The woman approached, and Sarra spoke before any of them were introduced.

"Florence Sanders. Wouldn't you be the first one to cheat in a game of baseball?"

Florence answered promptly.

"I'll have you know," she said, her words clipped and voice quick, "that the liars and cheaters in this world never gain satisfaction from their dishonesty. Sadly, most are too uneducated to realize this and continue with their practices thinking that they'll get more satisfaction from it. That is a trait that I hope to have eliminated."

Sarra made a face and stole a habitual glance at her sister, nodding and smiling in agreement. Sarra scoffed.

"Bunch of girl scouts..."

Lora stepped up to shake her hand and they introduced themselves properly. Trippi was dismissed, and they all headed for the main facility. Florence's baseball uniform melted into EnWol silver and then into a navy business suit with a skirt.

"Helena told me about you two, how Crimson Cherry," she pointed at Sarra, "is a proper EnWol, and how Lora... is not."

Florence opened a door for the sisters, presenting a light marble stairwell with planters on the wall. Lora and Sarra walked in and Florence led the way down.

"It's Crimzon Cherry, with a Z." Sarra said.

Florence stopped mid-step, brows furrowed and looking around in thought. Her knees disappeared into her curved legs.

Lora gripped Sarra's shoulder.

"Sarra, don't do that."

Florence shrugged.

"Okay, whatever you like. Why though?" She walked off again, legs properly defined.

Sarra smiled.

"It's pretentious."

"Ahh, good." Florence said. She shook her head as if to roll her eyes.

"Anyway, I was going to ask how that happened and why Lora had not gone through with the elasticity, but... I'm not sure if either of you know yourselves..."

Florence pointed at Lora.

"You don't want the elasticity, I heard, so we may have to train you like a normal ice bearer. We won't make you transform if you think it unpleasant, Lora, but we'll need to make sure that you know what it means for your safety if you're not elastic. As far as the gauntlets, there is most likely a problem, so we're going to get Bronson to look at them."

Lora let out an internal sigh.

"Quick thing, don't you normally have pink hair?" Sarra asked.

Florence nodded.

"Normally. Good PR means having a good hair color."

The three arrived in a gigantic room made of the same light marble as the stairs. On both sides were sub-buildings with large, floor to ceiling windows. There was no roof above, aside from the main surface with several high-powered lights simulating sunlight. A narrow planter-bench combination sat in the center of the corridor, and a quiet roar echoed across the facility.

Florence's arm stretched up and out several times her own height.

"This is the main branch for Meta Corps, supported by Clark and me. The three divisions are Psy, for teaching meta of all ages to adjust to their powers; Earth, where metas who don't chose to be heroes can use their powers for a good cause; and the Hero division, the one in which you two will become the most acquainted with.

Usually, new EnWol are exceptions to starting out in Psy, since the gauntlets seek their next owners. This means that they train in Hero with someone that matches their own power while an actual EnWol will instruct them on elasticity."

"Like Cindy and Helena." Lora said.

Florence licked her teeth and looked away in thought.

"Cindy is C-Girl, the stretcher from Lake Forest?" She asked.

Lora nodded.

"Yep. She helped me become accustomed to being a Pink Lemon, Mrs. Florence."

Florence nodded.

"Good, I like to hear that heroic metas are helping EnWol out. Now, the Psy, Hero and Earth divisions are adjacent to each other, with each of the three branches separated by a hub. We are technically in the earth division."

Inside the windows, Lora and Sarra saw various metas using their powers. Some were generating their own force fields and controlling their trajectory, while others were trying to fly against a wind tunnel. One room caught Sarra's eye where a lone man was acting as his own resonant transformer circuit, and zapping targets to keep an electric meter above a certain level.

Florence glanced back at Lora and Sarra and saw them studying the metas. She and stretched her arm out to direct.

"The people here act as enhancers to our own electrical grid, making sure that there is just enough power to get by. The other meta uses their force fields to blanket the planet with them, intersecting with others across the globe to protect us from the foreign objects that Jupiter failed to eject from the Solar System."

"Huh?" Lora asked.

"Physics, Lora. Jupiter's gravity flings all kinds of crap out of here." Sarra said.

Florence nodded.

"That's right; good job. So, every week, the metas come in to get a check up on their powers to see if they are working properly. Without them, our planet would barely be able to slip by."

Sarra scoffed.

"What, there's no 'we can't live without them; our planet would be doomed otherwise?' Just barely?"

Florence nodded.

"Somewhat, yes. The metas that don't choose to be heroes make a living off their powers, and, although yes we would be able to function without them, it would make our lives exceedingly difficult."

"I'm grateful for them, Mrs. Florence." Lora said. Sarra rolled her eyes. "I was around when that fiasco with Sergei Slade happened a few weeks ago. That's pretty much where I got the gauntlets."

Florence turned around, her presence suddenly daunting.

"Are you implying that Slade had your gauntlets?" She asked.

Lora stopped and frowned. She hesitated.

"Boy, I hadn't thought of that. It was a crazy time and I wasn't paying that much attention. I guess that could be true. Why do you ask?"

Florence turned back around with her hand on her chin.

"Fascinating... Slade is a reclusive collector and he has noted that he would not go after the gauntlets. I wonder why he had them then..."

Lora and Sarra exchanged glances.

"You trust a bad guy's word?" Sarra asked. Florence waved her hand.

"It's not important right now. That's good to hear that you are grateful, Lora. We don't need to take the blue collar metas for granted so much that we lose respect for them."

As they started to walk off, Sarra stretched her hand a little, a question coming to mind.

"Where's Clark, shouldn't he be here too? The tabloids call you the meta hero pair." Sarra asked.

Florence chuckled and gave Sarra a thumbs up.

"Ninth inning with the San Francisco Stretchers upstairs. I knew you were coming, so I was able to step out."

Sarra scoffed.

"Yeah, because baseball is very important in this line of duty."

Florence turned her head partway.

"So is keeping sane by remembering that you are still human in spite of your drastic changes. This can be helped by taking part in human defining activities." She said as dryly as Sarra had.

Sarra shrugged her shoulders, hiding her embarrassment.

"Touché..."

Florence smiled.

"By the way, Clark and I aren't metas, we're EnWol. We were bestowed the power, metas were born with it."

"I knew that..." Sarra muttered under her breath.

Lora shrugged.

"Well I didn't. Thank you. Umm, Mrs. Florence, I'm curious though, why is it important that the EnWol be stretchy? Cindy told me something about being defensive back in Lake Forest, but I think that it's just, well, a little silly."

Florence shrugged. The corridor ended and they reached a large courtyard with a waterfall in the center. Lora expressed her awe and they continued to their left.

"I've spent several years keeping the elasticity from being seen as so cartoonish that it's no longer respectful; it's been an exceedingly difficult run. I don't mind the comparison, wartime cartoons had that effect, but I do mind when it is called silly."

Florence looked at Lora with a sad smile to show that there were no hurt feelings.

"The malleability is there so that you can annoy bad guys that are trying to kill you. They give up after a while, and then you eat them alive."

Lora stepped back, a little aghast.

"Yuck!"

Florence chuckled.

"You've got a wit about you."

"My levels of attitude would soar higher than the birds, but the behavioral scientists thought that was counterintuitive, so they reevaluated my title and came up with me being a jerk."

"Hmm, just an assumption, but maybe you could use this opportunity to help fix this world that you find so shallow."

"I said that same thing to Daddy about her." Lora said.

Florence looked at Lora with a smile.

"Anyway, the EnWol are technically a viscous, self-aware liquid that used to be human. This is because of our own personal safety. Humans by nature are a very fragile race and they would not last puncture wounds, gunshots, or even a bazooka."

"Duh..." Sarra said.

"The gauntlets creators, a group of Wol scientists called The Heroes of the Cosmos, figured that they would transform the gauntlet bearers to avoid death. What if you were fired at by that bazooka? Instead of getting blown up on contact, an EnWol would find that they have just gotten a hole in their torso if they had kept a low viscosity. This would mean that the EnWol could focus on stopping the rocket instead of worrying about a loss of a stomach. All separated droplets automatically swing back to the largest portion of the body. That is, unless you wish otherwise for a makeshift homing beacon anyway."

Lora was frowning, unsure of how to take to the example. Sarra looked at her sister with her neck stretching out.

"Doesn't that sound like fun?"

"Sarra, stop it!" Lora said.

Sarra laughed at her sister's nearly exasperated expression.

Florence rounded a corner to the left and hovered over to a door with a keypad. She entered the code and the door rolled open to the side. She poured back a step, and offered Lora and Sarra to go first, which they accepted.

The room was illuminated by dim computer displays. Florence moaned and her arm snaked over to the light switches. She flicked them a few times, but nothing happened.

"Bronson, lights." Florence called.

There was a clang a few rooms over, followed by an approaching voice that lacked footsteps.

"Oh wow, Florence, I'm sorry! These lights have been tormenting me for two days now. I need to check the wiring."

A small figure about four feet high hovered in from out of the hallway. Both Lora and Sarra noticed that all they could see of this Bronson was that he had glowing red eyes and no pupils. Both were alarmed at the contrast between his unnerving look and deep compunction.

Bronson floated up to the switch and flicked it a few times. Nothing.

"Oh, intercourse the waterfowl!" He banged on the wall above the switch and growled. Both Lora and Sarra laughed at his expletive.

"You don't have to be jumpy about it." Florence said. The flickering lights came on with a solitary bang. Everyone looked at the celling, waiting for the lights to die.

"I'm not jumpy, I aim to please." Bronson said sternly.

Lora gasped and covered her mouth, and Sarra felt like doing the same thing.

Bronson did not look human.

He possessed the symmetry and all major limbs of a human, but that's where the parallels ended. His skin was a shiny teal, textured like a reptiles, and he had glowing, blood red eyes on a disproportionate head that was one and a half times larger than a human's was. He wore a shiny jumpsuit that opened at the chest with a t-shirt on underneath. The shirt had a prominent capital U and M on it as part of a larger word.

Bronson pointed at Florence with a very human expression of jest.

"Huh, no pink hair today. What was the matter; did you get stuck in the cotton candy machine and it took it all off?"

Florence sighed and both her hair and suit turned hot pink, the same shade on Lora's outfit. She smiled at Bronson's ribbing and held out her hand, her arm stretched out and traced behind the new heroes.

"Bronson, these two are Lora and Sarra Summers, they are next in line for your EnWol heritage." Florence put both of her hands on the woman's shoulders as she said their names. Lora waved and Sarra studied Bronson, both unsure of how to deal with the strange beast.

Bronson floated up and smiled as Florence recalled her arms.

"Pink Lemon and Crimson Cherry then, huh? A classic look." He flashed an okay sign.

Lora cleared her throat.

"Excuse me, Mr. Bronson. I'm new to the intricate details regarding metas and um... Well, are you... human?"

Bronson laughed.

"Voluptuous Voids, no! I'm neither an EnWol nor a human. No, I'm just a regular Wol, I can only do regular things that regular Wol can do, like juggle, walk your dog and sing tenor."

"Speaking of regular versus enhanced," Florence started, "While Sarra is complete, Lora went through every stage of the transformation process, yet her body composition is still human. She is EnWol in every way except elasticity."

Lora made a thin smile and nodded. Bronson's eyes widened.

"Oh snap, for real? Take them off; I need to check it out."

Lora yelped and did what she was told. She hastily gave him the gauntlets, but her costume remained. Bronson sped away and Sarra was amused by Lora's urgency.

"Yeah, cough up your bag and pearl necklace too, doll." Sarra muttered.

Florence sneered and followed Bronson. He was studying the gauntlets on a pillar as they sparked up in a traveling arc. Data spit forth from several computer monitors.

"Lora, can you use any of your powers without the gauntlets?" Florence asked.

Lora probed her chin in thought. She twinkled her fingers, trying to pull some moisture from the air to create some frost, but nothing happened.

"I don't think so, Mrs. Florence." Lora jumped a few times. Her boots absorbed her shock on landing but she did not float.

Florence nodded.

"Current EnWol heroes usually keep them on at all times to avoid theft, but in the case of still having a human body, I'm not sure what you should do."

Sarra held her arm out, stretching it a little.

"So that means that it's my responsibility to keep these on until I quit?"

Florence nodded.

"Well, you don't want criminal EnWol running around; although, we are trying to make everyone that wears them an altruist."

Lora held her chin.

"That sounds like you're forcing conformity." She said.

Florence nodded.

"I know. The setting can be flipped with a switch, theoretically, but the issue of free will hangs heavily above it. So far, we hope that we can train and persuade an evil EnWol to become a good person. Our only success is that Jack Ogden went into hiding after his lawsuits." Florence said.

Bronson shouted a very bad word. He pounded the console and read some data.

"I thought that that was a permanent fix. Gaia's Rose, I thought that that was a permanent fix." Bronson glided back up to the gauntlets and pressed a button. Both the protective glass and the electricity vanished. He grabbed the gauntlets and threw them back at Lora. She yelped again, let them roll into her arms, and held them close to her chest with a strong sense of déjà vu over her.

Bronson continued to curse and swear pain upon someone. Florence threw her arms out and wrapped him up in her coils. Bronson struggled as Florence pulled him close and shooshed him while caressing his head. Both Lora and Sarra were amused by the action. Bronson's rage subsided and he merely looked steamed after a moment.

"Please let me go now, I'm fine."

Florence did so and he hovered in place.

"What was the matter?" Florence asked. Bronson made an exaggerated shrug.

"Oh, the spare tire went flat out here in the sticks when the nearest service station is a buh-zillion miles away!" Bronson flung his arms out. "The Heroes HQ is too far and we don't have access to the Gans jump gates, so getting more silver for the power chamber is next to impossible. I'm sorry, Lora, but I'm afraid that you and those that get that pair down the line will have to stay human."

Lora frowned and increased her grip on the gauntlets.

"Oh no. I feel terrible for all those heroes in the future."

Sarra made a sharp laugh.

"I told you that I would be better." She said while crossing her arms. Lora, oblivious to the sibling rivalry, tilted her head.

"Sarra, this isn't a contest."

Bronson floated over to Lora and held his hand out. His attitude was smoothed over.

"Fork over the gauntlets, both of you; I'm going to stick a small bit of code in that will help you out, Lora."

The sisters took them off and Bronson hovered away. Sarra's outfit melted into EnWol silver and then into a sleeveless black top and jeans.

"The kicker is that I'm still naked. Earths mightiest heroes are full time exhibitionists..." Sarra muttered to herself. She whipped her arm up and down and it bent fluidly.

"Tench!" Bronson shouted as he flew over to a worktable.

From out of another room, came a male meta. He had dark hair and goggles perched on his head. He wore black spandex that covered his entire body, with a blue pair of shorts and a short-sleeved shirt on top. An 'FF' decorated his shirt. He looked like he was ready to go out jogging in cold weather.

"What happened? Is Bronson bickering about some boisterous bangles back-ups again?"

Lora giggled and that caught Tench's ear. He looked at her and waved. Lora twinkled her fingers.

Bronson drummed his fingers on the table.

"Beyond a doubt, Tench. We've got two new EnWol and one of them didn't go silver."

Tench made a face.

"Uh oh, which one?"

Bronson pointed at Lora, and then he fiddled with her gauntlets.

"Lora, the Pink Lemon; she's human, not silver. The other one, Sarra, is silver." He said.

Tench looked at Lora with a lopsided smile.

"Oh, it's a Perplexing Pink Plastic Problem then."

Lora snorted and doubled over with laughter. Sarra shook her head, unimpressed.

"I'm glad you liked that. I'm Andy Tench. The public knows me as Frost. Frost Forward to be frank actually."

Lora giggled.

"Cool!"

Florence walked over to Bronson and lazily stretched her neck out to peek over his shoulder.

"What are you doing?" She asked.

Bronson pointed to the back room.

"I wanted Tench to grab me my self-regeneration code. We need to compensate for her lack of silver."

Tench frowned.

"Bronson, it isn't tested with the gauntlets. Do you want to do that?"

Bronson looked at him with a hopeful smile.

"It'll work."

Florence's neck returned to normal. She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes.

"What regeneration code?"

Both technicians nonchalantly waved their hands at the same time; Bronson's human like passion left with Tench to retrieve the code.

"I had informed you of that when you bought this land, I was going to do whatever I wished to improve the EnWol gauntlets, as long as no one was physically or psychologically hurt."

Florence nodded.

"I understand that; but this is the first that I've heard of this code."

Bronson shrugged, a chunk of his humanity was slipping back.

"Oh, it was an experiment that I've been tinkering with for a long time now, it'll work. The gauntlets scan the body whenever they are slipped on to check for the proper powers. This code will make a restore point and heal any injury that Lora will get whenever she removes the gauntlets, bar decapitation, severed limbs, and digits and the like. The other ones regeneration powers will lie dormant just in case."

"I really think that the bugs need to be worked out." Tench said. He plopped a single terabyte flash drive on the counter along with an odd jar of sand that swayed like water.

"Hey, I coded the thing up, down, left, right, port, and starboard on its plane of orbit while peering down at the four dimensions it lives in. It had better work!"

Lora walked up, her chin resting on her closed hands.

"What's going to happen to me, Bronson?"

"For your sake, I hope that you're fine, and that we don't find out when you're not."

Lora frowned and chewed her lip.

Bronson took a few grains of the sand in a measuring cup, and took it and both pairs of gauntlets back to their electrifying chamber.

"So, what unique powers do you two have?" Tench asked as he plugged the flash drive in.

"We can find the best deals at the mall and look cute while doing it." Sarra said.

Tench laughed. Lora joined him and waved her hand.

"No, she's just teasing."

"I noticed."

"Helena Christophers called us, umm..."

Lora snapped her fingers, a muffled click coming from her glove. Sarra almost interjected, but Lora unwittingly cut her off.

"Cryokinetics."

Tench smiled again.

"Oh really? That's my power."

Sarra sneered.

"No it isn't."

"No it's true. Why else would I look like the dorkiest triathlon runner?"

Sarra turned away, trying not to laugh.

Tench twiddled his own fingers and Lora noticed that some frost formed on his black glove. She made a slow gasp with a large grin.

"Neato! Hey, maybe you could help us both out with the cryokinetics? I would appreciate the help, and I'm sure that Sarra would too." Lora put her hand on Sarra's shoulder. Sarra grunted.

"I think that might work." Florence said. "You're a capable ice bearer, and you two seem to get along, so why not? How long have you been able to manipulate ice, Tench?"

Tench shrugged.

"Umm, I lived in a freezer when I was six because the world was way too warm."

Sarra blew a raspberry.

"What can I say if it's true?" Tench asked. "I came out to try and tolerate it two years ago. I even remember hurling snow inside the house when I was four too. It really made my parents mad. I'm a certified master at it, if that's what you're asking."

"No, we wanted your life story, thanks." Sarra croaked. Florence shot her a look. Lora caught it and rested her palm on Sarra's back.

"She's not usually this, umm... talkative."

Sarra snorted again.

"My snark is off the charts, someone help me."

Florence went back to Tench.

"How would you like to show them around, and maybe practice at Air Station Alameda?"

Tench stood up straight and grinned.

"Aw, really? Yeah, sure! A couple of cool characters crossing the city."

"That sounds fun." Lora said.

Sarra moaned.

"Golly ma'am, it sure would be swell to escort these wonderful ladies out. Boy oh boy..." She started with an enthusiastic tone that degenerated into her normal croaky voice.

Florence glared at Sarra and sighed.

"I'm sorry, I need to know. Lora, how did you live with her?"

Lora smiled.

"I just don't let her get to me."

There was a loud pop behind them. Lora and Sarra jumped while Florence and Tench moved into position to fight back. Lora ran up a second later and posed.

"Oh no, no, no, no, no!" Bronson grabbed his bulbous head.

A loud whir came from the machinery. The snaps increased and the gauntlets glowed. Tench ran over; both he and Bronson made some adjustments on the computer and the machine's power resumed normal levels.

Bronson swore in his native tongue. The gauntlets container opened and spit the four pieces onto the floor.

"What happened?" Tench yelled with a cracked voice. He was breathing heavily. Florence slowly stepped up behind them and crossed her arms.

"Yes, tell us, what happened, Bronson?"

Bronson picked up the gauntlets. He shoved them at Florence and they dug into her a little bit. She grabbed them before they could fall.

Bronson floated over to the jar of sand.

"I don't know. I don't think I checked the code while it was inverted." He said.

Tench made a squeaky laugh.

"Ya think? Gomez and Rodgers, that was scary!"

"Are the gauntlets alright?" Florence asked, her words cutting through the air with great precision.

Bronson grabbed at the sand and let it run through his fingers.

"They're as operational as before, there's no question, but the code was not implemented properly and the gauntlets themselves rolled back to their previous operational setting. This means that my idea for a regenerative feature did not work. I'll call you back when I have the code good and ready..." Bronson looked Florence in the eye. "...and sure of it."

Florence's eyes narrowed. Bronson turned to Tench.

"Andy, you can go with them, I can hold down the shop." He said. Tench nodded and walked back to the twins. Florence gave him the gauntlets as he approached and Tench handed them out.

"Are you sure that there won't be any problems when you get this fixed?" Florence asked.

Bronson examined the code on the flash drive.

"Florence, it was my fault that that happened, and I can fix this. Besides, how many mistakes have I made on my own? Really? I'm only inhuman."

Bronson looked at Florence with a smirk, and was pleased when she cracked her own little smile.

Florence pointed at him and enunciated her words clearly.

"Do a thorough job this time."

Bronson shrugged.

"It's a useful feature to have and I care about my converted and superior brethren. I'll fix it up, trust me."

Lora looked at her gauntlets.

"Is there a differentiation between these?" Lora asked.

Tench smiled with worry shaking his voice.

"Not really. When they are looking for new heroes, then the two closest pieces will form a pair and fly away. The other pair goes to the partner. There's elastic sand in all four, but they are using different measures in each chamber to prevent unpredictable super elasticity. We can't really configure them any other way."

Lora and Sarra put their gauntlets on; Sarra's outfit changed back to purple and red and Lora hovered a little bit.

"Super elasticity?" Sarra asked.

Tench shrugged.

"It's a theory that Bronson and I have that says an EnWol will have problems keeping their form and turn to self-aware silver as a default shape. The current configuration says that the EnWols shape before the conversion is default, so..." He shrugged again. Sarra nodded.

Tench politely grabbed Lora's shoulder and they started to leave. He cleared his throat.

"Later Bronson."

Bronson said his farewells, and everyone but Sarra left the shop. Bronson caught a glance at her.

"Question?"

Sarra crossed her arms.

"You know, I hate to say, but the warm uncle thing you've got going next to the alien lizard thing is unsettling."

Bronson laughed.

"You kidding? I can see that's your favorite thing to do."

Sarra shook her head.

"No, not this time. I've just had... different expectations from extraterrestrials."

Bronson smiled.

"Hey, don't look now, kid, but there's one staring right back at you whenever you look in a mirror."

Sarra felt her heart sink at the realization. She hid it away with a sneer.

Bronson shrugged.

"Well, if it makes you feel better, than I'm the short overly warm uncle with a skin problem and blown blood vessels in both my eyes. Hey, it helped me get out of Roswell when I landed in forty seven."

Sarra did not enjoy being reminded of her physical humanity being stripped away.

"Okay, whatever." She turned to the exit.

Bronson watched her and acted on a hunch.

"Hey!" He called.

Sarra looked back at him and his radiating concern made her look away.

"I don't know how you feel about your new change, but it isn't a bad thing. You still have a human shape by default, a human thought process, all of your memories, and the lack of an organic brain makes you impervious to most psychic attacks. By the Void, you still have your DNA so that you can have a child if you can find a surrogate."

Bronson smiled.

Sarra scoffed again.

"Get used to this because I'm never going back."

Bronson nodded.

"That's the general idea."

Sarra said her good byes by way of a lazy raspberry and left.

Chapter 12

"I know that for a fact that I'm fired for sure. The process is taking too long. They probably already sent out a search warrant for Anne. Those release documents won't work; they'll see right through them. This is bad. This is bad." Garner muttered to himself and paced the floor. Although he was worried, the promise of realizing Anne's abilities kept him from acting out against the research.

Morgan had no such thoughts. She had been hammering away at Anne, scanning her psychic powers, checking the strength of her ability from various readouts, and running off on odd tangents. Since the tests had begun, Morgan had learned that Anne was far more intriguing than Garner had originally made her out to be.

Garner stared at his computer. Anne's anxiety levels had dropped since she was first placed in Morgan's tank. Garner looked up at the child and she stared back. Anne floated in a tube of highly oxygenized liquid, giving her and the world around her an orange hue. Morgan had put a spell on it that would keep Anne from phasing out. Garner waved while a knot of grief cooked in his stomach. Anne harrumphed and his heart flittered.

Garner was responsible for Anne; he wondered why he let Morgan talk him into going the whole hog and kidnap her, even with forged papers. He felt his cooking knot long to relieve a burst of sudden pressure. He balled his fists and stepped up to Morgan. She was engrossed in her console covered with graphs and readouts of Anne's power.

"Look, I'm already fired, I can just feel it, but do we still need to keep Anne here?"

Morgan looked up at him from an incline, her eyes half-closed and unreadable. Garner pointed at Anne.

"I was responsible for making sure that one of the most powerful metas in recorded modern history was content. What if she suffers irreversible trauma from this experience?"

Garners face paled.

"Oh, great Gaia with an apple pie, what if she is traumatized by this experience? How will we cope with her if she becomes a criminal?"

Morgan sneered and tried to ignore her ranting partner.

"Anne would tunnel through buildings for goods while harnessing her ability to project her thoughts, rendering her presence a non-issue; people's eyes will just slide off of her."

Morgan shut her eyes and sighed. Her anger was bubbling up.

"Pretty soon, our economy would falter because she has all the worlds' goods and we would have nothing. She could vibrate her atoms too quickly and leave fires in her wake as well."

Morgan smacked the console and stood up. Garner yelped; his full attention was on her.

"Was this not your idea?" She asked. Morgan took a step toward him.

Garner sputtered more than he gave an answer. Morgan spoke over his retort as she strode toward him.

"Was this not your request of me?"

More sputtering. More advancing. A fit of retreating. Anne and Jack watched them from across the room.

"Am I doing exactly what you asked of me?"

More sputtering. More advancing. A fit of retreating.

"Are we getting the results that you wanted?"

Garner nodded.

"Well, yes, but, you see...

"Are we hurting her?"

"No, but there are psychological—"

"Then there is no problem here."

Morgan turned on her heel and went back to her workstation.

Garner felt like crying.

"To ensure that there is no problem, Doctor," she spat the word, "I would suggest that you adjust your ghastly disproportionate sputtering to coherency ratio and continue with your research."

Garner stole a glance to his left to see Jack staring down at him. Garner sighed and went back to his station with a dark cloud looming over him.

Morgan looked at her display and at Anne. Her readings seemed to have peaked, her telekinesis, projection and tunneling appeared to have reached a cap. Morgan thought back to the catalyst for her own independent testing with Anne. Her original idea of expiration was proven wrong when she had to transfer one meta human power set to another just over fifteen years prior. This gave her plenty of ideas to mull over. Anne's potential had not been reached, and Morgan knew from experience that more power would be needed for ample results. She was too far on her own tangent to turn back and leave the young Anne alone.

Morgan sneered and adjusted some settings to her liking.

"At least there... was no problem, Doctor..."

Morgan pressed a button and Anne jerked at attention. Garner watched as Anne's head shuddered. She started to scream. Morgan smiled, her data exploding. She read it quickly, stumbling over some of it.

"Yes... yes..."

Garner watched Anne, feeling her pain. His knot burst.

"Morgan, you have pushed this too far, you're amplifying her powers to her wits end. You need to let her go!"

Morgan glanced at Garners approach and waved her hand.

"Jack, dispose of him."

"No!"

Garner latched onto a console as Jack shot up and picked him up.

"Morgan, no! I won't let you break—"

The test chamber exploded.

Jack swore as he dropped Garner, letting the fluid and glass projectiles slide through his body. Morgan ducked behind the console. Anne was screaming. Morgan checked the console; the dials were rising steadily and Anne was generating a gale force of wind.

"Good. As long as she's in the area, she'll produce ample readings." Morgan said.

Jack shook his head. Anne was growling, trying to suppress her power.

"She seems too preoccupied to try and escape. What did you do to her?"

Garner gapped at Anne. He pulled on what little hair he had left.

"What are you doing? Prematurely boosting her power was not part of my plan Morgan. There may be unexpected side effects and consequences that could befall Anne and the entire country, the world even. You don't know what you're doing!"

"Everything... is under control. William. Jack, get him out of here."

"No! I need to—" Jack slapped him and then dropped him. Vertigo swam in Garner's head and stars floated in front of him.

"That should shut you right up."

Jack sneered at the girl. Anne's fingers were curling and images of blood and sharp lines surrounded her like an aura.

"Say, mum, do you think that he might have a point about..."

"Out!" She yelled, and pointed outside.

Jack made a face.

"Fine, I'll see him out and do whatever else blows your skirt up..."

Morgan was lost on the statement. She had chosen to wear her sleeveless black catsuit with flat boots to prevent herself from catching on stray debris. Morgan dismissed the remark and got back to work.

Jack plucked Garner from off the floor. He swore wordless threats as the world spun around him. He noticed that the light had intensified after a moment and that his hip struck concrete and demanded all of his attention. He moaned and Jack locked the door.

Garner shook his head to relieve himself of his lightheadedness, and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He ignored the cracked screen and called up the single most important number in his speed dial.

Three rings.

"Hello, Meta Corps dispatch, this is Rachel, what is the nature of the call?"

Before Garner could answer, all of the windows burst outward and shattered. Garner yelled.

"Sir? Sir, I heard an explosion, where are you?"

Garner tried to stand, but his hip protested too much. A red glow exuded from the windows accompanied by the sound of Anne's sobbing. Garner licked his lips, feeling her pain and wondering how Morgan could stand to put her in that situation.

Garner drew strength from within.

"Ma'am, I'm at a warehouse in Dogpatch, just off 20th street near pier 70, and I'm dealing with a crazy woman! The address is..."

A large shadow swallowed the sunlight below him. Garner looked up to see a dark vortex swirling in the sky and growing bigger by the second.

"Oh my..."

Garner's eyes rolled up into his head and his vertigo returned in spades to help displace his consciousness. He fell to his back as Rachel tried to coax more information from him.

Chapter 13

"Clark.... Country wide interest in metas is going down the drain, again." Florence said. She twirled her finger above her computer screen showing a line graph.

Clark Sanders never wanted to leave the forties, as outwardly indicated by his beige work shirt and suspenders. People had class back then and, to him, the modern world was nothing but bad music and sensationalism. He slicked his burgundy hair back and walked over to Florence.

"Are they complaining about how EnWol are too powerful again, Dilly."

The graph illustrated overall interest in meta humans and how it has been declining since the second world war. There was a sharp rise in 1977 when Meta Corps subsidiaries, Aviator Films released the first modern and well-made EnWol movie, with Cave Comix releasing tie-in comic books. Since the start of the millennium, interest and sales have declined, with the lowest point being in autumn of 1992. The company had extremely high insurance issues from citywide crime fighting coupled with general utilities and other fees. There were predictions that said that Meta Corps would collapse in 2012 unless they either came out with a killer franchise or forced a global takeover.

Florence shook her head.

"We can't have any more slopes or else we'll have to close some branches." She said. She fingered the line from the war and traced it up and down into the present. Clark shrugged.

"Well, at least the mutations are prevalent enough so that there's a steady trickle coming in for medical study and power harnessing. Hey, I still think that hiring on writers that paint EnWol as overpowered is part of the problem. Barely anyone knows how to write us and it comes off badly. It's a danger to the innocents that drives good stories, not EnWol."

Florence nodded.

"Our greatest gift is our greatest curse, although, I'm not sure if that trickle that you mentioned will be enough." Florence said. She started to think aloud.

"Our students and heroes pay for their own tuition, but there isn't an insurance firm that will touch us; that's what's been killing us for the longest time now..."

Clark walked around the desk.

"We could look at a merger with someone, or license some of our lesson plans out to drum up interest. Give up the monopoly."

Florence leaned back in her seat.

"I don't know. I had thought of that a while ago, but I'm worried that our own tactics will be used against us. Aviator is too overblown to be practical, but actually exporting our services to others..." Florence trailed off.

Clark cracked his knuckles out of habit; his EnWol hands bent in random directions.

"I know that in this job you can afford to be paranoid, what with every single person signing non-disclosure agreements, but it might help us out."

Clark stretched his neck out to study the monitor again.

"At least the entertainment district isn't making us look like fools anymore."

Florence laughed at his remark, remembering her cartoon from the eighties that gave eco-friendly advice without any entertainment value. She leaned back to reminisce.

Clark retracted his neck and made his way to the window. He frowned and focused his attention to a point in the sky behind the trees.

"You know what the worst part about The Little Squirts is?" Florence asked.

"What's that?" He asked with an odd quality.

"The distributer is capitalizing on the nostalgia niche with shirts and videos. I told them that..." Florence stopped. She frowned.

Clarks question was right, but the tone was wrong. She stretched her neck out to his side and joined him without leaving her seat. Clark glanced at her and pointed at a dark, pulsating cloud peaking up over the tree line.

"I haven't the foggiest idea what that is," Florence said, "but it looks bad. Call for a dispatch, I'll see who's available"

Clark nodded, fingering an imaginary pole sticking out of his mouth.

"I wish I had a cigarette... being EnWol has made it hard to use... or, hey, even really want one."

Florence resumed her normal shape.

"What would the Little Squirts think of that?" She said with a playful smile. Clark chuckled as the dark cloud in the distance raged.

Chapter 14

Tench was the first of the three to see it. The cloud was dark, brooding and sat low over eastern San Francisco. Tench slowed to a hover, and Lora and Sarra did the same

"What is that? That's a mean looking storm." Lora asked, her voice wavering.

"That sucker must be a mile in diameter." Sarra said.

Tench cracked his neck, the sound inaudible from the wind.

"That looks like it's your very first day on the field, ladies."

Sarra snarled.

"Doesn't the first day come after extensive training? I thought that first days with no experience only happened in the comics."

Tench and Lora replied simultaneously.

"Where do you think the writers get these kinds of ideas?"

The two exchanged glances and laughed. Sarra got a kick out of the synchronicity. She pointed at them with a rounded elbow.

"Wow. The stars shine on you two, hard."

Their laughter fell to nervous levels. Tench fiddled with a dial on his goggles while Lora watched him with a swelling chest.

"Rachel, hey, it's Tench, I'm seeing an odd cloud in what looks like Dogpatch. Is anyone on this?"

Rachel sighed. Levan was asking her what was going on, frustrated at being ignored.

"Not really, you're the first to call after I received the distress signal, Andy. Looks like you're on the job. Is anyone with you presently?"

Tench pointed at the two women.

"Lora and Sarra, the new EnWol are."

The voices got fuzzy as Rachel spoke to a different someone.

"Rachel?" Tench asked.

Lora and Sarra exchanged glances. Rachel came back on.

"Okay, Florence gives her best wishes to her new protégés, and Juno Osbourne will be present to monitor the site once she's set up."

A new voice came on, clear as a bell.

"I'll join them too." Levan said. Tench could see him raising his eyebrows with seductions intent at Rachel. Tench heard a slap and a thank you from Levan.

"Fine, that idiot will be joining you too, just get him out of my hair!" Rachel yelled.

Tench chuckled.

Sarra mocked his laugh, slightly frustrated. She stretched out and stroked her finger across his face, digging into it at the same time.

"Yeah, hey cutie, can you let us in on stuff, like, say just what that thing is?"

Sarra pointed at the cloud with a twenty-foot arm. Tench ignored her. Lora floated up and rubbed Sarra's back. She was cold to the touch.

"Hey, easy, easy, Sarra. He'll tell us. You're part of the club too."

Sarra snorted with her breath shooting out in cold streams from her nose.

"That sounds okay, Rachel, we'll keep an eye out." Tench said.

"Good luck." Rachel sounded relieved.

Tench broke the connection.

"Okay, we're going to go investigate that thing... whatever it is. Rachel sent out a scientist to help out on a technical side and Levan will accompany us as we check it out up close."

"We're going in that scary thing?" Lora asked while pointing at the growing anomaly.

Tench puffed his cheeks.

"Hey, I'm scared too, but what else is there to do but attack that big splotch?"

"Ask someone else to do it?" Sarra asked.

Tench looked at her with his lopsided smile.

"And get bad PR? No way."

The cloud made itself known, and a shockwave pulsated from it. Lora shrieked and latched onto Tench as a strong wind blew past them. The three of them stared at the angry, flashing cloud. A mangled symphony of car alarms wafted up from below.

Tench blushed, all too aware that Lora was clutching him. Sarra hovered up with a smile on her face.

"We really should go check out what's raging down there, but I don't want to rush the raging that's up here."

Lora looked at Tench, her own face flushing. She broke off and started to giggle. Tench was unable to speak and his perspiration disagreed with his spandex. He pointed at the cloud and flew toward it with the sisters trailing behind.

They arrived within a few minutes, both Lora and Tench having settled down enough to function without giggling. They swooped underneath the cloud and noticed that there was dry warmth radiating from its center. It was generating a very low drone, like a slowed thunderclap.

"It's always a warehouse, isn't it?" Sarra asked.

"I've been to quite a few that had some bad guys in them." Tench said.

20th street led to a shore side lot surrounded by rustic buildings. Spare parts, tools, parked cars, overgrown dead plants and poorly stacked resources of different verities sat wherever a spot could be found. A shipyard was a few hundred feet to the north; it looked just as dirty and uninhibited as the preceding buildings. The warehouse under the cloud had its two front windows blown out.

Tench saw a crowd of workers who matched the area. They stared up; slack jawed at the swirling mess. He turned to Lora and Sarra.

"I'm going to tell them to evacuate and to spread the word. You two scan the perimeter of our vacant void and see if anyone is hurt. Don't go in until I join you."

Sarra wrinkled her nose.

"Hey, who's the more powerful one here? Me, I'm EnWol."

Tench smiled.

"And who's your senior? Who's been a Meta their whole life and has a confidant grip on their powers?"

Sarra's wrinkled nose intensified. Tench continued.

"That was rude of me to retort that way, but it's the truth. I'm open to suggestions, but you do what I say or someone could get hurt. That goes for Lora too. If I'm not around, or you're on your own before you know what to do, think of what is morally right, and act on it. All right?"

Lora nodded. Sarra sneered.

"What about exceptions?"

Tench's own nose wrinkled.

"We'll talk later. Lora, you're in charge, go."

Sarra's jaw fell.

"What?"

Tench left before he could answer.

"Okay Sarra, let's mosey." Lora swung her fist across her chest. "I want to make a plan of action before we—"

"Bullshit, you're not in charge."

Sarra shot down to the building. Lora frowned and followed her sister.

"Hey, wait, wait. Sarra!"

Lora followed her sister and watched her shoot once around the building in a blur. Lora dropped to the pavement, trotted up to the 800 foot deep building and started to look around on foot. Sarra zipped up behind her sister.

"What are you doing? I'm done." Sarra asked.

Lora hesitated.

"I'm just double checking, Sarra, it's alright."

Lora jogged away. Sarra watched her for a moment and sneered. "It's alright..."

Lora stopped to look at something at the midway between the front and rear of the building. She bounded back into the air, and waved to her sister.

"Oh, Sarra, come here, look!" She was hopping up and down.

Sarra rolled her eyes and flew over.

"What, did you find a kitten and a baby ducky? I don't have time for.... Oh..."

The two stared at a pudgy man in a dark suit. He was disheveled and knocked unconscious.

Sarra held her arms out.

"Okay, how in a horrible void could I have missed this guy?"

Lora ignored her sister. She had bent down on Sarra's approach to try and wake him.

"Sir? Sir, please wake up and tell us what happened. Please?"

Sarra pushed her sister aside. Lora fell to her butt and Sarra wrapped her arms around the man. He had a nasal groan.

"Sarra! You put him down. What if he's hurt?" Lora stood up and grabbed Sarra's shoulder. Her hands went through her sister's body to her mid forearm. Sarra showed no signs of noticing. Lora recoiled and wiped her hands on her hips on instinct.

Sarra brought the man close to her. His glasses were off on one side, and his two front teeth were prominent. He tried to focus on Sarra. She drew him close and spoke through gritted teeth.

"Okay you rat, listen up. I want to know who is responsible for that beast hanging above us." Sarra shook him. The man replied by retching. Sarra sneered. She wanted to drop him.

"Be nice!" Lora called. She was torn between either letting Sarra talk, or acting out and stopping her. She didn't know how hurt the man was or if Sarra would cooperate if challenged.

Sarra ignored her sister. Lora saw the man wince. She stepped up, grabbed Sarra's shoulders and tried to shake her.

"Sarra, stop it, put him down already! This isn't a good way to be a hero." Lora yelled.

"What are you doing?" Tench swooped in from the front of the shop and approached Sarra, who decided to drop the man anyway.

"Great Gaia, who's this? Did you rough him up like that? You were in charge, Lora, what happened?"

Lora pointed at Sarra while sputtering. Tench eyed Sarra with an arched eyebrow. Sarra felt her defense strengthen from Tench's intimidation.

"You don't rough up an innocent found at the scene." He said.

Sarra crossed her arms.

"I didn't pulp him, I found him like that."

The man stood up, using the wall for support. Tench helped him up and Lora came in to assist.

"Regardless, I saw you drop him on purpose. There's no excuse for that."

Sarra cured her lip and widened her eyes. She folded her arms into a tight cross.

"Yes, mother!" She spat. "I'm sorry for ever upsetting you. Why, I would love it if you would forgive me!"

Lora looked up and held her hand out at Sarra.

"Sarra, easy," she said.

Tench gave Sarra a look, and then went back to the man. He handled his chin with care as Lora stroked his forehead with a cold palm.

"Sir, the heroes are here, what happened?" Tench asked. "Is there a threat that you know of running around?"

The man pointed behind Tench and his eyes widened. Lora followed his gaze and gasped.

"Him!" The man squeaked.

A yellow tendril came from out of nowhere and slammed the man's head against the wall. Lora screamed. In the span of a second, Tench turned on his heel, tracking the end of the tendril as it returned to its owner. He released a spray of ice, and Lora followed that lead another second later. The blasts lacked the pressure to hit the target and fell short.

The person for whom the tendril belonged floated off the ground one hundred feet away.

Tench went into a fighting stance and Lora copied him. Sarra studied the yellow suited male assailant with a lack of interest.

"Who's that?" Lora asked.

Tench growled.

"Trouble."

Lora nodded and her heart quaked. Her breathing increased.

"I'll say."

"No, he's dead meat!"

Sarra shot ahead like a bullet.

Tench held his hand out.

"No, wait. What are you doing?"

He took a glance at Lora.

"Keep an eye on our..." Tench looked back to see the injured man hobble into the building.

Tench sighed.

"Never mind, I guess." He said and they lifted off to chase after Sarra.

Sarra cocked her arm back, eager to unleash her icy fist on the fiends confidant smirk. She approached, roared and released her fist into her opponent's chest. Sarra's fist stretched out from the man's back like a yellow tree branch and rebounded back. The man tilted his head with a grin. Sarra pulled her fist back, but it was stuck in the man's chest.

Tench put a hand put in front of Lora when they were several feet shy of Sarra.

"What are you doing? Sarra is—"

"Hey, this is another stretcher with some kind of adhesive so unless you want to get stuck, than stay back, alright?" Tench's voice cracked.

Lora looked out at her struggling sister. Tench cupped his hands over his mouth.

"Use your ice powers!"

Sarra glanced back at him; both her arms and her knee were caught. She started to panic.

"You're a crazy idiot!"

The man had not moved. He laughed at Sarra.

Tench looked back at Lora.

"I'm sorry, does she ever learn?"

Lora bit her lip.

"Usually the hard way..."

Sarra looked the man in the eye and her courage deflated. The cloud was growing. It obscured the sun and put the face of her assailant in shadow.

The man smiled and his eyes glowed yellow.

"Brain freeze..."

His head split down the middle revealing silver within. Sarra's breath caught. Every instinct screamed at her to run, but she wanted her extremities back. The split went down the man's chest and stopped at his navel. The back was unbroken, showing off Sarra's horrified reflection. The new cavity grew four sets of teeth that swirled around the bloodied parameter. Arcs of electricity appeared down its throat in the center.

Sarra lost her impermeable nerve and screamed at the abomination before her. Lora huddled in Tench and looked away; her sister's cry shook at her core.

The thing's lips stretched out to encompass its prey. Sarra snapped and broke for all. She turned to fly away without her appendages, only making it far enough to see the last sliver of light before she was consumed. Sarra pounded frantically at the rock solid wall while crouched over. Dozens of electrical tendrils reached out from the things pit to ingest her. Sarra tried to fend them away in the small space, but the crackling tendrils numbed her on contact and dragged her away.

Sarra was there and gone in eight seconds.

Tench and Lora watched through bleary eyes as the thing's body deflated and resumed a human shape. Sarra tried to escape in the compressed space, and it showed through impressions in its body. The thing laughed and twirled its arms upward. Its elbows hooked together and it spun them around as one like a baton. It gained velocity and the budges of Sarra moved toward the arms. The ends of its arms blurred as they spun now left to right in an arcing figure eight.

The twirling slowed and it held the stretched arms up as if it had something to throw. They reached a climax, and then released. Globs of Sarra blasted from the ends of its hands onto the concrete below. Lora and Tench watched her rain down and the ground with a splash. Sarra remained motionless, reflecting the sky.

The thing approached Tench and Lora and spoke as they studied their partner on the ground below. The two heroes eyed the thing, and Lora hid behind Tench. It had a wicked smile.

"The Cherry Tart was delicious, there is no doubt in my mind, but I really must have had my supper before desert. I think that I would enjoy the main course... the Lemon Chicken."

Chapter 15

Lora froze up. Her vision skewed and sudden exhaustion overwhelmed her dread. Tench felt her weight drag him down and he turned around to see her fade. He grabbed her before she could fall.

"Oh no, Pink, don't pass out now!"

Lora's eyes rolled up in her head. She took a deep breath and went limp in his arms. Tench looked back at the thing with a sneer.

"Jack Ogden, the Electric Beaulieu, the Lecherous Lad of London."

Jack put his hand to his chest.

"That's cute, yes. After a show of my distortion, I'm introduced to a fourth wall that exists in the knight in spandex armors head as he holds his elegant prize, just like in the comics. It's quite distinctive, actually."

Tench glanced at Lora, the tension from Jack mounting on his shoulders.

"What do you want?"

Jack waved his hand.

"Oh, I was watching you turn your back on me before striking and wondering why some new Pink Lemon, it looks like, would lose her shit like that. I assume that it's to make your life more difficult." Jack chuckled.

Tench bit his lip. His training brought to mind a tactic for planting seeds in the enemy's head.

"Well, maybe you aren't attacking because there's some sort of compassion in you."

Jack huffed.

"Oh come on. You clearly weren't paying attention to what I had done to poor Crimson Cherry. Honestly, some sort of compassion? You sound like that cow, Florence."

Tench frowned.

"There is a thing that you could do—-"

"Nope, denied." He stretched out and punched Tench in the chin. The two heroes went spiraling to the ocean.

Jack smiled and looked at his hand. He flexed it and it pivoted back into his wrist while letting a reserve hand come out the other end. He flexed his new hand.

"Cake." He watched the duo twirl for a moment, and then dove down for the kill, bowing his hands to build electricity.

Lora's eyes fluttered open.

The earth climbed up to her at a blazing speed with an oil tanker directly below. Lora gasped, now fully awake. She flailed for a moment in a panic, and then she tried to gain control of her momentum. She tilted her head up and curved her back to emulate an airplanes nose being turned upward. She closed her eyes and held her head up with a protesting back.

Lora made a wide arc above the ship's bow, inches from grazing the deck. Her stomach dropped as she sought clearance back into the air. She flew parallel to the deck and a cabin sprung up in her path. She screamed and continued her arc while rolling a few degrees to the side. Lora jerked back at the last second and swore that her stomach had barely brushed the corner wall. She had passed the ship, but hadn't gained any more control.

Lora nearly gave a celebratory vomit for her aerodynamics, but it was cut short. Her trajectory made her set to collide with a large, land-mounted crane.

"No, no, no!"

Lora's speed was dropping, but she was still a bullet on a set straight path. She felt as if she was riding an invisible rail toward the crane. Lifting her nose again would result in a head on collision with one of the four pillars. Lora closed her eyes and winced. She entered a center opening and was set to leave, but she did not have a chance to relish in enjoying her luck.

Lora's shoulder pressed on a pillar on her way out and scratched a protruding bolt. The friction burn and resulting tear burned worse than a dry California summer. The slight change in momentum was enough to send her spiraling out of control. She screamed as the both force of gravity and velocity took her elsewhere. She never had the chance to gain her bearings. She collided at a full stop with a faraway brick wall, her other shoulder was imbedded in enough to hold her in place.

A moment passed with Lora's mouth in a painful and silent scream. She squeaked. Both of her shoulders burned in agony, one more than the other. She was still dizzy and feeble. She reached up to try to inspect the damage, but she paused when she felt herself being dislodged.

"Oh no! Please!"

Lora fell from the impression. She tried to grab the edge on instinct but her arm screamed and her voice wasn't too far behind. Lora plummeted to the parking lot, and flew up in a successful arc. She heard herself breathe and she stole a glance at her burning shoulder. It was soaked with blood.

Lora saw Tench fly up to her with Jack not far behind. Lora sighed with relief, but a gleam in the distance caught her eye.

Sarra.

Lora took a detour and flew past Tench. He called out to her, sighed and followed.

Sarra lay flat as a puddle of silver, frightened with her recent experience. In the entire dome of the earth above her, she saw her sister flying up followed by Tench, and... Sarra was not sure of what she did, but it equated to squinting, and she got a better view of Jack....That thing! She felt herself literally boil and ebb.

Lora landed near her sister. Before Lora could execute any sort of care, Sarra shot up, immediately resuming her form without color, and screamed to the sky with a terrible fury. Lora jumped and backed up several steps.

Sarra's mirror sheen vanished, and her color returned, a little oversaturated. She gritted her teeth and flew up at Jack, creating a boom that sent Lora onto her back. Lora squealed in agony and almost passed out again.

Sarra rushed at her assailant. Jack stopped, impressed with the tenacity, and threw his arm out to attack. Sarra wanted that thing dead. She paid attention to the arms course and covered it in ice up to the shoulder at the last second. Jack looked at his frozen appendage, puzzled. Sarra shot up to Jack's head, wound her arm back, and let her ice charge.

"Hey Hot Dog, here's your own brain free—"

Jack grabbed Sarra's face with his other arm. Sarra didn't feel any pain after the literal shock of being blinded, but she did feel that she had lost control of her body. Sarra wanted to scream with rage, but nothing came of it. Jack parted his fingers so that Sarra could see.

"I'm sorry, love, who's the hot dog?"

Sarra's amber eyes blazed with hatred.

Jack smirked and threw the hero away. He studied his frozen arm, and caught sight of Lora following Sarra. Tench noticed the frozen twenty-foot appendage, and decided to finish the job. He charged up his ice. Before he was ready to release his snowstorm, Jack smacked him with his free hand. Tench lost control and writhed in midair. He screamed.

Jack pushed him away and hauled his burden off to follow the sisters. The frozen arm hit Tench, and he tried his best to keep hold. While his body was limp, he forced himself to generate some ice and affix himself to the block. Jack looked down at him and tried to shake him off as he flew.
Chapter 16

She was in agony. Anne Redford has always had a modest grip on her power, but this ascent was an overload. It was too much, too overpowering... too painful. Anne cried out, in over her head over the lack of control. Her tummy hurt, her knees hurt, her fingers hurt, her eyes hurt and even her toes hurt; but her head... and feelings hurt the most.

Anne had trusted William Garner, she trusted Florence Sanders, she trusted her parents, and she had the heart to take a chance and trust those who were nice to her. Morgan le Fay, though, was not a person to be trusted. She was a bad person that could not be trusted, and she wished that Dr. William Garner had been able to see that.

Morgan sat at the console, watching Anne's power levels rise and reading the information that she desperately sought.

"Rise, rise dial, it is imperative that you meet my demands, rise. Rise! Time is of the essence!" A smile peppered with frustration graced her blue hued lips.

Garner ambled in from outside. He was disheveled and tired from dealing with Crimson Cherry. He had an awful, awful headache from Jack knocking his head against the wall, which did not help the matters any. He looked at Anne, and then turned away when she started screaming again. Her wails were like tens of thousands of hot, poisonous needles pressing into his chest.

Morgan watched the levels rise on psionic capacity, electrical current, and the likelihood of a one-one genetic lineage being passed on. All things seemed to be perfect, but... they were also too perfect.

Morgan had all the data needed, so she decided to evaluate the lot and see if her hypothesis was correct. She read the data and felt hot wax run down her throat as she read. The meta power and genetic code were two different things linked together, working together to pass each other on to the next generation. A terrible virus attached to human DNA to allow meta powers. It was not a normal mutation; she was sure of it. Morgan looked up at Anne and swallowed the lump in her throat.

"That's it, Walter. Do you see?... All of them... Leon is building his army... and I was the first..."

Anne screamed for her mother. Garner felt his chest burn hotter than his already massive headache. He had had enough. He drew strength from inside himself and plodded up.

"Morgan, I'm not usually a violent person but—" A piece of concrete fell in his path.

Garner lost his focus and shrieked. Morgan caught sight of him and looked around. There were cracks in the drywall, and shelves of computer parts had fallen to the ground, unbeknownst of Morgan's knowledge.

Anne growled, trying her hardest to compress her unrequited fury, but there was a surge coming; she could feel it. She screamed again as her head felt like it was being ripped in half with a white-hot saw. The whole building rumbled and Morgan's machine exploded. She shielded her face and stepped back, pulling her wand out.

"Stay close to me William." Morgan waved her wand.

"You need to bring her down from this rush! You could kill her!" Garner yelled.

"I can neither stop her, nor do I care to. I have the data that I need from her."

A bubble materialized around them both; a meta human force field. Anne's screams became hoarse, and her silent sobs were lost among the rumbling. Garner was about to retaliate, but he heard a crack above. He looked up to see that the entire roof had collapsed and that he was in the line of fire. Garner screamed as Morgan escaped, the bubble splitting into two. Garner bent down on his haunches and protected himself.

He had several thoughts run through his head, he had regret for mistreating Anne, his jumping the gun, and wondering why he cowered down and did not run. He also thought that the concrete was taking a while to land. Garner looked up from his hands; no excess rubble littered the floor.

The impact had not come.

He looked up to see that the roof was breaking apart, and swirling into a small point in the cloud... as were the walls, the rogue shelves, pieces of equipment, furniture, and the heroes.
Chapter 17

Sarra's spasms ended and she regained control of herself, not counting some smaller jitters here and there.

"Sarra!"

Sarra turned to see her sisters approach and sneered. She predicted that Lora would ask if she was all right, forgoing duty. Sarra looked past her sister and saw Tench fall to the earth, clearly injured and unable to fly properly. She saw that Jack was above him with a rocking arm.

Sarra answered before Lora could ask.

"I'm always going to be alright, you putz! Why worry about me when Tench is falling? Gaia's Rose, Lora!"

Sarra shot past her sister. Lora watched her leave and was surprised to see that Jack's icy appendage was being sucked up into the eye with its owner not far behind. Below, she saw Tench plummet to the earth. Lora gasped and followed Sarra.

Jack had dislodged Tench with his swing, but he found that the eye had caught his appendage in the process. Displeased at the thought of losing his arm to another dimension, Jack wrapped his free arm around the ice and flew in the other direction. The pillar of ice turned ninety degrees, and the eye got a better grip. Jack forced his panic away; he was losing. A chunk of concrete half the size of his body rushed at him.

"Oh shit, no you don't!" Jack looked around, afraid to move in any other direction. He was smacked before he could attempt anything, and was sucked up within moments.

Sarra caught up with Tench, grabbed him, and held him in a fireman's carry as she flew back to Lora. She saw Jack get sucked up and felt a pang of elation.

"Serves you right, blow hole!"

Sarra flew back to Lora, who inspected Tench without a word. Tench was immobile but conscious, and looking up at the eye.

"Jack is gone." Lora called. She held onto her arm.

Sarra scoffed.

"Good riddance. Make him suffer his own cosmic void."

Lora looked up at the eye.

"Now what, Sarra? How do we stop it?"

Sarra looked away; she didn't have an answer.

The wind suddenly picked up, and the three were caught. Lora shrieked and grabbed for her sister. Sarra was caught by surprise, both by the sudden gale and Lora's lunge. She backed away from Lora and hit a current where the gust was stronger. Sarra's liquid body enfolded Tench in awkward swirls as they tumbled out of control toward the eye.

Lora watched them disappear into the vortex.

"Sarra!" She held her bloodied arm up as if she herself could stretch. She saw red and yellow spots accompanying lightheadedness and gasped. She shook her head, grimaced, and wondered what to do. Save the city, or her sister. Lora bit her lip and decided to defy fate by choosing both. She mustered all her courage and dove upward, straight into the eye of the storm.

On the ground, Morgan cowered behind a stationary piece of rubble, watching as Anne's power grew. She had never witnessed psychic power of that magnitude, and both the scientific doctor, and former practitioner in her was deeply curious. She sat quietly and watched.

Anne rose up to the eye and stopped at the event horizon. She tried to look around, but swirling flakes of dust got in her eyes. She cried and wished for nothing more but for her pain to go away.

Chapter 18

Lora awoke, too groggy to open her eyes. She sat up and felt like she was in a tank of syrup. She made a moan and it echoed for several seconds. Lora opened her eyes, furrowed her brow and stood up.

"Well this is funny..." She said to herself. Her words echoed away and came back.

Lora was in a playroom filled with toys that seemed one and a half times larger as they should be. Lora walked up to a nearby teddy bear, it having the proportions of a carnival prize.

"Hello." She felt a little foolish. "You wouldn't know what happened, would you?"

Her query echoed against the absolute quiet. The bear was not responsive.

She still felt like she was lying down. Lora turned and caught sight of a pink and yellow blur. She stumbled back in the thick as molasses air, and slowly fell to the ground. She noticed that her hands were creating trails. Lora made a soft landing on her butt.

"Scared of my own shadow... What is going on?"

She stood up and flew into the air to get a better look around.

The florescent lit ceiling resembled a sky, but without a logical light source. She could see the ceiling tiles represented as an impressive moiré pattern. The rest of the expansive room was even more of an enigma.

The playroom stretched to infinity in all directions; the horizon being a thin black line with dots of multi colored toys as it stretched. Toys of all kinds dotted the floor below in a terrible clutter, all bigger than they would be normally but each proportionate with each other.

"Dang, I must have shrunk. Hello?" Lora called. Her voice carried far across the emptiness. She tilted her head, her call taking on a life much, much longer than it should with the empty acoustics.

"Yeah." A croaky voice rang out from all directions.

Sarra.

Lora turned around, searching for evidence of her sister. Her own odd trail got in her way and she ended up seeing into her own eyes. Lora gasped, waved her hand to clear the illusion, and then moved out of the way. She noticed that her trail from when she was in front of the bear was fading.

"Oh, Sarra, I'm glad you're alright. Where are you?"

Lora saw her sister rise up from a mound of blocks. A trail followed her with such precision that it might as well have been her elastic body. They spotted each other.

"That's what I want to know." Sarra said.

"Where's Tench? What is this place?"

Sarra looked around. She held her hands out.

"My sarcasm fails me..."

Lora covered her mouth and chuckled.

"Oh wow."

Sarra stared into her. Lora grimaced, apologized, and looked around.

"Tench can't be far, can he?"

Sarra snorted.

"I don't know, I think he was hurt. It might be a little hard to find him."

Lora gasped.

"He's hurt? Oh no. Tench!"

Lora sped off, calling for him. Sarra threw her arm out to stop her sister.

"Whoa, whoa!" Sarra called.

The speed at which Lora flew off, and Sarra's stretching her arm was fair, but painfully slow. Sarra imagined that it was something like having the mindset for super speed but not the power.

Several seconds later, Sarra wrapped her arm around Lora's, she experienced a slow motion whiplash, which would not have hurt had both her arms not been injured, one far more than the other. Lora howled and her stars returned as Sarra retrieved her. Lora blinked and fought back tears.

"Hey, that... thing came in here first, and I'll be lost in the Void before I see it again, although given this place, that might not be far from the truth. I want to make sure that you don't get eaten too." Sarra said.

Lora nodded and bit her lip, tears streaming down her face.. She caught sight of Tench hovering up from behind Sarra. He looked as if he would fall from the air from sheer exhaustion. Lora smiled and hovered up to give him a one armed hug.

"You're okay."

Tench nodded.

"Yeah, I'll live, I'm fine. Hey, I need to tell you that that thing's Jack Ogden." His voice was small.

"I've heard of him." Lora said. "I knew that he could attack with electricity, and that he's British, but I didn't know he could stretch."

"That's Jack?" Sarra asked with an outward show of disbelief.

Tench nodded.

"Yeah, he caused Bronson some trouble in 1970. We think that he may have caused those gauntlets to lose their elasticity, but it's just a guess."

"How would he do that?" Lora asked, twisting a gauntlet on her arm.

Tench shrugged.

"I don't know; let's find out where we are before worrying about a villain's origin story. How's your arm? Is it as bad as it looks?"

Lora's entire left shoulder was caked with blood. Her EnWol silver suit was not hurt. She resisted rubbing the wound.

"It's hurting, but I can make it... I don't think that there are any broken bones, thank goodness. Are you sure you're okay, Tench?"

"I'm shaken up, but fine. I'm more concerned about where we are."

Sarra crossed her arms.

"Well, I was turned to goo, and I'm psychologically traumatized. Otherwise, I'm hunky-dory too." She said with a curled lip.

Tench rolled his eyes.

"Come on; let's find something that will help."

Sarra scoffed.

"Like what? An Ozmone Board?"

Tench and Lora chose to ignore her.

Down below, Jack watched them. He had not moved from where he started; a cage made of blocks. The ice around his arm was gone and he was whole. He watched the trio fly away. Their odd shadows and overgenerous echoes made it easy to keep tabs on them. Jack left his cage and followed them, keeping low to the ground.

"Are we dead?" Sarra asked. She heard her quip about the Ozmone Board come shooting back to her and wished that she could swat it away like a fly.

"I don't think so." Tench said. "The Tree wouldn't have toys as far as the eye could see. As for what caused this, and how Jack is involved, I'm pretty clueless." His words slurred and he had little jitters here and there.

Sarra moved her arm up and down. The trails went through her, and impressions of her side continued behind her. She closed her fist a finger at a time and reopened it.

"This place is weird. I don't feel tired, but... I haven't felt this tired since the night before I put the gauntlets on the very first time. On the other hand, how could we be in such a thick atmosphere without being able to see it? I don't even see any haze in the distance."

"Yeah, it's crazy." Tench said.

"I almost feel... like I'm swimming?" Lora said with her southern California accent peeking out.

Tench nodded and agreed.

"Foolish mortals, I am the water..." Sarra muttered to herself.

The trio flew off with Jack following not far behind, unsure of where to go since the world was the same as far as the eye could see.

Tench laughed after a minute.

"You know, it may be a wild guess, but I have a five year old cousin that—"

Tench never finished. A yellow tendril with a looped eye grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him to the ground. He disappeared behind some toys; his trail looking like a blue and black smoke signal. Lora chased after him with Sarra not far behind.

"Tench!" Lora yelled.

Tench clawed at whatever he could find. He was turned around to see Jack smiling at him. Tench started to fight back, but he felt a twitchy pain again. Jack also felt a tingle; something was wrong.

Jack exploded.

Lora and Sarra were just above. Jack's molten sediment flew out in all directions with Tench flowing along aimlessly. Lora tried to protect herself from Jack's onslaught, but she could not raise her arm to her face. Sarra swooped in and covered her sister. The bright bits of Jack looked to have landed after a moment, and Tench's trail was lost in it. The expansive room seemed to prefer the quiet because the explosion did not echo.

The sisters scanned the area; Lora's hard breathing being the only noises. Sarra no longer had to breathe.

Lora stuttered.

"Wow Sarra, I want to get out of here." Lora was on the verge of tears.

"You think I don't?" Sarra snapped. "Something blew up and killed Tench—"

"Killed?"

"—and I don't want to be here when it gets one of us!"

"You—" Lora sniffed hard. "You think he's dead, Sarra?"

Sarra searched for any sort of indication that suggested the contrary, but found nothing. She growled and crossed her arms.

"Anything's possible in the land where very bad toys go to die..."

Lora sniffed again.

Jack's body regrouped on its own, one of the things about his change for which he was grateful. He finished reforming while lying down. He looked up at the ceiling that may have been light years away, feeling his meta born electricity flow through him.

Jack paid attention to his body and how it felt, and wondered why he exploded. From what he could tell, he still looked like a normal human. His defining powers were functioning, and the intense whole-body wobble from being a sentient puddle of goo was, sadly, doing its job.

"What in a vacant void was that?" Jack wondered.

He saw Lora and Sarra out of the corner of his eye.

"So, where do we find Tench? What's your bright idea, leader?" Sarra spat.

Lora grimaced. Her shoulder was pulsing and burning. She bit her lip, trying to ignore the pain of her bloodied appendage, and pointed with her good arm.

"This way?" She wiped her eyes.

Sarra's head on a long neck appeared in Lora's field of vision.

"Why?"

Lora felt the pit of her stomach burn white hot and the heat needed a release.

"I don't know, Sarra! Gaia, I'm not as analytical as you are when it comes to this kind of thing. Why don't you lead then, please. Which way?" Lora cried again.

Sarra bit her lip, wondering if she should do the sisterly thing and console her. She figured that she would do it later; being stuck in the strangest wasteland beyond what they could imagine was not the right place to show sisterly love. Sarra shrugged.

"Fine, this way. These trails do fade though, so we could get stuck somewhere."

Lora searched for any signs of life that wasn't their own trails. The explosion was fading away; the ends of it spreading out like the incident inverted.

From the ground, Jack saw Lora point with her chin and they flew off. Jack slunk up like a snake. He was still confused about the blast, but he was also still willing to keep stalking the heroes. Jack pondered which of the two sisters to grab, waiting for them to stop.

"I love the hunt, even with the unpredictable nuances. Which one though, the sweet one or the spicy one? They're both so different."

Neither of the sisters had said much on the journey. They flew to the horizon to seek a comfort that would not be found from behind.

Jack became impatient and quickened his pace. He took the strategy a little differently than with Tench. Since Sarra was EnWol, grabbing her by the ankle and pulling would separate her foot from her leg and alert them of his presence. Jack took the direct approach. He charged his electricity and flew through the thick atmosphere without a sound. He captured Sarra in a sort of pocket and dove into the ground in an arc. Lora could only process that Sarra was eaten by a yellow ribbon. The end of the arc exploded much in the same way that Tench's encounter had. Hot mantle and bits of silver Sarra traveled in all directions. It was over in less than three seconds.

Lora hovered, stunned at the action and unsure of how to react. The sound dissipated into the quiet and only the trails remained. There was no trace of Sarra to be found.

"My..."

Lora could hear herself breathing. She looked around.

"Okay..." she chuckled nervously. She searched for a deity to appease; she thought it would be Jack.

"I'm sorry? I guess?" She yelled. Her voice cracked. She immediately cleared her throat and tried again. There was no reply except for her echo. The trails from Sarra and the second explosion had faded away after several moments.

Lora gulped and found that she was unable to get her bearings. She pointed ahead and flew.

"I think it was this way?" No reply. Lora gulped. "Okay... Here I go..."

Lora began to fly, unsure of where she was going or where she was headed. There was nothing to be found. The oversized toys repeated in a random pattern the further Lora flew. Pastel pink, blue and green teddy bears, blocks, yo-yos, and dolls sat motionless on top of a dark blue carpet. Lora shivered; outside of her own noises echoing back, the eerie quiet proved that there was nothing fun in the jubilant void.

A thought tingled in the back of her mind. If she were trapped, alone, than how would she cope? There was no one to be seen or heard from. Lora could be all alone for eternity, locked at age eighteen and her mind still processing a normal flow of time. She would surely go mad, alone in toy land.

Alone.

What was the opposite of love but being alone?

Lora's breath caught and her heart pounded. She turned around and flew under her own trail, inches from the toys.

"Sarra? Tench? Oh please someone! Please answer!"

There was a crash behind her, an odd sound in this environment. Lora gasped, swooped upward, and scanned the area behind her.

There was only her honey blonde trail.

"Sarra? Tench?"

Nothing.

She bit her lip.

"Jack?" She said in a small voice.

Nothing.

Lora sighed, wondering if she had made the crash by flying too low. She turned around and found Jack Ogden, hovering before her.

Lora gasped; her heart pounded. Jack smiled. Lora raised her hand to try to freeze him, and nearly collapsed under the pain. Jack wrapped Lora's arm up in a cocoon and they met, nose to nose. He let off an electrical charge.

"Yes, love. I'm here. What do you want?" His voice was smooth and hushed.

Lora's shoulder was in agony. Her vision blurred with tears and she sniffed. She clenched her fist on her bloodied arm. Jack intensified his charge and he was pleased to see Lora squeak.

"Aww, Pink Lemon can't handle the tartness? Why not just get used to it?" Jack upped the amperage and Lora screamed.

Jack laughed.

"Look at you, a pathetic excuse for an EnWol; it doesn't even seem like you can stretch."

Lora clenched and released her fist. Bits of snow formed between her fingers and solidified. She tried to speak but her words were cut off by her own short breaths.

Jack frowned with mock intent.

"Aw, can't talk? Mighty EnWol? Or should I say... human?"

Lora's breathing deepened and tears streamed down her face.

"What is it? Before I kill you." Jack asked. His low voice became gravely.

Lora looked up at him and smiled.

"Have... have an ice day."

She screamed with numbing pain as she blasted a stream of cold air in Jack's face.

Jack screeched and let go. Lora smiled, despite being reminded of her wounded arm. She wished that removing the gauntlets would heal her.

Jack tried to wipe the ice from his face. His head was numb, and he lost his sight. He moved his vocal and optic relays to his hand, holding it out to find Lora.

"Oh, you'll, pay for that you fool!"

Jack charged, and Lora got ready for another round to toss. Jack's body radiated with electricity. Lora gulped and drew as much moisture from the air as she was able to.

As Jack came less than three feet from Lora, the toy room faded to black. As did Lora, as did her physical self. Neither Jack nor Lora got the chance to exchange blows. The two fighters felt nothing, saw nothing, experienced nothing but their own thoughts...and Tench's, and Sarra's.

Chapter 19

Juno Osbourne watched the levels on her controls tick beyond their limit as Anne's power levels escalated. Florence and Clark looked up at the eye, the three of them and the equipment sitting in the middle of the street by a condemned red masonry building. The area of activity crept toward the rest of the city, taking up any debris that wasn't laid in foundation on its outer perimeter. Water, cars, twirling power lines dependent on their connections and large chunks of building in the epicenter were gobbled up. The vortex was getting stronger.

"Florence, I have no idea how to handle this. I have no idea how she can for that matter. Anne's' power is miles off the charts." Juno said, her nasal voice whining.

Florence nodded.

"Is it possible that her vortex can grow large enough to eat the planet?"

Juno flipped her lengthy braid across her shoulder.

"No, Anne would die in the process. Even then, the power would need to go somewhere, and the inhabitants of the earth would feel the psychic effect of a dead little girl for years to come, provided that we survive, that is."

Florence nodded.

"Can we get anyone near her and subdue her?" Clark asked.

Juno shook her head.

"We already lost our current EnWol, and any further hope of more EnWol with it. I've kept any ancillary metas from approaching the vortex so that we don't lose more lives. As of now, Dogpatch is quarantined."

Florence wrinkled her nose.

"This game is all about risk; that's how it goes. We just need to find the right way to take advantage of the situation and act on it."

Levan came up from behind them.

"I'm risky, I'm heroic and expendable. I could go up and save the little girl from the dastardly vortex."

"She's causing the vortex." Juno said without looking up at him.

Levan's brow furrowed.

"Excuse me? That can't be right."

Juno nodded.

"I know. It violates the laws of conservation and mass. She shouldn't be able to do this."

Levan held his hands up and chortled.

"Okay, look, I know that, Juno, you are the smartest person in the land..."

"Who other?"

"...but that can't be right. I don't know anything about physics, but if Hollywood has taught me anything, it's that that vortex should be bigger." He pointed at the swirling mass above him. In the context of a Hollywood movie, it was very small.

Clark shook his head and Florence hid her face to moan.

Levan pulled on his spandex as if he were wearing suspenders.

"In any case, I can still rescue that girl up there. Perhaps that's just what she needs to end this storm; a hero with good PR." He rocked on the balls of his feet.

Clark walked up.

"Levan, don't. Lora and Sarra are gone. We don't want you to go either."

"No please. Levan don't. Listen to the veteran." Juno said. There was no emotion in her voice.

Levan ignored Clark.

"It is too late my lady, Osbourne, for my decision is made. I shall, nay; I might rescue the little girl from her own peril."

Juno rolled her eyes and mouthed the word 'might.'

"No, don't. The world needs you and your special sarcasm detecting abilities."

"What?" Levan asked and then flew away without regards for an answer.

Florence shot off and left as quickly as Levan did. Juno quietly got back to her readings, adjusting them to compensate for hitting the maximum levels. Clark crossed his arms and glared at Juno. She shot a glance at him.

"I'm not sure if his use of the word expendable back there was deliberate or not." Juno muttered.

"Why did you have to feed him?" Clark asked.

Juno held her thumb and index finger close together.

"He gets his egging on from a pea. He hardly needed my help, Clark. Without me, it would have just delayed the inevitable."

Clark pursed his lips, defeated.

"That may be so..."

Florence readied her arm to catch Levan. The gap closed in between them and she threw. Her arm sailed past Levan, and then it was violently pulled on by the vortex. She gasped and pulled it back, thankful that she did not lose it. She wiggled her fingers and watched Levan approach Anne. He seemed unaffected by the vortex. Watched as parts of her body bubbled in and out like a lava lamp; the vortex was teasing a craving for EnWol silver.

Florence curled her lip and looked up at Levan. His hair remained motionless as he hovered in front of Anne. Levan was being his 'heroic' self, apparently unaffected by the vortexes pull. Florence decided to leave him be. She flew back to her husband and Juno.

"Young Anne, I have arrived to rescue you and relieve you of your misery."

Anne's face was ablaze in distress. Her eyes were shut and she was trying to regulate her breathing. She shuddered out every breath. She opened her eyes a crack and stared at him.

Levan grimaced behind his smile. He cleared his throat, unsure of what to do beyond what he was taught about dealing with meta children. Usually they had some degree of control over their powers.

"Well, young Anne, we should get going." He reached for her hand. Anne held her breath and mewled, trying to talk. She found that her intangibility was failing her. Levan grabbed her hand with a smile on his face, and then his expression went slack.

"Oh cheese..."

Levan felt Anne's powers loop up his arm like a flash of numbness and into his head. He saw flashes of Anne's pain, her fire, Morgan and Garner, Jack, and reserves of hope and trust buried away so that she could recover from her torture. Levan's head felt like it would split open. He grabbed it and shouted.

Anne gasped, her headache gone in an instant. She looked up at Levan and covered her mouth.

"Great Apple Trees, Mister, I'm sorry!"

Anne looked up at the eye of the vortex, its power being shifted from her to Levan. The eye shrunk and inside, she saw the unconscious forms of Pink Lemon, Crimson Cherry, The Electric Beaulieu, and cousin Tench very slowly falling out of it.
Chapter 20

"What is this?"

"What's going on?"

"Sarra? Is that you?"

"What?"

"Which one of you is Sarra?"

The four people saw only a dark void. They touched the void, heard the void, and knew only both the void and their own thoughts.

Jack spoke up.

"Well, whatever happened, it's a stark, and bloody better change from the babes in toy land."

"Well, I would rather be in toy land as a person instead of fuckin'...nothing!" Sarra yelled.

Color faded in, a view from someone's eyes. Yellow-gloved hands held onto a jar of sand. Its contents moved like water.

"Oh no..." Jack said.

"Who's this?" Tench asked.

"Me, who else, you tart? This is 1970..."

The younger Jack walked briskly through the cave with Maximilian Doom by his side. He was swearing.

"How could the heroes have found Bronson? We're a mile underground!"

"I don't know! He must have a beacon of some kind." Jack said.

Doom looked shocked.

"A beacon that can reveal our precise location in the middle of England?"

They saw the younger Jack throw his arms up in the air; Doom watched them, slightly panic-stricken.

"I don't know; he's a silly alien! Who knows what sort of tricks the gob has. "

Max snatched the jar of oddly fluid sand from him.

"You be careful with this stuff! Bronson got this stuff for us, and it's going to be used properly."

The younger Jack scoffed.

"Yeah, we tortured the bloke to death; why not have him give us the stuff?"

Doom gave him the jar and looked back in the opposite direction. The hallway beyond had the sounds of crackling electricity and cries of pain. Young Jack looked back and saw flashing lights around the corner.

"That's EnWol silver!" Tench blurted.

"What?" Lora and Sarra asked in unison.

"Look Jack," Doom said. "You get that stuff to Slade. I'll go back and handle the situation with that Pink Lemon and Crimson Cherry." Young Jack watched Doom run off for a moment before hovering down the corridor.

"Jack, what is this?" Tench asked with a tone that suggested that he was disciplining a child. "You ingested the silver, didn't you?"

The current Jack did not answer.

"What will that do, Tench?" Lora asked.

"The mirror with the perfect shine reflects the dim glare back tenfold," the current Jack said.

The metaphor immediately clicked with Tench.

"...you took too much."

After several minutes, the younger Jack slowed; the distant sounds of a fight were only a vague suggestion. Young Jack checked to see if he was alone, and then bent down to the ground with the sand.

"Oh Gaia, why did this have to come up?" The current Jack bemoaned. "Of all the dinky memories in this plot, why this?"

Young Jack undid the cap and took out a handful of sand. He let it go through his fingers back into its jar and grabbed another handful.

"It's so strange..." Young Jack said.

"Don't do it..." Current Jack moaned.

Young Jack looked up after hearing a distant click. He shrugged and looked back at the gleaming sand.

"Couldn't hurt."

"Yes it could! Don't!"

The younger cupped his hands, and poured the sand into his mouth.

"What was I thinking? Stop! Stop! Stop!" The current Jack pleaded.

"That was fifty times over the normal dosage, Jack. That's way, way too much." Tench said.

"You shut your gob!"

The younger smacked his lips.

"Oh bollocks, it's like sugar, but worse!" He wiped his mouth on the spandex sleeve.

"Hence, Pink Lemon." Sarra said.

Young Jack caught sight of his hand, and stopped cold when he saw his reflection in it. He looked at the back of his hand and it started to melt. The younger Jack bolted to his feet and looked at his body. His reflective hands dribbled from the sleeves and squeezed out from the fabric. He melted to a heap on the floor before he could let out a panicked scream. His vision spread to a one hundred and eighty degree dome. He tried to move, but he simply jerked left to right, burying his yellow costume in himself.

"I stayed like that for four days... I wasn't sure whether I was dead or not..." Current Jack said. "Serves me right for doing something stupid..."

"So why are you still evil? You could have come to Florence for help afterward." Tench asked.

There was no reply. The younger Jack quivered, unsure of how to deal with the change.

"Normally, the gauntlets would take a snapshot of the person beforehand to help them keep their shape, but the sand itself just seems to make a straight conversion to silver. That explains your dynamic looks, Jack." Tench said.

"You're dead, ice man." The current Jack did not sound sure of himself.

From the other end of the hall, a figure approached. He slowed at the puddle that was Jack and saw the jar of sand.

"Sergei Slade..." Tench said.

"Scary..." Sarra retorted.

He had a dark mane of hair and wore a silver jacket.

"Dammit, he was probably killed. How did this get unscrewed?"

"An idiot ruined her life with it, that's what," the current Jack croaked.

Slade screwed the jar back on and left, the younger Jack screaming for help without a sound to make.

"Jack, does Slade still have the EnWol sand?" Tench asked.

"Max Doom died at the hands of the Steel Atom here... his neck snapped when he was punched in the head..." Jack said. A great remorse filled his voice.

"Does Slade still have the EnWol sand?" Tench asked again.

There was no reply.

The full view of the corridor faded to black; and the four were immediately spit out from the eye and back to San Francisco.

Chapter 21

Anne held her hair back in the wind, scared for herself and the suffering Levan. If she was unable to subdue the extra power when she had it, than what could she do with someone that had literally absorbed it? Even worse, Anne felt obligated to do something since her main caretaker had betrayed her, and she was the only one of her kind. Levan was the "second."

She looked down at the small camp in the middle of the road on 20th Street. She could recognize Florence, Clark, and Juno, a trio of her most intimidating authority figures. Anne was reluctant to ask for help with her obligation because she was terrified that she had done something unfathomably wrong.

Levan wailed again, bringing Anne out of her train of thought. She looked around.

"Mister, I'm sorry!"

Levan jerked his head left to right, his face flushed. Anne held her hand out, her mind reeling for an answer to this problem.

Nothing was coming up...

...nothing was coming up!

Anne had no idea what to do. She knew that she would probably get in very deep trouble for doing that to Levan, even if he had started it. With her fear focused more toward the topical events instead of Morgan, Anne felt the hollow pain of both terror and frustration ring through her tummy. It resonated up through her chest and out the top. She started to cry.

Tench fell from the vortex. Neither Levan nor Anne noticed him, but they were the first thing that he saw on exiting.

Is that Anne? Anne! Toyland! That makes a bit more sense.

Anne felt something large and wet brush her shoulder. She looked down to see Jack falling to the earth. Anne looked up and gasped. Lora and Sarra trailed after them, along with a surprise.

Anne took Levan's hand and pulled him away.

"Come on, come on, please. This things gonna barf!"Anne said. Levan didn't register as Anne led him away.

"Flo, the gale force has slowed tenfold since Levan took over and that gave us our missing heroes; all are alive and whole." Juno yelled.

Florence straightened her posture and grew another two feet in the process.

A light blinked on the console.

"We also have rubble and all kinds of crap being ejected along with them. I just hope that you got everyone out of there unharmed."

Florence and Clark exchanged glances.

Tench and Lora were disoriented to the point where they were convinced that the cloud was the ground and the ocean was the sky. They were unable to figure out why the world was spinning as they tumbled.

Florence and Clark exchanged glances. Florence nodded.

"I'll grab Tench, you worry about Lora." She said. Clark nodded and the two shot off like lightning.

Lora was starting to realize that the ocean was not, in fact the sky. She saw Clark fly up alongside her. He looked up to see the rubble pour from the vortex. Clark swore. He matched Lora's velocity to prevent her neck from being broken by the whiplash. Lora felt herself being grabbed before she could conjure up a greeting. Clark arced above the remains and Lora's stomach dropped along with the rest of the junk that the vortex had sucked up.

Lora didn't feel saved. She felt sicker than she did coming out of the eye. The two heroes were brought back to Juno.

Jack had relived the moment where he became far, far more EnWol than EnWol. He barely cared about where he was. He lost his shape and fell to Dogpatch, splashing to the ground not a few feet from Morgan where the old, decrepit test building had once been. He was rained upon by the former structures turned to sand.

Sarra did not recover until she landed. She could not make out anything coherent as she fell, swearing along the way. She hit with a wet splat and went everywhere, her body spreading out and then retracting back to a familiar shape, upside down and in the middle of a rogue I-beam. She saw her predicament, and then the rain of rubble that landed nearby her. She started to run, but she was pummeled before she had a chance to escape. Sarra felt dust cover her and shrapnel pierce her as a deafening roar from the impact filled her ears.

As the dust settled, Sarra was thankful that she was only coated in small flecks and that she was still out in the open as opposed to being buried under the fallen debris; smaller rocks had just bounced right off of her. She looked up and saw how her body had been split by the piece of steel. She removed herself from it, creating a hole similar to bubblegum being stretched three ways too far. She stood up to dust herself off and reform.

Clark put Lora down, to which she leaned on him for support.

"Oh, cheese and macaroni, but do I feel hurfy..." Lora said. She hiccupped.

"Three G's will do that, you'll be fine." Clark said.

Florence landed, depositing Tench. He broke off and pretended that his own g-forces had not affected him.

"Okay, what's going on?" He stumbled across to lean on Juno's console.

"Hey, that's sensitive stuff." Juno said brushed him away. Tench almost fell back when Lora rushed up to him.

"Oh Andy!" Lora latched herself onto him, and Tench dropped his formal attitude. His face flushed.

"I'm worried about Anne up there." Florence said. "She hasn't come down."

"A... Anne? My little cousin?" Tench sputtered. He couldn't think straight. Lora broke her hug. Florence glanced at Tench and nodded, a curt smile gracing her lips from his handling of received affection. Tench cleared his throat.

"I... I knew that, I saw her as I fell. What happened?"

"We're not sure in the slightest." Juno said.

Tench nodded.

"I can tell you that Jack Ogden is involved. He was sucked up with us."

Everyone looked at Tench, suddenly very interested.

"What would Jack Ogden want with Anne Redford? How could he even over saturate Anne's powers anyway?" Clark asked.

No one had a good answer.

Lora stepped up.

"Where is Jack then? Gee, and Sarra too?"

Chapter 22

Sarra fell into the rubble again and immediately jumped back into the air. She was dizzy and she had trouble staying aloft; she figured that it was a psychological effect of being in toy land. Her only current comfort was that the bizarre vertigo was fading to manageable levels. She splashed into a puddle and her swearing was cut short by a voice. She took on her human shape and kept herself low.

"Jack, we had a deal. Get up."

Sarra's head floated up to look over a former wall and she saw Jack half reform. His lower body was a puddle. A woman stood over him. Sarra had some lewd thoughts because of the tight catsuit and dark bobbed hair; although being sexy did not seem to be the woman's intention.

"Morgan." Jack said. "I experienced my transformation again in that eye; my one stupid, stupid mistake in life." His anger grew.

Morgan lorded over Jack with crossed arms and a scowl. Morgan's frustration gained an edge of vague interest.

"Up there, in that vortex?"

"We were in play land first, and then the four of us reopened my wound."

"How could that be?"

Jack formed a leg from his globular mass and 'stepped up' from the vanishing puddle to a normal height. Morgan bit her fingernail and Jack stood there, looking slightly dizzy. His face elongated downward slightly with one eye falling faster than the other one.

"Jack is the dragon, then..." Sarra said.

Morgan took a minute to think and then looked at Jack.

"Never us mind that now, I shall repair the damage and make you normal when we are through, Jack. We shall focus on Anne now. Ascend, Jack, and bring her to me."

Jack straightened up and sighed. He looked up at Anne and Levan and flew off.

"Fly my gooey, fly." Sarra said. She stood up to shorten her neck and then flew after Jack.

Morgan sighted Sarra and pulled out her wand.

"Even the noblest of heroes meet their end at the hands of someone in love and out for revenge... in damnatio memoraie, EnWol."

Morgan spread her feet, grateful that she had decided to leave the high heels at home, and took aim. Two swaths of blue flames twirled around Morgan and picked up speed as they neared the wand. They blurred at the tip, paused, and then exploded into the air, straight for Sarra.
Chapter 23

With as much precision as he could muster, Garner heaved himself upward against his globular protection from the pit of the shallow valley of concrete and steel. He had found that Morgan's meta shield was like no other in the sense that nothing could get in or out, with the exception of air. He was, in a sense, numb to the world as a scientist preserved in another's experiment. Like a rat.

Garner put all of his weight on the side of the shield. He was so frustrated that he did not pay attention to what was on the other side of the gentle incline propped up by fallen structure on a fence.

Florence, Tench, and Lora's attention jerked to Morgan's fiery attack and they took action. The trio flew off, Florence telling Tench to go after Anne, and Lora to find out where those shots were coming from. Clark took notice of a green bubble coming up over a wall. He wished his partners luck and stepped up to the bubble. He cocked his eyebrow when he noticed who was inside the green light.

"Dr. Garner, I presume?"

Their eyes met and Garner yelped. He fell backward and rolled all the way down to the small valley where he had gotten himself stuck in the first place. Clark flew up and stretched out to grab the bubble. He wrapped his fingers around it, noting its odd solidity, and picked it up to meet Garner at eye level. He was quivering, like a rat.

"Bill Garner, what's someone like you doing here with a force-field when Anne Redford, your responsibility I might add, is up there terrorizing the city with amplified power? Looks mighty suspicious to me."

Garner's stomach dropped and he nearly threw up. He figured that if he looked like a rat, felt like a rat and acted like a rat, he might as well be one. Garner pointed at where the shots were coming from and started to hyperventilate.

"M-Morgan! Morgan le Fay talked me into this! I wanted her opinion on Anne, but she went crazy and she took the Psychic Anne's powers and... and..." Garner's eyes rolled up in his head again and he passed out. The shield popped and Garner fell into the original Crimson Cherries fingers.

Clark racked his brain to find out whether he had ever met a villain named Morgan le Fay. He looked toward the oblique flashes and rubbed his chin.

Chapter 24

Sarra charged her ice, leaving a vacuum of low humidity behind her. She was gaining headway on Jack. She ignored the bursts of blue that shot both past and through her, and focused only on Jack and his death wish. His knuckle cracking, face smashing death wish.

Tench darted up to Anne from another angle, stopped for a moment and flew off with her in tow. No matter. Sarra drew in any available moisture, stretched her arms to her ankles, and listened to the ice crystals form with a smile. She got within a few feet of Jack, pulled her arms taut, and then she was tackled by another EnWol. Sarra released her icy build up in a random direction and howled with rage as the other EnWol, Florence, worked to separate herself from the single, newly fused mass.

"Are you out of your liquid mind?" Sarra yelled. She didn't pay attention to Florence drawing her own body from Sarra's and instead watched Jack chase after Tench.

Sarra pointed at Jack and looked at Florence; the fused mass separated.

"I almost had the jerk, why in Gaia's name did you intercept my—"

"What in the world were you planning on doing by chasing after Jack when there were fireballs hurtling not just at the two of you, but at two more innocent people? Saving the day does not mean hurting oncoming innocents." Florence said. Her gaze pierced Sarra.

Sarra slapped her chest.

"Anne was out of the way, and I could have stopped Jack!"

"And we protect the people before everything. Winning the war sometimes means losing small victories. Administer common sense next time instead of listening to your own pride."

Sarra glared at Florence.

"You don't know what he did to me."

Florence jabbed at her own chest.

"I have a body count of over five hundred because of my own mistakes, and only an eighth of that was a part of the Third Riche. I'm still paying off the insurance for those deaths and I don't want to see a reckless EnWol, Crimzon with a Z, have a track record that's as bad as mine, or worse."

Sarra curled her lip and crossed her arms.

"Isn't this conversation pointless when there are villains flying around with us in the middle?"

Florence jabbed Sarra's chest; she didn't respond beyond letting her body jiggle.

"Don't be cocky. Remember that a small battle has to be lost to win the war. We have back up to help. Now come on, you go after Jack and use some good old-fashioned common sense. I'll try and calm Levan down."

Florence flew upward and left Sarra feeling like she should be pleased that she was able to keep pursuing Jack, but she instead felt bitter about being ordered around. She saw Jack come up behind Tench.

Sarra sighed.

"Okay..." She flew off to do what she was told.
Chapter 25

"Okay, Anne, how's that for an idea?" Tench shouted. Anne giggled.

"That's cool! I wish I had thought of that! Here!"

Anne projected a cupcake for Tench, which he knew that he could not interact with, and playfully bit at it. He saw the imagined treat vanish and heard Anne gasp. Tench turned around to see Jack smack him upside the head. Tench lulled for a moment, trying to clear the stars from his eyes, the sick from his stomach and the pain from his head as Jack made off with Anne.

Down below, Lora hovered over the ruined buildings at the water's edge. Her bloodied and crusted shoulder was starting to come out of shock and realize that it had a wound. It felt less like a blackened welt and more like uncooked filet mignon. A dagger of pain struck her arm, and she almost buckled over. Lora looked up with a pained gasp and saw Jack disappear behind a tanker ship with Sarra closing in from behind. Lora held her arm and sniffed hard. She figured that she was alone, and bobbed over to meet with Sarra. She landed in the debris, rubbing her arm and hissing. The area was disserted; the only sounds that she could hear were coming from the sea, and the cloud that Levan had overtaken.

"I hope this isn't infected... or broken, eww..." She looked at her pink hand darkened by the blood. Lora figured that it was better to swallow the pain and try to win rather than waste time by wishing for the second time that Bronson had applied the coding properly. She wasn't sure how well she would be able to fight with an arm that she couldn't raise higher than her belly button.

Lora hovered across the plot, checking behind pieces of wall, chunks of rubble, and other assorted mismatches that had fallen from the vortex. As she started to call for Sarra, she heard a scream. She flew over to peek behind a mound of rubble and saw Jack carrying Anne into a cave. Lora studied the cave. She was puzzled by its building materials; bits of rubble, rebar, cars, oil drums, and the like were held together by what looked like spider webs of melted solder. Lora didn't worry about the construction and headed for the aperture, her mind focused on the little girl.

Lora flew in and yellow, blue, and red sprites materialized and danced before her. They made her instantly lightheaded.

"Oh..."

Lora fell to the ground.

Chapter 26

Tench was too dizzy to make out anything coherent, as he spiraled to the earth. Florence flew up right beside him, finding herself in the same situation as before. She matched Tench's velocity, grabbed hold of him by hoisting him over her shoulder, and swooped off, leaving his stomach behind. This jolted Tench awake and he got a look at his savior.

"Again?" He shouted.

"My hero." Florence retorted.

Tench rolled his eyes.

"Okay, stop, stop. I'm fine."

Florence slowed to a hover, and Tench got off. He floated across from her.

"Dang, what happened?"

Florence looked away, trying to locate the enemy.

"Jack smacked you upside the head and took Anne that way with Sarra not far behind."

"How are we going to stop her?" Tench asked.

Florence crossed her arms and smiled.

"Well Andrew, tell me how would you put a stop to me if I went rogue?"

Tench paused for a moment, and then chuckled.

"Well, with ice, obviously."

Florence nodded and stretched her arm to pat him on the shoulder.

"Good. If that's the solution, then let's go flank him."

Florence flew off, her pink hair billowing, and Tench followed along.

Sarra could have sworn that Jack went into the previously empty lot. Piles and spreads of buildings, heavy machinery, tools, raw materials and cars filled the area like a dusty attic. Sarra snaked and oozed through the several loads and up with nothing.

"Dammit, how can Jack hide some girl in a pile like this?"

Sarra was getting mad. She knew that it was not good for her, but she believed in acting on revenge as soon as possible. With Sarra being the newbie hero, and Jack a villain since 1958, that set the challenge bar for Sarra far, far too high, and it was frustrating her to no end.

"Come out you slimy fuck. I've got some calcium chloride for you to rot in..."

Sarra peeked around a corner, and heard a scream that came from her right. She undulated over without hesitation. Sarra looked around the corner, to see her sister fall to the ground in the mouth of a cave.

Chapter 27

Lora hit the ground, hard. Her lightheadedness cleared up enough to allow pain into her awareness. She gripped her arm and squealed. Her shoulder burned white hot. Lora looked up to see someone kicking her in the stomach, casing a comparatively dull pain.

"Stop please—!" She squeaked.

"No! I must finish my research! For many years, I have wanted to take my revenge for this curse on us all, and I have never been this close! The calm project must be set in motion immediately!" The woman shouted.

Lora could not think straight. She tried to get up.

"Morgan, she's down!" A male voice yelled.

Morgan kicked Lora in the head to keep her from getting up, and her vision faded in the corners. Suddenly, the spikes of pain stopped and Morgan felt to Lora's eye level. Lora moaned and looked away.

"Chill the fuck out, woman! My sister didn't have the luxury of being EnWol."

Sarra stood on top of Morgan, disregarding her. Morgan moaned and yelped.

"Can you get up?" Sarra asked, slightly uninterested. Lora held her hand up and nodded, a very sour look gracing her face. She retched and went on her hands and knees. Sarra looked toward the rear of the cave.

"If I were you, I would knock this whore's block off when I got the chance. At least Jack wouldn't have killed me. Remember to fight back, too Lora. Grow some ovaries."

Lora retched again in reply.

"Get off of me!" Morgan ordered.

Sarra stretched her neck down.

"You cram it!"

Morgan looked at her, shocked.

"How dare you?"

There was a yelp of frustration in the back, keeping Sarra from retorting farther. Anne flew out of the cave with a flying yellow noodle chasing her. Sarra watched Anne leave, and timed herself so that her entire torso wedged itself in with the cave. Jack's arm passed right through Sarra's torso, creating a hole. She had forgotten to alter her viscosity.

"Come on!" Sarra yelled, unbelieving.

Jack ignored Sarra and passed the rest of his body through as if Sarra were a thin membrane.

"I'm such a silly sod, how could I let her escape?"

Sarra lost her balance and fell backward. She slowed her fall, shifted herself so that her back literally became her front, and shot after Jack.

Lora and Morgan were left to ache together.

Lora smiled; she saw a light pulsating in synch with her heartbeat.

"I guess that you're the bad guy, huh?" She asked without thinking and then promptly collapsed with a moan. Morgan curled her lip and rolled over.

Anne raced up to Levan to execute Tench's idea, and she wasn't going to let anyone stop her.

Anne did not understand her power in the least. She was sure that she was able to fly, 'ghost' through nearly anything (her tube that Morgan put her in was the first thing she could not phase through), and project her innermost desires in a phantasmagoric form at will.

She was unsure as to why she was the only one who saw those traits as normal parts of her life. She suspected that since everyone she interacted with seemed scared of her power, that they repress their own, only to use it to fight crime, of course. She had a fond wish to draw the power out from others to show them that it was not as scary as they thought it was.

With Levan, and her own experience with trying to harness an overload, Anne was starting to understand why her power was so revered, and why, in her own mind, not too many people put their own projection and intangibility powers to use. With her newfound realization, Anne rushed to Levan to try to help him to keep his own newfound powers under control.

Jack Ogden was right behind Anne and quickly closing the gap between them with Sarra following. She felt a strong need to hesitate because of how Florence approached her, but, as usual, Sarra used the hesitation as power and it drove her further.

As Sarra slowed, she spotted someone flying beside her. Florence pointed up at Jack and nodded. Sarra was miffed at how her superior was contradictory, but she didn't argue. She decided to take the moment in to exact her revenge on Jack.

Sarra saw Tench rush up to Jack, fly up next to him, and throw ice in his face as soon as se got a look at who had joined him. Jack reacted accordingly and tried to brush the ice from his face without success. Sarra laughed and looked at Florence. She flicked her hand out in a similar manner that she uses to discharge herself. She wanted Sarra to use her ice powers, and Sarra got the message. She worked to draw in enough ice to encapsulate Jack, and got ready to attack.

Jack was surprised to see that the ice had gone as suddenly as it came. He saw Sarra rushing at him, and ducked down at the last second. Sarra threw her ice, her body working before her mind caught up, and Jack dipped down to make an arc. He pitched herself upward so that both Jack and Sarra would smack into each other, belly to belly.

Sarra was still getting used to her elasticity, thus, she still had a low viscosity. Jack collided with her from below and Sarra's body exploded into several globs of chrome. Jack rolled over and continued on his course as Sarra fell to the earth, her body recovering from the shock. Florence was directly behind her, hoping that her electrical charge mixed with Jack's would be enough to send him down.

Tench came up alongside Florence and flew past her. He rose over Jack and doused his body from his feet to his shoulders with ice. Jack's momentum allowed him to fly past Anne and Levan, missing them by six feet. He reached an apex and fell.

Anne was terrified to see that Levan's nose was bleeding. She whined as he did, both for different reasons, as she inched herself over to him. Anne materialized a small teddy bear for Levan to hold. He acknowledged it, but Anne was aware that he might not have cared. She probably would not have either under that much pain. Anne held onto Levan's hand and started to reabsorb whatever bit of his excess power that she could take.

Jack's body had too much friction against the ice to be able to escape without a struggle. He had no fear of death from falling at great heights, but it irritated him that he was encased in a trap with only a time consuming method of escaping as the ground came closer and closer. Jack took all of his inner silver that had not frozen, and forced it up out of the icy prison, leaving a silver shell stuck to the interior. He let his head and shoulders fly upward in the air, and then he drained herself in a glob.

He took on a human shape, less than an inch smaller all the way around, and watched the block fall. He was bemused to see a hot spot form in the middle of the block before it blew up instantly, the pieces turning to steam. Jack smiled as his half-inch shell returned to him.

"Morgan... Thanks, mate."

Jack looked back up at Anne, and darted to her, relying on his witch of a partner to get him out of a cryokinetic mess.

Lora watched Morgan stand at the mouth of the cave, muttering to herself and orchestrating an unseen symphony. Lora felt like throwing up. Her shoulder was throbbing and the spots in her eyes had dulled significantly. Lora felt powerless to do anything but roll over and sigh. She tasted bile.

Sarra reformed a good one hundred feet from the battle area, feeling deeply annoyed. She shot up to Florence, who was keeping an eye on Jack, wondering what she would do after the tomb of ice exploded.

"Hey, what gives? Why didn't you prevent Jack from doing that with your own electricity, huh?"

Florence's face soured. Tench smacked his forehead and moved away. Sarra was unaware of Jack's escape.

"You are a stinker, aren't you?"

"What's up?" Sarra demanded. "This isn't pride, this is legitimate annoyance."

Florence crossed her arms.

"Jack, the Electric Beaulieu, mind, has power over electricity. In this heroic and tiresome game of roshambo, Jack struck gold when he became EnWol silver. That newfound elasticity allowed him to become far more powerful after absorbing his element."

Sarra curled her lip.

"You're useless then?"

Florence's sour expression deepened. She did not answer.

Sarra clicked her tongue.

"You are useless; I'll take care of Jack myself." Sarra flew around Florence toward Jack.

Florence sighed.

"She's torn her dress and her face is a mess..." Tench said.

Florence nodded.

"That's apt. Go help her."

Tench nodded and followed Sarra.

Lora stood up; her knees were buckling. She leaned on the side of the wall trying to rein in what was left of her curdling nausea. She watched the fight above. Sarra got close to Jack and shot some of her ice, but was smacked away. Jack got a part of himself incased in Sarra's ice, to which Morgan reacted and directed a spell to heat the ice and free Jack.

"She's helping Jack from down here..." Lora said to herself.

She inched over, feeling less like she would throw up than the moment before, and wobbled behind Morgan. She watched the back of her head for a moment, wondering if she should act at all. Sarra, Tench, and Florence were busy with Jack trying to capture Anne, Clark had no idea where she and Morgan were, and neither did any other hero available.

Lora saw that she had the advantage over Morgan, who was busy tossing her riding crop of a wand around as if she was trying to swat several flies with it.

Lora raised her arm to attack, and crumpled silently when she realized that her dominant arm was also her badly wounded arm. Cursing herself over her mistake, Lora decided to take a different route, even if it would make her feel more ill. She prepared herself for the oncoming sickness and bit her tongue. She spread her feet wide, crouched, and spun around to kick Morgan in the back of the head.

The hit connected.

Lora fell to the ground and so did Morgan, the latter without a peep. Lora made a loud gasp as she landed on her less hurt shoulder, the shock going through it to her bloodied one. Lora tried to keep from blacking out from the pain by standing up in a fighting stance.

Morgan was holding her head, and Lora's nausea returned in spades. Her stomach and arm felt wretched. She walked past Morgan and picked up the wand.

"Look, I'm sorry for kicking you, but you were keeping my friends and sister from extinguishing the portal. You know, it was getting bigger when I last looked, so it would probably gobble everything..."

Lora's hand tingled.

She looked at the wand and the world around it turned black. An uncomfortable warmth permeated her hand and went up her arm. Lora heard whispers emanate from the wand. They echoed chants of hatred and got louder with each racing beat of her heart.

"...Calm... Morgan... Fire... Flight... Leon... Die!"

Lora made a sharp gasp. She had to make the whispers stop! Lora gripped both sides of the wand and snapped it in half. The world returned to normal.

Morgan looked up at Lora; her face contorted with horror and anger. Lora dropped the two pieces while trying to catch her breath. Her heart was a piston.

"You fool, have you any idea what you have done?"

Lora jumped and almost by reflex, she sprayed Morgan with ice from her upper abdomen down to her feet. Morgan hissed at the abrupt cold and started to shiver. Lora held her arm up, staring at Morgan with disbelief at what she had done.

Morgan narrowed her eyes and her lips rose with disgust.

"You may be green now, but you remember this for when you are a professional hero, Pink Lemon. Heroes never have friends; they only have those who fear them, and those who hate them. After several lifetimes of fighting at the top, Pink Lemon, you will find that there are no positive feelings harbored toward you. The citizens you saved will turn away; your family will be shamed, and those who love you will be gone. Beware the superman, they will cry, all because the so-called hero would one day hurt those whom they had once tried to save.

Hate is the emotion that stems from anger at others and it requires its opposite, the concept of another's company to function. However, the true opposite of love, Pink Lemon, is loneliness. Long, dark, infinity. Alone. That is how those you save will shape your future and create your fate in the void. Heroics, harm, fear, and loneliness."

Lora stepped back, feeling both her shoulder and heart throb. A fat blister of sorrow tried to burst from her chest. She had a flash back to when she was inside Anne's vortex, how both Tench and Sarra vanished, and she was alone in the void of toys. In the purest form, nothing was out there. No cities, no people, no apple pie, no love. Nothing.

Lora's mind made the correlation for her between Morgan's curse and her experience with the very concept of infinity and it made her want to scream.

Lora shut her eyes and shook her head hard. She had to get away from Morgan before the poison spread farther. Without watching where she was going, or even caring, Lora flew up into the air and forced herself to find the eye of the vortex.

She dwelled on why she was even continuing as she flew, why bother, why be the hero if there was an inevitable point where she would do something catastrophic? Sure, she's needed for that situation, but how much would she be needed still and not be despised when the time came?

Lora wanted to lie down in her fluffy bed with a romance novel and good chocolate wrapped in gold foil and forget about being a hero, especially if the experience is as bad as the first day. Instead, she wondered why she trudged on in spite of both what Morgan told her, and her own feelings.

Morgan watched Lora leap up and fly away in a zigzag. She reached for her broken wand bits and looked at them. Walter R. was engraved in elegant lettering on the handle and Morgan could feel its unbiased magic being reabsorbed back into Gaia's immense reserve.

Morgan clutched the two bits of wand and wept as they erupted in blue flames.

Lora watched as Sarra and Tench tried to freeze Jack as the cloud got smaller. Jack knew better than to get cocky when he was being helped. He was on guard when it came to who was beside him, and who was not. He came close to grabbing Anne a few times, but he was forced away by at least one annoying fly that did nothing but vomit ice in his face.

With Jack's ability to electrocute people only by touch, or arc if the conditions were right, and the heroes with the ability to throw their ice at him from a distance, Jack decided to get crafty. If the heroes were keeping him from his prize, in essence, his healing, then changing the game seemed like a good idea. He had changed the rules when he ate Sarra to moderate success.

Jack drained himself from the ice that covered a little bit of his torso. He let his stuck and icy thin skin fall to the bay, knowing that the covering would come back. He closed his eyes and concentrated. Jack's head split in half down the middle, and it continued down his torso.

Lora flew up to Sarra as she examined Jack.

"What's he doing, Sarra?"

Sarra sneered.

"There's no one new to eat, so I don't know."

Florence and Tench arrived and joined in on the villain watching.

"How's your arm?" Florence asked.

Lora just moaned.

"Are you delusional from the blood loss?" Sarra asked with a sarcastic bite.

Lora shook her head.

"I don't know."

Jack was literally split down the middle. He willed his body not to reform itself as he felt himself splitting as well. The two halves of his body each formed an identical whole, their height shrinking by half to compensate for the other half.

Jack Ogden had become two.

"What is he doing?" Florence asked. "All that EnWol can achieve by splitting is synchronicity, how can he expect to gain an advantage if he's using an impossible method to—" Florence interrupted herself as the two Jack halves flew off in different directions. Florence frowned.

"Oh my..."

Florence looked right at Sarra, but spoke to everyone.

"I'll get Clark to call for more help, you all fire at will! Go!"

Tench and Sarra, with a smug smile, left toward a Jack half as Florence went the other way. Lora held her arm and followed her two partners.

The two Jack halves laughed and twirled amongst each other, glad that the mitosis had worked and that their minds were still linked. As if it were instinct, one left to rush after the hero cavalry and the other went to Anne.

Anne looked up at Levan as she tried to reabsorb enough of the power for him to deal with. The entire cloud had a radius of one hundred feet, and Levan seemed to be coming to. His breathing had stabilized, and he seemed only very tired. His crusted blood cracked on his upper lip.

"Is it all better yet, mister?" Anne asked.

Levan nodded.

"Yeah, the aberration and torment shall ultimately cease once the young miss sorts out the nefarious tribulations."

Anne giggled. None of them had a clue what was just said.

Jack came up behind Anne, slowed himself to prevent breaking her spine, and took her away. Levan's arm stretched out with a jolt, it still being elastic from acquiring Rachel's power from a slap after stealing her radio.

"Confound it, viscoelastic wench!" He looked up at the portal, the eye a small pinprick, and plugged it with his finger. The cloud dissipated instantly and left Levan wondering how he knew that that would happen. He looked for the Jack half, wondering how he knew what he was about to do would be effective.

The other Jack half was delighted to see that the three heroes flew in a formation worthy of a professional flight exhibition team. He let the group come to him.

"What is he doing?" Tench yelled through his radio to be heard.

Sarra snarled.

"Who cares?"

Tench looked at her. Sarra looked terrified. He frowned.

"You sure, Sarra?"

"Just go!" Sarra snapped. "I'm not going to let him pull that horrible trick on me again!"

At the last moment, the Jack half's chest had a creature burst forth from it. The several tendrils tipped with blood waved back and forth, their hairs matted and irregular. In the center was a single normal looking eye, sky blue and friendly. Underneath was a mouth with no teeth, gnawing aimlessly at whatever it could find for sustenance. It shrieked.

The Jack half looked on with a wicked smile, entirely whole behind the creature.

Tench paused, surprised by the sudden change. Sarra's heart caught and she stopped completely. This surprised her.

Lora plowed on without missing a beat.

Jack focused on grabbing Lora by using his sticky tendrils. Lora swooped up and down and dodged every swing while trying not to cry. She was terrified. After what Morgan had told her about being alone several years down the line, along with Sarra's reaction to Jack's transformations, and the experience in toy land, she had a right to be.

Lora wondered why she bothered, why did she care? Why had Morgan's words struck her so hard in the gut and yet she persisted in opposition? She didn't know why she endured, but she knew that to defeat Jack, she had to kick her fear to the curb.

Lora approached Jack, roared, and kicked him square in the face. Ice exploded from Lora's foot, and Jack's head sped away from his body, stopped in suspended animation by the ice.

The horror shot back into Jack's chest and the husk of the body fell, limbs flailing madly.

A thought came to Lora and she started to laugh. She covered her mouth, the giggles growing in spite of both her hurt arm and emotional state.

"Oh my goodness. Brain freeze."

Lora enjoyed her joke and kept to her attack. She swung her arms and prepared to cover Jack in ice with only seconds before he recovered. Lora gasped and stopped when she saw Sarra fly directly into her path. Sarra dove after Jack and got ready to unleash her own attack. Lora moved out of Sarra's way so that she could add to the blizzard.

An ethereal sound wafted in from out of the blue with Sarra hearing it first. She lost focus and felt her ice changing back into a gaseous form.

Sarra shook her head.

"No, no, no! Stay with it!"

The song slunk across the Dogpatch district, playing itself for the heroes. Tench, Lora and Juno were confused by the new music, but the remaining EnWol were enchanted. Juno watched Florence and Clark, interrupted from trying to strategize and make sense of what Jack had done.

Clark turned to silver at his own feet, quivering; his top half bleed from over the table.

"This tone confuses the human brain on a level of physical perception; a quality that the EnWol body no longer has. Why are they affected into hypnosis?" Juno wondered. She looked up at the heroes and villains above, trying to make sense of the new situation.

Lora flew back to Tench; he was looking for the origin of the sound.

"I'm definitely sure that I'm hearing this, Lora. How about you?"

Lora nodded.

"It's pretty." She said.

The Jack carrying Anne heard the slow tempo, high-pitched music and unwittingly shifted his body to a silver blob. Anne, who had been having trouble with her intangibility, slipped out from Jack's grasp. Jack kept flying; he had not noticed that his detainee had escaped.

Anne gulped and flew off to Levan.

Levan!

Anne could easily see which mark among the sky he was since there were refractive waves searing off of him. Anne arrived and watched him for second. The sound came from his head, yet it was not vocalized.

"What'cha doing? That's scary music." Anne said.

Levan shook his head.

"I am most uncertain young miss, yet I know in my heart that radiating my thought patterns into an audible frequency shall assist us greatly in this terrible plight."

Sarra tried to block everything out in trying to keep her focus. The sound was affecting her on a mental level; it penetrated her to her core and made her melt, no matter how hard she tried to block it out. She kept her eyes from seeing light years through San Francisco, she kept her focus on the ice long enough to hold onto it, and she kept control long enough to see her gloved hands melt into reflective stumps. The mild shock was enough to force Sarra off the edge, and she melted away, unable to help herself by surrendering to Levan's song.

The two Jack halves suffered the same fate. They lost control and became unaware that they were shooting back at each other in a straight line, like two rubber bands that were tied together and simultaneously let go.

Tench watched the two shoot toward each other and smiled when he realized what was happening. He patted Lora's back and she turned to look at him. Tench leaned in with his lopsided smile.

"Let's go kick some ice."

Lora could not help but giggle and she could feel herself melt for reasons unrelated to Levan's song.

Tench flew past Lora to the point that he guessed the two Jack's would converge. Lora followed and caught up. He noticed her beside him, and he had begun to orbit her. Lora felt low temperatures radiate from him as he spun. She worked to do the same. The two quickly orbited each other, creating a reserve of ice in their center.

"You got it!" Tench yelled over his radio to Lora.

Lora laughed as the ice and snow at their center grew larger and more frantic.

The two halves of Jack collided with each other, not a thought between them as the song played. They both conglomerated into a mass of yellow spotted silver with bits of hair and random shapeless limbs poking out.

Lora and Tench got within twenty feet of Jack.

"Do as I do!"

Lora nodded. She watched Tench make a motion to grab the reserve, and the two hurled themselves around Jack like a gravitational slingshot. They completely covered him in a three-inch thick layer of ice within six passes, making special care not to leave any openings.

The two broke off and twirled upward, leaving a whole, immobilized and deformed Jack to fall to the ocean. Lora and Tench met at their spiraled pillar of excess ice and Tench held out his hand for a high five. Lora returned it with her good arm and gave him a hug with a boisterous laugh...

...and gasped when her bad shoulder protested the action. She chuckled nervously and rubbed it.

Tench laughed.

"Hey, don't let the arm be a killjoy, we did it. Enjoy the moment, Pink."

Lora smiled and nodded.

"Sure!"

Tench returned the smile, leaned in and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Lora's face flushed and she beamed. She squealed and hugged Tench with her good arm, her warmth radiating and melting his ice to its core.
Chapter 28

Sarra passed over the ocean, fully cognizant and very grumpy after being tasked with finding out where Jack had gone. An hour had passed since Jack was detained, and Sarras on-the-spot plot for revenge had been thwarted by both a now-telepathic moron, and her own sister. She figured that finding a chunk of ice would not be that hard, but it was far more difficult than she would have liked. Sarra thought of the search as a metaphor for how Jack was more experienced than she was, not just in hiding, but also in fighting skills, trickery, and overall being an EnWol. This made her even grumpier.

Sarra headed back to shore, swearing her nonexistent lungs out. She passed over the several twisted freight ships, unaware of the sphere of melting ice that had wedged itself between a pier and an oil tanker on that late afternoon September day.

Dr. Garner walked with a low slump to his back and a shuffle as he was escorted into the back seat of a police car. His shield had faded away completely. Anne Redford floated nearby and watched him. She couldn't help but feel sorry to see him go. Garner looked up at her, his face drooping and tender. Anne fought her tears, but the effort was for naught. She said good bye to her best friend and flew away.

"Alright," Juno said; a computer tablet in hand. "These data says that Anne's power ascended into absurd levels without any lasting effects. Levan, having been a dope by trying to save her, actually succeeded and gained some of her power. Because Anne held so much of her ballooned power and with Levan's copying ability, Levan's gain of Anne's power is permanent since there was so much for her to give."

Levan nodded.

"Precisely. Whatever that means."

Juno made a sarcastic laugh, sounding not unlike a goat.

"You're cute, now, what eludes us all is: One: how did Jack get himself to split into independent parts when every single post-human EnWol can only operate in one-one synchronicity when split. Two: why was the odd, ethereal tone that reportedly came from Levan so effective? And three: how in the name of Gaia's womb did you, sir, with your reputation, make such a deduction right on the spot that you did not know would work at all?"

Juno pointed at Levan, her finger inches from his nose. He leaned back and put his hands up, his stretching power gone.

"Lady Juno, I am as unfathomably unsound as you. To paraphrase, the solutions to the problem stem from the ether and abruptly disembark from my thought process. I cannot express sufficient regret for my absentminded predicament. In short, I find the circumstances incalculable."

Juno sighed and threw her upper body on the console, her arms supporting her.

"I don't know if you know what you're talking about or not."

Florence walked up.

"Maybe we need to regroup and talk to Bronson about the... odd behavior and give time for Levan to gather his thoughts."

Juno held her hand up and dropped it, signifying her lack of decision. Florence tilted her head to emphasize her order.

"Go home, Levan, we'll let you know when we need you. I'm not sure if Juno wants to test you out or not."

Levan frowned and left without a word.

Anne floated up and watched him go. The heroes could tell that she felt a little better after seeing Dr. Garner go.

"He's pretty silly."

Florence sighed and put her hand on Anne's shoulder.

"Not as silly as he looks."

Lora and Tench roamed the cave, trying to find out where Morgan had gone. The cave remained a monument in the rubble as the only sign that anyone had been there at all.

Tench knocked a few times on the structure.

"Behold the cave of junk; a great mystery that was built long ago by the same civilization that built Stonehenge, the pyramids, the Easter Island idols, and of course, Fred King on the news channel." Tench said.

Lora giggled.

"No kidding!"

Tench shared the laugh and walked over to where Lora had said Morgan was last seen. There was a slight, human sized depression in the burnt and wet grass. He shrugged.

"I might be way off on this, Pink, but I'm pretty sure that she escaped."

Lora frowned.

"Is that bad? I mean, are there ways to track her down?"

Tench shook his head.

"Not really, but you know, you wouldn't believe how often bad guys get away. It happens all the time. The good part is that they usually come back to do another dastardly deed and we nab them then.

One of the things that Florence teaches new heroes is that small battles have to be lost to win the war. We lost this bogey and Jack, but we'll get them next time."

Lora looked away, remembering what Morgan had told her. About her decisions hurting others, and finding only loneliness in a world full of people. Lora bit her lip and her heart shuddered.

Tench frowned and gently took her chin.

"What's wrong? We saved the day and kept everyone from suffering a permanent relocation to toy land. Who cares that the bad guys escaped today? We all know that they'll be back, and we'll be stronger than ever when they do."

Lora looked up at Tench and thanked him with a smile. She didn't want to burden her with her worry, and felt that it would bring him down.

Tench backed off and leapt into the air, hovering a few feet up.

"Hey, let's report in and get that arm patched up. You never know too, we might be able to talk Bronson into fixing up that patch for you too, an EnWol ex machina, if you will."

Lora laughed and jumped into the air.

"Awesome! Let's go. I don't want this to get infected."

The two sped off back to Meta Corps and into the sunset.
Chapter 29

The wound had blossomed into something terrible, and Lora was its victim. She and Tench hovered down the hallway leading to Bronson's lab with hope that he had worked out the error with the gauntlets.

"That's good, stay airborne; it won't jostle it as much." Tench said. Lora held her arm just below the slash with an iron grip; she was trying not to cry.

"It's alright. Bronson knows you're coming. If this works, it will be better than any surgery, Lora. Trust me."

Lora sniffed hard and nodded with a grimace.

Sarra leaned on the wall outside of Bronson's door, eyeing her sister and Tench.

"For pity's sake, Sarra," said Tench. "Can you help us?"

Tench and Lora stopped outside the door.

"I want to talk to you alone." Sarra said.

"What?" Tench and Lora said simultaneously.

"What on earth are you¬—" Tench started. Sarra assumed full height and jerked her head toward the door.

"Send her in and we'll talk."

Tench glared at Sarra and started to growl. Lora put her hand on Tench's shoulder and gave a small smile.

"Sarra's a good guy, Andy. I'll be fine." Lora's face soured and she hissed as she went in.

"Lora! Okay, I have some food for you; you're going to need it to help regenerate yourself for that wound. It won't work otherwise." Bronson said before the door shut.

Tench approached Sarra, who sunk back into the wall.

"Blast you, Sarra, what is so important that—"

"I have a hunch about you that says you'll be around a while, around Lora." Sarra said.

Tench blinked.

"What? Sarra, what do you mean?"

"Oh you two, lovey-dovey on the first day with similar power sets and ambitions. You're the same person with different hair lengths."

Tench's brow furrowed.

"You want to assume there's a relationship because of that? This is what's keeping me from helping Bronson in there?"

Sarra walked up to him and forced his attention on her.

"Hey turkey, my hunch is pretty strong, and it says that there's a possibility for disappointment between you and Lora. Listen to me; I don't want you to fuck around with her, I'm serious. Do not disappoint her, or I'll kick you in the teeth. Got that?"

Sarra's face was inches from Tench; her message started to sink in. Tench stood tall and he took a breath.

"All the truth serums on the planet would make me say the same thing. I don't have plans to, and I never will. Trust me." He smiled again, but it was overflowing with serious intent. Sarra saw it as being cocky and shoved him.

"Look flyboy, I'm a good guy with no tolerance for anyone's stupid bullshit, especially from the bad guys and dumbass heroes. Think about this; I'm a nasty bitch, but all the things that I've done to pick on Lora are nothing against some compatible looking boy breaking her heart."

Tench deflated. He frowned and took a step back. He licked his lip and nodded.

"Yeah..." He said, barely above a whisper.

Sarra stretched her arm out to the doors sensor and it rolled open.

"Great minds gestate in the same pod. Don't be the rotten end."

Tench nodded and headed inside.

"Great Gaia's Ghosts, that's a good one!" Bronson said as he hovered near Lora's shoulder. Her suit stretched out over her wound to expose the injury. Lora's shoulder was spilt open, deep enough to burn white hot, but shallow enough so that it did not hit a major artery.

Tench grabbed a first aid kit and worked to clean the wound. He took over from holding the suit from Bronson.

"I didn't know that the suit was a weave that allowed bleeding through." He said with a slight waver in his voice.

Bronson shook his head and flew back to the controls.

"I guess that Lora expected it to be like that on a subconscious level."

Tench wiped the blood away and leaned in to study it.

"I gotta say though that it looks a lot like a pomegranate." He said.

Lora squeaked and her face paled. Tench grimaced and held his hand up.

"Sorry, sorry. I'll stop making comparisons."

Lora whined.

Bronson called back as he fiddled with his computer.

"I found out the problem after you left, but I haven't had time to implement it since Juno had asked for help with the afternoon's debacle."

Tench smiled.

"Oh yeah? What was up?"

Bronson worked on fixing his mistake as he talked about it.

"In section 85,634-B, I forgot to put in some particular values pertaining to human fingernails. The system knew that something logical went there, but it wasn't pulling anything from the data buffer, and instead of letting our Lora here sprout very thin strands of intestines when she recovered from an injury," Bronson paused to let Lora express how disgusted she was. "Instead of, well, that or some other horror, the machine knew that that was not right at all, and came to a full stop. Everything bottlenecked from that and thus the system overheated. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop."

Tench was taken aback.

"Dang."

Sarra entered the room and stood nearby. She changed from her costume to her civilian clothes consisting of some jeans and a black top.

Tench glanced over. He turned away to ignore her, but decided against it.

"Hi Sarra." He said. Sarra ignored him.

She stretched her neck out to look at her sisters wound.

"Sick." She croaked.

Bronson finished the code and saved it to the flash drive. He turned around and saw Sarra.

"Oh, good. I was about to call you in. Fork over the gauntlets, we're going to try this again."

Sarra took her gauntlets off and Tench took Lora's off. Lora was whimpering, her shoulder panicking liberally. Bronson took the gauntlets from Sarra and Tench and set them up.

"I still think that there's a snuff film hidden behind all this." Sarra said.

"Please hurry..." Lora said softly, quiet sobs erupted from her. Tench went back to stand with her.

Sarra crossed her arms as Bronson loaded the machine.

"Don't worry; you'll be back to being Dr. Lora Lessbleeder in no time at all." Sarra said.

Tench looked back at Sarra, his eyes were half closed.

"No one likes a smartass, Sarra." He said in a hushed tone.

Sarra stared at him and felt very cold all of a sudden. Images of her father sprang to her mind. She pointed at him, her closed fist facing up.

"Dude, that's frickin scary."

Tench shrugged, misunderstanding her.

"Nah, I was already the guinea pig for these things and that code here and there. Bronson's just going to put the new stuff in and send you two off. That's all."

Tench looked at the gauntlets in their chamber. They sparked up and interacted with each other, looking normal.

Bronson studied the sparks and nodded with a smile.

"It'll work now, supposedly, just remember to take the gauntlets off when a battle's over. Of course, when Lora gets them back, there should be no trace of her injury."

Sarra snorted, dismissing the eerie comparison between Tench and her father.

"With how she got that injury in the first place, I would think that she would either have her arm ripped off," Sarra was interrupted by Lora's squeak. Sarra held her finger up and raised her voice a little bit, to be heard over her sister.

"Or, I think that she would have been killed right there."

Tench nodded.

"Well, it's good that this is the only thing that happened. A dead Pink Lemon fresh into her first day would hurt our reliability, trust and by extension, both Meta Corps funding and stocks."

Sarra nodded.

"I don't doubt it."

"Where would we be then?" Tench asked.

"Overrun by a paranoid sociopathic meta dictator." Sarra said.

Tench nodded.

"Yep, that's exactly right. No one wants that to happen again."

Sarra glanced at him and then scoffed and rolled her eyes.

Within a few minutes, the gauntlets had completed their new upgrade. Bronson removed them from the chamber and floated up to present them.

"Alright, each lady gets two cheap and disgusting microwave burritos. Dig in."

"Diarrhea in a tortilla. Yummy." Sarra said. She hooked her gauntlets back on and they resumed sharing Sarra's fluidity.

Tench carefully slid Lora's suit back up her shoulder. She gasped and flinched.

"Isn't it going to get infected if you do that?" Lora asked.

Tench shook his head.

"It won't matter if Bronson's upgrade works. I'm being baby soft, so it shouldn't hurt that much."

Tench took the gauntlets from Bronson and put them on Lora. There was an odd whirring noise, and then Lora burst with a thin pulse of light. A stronger glow came from the gauntlets, and scanned her body up and down several times. With each pass to her shoulder, the bloodstain diminished, leaving no trace behind.

"Hah, it's working!" Bronson yelled.

As if on cue from the exclamation, the scan stopped and Lora's glow subsided. She hovered an inch or two off the ground and rubbed her arm.

"It should be fine." Bronson said.

Lora patted her shoulder, waited for a reaction, and smiled.

"Oh it is, Mr. Bronson. Thank you."

Bronson nodded.

"You're welcome. Just be careful on the field."

Lora went up to hug him and she giggled.

"Oh, hey, you bet."

Lora backed away and studied her formally hurt arm.

"I don't feel any different though..."

"Well, you shouldn't." Bronson said. "It should work on a normal basis, I mean, the worst that could happen is that you turn into some kind of shapeless goop."

Everyone laughed and Bronson gave Lora a wink.

"On a normal basis?" Sarra asked with a raised eyebrow.

Bronson wrinkled his nose, an odd sight since he appeared to lack the protrusion of one in the first place.

"Or it will work every single time, all I'm saying is that neither Lora nor her heroic ascendants should have to worry about getting hurt from a lack of elasticity." Bronson paused. "That's why the EnWol transformation is there in the first place." He chopped his hand with each word.

Lora nodded, understanding why there was a transformation.

Tench cleared his throat.

"Bronson, while we were in the toy land back there, the scene shifted to one of Jack's memories, particularly how he became EnWol."

Bronson nodded.

"An incorrectly overclocked EnWol. He had the sand that I was threatened to forge in 1970, and consumed enough for forty; I knew that. The silver sand became the sand of time, lost in its new namesake because we could not find it in the remains of Max Doom's stronghold." Bronson pointed at the women. "History lesson."

Tench held his black gloved finger up.

"A-ha, but there's more. We found out that the sand was given to Sergei Slade."

Bronson's eyes widened.

"No. No way, man. If Slade had the sand than he would have an EnWol army that would have attacked Meta Corps by '75, I bet. It's not his style to just sit on something that powerful for," he blew a curt raspberry, "forty years."

Tench shrugged.

"That's what I saw, and Jack reacted pretty strongly to it. I think that what we saw was true."

Bronson nodded.

"Could be."

Lora floated up.

"Excuse me, but who is Sergei Slade? I know that he was there when I got the gauntlets, but I didn't know much about him."

Bronson looked at her and laughed.

"You were in Costa Mesa? Okay, that makes sense. Slade must think that he needs the gauntlets to enable the elasticity. We're lucky that you got them in that explosion instead of him.

Anyway, Lora, the Russian born Sergei Slade is an extremely elusive weapons industrialist with a fondness for, in his own words, 'what can hurt the most.' He's a master at hiding, so this search may be very difficult."

"So, getting the sand back is going to be impossible then?" Sarra asked.

Bronson shook his head.

"I don't know; we'll have to find Slade first. I just wish that I could converge the sand that Sarra has into both chambers on all four gauntlets, but there's a different system for each and there's no compatibility. What got the previous EnWol in Lora's place up and running was that I had a small reserve that I thought would last a lot longer than it did. A lot longer. Slades reserve is the mother lode, ready to be converted and assigned to each chamber for when the gauntlets run out. Otherwise it converts unceremoniously."

Sarra crossed her arms.

"How do we find the panzer sucker then?"

Tench glared at her, trying not to laugh. Bronson shook his head.

"I have no idea. I'll take it up with Florence and Clark and see what they say. There's not much that we can do about it now. Thanks Tench, that will help us out significantly."

They said their good byes, and went their own ways. Lora and Tench stayed together and talked as they roamed the underground waterfall.

"So, how did you like your first day, Pink?" Tench asked. Lora watched the waterfall and frowned.

"I don't know yet. I had a friend back in Orange County named Cindy. She was a stretcher too, like Rachel. I think that the EnWol elasticity makes Cindy look like a tight little hair bow next to a glass of water. The idea of Sarra being like that, and myself before today, was a little daunting."

"Why?"

Lora sighed and rubbed her arm.

"It's just sort of yucky, I've told everyone that."

Tench nodded, and Lora continued.

"Cindy also said something about how... how I'm submissive and always do what I'm asked. She thinks that I'll get in trouble because of it."

Tench smiled.

"Well, it can't be blind yes's, you're smart enough to say no when someone asks if you can swim around in toxic filth, jump off a cliff, or put on some strange gauntlets and become some kind of silver goop."

Lora chuckled.

"Oh, you quit it. Cindy said that I'm too passive and agreeable. I could see it a little, but her advice was that if my conscience says that saying no feels right than I should say no. Before that, I just pushed it aside and tried to please whoever was requesting my help."

Tench frowned.

"I'm sorry, Lora, I don't see your point. All I can figure is that Sarra enjoyed your time for all the wrong reasons."

Lora swept herself in front of Tench and stopped him.

"Oh, she did, but... Andy, my conscience said no to being a Pink Lemon because I'm afraid that I might hurt someone, or get hurt myself." Lora rubbed her arm where her gash used to be.

"The problem is that a lot, a lot of people have relied on EnWol to run out and save the day, to be an idol, and now Sarra and I are next. I don't want to let them down by screwing up."

Lora started walking again.

"My first day opened my eyes to how heroes really operate. Violence, cruelty for selfish reasons, I was kicked in the stomach repeatedly."

Tench's eyes widened.

"Really? Wow!"

Lora nodded.

"Yeah, it wasn't fun."

"I'll bet."

"Yeah. Being a hero is grittier than I could have ever imagined, Andy. My first day's opinions... well, I don't know..."

Lora's hand shielded the side of her face opposite Tench, as if she did not want to be seen.

Tench shrugged.

"Well, you know, Lora, not all heroes and villains reflect the reality in The Little Squirts. Do you believe everything that this rubber Cindy says about you?"

Lora rubbed Tench's arm.

"She's a good friend to laugh and shop with, but, well, she's a little challenged sometimes."

"A little dumb?" Tench asked.

Lora made a noise of disapproval.

"That's okay, not everyone can be Juno Osbourne. Listen, it sounds like she means well, but frankly, this is your decision, Lora. If you're worried about hurting people and letting your fans down on the first day, I would stick with it, see if it gets better. If you're still here a month, a year, two, three years and you still feel like that then hey, by all means, quit. Take the gauntlets and leave them in a park, someone will find them, and become the next Pink Lemon, or Dazzling Blaze, or whatever they want to be called. Give it some time, okay?"

Lora smiled.

"Okay." She held up her hand. "I think that I need some more practice with my powers."

Tench laughed.

"Yeah a little bit. I could tell that you were on the ball with your reflexes, but your ice was a little wild. Here, come here."

Tench walked over to the waterfall. He sat at a ledge and twirled his finger over the still water. He glanced at Lora.

"Copy me."

Tench dipped his fingertip in the water and swished it around. Lora copied him. They made a frozen base that sunk to the bottom. The two added to the base and molded a thorn that broke the surface and curved in on itself. It was held steady by the base. Lora's fell forward.

"Oh! Oh no!" Lora held it straight up and tried to balance it.

"Let it go, it's alright." Tench said. Lora ignored him and supported the base with some new ice. It tipped to the side, but it remained stable. She looked at him and chuckled nervously. Tench nodded with approval.

"That's pretty good; much better than some guys that could do that since they were born."

Lora tried to stabilize the tilted sculpture.

"Oh really? That's cool."

Tench cut his hand through the air.

"Slick."

Lora giggled.

Tench rubbed Lora's shoulder and looked at the twin ice hooks.

"Lora, listen. Do you need practice with the ice? No, I don't think so. That's bullcrap. Are you brave, yes, I would say so. I was impressed with your wanting to defend your sister, but it's good to remember that she can no longer get hurt. Most EnWol have to have that driven into their heads." Tench said.

Lora looked at him.

"Well, I couldn't just stand by and do nothing. Even after I escaped the vortex, I flew right back in to save both you and Sarra."

Tench whistled.

"Really? I'm impressed. That took guts." Tench patted Lora's back.

Lora started to laugh.

"Aw, thank you." Lora said.

Tench nodded.

"That's a really good quality, Lora. Facing the odds when they are against you and persisting anyway. It's just the kind of person you are. You persist because it's the right thing to do, and I think that's very heroic."

Lora smiled and felt her delight grow. Her fear washed away with the realization, and Lora felt the world tumble from her shoulders. She held her cheeks and giggled.

Tench laughed.

"Hey, I'm glad that you liked that. For every good, there's a bad though, and I want to look at some first day jitters that you had..."

Lora nodded.

"Go right ahead."

Tench blew air from puffed cheeks.

"I noticed that you had a little bit of hesitation. This is bad, Lora, a small delay can kill you. That's it. This happened when Jack showed up, when Sarra was interrogating that one innocent, and, although I can barely blame you for it, you're passing out at Jack turning into a nightmare.

I can see that you're a passive person. Yes, it's apparent that you took self-defense courses, but I'm afraid that you might not fight back for fear of hurting the assailant."

Lora sighed.

"I.... I'm trying not to worry about it."

Tench nodded.

"Well, if you do fight, why not use your passive nature instead of trying to run? Instead of trading blows, why not sneak in some attacks while defending yourself?"

Lora smiled.

"I was trained by my sempai to defend myself over attacking. That's what we paid for."

Tench shrugged.

"Hey, it's different now, Lora. Florence wanted equality between metas and humans and taking some self-defense classes did it. We'll see if you can be shown how to be offensive. Defending yourself all the time though, that's the polar opposite of what Sarra would do. You saw her with Jack."

Lora frowned.

"Yeah, poor Sarra. I've never seen her panic like that before."

Tench curled his lip and shook his head.

"I don't know about Sarra. After what Florence told us about how she reacted to orders, I have a suspicion that she might go rogue. I think that we both know what a rogue EnWol can do as of today."

Lora nodded.

"Oh boy, no doubt. I don't think that Sarra would do that kind of thing though. She's very particular in her ways."

Tench sneered.

"I don't know. I have a bad feeling about her, Pink.

Anyway, I want to make another point about your first day, and it regards your flying. Using your ice gives you a better degree of control when out of control. I'm not sure if you're immune to the cold like I am, but when I'm flying and I lose it like you did, I create a huge slide."

Tench made a dramatic U shape with his arm and a wide candy cane like shape that was made of ice appeared over the water. Tench took a hold of it before it sunk and showed it to Lora. She proceeded to run her fingers across the inside rim. She giggled.

"Ooo, that's fun."

Tench nodded.

"Yeah, during peace time they are. These take a lot of practice to create and they have saved my life more times than I can count out on the field. I shoot a burst of ice at a surface at an angle, and bring the slippery side to me. This way, if it doesn't break first, I fly off into another direction where I can have the opportunity to regain control.

Just don't overdo it. I've passed out maybe once or twice from blowing out too much ice. You can't regain control when you feel like you've blown too much air into a bunch of balloons."

Lora smiled and looked at the small-scale slide with more interest.

"Man, Andy, you know a lot about this stuff."

Tench chuckled.

"Not really, the ice powered EnWol can run rings around me. These are just some tricks that I learned."

Lora held his shoulder.

"Yes you do know a lot about having ice powers. More than I do, anyway. These are really wonderful ideas and I really think that you should get them out there."

Tench shook his head.

"They're just little things."

Lora grabbed his chin and looked at him with a hopeful smile. His face went slack and his heart beat faster.

"Can you show me then, please? My ice cream man?"

Tench's grin grew wide. He shook his head.

"Sure Pink Sugar. Where do you want to start?"

To be continued...

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

