One

Madeleine

The power had been out for days now. My dad didn't seem to mind the darkness and the stuffy heat that came from life in Georgia without air conditioning. He said it should make me and my mom tougher, that we had grown too accustomed to a pampered life. Mom had been cooking meals outside on a charcoal grill, trying to cook as much food as she could before it all spoiled. She said that we would get the money to pay the bills soon, that everything was going to be okay. Of course, that was the answer. "It's going to be okay" is her answer for everything.

"Mom, I skinned my knee, and it's bleeding."

"It's going to be okay."

"Mom, I failed my chemistry assignment because you and Dad kept me up all night with your fighting."

"It's going to be okay."

"Mom, my councilor saw the bruises on my arms and is considering calling Child Protective Services."

"It's going to be okay."

However, as much as her response to my problems annoys me, I know that she doesn't have much of a choice as to what to say. If she tells me that she's going to get a job, Dad freaks out. If she uses her healing legacy, Dad freaks out. If she says she's going to get us help... You get the point.

Almost my whole life, it's been like this. My mom, Anna, used to talk about a time when her and my father, Wes, were actually in love. She told me stories when I was a child about them living on a planet named Lorien and training as Garde's to go on special missions for their people. She spoke almost as if she were describing a beautiful daydream, her eyes looking far away as she talked about the gorgeous nature and lovely beaches and fireworks they used to watch together, watching as the two Loric moons came into view. She talked about how her friends used to tease her because her main Legacy – or power – was healing, and that it came so late that many people thought she was a Cepan – a trainer with no powers. She could do other things, she said, but that healing was the one she was the most gifted at.

Mom said Dad was a gifted archer and very talented with his legacies. See, there was tons of controversy about their love because he was the son of one of the planet's Elders, Pittacus Lore. Apparently, his mother wanted him to marry the daughter of another Elder instead of a normal barely-qualified Garde. Pittacus didn't seem to mind. He actually seemed to like that his son had found someone he liked that didn't want him just because of his heritage. They ended up marrying without his mother's blessing, and, because of it, it made relations strain on their home planet. When a mission came about looking for a Garde to scout out Earth during our bad Mogadorian relations, my parents volunteered immediately. They packed up all of their belongings and ran to the spaceship as fast as their feet could carry them.

Here's where things got complicated. Wes enjoyed the sex and the flirting with his wife all the time. He mainly married her so that they could move in and do whatever without interruption. The game plan was to move to Earth for a month, come back, and report their findings.

That didn't work. When they arrived, Mom found out she was three months pregnant with me, Madeleine, and doctor's they spoke to back on Lorien suggested they wait until after I was born to return home. No one was sure how space travel could affect a fetus, so they agreed reluctantly and rented an apartment in New York City. Months passed and I arrived extremely small and sick.

Turns out, space travel does hurt babies! Shocker! One of my lungs had collapsed while being birthed, and I was forced to spend over a month in the hospital while they fixed me up. No one was sure I'd even survive the first forty-eight hours, but I miraculously did. Mom tried her best to use her healing legacy on me, but either she was too shaken up or too tired from giving birth for it to work. They waited for my health to improve for a year, nursing me at home and keeping a close eye on me at all times. Then, after I was able to sit up and giggle, Wes called my grandmother to request a ship home for him and his family.

They had barely began to speak when the Mogadorian's attacked Lorien. They pillaged and raped the entire planet thanks to the help of my grandfather's enemy, Setrakus Ra. Our plans to return home no longer existed. We had no place to call home, no backgrounds, and no other people of our kind. We were alone on a planet that knew nothing about us.

So we hopped around the United States, creating fake lives. I was a US citizen, technically, so I fit in nicely. My parents changed my name to Madeleine Paisley so that I could start school. My dad did a few under the counter jobs and made a living the hard way while Mom stayed home and took care of me. At age 4 I was diagnosed with a very bad case of asthma that I still hold onto today at 17. My immune system was shit; I would get sick if someone coughed in the same room as me. But I grew up looking a lot like my mother – fiery red curls and a sharp jaw line – and my father – those piercing blue eyes and freckles splashed across my face – despite the illnesses that I faced.

We became the modern day family until Dad became an abusive drunk. Once I hit grade school is when it really began. He lost a lot of his contacts, and we began to have financial problems. We shopped at thrift stores for clothes and shoes, clipped coupons for hours, and became extremely reclusive in our neighborhood. My parent's began to get Cabin Fever while in hiding and began to fight and scream more. After a month of just words, things got physical. Then it moved to him spending our money at bars, only to come home and beat me if my grades weren't what they should be.

That's how we managed to lose our power. Dad spent all his money on liquor and is now passed out at 9PM in their bedroom. I'm not actually sure what Mom is doing right now, but I'm upstairs in my bedroom, laying back on my bed and listening to the crickets chirp outside my open window. Part of me used to wonder if the reason Dad began to drink was because I was 17 and still haven't developed a Legacy, not even telekinesis, something Dad said he developed at 13. Another part of me wondered if it was because of Mom, but I think I understood when I was younger that the real reason was because I was born. I kept him from returning home to his family and friends, and in his eyes, I can see he resents me for that.

As I laid there on my bed, I held my hand up like Darth Vader did in the movies and focused on the dormant fan blades, squinting and trying my hardest to make them move only an inch for what feels like an hour.

Nothing happens. I sigh and let my hand fall to my side. It was no use. I accepted that I was never going to develop a legacy and would continue to be my father's little disappointment for the rest of my damned life. I sat up, flipped my head over, and pulled my thick hair into a messy ponytail. At least no one except for my parents and I would know about the girl, Madeleine Paisley, who was guaranteed to be a Garde not being able to obtain any legacies. Even if I did get them, I would probably have an asthma attack just trying to use them.

I stood and stretched my limbs, yawning. Tomorrow I would make up flyers for dog walking or babysitting around town in hopes of bringing in some money to get the power back on. I looked over to the small open window from which I could feel a slight breeze coming into my room. Moving closer, I noticed how the leaves on the oak tree in the back yard were beginning to fall away, reminding me that I unfortunately had school in two days to start my senior year. I bit my lip as I rested my hands on the windowsill. Oh how I hated school – the pointless assignments, the obnoxious kids, the rude teachers, the detention and suspension-

Bam!

A small black shape hurtled towards my face, grazing my forehead with its claws before knocking me to the floor. The animal screeched before it flew down on my face, flapping its wings at me and pecking at me with its sharp peak. I let out a cry before covering my face with my arms and rolling away. I awkwardly tried to fight against it – waving one of my arms around, tripping onto the bed, stumbling and cursing – but the bird was relentless. My head began to ache badly from its beak. I glanced up in time to see the bird flying across the room before shooting back at me like a bullet. I threw my hands up, screaming, tensing -

Thunk.

I slowly opened my eyes. The bird hit the ground a foot away from me twitching, one of its wings dislocated at the joint while its black beady eyes looked all around the room in terror. I looked around to see a soft pink light filtering onto my walls. My body slowly untensed as I looked around for the source of the pink light, but when my arms came down and my shoulders loosened, the pink light disappeared. I stepped over the broken bird and scampered over to my dresser mirror, looking at myself wide-eyed. There was three bleeding scratch marks on my head and a few nips, but nothing major. I closed my eyes and imagined the bird was hurtling towards me again, throwing up my arms and tensing. Internally I felt a click, something in my mind telling me I was doing something right. I opened up my eyes, not bothering to move my body.

I was encircled in a pink force field. It was round, almost like a bubble. Carefully, I stuck my hand out and let my fingers touch the edge of the force field when an electric shock sparked on its outer part. I jerked back just as the force field disappeared.

"Oh my god this can't be happening," I said breathlessly.

My first legacy is a pink shield.

"MOM!" I called down before rushing towards the door, but before I could run downstairs, the bird my legacies almost killed flopped as it tried its best to move.

"Oh, right, sorry," I said quietly as I gently scooped up the black bird in an old shirt and carefully carried it downstairs for my mom to heal it.

I found her on the couch fanning herself with an old magazine in her pajamas. Her graying hair was braided back out of her face as she looked up at me expectantly before confusion set in.

"What's that?" She said quietly. "What happened to your head? I heard screaming but I didn't think to -"

"A bird. It flew into my room and attacked me." I sat down beside her and passed it to her easily.

"How did it get hurt?" Mom laid her healing hand on its chest. The bones in its wing began to fuse back together, and its movements began to come back.

"I developed a legacy!"

Mom jumped, the bird bouncing in her arms in shock. "Wha-what is it?"

I stood up off the couch and closed my eyes, trying my best to envision me being protected once more. My mind clicked again, and I opened my eyes. My mom's mouth hung open in shock as she stared at the pink force field that stood between us. She acted like she was trying to speak, her mouth opening and closing, but honestly she just looked like a fish eating.

"Well, I'll be damned." My parents bedroom door clicked shut. "The little bastard finally is becoming productive."

"Wes-"

"Don't chide me, Anna," my father snapped in a hushed tone, his finger pointed at her but his eyes glued to me. "I'm perfectly capable of talking to my daughter about her gift without your imput."

My mom sat on the couch in silence for a moment before silently walking over the front door and stepping outside with the healed black bird. Dad walked past me and into the connecting kitchen while taking in the sight of my force field. I hesitantly willed it away. When it disappeared, Dad snorted.

"Some legacy." He opened the refrigerator and grabbed a can of Coors Light. "Seems like something you would inherit from your mother – the ability to protect your own hide and leave the rest of us to be injured."

I chewed my bottom lip. "Maybe I can expand it, or maybe channel it to work on someone else."

I saw his eyebrows shoot up as the can popped open. "To do that, you'd need to actually have the ability of a Garde and not an Earthling." He took a sip of beer, his eyes almost daring me to talk back.

Dad does this all the time. He talks like he's tough, like he's hot shit surrounded by peasants. Back in his prime, I could understand this attitude – he was kind of important, he was popular, and he was rich and smart. But now, all he's succumbed to is the life of an overweight, unemployed drunk who likes to beat on me.

I began to walk backwards with my head kind of hung low. I honestly wasn't sure what I expected. Maybe a congratulations. "I'm just going to go to bed. Night."

I turned to walk up the steps when I heard the can crinkle in his grasp. "Now just you wait a minute, we ain't done talking."

Shit. Of course we're not. I turned back to face him as Mom stepped back inside with my shirt draped across her arm.

"What else is there to say?" I slowly began to walk towards the kitchen. "'Madeleine, you're a disappointment and the reason that I wasn't there to protect my home from those Mogadorian bastards'? 'Why can't you develop a legacy like Ximic, or Dreyen?' 'Why did you have to turn out so much like-"

He slapped me hard across the face. My knees buckled slightly, but I stumbled and corrected myself with one hand against the door frame. Mom gasped, still standing by the front door. Dad pointed his fat finger in my face as he got in my face. His other hand, the one that was firmly grasping the crumpled beer can, radiated heat that I could feel warming the already sweltering house.

"Don't you ever talk like that again to me," he growled. I closed my mouth and held my breath to keep from smelling the alcohol on his breath. "Need I remind you the things that your mother and I sacrificed to keep you alive? Did you just happen to forget that we gave up everything for you? Our lives, our family, our jobs?"

"If I remember correctly," I said through gritted teeth, "you and Mom volunteered to come to Earth. I never volunteered to be born."

His hot hand balled around the can as he threw that first punch into my stomach, knocking the wind out of me. I gasped and doubled over, holding my stomach in pain as I tried to level my breathing. No asthma attacks. No. I can't have another one this week.

"So much for that fucking legacy you have."

He slammed the beer can into the side of my head and knocked me onto the floor. I felt blood trickle into my right eye as I groaned.

"Buck up, Maddy," he said as he pressed the toe of his house shoe into my side. "You've developed a legacy, which signifies your coming of age. You're growing into an adult now. Act like it." With a shove of his leg, I laid on my back. Dad threw the can and turned his back to me, shaking his head as he went back for another drink. Maybe this time he would get something stronger.

Mom shuffled across the room before kneeling down next to me. She placed her hands on my forehead where the can and the bird cut me up. Her face seemed pained, but I knew this wouldn't last long. It would be long before she was taking his side.

I didn't see him in time to warn her. My father let out an annoyed grunt and landed a soccer worthy kick in her ribs, knocking her onto her side. He began to stomp on her ribs, her back, her legs – whatever he could get a good shot at.

I extended my hand out towards her as my heart raced and my breath began to quicken. I wanted to take her hand and run away from this place, go into hiding, and never see my father again. I knew she was scared of him, that he wasn't the man she married so many years ago. But she still loved him, and love was a concept that I knew I was never going to be able to understand because of him. I didn't think that I would be able to trust a man or a woman that I loved in the same way that Mom used to trust Dad. He ruined me not on physically but also mentally, he scarred my heart.

No person would ever be able to make me fully trust them. They could thank my father for that.

My mom let out a tiny cry when he kicked her again in the ribs. I lurched my hand out, and, to my surprise, my legacy I had forgotten about responded. The pink shield wrapped around both of us. When my father's foot connected with the force field, the electric shock threw him back against the wall. His large mass knocked a huge hole in before he fell to the ground unconscious. I waited a moment before removing the force field from around us.

I rolled over onto my belly painfully and crawled over to my mother. Her face was beat up and she had broken a few ribs, but besides that, she seemed conscious and fine. I brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes before taking her hand in mine.

"You did good," she whispered quietly. With one hand, she reached up and healed my head wound. "It's going to be okay."

"Are you going to heal yourself?" I asked. "Before he wakes up?"

"Yes, but he should be out for a few hours." She gave me a bloody smile. "Go upstairs, lock the door, and get some rest. Let that headache heal naturally."

I looked over at the sweaty slob in the floor. "Do you have to heal him?"

"Only when he wakes up. If I didn't, he'd do it himself and just set himself off again."

I bent down and pecked her head. I stood, holding a cracked rib that I knew she wasn't going to fix, as she closed her eyes and began to focus on healing herself. I stepped over her and slowly began to walk up the steps.

As I stumbled into my bedroom and fell on the bed, only one thought kept running through my head – that I was given that legacy for a reason. Not because of sheer randomness, but out of necessity.

Perhaps there still was hope for me after all, that I could still develop legacies without necessarily being on the planet that gifted them. Maybe it was in my blood, or maybe it was all in my head. Maybe one day I could travel to Africa and get super speed from being chased by a Cheetah, or super strength from lifting an elephant.

My planning was short lived. Soon after lying down, the comfort lured me into a slumber, and my night raged on with nightmares and restlessness.

John

Nine and I had been sitting at the table for what felt like hours. The girls were showering away the sweat from today's training while Sam and his father tinkered in Sandor's old work room. Five was already asleep in his new room – at least, we presumed. Neither Nine or I wanted to check, so to us, he was asleep. Nine and I were waiting on the girl's to get out of the shower before we could get in, but from the rate it was going, it seemed like it would take forever.

It had been very nice for Nine to let us stay in his old penthouse in Chicago. While I never would publicly tell him this, I kind of envied the way he used to live – the fancy living space, the video games, the tv's, the food, the privacy. It was all most of us were deprived of. I never experienced anything near settling down, and Nine had said he had lived here for years.

Staying in plain sight in the middle of a huge city. Sounds like the opposite of what Henri would allow us to do.

But as of right now, we were all experiencing the life of luxury, while temporary, that Nine used to know and love. I looked across the table to see him peeling open a banana very slowly. I watched for ten seconds before he finished the first strip.

"What are you doing?"

"Peeling a banana. What does it look like I'm doing?" He began on the next one.

"Why so slow?"

"What, are you the banana police? Am I fucking peeling my banana wrong? Would you like to do it for me, Pittacus?" Nine rolled his eyes and continued his slow work.

I shrugged my shoulders. "I've just never see someone focus so hard on peeling a -"

"Well, it's my banana and I'll peel it how I feel. If you must know, Officer, I'm trying to keep the strings from breaking and making a mess. Is that a crime? Are you going to arrest me?"

I closed my eyes and stifle a laugh. "Whatever, man, I hope you enjoy it."

"I fucking will." He plucked the banana from its peel and bit into it, a snarky grin spreading across his face as he took the peel and flicked it at my face. I pushed it back at him with my telekinesis, but it fell pointlessly back on the table. Nine just shook his head with a grin.

"Some Pittacus you are," he said with a mouth full. "You can't even throw a banana peel right!" He cackled before almost choking on his banana.

I started to throw the peel at him again when Sam walked into the dining room, holding onto the tablet Sandor made to track known Lorien. His face was scrunched into a frown, possibly from not being invited to join Six in the shower, as he stared down at the device.

"The only person we're missing is Adam, right?" He looked up at us, looking puzzled – AKA, the same look he gets when he's onto something.

"The only Mog we're missing is Adam," Nine said, swallowing the rest of his banana in one bite. He pushed out the chair beside Sam with his telekinesis. "But yeah, that sounds right."

Sam slid into the seat and sat the tablet where all three of us could see. "And Adam is here." He points to a triangle moving from New York to Chicago.

"What are you getting at?" I asked, frowning down at the tablet. In Chicago, six tiny triangles overlap each other, representing Nine, Six, Ella, Marina, Five, and myself. Eight was just killed. Am I forgetting anyone?

"Then who are they?" He points to three triangles near Atlanta, Georgia.

"Have the Mogadorians taken the legacies of Two, Three, and Eight and transferred them like they did with Adam?" I asked.

"No," Malcolm Goode says as he comes in. His eyes are heavy from lack of sleep, and his movements seem to be a little sluggish. "They didn't know they transferred the legacies over to Adam until we attacked. Even then, the equipment used was destroyed, along with both scientists over the proceedings."

"So you're saying there's more Lorien out there. More people that didn't travel on the ship with us."

"That's what I theorize, but I can't be certain. It could be a flaw in the system-"

Nine shook his head. "No flaw. Sandor never made any flaws, not with technology."

"How can you be certain?"

He thought for a second before shrugging. "I knew Sandor and how seriously he took building that tablet."

I looked over at the tablet. "Can you get an address?"

"Already handled," Sam said. His eyes seemed to light up. "That house is owned by Wes Paisley, unemployed alcoholic with domestic violence complaints. Apparently, he's married and has a daughter, which CPS is threatening to take if he doesn't straighten up his act."

"CPS? He beats on them?"

Malcolm pulled a cell phone out of his back pocket and produced some pictures that he handed to us to look through. A red headed girl about our age stood in front of the camera glaring. Her lip was busted and her eye and arms were bruised.

"She said it was a fight with one of the neighborhood kids, but the dad's record makes them suspicious."

I passed the phone to Nine, whose face hardened as he looked through the pictures. "What's her name?"

"Madeleine Paisley. Born one year before Lorien was destroyed."

Nine handed Malcolm back the phone. "And you think they fled the planet, took the girl, and hid?"

Sam shrugged. "We don't know, but we think she's important."

I nodded. "We'll go check it out." I glanced over at Nine, who seemed to have a permanent scowl now. "How about me, you, and Ella leave in the morning?"

"You're going to need a healer," he grumbled.

"I can use my Ximic."

Nine nodded before he stood up and smiled over at Sam sarcastically. "Sorry, bro, but I'm about to go get your girlfriend out of the shower."

"What?!" Sam stared at him wide eyed as Nine used his super speed down the hallway. Suddenly, a chorus of girl screams preceded Nine being thrown back down the hallway. He landed with a thud before laughing and getting back to his feet.

"There were worse places to get thrown out of," he said cheekily. Sam rolled his eyes and took the tablet with him as he marched back into the office.

I rubbed my temples. This was going to be harder than I thought...