TWO: ENERGY.

"Oh my gosh.."

Bree takes the words right out of my head. I have never seen a school so big, with so many mutants. Some look like us, practically human, but there are those who look nothing like us, and yet roam the halls and waltz through with pride. Like the girl with the lightning bolt scar that travels down from the right side of her face to her fingertips, or the boy with the purple eyes and, do I spy horns growing from under his hair? There is a girl that wherever she travels m, so does the dark eerie shadow. Another girl walks on the ceiling to her next class, a boy flys past, hovering on his notebooks as a platform, someone throws a ball of light to another student, causing an older student to whip her hand out in the two rowdy kid's direction, calming them instantly. I see a kid teleport, before I tell myself to stop staring.

Jay finally comes back, a few moments ago he told us that he had to go find where Charles and everyone else was, leaving the three of us to gawk at these kids like tourists. I was close to dropping my suitcase due to my weak grip. This place was beautiful.

"Okay, everyone's in the basement," he sounds out of breath, I'm guessing he took the stairs. While he tries to catch his breath, he gestures to behind the three of us, "this is Hank McCoy, we call him Beast, he'll be"-

"Why do you call him"- Scarlet stops her question when she turns around and is met face to face with a blue man covered in fur. He is grinning with a set of sharp teeth, that makes Scarlet grin back. I reach out and hold Bree's hand. "Oh, now I get it."

He clears his throat, "it's an honor to meet you girls," he puts his giant hand for us to shake. I eye his sharp nails. "I've heard nothing but great news about Pandora's three girls."

"You know our mom?" I raise my eyebrow, skeptically. I realize that he's wearing glasses, and, a suit... a blazer and nice slacks.

What the hell is going on? I think to myself.

"Of course, your mother, along with a few of the other mutants fought together, alongside myself back in the day."

Right. I forgot she was an X-Men before they were called X-Men, that was before she decided she wanted to have kids.

I shake Hank's hand, grinning, and tell him, "it's nice to meet you as well. I'm Angelina. You can call me Lina." He went down the line of my sisters, shaking Bree's hands next.

"I'm Sabrina, but everyone calls me, Bree," she laughs awkwardly as she shakes his hand, then raises her eyebrows at contact. "Oh. Wow. You do a lot for mutant rights. You've met the president?"

He pulls away, his eyes squinting. "Another telepath, I presume."

"Empath," she corrects him.

"Well, while the X-Men fight the good fight on the ground, some of us have to fight the good fight upstairs, too," he explains while moving down the line and shaking Scarlet's confident hand. "You must be Scarlet. I remember your mother calling the school, telling Charles that if you were to burn one more thing she'd be shipping you right in Charles' office, to learn your ABCs."

"That's me," she beams with excitement.

Jay clears his throat, "uh, sorry to interrupt the pow-wow, but everyone is waiting downstairs. I know for a fact Logan doesn't like to wait"-

"Oh, are you sure they should meet Logan on their first day?" Hank whispers loudly to Jay, he squints his eyes, "we don't want to scare them off."

Jay rolls his eyes, "they'll be fine, it'll be fine," he tells us, escorting us down the hall while Hank grabs our bags and heads off in the opposite direction.

"Uh, who is Logan and why would he scare us off?" I ask Jay as the four of us shuffle into an elevator at the end of the hall.

"No reason," he sighs, pushing the button labeled X, and the doors close. "He's.. just a bit of an animal."

"So you guys have the same powers?" Scarlet pipes up while the elevator descends.

Jay scratches his head and looks at the ceiling of the elevator, "not exactly..," he sighs, "look, I'm not gonna lie, my brain is still fried from the revelation of your guy's dad's"- he gets a groan from the three of us, an annoyed 'really!?' from Scarlet before he continues - "so I'm not really in the headspace to be answering so many questions all at once."

"Uh-huh, whatever you say, Tarzan," Scarlet mutters under her breath with her arms crossed.

To my surprise, Jay chuckles as the elevator doors slide open, "hah, Tarzan. That's a good one."

The basement is an entirely different world in comparison to the main level we just descended from. The hallways are metallic, slick with silver walls. I exhale, a little shakily, feeling reality finally start to set in. This was it. I am about to become a superhero. An X-Men. I have powers. I'm a mutant! Finally!

Just don't mess up and you'll be fine, I tell myself, crossing my arms in front of my chest as I walk beside the small group composed of me, Bree, Scarlet, and Jay - who has a rushed pep in his step. My anxious thoughts continue to cloud my thoughts, the closer we come to reaching our destination. Bree comes up beside me, setting a comforting hand on my shoulder and easing my worries, "Hey. You're okay, Lina. Everything is going to be fine. We're here all together, we're not going anywhere."

I exhale, turning to smile at Bree and kiss her forehead. "Love you, Bree," she giggles, scrunching her face up. Scarlet slams into my side and wraps her arm around my shoulder in a sluggish manner.

"Stop bonding without me, Losers," she ruffles both of heads, messing up our hair. "Let me guess, you're getting cold feet, Lina?"

I eye her devilishly. "Well, what do you expect? I find out I have powers and the next day I'm already training to be a superhero!"

Scarlet rolls her eyes, "I love you, sis, I really do, but don't you ever get tired of thinking too much? You've wanted this your whole life, right?" She waits for my nod, encouraging her to continue. "Right. So stop thinking so much about the micro 'what ifs' you create in that beautiful brain of yours, and focus on the now! You're here. You have powers! Own it." She exhales, turning from where she had turned into our little huddle of inspiration. "Plus, you should be jumping for joy, we never have to go back to that wretched high school. This place is so much better. I mean did you see those kids upstairs? It was beautiful."

All I can do is laugh, as well as Bree who finally let me go, "yeah, and you never have to put up with Sebastian anymore. That relationship didn't seem like it was going anywhere but out the door," Scarlet and I raise an eyebrow due to shock. She purses her lips only to shrug, "it is the truth."

Jay sighs out of relief and whispers, "thank you, we finally made it," to himself before pushing the door open.

The sight I was seeing was not at all what I was expecting.

Charles is the first face I recognize, but I have yet to  ever seen such a look of annoyance compared to the one I'm staring at now, on his face. He's sitting behind his desk, his hands seem to be massaging away a migraine. I look to my right and try to keep my eyes from bugging out of my head. There's half of a boy's body sticking out of the wall. All we can see is the ass and legs, which from time to time either stomp the ground or start up in running place, of a mystery boy. I can hear muffled voices from the other side of the wall.

There's a man on our side of the wall with red glasses who tries pulling the stuck legs in his direction, resulting in a loud noise from the other side, which I presume to be the owner of the legs telling the man to stop.

When Charles sees us he grins, "girls, please, join us, we were just, finishing up." He then turns to the bottom half of the body. "All right, that's enough, Romeo, I'll take it from here."

While my sisters and I are taking a seat in the scattered seats around the room, a boy falls backwards through the wall, sending the man with red glasses into Bree's chair. He hits her chair with a thud and his glasses slap on the floor.

"Oh, my bad," Bree mutters as the door opens and strangers file in. The man who fell on her chair is crouched on the floor, his eyes shut tight as he feels around the room.

"Uh, could you hand me my glasses?" He's talking to Bree, his eyes remaining shut.

She looks at him, then to us, then to his glasses that are on the ground. "Uh, sure," she reaches down and sets the red shades in his palm, "here you go," he takes them from her, slips them on, and retreats to the back of the room.

"Logan, the door," Charles instructs the last person to walk in. I turn back in my chair, I don't get a good look of the guy because he's shutting the door, but I can smell his cigar from where I'm sitting. "Now that we have everyone back together in one piece"- his eyes cut to someone who sat behind me. I turn my head and follow Charles' playful icy stare to the boy who's skin complexion is almost as dark as my own, but his grin is a lot goofier on his face than mine. I'm looking at him, trying to piece together what Charles is talking about, then I look down and recognize the boy's legs, and if he stood he'd probably have the same ass that was stuck in the wall not too long ago. He catches me staring at his grin disappears, after he does a quick double-take at my face. "As I was saying, it's time we introduce ourselves to the newest recruits to the X-Men. Everyone, meet Angelina, Scarlet, and Sabrina Smith - they are our newest addition to the team."

"Hi."

"Hey."

A grunt.

"Hello."

"Welcome."

"Uh-huh."

Charles' eyes don't leave his welcome wagon, as he raises his brows in disbelief. "I think we can do a little better than a few hellos for these girls, they've come a long way and have waited even longer for this moment."

"Look, Charles, if I knew this would be a welcoming party I would've brought a cake," I turn around to see that the boy who was stuck in the wall was speaking. "Just tell us our new teams so we can get out of here." When he gets a disapproving groan from Charles, he groans and adds a quick, "please."

"Thank you for volunteering to go first; announce your name and your mutation." Charles nods his head to the boy.

I'm still staring when his jaw ticks out of annoyance. But nevertheless he stands, or well, he puts his feet in his chair and looks around the room. He speaks in a monotoned voice, "I'm Romeo."

Before he can continue Jay pipes up in an exact monotoned voice and replies, "hi Romeo."

This makes Romeo snicker, before he shakes his head, but not the cheesy grin plastered on his face. He must've thought that was really funny, even though no one, besides Jay, laughs. "Uh, let's see, my mutation? Aura manipulation, and as of this morning, intangibility. Or so I thought." That explains the wall epidemic, he had gotten halfway through the wall and then got stuck.

"You'll get it Romeo, in time," Charles promises as Romeo plops back down in his seat.

"Time schmime," he mutters playing with the ends of his shirt before craning his neck to scout out the next volunteer.

A silence falls over the room, we each wait for someone else to speak. I could hear the clouds of smoke puff from Logan's mouth in the back of the room. Fear makes me look forward, to not even so much as to think to look in the back of the room.

"I guess I'll go." Jay pipes up from the right corner of the room. He's leaning on a counter and his shoulder rests against the wall. "I'm Jay, pretty sure everyone knows that," he chuckles lightly, then stretches his arms above his head, "and my mutation is zoolinguism and animal control." He pronounces every syllable in the word zoolinguism.

"Thank you, Jay," Charles nods his head then scans the room before pinpointing his next volunteer. "Ah, Carrie, let's hear from you next."

I turn around and finally notice a girl sitting in the midst of a shadow from the room. She's wearing a long black skirt, and her hair is covering her face until she moves it behind her ears and reveals a white, pretty face. Her eyes dart from our faces before she looks down at the ground again, takes a deep breath and says, "my name is Carrie. Uh, Carrie Black. And my mutation is Dark Energy Manipulation, but most people like to call it Dark Force."

Dark Force? That sounded like something from Star Wars, I ponder, turning back around in my chair and expecting that it was my time to share. However, Charles looks to the back of the room instead, and juts his index finger out. "Logan," all eyes turn back to the mysterious man in the back of the room, "the floor is all yours. And while you're at it, put that thing out, you know there's no smoking allowed in here."

He relit his cigar, probably just to piss of Charles, and spoke through his clouds of smoke. "Name's Logan. They call me Wolverine. I get angry, don't piss me off." He pops his cigar back in his mouth after his very brief explanation.

Charles groan with annoyance, and moves down the line of adults in the back of the room. Next to Logan was a coffee skinned woman with long white hair, she was the next to speak. "My name is Ororo, but everyone here calls me Storm. Where I'm from, they called me a weather witch, because I can control the weather."

All eyes follow down the line, to the woman with shoulder-length red hair. She fixes her glasses all while brushing off her white pharmacist's jacket. "Hello, I'm Jean Grey. Like Charles, I'm a telepath, and today I'll be running a few tests on the three of you this afternoon." Her eyes scan over me and my sisters.

My eyebrow raises. "What kind of tests?" The three of us ask in accidental unison.

Jean chuckles. "Just drawing blood in hopes of studying your powers, a quick MRI test, nothing too crazy."

"We don't do well with crazy," Scarlet mutters before the man beside Jean clears his throat and adjusts his red glasses.

"I'm Scott. Scott Summers. To the X-Men, I'm Cyclops. I can't take my sunglasses or visors off, and uh, yeah, that's me," he gives us a straight-line smile, a nod of the head and returns to his spot on the wall.

"So, is the part when you tell us our"-

"Patience, Romeo," Charles cuts off Romeo's words before he can finish whatever he was going to say. "I will announce teams after the girls have completed their rounds with Jean, Logan and I."

Romeo slumps in his seat, while rolling his eyes, he scoffs, "great. Now we have to wait for the PowerPuff Girls to finish interrogation."

"PowerPuff Girls..?" I mutter to my sisters.

Scarlet glares, then looks at the two of us, "that would make me Buttercup, right?"

"Well you're definitely not Bubbles," Bree informs Scarlet with a very bubbly demeanor. She looks at the two of us, "Lina is definitely Blossom, I'm Bubbles, and you're most definitely Buttercup."

Charles clearers his throat, stopping the the conversation. "Now that we're all acquainted, let's start with the tests. X-Men, you're dismissed. Girls, you will be rotating stations. From Jean in the lab, Logan in the training room and in here with me. I'll start with Angelina, Scarlet go with Jean, and Bree"-

"I'll go with Logan," she finishes his thought and springs to her feet. "Do we get a change of clothes?" She glances down at her own sweatpants.

"Oh, I almost forgot," Charles shakes his head and gestures to the door, "feel free to have a change of clothes before staring. Training Suits are in the locker rooms down the hall and to the left. Help yourself."

"Thank you," Bree beams as the three of us file out of the room, not too long after the other three kids who introduced themselves earlier. I could hear them chatting while we made our way down the hall, a large part of this was due to how open the hallways are - they're prone to echoes.

"Hm, I don't know.. the redhead might be with Carrie," I hear the boy who introduced himself as Romeo not too long ago.

Jay snickers. "Dude, you don't even know her powers."

"No, but I know mine. And mine tell me that her aura would pair wonderfully with Carrie's. Have you ever mixed black and green together? The color is quite beautiful, actually."

We approach the locker room, and before I completely walk in, I catch myself turning around to say something to Romeo. To tell him to explain why he has such a bad attitude towards me and my sisters. But when I turn and face him, it's like all my energy is drained, and pulls me through the door of the locker room and on my ass. I hear Romeo's booming laugh from the hallway and I know he's the culprit for my sudden loss of energy.

"Hey..!" I yell, wanting to sound angry and threatening, but simply choke out a pleading whimper. Bree is by my side in a second, setting her hands on my body, reading the situation.

"What's wrong with her?" Scarlet is trying to hide her panic in her voice with humor. Her laugh is a little too airy.

Bree sets her hands on my forehead and chest before releasing her all too well-knowing healing sensation through my body. "That kid Romeo is using his power on her."

That's all Scarlet needed to hear to fix her worry. "I'll kill him," she promises, ready to storm out of the room.

Bree sticks her foot out, shielding Scarlet's escape. "Scar. Calm down. Lina's fine. She's just.. really tired. It's weird, I can sense how exhausted her body is. He.. just messed with her energy. I can't restore energy, I can just ease pain." I feel her hands shift on me as she looks down at me. "Is this even helping Lina? I don't exactly know what I'm doing."

This was worse than when I ran that marathon with Mom. If I close my eyes, I know I will fall asleep, and I'm not sure when and if I'll wake up. Bree's powers were soothing me to sleep at this point. I groan, raising a hand to her arm to tell her stop and shake my head, "not.. not helping. I'm.. about to fall asleep. My body feels like.. like a ton of bricks." I try to roll over, only to ache all over and groan, "this is so stupid..!" I yell, trying to place my hands on the ground and prop myself up. My arms give out and I face plant the ground. I exhale, annoyed.

"Come on, let's get her up," Bree suggests, reaching down and grabbing my arm.

Scarlet doesn't move, I see her shoe in my peripheral vision, her arms tightly crossed in front of her chest, "actually, I have a better idea. Stay here, I'll be back." She instructs Bree before making a beeline out the door.

"Scar!" Bree calls after her, waits, then gives up. "She won't do anything stupid," she tries convincing herself. I laugh at that.

In Scar's absence, Bree takes it upon herself to get dressed. The suits Charles instructed for us to wear were nothing but a matching gray spandex sleeveless top in pair with tight shorts that stop right above our knees. She was pulling her long hair in a ponytail, I'm leaning against the wall, courtesy of Bree, when Scarlet returned with Romeo. He still has the bad attitude look on his face, and when I see him all I can do is seethe with anger. Bree steps away from the mirror and raises an eyebrow. "Um, fix her, please!"

Romeo drags out a long sigh before crouching down to my height. I'm looking at the smirk on his face, the stupid glint in his eyes. He places his hand on my shoulder and the other against my jaw. We stay in this position for a few moments, and the moment I feel the heavy weight lift from my shoulders, I shove Romeo off of me and stand to my feet, ignoring my pins and needles.

"What the hell did I ever do to you!?" I screech, fixating my burning glare into his eyes.

He laughs at my reaction, making me even more fired up. "Calm down, Princess, you've never heard of a joke?"

"A joke..?" I let out a dry laugh, glaring even tighter, I'm staring at him through the faint slits of my eyelids. "I'll show you a joke..," I raise both my hands to attack him, not thinking clearly through my movements, not really thinking at all due to my anger. But when I hear his cut of breath I step back and freeze. Like him. Because he's frozen. His facial expression is a mix of his stupid smirk and confusion. He's not moving an inch. He's not talking, he's not breathing, he's not blinking. He's frozen.

I look down at my hands at the exact moment Bree and Scarlet come to my side.

"Did you do this..?" Scarlet gestures to the statue that is now Romeo, not too far from our huddle.

"Yeah," I'm still looking at my hands, "I mean I think so."

"Well, hurry up and unfreeze him..!" Bree takes my hands in hers and aims them at Romeo. I snatch my hands out of her own.

"It doesn't work like that," I tell her in an irritated manner.

"Well then how does it work?" Bree raises her eyebrow, resting her hands on her hips.

I look back down at my hands, "well, obviously when I move my hands things freeze.. and I'm guessing I have to get angry? Or scared? Like earlier at the house with the book." Or maybe it was happy? Like when I first froze Bree.

Scarlet pauses from stripping out of her t-shirt to add, "you know, emotions are almost always the trigger to tapping into one's powers."

"Hm, thanks," I mutter then think to myself, If only it were that easy.

I squint at Romeo and flex my hands out at him. Nothing. I shake my hands in his face. Still frozen. I try to snap. Not even a blink. "I can't say I didn't try," I drop my hands to my side.

"Not like the ass doesn't deserve it," Scarlet holds her folded clothes in her arms as she marches over to his statue and gives him a nasty look. "Now he gets a taste of his own medicine."

Bree sighs, seeing as though there's no use of arguing and grabs her own clothes, "come on, Lina, get dressed we have to go."

"Right," I exhale going into the room next door and grabbing a training suit. I strip it on in lightning speed, trying to hurry up and not waste any more time. I take off my pants, skimming them down my legs, then hike my underwear up over my hips the way I like to keep them. My socks are peeled off by my quick fingers before I snake up my body and strip off my final layers. When I'm done, I walk out with my clothes in my hands, my training suit on my body. Bree raises her eyebrow and jumps a little, in shock.

"You got dressed that fast?"

I glance at the clock on the wall. She's right. That was fast. Only three seconds had passed since I left the room. "Wait, what"-

"Oh what the hell..!?" Romeo unfreezes all of a sudden, and stumbles back into the land of the moving. He looks from Scarlet who's standing in the door way, Bree who is next to him, and finally to me, who's the one smirking now. He whips his head from me to my sisters, then to our clothes then back to me. "What the hell did you do to me?"

I snicker, waltzing passed him. "Calm down, Princess, you've never heard of a joke?"

Scarlet laughs, then gives me a high five as I walk out the door, "nice one!"

Bree is thinking hard beside me, I can practically see steam spewing out her ears as we walk side by side down the hallway. "What's on your mind?"

"I'm just trying to track your development. You know, with your powers," she informs me, then begins to list them off, "so far you're able to travel about twelve hours back in time, so that's time travel, you're able to slow things down to the extreme, and speed them up - like when you froze Romeo, and then a minute later when you were getting dressed. You took one second to get dressed when it usually takes one minute."

I shrug, "what can I say? I'm a bit of a badass."

We do as we were instructed by Charles, Bree starts with Logan in the training room, Scarlet goes with Jean in the lab, and I start with Charles in his office. I step inside and he looks up with his usual, welcoming smile, "close the door, please."

"Oh, right." I mumble shutting the door before going back to the now only chair that's in front of his own desk. I sit down and set my hands on my knees. Charles folds his hands in front of his mouth, looking me in the eyes. I stare back at him until I feel too awkward. I'm looking at a picture of a younger pair of two men on his desk when I finally ask, "are you reading my mind?"

"Yes, I apologize for not asking"-

"Oh, no, it's okay, I'm used to it, with Bree," I stopped trying to force away my thoughts in middle school when Bree would try and squeeze out every detail about the boy I had a crush on. "Anything specific you want me to think about?"

"Yes, I'm curious, what it was like to time travel, what happened then?"

I raise an eyebrow, thinking back to this morning, or well, my first morning. "I woke up late, went to school, then we went to homecoming and I got into a fight with Sebastian, and then everything sorta just rewinded itself back to this morning." I snap out of my memory and grin at Charles, then give him a shrug.

"Ah," he clicks his tongue and moves from behind his chair en route to in front of where I was sitting. "Angelina, I'm starting to get a better understanding of your powers. You posses a type of chronokensis I haven't come upon in a long while. You see, it's like you said, your day rewinded yesterday. Your powers act as a cassette player. Your life right now, it's a song - the cassette itself - and with your powers you're able to, in theory, pause the song - meaning stop time. Rewind, go back in time - who's to say how far? - and maybe even fast forward."

My mind goes blank. When I comprehend what he's told me, I gasp. "You mean like travel- travel to the future?"

Charles nods, a gleam of hope in his eye.

Shock morphs to fear too quickly in the back of my mind. "But, if I were to jump forward in time, would I be able to get back?"

"Oh, Angelina, let's not waste time thinking of such horrid things. First, we must focus on how to control these powers of yours, yes?"

I nod, in full agreement. "Yes."

Next, I stride down the hall to meet Jean Grey in the laboratory. Her back is facing me when I come in, but I knock on the door in a polite manner, in fear of scaring her.

"I heard you come down the hall," she informs me, "come on in, I know you won't bite." She puts on hand sanitizer before spinning around then gesturing me to sit on the examining table. I hop on with a chuckle.

"Right, telepath," I gesture to my own head, then chuckle. "Wait until you meet Bree."

"Oh, I'm looking forward to it," she chuckles with me then sets her hands on her hips. "Okay so first I'm going to need to draw some blood from you. Are you allergic to any chemicals?"

"No," I answer as she peels on a fresh set of gloves.

"Do you get faint at the sight of blood?"

I think of the last time I saw someone bleed. "I do not."

"Great," she grins at me then turns her head to glare at the set of needles across the room. A new needle hovers across the room before laying into the center of her hand, "so, Lina, how's Pandora doing?"

I fight a smirk. "Mom's good. Still, Mom, I guess," I furrow my eyebrows, trying to think of a time when Mom mentioned a Jean Grey during her X-Men days.

"Your mom joined the team while I was on a.. little bit of a superhero break, if you will," she briefly states before swabbing my veins with an alcohol wipe. "That's probably why she didn't mention me."

"Huh," I hum, thinking she's probably right, and not sure what else to really say.

She manages to stir up conversation. "So you can travel through time..? What's that like?"

I wince when she pierces my skin, "well, I've only done it once so far, but, it's really confusing. And it's one hell of a headache afterwards."

"Tell me about it," she laughs while the small vile begins to pool with blood. "But don't worry, the professor will help you get a grip on your powers," she seals off the blood and pulls the needle back out.

"Thanks," I tell her rubbing my arm and taking a band aid that she offers. "And I go to Logan right outside these doors?" I gesture to the black double doors.

Only a few minutes later, I was in the training room down the hall, my hand blowing the smoke from my eyesight that was clouding the room. I cough, waving the all too familiar thick scent fill my lungs. Once I round the corner, I see Scarlet pinned down on her back, a pair of strong hands pressing her shoulders into the mat beneath her back. Logan was pinning her down, a cigar in between his smirk. The look in Scarlet's eyes was all too familiar. I have only seen that look in her eye once, and I was inches from being burned to a crisp.

The second I saw her fists flaring up, I storm between the two of them, or try before Logan rose a cautious hand in my direction. "I can handle it."

"Uh, no you can't. I know you think you can, but Scar here is a loose canon, and you have about point five seconds before"-

His groan was right on cue, followed by him jumping back. Scarlet props herself up from where she was pinned only moments ago, her palms burning the mat beneath her. I sigh, setting a hand on my forehead, shaking my head, "I did warn you."

To my surprise Logan only laughs, a bellowing deep chuckle in his stomach, making me believe that he truly was a mad man. "Scar, get up, cool off, and step away from the crazy man."

Scarlet exhales, and just like that her sign of combustion fades away. She exhales, brushing me off only to shoot a glare into Logan's back. "I told you I always get back up."

When it's just Logan and I, standing across from the other in the now hazy training room, I know that one of us should probably speak. I jump the gun, "what exactly did you say to my little sister?"

"So I was right, you are the oldest." Logan walks over to the corner to light another cigar.

It's weird. The atmosphere. I thought we were supposed to be - what's the word? - sparring? But he's just wasting time, trying to start casual conversation. I think. "Yeah, it goes Bree, Scarlet, then me, from youngest to oldest." I raise my chin to watch him puff yet another puff of smoke, "Hey, you know, those things'll kill you."

He laughs as if I have told some joke. "So, come on," he sighs, pricking the cigar from his mouth to rest his hands on his hips. "Hit me with your best shot."

We fight for what feels like merely seconds to me, mostly because I keep slowing him down his attacks. I realize that when I throw my hands out, in a cautious motion I'm able to slow him down. My hands are my key, the two of us figure that out around the same time, because when he unfreezes, he aims straight for my hands, gripping them and holding them behind my back. One hand has a steel grasp on my hands, the other puts his cigar back in his mouth. "Your hands are your Achilles. You can't stop me without them?"

I try and budge free with what fight and strength I do not possess. My efforts are soon stalled, "okay. I give."

He releases me so abruptly I stumble forward, and before I can leave he calls out to me. "You need to learn self defense, maybe how to use a weapon if you're a quick learner. Your power isn't active so there's another weakness!"

I blow a loose strand of hair from my face, "gee, thanks."