07-21-2009, 10:06 PM
Legendary Academy Incident Reports:
Double Trouble
by Sofaspud
"I'm truly very sorry about this," the vice-principal of Atlas Park Regional High School said. He cast a nervous glance at the two redheads
visible through the window separating the principal's office from the waiting room. The young ladies were twins, that much was obvious. One sat calmly,
regarding the principal's office with a thoughtful, calculating look on her face; the other scowled and fidgeted in her seat, alternating between digging
at the carpet with the toe of her sneakers and joining her sister in silent contemplation.
"We've tried to make allowances for them," the man continued quietly. "But, simply put, Mr. Sparks... we've reached the end of what we
can do. And it's not just because of this latest incident. It's everything. The past semester has been... well, you've been to the
conferences. You understand, I'm sure."
"I'm sure I don't understand, actually." The other occupant of the room, the twins' father, said quietly but with force.
"Last I checked, this is Paragon City. I'd be surprised if you didn't have super-powered high school students coming out of your ears. Surely
you can handle a little lab accident."
"The difference being that it wasn't accidental. They deliberately engaged in unsupervised and, might I add, completely unethical, experimentation.
On each other, which is bad enough, but on their peers as well!"
"Nobody was harmed..."
"That's hardly the point. They might have been. Your daughters are very lucky that they weren't." The vice-principal shook his
head. "Look, Mr. Sparks, there's simply no option. They're being permanently expelled. This meeting isn't going to change that. I'm
here to help you find alternatives. Home schooling, perhaps, or a tutor. There are many available, including some with abilities that could... lessen the
impact, should your daughters' tendencies land them in trouble again. There are private schools. They have places to go... but here isn't one of
them."
George Sparks scowled at the man behind the desk, but his heart wasn't truly in it. He knew the administrator was correct. As excellent as it was, Park
High (as it was colloquially referred to) wasn't enough, anymore.
"Fine," he heard himself say. "Let me see what you've got."
"Dad looks pissed," Amanda Sparks observed quietly from where they sat cooling their heels in the waiting room.
"Yeah," Melissa replied.
"Think this is about the thing with the hamsters?"
"... I don't think so. Dad would be a lot more upset if it was. I think it's about the biology lab."
"Oh, right... that would have worked if they hadn't stopped us." Amanda sighed. "So, think we're kicked out this time?"
"Oh yeah."
"Bummer."
"Tell me about it." Melissa frowned and blew an errant strand of hair away from her eyes. "We would have totally kicked butt in the science
fair."
"Totally!" Amanda agreed. She dug at the carpet again, scowling. "The field coupler is still sitting on my bench in shop class. I got yanked
in here before I could finish."
"... you did remember to discharge it before you left, right?" Melissa raised an eyebrow at her twin.
"Well, I didn't think I'd get pulled away like that, now did I?" Amanda replied in exasperation. "It should be fine until we can pick
it up. They can't take too much longer in there, can they?"
The phone rang. The secretary finished filing her nail and picked it up on the fourth ring. She winced and held it away from her ear for a moment, then
frowned. A frightened look crossed her features, and she nodded. "Right away!" she said into the handset, and dropped it on the desk in her haste
to stand up. She crossed to the door leading to the inner office, rapped on it quickly, and went inside without waiting for a response.
Amanda and Melissa shared a glance.
"WHAT?!" The bellow shook the window and was audible in the waiting room.
"Uh-oh," the girls said in unison.
The vice-principal burst out of the office and made a beeline for the door. "Evacuate the students!" he snapped over his shoulder as he vanished
from sight. His secretary nodded frantically and tipped over a bust of Statesman that sat on a podium in the corner of his office, revealing a large red
button. She mashed it and alarms began to wail.
George Sparks came out with a grim expression on his face and looked at his daughters.
"We didn't do it," they chorused. Mirroring each other, they crossed fingers behind their backs.
"What?" George looked momentarily puzzled, then waved it off. "Oh, that. No, something about an explosion over in the shop building."
Amanda and Melissa winced. George noticed the flicker and closed his eyes. "Girls," he said reproachfully. "You didn't."
"It was just our science project!" The twins sprang to their feet.
"Yeah! And, anyway, it's not like it could actually hurt anyone!"
Melissa eyed her sister dubiously for a moment. "... er, right! What she said."
Together: "We'll take care of it, dad!"
Without waiting for permission -- or, more likely, refusal -- they sprinted out the door.
"Girls, wait--!"
"That," Melissa panted, palms braced against her knees as she gasped for breath after their full-bore sprint across campus, "does not
look like something our field coupler should generate. What did you DO, sis?"
"Don't look at me," Amanda replied. "I mean, yuck!"
"I AM THE STUDENT BODY!" howled the protoplasmic, vaguely humanoid mass of cloudy purple-gray goo wobbling like a titanic jello mold away from the
shattered shop building. It formed what might have passed for a head, with a grotesque, oozing maw slashing jaggedly across it's face serving as a mouth,
and glowing shop-lights for eyes. A section of brick wall from the shop building, bearing the school logo, burped to the surface of its chest and stayed
there.
"MY VOICE WILL BE HEARD!" It took a huge, lumbering step that shook the ground when it landed, flattening a rack of bicycles into a twisted jumble
of steel and aluminum. A fleeing student tripped and sprawled headlong in the dirt. The blob took another ponderous step and stomped on him. The girls
winced, expecting the worst... and instead, saw the startled-looking student slowly rise up through the semi-transparent leg of the creature to join other dark
blobs bobbing gently in the middle of the shuddering mass, at roughly gut level -- if such a thing could be said to have a gut.
"Sis..."
"Yeah?"
"Are those...?"
"I think so."
The twins looked at each other. "Y'know," Melissa began thoughtfully, "if we could get a sample of that thing..."
"Way ahead of you." Amanda brandished a small vial with a rubber stopper.
"ONE VOICE, ONE PURPOSE!" the creature roared, and swung an enormous arm into the maintenance shed, completely demolishing it. A spray of purple goo
splattered nearby buildings and the few students who hadn't yet fled to safety. The girls winced as the monster noticed a lab-coated teacher waving
frantically at it -- "Go away! Shoo!" -- and flicked him with an oversized finger, sending the man flying away over the campus, a diminishing wail
trailing behind.
The creature raised massive fists in the air and bellowed, "NO MORE BOOK REPORTS!" It brought both hands down on one corner of the library, crushing
it into rubble. "NO MORE BAD LUNCHES!" A titanic kick tore through the cafeteria, sending an unfortunate walk-in fridge on a high, arcing
trajectory, dispensing frozen meat as it tumbled. "NO MORE BELL CURVES!" The clock tower was wrenched free of the admin building and spiked into
the ground with a great, resounding KLONG.
"What the HELL is THAT?" cried a new voice. The girls spun around to see a Longbow officer staring at the towering goo-creature in utter bafflement.
"It calls itself The Student Body, and appears to be sentient," Melissa said helpfully.
"Yeah, and it's made of some form of gelatinous material, non-acidic... at least, nothing appears to be melting," Amanda added, using the toe of
her sneaker to nudge one of the inert blobs of goo that decorated the landscape. It wobbled.
"Plus, it can selectively absorb things through its skin. What do you think, sis? Semi-permeable membrane?"
"Possibly, though it might just be selective surface tension, like those water balls we made."
"True." Melissa turned her attention back to the thoroughly befuddled Longbow sergeant. "Anyway, it's ingested at least one, and more
likely a dozen or so, students at this point... and it has a really bad temper," she finished, scribbling in her notepad.
The man was silent for a long moment, staring at the two of them. In the background, the creature entertained itself by grabbing teachers' cars and
crushing them like soda cans, chuckling to itself heartily.
"What?" the twins asked simultaneously. "Did we stutter?"
"I, uh -- MEN!" The sergeant noticed the arrival of the rest of his squad, and turned away from the girls with relief evident in his voice.
"The giant monster eating the school! Take it out!" He chopped a hand in the direction of The Student Body and his men responded with a roar as
they charged.
"Get somewhere safe, we'll handle this!" the sergeant barked, and trotted past the twins.
"They're gonna be in trou-ble," Amanda sing-songed quietly.
"No kidding." Melissa flipped her notepad shut and pushed her glasses back up on her nose. "So... field coupler?"
"Sounds good."
They ran for the ex-shop building, as the creature responded to the Longbow attack by executing a massive bellyflop that body-pressed the first squad into the
asphalt of the administration parking lot. The ground shook in sympathy as the behemoth clambered back to its feet and roared.
"THE STUDENT BODY HAS SPOKEN! SCHOOL IS OUT... FOREVER!"
Two more squads of Longbow troops, aided by a few wandering heroes who were listening to their police scanners, attacked The Student Body as the twins ducked
into the ruined shop building.
Evangelia peered critically at herself in the mirror, tracing one fingertip along the border of her eye. Satisfied, she leaned back and grinned crookedly at
her reflection.
"Magical Girl Side Effect Nobody Told Me About Number 302," she intoned quietly. "No makeup needed to stay looking sixteen."
Her communicator chirped. "Eva? There's something on the monitor you might want to see..."
"I'm in the bathroom, Space," Eva pointed out.
"You REEEAAAALLLY wanna see this!"
Eva sighed. "On my way," she said, and headed for the command center. She nodded at the familiar faces as she passed by, making note to ask about
the ones she didn't recognize later, and entered the command center at a brisk walk. She glanced at the master monitor, sized up the situation instantly,
opened her mouth to speak, and blinked.
"Is that Park High?" she asked, staring transfixed at the image on the screen.
"A live feed, yes, ma'am," said the on-duty operator. Space Mage bounced and pointed at the screen.
"See? See? I said you'd want to see it!"
Eva smiled a little but didn't respond. Instead, she leaned forward, resting one hand gently on the duty operator's shoulder. "Who do we have in
the area?" she asked quietly, and nodded thoughtfully at the list as it sprang up on the screen.
"Okay then," she said, straightening up. "Space, you're with me--"
"Yay!"
"-- and I want messages out to the rest of the group. Giant monster attack at Park High, reinforce us as soon as you can." Eva made for the
teleporter bay at a dead sprint, even as the operator was acknowledging her orders. Space Mage floated gently along with her.
"What is it with that school?" Eva asked rhetorically as she punched in the coordinates.
"Dunno," Space replied, shrugging. "It could be that it's like a cosmic nexus, a place where the lines of power meet and intertwine and
shape history and bend space and things like that, making it pretty much a given that if weird stuff is going to happen it's going to happen there. Or it
might just be a funny coincidence." Space cocked her head curiously. "Think this is another crazy teacher?"
Years of experience with her friend's speech patterns let Eva absorb the verbal torrent without going cross-eyed, though it was still a close thing.
"Historimandias didn't get that big," she replied, taking her place on the pad. "Thankfully."
"Yeah, I don't wanna channel MySpace again," Space noted as the teleporter spun up. "It's kinda icky these days."
"Try Facebook, then," Eva quipped, and laughed at Space's expression as they vanished in sparkles of light.
"Like that's any better!"
Amanda kicked aside a shattered workbench and yelped, then spent a frustrated moment holding her toe and hopping in place.
"Use your brains, not your brawn," Melissa teased, shoving a section of broken steel pipe under a pile of rubble, then pushing down on the end in her
hand. The junk pile, easily weighing a half-ton, lifted smoothly away from the floor and fell to the side.
"Yeah, yeah, I know -- hey, I found it!" Amanda bent down and rummaged under the table she'd just overturned, rising with a grimy but still
functional device cradled in her arms. She brushed some of the dirt away from a dial and frowned. "Sis?"
"Yeah?"
Amanda turned the contraption so that the dial faced her sister. It was hovering well inside the green zone, near the bottom. "This thing isn't even
halfway to overload, yet. We should have had a few hours yet before it went off. What gives?!"
Melissa hopped over a destroyed band saw and examined the field coupler device. "Yep, you're right," she said, and poked a button. Electricity
arced and fizzled and Amanda twitched and spasmed as it coursed through her, puffing her hair into a fright wig.
"You should discharge that before you leave it lying around," Melissa noted impishly. Amanda blinked and glared at her sister as smoke gently curled
up from the frazzled ends of her hair.
"... get you for that," she muttered.
"So what happened in here, anyway?" Melissa wondered aloud as they picked their way through the rubble toward the exit.
"I don't know, but I don't think it was us, this time." Amanda waggled the field coupler for emphasis. "Not like this could have done
that anyway, but still."
"Think they've destroyed it yet?"
A screaming Longbow pilot crashed to the ground just outside the retracted rolling steel door, bouncing twice before settling to the ground with a low, pained
moan. Behind him, visible above the ruins of the building, his Chaser skiff described a wobbly triple-loop before slamming into the ground and detonating in a
belch of orange flame and black smoke.
Amanda turned to her sister with a raised eyebrow. "Nope."
"-- magician of the FUTURE, the sorceress of the SPACE AGE, defender of all that is shiny and true, I am -- EEEP!" Space Mage ducked as the massive
slimeball took a swing at where she'd been moments before. She wasn't quite fast enough, and the edge of the fist caught her, knocking her into a loop
but doing no serious damage. She wobbled back upright and put her hands on her hips, glaring through a freshly-applied mask of purple goo at the lumbering
beast.
"HEY!" she barked. "THAT WAS RUDE!" So saying, she let loose with a barrage of energy at the thing.
"Less yak, more blast," Eva cried from down near the monsters feet, where she and a half-dozen other heroes were industriously chipping away at it.
Goo sprayed away in arcs every time she swung her blade, but it was like using a knife on runny jello -- as soon as the blade passed through, the gap filled
itself in.
"Is it just me," a weary Longbow grunt muttered, "or is this thing getting bigger the longer we whack at it?"
His sergeant glared at him. "Shut up and keep shooting!"
The Student Body howled as it scattered the latest round of attackers with a massive foot stomp that set off car alarms half a mile away. The gathered heroes
rose to their feet, groaning, and set themselves to charge again. From their position behind the corner of the wrecked cafeteria, the twins watched in rapt
scientific fascination as the monster showed no signs of slowing down.
A small figure appeared at the entrance to the administration building. A straggler, a student who had been missed in the evacuation. The girls couldn't
make out his identity from this distance. The boy displayed good sense, waiting until the heroes charged the beast before scampering down the steps and making
a beeline for the nearest shelter.
He didn't make it.
The Student Body twitched and whirled, faster than its bulk should allow, as soon as the boy left the protective cover of the building. It lunged, knocking
heroes and Longbow aside like bowling pins, and made a long grab, slamming one gigantic hand down on the unfortunate boy as he sprinted for safety. There was
a roar of outrage from the gathered heroes as they renewed their assault...
... and a comprehensive gleam in the twins' eyes. The boy oozed rapidly through the creatures arm to join the other blobs bobbing gently around inside its
chest.
"It's attacking everybody --" Melissa began.
"-- but ingesting the students --" Amanda continued.
"-- and getting stronger with each student it eats --"
"-- and nothing hitting it from out here is doing any good," they finished in unison.
They looked at each other for a long moment... then down at the field coupler still cradled in Amanda's arms.
"... yeah, that'll work," they chorused, and scrambled over the wrecked wall into the remains of the cafeteria.
"Its got connectors for 110, but if we use the lines to the appliances we can quick-charge it with 220," Amanda pointed out, setting the coupler down
on a table and sweeping debris aside with her arm.
"On it!" Melissa replied from the kitchen. She appeared momentarily hauling an extension cord and a butcher knife. Amanda, meanwhile, darted down
the as-yet-undestroyed hallway to the janitor's closet, where she retrieved another extension cord and a screwdriver. She returned to the cafeteria where
Melissa had just finished stripping the plug off the end of the first cord and had gleaming copper wires exposed. The second cord was given the same
treatment.
"Is this such a hot idea?" Amanda asked, scientific curiosity briefly overridden by common sense.
"What could go wrong?" Melissa replied as she tested the power flow by tapping the bare wires together, producing a shower of sparks. She handed one
cord to Amanda and attached the other to the field coupler.
"Well, I dunno, we're turning a device that was supposed to harness the ambient dark energy of the universe for the betterment of mankind into a bomb
that might create an artificial singularity and snuff out life as we know it."
"Yeah, and?" Melissa arched an eyebrow at her sister.
"... you're right. Sorry, I'm not thinking clearly. Okay! Are we set?"
"Just about... yep!" Melissa gently slotted the screwdriver into an opening on the top of their creation and gave it a quarter twist. The device
emitted a hum and spat forth a shower of sparks, before settling down into a quiet buzzing. The charge indicator on the front jumped and began to climb
quickly as the lights dimmed.
From outside, they heard another enraged bellow and a series of small explosions.
"C'mon," they urged, watching the needle rise. It hesitated at the edge of the green zone, then crossed into yellow. Melissa glanced at Amanda.
"Now?"
"Not yet..."
"Now?" she inquired again, less calmly, as the overload indicator began to blink. The needle was teasing the red zone.
"Not yet..."
Melissa watched the needle slide into the red. The overload indicator was joined by a frantic beeping. Smoke began to rise from the connectors where the
extension cords were attached.
"Sis," Melissa began, but Amanda interrupted her.
"Now!"
They yanked the smoldering cords off the coupler, then lifted the makeshift bomb between them and carried it at a quick trot down the halls toward the admin
entrance.
"Don't drop it!" Amanda yelped as Melissa's footing slipped and the girl nearly fell.
"I'm not going to drop it," Melissa snapped back.
"That's what you said about that uranium sample. We were cleaning it up for days."
"Oh, sure, you ALWAYS bring THAT up. Like you've never dropped anything."
"I've never dropped radioactive material."
"No, you just dropped --"
"Hey, slow down, we're here!"
Melissa scowled briefly, but let the matter go. They stood inside for a moment, watching as the creature swung a flagpole like an oversized bat and whacked a
Longbow Eagle patroller nearly into orbit.
"You ready?"
"No."
"Yeah, I know what you mean."
Melissa took a deep breath. "For science?"
Amanda gulped. "For science!"
They ran down the steps.
"Eva! Look!" From her vantage point above the ground, Space pointed frantically at the admin building. Evangelia completed her swing, watching in
tired resignation as the slice she'd taken out of The Student Body closed up again, and looked where Space was indicating.
"Two more students!" she yelled, sizing up the situation instantly. "Longbow, cover them! Heroes, on me! Distract it so they can get clear!
GO!"
With renewed vigor, the gathered forces lunged back into the fray. Eva gritted her teeth and leaped, driving her blade point-first into the slimeball so hard
that her hands followed it. She braced herself and wrenched it clear in a shower of goo, completely destroying the creature's 'knee', and raised
her blade to deflect a strike that would have flattened her had she not parried it.
Her heart sank as she looked past The Student Body and saw the students -- twins, she realized -- running straight toward the fight.
The creature twitched and whirled to face them.
Her jaw dropped in shock as the girls set themselves and taunted it. "HEY, UGLY! EAT ME!" one of them cried, waving her free hand
frantically.
The creature whirled to face them as they cleared the steps.
"Just like we planned," Melissa muttered.
"Yeah, I know," Amanda replied, and raised her voice. "HEY, UGLY! EAT ME!"
"This is SO gross," Melissa noted, closing her eyes in resignation as the behemoth engulfed them.
The jello comparison had been apt, she thought absently as the outside world was suddenly cut off. It was like swimming in a pool filled with the stuff --
warm, viscous, a bit slimy, and altogether not very pleasant. Very soporific, she thought, and would have yawned had a squeeze on her hand not distracted her.
She turned her head.
Amanda pointed at her mouth and shook her head. Melissa nodded. Her eyes weren't burning, but there was no telling what would happen if she swallowed any
of this gunk. They began to slide through the ooze, vague shadows from outside and the pulsing contractions of the glop their only indicators of motion.
Maybe that's how it works, she thought clinically. Puts its victims to sleep so it can... digest them at leisure?
She shook off her ruminations as their pace slowed. The other students were here, and all of them appeared to be asleep. Or dead. She wasn't sure, they
had no time to check, and there was nothing they could do about it anyway. Amanda squeezed her hand again, and she nodded. She pushed against the goo with
difficulty, bringing the device around from under her arm to rest between them where both of them could reach it. Amanda set one hand on the screwdriver and
looked into her sister's eyes. Melissa felt herself growing faint from lack of oxygen -- she couldn't hold her breath much longer -- and forced her
fingers to crawl over the field coupler until they reached the discharge button.
Neither her nor Amanda had to speak. They nodded once at each other and screwed their eyes shut. Melissa pressed the button at the same instant that Amanda
savagely twisted the screwdriver, opening the flow gate all the way.
It suddenly became very, very dark.
"NO!" Eva yelled as The Student Body swallowed two more victims. The creature shuddered and belched, a savage grin creasing its 'face'.
"YOU ARE THE DELINQUENTS!" it cried, raising a foot to crush.
"FALL BACK!" Eva commanded the heroes around her. They scattered as the massive foot came down, toppling what remained of the cafeteria and
shattering nearby windows. The shockwave slapped everyone, heroes, Longbow, and civilians alike, into head-over-heels tumbles.
"We're too pretty to die like this," Space pointed out as she bounced and skidded to a halt next to where Eva was prying herself out of the
smashed wreckage of a car.
"Tell HIM that," Eva grumbled, wrenching herself free and resettling her tiara on her head.
"What in the world--?" A battered Longbow private pointed at the creature. "What's it doing now? Oh, god, we're dead,
we're all dead!"
"(Don't think of it as dead, just think of it as being life-challenged,)" Space muttered as everyone followed the private's pointing finger.
Lightning bolts crackled over the creature's surface as it reared back and roared -- in pain, in anger, or in sheer glee, they couldn't tell. They
blinked as the electric sizzles changed to fat purple arcs, lashing out and grounding themselves against any convenient surface.
"This might not be good," Eva mused.
"Look!" Space cried, pointing. At the heart of the beast, what could best be described as a black glow was spreading, with more crackles of that
otherworldly purple electricity coursing through it. Bubbles formed and burst on the creature's surface as it howled in what now was plainly agony.
A tremor raced through the ground, and jets of steam began to appear on The Student Body. Several of the dark blobs oozed out of the rapidly-liquefying
creature, falling to the ground and bouncing gently as the goo clinging to them acted like shock-absorbent cocoons.
"... okay, that's gross," Space noted.
The Student Body howled again. "TRAITORS!" it screamed. "NONCONFORMISTS!" A geyser of goo erupted from it, splattering the parking lot
as it clutched at its 'ears'. It opened its mouth and let out a long, drawn-out roar of rage. "GEEEEEEEEKS!"
There was a deafening explosion.
Amanda woke slowly. She felt like she should be tired, but she wasn't -- she felt full to bursting with energy, in fact, even though her body was
responding sluggishly as she struggled to sit up in bed.
"Sis?" she croaked, peering around. Without her glasses, details were fuzzy, but this didn't look like her room at home.
"I'm here," Melissa replied, her voice as harsh and grating as Amanda's own. "What did you do to us?"
Amanda suddenly felt more alert as indignation swelled within her. "Me?! Why do you always assume it was me when one of our experiments goes
wrong?" She paused and looked around, squinting at the vague shapes in the room. "Um... we were experimenting on something, right?"
"Must have been," Melissa replied sourly. "We're in the hospital. Again."
"Oh." Amanda pondered that a moment. Then, shrugging, she reached out to the nightstand beside the bed and retrieved her glasses. She rather liked
hospitals; they were so predictable. She slipped the lenses into place and blinked as her vision adjusted and everything snapped into focus. Then she
frowned. "Um... sis?"
"Yeah?"
"Why are we in a quarantine room?"
"I don't know, but I'll bet it's your fault."
Amanda stuck her tongue out at her twin. Despite their barbed comments at each other, she knew without a doubt that Melissa was just as confused as she was,
and the snark was simply a way of dealing with it. So she didn't take it seriously.
Well, not much. She made a mental note to get even later.
She raised her hand to push her glasses back up on her nose and froze as her fingers came into sight. Wispy, smoky tendrils of energy were leaking from her
skin. She glanced at Melissa and noted the same phenomenon. Melissa met her eyes and jerked, startled. "Whoa! You're oozing, sis!"
Amanda nodded in uneasy acknowledgement. "So are you." It was true; the same leakage was occurring on Melissa's body.
Memory flooded back. The Student Body. The field coupler. The feel of goo sliding over her skin (she shuddered involuntarily at the memory). The explosion.
Amanda and Melissa stared at each other for a long moment. Finally, they spoke as one:
"Guess that explains the quarantine."
They stood, swinging their feet over the edges of their respective beds and standing; Amanda on the left, Melissa on the right. They stepped closer to each
other and bent forward, peering at the tendrils as they writhed and swirled, absently holding the wires and leads taped to them in various places out of the
way as they moved.
"Quantum flux?" Amanda suggested thoughtfully.
Melissa shook her head, still staring at her sister's shoulder. "Nope, it's too stable. Superstring bridging?"
"No. Orders of magnitude too weak for that," Amanda pointed out. "I mean, the room hasn't exploded, right?" She frowned.
"Zero-point energy?"
Melissa scowled. "Please," she said sourly. "Let's stay rational, here. It's not magic, you know."
"Right, sorry." Amanda poked tentatively at one of her sister's tendrils and watched as it bent and swirled like smoke around her intruding
finger.
Melissa paused as a thought struck her. "Hey, sis?"
"Hmm?"
"Which way did you twist the screwdriver?"
"Left, of course. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosy. What does that have to -- ah, crap."
Melissa nodded. "Yep."
Amanda closed her eyes and sighed. "Great. Just great."
"You were supposed to close the flow gate, not--"
"Yeah, yeah, I know, I get it." Amanda scowled. "Look, it was dark and slimy in there and I just forgot, okay?"
"So this," Melissa stated, flicking at the wisps escaping from Amanda's nose, "would be dark matter. Er, energy. Both."
They stared at each other for a long moment... then broke out into huge grins.
"That is so cool!" they chorused.
"Going to make it difficult to walk around town," Melissa noted.
Amanda shook her head, regarding the equipment in the room with a critical eye. "Actually... I think we can fix that..."
Melissa followed her sister's glance and grinned. "Ooh, I like the way you think."
The on-duty nurse on that floor was a no-nonsense professional of fifteen years experience. Normally a nurse of her rank wouldn't be pulling monitor duty,
but she was covering for someone's vacation and actually welcomed it as a chance to get off her feet. On this floor, it was either all-hands-on-deck
insane, or mind-numbingly quiet. There was no in-between. So far it had been the mind-numbing sort of night, and she sighed happily as she leaned back in her
seat and sipped at her Diet Pepsi.
Mind-numbing it might have been, but it was a nice, relaxing kind of mind-numbing-ness, and she welcomed it after the chaos of the hero support floor where she
usually worked.
She regarded the sudden blaring of a life-support alert from quarantine room 2-B with the same sort of expression one reserves for traveling salespersons or a
visiting dog that has just piddled on the carpet. Per protocol, she flicked the monitor to the cameras in that room even as her other hand was bringing the
phone to her ear to request a code team. The picture showed nothing but static.
"On our way," the team responded before she could say anything, which was exactly as it should be -- they could see the alert too, after all; the
phone was just for redundancy.
The code team burst through the door, pulling on their haz-mat gear as they ran. Out of habit she glanced at her watch, and smiled a little in approval.
Seventeen seconds from alert, and the airlock cycled in ten, meaning they'd have responded in less than thirty overall. Not bad, not bad at all.
Room 2-B was directly across from the nurse's station, so she had a perfect view into the airlock as the team crowded in and waited for it to cycle. The
quarantine rooms were not soundproofed by design; 2-B had the privacy curtains drawn but she could hear the muffled conversation of the team quite clearly.
She counted the seconds as the lock cycled, and heard the clunk-hiss as the inner door unlatched and opened.
There was a moment of silence... then a girl's voice, bright and cheerful, echoed out into the hall.
"Oh, hey, perfect! Listen -- does one of you guys have a Leatherman, or at least just a pocketknife?"
TWO WEEKS LATER
"Hello, Mr. Sparks." Eva smiled at the man standing in the doorway before her.
George Sparks nodded pleasantly and held the door wide. "Hello! Come in, come in. We've been expecting you, miss Evangelia."
Eva chuckled as she entered. She followed George through the foyer into a small living room, where two fidgety-looking redheads perched on a couch. Eva noted
to herself that the rough containment suits they'd left the hospital in, jerry-rigged out of scrounged equipment, had been replaced by form-fitting
bodysuits with elaborate circuit traces visible where it peeked out of their normal clothing. The dark tendrils she'd been told about were not in
evidence.
The twins rose as Eva entered, and she waved a hand dismissively. "Don't stand on my account," she said, laughing.
"Girls, this is miss Evangelia," George said by way of introduction. "Miss, these are my daughters, Amanda and Melissa."
"Hello," the twins chorused dutifully.
"I won't take up your time," Eva noted pleasantly. She handed a thick manila folder to George, who accepted it with a smile and nod.
"I'm the leader of The Legendary, one of the supergroups operating in Paragon City." She shrugged modestly. "One of the larger and more
successful ones, as it happens. I was there when you two destroyed The Student Body. Very impressive." She leaned forward, her eyes twinkling.
"Very impressive, but very, very dumb."
The twins glanced at each other, then back at Eva. "Hey--" they began, but she cut them off with a wave of her hand.
"Dumb," Eva repeated, a note of command entering her voice, "but you did it for the right reasons and you didn't hesitate. That
takes courage. You had the right instincts, but you need to train them. And, your father tells me, you happen to be between schools at the moment." She
held up a hand. "I know, I know, it wasn't your fault."
Amanda and Melissa blushed lightly, but held their composure.
"The Legendary runs an academy for special students," George put in helpfully.
"We do," Eva nodded. "We don't accept just anybody. You'll have to keep your grades up, and we have rules about experiments. But I
think you'll find it a better fit for you than Park High was."
"Do we have a choice?" Amanda put in sourly. Melissa elbowed her twin, but it was obvious that she privately agreed with the sentiment.
"Not really," Eva replied pleasantly. "Of course, if you don't think you're up to the challenge of becoming a hero, well, that's
your problem. I'd be happy to help your father find a... more normal school for you to attend." The spin she put on the word spoke volumes
about what she thought of that idea.
The twins glowered at her.
"Well then." Eva grinned. "The packet has all the information you need and their provisional licenses, Mr. Sparks." She sketched a
salute at the twins, not waiting for it to be responded to. "Orientation will begin Monday morning at nine sharp." She turned to leave and paused
as if a thought had just struck her. "Oh, and, ladies? Bring your latest experiment with you, whatever it is. I'm sure Professor Geerz will have
something to say about it."
As she left, she could hear the twins' voices rising in protest, and George beginning to lay down the law. She grinned. Oh, they would be trouble, of
that she had no doubt. But Eljay needed a challenge to keep him on his toes, and this sort of thing was why they'd founded the Academy in the first place.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Double Trouble
by Sofaspud
"I'm truly very sorry about this," the vice-principal of Atlas Park Regional High School said. He cast a nervous glance at the two redheads
visible through the window separating the principal's office from the waiting room. The young ladies were twins, that much was obvious. One sat calmly,
regarding the principal's office with a thoughtful, calculating look on her face; the other scowled and fidgeted in her seat, alternating between digging
at the carpet with the toe of her sneakers and joining her sister in silent contemplation.
"We've tried to make allowances for them," the man continued quietly. "But, simply put, Mr. Sparks... we've reached the end of what we
can do. And it's not just because of this latest incident. It's everything. The past semester has been... well, you've been to the
conferences. You understand, I'm sure."
"I'm sure I don't understand, actually." The other occupant of the room, the twins' father, said quietly but with force.
"Last I checked, this is Paragon City. I'd be surprised if you didn't have super-powered high school students coming out of your ears. Surely
you can handle a little lab accident."
"The difference being that it wasn't accidental. They deliberately engaged in unsupervised and, might I add, completely unethical, experimentation.
On each other, which is bad enough, but on their peers as well!"
"Nobody was harmed..."
"That's hardly the point. They might have been. Your daughters are very lucky that they weren't." The vice-principal shook his
head. "Look, Mr. Sparks, there's simply no option. They're being permanently expelled. This meeting isn't going to change that. I'm
here to help you find alternatives. Home schooling, perhaps, or a tutor. There are many available, including some with abilities that could... lessen the
impact, should your daughters' tendencies land them in trouble again. There are private schools. They have places to go... but here isn't one of
them."
George Sparks scowled at the man behind the desk, but his heart wasn't truly in it. He knew the administrator was correct. As excellent as it was, Park
High (as it was colloquially referred to) wasn't enough, anymore.
"Fine," he heard himself say. "Let me see what you've got."
"Dad looks pissed," Amanda Sparks observed quietly from where they sat cooling their heels in the waiting room.
"Yeah," Melissa replied.
"Think this is about the thing with the hamsters?"
"... I don't think so. Dad would be a lot more upset if it was. I think it's about the biology lab."
"Oh, right... that would have worked if they hadn't stopped us." Amanda sighed. "So, think we're kicked out this time?"
"Oh yeah."
"Bummer."
"Tell me about it." Melissa frowned and blew an errant strand of hair away from her eyes. "We would have totally kicked butt in the science
fair."
"Totally!" Amanda agreed. She dug at the carpet again, scowling. "The field coupler is still sitting on my bench in shop class. I got yanked
in here before I could finish."
"... you did remember to discharge it before you left, right?" Melissa raised an eyebrow at her twin.
"Well, I didn't think I'd get pulled away like that, now did I?" Amanda replied in exasperation. "It should be fine until we can pick
it up. They can't take too much longer in there, can they?"
The phone rang. The secretary finished filing her nail and picked it up on the fourth ring. She winced and held it away from her ear for a moment, then
frowned. A frightened look crossed her features, and she nodded. "Right away!" she said into the handset, and dropped it on the desk in her haste
to stand up. She crossed to the door leading to the inner office, rapped on it quickly, and went inside without waiting for a response.
Amanda and Melissa shared a glance.
"WHAT?!" The bellow shook the window and was audible in the waiting room.
"Uh-oh," the girls said in unison.
The vice-principal burst out of the office and made a beeline for the door. "Evacuate the students!" he snapped over his shoulder as he vanished
from sight. His secretary nodded frantically and tipped over a bust of Statesman that sat on a podium in the corner of his office, revealing a large red
button. She mashed it and alarms began to wail.
George Sparks came out with a grim expression on his face and looked at his daughters.
"We didn't do it," they chorused. Mirroring each other, they crossed fingers behind their backs.
"What?" George looked momentarily puzzled, then waved it off. "Oh, that. No, something about an explosion over in the shop building."
Amanda and Melissa winced. George noticed the flicker and closed his eyes. "Girls," he said reproachfully. "You didn't."
"It was just our science project!" The twins sprang to their feet.
"Yeah! And, anyway, it's not like it could actually hurt anyone!"
Melissa eyed her sister dubiously for a moment. "... er, right! What she said."
Together: "We'll take care of it, dad!"
Without waiting for permission -- or, more likely, refusal -- they sprinted out the door.
"Girls, wait--!"
"That," Melissa panted, palms braced against her knees as she gasped for breath after their full-bore sprint across campus, "does not
look like something our field coupler should generate. What did you DO, sis?"
"Don't look at me," Amanda replied. "I mean, yuck!"
"I AM THE STUDENT BODY!" howled the protoplasmic, vaguely humanoid mass of cloudy purple-gray goo wobbling like a titanic jello mold away from the
shattered shop building. It formed what might have passed for a head, with a grotesque, oozing maw slashing jaggedly across it's face serving as a mouth,
and glowing shop-lights for eyes. A section of brick wall from the shop building, bearing the school logo, burped to the surface of its chest and stayed
there.
"MY VOICE WILL BE HEARD!" It took a huge, lumbering step that shook the ground when it landed, flattening a rack of bicycles into a twisted jumble
of steel and aluminum. A fleeing student tripped and sprawled headlong in the dirt. The blob took another ponderous step and stomped on him. The girls
winced, expecting the worst... and instead, saw the startled-looking student slowly rise up through the semi-transparent leg of the creature to join other dark
blobs bobbing gently in the middle of the shuddering mass, at roughly gut level -- if such a thing could be said to have a gut.
"Sis..."
"Yeah?"
"Are those...?"
"I think so."
The twins looked at each other. "Y'know," Melissa began thoughtfully, "if we could get a sample of that thing..."
"Way ahead of you." Amanda brandished a small vial with a rubber stopper.
"ONE VOICE, ONE PURPOSE!" the creature roared, and swung an enormous arm into the maintenance shed, completely demolishing it. A spray of purple goo
splattered nearby buildings and the few students who hadn't yet fled to safety. The girls winced as the monster noticed a lab-coated teacher waving
frantically at it -- "Go away! Shoo!" -- and flicked him with an oversized finger, sending the man flying away over the campus, a diminishing wail
trailing behind.
The creature raised massive fists in the air and bellowed, "NO MORE BOOK REPORTS!" It brought both hands down on one corner of the library, crushing
it into rubble. "NO MORE BAD LUNCHES!" A titanic kick tore through the cafeteria, sending an unfortunate walk-in fridge on a high, arcing
trajectory, dispensing frozen meat as it tumbled. "NO MORE BELL CURVES!" The clock tower was wrenched free of the admin building and spiked into
the ground with a great, resounding KLONG.
"What the HELL is THAT?" cried a new voice. The girls spun around to see a Longbow officer staring at the towering goo-creature in utter bafflement.
"It calls itself The Student Body, and appears to be sentient," Melissa said helpfully.
"Yeah, and it's made of some form of gelatinous material, non-acidic... at least, nothing appears to be melting," Amanda added, using the toe of
her sneaker to nudge one of the inert blobs of goo that decorated the landscape. It wobbled.
"Plus, it can selectively absorb things through its skin. What do you think, sis? Semi-permeable membrane?"
"Possibly, though it might just be selective surface tension, like those water balls we made."
"True." Melissa turned her attention back to the thoroughly befuddled Longbow sergeant. "Anyway, it's ingested at least one, and more
likely a dozen or so, students at this point... and it has a really bad temper," she finished, scribbling in her notepad.
The man was silent for a long moment, staring at the two of them. In the background, the creature entertained itself by grabbing teachers' cars and
crushing them like soda cans, chuckling to itself heartily.
"What?" the twins asked simultaneously. "Did we stutter?"
"I, uh -- MEN!" The sergeant noticed the arrival of the rest of his squad, and turned away from the girls with relief evident in his voice.
"The giant monster eating the school! Take it out!" He chopped a hand in the direction of The Student Body and his men responded with a roar as
they charged.
"Get somewhere safe, we'll handle this!" the sergeant barked, and trotted past the twins.
"They're gonna be in trou-ble," Amanda sing-songed quietly.
"No kidding." Melissa flipped her notepad shut and pushed her glasses back up on her nose. "So... field coupler?"
"Sounds good."
They ran for the ex-shop building, as the creature responded to the Longbow attack by executing a massive bellyflop that body-pressed the first squad into the
asphalt of the administration parking lot. The ground shook in sympathy as the behemoth clambered back to its feet and roared.
"THE STUDENT BODY HAS SPOKEN! SCHOOL IS OUT... FOREVER!"
Two more squads of Longbow troops, aided by a few wandering heroes who were listening to their police scanners, attacked The Student Body as the twins ducked
into the ruined shop building.
Evangelia peered critically at herself in the mirror, tracing one fingertip along the border of her eye. Satisfied, she leaned back and grinned crookedly at
her reflection.
"Magical Girl Side Effect Nobody Told Me About Number 302," she intoned quietly. "No makeup needed to stay looking sixteen."
Her communicator chirped. "Eva? There's something on the monitor you might want to see..."
"I'm in the bathroom, Space," Eva pointed out.
"You REEEAAAALLLY wanna see this!"
Eva sighed. "On my way," she said, and headed for the command center. She nodded at the familiar faces as she passed by, making note to ask about
the ones she didn't recognize later, and entered the command center at a brisk walk. She glanced at the master monitor, sized up the situation instantly,
opened her mouth to speak, and blinked.
"Is that Park High?" she asked, staring transfixed at the image on the screen.
"A live feed, yes, ma'am," said the on-duty operator. Space Mage bounced and pointed at the screen.
"See? See? I said you'd want to see it!"
Eva smiled a little but didn't respond. Instead, she leaned forward, resting one hand gently on the duty operator's shoulder. "Who do we have in
the area?" she asked quietly, and nodded thoughtfully at the list as it sprang up on the screen.
"Okay then," she said, straightening up. "Space, you're with me--"
"Yay!"
"-- and I want messages out to the rest of the group. Giant monster attack at Park High, reinforce us as soon as you can." Eva made for the
teleporter bay at a dead sprint, even as the operator was acknowledging her orders. Space Mage floated gently along with her.
"What is it with that school?" Eva asked rhetorically as she punched in the coordinates.
"Dunno," Space replied, shrugging. "It could be that it's like a cosmic nexus, a place where the lines of power meet and intertwine and
shape history and bend space and things like that, making it pretty much a given that if weird stuff is going to happen it's going to happen there. Or it
might just be a funny coincidence." Space cocked her head curiously. "Think this is another crazy teacher?"
Years of experience with her friend's speech patterns let Eva absorb the verbal torrent without going cross-eyed, though it was still a close thing.
"Historimandias didn't get that big," she replied, taking her place on the pad. "Thankfully."
"Yeah, I don't wanna channel MySpace again," Space noted as the teleporter spun up. "It's kinda icky these days."
"Try Facebook, then," Eva quipped, and laughed at Space's expression as they vanished in sparkles of light.
"Like that's any better!"
Amanda kicked aside a shattered workbench and yelped, then spent a frustrated moment holding her toe and hopping in place.
"Use your brains, not your brawn," Melissa teased, shoving a section of broken steel pipe under a pile of rubble, then pushing down on the end in her
hand. The junk pile, easily weighing a half-ton, lifted smoothly away from the floor and fell to the side.
"Yeah, yeah, I know -- hey, I found it!" Amanda bent down and rummaged under the table she'd just overturned, rising with a grimy but still
functional device cradled in her arms. She brushed some of the dirt away from a dial and frowned. "Sis?"
"Yeah?"
Amanda turned the contraption so that the dial faced her sister. It was hovering well inside the green zone, near the bottom. "This thing isn't even
halfway to overload, yet. We should have had a few hours yet before it went off. What gives?!"
Melissa hopped over a destroyed band saw and examined the field coupler device. "Yep, you're right," she said, and poked a button. Electricity
arced and fizzled and Amanda twitched and spasmed as it coursed through her, puffing her hair into a fright wig.
"You should discharge that before you leave it lying around," Melissa noted impishly. Amanda blinked and glared at her sister as smoke gently curled
up from the frazzled ends of her hair.
"... get you for that," she muttered.
"So what happened in here, anyway?" Melissa wondered aloud as they picked their way through the rubble toward the exit.
"I don't know, but I don't think it was us, this time." Amanda waggled the field coupler for emphasis. "Not like this could have done
that anyway, but still."
"Think they've destroyed it yet?"
A screaming Longbow pilot crashed to the ground just outside the retracted rolling steel door, bouncing twice before settling to the ground with a low, pained
moan. Behind him, visible above the ruins of the building, his Chaser skiff described a wobbly triple-loop before slamming into the ground and detonating in a
belch of orange flame and black smoke.
Amanda turned to her sister with a raised eyebrow. "Nope."
"-- magician of the FUTURE, the sorceress of the SPACE AGE, defender of all that is shiny and true, I am -- EEEP!" Space Mage ducked as the massive
slimeball took a swing at where she'd been moments before. She wasn't quite fast enough, and the edge of the fist caught her, knocking her into a loop
but doing no serious damage. She wobbled back upright and put her hands on her hips, glaring through a freshly-applied mask of purple goo at the lumbering
beast.
"HEY!" she barked. "THAT WAS RUDE!" So saying, she let loose with a barrage of energy at the thing.
"Less yak, more blast," Eva cried from down near the monsters feet, where she and a half-dozen other heroes were industriously chipping away at it.
Goo sprayed away in arcs every time she swung her blade, but it was like using a knife on runny jello -- as soon as the blade passed through, the gap filled
itself in.
"Is it just me," a weary Longbow grunt muttered, "or is this thing getting bigger the longer we whack at it?"
His sergeant glared at him. "Shut up and keep shooting!"
The Student Body howled as it scattered the latest round of attackers with a massive foot stomp that set off car alarms half a mile away. The gathered heroes
rose to their feet, groaning, and set themselves to charge again. From their position behind the corner of the wrecked cafeteria, the twins watched in rapt
scientific fascination as the monster showed no signs of slowing down.
A small figure appeared at the entrance to the administration building. A straggler, a student who had been missed in the evacuation. The girls couldn't
make out his identity from this distance. The boy displayed good sense, waiting until the heroes charged the beast before scampering down the steps and making
a beeline for the nearest shelter.
He didn't make it.
The Student Body twitched and whirled, faster than its bulk should allow, as soon as the boy left the protective cover of the building. It lunged, knocking
heroes and Longbow aside like bowling pins, and made a long grab, slamming one gigantic hand down on the unfortunate boy as he sprinted for safety. There was
a roar of outrage from the gathered heroes as they renewed their assault...
... and a comprehensive gleam in the twins' eyes. The boy oozed rapidly through the creatures arm to join the other blobs bobbing gently around inside its
chest.
"It's attacking everybody --" Melissa began.
"-- but ingesting the students --" Amanda continued.
"-- and getting stronger with each student it eats --"
"-- and nothing hitting it from out here is doing any good," they finished in unison.
They looked at each other for a long moment... then down at the field coupler still cradled in Amanda's arms.
"... yeah, that'll work," they chorused, and scrambled over the wrecked wall into the remains of the cafeteria.
"Its got connectors for 110, but if we use the lines to the appliances we can quick-charge it with 220," Amanda pointed out, setting the coupler down
on a table and sweeping debris aside with her arm.
"On it!" Melissa replied from the kitchen. She appeared momentarily hauling an extension cord and a butcher knife. Amanda, meanwhile, darted down
the as-yet-undestroyed hallway to the janitor's closet, where she retrieved another extension cord and a screwdriver. She returned to the cafeteria where
Melissa had just finished stripping the plug off the end of the first cord and had gleaming copper wires exposed. The second cord was given the same
treatment.
"Is this such a hot idea?" Amanda asked, scientific curiosity briefly overridden by common sense.
"What could go wrong?" Melissa replied as she tested the power flow by tapping the bare wires together, producing a shower of sparks. She handed one
cord to Amanda and attached the other to the field coupler.
"Well, I dunno, we're turning a device that was supposed to harness the ambient dark energy of the universe for the betterment of mankind into a bomb
that might create an artificial singularity and snuff out life as we know it."
"Yeah, and?" Melissa arched an eyebrow at her sister.
"... you're right. Sorry, I'm not thinking clearly. Okay! Are we set?"
"Just about... yep!" Melissa gently slotted the screwdriver into an opening on the top of their creation and gave it a quarter twist. The device
emitted a hum and spat forth a shower of sparks, before settling down into a quiet buzzing. The charge indicator on the front jumped and began to climb
quickly as the lights dimmed.
From outside, they heard another enraged bellow and a series of small explosions.
"C'mon," they urged, watching the needle rise. It hesitated at the edge of the green zone, then crossed into yellow. Melissa glanced at Amanda.
"Now?"
"Not yet..."
"Now?" she inquired again, less calmly, as the overload indicator began to blink. The needle was teasing the red zone.
"Not yet..."
Melissa watched the needle slide into the red. The overload indicator was joined by a frantic beeping. Smoke began to rise from the connectors where the
extension cords were attached.
"Sis," Melissa began, but Amanda interrupted her.
"Now!"
They yanked the smoldering cords off the coupler, then lifted the makeshift bomb between them and carried it at a quick trot down the halls toward the admin
entrance.
"Don't drop it!" Amanda yelped as Melissa's footing slipped and the girl nearly fell.
"I'm not going to drop it," Melissa snapped back.
"That's what you said about that uranium sample. We were cleaning it up for days."
"Oh, sure, you ALWAYS bring THAT up. Like you've never dropped anything."
"I've never dropped radioactive material."
"No, you just dropped --"
"Hey, slow down, we're here!"
Melissa scowled briefly, but let the matter go. They stood inside for a moment, watching as the creature swung a flagpole like an oversized bat and whacked a
Longbow Eagle patroller nearly into orbit.
"You ready?"
"No."
"Yeah, I know what you mean."
Melissa took a deep breath. "For science?"
Amanda gulped. "For science!"
They ran down the steps.
"Eva! Look!" From her vantage point above the ground, Space pointed frantically at the admin building. Evangelia completed her swing, watching in
tired resignation as the slice she'd taken out of The Student Body closed up again, and looked where Space was indicating.
"Two more students!" she yelled, sizing up the situation instantly. "Longbow, cover them! Heroes, on me! Distract it so they can get clear!
GO!"
With renewed vigor, the gathered forces lunged back into the fray. Eva gritted her teeth and leaped, driving her blade point-first into the slimeball so hard
that her hands followed it. She braced herself and wrenched it clear in a shower of goo, completely destroying the creature's 'knee', and raised
her blade to deflect a strike that would have flattened her had she not parried it.
Her heart sank as she looked past The Student Body and saw the students -- twins, she realized -- running straight toward the fight.
The creature twitched and whirled to face them.
Her jaw dropped in shock as the girls set themselves and taunted it. "HEY, UGLY! EAT ME!" one of them cried, waving her free hand
frantically.
The creature whirled to face them as they cleared the steps.
"Just like we planned," Melissa muttered.
"Yeah, I know," Amanda replied, and raised her voice. "HEY, UGLY! EAT ME!"
"This is SO gross," Melissa noted, closing her eyes in resignation as the behemoth engulfed them.
The jello comparison had been apt, she thought absently as the outside world was suddenly cut off. It was like swimming in a pool filled with the stuff --
warm, viscous, a bit slimy, and altogether not very pleasant. Very soporific, she thought, and would have yawned had a squeeze on her hand not distracted her.
She turned her head.
Amanda pointed at her mouth and shook her head. Melissa nodded. Her eyes weren't burning, but there was no telling what would happen if she swallowed any
of this gunk. They began to slide through the ooze, vague shadows from outside and the pulsing contractions of the glop their only indicators of motion.
Maybe that's how it works, she thought clinically. Puts its victims to sleep so it can... digest them at leisure?
She shook off her ruminations as their pace slowed. The other students were here, and all of them appeared to be asleep. Or dead. She wasn't sure, they
had no time to check, and there was nothing they could do about it anyway. Amanda squeezed her hand again, and she nodded. She pushed against the goo with
difficulty, bringing the device around from under her arm to rest between them where both of them could reach it. Amanda set one hand on the screwdriver and
looked into her sister's eyes. Melissa felt herself growing faint from lack of oxygen -- she couldn't hold her breath much longer -- and forced her
fingers to crawl over the field coupler until they reached the discharge button.
Neither her nor Amanda had to speak. They nodded once at each other and screwed their eyes shut. Melissa pressed the button at the same instant that Amanda
savagely twisted the screwdriver, opening the flow gate all the way.
It suddenly became very, very dark.
"NO!" Eva yelled as The Student Body swallowed two more victims. The creature shuddered and belched, a savage grin creasing its 'face'.
"YOU ARE THE DELINQUENTS!" it cried, raising a foot to crush.
"FALL BACK!" Eva commanded the heroes around her. They scattered as the massive foot came down, toppling what remained of the cafeteria and
shattering nearby windows. The shockwave slapped everyone, heroes, Longbow, and civilians alike, into head-over-heels tumbles.
"We're too pretty to die like this," Space pointed out as she bounced and skidded to a halt next to where Eva was prying herself out of the
smashed wreckage of a car.
"Tell HIM that," Eva grumbled, wrenching herself free and resettling her tiara on her head.
"What in the world--?" A battered Longbow private pointed at the creature. "What's it doing now? Oh, god, we're dead,
we're all dead!"
"(Don't think of it as dead, just think of it as being life-challenged,)" Space muttered as everyone followed the private's pointing finger.
Lightning bolts crackled over the creature's surface as it reared back and roared -- in pain, in anger, or in sheer glee, they couldn't tell. They
blinked as the electric sizzles changed to fat purple arcs, lashing out and grounding themselves against any convenient surface.
"This might not be good," Eva mused.
"Look!" Space cried, pointing. At the heart of the beast, what could best be described as a black glow was spreading, with more crackles of that
otherworldly purple electricity coursing through it. Bubbles formed and burst on the creature's surface as it howled in what now was plainly agony.
A tremor raced through the ground, and jets of steam began to appear on The Student Body. Several of the dark blobs oozed out of the rapidly-liquefying
creature, falling to the ground and bouncing gently as the goo clinging to them acted like shock-absorbent cocoons.
"... okay, that's gross," Space noted.
The Student Body howled again. "TRAITORS!" it screamed. "NONCONFORMISTS!" A geyser of goo erupted from it, splattering the parking lot
as it clutched at its 'ears'. It opened its mouth and let out a long, drawn-out roar of rage. "GEEEEEEEEKS!"
There was a deafening explosion.
Amanda woke slowly. She felt like she should be tired, but she wasn't -- she felt full to bursting with energy, in fact, even though her body was
responding sluggishly as she struggled to sit up in bed.
"Sis?" she croaked, peering around. Without her glasses, details were fuzzy, but this didn't look like her room at home.
"I'm here," Melissa replied, her voice as harsh and grating as Amanda's own. "What did you do to us?"
Amanda suddenly felt more alert as indignation swelled within her. "Me?! Why do you always assume it was me when one of our experiments goes
wrong?" She paused and looked around, squinting at the vague shapes in the room. "Um... we were experimenting on something, right?"
"Must have been," Melissa replied sourly. "We're in the hospital. Again."
"Oh." Amanda pondered that a moment. Then, shrugging, she reached out to the nightstand beside the bed and retrieved her glasses. She rather liked
hospitals; they were so predictable. She slipped the lenses into place and blinked as her vision adjusted and everything snapped into focus. Then she
frowned. "Um... sis?"
"Yeah?"
"Why are we in a quarantine room?"
"I don't know, but I'll bet it's your fault."
Amanda stuck her tongue out at her twin. Despite their barbed comments at each other, she knew without a doubt that Melissa was just as confused as she was,
and the snark was simply a way of dealing with it. So she didn't take it seriously.
Well, not much. She made a mental note to get even later.
She raised her hand to push her glasses back up on her nose and froze as her fingers came into sight. Wispy, smoky tendrils of energy were leaking from her
skin. She glanced at Melissa and noted the same phenomenon. Melissa met her eyes and jerked, startled. "Whoa! You're oozing, sis!"
Amanda nodded in uneasy acknowledgement. "So are you." It was true; the same leakage was occurring on Melissa's body.
Memory flooded back. The Student Body. The field coupler. The feel of goo sliding over her skin (she shuddered involuntarily at the memory). The explosion.
Amanda and Melissa stared at each other for a long moment. Finally, they spoke as one:
"Guess that explains the quarantine."
They stood, swinging their feet over the edges of their respective beds and standing; Amanda on the left, Melissa on the right. They stepped closer to each
other and bent forward, peering at the tendrils as they writhed and swirled, absently holding the wires and leads taped to them in various places out of the
way as they moved.
"Quantum flux?" Amanda suggested thoughtfully.
Melissa shook her head, still staring at her sister's shoulder. "Nope, it's too stable. Superstring bridging?"
"No. Orders of magnitude too weak for that," Amanda pointed out. "I mean, the room hasn't exploded, right?" She frowned.
"Zero-point energy?"
Melissa scowled. "Please," she said sourly. "Let's stay rational, here. It's not magic, you know."
"Right, sorry." Amanda poked tentatively at one of her sister's tendrils and watched as it bent and swirled like smoke around her intruding
finger.
Melissa paused as a thought struck her. "Hey, sis?"
"Hmm?"
"Which way did you twist the screwdriver?"
"Left, of course. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosy. What does that have to -- ah, crap."
Melissa nodded. "Yep."
Amanda closed her eyes and sighed. "Great. Just great."
"You were supposed to close the flow gate, not--"
"Yeah, yeah, I know, I get it." Amanda scowled. "Look, it was dark and slimy in there and I just forgot, okay?"
"So this," Melissa stated, flicking at the wisps escaping from Amanda's nose, "would be dark matter. Er, energy. Both."
They stared at each other for a long moment... then broke out into huge grins.
"That is so cool!" they chorused.
"Going to make it difficult to walk around town," Melissa noted.
Amanda shook her head, regarding the equipment in the room with a critical eye. "Actually... I think we can fix that..."
Melissa followed her sister's glance and grinned. "Ooh, I like the way you think."
The on-duty nurse on that floor was a no-nonsense professional of fifteen years experience. Normally a nurse of her rank wouldn't be pulling monitor duty,
but she was covering for someone's vacation and actually welcomed it as a chance to get off her feet. On this floor, it was either all-hands-on-deck
insane, or mind-numbingly quiet. There was no in-between. So far it had been the mind-numbing sort of night, and she sighed happily as she leaned back in her
seat and sipped at her Diet Pepsi.
Mind-numbing it might have been, but it was a nice, relaxing kind of mind-numbing-ness, and she welcomed it after the chaos of the hero support floor where she
usually worked.
She regarded the sudden blaring of a life-support alert from quarantine room 2-B with the same sort of expression one reserves for traveling salespersons or a
visiting dog that has just piddled on the carpet. Per protocol, she flicked the monitor to the cameras in that room even as her other hand was bringing the
phone to her ear to request a code team. The picture showed nothing but static.
"On our way," the team responded before she could say anything, which was exactly as it should be -- they could see the alert too, after all; the
phone was just for redundancy.
The code team burst through the door, pulling on their haz-mat gear as they ran. Out of habit she glanced at her watch, and smiled a little in approval.
Seventeen seconds from alert, and the airlock cycled in ten, meaning they'd have responded in less than thirty overall. Not bad, not bad at all.
Room 2-B was directly across from the nurse's station, so she had a perfect view into the airlock as the team crowded in and waited for it to cycle. The
quarantine rooms were not soundproofed by design; 2-B had the privacy curtains drawn but she could hear the muffled conversation of the team quite clearly.
She counted the seconds as the lock cycled, and heard the clunk-hiss as the inner door unlatched and opened.
There was a moment of silence... then a girl's voice, bright and cheerful, echoed out into the hall.
"Oh, hey, perfect! Listen -- does one of you guys have a Leatherman, or at least just a pocketknife?"
TWO WEEKS LATER
"Hello, Mr. Sparks." Eva smiled at the man standing in the doorway before her.
George Sparks nodded pleasantly and held the door wide. "Hello! Come in, come in. We've been expecting you, miss Evangelia."
Eva chuckled as she entered. She followed George through the foyer into a small living room, where two fidgety-looking redheads perched on a couch. Eva noted
to herself that the rough containment suits they'd left the hospital in, jerry-rigged out of scrounged equipment, had been replaced by form-fitting
bodysuits with elaborate circuit traces visible where it peeked out of their normal clothing. The dark tendrils she'd been told about were not in
evidence.
The twins rose as Eva entered, and she waved a hand dismissively. "Don't stand on my account," she said, laughing.
"Girls, this is miss Evangelia," George said by way of introduction. "Miss, these are my daughters, Amanda and Melissa."
"Hello," the twins chorused dutifully.
"I won't take up your time," Eva noted pleasantly. She handed a thick manila folder to George, who accepted it with a smile and nod.
"I'm the leader of The Legendary, one of the supergroups operating in Paragon City." She shrugged modestly. "One of the larger and more
successful ones, as it happens. I was there when you two destroyed The Student Body. Very impressive." She leaned forward, her eyes twinkling.
"Very impressive, but very, very dumb."
The twins glanced at each other, then back at Eva. "Hey--" they began, but she cut them off with a wave of her hand.
"Dumb," Eva repeated, a note of command entering her voice, "but you did it for the right reasons and you didn't hesitate. That
takes courage. You had the right instincts, but you need to train them. And, your father tells me, you happen to be between schools at the moment." She
held up a hand. "I know, I know, it wasn't your fault."
Amanda and Melissa blushed lightly, but held their composure.
"The Legendary runs an academy for special students," George put in helpfully.
"We do," Eva nodded. "We don't accept just anybody. You'll have to keep your grades up, and we have rules about experiments. But I
think you'll find it a better fit for you than Park High was."
"Do we have a choice?" Amanda put in sourly. Melissa elbowed her twin, but it was obvious that she privately agreed with the sentiment.
"Not really," Eva replied pleasantly. "Of course, if you don't think you're up to the challenge of becoming a hero, well, that's
your problem. I'd be happy to help your father find a... more normal school for you to attend." The spin she put on the word spoke volumes
about what she thought of that idea.
The twins glowered at her.
"Well then." Eva grinned. "The packet has all the information you need and their provisional licenses, Mr. Sparks." She sketched a
salute at the twins, not waiting for it to be responded to. "Orientation will begin Monday morning at nine sharp." She turned to leave and paused
as if a thought had just struck her. "Oh, and, ladies? Bring your latest experiment with you, whatever it is. I'm sure Professor Geerz will have
something to say about it."
As she left, she could hear the twins' voices rising in protest, and George beginning to lay down the law. She grinned. Oh, they would be trouble, of
that she had no doubt. But Eljay needed a challenge to keep him on his toes, and this sort of thing was why they'd founded the Academy in the first place.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
