The guards in the Bunker used top secret tech to help keep the inmates in line and that equipment had to be turned in after every shift. Alex pulled the pain giving extending baton from her belt followed by the Mark 3 Enhanced Subject Restraints, which everybody just called robot restraints. Alex gave each a visual once over before sliding them across the counter into the hardened cage. The clerk tore his eyes away from Alex's bosom long enough to inspect her gear then show her the return receipt. With that done, Alex headed to the elevator but found the line too long for her liking. Patience wasn't one of her stronger traits so without a second thought, Alex pressed her ID card against the pad and opened the door for the stairs. There were security checkpoints at every floor that would slow her down, but she'd easily beat the elevator just the same.

Peter Cooper had been one of the first inmates put into the Atlanta Federal Prison's Special Holding Unit. The entire episode had been a blow to his ego. He wouldn't have believed that he'd ever be caught, but as it turned out, the Feds had gifted people working for them too. He'd always been the biggest baddest guy around. His parents had tried their best to push him towards things where he could use his strength for worthy pursuits, but that hadn't been Peter's way. They told him that some things had to be done the hard way, and he'd laughed in their weak faces. As he heard the outer cell door open up he realized that they just might have been right. He counted to twenty then unleashed a punch that shook the whole cell and put a fist sized dent into the extra strong inner cell door.

The officer closer to the door jumped back and dropped the tray of special dietary food. Both officers stared at the dent in disbelief. The doors on this floor weren't the monstrosities that the ones on the lower ones were, but nobody on the top floor should have been able to shake a door let alone dent one. Peter's second punch rattled the teeth in their heads and knocked a hole in the door. Both officers pulled their batons but when Peter began peeling back the strong alloy with just his hands they knew that they'd need more than just the batons. "Out now!", the more senior guard yelled and they scrambled through the outer door. Unfortunately, it was already too late.

Alexandra was still on the middle level of The Bunker but felt the jarring. It almost sounded like something heavy had fallen against the floor sending vibrations through the cement. She continued on her way until a second, even stronger vibration reverberated through the cell block. She knew that wasn't normal, but her shift was over. This was somebody else's problem.

Peter had torn a big hole in the door and was widening it by the millisecond. He put his foot on the bottom of the widening gap and pushed down with his leg while pushing up with his arms. The door didn't have a chance. The metal stretched as far as it could manage before the internal structure simply gave way. The concrete surrounding door had been made extra strong, but Peter was a bit stronger still. The force he generated traveled up and into the walls searching for a weakness until finally a seam split and cracked. Peter growled and lifted an entire section of the ceiling before the final structures inside the door itself gave way. Pieces of chipped and broken concrete rained down behind Peter as he rushed towards the outer door.

The two officers flipped the emergency close switch, which detonated gunpowder deep inside the wall behind the door and sent it flying across its track, closing it faster than any hydraulic ram could have. The emergency close switch also turned on powerful pumps located near the surface that sucked all the air out of the cell and the room between the doors. Peter didn't care about the vacuum. He only cared about that door. He wasn't just extraordinarily strong. For a short while Peter could move faster than even a man with his strength could move. For less than a second, he was a literal blur.  He sped through the ante room as the outer door approached the end of its track. At the very last moment he thrust his hands through the slim opening. His bones were tested but the sliding door wasn't enough to break them. Once he let the pain wash through him, he drew his body back to arms length and rammed his shoulder into the door. After a couple of shoulder smashes the door bulged in the middle. Peter decided that he wouldn't try and fight the hydraulics. He'd defeat the track instead.

An officer managed to get a Mark 1 handcuff bracelet around one of Peter's thick wrists, but try as they might, they couldn't force his hands close enough to latch the other bracelet in place, not that it would have done them any good. The guards on this floor didn't carry the robot restraint because their prisoners weren't that strong. Obviously though, mistakes had been made somewhere down the line because the two officers bashed Peter's fingers with their special extending baton causing him to shout in pain, but the blue tinged bolts of energy that flashed with each impact didn't make him relent. Peter was desperate for escape. He'd scouted out his route and a probable time table. He wasn't going to be stopped before he'd really gotten going. After several moments, and after the door had nearly given its last, the senior officer leaned to the other side of the hallway, lifted the cover and pushed the panic alarm.

The panic button automatically locked every exit and cut every physical link to the outside world. Until the heavily armored SORT team assembled and entered the Bunker, the guards were on their own. The elevators stopped at the nearest floor and the duty captain had thirty seconds to get from his office to Master Control. He made it with some time to spare, but even though he was relatively safe inside the most hardened room in the Bunker, he was powerless to do anything.

Alex had dismissed the banging. The chest thumping booms raised a little concern, but the panic alarm made Alexandra's breath catch in her throat. She looked at the flashing '1' in the stairwell as if it had to be a mistake, but when nobody came on the radio to refute the alarm, Alex started running to the Bunker's top floor. She didn't understand how anybody on that floor could even generated a panic alarm since they were supposed to be lightweights. Also Alex's training lieutenant said that there hadn't been a serious escape attempt from the Bunker. He'd have to revise that statement for future classes.

She heard other officers rushing up from every level trying to get to the top floor. Alex sprinted to the next checkpoint but had to pause and slide her card into the slot then type in a different code at each checkpoint to get each door to open. It might have been against protocol, but Alex propped open each door so the other officers wouldn't have to waste time opening them. By the time Alex made it to the last door her adrenaline was flowing like water over Niagara Falls. She'd managed to do it several times over the last minute, but her hands were shaking so much that she just couldn't get the card into the slot. "Get that fuckin' door open!", an officer yelled which only made the situation worse. "Come on! Come on! Hurry up!!!", other officers practically screamed in Alex's ears.

The urgent shouts all mixed together inside Alex's mind. She tried again but this time dropped her card completely. If the area hadn't been so small and if the other officers hadn't been pressed against her she'd have moved out of the way to let someone else try, but it was all becoming too much. She wanted to help the officers on the other side of the door and she wanted the officers on this side of the door to stop screaming at her, so without even giving it a full thought, Alex put her hands on either side of the door and pushed. Dust fell from high above their heads and the concrete buckled. Alex's body flexed harder than the cold walls around them, and the guards behind her grimaced and groaned from pain as Alex's inhumanly hard muscles forced their muscles and even their bones to bend around their expansion. The ties and reinforcing steel inside the wall bent under Alex's quick onslaught. With a soft feminine grunt Alex forced her arms straight. Her already bountiful tits pressed forward, popping two buttons off of her uniform shirt as the pectoral muscles beneath bulged. The wall exploded into the hallway beyond taking the door, and its annoying locking mechanism with it. Alex rushed through the now ten foot gap before the dust had even settled, heading towards the sounds of the struggle while the other officers stood for a moment in stunned inaction.

Peter made his way towards the one exit he thought he could bust through. If he was being honest with himself he expected more resistance from the guards. He figured correctly that the heavy hitters weren't on the floor with the wimpy prisoners, but still. These guys weren't making a good showing of themselves. He rounded a corner and came to face with a couple of officers. One had that stupid baton in hand, but the other one held a metal sphere about the size of a baseball that Peter had never seen before. The officer pressed a button and a little light on the ball started flashing. The officer threw it at Peter, but once again the prisoner used that extra burst of speed and the sphere missed by a mile. Peter rushed the officer and lifted him by his arms. The other guard hit Peter in the ribs, but the escapee took the pain and threw the other officer onto the sphere anyway. The officer quickly tried to roll away from the robot restraint, but it was too late. Peter thought he was just trying to roll away from a painful landing, but then six insect like legs extended from the metal ball and crawled its way along the officer until he couldn't reach it.

The metal legs got longer and longer until they able to wrap around the officer's wrists. By now the legs looked like shiny lengths of piano wire as they pulled the struggling officer's arms to his side. The sphere was gone and the restrain turned itself into a cocoon, wrapping more and more wire like legs around his body from his neck to his waist. The officer fell to the ground, his breathing become labored as the restraint tightened the cocoon around him. The hundreds of metal legs all slid past each other crushing the officer until its internal sensors that the subject was unconscious. Peter laughed and held the other officer off the ground as both of them looked at the restrained officer get weaker and weaker. Just before he threw this helpless officer against the wall hard enough to break both of his legs, Peter unclipped the robot restraints from his belt, realizing they might come in handy.

Alex came around a corner, running past curious but still locked up inmates in time to see Peter beating a group of officers who'd gotten to him before her. One officer, a Level 2 who could manipulate energy flows seemed to be making some progress however. Peter dropped to a knee as the officer put his hands around the prisoner's neck and used his ability to cause extreme pain. Most people, gifted or not, would have been writhing on the ground, but Peter refused to be stopped. He managed to reach into his pocket and pull out a restraint.

"Look out!", Alex yelled but it was too late. Peter put the sphere on the officer's back and at once it began binding him. There was a way for officers to deactivate the restraints, but it was a clumsy process that required two people. Unfortunately, the other officers were down and while Alex was fast... she wasn't that fast. Peter ran on and by the time she got there, the sphere was finished with its binding and was well on the way to crushing this officer into unconsciousness. Alex rubbed the officer's forehead as the restraint crushed him. She wanted to at least try to free him, but the effort alone might have killed him, so she was forced to watch.

Other officers engaged Peter including a Level 2 guard with super strength. They tried to use their batons to slow him down enough for one of the officers to deploy a restraint, but Peter was just too much. He could snap bones with the squeeze of his hands and every punch ruptured things inside of bodies. He slammed the only officer giving him a fight into the wall so hard chips of concrete fall to the floor right before the bleeding knocked out officer did. Peter thought the way was clear until he was tackled from behind.

He hit the ground pretty hard and then to his surprise he felt two skinny arms trying to wrap around his body. Peter tried to spin around, but those skinny arms and now skinny legs were keeping him mostly face down. Alex grabbed his wrist, using techniques that every prison guard in America was taught, as she attempted to control the prisoner's arm. Peter tried once again to turn over but this guard was the strongest yet. He tried again, putting some sustained power into the attempt, but Alex put her hand against the floor to stop his rotation. Peter only managed to see a mane of long dark hair coming loose from its bun.

More officers were coming to help Alex subdue the prisoner and she allowed herself to feel like this was almost over, but Peter had his own ideas. He heard the other officers coming too. He yanked his arm forward as hard as he could, forcing Alex to lean with him just a little. He saw what could have been the shadow of a head, so he fired off an elbow to Alexandra's right eye that would have shattered limestone. She flew off his back and landed on her butt, covering her smarting eye with both hands.

Peter scrambled to his feet and looked over his shoulder at the waif of a girl covering half of her face wondering where the officer who'd been holding him down had gone. There was no way that little chick could be that strong. He didn't dwell on it though and started for the door again. He only got a few strides before he heard footsteps behind him. This time he spun, sending his fist flying right at Alexandra's face at near supersonic speeds. She ducked and he only managed to punch a few strands of her hair.

She sent a short hard punch to Peter's gut knocking him to the wall. She came in and threw a left hook to his ribs. It wasn't her hardest punch, but he felt it. Peter was so shocked that this girl could hit so hard that his mind wouldn't let him believe it. After one more punch though, he knew he had to beat her if he was going to get out of this place. He raised his hands high over his head and smashed them down on the tops of Alex's shoulders hard enough to knock her to her knees and to shake the entire Bunker. Alex put her hands up and mostly blocked Peter's next blow punch, but not the one after that. He caught her square in the jaw sending her sliding across the concrete floor, but she was already pushing herself up before she even stopped skidding. She rushed in and instead of punching him, drove her shoulder into his gut and wrapped her thin arms around his big body. She managed to trap one of his arms inside of her circle, so Peter pounded against Alex's left shoulder with his right hand. She took the blows and lifted the big man high off the ground, leaning back, before slamming Peter to the floor.

From his back Peter hit Alex with a tremendous punch that forced her head to spin the other way, but she didn't let go. She tightened her hold. Air and a pained grunt escaped Peter's lips when he finally felt Alexandra squeeze. Her relatively frail looking body finally flexed and her muscles felt like a thousand knots forcing themselves deeper into Peter's flesh. He flexed his own body, but his super human muscles were like dough compared to hers. This guard crushed Peter with strength that he'd never encountered before, and she was smiling at him, like she wasn't even straining hard. She was overpowering him, but the look on her face said that she had more in reserve, should she need it. The other officers were moments from arriving when Peter grabbed a handful of hair and yanked Alex's head up only to punch her as hard as he could, directly on her right eye.

Peter's punch felt like a cannon ball landed directly against Alex's already swelling right eye. She'd felt pain similar to this, but it had been a few years. She must have gone a little soft since then because her concentration lapsed just enough for Peter to free his trapped arm. He pounded Alex with three quick blows. Two of them hit her right eye as well. He scrambled from the ground, but instead of running straight to the exit door, he ran the opposite direction and retrieved a robot restrain from an injured officer.

The area around Alex's eye hurt so bad that it felt like a small person was trying to swell out of it, and she was so mad that she was on the verge of forgetting all of the training she'd been paying so much attention to learning. This guy Peter wasn't even so tough. Because of regulations she was handling him with kid gloves. Those were about to come off. Alex jumped to her feet and saw Peter behind her rather than closer to the exit. Six more officers were gathering but Alex would rather have Peter attack her than the six of them, so she charged him. When she was half a stride away from, she tried to stop, but it was too late. Peter activated the robot restraint and slammed it directly onto Alexandra's shoulder. The legs sprouted and the restraint had crawled to the small of Alex's back before she even had a chance to reach for it. She couldn't get a finger on it no matter how much she twisted and turned.

Peter howled with laughter as Alex ripped her own uniform top trying to get that restraint off, but she had no luck. All she managed to do was show Peter a little of her sexy little body. The robot restraint's legs were wrapped around her wrists, only it couldn't pull her slim arms to her sides as easily as the others. The metal tightened and tightened again around Alex's wrists, eventually contracting itself at the molecular level, using properties of the material itself, but Alex's suddenly shredded muscles didn't care about any of that. Her shoulders were shear madness as she fought to keep her arms away from her sides. Her deltoids looked like they'd been cut to ribbons by the claws of an angry bird of prey as she continued to fight, and they were flexing harder by the millisecond. Alex bent her arms against the pull of the metal legs, curling them with tremendous force. Straining biceps gushed up from some invisible well of granite hard muscle as Alex's arms continued to bend against the robot restraint's wishes. Her arms were beyond shredded now with the individual muscle fibers created an unending, undulating march of striations from one side of her body to the other. For the first few moments it seemed that the restraint and woman were locked in a stalemate of wills. Alex sucked in so much air to power her muscles that she created a breeze in the hallway. "Fuck me", Peter whispered as this guard's body pulsed into a solid throbbing flex.  Try as she might though, restraint finally gained the upper hand.  The Mark 3s really were as strong and capable as the designers said they were.  Once Alex's wrists were close enough, dozens of metal bands quickly wrapped all the way around her waist to increase the pressure, cinching her arms to her body. Once the hundreds of other metal strands began forming the cocoon around Alex's body, Peter turned his attention to the six officers.

They attacked Peter with everything they had, but he outclassed them and was too quick to get caught by the robot restraints himself. Peters blows broke bones, ruptured tendons and caused serious internal bleeding to the valiant but overmatched guards. Peter broke one officer's arm so badly that the bone shot through both her skin and her uniform sleeve. She was in shock as her blood began dripping to the floor. The others who ran up got the same or worse. Alex wanted her fellow officers to back off, but her voice was thin and small as the restraint constricted her torso. It might have been trying to stop her breathing, but it didn't cover her ears or her eyes. She heard all the screams and her eyes saw the horrible injuries. It was more than she could take.

Spit flew from Alexandra's quivering lips and her face turned as red as a fire engine. Her straining muscles trembled, sending vibrations through the floor. Peter turned around and his brain split in two at the sight. Part of him wanted to laugh. She was wasting her time and energy trying to break out, but he'd never seen anything like the look on her face, an unbreakable determination that put a twinge of fear into Peter's heart. A throbbing vein branched across her forehead like an angry brand. Countless arteries and capillaries looked ready to burst as they pulsed more than 200 times a minute and beyond as Alex's heart raised well past what a person would have been able to sustain, but Alex didn't slow down, she ramped her efforts, pushing herself like she was trying to lift some immovable object. After a few seconds when nothing happened, Peter allowed himself to relax and begin to plan his final push for freedom, but then he saw Alex do the impossible. She pushed her body even harder. Her head looked ready to explode right off of her shoulders, but that was just the side show. The real effort was  happening a little lower down, where her muscles were flexing so hard that the shapes of her bulging body began to show through the metal cocoon. He saw flexing biceps and pecs, and even saw the rising and falling of her abdominal wall.

In moments, Alex's biceps began to force the metal to expand around them as she once again began curling her arms. So far nothing had happened, but Alex let out a shriek and the first TINK of a snapping metal band sounded like an explosion in Peter's ears. Despite the incredible pressure the restraint was putting on her torso, Alex managed to fill her lungs again. She flexed herself into uncharted territory, pushing her muscles to flex harder and harder, demanding more strength from her hyper flexing sinews. Those muscle fibers were flexing so inhumanly fast that the metal around her began to heat up enough to faintly glow. Several alloy legs around her midsection broke. Feeling some air brush against her bare skin made Alex feel unstoppable. She roared towards the ceiling, her eyes focusing on a spot but not really seeing it as her slim little body doubled its previous size. The definition of her muscles was beyond shredded. She was all muscle.  Peter clearly saw her absolutely crazy abdominal wall now. She had six bricks of deeply etched muscle there, and each island of muscle was furthered divided by dozens of striations a piece and every surface was covered in veins like jungle thickets. Finally Alex threw her arms open and pieces of broken metal flew all over the hallway. She gripped the remaining bands around her body and ripped them off, each tug producing a prodigious flex that made Peter stare in awe. He looked at the now free Alex for one blink of an eye before running towards the door.

Alex distantly felt regret at having to bypass her injured coworkers, but she jumped over them and chased Peter, catching him about fifteen feet from the door. She grabbed Peter by the back of his neck and left arm then slung him sideways into the wall. All caps and protocols were forgotten as the impact of Peter's head and body cracked the concrete wall for yards in every direction. She grabbed him by the back of the head, pulled back and with a snarl, slammed his face into the wall again, forcing it deep into underlying structure. Peter put his hands flat on the crumbling wall and bench pressed himself loose. Blood ran down his sliced up face, but he wasn't nearly finished. He swung around with his arm extended, trying to hit Alex, but she ducked beneath his blow and tightened her fists before launching several quick punches to Peter's big body. Her teachers had stressed that as officers they were supposed to subdue any prisoner not fight them, but none of their training was on Alex's mind. She went back to her old ways.

Blood and a piece of tongue shot out of Peter's mouth when she hit him with an uppercut that threatened to decapitate him. He flew all the way to the ceiling and back to the already crumbling wall. Alex caught him as he came down, wrapping her arms around his middle. She could have simply crushed him with her pumped muscles, instead she drove Peter to the floor and grabbed his right wrist, then for the first time since engaging with Peter, she hesitated. The moment and the place rushed into her head. This wasn't the Pit and she wasn't a fighter anymore, but when she saw her seriously injured coworkers writhing in pain, her mighty muscles flexed with brilliant definition. Peter let out an ear splitting shriek that was nearly as loud as the sound of his super humanly hard humerus breaking in two places, but Alex's wasn't finished just yet. She stepped over his now broken arm, changed her grip and scrunched up her pretty face before twisting hard her body and completely separating Peter's shoulder, tearing almost every ligament that kept his arm attached to his torso. The rush of pain nearly made him pass out.

"Not so tough now!", Alex screamed and leaned down to blast a punch to Peter's face. Every fiber in Alex's body told her to keep going, but there were cameras watching her after all. She spun Peter onto his stomach and was about to use her hands to hold him in place when one of her fellow rookie officers ran up with a robot restraint. She place Mark 3 on Peter's back and stood up as the restraint began doing its job. She now knew exactly what Peter was feeling.

He was fully wrapped up by the time the door opened and the SORT team rushed in. Every officer in the SORT team was inside of a heavily armed and armored exosuit that enhanced their senses and made them resistant most things gifted people could throw at them.

"Nice of you guys to show up", Alexandra quipped then lifted Peter up by grabbing the end of the metal cocoon. "I hope you brought the paramedics."

"The secure hospital facilities are prepared to receive the prisoner", the officer behind the layers of armor told Alex through a speaker on the side of his suit.

"Fuck this guy!", she shouted and threw Peter to the ground just to hear him moan. "There're injured officers back there!"

The officer in the suit was taken back. "Yes, of course. Sorry. They're already being tended to."

"Good", Alexandra said and extended all 300 pounds of Peter towards the armored officer as if the prisoner was a sack of spoiled meat.

This time Jan was the one on the balcony watching Alexandra come home. She'd gone out to the car to get a book, but when she saw Alex's car drive through the gate, she'd decided to hang out for a moment. The only thing missing was Alexandra's foul smelling cigarette. Jan's delicious smoothie would have do in its place. She took a long slurp as Alex parked her car and quickly headed towards the stairs. She was trying to hide it, but the awful bruise around her right eye didn't escape Jan's eagle eyed vision. "I guess she pissed off the wrong person", Jan said to herself before turning to go back inside.

Alex had pretended not to notice Jan staring at her. It had been maddening, but she didn't even want another fight today… not even against a woman she could beat with one finger. She quickly went into her apartment and no sooner had she closed the door behind her than Max came out of the kitchen holding two glasses of wine.

"Oh man what happened?", he asked and examined his girlfriend's bruised face.

"You know how I usually say work is really boring", Alex began then accepted the glass of wine from Max's hand. "Well today… it was a kinda exciting."

"Tell me all about it", Max said then snapped his fingers. "Wait. Let me get you something for that black eye." He was gone for only a moment before coming back with a Zip-lock bag full of ice, water, and salt. He took Alex by her still pumped up shoulders and eased her down to the sofa.

"It's been a long time since you saw me like this?", Alex remarked, as she laid her head back and put the ice over her eye.

"Not long enough."

"Well, it'll be gone by this time tomorrow anyway", Alex said and took another sip of wine.

"But Babe, tell me how you got it."

Alexandra smiled despite her sore face. "So my shift had just ended, and this smush breaks out of his cell…"

"A black eye huh?", Alisha said from the kitchen. "I guess somebody dislikes her as much as you do."

"I don't dislike her at all", Jan said back then slurped some more smoothie. "It's actually nice having an anti-admirer again. I haven't had one in a while… not since Howard last year."

"A what?", LaShaunta asked with a raised eyebrow.

"You know how sometimes people have secret admirers? A person who likes you but doesn't even know you. Well Alexandra hates me and does even know me. She's my anti-admirer."

Alisha laughed and LaShaunta shook her head. "You are so weird", she said and went back to reading. Jan chuckled and then headed towards her room. She'd just turned on her laptop when Sara came home.

"Did you talk to your dad?", she asked Jan after throwing down her book bag and her workout bag to the floor.

"Oh yeah I did", Jan called from her room then hopped out of bed and headed back to the living room. "He wants us to have a dinner together at my house in Maryland on Friday. So long as LaShaunta doesn't mind taking us that is."

It turned out that LaShaunta didn't mind at all, and the promise of free food only made the prospects of going to the Caufield home more enticing. Jan went with LaShaunta to Lisa's office in Chicago so she could introduce the two of them. Cassidy showed up a bit later, and while she was more than willing to travel with LaShaunta for the first time, Lisa was a bit more skeptical. "I'm really good at this", LaShaunta assured her as Lisa reluctantly extended her hand. As soon as her fingers closed around Jan's hand they were in Atlanta. "Owww!", Jan exclaimed and snatched her hand from Lisa's and shook it vigorously.

LaShaunta laughed. "And that's why I wanted her to hold your hand."

"So she could try and break it?!?", Jan exclaimed and Lisa looked embarrassed.

"Sorry. It wasn't so bad. You'd think I'd be used to this sort of thing by now."

Once the six of them were ready, LaShaunta transported the group from Atlanta to a living room in Clarksville, Maryland. "Oh Damn!", Heather exclaimed and nearly dropped a glass of water when the group suddenly appeared. "A phone call, maybe? A little heads up", she said and took a step back.

"Now that's cool", Taylor said as she stood up from the sofa.

"Oops. I'd never actually been in this house before, so I didn't know where a corner was", LaShaunta explained with a grin then looked around. "You must be Heather", she said to the young woman with the dark red hair and violet eyes.

"And you must be LaShaunta", the two shook hands. "Oh that's got to be Cassie", Heather continued as the introductions and reunions began.

Lisa had been standing behind Jan and only stepped out after getting her bearings. It helped that she'd actually been in this house before. She'd stopped looking around at the paintings and pictures on the wall by the time her light brown eyes fell on Taylor Matthews. She looked so much like Jan that they could be twins, but Lisa's trained eyes quickly picked out the subtle differences. Taylor had just introduced herself to a smiling Cassie when her brilliant blue eyes swept left and stopped on Lisa. Her entire train of thought slipped off the tracks. Everyone was still talking around her, but she barely heard it. She knew who she was looking at without being told. Although Lisa didn't realize what it was, she saw an expression pass across Taylor's face that it rarely if ever wore. Taylor had never in her life felt even the slightest twinge of competitive jealousy towards a woman who wasn't related to her. As she looked at Lisa she began to wonder if she was feeling what other pretty women normally felt when she entered a room. Jan saw the look on her cousin's face and her lips turned up into a small grin. She had an idea what Taylor was feeling.

Lisa and Taylor approached each other slowly and extended their hands at the same time. "You must be Lisa", she said but didn't quite smile. She stared down into Lisa's eyes as they shook. This was like the meeting of two goddesses, each representing different paradigms of perfection.

"So I finally get to meet the mysterious Taylor Matthews. It's a real pleasure."

"For you more than her", Heather said with a laugh.

"You be quiet", the older sister chided the younger one but Heather always took some pleasure in seeing Taylor off balance, even just a little. Taylor shook her head and turned back to Lisa. "Jan talks about you all the time. It's great that we can finally meet." Lisa finally turned to Heather after a moment and unconsciously studied her face too. She came to the conclusion that Jan and her family just had terrific genes.

Just then Jack Caufield came out of the kitchen wiping his hands on a towel. For some reason to LaShaunta he looked even bigger than he did before. People and things usually got smaller the older one got, but what LaShaunta was really seeing was Jack in shape.

"Ah the guests have arrived", he called and walked right over to LaShaunta and Cassie, throwing big heavy arms around each young woman's strong shoulders. "Really good to see you guys again. Have you met my nieces yet?"

"Yes sir", LaShaunta said and Cassie nodded.

"Don't you sir me! Now you ladies just make yourselves at home. Dinner's just about ready. Jan, get them something to drink if they want it."

Nobody wanted anything but Jan followed the scent of cooking food towards the kitchen just the same. "Mom!", she called as she walked through the door expecting to see her mother wearing her red and white striped apron. Instead she saw Thomas standing in front of the stove about to slip his hand into an oven mitt. The look on her face made him laugh. "Mom's at that conference in Seattle remember? But don't worry you're gonna love the food me and Dad cooked."

"You and Dad?"

Thomas' grin was sly as he pulled open the oven door and leaned back to let the heat escape. After looking inside he turned towards the door and yelled, "Dinner's ready!"

Special Agent in Charge Nick MacCallum looked up from some paperwork when he heard a knock at his door. Before he could even utter a sound the door opened and his right hand man Special Agent Wills came inside. "The prelim report's finished on the escape attempt at the Special Holding Wing."

MacCallum took off his reading glasses and leaned back in his chair. "So what did they have to say?"

"Basically that the protocols worked, but that the prisoner'd been miscategorized as a Class S Level 1 when he was in reality a Level 3. He was strong enough to rip through the doors for God's sake. The report also states that the normal Special Holding Wing officers were able to subdue the Level 3 prisoner without the aid of the SORT team."

"Able to subdue the prisoner my ass!", MacCallum grumbled. "Does the report even say how many officers were hurt trying to stop that bastard?"

Agent Wills turned some pages. "Here near the back it states that fourteen officers were injured seriously and another five had more minor injuries."

"No deaths?"

"Thank goodness no", Agent Wills replied and MacCallum seemed to relax.

"What about our girl?", he asked.

Agent Wills grinned. "She's the one who stopped the prisoner, single handily. She beat him up and took him down... AFTER... breaking out of one of the new Mark 3 restraints." MacCallum was impressed. "There's some video of the whole thing if you want to see it", Wills said.

"Put it on", MacCallum urged and the two FBI agents watched the encounter.

"For what it's worth Nick, I think you made the right call getting her in the program."

"Thanks. I mean everybody who joins Special Programs isn't going to be as squeaky clean as Jan or Sara", MacCallum said aloud something he'd thought to himself while reviewing Alexandra's application the previous year.

"Yeah. I mean Alisha had a smudge, a small one, but nothing like Alexandra Young's got."

"She was never charged or arrested for the fights", MacCallum reminded Wills.

"But we know about them.", Wills said and turned off the video.

"Yeah, Harry, but we know a lot of stuff that is and isn't important." MacCallum rubbed his chin before saying, "She handled herself pretty good. I think we're ready to move her on. Let her graduate from prison guard training then schedule her for the advanced training courses. Special Programs needs her now."

Wills nodded and made a note to do just what his boss had said. "I don't know if Alexandra and her boyfriend will be as effective as the team we've lost, but I've got a good feeling."

MacCallum laughed. "Those girls should thank Max and Alex. They're the reason we can keep them on the inactive list. Oh, and remember to get in touch with Jan, Sara, and Alisha to tell them that we're keeping them on the inactive list."

"Will do", Agent Wills said and made another note. "I'm sure they don't like being in limbo."

"Martha just wanted to make sure they could go on a mission to save Ted Matthews. I mean there's no telling what Taylor and Heather would have done if Joelstine had really tried to arrest them."

Wills laughed. "Speaking of no telling… now that you've seen the video. Who do you think wins in a fight Jan or Alex?"

"Ohhh", Agent MacCallum said then whistled. "If I had to bet my mortgage money, I'd put it on Jan", he answered after some thought.

"Me too", Agent Wills agreed. "But I wouldn't want to be within a mile of the place if those two went at it."

Jack was fairly pleased with how this little dinner had turned out. It had been a while since he'd set a table like this, but it felt good to put long dormant skills to work. He'd even broken out the cloth napkins. His wife would be proud. Jan noticed her father's efforts even if the rest of the group didn't. The conversation around the table was nice and comfortable. Jack kept his eyes on Cassidy as she sat at the head of the table. To people who didn't know her, she would have seemed completely normal. Laughing occasionally and keeping a pleasant smile on her face so far. There was a question Jack wanted the answer to, but he didn't have to ask that one himself. Thomas asked it for him.

"So Cassie, what do you think about the food?"

All eyes turned to the daughter of a world renowned chef as she finished swallowing. "It's good", she said.

"Really come on, be honest", Thomas challenged. "I can take it!"

She laughed. "It's good really! Chicken marsala was a nice choice, from scratch too and you guys pulled it off." Thomas beamed like he'd gotten an A on a test.

The conversation died for a moment as people dug into the meal. Jack took a sip of wine then turned to Cassie. "I talked to your mother yesterday."

"Oh really", Cassie said with growing apprehension.

"Yeah. She told me you two got caught in that shootout at the warehouse." Cassie turned to Jack with a look of shock. "Lisa, you were there too I understand." Cassie's eyes went to Lisa who was still eating and then her eyes went from person to person finally stopping on Jan. She was wordlessly pleading with Jan to get her father to stop, but she didn't do anything. "Hayfa told me that you killed three men", Jack continued while Cassie looked like she wanted to vomit or run away. "Your mother also said that you've been having a rough time since that day."

"Mr. Caufield we shouldn't talk about this… not here", Cassie said although her tongue had gone very dry.

"If not here then where?", Jack asked with a raised eyebrow. "Everybody around this table understands what you're going through."

Cassie frowned and slowly looked around. "You've all…"

"Taken a life", Jan finished for her. "Yeah, we have", she said slowly.

"Even you Thomas?" The curly headed boy nodded but didn't say anything.

"The first time I killed someone", Jack began then set his glass down. "I went back to the little farm house where I was staying and stared in the mirror for hours trying to recreate the look that guy'd had on his face after I shot him." Cassie's mind instantly flashed the image of the three dying men across her eyes, just as they seemed to be blowing away in the wind. "I realized after a while that a person only wears that expression once."

"If they're lucky", Heather added somberly.

"It's never easy", Alisha said. "Even when you think the bastard has it coming, it's not easy."

"It shouldn't be easy", Lisa said with a sigh thinking back.

Cassie was near tears. "I don't think this is the time to try and cheer me up."

"We're not trying to cheer you up", Jack said with some force. "We're trying to get you to understand that you don't have to suffer alone. There's nothing cheery about what you did, nothing at all. It's not a small thing either, but you have to get past it. Sometimes when everything else is taken away all we have left is our lives, and you still have yours Cassidy."

Cassie felt overwhelmed and ambushed. "I didn't ask for this! I haven't talked to anybody about this because I didn't want to. Look, I appreciate your help…"

"Then take it", LaShaunta uttered softly. "I suffered alone once because I thought I had to. Everybody around this table is saying that you don't."

Cassie looked like she was going to cry. "I turned three men into piles of dust!", she exclaimed.

"Would it have been better if you'd shot them?", Jack asked. "Hayfa told me that you tried to use your ability to control emotions, but they'd protected themselves against a mind control device that the warehouse owner had and it blocked that power of yours as well. You had to do what was necessary. It doesn't matter how."

"I wish I hadn't killed them at all!", she declared. "They shot me and I was so mad that I just wanted to make them feel the same kind of pain that I was feeling. I wanted them to feel death! The next thing I know, the part of my gift that I held most dear was mutating into something vile and dark. Lisa saw the energy coming from my hand, but it was really coming from my heart because the only thing I was thinking about was revenge. Those men felt every moment of what I did to them, and they weren't even heading towards the gunfight. They were heading the other way!"

"They were heading to the office", Lisa informed her. "Right where I ended up. I had to deal with two guys when I got up there, but if you hadn't taken care of those three guys there I might have been dealing with five. She reached out and took Cassie's hand. "We're all in this together."

Tears dropped down Cassie's face. "Lisa you were standing right there. You saw how horrible it was. It was the worst thing I've ever heard that one person did to another, and I'm the one who did it."

"It's okay to fear yourself a little", Jan said. "I used to be terrified of what I could do, but now I'm just careful. There's a darker side to what we can do. You'll realize how to balance it out after a while."

"Balance it Jan!?!", Cassie shouted across the table. "I can't trust my own judgment from moment to moment and I'm supposed to know when to use my powers to kill! We don't have the right to be judge and jury!"

"Learn from the people sitting around you", LaShaunta spoke up again when the conversation began to break down. "Just the other day I watched Sara and Jan save a woman from getting murdered by two guys. One was looking out while the other one took her money and was about to put a bullet in the back of her head. Now Sara could have killed the men, turned the lookout into bone fragments and ground beef and she could have thrown the other one through the side of a building, but she didn't. She told me that she didn't even try and touch the shooter because it was so far away that she wouldn't have fine control. Anything she did might not be hard enough to stop him or it might be so hard that she killed him. She left the shooter to Jan, who could have killed that guy with a half hearted slap if she'd wanted to, turned his head round in a circle, but she didn't. She spent more effort sparing that jerk's life than it would have taken to end it. Cassie, they felt a responsibility to save that innocent woman's life, but they felt the same responsibility to spare those criminals too. That's the balance."

"So it's worse than judge and jury… it's more like gods picking and choosing?!?" The conversation fell into chaos. People tried to make reasoned statements, but Cassidy shot them down.

"It's evil math", Taylor spoke up for the first time and everybody stopped to listen.

"People like us don't fit into the normal equation of any situation. We're unexpected variables. There're no laws saying they had to, but both Sara and Jan felt an obligation to save that woman from certain death. How they did it though is important. Whether they knew it or not, they did the evil math in their heads. One person to save and two people to stop, for people like them that's pure child's play. I'm sure they hope lengthy hospital stays followed by stints in prison will be enough, but the math's not always going to work out so neatly. There are circumstances where killing has to be in play. For instance, none of us can be in two places at once", Taylor paused and looked over to LaShaunta with a small grin.  "Well, she almost can, but even she can't protect everything at the same time."

"So you've reduced people to arithmetic?!? Human lives are just equations!?!", Cassie shouted.

Taylor's voice didn't rise and her tone didn't change as she continued, "I know we've only just met, and Lord knows I hate making assumptions about people, but I think it's safe to say you'd never been in a life or death situation before that day. I'm saying that because your math was extremely easy. You were in the middle of a shootout where people were trying to kill you and your mother", Taylor stopped and glared across the table to Cassie who was the one who broke eye contact. "If those terrorists had been anywhere near my mother... near anybody in my family I'd have killed them all and worried about the consequences later, but let's talk about what you did.

"You walked into that situation completely unprepared mentally or emotionally. The attackers were plenty prepared, in every way. They even knew to protect themselves from a mind control device. Their intel was good and their resources even better. And you didn't even stop to think that by walking into a building full of killers that you might have to become one yourself... even if it was just to preserve your own life. I'm sure you thought your ability to control emotions would protect you, but that day it didn't. So there you were in mortal danger without your most trusted ability or a plan B. By going in that building you risked your life, your mother's life, and Lisa's life. You should have died in that warehouse. Your story should have ended right then and there. You committed error after error." Taylor paused and casually brushed some bread crumbs from her long fingers while Cassie looked shell shocked. Eventually, as the words sank in, tears began to well in her hazel eyes, but Taylor wasn't nearly finished.

"Those guys wouldn't have had a second thought about you after you'd died. They wouldn't have given a damn about your hopes, your dreams, or aspirations. They didn't give a damn about your family or your friends, or what they thought... how they felt. They'd have left you cold and dead and stepped over your lifeless body, but you do partially redeem yourself for all the earlier screw ups. After you were shot,  when you were hurt, bleeding, and dying, you didn't call to your mother, although you could have. You didn't look for Lisa to save you. You didn't try to hide. You didn't beg for them to spare your life. No. Your first reaction in that moment, in that split second, was to take those three bastards with you. You made the right choice when it counted. I know using your abilities that way was a shock, but you had every right to do so", Taylor said, her expression softening just slightly.

"It all goes back to the math. In the equation, our lives are worth the same as anybody else's. Not more, never more", she emphasized, "but never less. You had as much a right to hold your life dear as they did. We all make choices in life and those men chose to shoot someone who could turn them into dust. That's their fault, not yours. The way I see it, when someone tries to kill me, their life becomes mine. Just because I'm harder to kill than most people doesn't give somebody the right to try . Now usually I give their lives back with a beating or some other show of my displeasure. Other times I don't give it back at all. I take it.

"But you know, more importantly than all the other stuff I've talked about, and the reason I'm actually feeling honored to share this meal with you is the fact that those men tried their best to kill you... they tried to take your very life and yet you're probably the only person on this planet mourning theirs." Cassie began to sob again and this time she was helpless to stop.

"You asked Jan about balance before... look around you, at the people who care enough about you to rip off old mental scabs to help you deal with this. Learn from us just like LaShaunta said. Justification and grief live inside those of us who've had to make the same choices you have... sometimes they live side by side. Cassie, that IS balance. You've had it all along."

Cassie lowered her head into her hands and cried uncontrollably. People wanted to comfort her, but no one knew what to do. The awkwardness spread around the table to everybody except Taylor who went back to eating her chicken before it got colder. Cassie looked up through the blurry mass of tears and rushed from the table.

"I'll check on her", Sara said and left the table too.

Taylor was almost to the last of her chicken when Heather elbowed her in the ribs. "That was mostly brutal", she told her sister.

"And effective I think", Taylor said back. "I said the same things you guys did. She just had to hear it straight. The truth is, I think she's already getting over killing those men, and that was making her even more upset with herself. Kind of like a vicious cycle. Hopefully I broke it", she shrugged her shapely shoulders. "We'll see soon enough."

Several minutes later Cassidy came back into the dining room, walking slowly, clutching a damp napkin, and everybody turned to face her. "I don't know what to say guys. I'm completely overwhelmed with how sincere you all are. You really want what's best for me, and you've given me a lot to think about. I can't thank you all enough, really. I guess this is my first intervention, and hopefully my last", she chuckled weakly and looked at Jack who had orchestrated his whole thing, appreciating his efforts especially. "I do want to know though… Taylor are you majoring in psychiatry in college?"

"No!", she replied emphatically.

"Great, because you'd have patients jumping out of your office windows in no time." There were some laughs and Taylor smiled. Cassie walked over to stand next to her, realizing for the first time that she was even taller than Jan. "I know you have a reputation to uphold, but I'm pretty sure your family already knows that you are way nicer than you want to let on."

"No she's not!", Heather shouted from the kitchen.

"If you keep going I'll describe the outfit you were going to wear here! It has green parachute pants if I remember correctly!"

"Ok that's enough!", Heather quickly surrendered. Taylor turned back to Cassidy with a satisfied smile on her face.

"Thank you, Taylor. I really mean it."

"You're welcome. I've been where you've been", she said without her usual haughtiness then wrapped her long arms around Cassidy and gave her one of the hugs that her family was known for.

"Do you feel any better?", Jan asked.

Cassie looked at her and contemplated for a moment before saying, "My head's clear for the first time in a while. I still have a lot of stuff to work out, but yeah, a little." She sighed then a smile grew. "So Taylor, Jan told me that you and Heather have never been linked."

"I have no idea what linked is", she said then picked up her plate to take it to the kitchen but didn't get far. Thomas used his hand to encourage her to put it back down.

"There's space in the living room", he said urgently and pulled Taylor by her arm.

"You don't have to do this if you don't want", Jan said after Thomas had left the room.

Cassie smiled. "I know that, but as much as you guys get out of a linking, I get more. And...", she paused and her eyes begin to well up again. "All the stuff you guys said to me sunk in because I already know how you feel about me." Jan's eyes began to well up. "Don't you start crying too!"

"I can't help it", Jan said with a grin and wiped the tears before they fell.

As the group assembled themselves into a lopsided circle on the living room floor, Cassie stood there, opening herself and getting ready for the linking. The room practically overflowed with power. A few months earlier Cassidy would have been terrified at the thought of attempting to link so many ultra powerful people without help, but it was becoming easier each time. She was ready for the new challenge of combining two new extremely powerful people. She wasn't terrified; she was excited.

Cassie came at it with strategy just like the first time she'd linked her friends. She'd already pulled both Sara and Lisa's colossal gifts out somewhat, joining them to the circle before attempting to pierce Taylor's core with the energy of the linking. The statuesque blonde had spent most of her life building up ironclad controls over the volcano of power inside of her, but to Cassie's surprise instead of fighting her tooth and nail, Taylor only hesitated for a moment before pulling back and giving Cassie control. Taylor's gift was an unrelenting blast of white hot power, like a never ending explosion that filled the circle with more and more power every second. Jan smiled and so did Thomas as they felt Taylor's apprehension followed wonder and awe at getting to see her gift laid before her like that. Taylor felt comparatively small next to the power that lived inside of her. Cassie expertly shifted and distributed Taylor's gift around the circle. Seeing her gift from a new perspective was the most amazing feeling of Taylor's life, and then Cassie sent the energy of the linking into Jan. It was like a second volcanic eruption when they were still coming to grips with the first one.

Jan and Taylor's gifts competed at first, pushing against each other within the confines of Cassie's control until after a moment the two began to combine, heating up the circle until it crackled with breathtaking power. Cassie felt like a mad scientist as she allowed the combined might of Jan and Taylor to flow through each and every person in the circle. When she wasn't ready for it, Cassie sent all of that power into Heather. Her beautiful violet eyes opened wide and her face became one of struggled shock. It felt like every cell in her body was going to incinerate as all of that power burst inside of her, but then Cassie began drawing her gift out. Almost at once, Heather's power begin mixing with Jan and Taylor's, taming them both. The three powers wanted to braid themselves into a nearly unbreakable rope once Heather's gift joined the circle, but Cassie wouldn't allow it. Heather deserved a chance to see her power just like the others had. It didn't erupt like the her sister or her cousins, but Heather was no less powerful. After nearly a full minute, Cassie let the powers began to mix and the sensation to the circle was even more overwhelming than feeling each gift individually. While the powers were still binding themselves within the circle, Cassie released Thomas' gift, and she marveled at how much stronger he was than just a few months earlier. He wasn't there yet, but one day he's power would rival  that of the other people sitting near him.  Cassie released Alisha and LaShaunta's gifts at the same time just to see what would happen. It was perfect because Alisha's gift morphed itself inside the circle, becoming just what Cassie needed in order to fully bind LaShaunta's gift to the ill fitting ones. Now, all the powers and the people in the circle were truly linked. One individual flowed into the next just like all the gifts. The room was full to bursting with power, but the people in it were serene. Cassie held onto the link as long as her stamina allowed, but channeling and corralling that much power wasn't easily done. Of course it didn't matter how long she held it, the linking always felt like it ended too soon. Sweat rolled down Cassie's neck to her sculpted traps as she opened her eyes to witness the aftermath of the linking. Her eyes instantly turned to the newbies.

Taylor and Heather felt like they'd just returned from a journey to another world. They sat in stunned silence as one by one their sense reluctantly reengaged with the world around them. The emotions from the linking still flowed within them and it wasn't long before tears formed in Heather's beautiful violet eyes and she took her sister's hand. Taylor threw her arms around Heather's neck and both of them began to laugh and cry as the emotions spilled out. Taylor and Heather knew how much they loved each other, but for the first time in their lives they'd felt their shared love and their unbreakable bond. They wouldn't have thought it was possible, but this linking had actually managed to draw them closer. It wasn't long before Taylor motioned for Jan to join them, and their uncle as well. Heather took Thomas' hand and brought him into the embrace too. He hadn't needed it, but every time he linked, Thomas felt like less and less like an outsider within the family. That awkward transition period after his adoption had gone away long ago with Jack, Carol, and Jan, but as he hugged with his adopted cousins he felt that it was going away completely, although he'd always feel sadness that he'd never get a chance to link with his slain parents.

Lisa felt that sad regret too. She'd lost her father and he'd never get to experience the beauty of the linking, but her emotions were more than buoyed by the love in the room and the fact that she'd shared this experience with her mother in the past. LaShaunta and Sara made an effort to wipe the tears from their eyes, while Alisha didn't. She knew they'd just keep coming anyway. Cassie had said that the more times they linked, the more they got out of it, and she wasn't kidding. It was amazing.

For Cassidy herself this linking had bled off so much tension and cleared her mind tremendously. She still felt the ache of killing those men, but despite her refusal to believe it, she now felt those thoughts being countered by what her friends had said. She had a better understanding of all of them now and going forward. After a couple of minutes Cassie walked over to stand next to a silent, thoughtful Lisa. "I hope you know I didn't mean to say that I wanted to send those three guys your way… at the warehouse", Cassie said.

"I know that", Lisa replied quickly.

"You saved my life on that roof and you were right there after I got shot… then I made it sound like…"

"Stop", Lisa said with a raised hand. "It's over now. It's like I said, we're all in this together."

"I think I've always known that. I just didn't know exactly what 'this' was until recently." Cassie's face turned serious and she motioned for Lisa to follow her to a room where even Jan and her cousins couldn't hear.

"Mr. Caufield talked to my mother, but she didn't tell him everything, well she glossed over a few things. I'm pretty sure she didn't tell him what those guys were really after, and she didn't tell him or you, that the technique she used to save my life could have killed everybody within blocks of that warehouse."

"What?", Lisa asked with a frown.

"I don't know all the details, but if she'd failed to pull it off, everybody's life would have drained away and they would have died almost instantly. It's like if you create a vacuum inside a jar then the jar gets a leak, everything around it rushes in to fill it. Maybe you would have lived because you're extremely powerful and have a lot more energy to give than others, but even you would have barely been hanging on in the best case scenario."

"I had no idea it was that risky! I'm kinda glad Hayfa didn't tell me, but if it was the only way to save you then it was worth it."

"To my mother certainly and to you, because you're awesome, but what about to Tony and his men? Do you think they wanted to die because of me? What about Ian or that guy Freddie?" Cassie let out a long sigh. "And she barely pulled it off, my mother I mean. She was messing with forces that nobody's even attempted to tinker with in thousands of years. There're reasons for that. The bianzhong wasn't designed for the way she used it. She got lucky that it had just enough power, but it was seconds from running dry. If it had taken her a bit longer an entire area of the city would have simply died." She snapped her fingers. "A few more seconds, Lisa."

"So you've been carrying that too?", Lisa asked and Cassie nodded. "It could have happened, but it didn't. Playing what if's can drive a person crazy."

"Yeah, I know, but it's like Taylor said, our lives are worth the same as anybody else's, not more. My mother was willing to risk a lot of lives to save mine, but here I am talking about it. How can I get mad at her, right?"

"She did what every mother wishes they could if their child was dying. The only difference is that Hayfa actually did it. Are you going to tell the rest of the gang about this?"

"No", Cassie said with another sigh. "The fact that my mother brought me back shows her power and skill. It seemed to impress everybody back there and that's not easy to do with that crowd. If my mother's supposed to lead them there's no need ruining the story by telling them that she was just another desperate mother."

There was a knock behind them and they turned to see LaShaunta leaning against the entrance. "I didn't want to interrupt", she said and stepped into the doorway. "I heard all that stuff that Mr. Caufield said about a war… does this have anything to do with something called the Great Recipe?"

Cassie frowned and stepped closer to LaShaunta. "What do you know about that?"

"Just what a friend told me. Said that it's supposed to be the most powerful substance on earth", LaShaunta paraphrased what Morgen Stern had explained.

"Just looking at it is painful", Lisa recalled.

"Only for the gifted", Cassie reminded her. "Have you told the others what you know?"

LaShaunta shook her head. "It's all so weird. I wouldn't even know how to begin. I hate keeping it from them though. I just thought you might know something about it."

Cassie nodded. "I know just enough to be dangerous. My mother and my cousins are as close to experts as there are, I guess. Anyway, we better keep this amongst ourselves. Half the stuff we tried to explain would probably be wrong anyway." Cassie started heading out of the room.

"Wouldn't want to pass off bad info", Lisa said and turned to leave too.

"Wait", LaShaunta began, her face drawing up in confusion. "Aren't you in the advertising business? Don't you spread lies and half-truths for a living?"

Cassie's mouth fell open as LaShaunta made a hasty exit. She turned to look at Lisa as a smile slowly grew larger on her gorgeous face. Then she shrugged. "She's kinda got a point. I mean those teeth strips don't always get your smile whiter in ten days, but I get paid well to convince Americas that they will." Cassie chuckled and Lisa put an arm across her shoulders as the two headed out to rejoin the group.

"Do you guys know Ian", Jan asked just as Lisa, Cassie, and LaShaunta came back into the room. "He works with Special Programs sometimes."

"Dr. Brooster?", Heather asked and Taylor rolled her eyes.

"You don't like him?", Jan asked with a smile.

"I like him just fine, but Taylor… not so much", Heather replied.

"What did he do?", Lisa asked after taking a seat on the love seat.

"Well, it wasn't quite his fault", Heather began then turned to Taylor, wordlessly asking for permission to tell this tale. Taylor rolled her eyes again, but didn't object so Heather continued. "So we were home one day, not too long after we'd gotten out of training with SP and these government guys drive up and ask us to come with them", she explained, using the universally accepted voice of a humorless government agent.

"Anyway, they took us this airbase in the middle of nowhere, and told us that we had spend the next few hours taking some tests. So they make us do this written test. I guess it was a personality thing, but that's not important. Then Ian comes and says that he has some tests that he's got to run."

Jan and Lisa gasped at the same time. "Did he put you in that big black thing?", Jan asked.

"Yes!", Heather replied emphatically. "But he didn't tell us what kind of tests we were going to be doing. So they separate us and I go in first. It's absolutely horrible! Like some kind of torture device. The damn thing is trying to pull my arms and legs off and then it's trying to blow me up, and this is where Taylor and Dr. Brooster had their falling out. They didn't want my post test condition to influence Taylor's test, so when I was finished, they shuttled me out.

"At this point I'm a little slow reacting to things after all of that, but I was trying my best to explain to Ian that he should postpone Taylor's test. Everybody just figured that I was delirious, and I sort of was. But you guys know, I heal fast, so by the time they put me in this little room off the hangar I was pretty much okay. I went back into the hangar to stop the whole thing, but it was too late. Taylor was already strapped into that big black thing. I just shook my head and went to a monitor to see the camera feed from inside. She seemed fine with the tests of strength."

Taylor thought back to being in the near darkness of the inside of that black egg shaped contraption, bound to a weird looking segmented table by her wrists, ankles, and around her waist. It rarely happened, but she was nervous when the motors spun up and the gears started turning. The bands seemed unstoppable as they tightened around her arms, legs, midsection, and chest. She was locked tightly to the table just as the joints disengaged and began to separate. The spreading table began to pull and stretch Taylor's already long limbs. After a while of increasing tension, it leveled off and Taylor just lay there for a while wondering what was next. She had no idea that she was supposed to pull the segments back together, even after the pressure started increasing again. She thought it might be like one of those automatic blood pressure machines at the supermarket that she used to be so found of. Eventually discomfort became real pain and without even thinking about it, Taylor's body had begun to fight back.

For the first time since stepping into the box, Taylor's muscles tightened. Just a fraction of Taylor's strength was more than enough to pull the various slabs of the table back together and to force the bands that had been biting into her flesh back to the surface. Her body was tight and impenetrable now. The bands kept tightening, but Taylor had finally figured out what was going on. As the bands tightened, she flexed to prevent the bands from cutting into her at all. They were moving her skin around, but that was about it. It was actually kind of fun being able to use her strength in a way that wasn't breaking anything or hurting anybody.

"I took a deep breath trying to calm myself down, saying that everything was going to work out", Heather said to her audience. "But then the explosions began."

Taylor groaned and remembered when the pressure inside the box began to rise. Her ears popped and it became harder to exhale, just not enough to make her worry. A detonation off to her right made her jump. For a split second Taylor's muscles had really flexed and some fibers on the bands had frayed. Before she could even ask if there was something wrong with the machine another stronger explosion rocked the box, detonating with the equivalence of a 500 pound bomb going off half a block away. A concussion waved bounced back and forth inside the box, hurting way more than the separating table ever did.

"The explosions kept going one after another and they felt like huge whips cracking all over Taylor's body, inside and out. More importantly than the pain though, the concussion waves left terrible bruises. I'm pretty sure Dr. Brooster thought Taylor would be like me, or like you Jan. Our bruises go away pretty quickly. Heck I don't even really get bruises."

"But you do?", LaShaunta asked Taylor.

"Unfortunately", she replied.

"She's durable though", Heather said. "Like an old Chevy C10." Everybody in the room laughed, except for Taylor, which made Heather's grin broaden. "But sometimes she shows a little body wear… like an old Chevy C10." Taylor cracked the smallest of smiles as her sister continued to needle her. "Anyway, it takes a few hours for Taylor's really bad bruises to go away, and that was a problem. Jan do you remember Whit Pearlman?"

Jan swooned and fanned her face. "Oh yes. I remember Whit." Laughs spread around the room again.

"He's really, really hot, and Taylor had a date with him… THAT NIGHT!" Taylor looked around as everyone in the room felt her pain.

"I'd say it's like getting a zit before a date, but you three wouldn't know what's that like", Alisha said with a chuckle.

Heather laughed. "Taylor was getting her predate zit that day. So in a moment of desperation... or weakness... or both, Taylor looked up at the camera and literally begged Dr. Brooster to stop the test." Jan and Jack gasped, and Heather chuckled again. "For you guys who don't know my sister well, if she's begging its bad."

"Real bad", Jan echoed and Taylor just smiled. There was nothing she could say. They were right.

"I hurry over to Dr. Brooster trying to convince him to listen to her and he proceeds to explain to me that the test sequences were locked in. He told me that unless there was a medical emergency all he could do was lower the intensity of the tests... if they hurting Taylor. Do you believe that?!?", Heather exclaimed. "I laughed right in his face! I told Dr. Brooster, as respectfully as I could, that his box couldn't hurt my sister if it fell from Mount Everest and landed on her head." Heather shrugged. "I don't think he liked that too much because he pretty much shut me out. Instead of saying anything else to me he cues the mic and tells Taylor that the scheduled tests aren't even halfway finished and that the strength evaluation isn't even complete. I wondered if Taylor was just going to let things ride out." Heather shook her head, causing some of her long auburn locks fly over her shoulder. "Why I let myself think that, I have no idea because when I looked up at the monitor, I was like… oh no."

Taylor's body was tense and the people in the lab thought that they were seeing her strain, but like most people, they completely misread Taylor Matthews. She went from worried about her date to pissed off. She'd worked hard to get Whit to go out with her, and Taylor rarely worked at all to get any guy to go on a date with her. But just like she had a queue of guys wanting dates, Whit has a queue of his own. He had actually given up the dating scene for a while. She was going to be his first real go out to dinner and a movie date in over a year, but Dr. Brooster was ruining it!

Taylor screamed at the camera and began to free herself. Every muscle on Taylor's body from her calves to her traps tripled in definition and nearly doubled in size. Biceps that had seemed athletically buff on a woman her height ballooned. The bands tried to tighten to compensate for their sudden load. The motors sped up faster and faster building up so much current in them that the lights in the hangar dimmed, but Taylor's body was just getting started.

While proud of her body, Taylor would readily admit that both Jan and Heather normally had better abs than she did, but neither of them could have done what she was about to. She tensed her six pack, making the bricks stand out prominently, bulging with striations of their own. The strap across her stomach couldn't begin to press in her abs now, not as she tensed them, but then she began to sit up. The straps against her chest and arms began to tear. The table pulled apart more, the gears turning and grinding against each other trying to add more tension, but Taylor kept rising, doing a sit up against every bit of power the box could produce. The motors began to smoke and the whine was deafening. Taylor sat up at almost a normal speed, as if the best efforts of that box were nothing at all. The strap around her chest broke first and then the one around her stomach, but her arms were still stubbornly attacked to the table. She looked first right and then left, before snatching her arms free.

Taylor's biceps and delts and pecs flexed with discrete detail and amazing separation between each of her perfect muscle groups. She didn't just tear the straps, she tore the two sides off of the segmented table. Gears, springs, and broken metal dropped to the floor of the box as Taylor bent her legs. Her long gams had about as much trouble breaking the straps as her arms. Quads flexed sharper than razor blades with striations lined up like soldiers on parade. Her hip flexors were an absolutely insane tangle of tendons, ligaments, and bulging muscles as she ripped herself completely free. She stood up, turned back to the now mangled table and snapped its base with a well executed kick. Sparks and smoke filled the box as the table toppled to the floor. Taylor leaned up towards the camera and screamed for them to open the door.

"There're a few of us in this room who know what happens when people don't open a door for my sister." Jack snickered, and Thomas laughed. Taylor blushed with embarrassment. "Nothing good", Heather continued. "So when they refuse to open the door… for what reason, I have no idea,  Taylor just sort of guessed. She kicked the crap out of the box. The whole thing shook so much I thought it was going to topple over. Now as a testament to Dr. Brooster's engineering skills, his box stayed in one piece. There was just a size ten and a half foot print in the metal. Her next kick had better aim and the door flew off. Smoke starts billowing out going up near the ceiling of the hangar and a second later out jumps Taylor. I'm pretty sure you guys think she's done… but noooo… Taylor's not done. She's too pissed to be done. She turned back towards the box. Do you remember what I did after you jumped out and faced the box?", Heather asked.

Taylor laughed then mimicked Heather's frantic expression from that day. "She started screaming, No Taylor don't do it!", she recalled and laughed again.

"But like I said, it was way way too late. That box had ruined her date with Whit because, now I don't know if you saw it yet, but there was a big angry bruise going from just about her right ear to the middle of her cheek."

"I hadn't seen it, but I could feel it", Taylor confirmed.

She'd bent down and for a moment her marked, but still exquisitely beautiful face showed some real strain as she powered up her incredible muscles to do what it had taken a crane to do the day before. Her glutes and hamstrings bulged along with her lower back and shoulders as she conquered the dead weight of the box and its pedestal. Tons of metal with all the motors and gears tried to stay rooted to the floor, but when the first ray of sunlight shined beneath the pedestal from one side to the other, everybody in the hangar knew that it was over. She wasn't going to tire out, and she wasn't going to stop. Taylor's perfect body grew bigger and stronger as she lifted the box higher still. Her arms didn't even shake as she began pressing the huge shadow creating box over her head. She gave a yell as she locked her elbows at the top.

"So by now I'm all in", Heather exclaimed and Taylor shook her head, her blush growing redder. "She turns towards the hangar door and without a running start chucks that thing through the door, and over a taxiway. It bounced and rolled through some grass and ended up on a runway. Everybody was just stunned… floored… well except for me. I'm cheering her on. I'm like… That's my big sister! I tried to warn you people! So Taylor's standing there next to the gap where the machine used to sit and then glares over at Ian, you know one of those glares that usually makes healthy people's hearts stop and she yells, 'Test concluded!' Now to his credit again, Ian didn't die or faint or even shrink away, but when Taylor started towards the exit he didn't try to stop her either."

By this point, Lisa was doubled over with laughter. "That's why he hasn't talked about that medieval contraption of his, somebody destroyed it for him."

"Did he ever put you in it?", Cassie asked.

"No way!", Lisa said quickly. "He's way smarter than that. Now he's smart enough to never put anybody else in it again. He probably tried to apologize with food didn't he?", Lisa asked and Heather nodded.

"And it was good", Taylor said, "which is one of the reasons the two of us can get along as well as we do. I never did go on that date and Whit still doesn't return my calls."

"Somebody doesn't return YOUR calls?", Thomas asked with amazement.

Jan laughed hard when Taylor's cheeks turned rosy all over again. "Whit's a special case", Taylor explained.

Nobody lounging in that living room traveled that night. Instead they stayed up late telling stories and enjoying each others' company. For regular people it might have been harder for strangers to bond so quickly, but the people in that room weren't strangers anymore. After the linking they understood each other in ways that most people could never begin to understand. The next morning Cassie insisted on cooking breakfast for everyone, and was just about finished when Jan's mother returned home. Jack had told Carol some about what had happened the night before and filled in the details once she arrived.

That next day there were some shopping trips, but everybody returned to the Caufield home that night, but the gathering had grown larger by several people. Taylor and Heather brought their parents and Brice, but it was LaShaunta who'd been the busiest out of them. First she went to Chicago to pick up Cassie's parents and then she'd gone to LA with Alisha, to pick up her parents and her little brother Conrad. Cheryl von Edder had been a little skeptical about traveling with her baby but LaShaunta assured her that it was safe. She'd taken her younger siblings hundreds of times over the years. Once the von Edders were in Maryland, LaShaunta went to Clover Bottom to get Sara's father and brother, only Charles was sick and couldn't come. Her last stop was her own hometown of Atlanta to pick up her mother, Darlene and Lisa's mother, Gloria. The two of them had apparently hit off quickly because they wouldn't stop talking when LaShaunta appeared , so to their dismay LaShaunta had taken them and the couch they were sitting on to Maryland. They stood up then. LaShaunta laughed as she took the couch back to Atlanta. After the incident with the couch, LaShaunta thought she was finished rounding up people, but then Thomas came up and asked, "Would you mind going to Columbus, Ohio to get my Uncle Cor?

"Have you talked to him?", Jack asked.

"No... not yet", Thomas admitted. "But I'll call him and see if he's busy." Jack smiled and gave the okay. It hadn't taken much convincing anyway. He and Cornelius had been good friends at one point who'd lost contact, although they'd been talking more ever since Jack had adopted Cornelius' nephew. Besides, any gathering would be better with Boones Lee than it would be without him.

LaShaunta didn't complain while preparing to take Thomas and Sara Columbus, OH. Once they got there, she expected somebody to have to explain that there were these people with powers and that they could do these amazing things. Instead Sara had spoken with him telepathically and when they arrived at his house, Cornelius "Boones" Lee was all ready to go. His wife was gone with friends and he'd told her not to wait up for him. When that was done, Boones had put his hand on Thomas' shoulder and the foursome appeared in the Caufield's living room a moment later. Jan came over and hugged Cornelius eagerly. "Don't crush me", Boones groaned and Jan proceeded to lift his 165 pounds off the floor in a big bearhug. Sara told LaShaunta that Boones had helped rescue Jan the previous year and then LaShaunta understood the happiness on her friend's face. As soon as Jan let Boones' feet touch the floor, Jack came over and the shook hands before the two old soldiers embraced too, but Jack hadn't picked Boones up.

"It's real good to see you", Jack told Boones and looked around for Thomas to handle the introductions, but he'd gone looking for Cassie. While Thomas on the for Cassie or her mother, Jack made the rounds with Boones, who had everybody laughing almost instantly. When he met Taylor he pretended to faint and then with a wink said that he should have pulled the fainting gag with Heather instead. A couple of minutes later Thomas came back to the living room with Cassie behind him. This time Thomas did make the introduction. "Uncle Cor is my dad's oldest brother. I should have thought about this yesterday, but I was hoping that... umm... if we do link again... you know how people with the right genes can..." Cassie laughed and stepped past Thomas and held out her hands in front of Boones. He hesitated a moment before put his hands in Cassie's, but when he did, he felt the warmest feeling penetrate him. Just as his brain began to make sense of the sensation it was over and Cassie smiled at him before giving Thomas a thumbs up. The thirteen year old was so happy all he could do was jump up and down.

It wasn't much after that when dinner was ready. Only it wasn't Jack and Thomas cooking. Jeremy Redwine had put himself in charge of this evening's meal. Everybody at the table agreed that Jeremy's reputation was well earned. People eating at some of the finest restaurants in the world were paying a fortune for a meal that probably paled in comparison to the one served in the Caufield home that night, and the atmosphere was amazing too. There were no hard emotions or crises to fix. It was just a chance for people to enjoy each other's company. Plenty of stories were told, but nobody mentioned the original reason this gathering had been called in the first place. Even to the people who knew her wall, Cassie seemed way closer to normal than they had dared to hope.

"Nothing's wrong Mom. Everything's perfect", she replied as she sat cross-legged on the floor. Ted and Katherine Matthews were just as confused as Darlene and Brice was a little apprehensive as he helped move furniture to make more room, but his efforts became unnecessary when Sara simply lifted all of the offending furniture  out of the way all at once. Several people marveled at what she'd done, but Sara told them that hadn't seen anything at all yet. William Hewitt held out his hand and helped his daughter to the floor, as he looked around the circle at the people who had no idea what they were about to experience. Boones was uneasy while Brice began to wonder if this was about to be a big waste of his time. William though could hardly wait. Part of him wanted to go back to Mississippi with LaShaunta and drag Charles there sick or no sick.

While Cassie was becoming an expert at this, the linking tonight was lead by Hayfa herself. She was like a maestro conducting a super powered symphony. Everybody experienced the full power of the linking, but it was most intense for Jack and Kat. The siblings were on their way to repairing a long fractured relationship, but linking cut through any doubt or emotional barriers like a laser. Their feelings for each other were laid plain and it was as overwhelming as the rest of it. Tears were rolling down every single cheek as the linking ended. Darlene leaned over and hugged LaShaunta for a very long time realizing immediately that they had just shared something very special. Boones was speechless. He knew that he hadn't experienced this linking the same way the truly gifted people had, but what he'd gotten out of it had been magically. He ran his hand through Thomas' curly hair then pulled the boy's head to his chest and hugged him, all the while thinking about his baby brother, Thomas' father.

"We should do this again", Sara said, while wiping fresh tears from her face. "And bring everybody who didn't come this time."

"Yeah", Jan agreed.

Jack smiled while still hugging his wife and his sister. "I don't know if we'll have enough room", he said and looked around his living room.

"My house is always open", William Hewitt stated. "To all of you."

"Thanks Mr. Hewitt", LaShaunta said and looked back towards the group. "He's got room for all of us and then some!" Later that night while most people were in the house still on a high from the linking, Jack had gotten himself a beer and gone out to his deck to look up at the sky and reflect. He heard the door open behind him, expecting to see his wife or maybe Jan instead it was Boones.

"Thank you, man. I mean... thank you."

Jack laughed. "We've got the right DNA to experience whatever that linking is and what kind of friend would I be if I kept that from you?"

"You'd be a rotten low down dog", Boones replied then laughed. "But hey, Jack Bear, since I've got you out here, there's something I want to tell you." He cleared his throat before continuing. "Ever since that op in Oklahoma, I felt unsettled. Then a little while back the police department started offering early retirements."

"Are you thinking about taking it? Want do you something else?"

Boones sighed. "I already took it. That's what I want to talk to you about."

The gathering inside the house turned into a party that nobody really wanted to end, but very late Sunday night the gathering reluctantly broke up. LaShaunta took everybody home. In many cases it was as simple as dropping people off in their living rooms, but in other cases it wasn't that easy. There were people around who didn't know the first thing about gifted people. In Karl and Cheryl von Edder's case, none of their household staff knew that gifted people existed, and if any of them did know, they had no idea that Alisha was one of them. Karl and Cheryl wanted to keep it that way. It was much the same way for William Hewitt. By the time all that traveling was over, she was pretty well exhausted. LaShaunta was allergic to showing weakness, but her friends could easily see it. She didn't stay up and banter with them when they finally got back to their apartment. She just took a shower and went to sleep. Jan, Sara, and Alisha stayed up a little too late discussing Cassie's progress, especially since they all had classes the next morning.

Jan hadn't run Monday morning but she was still in one heck of a good mood as she got back to her normal routine on Tuesday. She had The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill playing through her earbuds and a smile on her face that had lasted for five whole miles. She easily negotiated the road construction and completely ignored the ogling drivers as she made the turn up to the hills. Her grin broadened just thinking about the kids waiting for her on the bus stop. She wondered what they were going to have for her today. She found out as she came into view. She just had to laugh. The kids had formed themselves into a wobbly human pyramid, like unpracticed cheerleaders. The boys were on the bottom and the girls were on top, trying their best to keep from falling. The kids cheered like Jan was about to score a touchdown. She actually slowed down because she was laughing so hard. "Go! Go! Go!", the kids yelled and Jan pretended to be tired and struggling to make it up the hill.

The pyramid was just falling apart as Jan made it to the crest. She stopped and helped one girl off the side of the pyramid so she wouldn't fall in the mud. Jan was pretty sure the boys didn't care about dusty knees. She was just about to tell the kids good-bye for the day when she heard an engine rev up at the bottom of the hill. Jan turned to look over her shoulder just as the lights of a silver Mercedes shined up the hill. Her eyes narrowed as the asshole driver turned to look right at her and pushed the gas pedal all the way to the floor. The engine growled and the car rocketed forward. If looks could have killed, that driver would have died a hundred times. He actually smiled as he sped up. Just as he reached the top of the hill, his front left tire exploded with a teeth rattling boom and the car veered right towards her. Everything else happened very quickly.

Jan looked at the kids behind her and realized that she might not be able to move them all out of the way quickly enough. She thought about her cousin's words, realizing that there was too much to protect. She was sitting in the middle of one of Taylor's evil math problems, but she had the answer to this one.

She sprinted towards the center of the road, towards the speeding car. Her expression hardening just like the muscles as she pulled the mental cork that kept her gift locked away deep inside her. Usually she let it out a little at a time as she needed it, but not this time. She let the full raging volcano of her gift free all at once. She lowered her shoulder as she gained speed, almost matching the speed of the car as she approached it. Her vision locked onto the driver as she lowered her shoulder and flexed every muscle in her body as hard as she possibly could.

The impact was catastrophically brutal. The whole car was knocked fifty degrees to the right, away from the kids as Jan's shoulder caved in the front of her Mercedes. The bumper snapped in two against Jan's hip and the frame curled in around Jan's body like she was an oak tree. Bits of broken plastic and shattered glass mixed in mid air like a cloud before flying towards the middle of the street. Her shoulder obliterated the hood and sank deeper into the engine compartment. The still spinning radiator fans sliced through Jan's jacket and bit into her skin before the blades broke against her super hard biceps and deltoids. The airbags deployed just as Jan's shoulder encountered the engine block. The rear tires came off the ground as the engine stopped and seized forever, the impact with Jan's body actually cracking the cast steel block. Steam and hot fluids sprayed out as the car's momentum slowed even more. Jan felt cuts from glass, steel and aluminum, but she didn't care.

The impact had nearly brought a speeding car to a stop, but Jan didn't weigh as much as a luxury sedan so when her energy was used up, she went flying into the street. She hit back first, sliding, bouncing, and rolling along the asphalt for more than fifty feet.

The kids were so shocked that some looked at the steaming heap of a car while others looked at Jan expecting to see carnage, but then she jumped up to her feet. Her face was just as angry looking as before, but now it was covered in cuts and scrapes. She pulled off her jacket, realizing that it was actually smoldering from friction with the rough pavement. She threw it to the ground, revealing her lean, perfectly proportioned muscles. She took a couple of steps, the small cuts on her skin closing up almost immediately with the larger ones not far behind. She was still far away from the car when she leapt into the air, flying higher than any human should have been able to and landing on what had been the hood of the battered car. She felt the full rage of her gift flowing through her as she looked through the spider-webbed laminated windshield to the driver.

Her form fitting top didn't hide her tremendous core muscles as she leaned down and forced all ten of her fingers through the broken glass and yanked the windshield from the car, throwing it to the side of the road. The inside of the car was smoky from the airbag deployment and noisy from half a dozen alarms sounding at once. She ignored all that and stared at the driver who had caused all of this. He bobbed near the line between consciousness and unconsciousness with twin trails of blood running from his nose and the little cut on his forehead. His eyes didn't want to focus, but she was now taking up almost all of his field of vision. He saw an amazing set of abdominals, a wall of muscle surpassing any that he'd ever seen. Deep channels ran between the perfectly symmetrical muscled islands, complete with their own landscapes of striations.

She reached out and grabbed the steering wheel, wrapping her long fingers around it and crushing the rubberized grip and misshaping the steel itself as she pulled. Her biceps peaked even though her arm was nearly straight, and immediately things began to break behind the console. The wheel was forced upward and in less than a second she broke the steering shaft deep within the car. She casually tossed the steering column and shaft to the passenger seat. Now there was just one more thing between him and her.

He squirmed and tried to lean back away from her, but she grabbed the front of his suit with her right hand and the seat belt with her left. She didn't bother unbuckling it. Her lats and traps flexed now, muscle fibers firing at superhuman speeds as she tore apart the entire assembly, the bolts failing with thunderous booms. Free from the newly deformed seat Jan pulled the dazed, bloody, terrified man all the way out of the car, letting him dangle from her arm as she stood up to her full height. Her eyes burned a brilliant blue as the full weight of her power danced around inside them. She just stared at him before reaching around to his back pocket and pulling out his wallet.

"This is your lucky day Mr. Medford", Jan told him ominously. "Just think what you might have done if I hadn't been able to prevent it. You'd have the blood of a bunch of little kids on your hands. If that had happened this conversation wouldn't be so cordial. This is a second chance for you though. Think about what happened just now before you make another mistake and end up looking like your car does. I'd tell you that I'm going to keep an eye on you but", she pulled him closer, until their faces were only inches apart. "I won't have to, will I?", she hissed. Medford shook his head and began to weep. Jan threw the man back into his seat and jumped down to the street. Only then did she look at the kids. All of them were shocked beyond words.

Jan just grinned thinking about what must be going through their little minds. Her long legs finally got into the action a little as she bent down and lifted the car up to waist level. Her thighs, calves, and ass looked amazing as she pulled the car to the side of the street. From top to bottom Jan displayed the power and faultless perfection of her body. The blown tire hung uselessly by her arms and the others dragged rather than rolled as she backpedaled. She dropped her load on the side of the road near a tree, making the driver gasp when the jolt caused him more pain. Jan wasn't sorry.

Then she looked at the kids again before putting her index finger over her lips. "Shhh, you guys. You can't tell anybody. Okay?" They all nodded as Jan jogged towards the middle of the street to retrieve what was left of her jacket.

"Are you a super hero!", one of the kids yelled and Jan laughed.

"No", she replied with a big smile.

"But you're really strong!"

"Stronger than my dad!", another yelled.

"Maybe just a little", Jan said then raised her arms and did a quick double biceps flex, making her super human muscles swell and grow harder than steel. Then she tied her jacket around her waist and stuck her slightly damaged earbuds back in. "Have a good day at school. I'll see you guys tomorrow."

"Bye!", they yelled and waved as Jan jogged down the hill to "Everything is Everything".

"She's Power Girl", one kid shouted.

"No, Power Girl's blonde. She's Wonder Woman."

"No she's not!", the kids debated until the police cars began to show up. They got nervous, knowing that the cops might ask them what had happened, and they knew that they were never supposed to lie to police men. They were saved though when the bus showed up and instead of asking the kids if they'd seen anything, the cop ushered them onto the bus to get them out of the way as the fire engine and ambulance arrived. The cop just figured that he'd ask the driver what had happened to cause this one car accident, but the story he got from Mr. Medford was so unbelievable that the police sergeant had suggested he be tested for drugs at the hospital.

Jan didn't bother finishing her run via the normal route. She just headed straight back to the apartment. She knew from experience that even though she'd put her power back in its cage, she wasn't going to get anything from this run. Her body was still charged up. She could have sprinted back to her apartment if she'd wanted to. She knew that it had been risky showing those kids what she could do, but she hadn't had a choice. If she felt that she had to, she'd just start running another route, but she didn't have to. The kids knew that she said that she wasn't a super hero, but they all figured that she was anyway. They were one of the few who knew her secret identity, but she didn't have to worry. Her secret was safe with them.

more on the way soon...

Recent Chapters

There are plenty of others where this story came from.  Please check out the bookshelf for all the past chapters of Power and Fury and my other series.

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