Super Powereds: Year 3

by Drew Hayes

  “So it seems,” Shane said. “Just be careful. Please.”

  “Why Shane, I’m surprised at you. When am I ever anything but fore-thinking and methodical?” Even though he couldn’t see the grin on her face, Shane could picture it perfectly, and somehow, that just annoyed him all the more.

  43.

  Though there were many similarities between Chad and Vince, their social obliviousness was slightly different. Vince understood that things like dressing up and fashion existed, but he was never too certain on what the rules were, or how to do it appropriately. Chad, on the other hand, was able to catalogue the data he observed on how people dressed themselves for various occasions and construct a rudimentary understanding of what was appropriate to wear for different social situations. The reason he rarely used this knowledge was that he usually didn’t care enough to bother. The night of his first date with Angela was a notable exception.

  Reconstructing his body back to its usual appearance had been a relatively easy task. Rather than dissolve the bone armor back into various minerals and merge them with his body, Chad had found it more efficient to simply molt off the excess growths. He could always ingest more minerals and supplements, but molting had been a five minute process, compared to around a five hour one for reintegration. Generally, the time wouldn’t have mattered. But this night was, once again, an exception.

  Chad stood in his dorm room, looking into the mirror he rarely used for more than a few minutes at a time. Most mornings, he merely glanced in it, willed his hair into the same arrangement and style he had it in every day, and then proceeded to brush his teeth. Currently, he was wondering if he should change something. Was it appropriate to go into a situation like this with normal hair? He knew changing clothes was expected, and he’d heard people often got haircuts before large events, but he wasn’t certain if such large-scale alterations were expected of him.

  It was uncertainty that plagued him, a feeling he was unaccustomed to and very uncomfortable with. Perhaps he should have paid more attention to dating and acclimating to the normal world back in high school, when ignorance was the expectation of all involved. He wished he had someone to guide him on this issue. There might be time to call Shane; however, Chad suspected that his friend would not have much more experience with this than him. That was, after all, part of why they were friends in the first place. Chad wondered if Roy was still the dominant personality in his body; the fellow bartender was undeniably an expert on social expectations.

  Before Chad could reach for his cell phone, it began to chirp a ringtone. He picked up the diminutive device and accepted the call.

  “Hey, hot stuff,” came Angela’s voice. “I’m in the parking lot; come on down. And don’t keep a lady waiting.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Chad cast one last glance in the mirror and willed a few stray hairs to change position. He didn’t know if it was good enough, but it seemed this would have to do.

  * * *

  “What?” Violet yelled, the fierce whir of the blender choking out nearly every other sound that tried to break into her area.

  “I asked where we should put the sleeping bags!” Alice hollered, repeating herself for the third time. She and Mary had just arrived at the house, finding Jill and Camille on the couch, while Violet focused on getting some lime green concoction in the blender to the exact perfect degree of icy consistency. The sound from the struggling motor echoed off the tiled kitchen walls and bounded into the living room, making any conversation at all nearly impossible.

  Finally, the furious blending came to a stop as Violet pulled off the lid and stuck in a straw to test consistency as well as flavor.

  “We put ours on the floor,” Camille said, once the sound ceased. She’d been able to make out the question; however, she hadn’t been willing to produce the level of noise it would take to be heard over such a racket. Alice glanced over and realized there were already three sleeping bags laid out in the area between the couch and the television.

  “Why are there three? Violet and Jill have beds,” Alice pointed out.

  “We do, but it sort of takes all the fun out of it if you go up to sleep alone,” Jill pointed out. “Besides, we figured the more of us that are here, the better a chance that Mary will slip into someone’s dream.”

  “I appreciate the gesture,” Mary said, walking over to the living room area and setting down her own sleeping bag. “But I need to be touching someone to walk into their dreams. That’s why Alice and I are going to tie our hands together before we go to bed.”

  “You’ve only dream-walked into people you’re touching so far,” Jill said. “No sense in not seeing what happens.”

  “I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” Mary acquiesced. She laid her bag down next to a gray one with green stripes.

  Alice promptly came over and set hers down next to Mary, also setting out the long piece of cloth they’d procured to bind their hands together with later on. On top of that, she set down a case of soda and a bag of chips. Despite the fact that they’d more or less been told they were coming here, Alice couldn’t allow herself to attend a social gathering without bringing something along. Etiquette drilled deeply into her body simply would not permit such slights.

  “Hey, Jill, you live here now, is there a place I should stick the drinks?” Alice asked.

  “In your belly!” Violet announced, walking into the room clutching an assortment of glasses, all filled with the icy lime-green concoction from the blender. “Oh, you meant the soda. That can go by the fridge, we’ll make room in a minute. First, margaritas!”

  Alice had drunk margaritas before—expertly crafted cocktails meant to tickle the taste buds while not overpowering one’s palette. None of them had been this shade of almost fluorescent green. Still, she accepted the glass without any objections. She’d learned during the beach week that when Violet was set on having fun, fun would be had whether anyone else liked it or not.

  The others took theirs too, though Alice suspected Mary and Camille’s glasses would be covertly emptied when no one was looking. Then again, Camille had put away an impressive few shots at Six-Shooter, so who was to say.

  “A toast,” Violet said, raising her own glass high into the air. “To training, to friends, and to those of us who are still here. May we be able to toast together again in a year’s time.”

  All four women clinked their glasses, took tentative sips, and tried very hard not to cough and choke at the overpowering taste of tequila.

  “Perfect,” Violet managed to stammer out between barely suppressed gags.

  44.

  So far, Chad was feeling relatively confident that things were going well. He based this on the fact that the night was, for the most part, largely the same as how things usually went with Angela. They talked, she made crude comments, and he interjected actual logic here and there. It was their standard dynamic, the one he’d been enjoying for years without even realizing. The only genuine alteration he documented was his own attempt to allow his emotions slightly more free rein. That was why, upon completion of ordering their dishes as they sat in the well-lit seafood restaurant, Chad felt a stab of nervousness when Angela’s face grew a bit serious and she asked him a question.

  “Not that I’m complaining, but I’ve been dying to ask, what made you decide to ask me out all of a sudden? Kind of came out of nowhere.”

  “I suppose it did,” Chad agreed. He wondered how much he should tell her, then immediately dismissed all attempts at obfuscation as idiotic. Part of why he liked Angela was that she understood his strange way of thinking; what point would there be in hiding a story that centered on that very idiosyncrasy?

  He told her everything that had occurred on their first night working together. How his stomach had hurt, Roy’s advice, his realization of how he felt, and his own uncertainty of what to do next. By the time he concluded the thorough report, the salads had arrived and been consumed. Angela was an attentive listener, never interr
upting, always paying attention. It was only when Chad finished that she spoke up.

  “So, I actually won you over a long time ago, and you just didn’t realize it?”

  “That would be a fair assessment,” Chad agreed. He allowed himself a small smile, hoping it came off as playful.

  “Son of a bitch, I’m even better than I thought I was,” Angela said, her own expression a far less innocent type of playful than Chad’s. “And to think I owe a meathead like Roy for finally bringing you around. Ain’t that a kick in the teeth.”

  “Roy is surprisingly adept at helping me equalize my emotions,” Chad replied. “After the birthday party incident last year, he provided alcohol and commiseration.”

  “Ah yes, your little snafu with Vince,” Angela recalled. She paused to take a sip of her wine. Chad, not surprisingly, was drinking water. “It seems like those guys cause you more trouble than anyone else in your class.”

  “They aren’t bad people,” Chad defended.

  “I didn’t mean it in a bad way,” Angela explained. “Trouble can be a good thing. Trouble is messy, conflicted, unexpected, and chaotic. Let’s be honest here: I’m trouble. You’re the opposite. Ordered, organized, and thoroughly predictable. I’m glad they cause you some trouble from time to time. It’s good for you. And if Roy hadn’t, then you wouldn’t be sitting across from me tonight, now would you?”

  “I suppose there is a certain amount of truth to that theory,” Chad admitted.

  “I’m like a two-glass savant—after a pair of wine glasses, I can wax eloquent all night. I kind of lose the mojo after the third though; that’s when I start thinking dirty jokes are hilarious.”

  “You already love telling dirty jokes,” Chad reminded her.

  “Yeah, but I mean three-glasses-in Angela loves the absolute shit out of them.”

  “Any other transformations I should be aware of?”

  “Not too many,” Angela said, pausing to polish off her second glass. “After I hit the fourth glass, they all pretty much have the same effect.”

  “Which is?” Chad reached over and took a sip from his own glass.

  “I get really horny.”

  Chad choked on his water, flinging a hand to his mouth in an unexpected reaction to try and stop the clear liquid from exiting through his nose. Angela laughed so uproariously that no less than three other tables made a point of glaring at her.

  * * *

  The actual party portion of the group sleepover was rather subdued. Margaritas were downed, a movie or two enjoyed, and a single board game attempted. Most college students would have deemed it a waste of a perfectly good Friday night, but most students were not in a program with constant stress and regular physical battles, with the possible exception of architecture majors. While bars and outings were enjoyable, on occasion, a simple night of friends and conversation was good for recharging everyone’s batteries. No wild revelations, no crazy surprises, merely a night of regularity. For a few hours, the young women were able to make believe that this was their life, not a world of Supers and Powereds and Heroes and battle.

  Of course, that delusion was somewhat shredded when the time to sleep came and Mary tied her hand against Alice’s. It reminded them all of what they were really doing there, and that, even on the most normal of nights, none of them were like the rest of the world. None of them said this as they lay down, though, Mary and Alice carefully arranged, the rest merely crawling into their sleeping bags and lying however felt most comfortable.

  Sleepiness and Violet’s margaritas soon won the day, and each person began drifting off to sleep. Mary was the last to go; something she knew by the fact that everyone’s thoughts ceased being coherent and became the muddled mumblings she had long ago learned was the sign of a slumbering mind. She lay awake for some time, staring at the ceiling, a knot of fear in her stomach refusing to let her leave consciousness. What if this didn’t work? What if she never learned to control this aspect of her power? Mary liked to present a strong, put-together image around the others, because she knew they needed that, but in her heart, she still had the same worries as the others. She wondered if she would ever get to sleep.

  Eventually, even worry proved no match for biology, and the small woman fell into blissful slumber. She lay like that, within her own dream, for the majority of the night, until somewhere in the hour of four in the morning.

  That was when Jill, turning over in her sleep, stuck out a hand that landed on Mary’s forearm.

  45.

  The mental worlds Mary had seen thus far were organized, detailed settings so realistic that it was easy to mistake them for the reality. However, those had all been ones constructed or accessed through Rich’s ability. A mind not under the influence of such a power was messier, more chaotic, and far less bound by any convention of making sense.

  Unlike her first time, Mary immediately understood that she was no longer in her own mind. Moments ago, she’d been having a dream about a daffodil that was also a hunting lodge in the Alps, and then, without warning, she was standing in a carnival. Along with the scenery change, her level of lucidity rose sharply. It seemed the act of leaving her mind gave her self-awareness not present during the usual REM cycle. She looked around, noticing the way the colors in the sky were shifting between blacks and greens, and the way the edges of the rides and tents were muddled, like painted images someone had smeared along the lines.

  “I want to make a ‘not in Kansas’ joke, but even by myself that feels cliché,” Mary muttered. “At least now I know I can dream-walk without Rich.” Carefully, she began walking along the cobblestone-and-dirt path under her feet. That isn’t to say the two elements were both present, merely that sometimes, it was one, and sometimes, it was the other. Looking down and seeing the transition made her stomach queasy, so Mary instead kept her eyes level to take in the various sights.

  She had to admit, this wasn’t what she’d expected from Alice’s dreams. There were various people milling about—some as patrons of the events, and others working as carnies. The rides were bright and colorful, the scent of fried food hung thick in the air. After all the horror movies Nick had made them watch, Mary kept expecting something sinister to leap out, but it seemed this dream presented the happy side of a carnival. Maybe Alice had good memories of one?

  “What the what-fuck?”

  Mary recognized the voice, but immediately knew it wasn’t her dormmate. Pivoting on her heel, she spun around to come face to face with Jill. The Super with dirty blonde hair was wearing a green dress that looked like it had come from the eighteen hundreds, all lace and poofs and fancy trim.

  “Jill?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. Real me, too. Like not a dream version. It’s weird; a few minutes ago, it was like I suddenly became aware of how weird this all was. I woke up without waking up.”

  Mary nodded. “That happened when I entered someone’s mind unexpectedly before. I think the only reason it didn’t happen with Vince is that he was already partially aware of the real world in his dream.”

  “Neat, so you’re a cheat code for lucid dreaming. You could make money doing that,” Jill commented. “Let’s see how well this works.” She closed her eyes, and her brow furrowed. Moments later, she was wearing a tank-top and shorts, topped off by a pair of flip-flops. “Thank the gods; that dress was chafing like a mofo.”

  “Interesting,” Mary said, making note of this ability. It hadn’t been there in her previous journeys. Nick had been able to call upon the defenses in his mind, but he had never shown the power to simply alter the world at will. Perhaps that was because the other times were all playing in one of Rich’s worlds, and here, Jill was the creator.

  “Still doesn’t explain why you’re in my head,” Jill said, shifting her attention now that comfort was established. “Did you finish with Alice and decide to lay on me?”

  “No. As far as I know, I’m still bound to her,” Mary replied. “I guess we have to assume that, somehow or another, you and
I made physical contact during the night.”

  “It’s possible, I do tend to toss and turn when I sleep,” Jill admitted. “Oh well, this still counts as a win, doesn’t it? I mean, you can use your power without Rich.”

  “It seems that way,” Mary agreed. “The next step is to see how far it can take me. Or, us.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “In the state Rich induced, I was able to move through the person’s mind, and I freed them up to do the same. Memories could be revisited, portions of their personality spoken with; effectively, it allowed me access to the deeper recesses of their consciousness.”

  “I’m not sure how comfortable with that I am,” Jill said, her eyes narrowing slightly.

  “There’s a chance it’s not even possible like this,” Mary said. “But I’d like to at least see. Why don’t you come with me? If we encounter a place or memory you don’t want me to see, you can just lead me away. No questions asked.”

  A tall man pushing a cotton candy cart rolled up alongside them. Jill snagged a bag of the stuff, but when she opened it up, it was instead a bag of popcorn. Mary took a bag too, though she held her own down at her side.

  “I guess I can work with that,” Jill said. “The whole point of this was to help you, after all. I just didn’t realize how in depth your ability went.”

  “You have my word, I’ll respect your boundaries,” Mary promised. “I just want to see if it’s possible.”

  “Okay, but only on one other condition,” Jill stipulated.

  “Name it.”

  “We wait a couple of minutes to start. Since this is a lucid dream and all, there’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”

  “Fine by me,” Mary agreed.

  Jill nodded, but didn’t say anything more. Instead, she closed her eyes and focused once again. A golden necklace appeared around her neck, one Mary dimly recognized as the prop from an old sci-fi television show. As soon as it had formed, Jill began rising into the air. Her eyes popped open, and a small squeal of joy escaped her lips.