My mother was thirty-eight, but she didn’t look a day over twenty-four. That made it really easy to pick out an old human, or a first generation who hadn’t quickened. It also made it hard to judge the true age of a super. There were two theories about that. Either the homo-potens energy slowed aging, or at least kept the body fitter and had better DNA correction because of the super-healing thing. We wouldn’t know for another thirty to forty years though if that regeneration ability included the telomeres of the cells.
It was entirely possible my mother would never age all that much until the cells stopped being able to regenerate, then she’d age very quickly and die at the end of a normal human lifespan. It was just as possible our lifespan would be incredibly long, over a thousand years perhaps, or longer. That second one sounded better to me, but population problems would be a thing if it was.
She asked, “Comfortable?”
I shrugged, “Comfortable enough, why?”
She said, “After I quickened nothing pinched, or stressed, or… you get the idea.”
“Yeah, no super strength for me. I also feel normal except for my energy levels which are through the roof. If I didn’t have your hair, eyes, and face I’d be wondering if I was mixed up at the baby ward.”
She snickered, “No, you’re definitely mine. It could be my ability married with your father’s, one he never got to express because of the way he died so suddenly prevented his quickening. Then there’s the fact I really don’t have super strength. I may be using some kind of physical shield I can’t extend past me for some reason for that, my body is normal if I turn it off. It’s more likely I just never fully quickened, like so many of the first generation, despite my fantastic powers.
“My invisibility and control over sound are also obviously reactive in nature, I can enhance, change and even deaden light and sound. Much like your shields are reactive. You can just do it with other forms of energy too. We’ll figure it out.”
My biological father had died when I was just two, so I couldn’t remember him at all. I’d had a dad anyway. My mother had gotten remarried a couple of years later.
I nodded, “I couldn’t stop glowing at all, when it happened.”
She asked, “Did you try to attenuate the light, or did you just focus on turning it off? That’s two different things.”
“I’m not sure, the second one, I think. I was trying not to play around, given the hostage thing going on.”
She nodded.
We pulled up in front of the testing facility. Much like the original SAB building it was where the government superhero teams for the city were housed as well as their support personnel and equipment. It was a government facility, but it was run by A.I. and supers, and not the death trap the SAB building had been. I couldn’t even imagine going to a place like that after what I’d just gone through, and by all accounts my mother’s quickening had been worse than mine.
It was a lot to live up to, and I wanted to live up to it.
We got out and headed inside. The floor was made up of large off-white tiles with very tiny gray speckles. The outer walls were glass, with silver metallic framing, and the inner walls were painted a very subdued yellowish tan color. We walked over to the desk and I tried not to fidget while she checked me in. I definitely felt normal that way. The air conditioning chilled me slightly, and my feet felt a little uncomfortable from all the standing all afternoon after the incident.
It didn’t take long though, for a man in a lab coat carrying a data-pad to come out to collect me. I played it cool and like I didn’t care, when my mother stayed in the lobby. I took a deep breath and pushed away the fear and uncertainty using a mental calming exercise my Uncle Germaine had taught me. Powers worked on focus and intent, if I was nervous about everything it would affect the results.
He said, “I’m Cam. Cameron Leeds. Try to relax, this will take a while since we have no idea what to expect. With your mother’s power unrealized, I mean. We need to run the full gamut.”
I suppressed a giggle, if he only knew the truth, “Of course, Cam. Call me Wynn.”
We took the elevator down, it seemed to go really far for one floor, and I raised an eyebrow.
He said, “Testing can be loud, and often damaging to equipment, walls, and things. The walls are all highly reinforced and several feet thick, but it seems safer to do it further underground just in case.”
So we didn’t knock down the building above us? What if I caved in the elevator shaft? I smirked at myself, not really worried about that, overly. Still, that was a lot of dirt and cement above our heads.
He waved to the right, “That’s your door. I’ll follow you through the observation rooms, and the intercom will be on at all times.”
I nodded, and I walked through the door into the first room. There were no lights on, and when the door slammed it echoed ominously in the darkness as the light was cut off. Even that low level of nerves at an unknown pitch-dark room was enough to get me start glowing with a golden light.
The room had a dark gray floor. The walls were a shiny silver color, and there was a crossbar hanging from the ceiling attached to large metal poles on either end.
I took a moment to focus and concentrate on changing the quality of the light, but it didn’t do a damned thing. I tried not to get upset by that, clearly my powers wouldn’t be exactly like my mothers. I wouldn’t be turning invisible for instance, if I was always glowing. I was however able to glow brighter, I was also able to use it as a flashlight of sorts, a brightly glowing cord like what had connected me to all the other shields.
He asked, “Do you have super strength?”
I frowned, “I could probably hold up the bar with my shield, I think.”
I hoped, otherwise my shields were only good for energy.
I couldn’t help it. I floated off the ground and moved forward. I couldn’t wait to get high up in the air. My shield concaved under the bar, wrapping tightly to my hands, and I nodded at the one-way mirror.
He turned it on, and I felt a light pressure on my hands, but that was it.
My mother couldn’t lift things from a distance, but I wondered if I could, when I tried to form a shield directly around the bar I realized immediately it wouldn’t work. There was no rigidity in the thin line that connected my two shields, the one around me and the one around the bar, which meant there was absolutely no leverage to hold the bar up from a distance.
That explained why my mother couldn’t project her strength away from her body. Her power must work similar to mine, at least for physical protection. She had no protection against energy except for soundwaves and raw light.
He was counting off the tonnage I was holding up, and my feet were still in the air. My flying ability giving my body all the leverage it needed, and the shield taking the pressure of the bar. There were probably some reactive things going on as well, because I didn’t feel the pressure of it. When his voice got past sixty tons, I smirked. I was stronger too.
I’d honestly been looking forward to being invisible, but me being able to take an energy attack also meant I didn’t have to be invisible. It took some of the sting out of it. When he reached seventy five tons I started to feel a feedback pressure in my mind, if not in my body, but I managed to get to seventy-eight before it really started to hurt and I let it push me down and went to my knees to avoid getting hit by the thing.
He said, “Good.”
I frowned at the bar as it raised up, “Can we try something?”
His voice was dubious, “What?”
It was the lack of leverage between me and my projected shield that made it impossible to hold the bar up remotely. But what if I used something else as leverage? I focused and created a shield under the bar, and I made it big enough that it reached the floor too. It took a little more concentration to concave the shield where the bar was, so it sat firmly in the shield.
“Can you turn it back on?”
He grunted, and then did so.
I
could actually feel it. Feel the pressure on the shield when I was standing away from it. It was an odd sensation, because it was just in my mind, as opposed to the soft pressure against my hands earlier.
He cycled up a lot faster that time, since I wasn’t in danger of being brained by the thing if my shield failed. It made me think about possibilities. I could shield others from physical and energy attacks, but using the shields in interesting ways as long as there was something else around for leverage would be possible.
Of course, most floors, walls, and ceilings weren’t reinforced enough to take seventy-seven tons of pressure, so I’d have to be careful with the idea.
It was also that moment I had another leap of understanding. My mother didn’t hit with sixty tons of strength when she punched someone. The reactive physical shield took her normal human kinetic energy punch and then reactively enhanced it to her full abilities, or however strong she wanted it. I suspected I could do the same thing rather easily, but it would take time to train it.
Cam said, “Excellent, and creative. You may feel some discomfort, I’m going to hit you with several energy types.”
A rather intimidating looking rectangular device rose out of the floor near the door to the next room. It had a target on it, and several protrusions. First, I was hit by a laser that was probably just hot enough to be uncomfortable, I hoped. Didn’t feel a thing. I also knew instinctively I could enhance it and send it back, but I didn’t. Second, I was hit by soundwaves that were slowly building up.
That hurt, until I focused on stopping them. To my surprise however, I didn’t block it with my shield, I shot a shield around it which cut off the annoying sound that’d been going right through me. It took me a moment to realize why my power had done it that way. If I cut off sound at the shield around me, then I wouldn’t have been able to hear anything else either, and no one would be able to hear me. The attack was shielded at the source.
The energy of the sound waves was mine as well, to send back, even enhance and send back, but I didn’t do it.
I wondered if I could force it to do so the other way if I tried, but my power balked. Apparently, I wouldn’t be silencing myself any more than I could turn invisible. At first, I worried I wouldn’t be able to deafen sonic booms like she did if I could fly that fast, but a sonic boom wasn’t something my body made directly so I suspected I could. I’d have to experiment to be sure. It was probably just as well my powers were similar in some ways but presenting very differently, it wouldn’t take a genius to follow the clues if I had the same exact powers as my mother.
I was hit by several different energy types, and none of them got through. Just sound and the visible light spectrum, for my senses of hearing and vision.
My shields also defeated a taser, absorbed radar, lidar, and other kinds of active scanning. Apparently, the only way to see me was with the mark one eyeball, or passive optical cameras.
Next we tested any offensive abilities, which seemed to be none. Like my mother I could only shine like a light with my powers alone. I could enhance things and hit back with them, but I couldn’t generate my own attacks. Well, I could punch hard, but that was just my reactive shields.
It seemed my powers were projective and reactive shields, and flight. That’s it, outside of the normal super-healing we all had as homo-potens, and the next three hours of test rooms didn’t change that impression.
Whatever made me able to absorb energy when my mother couldn’t, was clearly responsible for that golden glow and the reason I wouldn’t be invisible and quiet anytime soon. It was what it was, and I was pretty damned happy with it. It made me one of the most powerful supers I’d ever heard of, even with only two abilities, the shields had endless applications.
I wasn’t invincible though. Not much could hit with seventy-seven tons of force, and I was sure the energy absorption rate of my shields could be challenged as well. I was fairly confident I could take any single energy wielder supervillain in a fight, but what if there were two, three, or even more?
Plus, when I wasn’t fighting, when I was just me, I’d be completely vulnerable. I sure as hell wasn’t going to walk around glowing a gold color all the time…
Chapter Three
The house I lived in was still the old safehouse. An old colonial two level mansion with eight bedrooms. Mine was a decent sized room, I’d moved into it when I was four and Joey Rufino had gone off to college. I hardly ever saw him, but he kept in touch.
It had a queen-sized bed in it, long and waist high white dresser, with a large white framed mirror over it. There was also a matching white vanity desk that I hardly ever used, and a small flat screen on the wall. There were shelves as well. A lot of stuffed animals, pictures, and other knickknacks filled out all the empty space.
Both Aunts Sarah and Maria had also moved out when they’d gotten married about ten years ago, but they were around a lot more and part of my mother’s super team, unofficially of course. Germaine and Debra had their own house as well, right down the street actually, but them and their young ones were over all the time and often had dinner with us.
My mother had married Glenn Mason, and I saw him as my father in every way that mattered. He was a super too, a psychic who got visions. In the past he hadn’t been very well respected, people had believed he was just a crazy conspiracy theorist, but that had changed as he’d been a big part of the reason the SAB’s horrors were exposed and stopped when they were shut down.
The house wasn’t just for the three of us though.
Jace and Sharon were both nine, fraternal twins, and they were my brother and sister. Technically half I supposed, but I never saw it that way because Glenn was my father too. They both took after him as far as their light brown hair and hazel eyes, but although Sharon’s skin was darker her features were a lot like mine and my mother’s. They were alright I supposed, but outside of watching them when mom and dad went out, I didn’t spend much time with them. With the eight-year gap we didn’t exactly have a lot in common.
It was later that night and my body was still buzzing with excitement. I had a lot of energy that I wasn’t sure what to do with. My mother had warned me I’d only need to sleep three or four hours, instead of the old seven or eight, but the difference between knowing that intellectually and feeling it was a different reality altogether.
After dinner I’d retreated to my room, attached the test results from my power evaluation and sent in the paperwork. The class started in less than a week, and I was resigned to possible disappointment, but hoped I’d get in despite that. I really wanted to get my hero training course in with Janna if possible. Of course, it was possible I’d be found unsuitable and rejected altogether like Stacey, instead of merely being shuffled to the next scheduled course, but I tried not to think of that. I didn’t see myself as a selfish person, but no one was perfect either.
The door knocked, “You decent?”
I smirked, “Dressed? Yes.”
My mother snorted as she opened the door and came in. She was in her Belladonna guise, using her power to make her hair look midnight black, and her eyes green instead of blue. Her features were slightly more severe as well, but not to the point her face wasn’t still soft. Just enough to look way different.
“You applied for the course,” she said, it wasn’t a question.
I nodded, “We’ve talked about this,” and I couldn’t help the defensive note that’d crept into my tone.
She sighed, “You know, I started doing this to protect others, to protect you, so you wouldn’t have to face such things.”
I tilted my head, “And I’ve been safe from the SAB for fourteen years, so why did you keep doing it? You can hardly blame me for being inspired and following in your footsteps.”
She bit her lip, “I know, I already approved it, parental consent I mean. I could’ve stopped it, but you’d just sign up again when you’re eighteen. And you’d be pissed at me, but I worry. It can be a thrill but it’s also dangerous. I kn
ow how you felt today, when you saved almost five hundred people, including your mother. What will you do next month? The course is only two weeks, but you can’t join a hero team as a minor.”
“I could take over your team,” I grinned impudently.
She smirked, “I’m not decrepit yet, we’ll talk in a few decades. But seriously, it’s something to think about. There’re advantages in both. I’m also glad you don’t have my weakness, but that’s no guarantee of anything. I’d love to have you, if only to keep an eye on you, but there’d be a stigma involved in it, and the city supers really are good people. There’s also college to think about.”
I made a face, “I want to be a superhero. I can maybe take a few courses, but it won’t really help me. The two-week course will prepare me for it.”
She nodded, “It will give you the necessary procedures, but really you need to train a lot harder and longer. The fighting aspects of the course are just an introduction. The teams will take care of that, whatever you decide. It also wouldn’t hurt to take criminal psychology or other law enforcement courses.”
I bit my lip, not wanting to insult her, because joining her team really appealed to me, but, “I… feel the need to prove to myself I can do it. And to make a difference. Make my own way, you know. Plus, Janna.”
You know, without my mother easing the way and holding my hand. Plus, Janna was my best friend, and I thought we’d make a good team.
She nodded, “I understand. I don’t like it, but I was the same way. When I turned eighteen I couldn’t wait to get out on my own and conquer life on my own terms. The offer’s there if you change your mind, always, in that way I’m nothing like your grandmother. Also, if you trust Janna that much… I suppose we could expand our circle in the know to one more. But you need to be sure and only if you two join my team, unofficially.”
I giggled.
She added, “Your certainly powerful enough to get in the door, but don’t think picking us would make it a free ride either.”
Lady Aegis: Origins of Supers: Book Two Page 3