Rule 28: Prologue
A/N: This is long, and I haven’t started posting on AO3 yet, but I figured that I may as well post chapters here, since I post my thought-process on those chapters as well. And if I need to overhaul a couple? Well, I’m posting the second first draft, after all. That’s kinda what editing is for.
(I wasn’t kidding when I said this is long. Don’t be worried, the individual chapters won’t grow to be this big!)
This story is a story for the ages. There’s nothing specific about the story that makes it stand out. In fact, if you were to press hard enough even the people within this story probably would admit they don’t know why this story is so important to them. But it’s the little pieces along the way that make this story worthwhile. It’s the decisions that are made in the heat of the moment, the smiles shared between people who never thought they could get to where they were, and the realizations that these people were not destined for greatness, but they carved their own way into it anyway.
Rule twenty-eight is an important rule to know. In fact, rule twenty-eight is the whole reason that this story exists. It’s the rule that a man named Clayton Reeves invoked twenty years ago when supervillains came into DC and the whole city was quarantined in order for the villains to be captured. And rule twenty-eight says, “If you need help, ask.” But we’re putting the cart before the horse. Before all these people in this story came together, they had to grow. They had to know who they were, and what they could do.
And that, my dear reader, is where this story starts. It’s a story that we’ve heard all our lives--one where good triumphs over evil, where determination and a little bit of teamwork means that everything turns out all right, even if it’s never quite the same. This is the story my sister and I will tell you--it’s the story of our family. And it starts out decades ago, right before the ban on superheroes was put into place.
Ducky could barely believe the newspaper he was reading. After starting to explore the world, working alongside the British Army, and seeing the attitude most countries had about supers, moving to the States had been a breath of fresh air. A place where if he so chose, he could disclose that he had powers and no one would care. He might get called on to see if he could use his powers to help someone, as some of the other supers he knew had experienced, but that was it.
Now, he was thankful that he hadn’t told anyone about his powers yet. Because the paper he was reading had revealed that superheroes were in danger of being prosecuted for their powers and their actions that may have damaged property, or worse, human life.
Ducky was incensed. The one place he was starting to feel safe was turning against him. Just because some man running around wearing spandex had saved another man’s life when that man was trying to commit suicide, did not mean that all supers were intent of causing harm. More than that, the man who was trying to commit suicide should have been placed in hospital care, and the man who had saved him should be praised. After all, suicide was a horrible act. How could anyone condone such a thing, and furthermore, try to sue the person who thwarted the attempt?
Ducky’s mother walked in the room and said, “Careful, Donald. You know what happens when you glare too hard at someone. That newspaper might not freeze at the sight of you, but anyone you’re looking at when you’re in a foul mood will.”
With a sigh, Ducky put the newspaper down. “Sorry, Mother,” he said. “I just don’t think it’s right that everyone should be punished for the transgressions of the few.”
“No one thinks that, Donald, at least I should hope not,” his mother said gently. “But you must hold out hope. No laws have been passed yet, you can’t give up the fight before it has even begun.”
Ducky shook his head. “I know. But the way the paper is reading, it looks like this is very serious. Mother, what if we have to move again?”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Donald,” his mother chastised. “You have not told anyone of your powers, and you’re careful about who even sees them. We won’t have to move anywhere, provided you get that job in the medical examiner’s office at the local police station.”
Ducky smiled. “You remembered that my interview was today?”
“Of course,” his mother said. “And I wish you luck. I won’t be able to work forever, you know.”
“I would never make you do such a thing,” Ducky vowed. “I would sooner work five jobs than force you to work into your old age.”
“You’ve become a good man, Donald, and I couldn’t be happier with how you’ve grown up,” his mother said fondly. “Go on, go to your interview. I’ll head out to work soon enough, and whoever gets home first can walk the dogs this afternoon.”
Ducky shook his head fondly. “I do suppose we’ll have to be careful about who we discuss my father’s heritage with, now won’t we?” he asked.
“We always have been,” his mother simply replied.
Ducky left for the interview, and thankfully got the job. He figured it would be much safer to hide among the dead than the living, when it came to his powers. Still, it was very disheartening to find that people were talking about what to do about supers. They restricted supers’ travel, told them that they had to be careful with when and how they used their powers, before telling them that eventually, they couldn’t use them at all. And all the supers Ducky had known, either around the neighborhood or at work, slowly started to move away, where no one would know them or their past.
Eventually, the day came that Ducky had been dreading. He was filling out paperwork for his taxes, and one little box taunted him on the pages. In it, were the undeniable words printed in black, that asked, “Are you a super?” And Ducky felt bile rise in his throat as he swallowed, forced himself to breathe, and picked up his pen, checking the box that said, “No.”
Gibbs knew something was wrong the moment he walked home from school. His mother and his father were both home, waiting for him. Normally his mom would be out making sure that everyone in the city was safe, although he had to admit that she had been doing that less and less recently, and she had mostly been staying home and cleaning instead. His dad might be out back in the garage, but he might also be working at the grocer’s at this time of day. But either way, he never was waiting for Gibbs when he came home.
His mother looked like she had been crying, and Gibbs felt his stomach fill up with dread. Either one of his grandparents had died, or something equally terrible was going on, and he was not looking forward to finding out what that something was.
“Leroy,” his father said slowly, cautiously. Like he was approaching a wounded animal. “We need to have a talk.”
Gibbs’ heart started to thud in his chest. “Who died?” he said, voice barely above a whisper.
“No one died, honey. But...” his mother took a deep breath. “The government has passed a law saying that supers aren’t allowed to use their powers anymore.”
Gibbs thought his heart stopped. Everyone at school knew he hung around with the supers, even if they didn’t realize it was because he was one himself. While he could strengthen or weaken someone else’s powers, that was about all he could do, and it wasn’t immediately obvious that he had done something, unless of course the person who he had affected did something with their powers. Still, everyone he was friends with knew that he could do this. “Am I in trouble?” he asked, dreading the answer.
“No, Leroy, you’re not in trouble,” his father said. “But because everyone around here knows you and your mother are supers, we’re going to have to move.”
Gibbs felt his stomach drop. Move? He had lived here his entire life! Where were they going to go? And would he be able to talk to his friends, still, through letters? No, he immediately knew. He wouldn’t be able to write them because then they would know where he lived and could get him in trouble. What was the point of making friends, though, if he couldn’t even keep in touch with them when they were gone?
His mother came over and put a hand on his shoulder, and he wrenched it away. “No, don’t touch me!” he exclaimed. “I’m going to my room!”
Before either of his parents could get another word in, Gibbs stormed up to his room to find everything he owned packed into boxes. He felt sick. This was real, this was genuinely happening. His whole life had fallen apart with that one simple declaration. He flung himself on his bare bed and cried, vowing to himself that he wouldn’t become friends with anyone wherever they moved to. He didn’t want to get attached to anyone only for them to get taken out of his life in case they had to move again.
After some time, his mother came in, and tried to get him to talk, to no avail. His dad came in maybe an hour after that, and said softly, “You know, your mother’s worried about you, Leroy.”
Gibbs scowled.
“We don’t like this any more than you do, son. But we have to move if we want to stay safe.”
Gibbs sat up and sighed, crossing his arms. “Where are we moving to?” he asked.
“A small town in Pennsylvania,” his dad said. “I know a man there who agreed to become partners with me at the local store, so I’ll have a job there. And there will be new kids for you to make friends with.”
Gibbs pulled a face but said nothing. He wasn’t going to make friends with them. There wasn’t a point to it.
His father sighed. “We’re leaving this weekend. I’d recommend saying your goodbyes tomorrow.” And with that, Gibbs was alone in his room again.
Abby didn’t consider herself psychic. After all, she couldn’t control her powers, or speak to the dead. She just knew that she could see the future, or at the very least, possible futures, because not everything she saw came true. She knew not everyone could do this, because Luca looked at her like she was crazy when she asked him about it. She knew that her parents worried about her because of this. She could see them signing the word super back and forth in conversation when they thought she wasn’t watching.
Everything came to a head one day when she was five, almost six, and she could see in her mind’s eye that a bully was going to come up from behind her and pull on her pigtails before shoving her to the ground. The second she felt someone grab her pigtails she whirled around and socked the person in the nose. The bully howled in pain, and the boy was sent to the nurse, while Abby was sent to the principal’s office.
The principal sighed and asked her why she had punched the boy, and Abby dutifully explained that she knew the boy was going to yank her pigtails and shove her to the ground. Although judging by the look the principal was giving her, maybe she shouldn’t have used the word know.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Miss Sciuto,” the principal had scoffed. “You couldn’t possibly know that he would try and hurt you. If you did, you wouldn’t be around decent people, you would be a super, a danger to society.”
Abby wanted to give the principal a piece of her mind, but she didn’t. Instead she asked, “Well, what else would he have done if he was grabbing my pigtails?”
She left school early, close to tears, and Luca asked her what was wrong when he got home. She didn’t say anything to him, though. She didn’t want him to know the horrible things the principal had said.
Of course, when her mother cornered her afterwards, and asked her why she looked about ready to cry, Abby signed the whole story. Her mother’s lips had thinned into a line as she explained to Abby that the principal was wrong, that supers weren’t a danger to society, and that she was fine the way she was. That she couldn’t tell anyone how she knew what she knew, and that this had to stay a secret, but that didn’t make her a bad person.
Abby didn’t know how inclined she was to believe her mother, but she repeated those words over and over to herself when she could. It didn’t help much. Especially now that no one wanted to be friends with her, because she had punched the biggest bully in school. She could see all the possible future timelines where she tried to make friends, and she was turned down every time. That did absolutely nothing to make her feel better.
Still, she held out hope. Because while she couldn’t control her powers very well, she was getting better at tuning them out at inopportune times. And besides, when she thought about the far off future, and making friends then, she saw so many different things. A flash of grey hair, a dorky smile, a crushing hug, a belly laugh. And those fleeting images left her feeling like she had more than one family, and a reason to keep going.
She desperately hoped that was one future that she would get to be a part of.
Alex loved the dark. Most people found that strange, but she found it comforting. Something about the fact that people didn’t have to see her, she didn’t have to pretend to be something she wasn’t and could roll her eyes when she needed to were all great perks about being in the dark.
By far, though, the greatest appeal for her being in the dark was the fact that she could find her way around wherever she was and no one else could. There was something about that fact that filled her with a petty sort of pride at first, but at the same time, she just found it really weird, but cool.
It had started when she was six years old, and the lights had gone out in a huge thunderstorm outside her house. Her dad had naturally moved the furniture around earlier in the day to make a pillow fort, so when she called out for her mother, there was a bump and a crash and Alex clicked her tongue and shook her head.
The weird thing was, when she clicked her tongue, she could almost see her room in her mind. Not in full color, of course, but the shape of where everything was. She heard more crashing downstairs and decided to help her mom get to a flashlight, so she continued clicking her tongue, surprised but pleased to have it show her where she was in the house compared to all the objects around her.
She made it down the steps without bumping into anything once, and quickly found where the flashlights were stored in the kitchen soon after. She turned one on and went to the living room, where her mother was struggling with the blankets on the ground. “Mom?” she asked.
“Alex!” her mother exclaimed. “How did you get down here so fast?”
“I...I walked down here? I know where everything is in the house, so...” Alex trailed off with a shrug.
“But I didn’t hear you run into anything, and normally when you’re walking in the dark you stub your toe at least once!” her mother said. “And what was that clicking noise I heard?”
Alex felt a blush creep up her cheeks. “Oh...that was me,” she said. “I made the noise so that I could see where everything in the house was, so I didn’t have to stub my toes this time.”
In the dim light of the flashlight, her mother looked like she had suddenly seen a ghost. “You...did what?”
“I made the noise, and could sorta see everything around me. Not in color, but...where everything was,” Alex said.
Her mother shook her head. “Honey, tomorrow morning you need to talk with your father about this,” she said. “And don’t tell a word about it to anyone else, understand?”
“Not really, Mom. What’s going on?” Alex asked.
“Sweetheart...I think you’re a super,” her mother said softly.
Alex’s eyes widened. “You mean like...like the bad guys on the cartoons?”
“No, honey, not like that, never like that. But you’ve got a special talent that most people don’t have, and some people might feel threatened by that.” Her mother squeezed her shoulder. “Could I have the flashlight, since you can walk in the dark without it?”
Alex nodded and passed it over.
“Thanks, honey. Now go on back to bed, if you can. I’ll tell your father about this and he can talk to you about it in the morning, sound good?” her mother said.
Alex nodded and walked back up to her room, clicking her tongue the whole way. When she got back into bed and stared unseeing at her ceiling, her mind was whirring with thoughts. What this meant for her, what she was going to do about it, and perhaps most importantly to her, why she had to speak to her dad about this of all things. Did that mean...that he was a super, too?
Now that you know about the first four supers in our life, it seems necessary to clarify: just because these supers are good, does not mean all of the supers in our life are good. This story is about the good ones, the ones who fought the supervillains. There are other superheroes in our life, too. Our aunt, our great-grandmother, and our grandfather, just to name a few. But if we talked about every super in our life, we’d never get to the actual story.
These supers are also the most important to us, because they’re the ones we see the most. Even if we aren’t related to them by blood, we all matter a lot to each other. And as one of our grandfathers says, family is more than DNA. Family is what we make of it.
My brother is such a sap, but he has a point. This is a story about our family, first and foremost. It’s an important story to many, but it’s also a story about our family, which makes it that much more important to us. You’ll find out more about the other supers in our life shortly. Just know that we’ll get to the actual good, action-y bits once we’ve explained who everybody is. Bear with us.
When Tony DiNozzo figured out that he could manipulate his voice to sound like other people he knew, he thought it was the most hilarious thing in the world. Everyone thought he was someone else, and as long as they didn’t see that he was the one talking, he could have them doing whatever he wanted.
He had a grand old time messing around with this power. Sounding like his dad, his mom, some of the kids around the other estates. It took some practice, and he had to hear their voices a lot, but he could do it.
His fun all came to an end one day, however, when he was practicing sounding like his mom in his room and his dad walked in on him talking into the mirror.
“Junior, what are you doing?!” his dad asked, looking around frantically and closing the door behind him as he walked in. His face held nothing but pure horror on it.
Tony was startled about the sudden movement, and frowned in confusion when his dad walked over swiftly and knelt down in front of him. “Dad? What’s wrong?”
“You can’t do that ever again, Junior, promise me you won’t!” his dad said frantically.
His dad’s hands were digging into his shoulders, and Tony tried to twist out of his grip, unsuccessfully. “Dad, why are you so freaked out? I’m just having some fun,” Tony said. His dad was just overreacting, he thought. Just like that time that Tony had ran around and accidentally broken a vase. “It’s not a big deal.”
“It is a big deal, Junior,” his dad whispered. “Not everyone can do this, and it’s dangerous!”
Tony’s eyes widened. Dangerous? He was just playing, wasn’t he? What was so dangerous about messing with his voice? “Am I gonna die?” he whispered hoarsely. He didn’t want to be in trouble, he didn’t want to be sick! He thought this was just a game!
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” his dad said. “Which is why you can never do this again! I wish you hadn’t inherited this from your grandfather...but what’s done is done.”
Tony couldn’t wrap his head around this. Why was what he was doing bad? His dad wasn’t making any sense! What was he saying? “Dad, you’re not making any sense!”
“Son...you’re a super,” his dad said.
Tony could feel the whole world stop. A super? He had seen supers on the news, and they were always bad people. People who didn’t care who lived or died, and did whatever they wanted without regard to others. Was he going to be like that?
...Were people going to think that he was like that whether or not he was?
“A...super?” he asked, completely shocked. “Can’t other people mimic voices?”
“Mimic, yes. Create an exact copy of someone’s voice? No,” his dad said. “If anyone else can do that, then they’re a super too.”
Tony thought supers were something to be feared, that they weren’t good people. That’s what everyone around him said. That they weren’t good, they just loved to destroy things, and took no responsibility for their actions. Tony couldn’t be a super! He cared too much about others! All his dad needed to do was ask anyone around the house, they’d say he couldn’t be a super! He was responsible! He couldn’t be a super! He just couldn’t!
“There’s no way,” he managed to rasp out. “I can’t be a super, there’s no way.”
His father shook his head, and gently shook Tony’s shoulders. “You have to promise me that you’ll never do that again. Promise me,” his father insisted.
Tony swallowed. “I promise, Dad.”
His father nodded and left him alone. Tony shook. He didn’t want to be taken away from everyone he knew and loved just because of his powers. If he was a super, he told himself, he wasn’t going to be one of the bad ones. He’d never use his powers if he didn’t have to. That way, he’d never have to worry about others hating him. If he was lucky, no one would find out about his powers, and he could just live a normal life. That was all he ever really wanted.
Kate found her powers really interesting. She couldn’t really see the future with them, unfortunately, not unless she focused really hard, but she could always see the past if she tried. This wasn’t just seeing any old past, though. This was seeing the past of specific objects that she held. She could see which of her peers went home and did their homework right away, or those who went to daycare and did their work then. She could see the surroundings of the object, too. So she could see the homes of her friends without ever going there, or see when a kid visited family in the hospital.
It took her awhile to pluck up the courage to tell her parents about this, though. She knew that both of them were supers, and that her brothers and sister were, too. They were hoping that she would be the normal child, the one who didn’t have to worry about the prejudice that supers had against them.
She might not have ever told them, in fact, if her brother hadn’t accidentally dropped a bracelet on the way to his room, and she picked it up, seeing that he stole it from a girl in his class. She immediately went to her parents, telling them this and how she knew it.
Her brother, naturally, was in big trouble for stealing the girl’s bracelet, and for a while, he wouldn’t let her even enter his room. She didn’t like that at all, thinking that meant he just had something to hide. Her other brothers also didn’t like the fact that she could see what they had been up to just by touching their stuff, so they might let her into their shared room, but she wouldn’t be allowed to touch anything. Only her sister, Rachel, would let her touch anything she wanted. After all, Rachel said, it’s not like Kate couldn’t tune out what she was seeing, and if Rachel wanted to keep something private, then Rachel could just ask Kate not to touch that thing.
Kate appreciated Rachel so much more after that. Having someone treat her like a human being with decency, rather than a little pest, was something that she appreciated.
Of course, Kate never told a soul outside her brothers, sister, and parents about her power. Not even the people in her extended family who were also supers, who might understand what she could do. She let the others think she was weird for enjoying playing with the toys around her grandparents’ house, seeing what sort of changes had been made over the years, the difference between the then and the now in the house, the people around it, the technology they had.
Kate had a newfound appreciation for history over the years, getting to see it in action when she touched older items, such as family heirlooms. She adored getting to see the stark difference in surroundings, and all the things the objects had seen. That is, she enjoyed it until she felt one of her brothers’ bears and saw him have a seizure before her very eyes.
Her stomach churned and she thought she might get sick as she could hear her mother scream, her father rush to the phone and shout to the person on the other side that her brother was having a seizure with a high fever. Her oldest brother was crying, practically sobbing, he was so scared. She dropped the bear in shock and her middle brother, the one she had seen having the seizure, snapped at her to leave his stuff alone, ignoring the fact that she looked like she had seen a ghost. After that, she tried to tune out her powers as much as possible. She hated the thought of learning more things like that, and while she still loved history, she decided she wasn’t going to use her powers to discover it.
Three year old Timothy McGee was scared out of his mind. His father had been yelling downstairs, bellowing something about him, and he didn’t know what in the world he had done wrong. He was hiding in his closet, hoping to stay out of everyone’s way, and away from his father’s wrath, but he was still so small and it was night outside and with the closet doors closed, he couldn’t see his nightlight.
He was trying to be quiet, but he couldn’t help but let a few sniffles loose. He hadn’t learned to cry silently yet, though he was close. He was terrified of the dark, and when he couldn’t see himself, how could he make sure that he wasn’t surrounded by monsters?
The clothes over his head were rattling because he was shaking, sitting on the closet floor in the dark, and he was bracing himself for when his father found out where he was, yelling nasty words that his mom would say that his father never meant. It was just a fact of life that this sometimes happened, and he would just have to grin and bear it.
Before he could do that for long, though, a pale orange glow appeared in Tim’s chest. He watched with wonder as it gently floated outward from his chest to rest in his palms. He had his own personal ball of light, floating in his hands! He touched it, and it felt warm. Kind of like when you got in a bath and the water’s temperature was just right.
Tim couldn’t stop the soft giggle that left his mouth when he touched the ball. It felt like the ball was telling him everything would be all right. His whole closet was bathed in a pale orange glow. He could see his shoes, his clothes, and only one shadow on the wall behind him, which he knew to be his. He could wave to it and it waved back, after all.
Of course, he didn’t take into account that while he couldn’t see his nightlight from inside the closet, a glowing ball of light would be much harder to hide from prying eyes, and soon his door was flung wide open, his father standing there, seething, on the other side. “What are you doing?!” his father hissed.
“It’s a glowing ball, Dad!” Tim exclaimed, so excited by his new discovery he didn’t notice his father’s ire.
His father smacked Tim’s hands and the ball disappeared. Tim’s jaw dropped in shock, and he was about to protest when he saw the look of pure rage on his father’s face. “Dad...?” he asked.
“You can. Never. Do that again, understand?” his father barked.
“Why?” Tim asked. He didn’t even know what he had done to get that ball to appear!
“If you show anyone that you can do that, they’ll take you away and you’ll never see me or your mother again!” his father hissed.
Tim didn’t know who “they” were, but they couldn’t be good people if they were going to take him away from his parents. He nodded his head to show that he understood what his father said.
His father pointed to Tim’s bed. “Get in bed, boy,” he said.
Tim scrambled to follow orders. His eyes widened when his father went over to his nightlight, and pulled it out of its socket. “You’re too old for this, boy. Time you learn to sleep in the dark like the rest of us.”
Not daring to protest, Tim let his father walk out and slam his bedroom door behind him, before he tried to conjure the ball again. He made a smaller one, but it made him so tired to try it that he fell asleep with it snuggled against his chest.
Ellie loved her powers. That wasn’t something she could say to anyone, let alone anyone outside her family, but it was the truest statement she had ever said. If it weren’t true, it would only be because she didn’t have adequate words to describe just how much she loved it.
Her discovery of them happened like most supers...which meant that she found out about them entirely by accident. She was daydreaming underneath her favorite tree on the farm, when her vision went out of focus in thought and suddenly snapped back in to focus, except all the colors she normally saw were gone, to be replaced with black and blue blobs of color, everything looking like a photo negative. Ellie put the book she was supposed to be reading down and stood up, walking out from under the tree’s branches. Everything was outlined in neon blue, and solid shapes had a navy-colored tint to them, but most of the world looked black.
Ellie looked up at the tree she had been sitting under, and wondered what everything would look like if she were to climb to the top. She jumped for one of the lowest branches, but was shocked when her jump took her halfway up the tree before she hit a tree branch and everything turned back to normal. “Ellie? Eleanor!” her mother was yelling.
Ellie made her way down the tree and ran to meet her mom halfway across the field. “Ellie, what happened?! I just saw a flash of blue light and you were gone!” her mother exclaimed.
“I was sitting under the tree and my vision went kinda funny,” Ellie said. “Everything turned sorta...black and blue, and I jumped up but flew into the middle of the tree. When I touched a tree branch everything went back to normal and you were calling my name.”
Her mother paled. “Are you sure?” she asked.
“Yeah, Mom. That’s what happened,” Ellie said. “Why? What’s wrong?”
Her mom wrung her hands. “Well, sweetheart, it looks like you’re a super,” she said. “And you have some sort of very unique power. Promise me that you won’t tell anyone about this, okay?”
“I promise, Mom,” Ellie said, straight away. She knew that supers were outlawed and that she could get into serious trouble if someone proved that she had powers. “I won’t even try and do it again if you don’t want me to.”
“That would make me feel so much better, thank you,” her mother said. “I’ll hold you to that promise.”
Ellie nodded, but was surprised to find herself in that same photo negative the next night when she was trying to sleep. She walked around the house and saw her older brothers playing video games downstairs, and her mom and dad talking in the kitchen, but none of them saw her. She grinned. This was quickly becoming addictive. What should she call this place? Obviously, it needed to have a name...She figured she could just call it the Negative for now and find a better name for it later, if needed.
She snuck back upstairs and was surprised that when she touched her bed, the world returned to normal. Apparently, she couldn’t touch anything in this other dimension without being pulled out of it. Oh, well. It would still be fun to travel through anyway. She couldn’t wait to test out her powers, and see exactly what she could do with them.
Jack would freely admit to anyone who asked her that she loved her powers. They would get her into trouble sometimes, yes, but she loved them. Of course, the only reason she could be as open about it as she was, would be that she was raised on a commune where superpowers were not only allowed but encouraged. She didn’t necessarily love everyone there, but she did enjoy the freedom it gave her to stretch her powers.
From a very young age, she was always asking questions she had no business asking, with knowledge about the answers that she had no business knowing. She asked her older sister what she meant when she’d think “oh, they’re so hot!” Or she’d ask the teacher at the commune’s school why he was crying and read his mind about how his affair was failing, as well as his marriage.
Her parents always warned her that if she wasn’t careful, she’d get kicked out of the community and they wouldn’t advocate for her to be brought back in, so she’d have to watch her tongue. Little did they know that she didn’t plan on sticking around very long after she was of age. It was restricting to her, only being able to move a certain amount of distance in any direction, and she hated it, vowing to leave the second she got the chance. Even if she got to use her powers here, she didn’t have many friends, because they all knew she could read their minds and were wary of her.
She left the commune when she was nineteen. Asking very sweetly to the leader of the community how his marriage was holding up considering he was hitting on some of the girls fresh out of high school, she walked off the reservation with the clothes on her back, the shoes on her feet, and the feeling that she could take on anything in the world if only she tried.
This attitude didn’t always do her good, but she made the most out of it. She made a few friends, who let her crash at their place, and as soon as she got a job, they moved together to a big apartment, where she helped pay rent. It was nice, being able to party sometimes, go out of the city if she wanted, and never being restricted to one place for very long.
Eventually, she grew tired of living in San Francisco and moved to DC, and once again, quickly found friends who would help her pay the rent. She joined a small group of psychics in their services, and read her clients’ minds to know what she needed to say, and that was a lucrative business.
She sometimes felt guilty about tricking the clients, but really, she needed the money. She tried to not let it get to her, and she tried to not regret moving away from the commune and to a place where her powers had to be hidden. She needed to hide her powers, but this still felt immensely freer than the commune ever did. She hoped that she’d never be confined to that small a space again. It was an unrealistic goal, but a goal nonetheless, and one she made sure to go to great lengths to keep up, if she had to. That’s just who she was, and who she would always be.
Ziva knew she was useful. That was the one thing that she kept at the forefront of her mind at all times. She was useful, and she served a purpose, and therefore it was unlikely anything bad would happen to her. She knew what happened to people who weren’t useful. They faded into nothingness, they disappeared from people’s lives and nobody went looking for them, they served no one and therefore were eliminated. Ziva worried that would happen to her if she outlived her usefulness. She would fade away into memories, and nothingness, and no one would bother to look for her.
Ziva was especially useful when it came to chemistry. It was something she could pick up quickly. Give her a textbook and a day and she would be able to tell you anything that was in the book, right down to the molecular structure of whatever chemical it was you asked her about. Ziva at first thought it was convenient to know this when her power was to generate poison, but she soon realized it had nothing to do with luck and everything to do with her abilities.
Her father would rent her out to people who needed her usefulness. These people often didn’t have a moral code outside of the desire to save people who were useful to them. In that way, she supposed, she was lucky. She would never not be useful as long as she had her powers, and therefore these people wouldn’t kill her when they were done with her. She always assumed that her father would never let that happen anyway, but something about him made her occasionally doubt that.
Growing up in the Middle East left Ziva busy. Everyone wanted her poison for an assassination, or a murder of the regular kind, or even just something to make someone violently ill and incapacitated for a couple of days. Ziva made all the poisons they requested, remembering that if she weren’t useful, then there wouldn’t be much point in her going on. She longed to stay at her father’s side, and maybe one day gain his approval.
Her confidante in all of this was her half-brother, Ari. He was always disgusted with what their father would force her to do, and he’d say that their father was a despicable man, who no one would miss once he died. After all, the only use he had was giving the both of them their powers. Ziva always urged Ari to take the words back, fearing that if someone overheard them, Ari would be taken away. But he never did take it back, not after their sister Tali was killed in a bombing. He blamed the whole world for her death, but he especially blamed their father, and Ziva worried about when Ari would stop idly blaming people for his misfortunes and start hurting others because of it.
When Ari attacked their father and ran, Ziva naturally followed him. Even if it meant her father wouldn’t approve of her, Ziva cared more for Ari than she did anyone else in her family after Tali died.
Ziva found Ari in America, which she found more than a little strange. After all, a lot of Western countries, including America, had banned the use of superpowers. But, she considered, it might be for the best. If Ari went to a place where he couldn’t use his powers, he couldn’t lash out at anyone and everyone he hated. She hoped that the reason he came here was to go somewhere where neither of their “services” would be called on, and not because he was going after whoever he blamed for Tali’s death.
Clayton was seven when he found out about his powers. And in this case, found out about his powers meant less teleporting across the world or discovering that he could make his friends stretch farther than they could otherwise with their superpowers, and more that not everyone in the world could hear any language at all, in the world, made up or real, and automatically know what was being said.
He didn’t tell anyone about his “newfound” ability, knowing that supers were not widely accepted, and he was ostracized by his foster family enough. If they found out he had powers, they’d send him back to the orphanage, and no one would ever want to adopt him, because his powers would be on record. Instead, he eavesdropped.
His foster parents preferred to talk about how stupid and incompetent he was in French. His so-called “friends” at school would mutter what a weirdo he was in Spanish. And he used his abilities to sign to the one kid who thought he was an okay guy, who was Deaf and preferred signing to trying to talk and read lips.
Still, not having a moment to himself without someone trying to alienate him in some way or form left him desperate for any sort of escape he had. And as soon as he was eighteen, he left his abusive foster parents’ house and never looked back. He felt bad for the kid who would get put there next, but there was nothing he could do about it now.
He got a small job, enough for rent just outside the city. Any money he earned that didn’t go to basic necessities, went to the pub on the nearest street corner, where he would lose himself down any bottle the bartender would give him.
Everyone there knew him by name, and a few knew when he would be coming from work or not by the way he dressed. He knew that was a problem, but couldn’t bring himself to care. Not when he finally had an escape, not when he could just go to bed and fall asleep and not remember his miserable nights alone.
Soon after he had turned twenty, though, he came across a problem. People in the bar were giving him funny looks and telling him that he got his languages mixed up when he was intoxicated. Sometimes he’d speak English, sometimes French, and once he even had a conversation with someone in Russian, and since when was he a polyglot?
Clayton decided there and then that he was going to stop drinking. If for no one else, then for himself and the sake of his safety. He didn’t want to be found out as a super, that would basically guarantee that he was dead. So he sobered up, saved his money, and applied for a green card to America. They didn’t have any more accepting a position on supers than England did, but there was no chance of anyone knowing who he was, and there were plenty more places to hide.
And he didn’t take this second chance lightly, either. He applied for citizenship, got a job as a local translator for pamphlets, and generally kept his head down. He wasn’t going to risk being sent away just because he could speak any language. That was about the stupidest reason ever to get arrested. When everyone let him be, he felt like he could finally exhale, but it didn’t last for long.
Nick Torres was never alone, and he hated it. Whether he was at home, at school, or outside somewhere between the two, there was always someone with eyes on him. He didn’t mind when the eyes were from his little sister Lucia, but if they were the neighborhood kids, or the bullies at school, or even his parents, it would drive him stir-crazy to have everyone observing him. Almost like he was a ticking time bomb, and no one knew when he was going to go off, so they were watching for when they needed to take cover.
Being that explosive was not a fun thing. Yes, he had a temper. Yes, sometimes it got the better of him. But in times like this, where he had everything under control, he wished that everyone could just mind their own business and let him do what he wanted. He wasn’t stupid enough to go into the gangs’ territories a couple blocks away, so why couldn’t he walk down to the grocery store and pick up some eggs for dinner by himself?
He knew why that would never be allowed by his parents, and that was because he antagonized all the bullies at his school, and they were worried he would actually be that stupid and go by the gangs to antagonize them. No matter what he told them, his actions would always speak louder than words.
But he was going through a lot at the moment. The girl he thought he was going to marry had just been diagnosed with cancer, and her survival odds didn’t look great. He had been snarling more than normal, not wanting anyone else to be as miserable as he was, and as such he had a much lower tolerance for bullies than normal.
Sometimes, he would stay after school to practice basketball on the court, shooting hoops on autopilot and letting his brain think on its own. He was doing just that when a group of bullies from several different grades came over to him, looking like the last thing they wanted to do was talk. Nick was only in the ninth grade, but he wasn’t naive. He knew trouble when it was coming towards him. That didn’t mean he was going to roll over for these guys, though. “Do you mind?” he asked, sparing them only a side glance. “I’m a bit busy, here.”
“Actually, we do mind, Torres,” the head bully sneered. “Who gives you the right to mess with us?”
“Well, I don’t know. Who gave you the right to mess with all the kids you decide to pick on?” Nick asked, throwing another shot into the hoop and running up to catch the ball. He turned around, ball in hand, to find the bullies starting to circle him, like wolves tracking down prey.
His stomach started to sink as the bullies came closer. He could feel the sun burning his skin, the sweat trickling down his neck from his exercise. His muscles tensed up, and with no where for the energy to go but outward, he shoved the head bully away from him, making him fly backwards and land on his backside five feet away. Did I just?! But...I couldn’t have! I’m not a super! Nick stared in shock at how far he had pushed the bully.
He didn’t have long to be shocked about this development, however, because now the other bullies were coming towards him, and fast. He dropped the ball and let it bounce away, muscles tensed before he started to pummel anyone who got too close to him. As he fought, he could feel the sun burning into him, and he remembered his biology class, how plants could turn sunlight into energy, and it clicked in his mind, that’s what he was doing.
As soon as all the bullies were on the ground, Nick took his book bag and took his ball and ran, using the sunlight to power his legs to keep moving, even when they were screaming for him to stop. He ran all the way home, and refused to tell his mother how he scraped up his knuckles. The only person he told was Lucia, and he made her promise not to tell anyone else.
The bullies all left Nick alone from then on, and wouldn’t pick on anyone if he was there to see. Well, good. He only got his powers from UV light, but they didn’t have to know that. All they had to know was that he was freaky strong, and wouldn’t take them lying down.
Jimmy Palmer had a secret. It wasn’t a little secret, but it wasn’t something that he was exactly going to be killed over. He was a very, very reckless child. He would run after animals into the woods, or he’d climb trees that were a bit too high and a bit too dead to be climbed in, or he’d forget to look both ways before crossing the street, because he was in the middle of an epic game of tag, and he didn’t intend to lose.
Most of his friends when he was growing up knew this. They found it funny how sometimes he might sprain his ankle, but not learn his lesson and two weeks later do the exact same thing that made him sprain his ankle in the first place. It made his parents worry sick about him, and he never understood the big fuss. After all, he hardly ever broke a bone, and he never died from what he was doing, so what was the big deal?
Jimmy was a super, but he never told anyone, not even his parents, what his power was. After all, the last place you would look for a super was in a reckless child whose parents had no clue what their son could do if he really tried. So he hid in plain sight, made friends all throughout his years in elementary school, and was generally well-liked by the school’s population, even if he was an egghead who didn’t know his own limits.
The secret Jimmy had was like the Mother of All Secrets. Everyone had a MoAS, but Jimmy’s could change the entire world if people knew it. So he resolved to never let it slip.
Middle school for Jimmy meant that he got quieter, more withdrawn, and more awkward. He was still mostly liked by his peers, but they found him more strange than endearing, and those who weren’t close to him mostly left him to himself and his good friends. As the years went on, and Jimmy met knew people, he would tell them stories about when he was a kid, but they rarely believed him. After all, how could this quiet guy run after a fox in the middle of the day into the woods, and not come back with a single scratch or bite mark?
He let them think his stories were made up, despite them all being true. After all, if they thought he was just exaggerating, it kept his secret from coming to light. And that was the safest thing for him and his family.
Now he had just finished his final year of college, one year ahead of his peers, he noted with some pride, and he applied for medical school, got in, and resolved to work for the local ME when he wasn’t doing his classes. After all, his dream was to help find justice for the dead.
His new boss, Doctor Mallard, didn’t seem like the type to dismiss his childhood stories, but Jimmy knew he suspected something whenever Jimmy would talk about them over a body on the examination table. One day, of course, Jimmy said too much and Doctor Mallard figured out Jimmy’s secret. Not that he ever told anyone. He respected Jimmy too much to tell the world he was a super. So whenever “Ducky” (as the detectives called him) spoke to Jimmy in hushed tones, everyone just assumed they were discussing something that others shouldn’t be privy to. Everyone suspected it had something to do with supers, but no one said anything to them.
Jimmy Palmer had a secret. But he wasn’t the only one.
