If the world had been different. If the X-Men were not the X-Men. If the school wasn't the school that we all know and love. If the X-Men were not the normal ones you know so well. If Scott, Jean, Dr.Mckoy, Remy, Logan, or any of them had come to not exist, what would have happened? That, my friends, is what you are about to see. In a world where only Professor Xavier is the same, what would happen to this world?
Informally known as Ender, Kenneth Iles walked down the street. As he looked at the trees, the grass, he didn't see what everyone else saw. When everyone else saw the trees, they saw green leaves, a brown trunk, maybe even a squirrel. For Kenneth, it wasn't like that. He wasn't blind, but he didn't see what they saw. When he saw a tree, he saw the energy flowing through the sap, the kinetic energy of the wind in the trees, the motion of the squirrels. He would never see what they could see, but it didn't matter to him, because he could see more. Kenneth walked to the end of the street where he was and saw a lamppost, a single lamppost that normally shouldn't have been there. A normal person would have missed it, but he didn't. Seeing through the metal, he could sense the energy flowing down into the ground, into the underground school. Secretly, he had chosen to join their group, and had talked Starflower, Violet Reece, into letting him know the secret location. He watched for any sign of sentinels, and was glad when he didn't sense any of the energy that their kind created. He wasn't afraid of the big, lumbering mechanical golems that roamed and killed off mutants on sight. What he was worried about were the 'invisibles,' Sentinels that were giving synthetic skin, and put in normal society as mutes, whose only purpose was to 'retire rogue humans.' In his mind, he cursed the xenocidal murderer that came up with the design. The Sentinels would have stayed useless, like before, but they were deadly now. Like ninja on the prowl.
Stealthily, he walked over to the lamppost, still looking for 'invisibles.' When he was sure he was clean, he turned around and opened up a maintenance slot that was really a passcoded entry. He typed in the passcode and suddenly, we was turned upside down. On his way, he could see the moving energy patterns of another lamppost, and figured that it was replacing the one he'd just moved. Then, suddenly, he fell down what seemed like a chasm. Really, though, it was only about 10 yards, and the 'steel' that made up the pathway was really a cushion. At first, he thought to be angry at whoever surprised him, but he stopped himself before he could get there. Over time and time of fighting, he had learned that in great anger, he would naturally direct the energy around him at his opponent, and he didn't want to start off on a bad foot. He stood up and walked down the 'steel' path, towards the only door. Suddenly, it opened up and a man in a wheelchair came out, smiling. Ender noticed that he was wearing an implant in his right ear, and it was taking data from a computer system somewhere else in the academy.
"Ah. You must be the Ender I heard about. Welcome to my underground school."
After the Professor talked to Kenneth, Ender, about the purpose for the school, Ender looked at him, startled.
"You mean... you want me to help the people who want to kill me? Geez, I thought this was a combat training academy!"
The proffesor gave Violet a wary look.
"Well... that is sort of our job. You see, Kenneth, this school trains you to use your powers, sometimes for destructive purposes. However, remember that we aren't going to use our powers to hurt others."
Ender was abashed.
"Then what in this world is open for us to destroy?!"
Proffesor Xavier looked at him and shook his head, sighing.
"Ender, there's something you don't understand. We are going to protect ourselves and protect humanity until we finally gain a good name. We cannot abandon humanity because we are human."
Ender was frowning, and Xavier could tell that he was convinced. To leave him off on something he could understand, though, he said,
"However, there is a little bit of fighting involved. Talk to Violet and she'll show you your room, and then show you everyone else. If you'd like, I can even have her introduce you to the Danger Room."
"The Danger Room?"
Violet opened one of the big, aluminum doors that constitued the doors to the room. Because wood was expensive, and more difficult to transport underground, aluminum had been chosen. She walked him inside, ignoring his awe at all the trinkets in the room, and showed him everything. After explaining where the bathrooms were, where the light switches were, etc., she told him,
"You'll be sharing this room with Roy."
Immediately, Ender snapped his head around to look at her.
"Who's Roy? I'm sharing a room?!"
Violet looked at his expression and laughed.
"Of course you are. Space is expensive down here, and even Charles has a finite money supply. Besides, You'll have a fun time with Roy."
"Who's Roy?"
"Oh. He's the teacher here at the academy. He's only 19, and he's a real partymonger, but he knows more about astrophysics and mutant powers than you'll ever know."
"You mean, he's a human?"
Violet gave him a funny look.
"You mean, we're not?"
"Well... we're mutants."
Violet blinked, and then understood what he was trying to get across, albeit unsuccessfully.
"We're all humans here, Kenneth. The idea that we're different is simply FOH propoganda."
"FOH?"
"I'll tell you about them later."
After Violet left him, Ender found the energy trails of other humans leading to a certain point in the school, so he walked down the hall to find where everyone was hanging out. Unlike his own door, there was a handprint pad on the door. He didn't know if his handprint was installed in the system, but he put his hand on it anyway. The heat of the laser reader seemed to tickle for a moment, but he smiled when the door opened into a rather luxurious game room. There was a pool table where two teens, a boy and a girl, were playing. At the foosball, four different people were trying to play, but the way they were laughing, Ender doubted they could really even concentrate on the board. Over at one corner, watching TV, were three others watching some improvisational game show. Finally, there was Violet talking to another middle school girl over in a couched area, giggling about who knew what. Or at least, he thought was it. Suddenly, he noticed that what he thought was a statue was actually a meditating mutant. It was going to be a weird world. He walked over to the foosball table, trying to find some way to edge into the conversation.when he got there, everyone stopped playing for a second and looked up.
"Who are you."
Ender smiled and gave a common school answer.
"Oh, just a new student."
"New student?"
She gave him a skeptical look for a moment, checking him over.
"Who invited you?"
Kenneth was wondering why in the world this girl, only 15, who she'd never met before, was suddenly on her case.
"Violet. Violet Reece."
"Starflower? I told her not to do that. Jin should choose the new recruits, not a human."
Ender didn't know what she was talking about, but he recognized the type of person she was. He'd seen it before, in his father. She was a type of person who felt she was responsible for everyone else, and normally, people like that want control.
"Who are you to ask?"
He had expected a response, but not one that was as violent as the one she gave. Her face exploded in anger, and out of nowhere, several blocks of metal came flying at him. If he hadn't detected the energy from her power, he would have been hit, but he simply raised his hands and caught it. From around the room, this caused a couple of people to turn their heads.
"What's your power, shrimp?"
Ender sneered and threw the piece of metal that he had caught to the flow. The others never made it to him.
"You first."
She almost smiled.
"All right, shrimp. I'm a magnetelekinetic user, I control magnetic fields, and can bend or move anything metal. Again, what's yours."
"I can sense energy flow. You don't know what that is, so I'll simplify it for you. I can see the 'invisibles,' I can't be surprised, and I can sense mutant signatures, as well as the energy that comes when they are about to attack."
The girl raised an eyebrow when he mentioned the 'invisibles' thing. In a matter of moments, it seemed as though he were the center of attention.
"OK, kid. I'll let you stay. My name's Cassandra, but I go by Steel. I'm the tactical master of this academy. "
Tactical master? I thought. She's barely 15. I smiled, though, and responded.
"Name's Kenneth. Most folks, though, call me Ender."
After the tense scene between Ender and Cassandra was finished, the room started loosening up. The people started introducing themselves. In about 5 minute's time, Ender seemed to understand that there were only twelve other than him. At least, in that room, and they were all under 30. After another 10 minutes of introduction, he started to classify their names with their powers in his mind.
Cassandra/Steel: Living magnet.
Ivan/Shiek: Teleportation.
Rachael/Nightshade: Invisibility
Tom/Polyform: Morphing ability.
Rick/Lightning: Inhuman reflexes, aim, and above average speed
Violet/Starflower: Control over the earth... plants and animals.
Paul/Ink: Pure black body
Tiffany/Blaze: Pyrokinesis
Ryan (meditation boy)/ Orion: Explosive light effects
Jennifer/Lizard: Climbs on wall, limb regrowth
Wendy/Indigo: Summon Aurora-type energy for attack
Lance/Drain: Drains energy from anything non-living.
It was definitely an odd group, and most certainly one that Ender wouldn't want to live with under normal circumstances, but as he thought about it, he realized just how 'not normal' these circumstances were. He, and somewhere around twelve others were trying to save the human race and save themselves at the same time. It wasn't exactly going to be easy. Then again, easy wasn't part of the job.
The next day, after he'd gotten his rest, a man in his room that he didn't know. In an instant, he shot out of bed and readied himself to fight against his enemy. It didn't take long, though, before he recognized a mutant signature and calmed down. He didn't, however, let his guard down.
"Who are you?"
The man looked at him questionably.
"Don't you know? I'm your roommate."
"Oh."
Ender hadn't even remembered, and he had just fallen asleep before he met Roy. His clothes from the day before were still on, so he simply got up and started getting ready. After he came out of the bathroom, freshened up from his day before, he noticed that there was a box on his bed.
"Hey. What's that?"
Roy looked at the box and said,
"You must be a newbie. That's your uniform."
"Uniform?"
"Yeah. Today, Cassandra's called for a danger room practice to test you out."
"What Danger Room?"
Roy sighed and shook his head.
"I can't believe they didn't explain this to you. OK. The Danger Room is our training center, basically. The walls, since we're underground, are made out of pure rock, but the rocks are shaped as spikes, and weapons come out of the ceiling to attack you. The higher the difficulty, the greater the number of weapons."
"Hold it. How do buy these weapons? They must be expensive."
Roy smiled.
"I knew you'd ask. We have a technology, a newer design, actually, that allows us to convert the atoms in the rock into weapons, and then reconvert them. That takes a lot of energy, I know, but we covert Wendy and Ryan's powers, not to mention Professor Xavier owns the windmill field to the east of the city under an assumed name. Using specialized tech, they produced about two thirds more energy then they normally would, and that excess goes to the city."
Ender had heard of such ideas being proposed, but he had never seen them in action. Then again, that was probably a good thing. He didn't want to know who could have supplied them with that.
His uniform on, a black, silver, and red vest with slightly baggy black nylon trousers, he went over to the Danger Room to get on with the battle simulation. When he reached the door, he saw that his uniform was unique, and theirs were as well. Everyone had their own individual style, and it was represented with their clothes. Now that he thought of it... red, black, and silver were his favorite colors... that mind reading professor must have found out. They were all lined in front of the door, waiting for him. He stepped into last place and listened and Cassandra briefed them about the simulation.
"Since all 14 of us, including Ender there, are here, I think it's time for us to take it up a level. Today, it will be a level 7 sim."
Ender could feel the collective gasp from the group.
"Pardon, but what is a level 7 sim?"
Tom turned around to talk to him.
"Level 7 is the hardest sim we've ever done. As far as we know, it's unbeatable."
"Why?"
"You'll see. We've tried it before, 7 of us in there at a time. To put it bluntly, I'm glad it wasn't real."
"Let me guess, annhilated?"
"Totally."
Then, the door opened. They filed in quickly, the ones with directly battle-related powers charging up. From next to him, Rachael, already invisible, whispered,
"Ender. Sense when they'll arrive. You'll take point."
"Right."
Ender ran to the front with Cassandra, Ryan, Tiffany, and Wendy. Cassandra was already setting them up. In the rush of the battle, she started calling them by their codenames.
"Ender, alert us to any surprises. Ryan, face the south wall. You know something comes out of there. Blaze, you take the east wall. Wendy, the west wall. I'll try to hold the zaps and the spikers still."
Ender had no clue what a zap or a spiker was, but he decided that it probably didn't matter, anyway. He would follow orders. Suddenly, all the lights turned off. Ender couldn't see, though. All he saw was the energy for the lights being diverted. Through the collective panic, he followed what the energy was diverting to.
"Everyone! Duck!"
Although no one saw the blades, they came out from the wall at head level. Ryan lit up his hands to illuminate the room, and then launched his attack into the blades, ripping them apart. Ink was waiting and a point in the far wall. That point...
"Ink! Get away from there!"
Ink jumped away just in time to dodge a spinning saw that came out of the wall. Aurora, Blaze, and Orion were doing everything they could to destroy the newly coming weapons, but they could barely see them. Steel's face was drenched in sweat and she tried to hold them all upwards, away from them, against their own will. Drain jumped over to a laser that escaped Steel's pull and grabbed hold of it. It jerked violently, like a bull trying to buck a rider, it started to flail, trying to get Drain to fly off, but it didn't work. He refocused all of its energy into his hands and found a spiker, a metallic spike launcher, and fired it, slagging the thing. None of them had been expecting the room to bring out any weapons from the rock walls, and it was still disorienting them. Ender was running as fast as he could, anticipating energy blast and given advice to the others. Shiek flicked over to Drain.
"Grab my hand, Lance!"
Lance had barely touched him before they teleported, together, towards a buzz saw aimed at Cassandra. Drain grabbed the thing and sucked out what little energy it used, rendering it worthless. Shiek gave him a thumbs up, and flicked off to Ender, holding the circular blade in his hand.
"Here! A shield!"
Ender had only just grabbed it when Shiek flicked off again and he was left alone. Or at least, he thought he was alone. From both his front and his back, two lasers charged up, and in his mind, he was reluctant to let go of his shield. Suddenly, he was grabbed and thrown aside. He was just getting up when Nightshade, Rachael, appeared for just a moment and nodded to him. So, Rachael was being his guardian. He wasn't going to stand for it. He grabbed the saw tighter, tensed up, reared back, and then hurled it into a laser, chopping the barrel neatly in half.
"Go! Help Tom! He's more battle worthless then I am!"
She nodded, dissapeared, and he was alone again. He surveyed the damage they had dealed, and was shocked. For all the ones they had destroyed, there were AT LEAST thirty times as many. Suddenly, a laser activated near Steel.
"Cassandra! Steel! Move!"
But she was too focused. She could barely even hear him, and one of them slammed into her, burning her shoulder, and knocking her out. With that, the laser weren't being held even slightly still. They started to move amazingly fast, like arms to a big octopus, launching spikes, saws, laser blasts, everything it had to destroy them. Ink was hit almost instantly, surprised from behind. They all were systematically knocked out. The system was efficient. It would attack one until it was overwhelmed, then move on.
"No... this is not happening. This is not happening! THIS IS NOT HAPPENING!"
Suddenly, the entirely room seemed to light up as all the energy in the room, the laser blasts, the mutant's attack, everything focused at one point.
"Let's.... end... this!"
The ever growing sphere of energy near the ceiling started to launched out lightning bolts, striking like tentacles, devestating the lasers. They couldn't attack, and they were being destroyed. They didn't stand a chance. One of the only ones that were uninjured, Nightshade, came over to him, coming visible only when the lasers had stopped. Ender didn't need her to come visible, though. He could sense her energy system.
"Now, Kenneth, I know why they call you Ender."
Kenneth Iles
A.K.A: Ender
Brown Eyes
13 Years Old
Black hair
6 feet, 2 inches
Mutant power: Energy detection, Energy diversion
Informally known as Ender, Kenneth Iles walked down the street. As he looked at the trees, the grass, he didn't see what everyone else saw. When everyone else saw the trees, they saw green leaves, a brown trunk, maybe even a squirrel. For Kenneth, it wasn't like that. He wasn't blind, but he didn't see what they saw. When he saw a tree, he saw the energy flowing through the sap, the kinetic energy of the wind in the trees, the motion of the squirrels. He would never see what they could see, but it didn't matter to him, because he could see more. Kenneth walked to the end of the street where he was and saw a lamppost, a single lamppost that normally shouldn't have been there. A normal person would have missed it, but he didn't. Seeing through the metal, he could sense the energy flowing down into the ground, into the underground school. Secretly, he had chosen to join their group, and had talked Starflower, Violet Reece, into letting him know the secret location. He watched for any sign of sentinels, and was glad when he didn't sense any of the energy that their kind created. He wasn't afraid of the big, lumbering mechanical golems that roamed and killed off mutants on sight. What he was worried about were the 'invisibles,' Sentinels that were giving synthetic skin, and put in normal society as mutes, whose only purpose was to 'retire rogue humans.' In his mind, he cursed the xenocidal murderer that came up with the design. The Sentinels would have stayed useless, like before, but they were deadly now. Like ninja on the prowl.
Stealthily, he walked over to the lamppost, still looking for 'invisibles.' When he was sure he was clean, he turned around and opened up a maintenance slot that was really a passcoded entry. He typed in the passcode and suddenly, we was turned upside down. On his way, he could see the moving energy patterns of another lamppost, and figured that it was replacing the one he'd just moved. Then, suddenly, he fell down what seemed like a chasm. Really, though, it was only about 10 yards, and the 'steel' that made up the pathway was really a cushion. At first, he thought to be angry at whoever surprised him, but he stopped himself before he could get there. Over time and time of fighting, he had learned that in great anger, he would naturally direct the energy around him at his opponent, and he didn't want to start off on a bad foot. He stood up and walked down the 'steel' path, towards the only door. Suddenly, it opened up and a man in a wheelchair came out, smiling. Ender noticed that he was wearing an implant in his right ear, and it was taking data from a computer system somewhere else in the academy.
"Ah. You must be the Ender I heard about. Welcome to my underground school."
After the Professor talked to Kenneth, Ender, about the purpose for the school, Ender looked at him, startled.
"You mean... you want me to help the people who want to kill me? Geez, I thought this was a combat training academy!"
The proffesor gave Violet a wary look.
"Well... that is sort of our job. You see, Kenneth, this school trains you to use your powers, sometimes for destructive purposes. However, remember that we aren't going to use our powers to hurt others."
Ender was abashed.
"Then what in this world is open for us to destroy?!"
Proffesor Xavier looked at him and shook his head, sighing.
"Ender, there's something you don't understand. We are going to protect ourselves and protect humanity until we finally gain a good name. We cannot abandon humanity because we are human."
Ender was frowning, and Xavier could tell that he was convinced. To leave him off on something he could understand, though, he said,
"However, there is a little bit of fighting involved. Talk to Violet and she'll show you your room, and then show you everyone else. If you'd like, I can even have her introduce you to the Danger Room."
"The Danger Room?"
Violet opened one of the big, aluminum doors that constitued the doors to the room. Because wood was expensive, and more difficult to transport underground, aluminum had been chosen. She walked him inside, ignoring his awe at all the trinkets in the room, and showed him everything. After explaining where the bathrooms were, where the light switches were, etc., she told him,
"You'll be sharing this room with Roy."
Immediately, Ender snapped his head around to look at her.
"Who's Roy? I'm sharing a room?!"
Violet looked at his expression and laughed.
"Of course you are. Space is expensive down here, and even Charles has a finite money supply. Besides, You'll have a fun time with Roy."
"Who's Roy?"
"Oh. He's the teacher here at the academy. He's only 19, and he's a real partymonger, but he knows more about astrophysics and mutant powers than you'll ever know."
"You mean, he's a human?"
Violet gave him a funny look.
"You mean, we're not?"
"Well... we're mutants."
Violet blinked, and then understood what he was trying to get across, albeit unsuccessfully.
"We're all humans here, Kenneth. The idea that we're different is simply FOH propoganda."
"FOH?"
"I'll tell you about them later."
After Violet left him, Ender found the energy trails of other humans leading to a certain point in the school, so he walked down the hall to find where everyone was hanging out. Unlike his own door, there was a handprint pad on the door. He didn't know if his handprint was installed in the system, but he put his hand on it anyway. The heat of the laser reader seemed to tickle for a moment, but he smiled when the door opened into a rather luxurious game room. There was a pool table where two teens, a boy and a girl, were playing. At the foosball, four different people were trying to play, but the way they were laughing, Ender doubted they could really even concentrate on the board. Over at one corner, watching TV, were three others watching some improvisational game show. Finally, there was Violet talking to another middle school girl over in a couched area, giggling about who knew what. Or at least, he thought was it. Suddenly, he noticed that what he thought was a statue was actually a meditating mutant. It was going to be a weird world. He walked over to the foosball table, trying to find some way to edge into the conversation.when he got there, everyone stopped playing for a second and looked up.
"Who are you."
Ender smiled and gave a common school answer.
"Oh, just a new student."
"New student?"
She gave him a skeptical look for a moment, checking him over.
"Who invited you?"
Kenneth was wondering why in the world this girl, only 15, who she'd never met before, was suddenly on her case.
"Violet. Violet Reece."
"Starflower? I told her not to do that. Jin should choose the new recruits, not a human."
Ender didn't know what she was talking about, but he recognized the type of person she was. He'd seen it before, in his father. She was a type of person who felt she was responsible for everyone else, and normally, people like that want control.
"Who are you to ask?"
He had expected a response, but not one that was as violent as the one she gave. Her face exploded in anger, and out of nowhere, several blocks of metal came flying at him. If he hadn't detected the energy from her power, he would have been hit, but he simply raised his hands and caught it. From around the room, this caused a couple of people to turn their heads.
"What's your power, shrimp?"
Ender sneered and threw the piece of metal that he had caught to the flow. The others never made it to him.
"You first."
She almost smiled.
"All right, shrimp. I'm a magnetelekinetic user, I control magnetic fields, and can bend or move anything metal. Again, what's yours."
"I can sense energy flow. You don't know what that is, so I'll simplify it for you. I can see the 'invisibles,' I can't be surprised, and I can sense mutant signatures, as well as the energy that comes when they are about to attack."
The girl raised an eyebrow when he mentioned the 'invisibles' thing. In a matter of moments, it seemed as though he were the center of attention.
"OK, kid. I'll let you stay. My name's Cassandra, but I go by Steel. I'm the tactical master of this academy. "
Tactical master? I thought. She's barely 15. I smiled, though, and responded.
"Name's Kenneth. Most folks, though, call me Ender."
After the tense scene between Ender and Cassandra was finished, the room started loosening up. The people started introducing themselves. In about 5 minute's time, Ender seemed to understand that there were only twelve other than him. At least, in that room, and they were all under 30. After another 10 minutes of introduction, he started to classify their names with their powers in his mind.
Cassandra/Steel: Living magnet.
Ivan/Shiek: Teleportation.
Rachael/Nightshade: Invisibility
Tom/Polyform: Morphing ability.
Rick/Lightning: Inhuman reflexes, aim, and above average speed
Violet/Starflower: Control over the earth... plants and animals.
Paul/Ink: Pure black body
Tiffany/Blaze: Pyrokinesis
Ryan (meditation boy)/ Orion: Explosive light effects
Jennifer/Lizard: Climbs on wall, limb regrowth
Wendy/Indigo: Summon Aurora-type energy for attack
Lance/Drain: Drains energy from anything non-living.
It was definitely an odd group, and most certainly one that Ender wouldn't want to live with under normal circumstances, but as he thought about it, he realized just how 'not normal' these circumstances were. He, and somewhere around twelve others were trying to save the human race and save themselves at the same time. It wasn't exactly going to be easy. Then again, easy wasn't part of the job.
The next day, after he'd gotten his rest, a man in his room that he didn't know. In an instant, he shot out of bed and readied himself to fight against his enemy. It didn't take long, though, before he recognized a mutant signature and calmed down. He didn't, however, let his guard down.
"Who are you?"
The man looked at him questionably.
"Don't you know? I'm your roommate."
"Oh."
Ender hadn't even remembered, and he had just fallen asleep before he met Roy. His clothes from the day before were still on, so he simply got up and started getting ready. After he came out of the bathroom, freshened up from his day before, he noticed that there was a box on his bed.
"Hey. What's that?"
Roy looked at the box and said,
"You must be a newbie. That's your uniform."
"Uniform?"
"Yeah. Today, Cassandra's called for a danger room practice to test you out."
"What Danger Room?"
Roy sighed and shook his head.
"I can't believe they didn't explain this to you. OK. The Danger Room is our training center, basically. The walls, since we're underground, are made out of pure rock, but the rocks are shaped as spikes, and weapons come out of the ceiling to attack you. The higher the difficulty, the greater the number of weapons."
"Hold it. How do buy these weapons? They must be expensive."
Roy smiled.
"I knew you'd ask. We have a technology, a newer design, actually, that allows us to convert the atoms in the rock into weapons, and then reconvert them. That takes a lot of energy, I know, but we covert Wendy and Ryan's powers, not to mention Professor Xavier owns the windmill field to the east of the city under an assumed name. Using specialized tech, they produced about two thirds more energy then they normally would, and that excess goes to the city."
Ender had heard of such ideas being proposed, but he had never seen them in action. Then again, that was probably a good thing. He didn't want to know who could have supplied them with that.
His uniform on, a black, silver, and red vest with slightly baggy black nylon trousers, he went over to the Danger Room to get on with the battle simulation. When he reached the door, he saw that his uniform was unique, and theirs were as well. Everyone had their own individual style, and it was represented with their clothes. Now that he thought of it... red, black, and silver were his favorite colors... that mind reading professor must have found out. They were all lined in front of the door, waiting for him. He stepped into last place and listened and Cassandra briefed them about the simulation.
"Since all 14 of us, including Ender there, are here, I think it's time for us to take it up a level. Today, it will be a level 7 sim."
Ender could feel the collective gasp from the group.
"Pardon, but what is a level 7 sim?"
Tom turned around to talk to him.
"Level 7 is the hardest sim we've ever done. As far as we know, it's unbeatable."
"Why?"
"You'll see. We've tried it before, 7 of us in there at a time. To put it bluntly, I'm glad it wasn't real."
"Let me guess, annhilated?"
"Totally."
Then, the door opened. They filed in quickly, the ones with directly battle-related powers charging up. From next to him, Rachael, already invisible, whispered,
"Ender. Sense when they'll arrive. You'll take point."
"Right."
Ender ran to the front with Cassandra, Ryan, Tiffany, and Wendy. Cassandra was already setting them up. In the rush of the battle, she started calling them by their codenames.
"Ender, alert us to any surprises. Ryan, face the south wall. You know something comes out of there. Blaze, you take the east wall. Wendy, the west wall. I'll try to hold the zaps and the spikers still."
Ender had no clue what a zap or a spiker was, but he decided that it probably didn't matter, anyway. He would follow orders. Suddenly, all the lights turned off. Ender couldn't see, though. All he saw was the energy for the lights being diverted. Through the collective panic, he followed what the energy was diverting to.
"Everyone! Duck!"
Although no one saw the blades, they came out from the wall at head level. Ryan lit up his hands to illuminate the room, and then launched his attack into the blades, ripping them apart. Ink was waiting and a point in the far wall. That point...
"Ink! Get away from there!"
Ink jumped away just in time to dodge a spinning saw that came out of the wall. Aurora, Blaze, and Orion were doing everything they could to destroy the newly coming weapons, but they could barely see them. Steel's face was drenched in sweat and she tried to hold them all upwards, away from them, against their own will. Drain jumped over to a laser that escaped Steel's pull and grabbed hold of it. It jerked violently, like a bull trying to buck a rider, it started to flail, trying to get Drain to fly off, but it didn't work. He refocused all of its energy into his hands and found a spiker, a metallic spike launcher, and fired it, slagging the thing. None of them had been expecting the room to bring out any weapons from the rock walls, and it was still disorienting them. Ender was running as fast as he could, anticipating energy blast and given advice to the others. Shiek flicked over to Drain.
"Grab my hand, Lance!"
Lance had barely touched him before they teleported, together, towards a buzz saw aimed at Cassandra. Drain grabbed the thing and sucked out what little energy it used, rendering it worthless. Shiek gave him a thumbs up, and flicked off to Ender, holding the circular blade in his hand.
"Here! A shield!"
Ender had only just grabbed it when Shiek flicked off again and he was left alone. Or at least, he thought he was alone. From both his front and his back, two lasers charged up, and in his mind, he was reluctant to let go of his shield. Suddenly, he was grabbed and thrown aside. He was just getting up when Nightshade, Rachael, appeared for just a moment and nodded to him. So, Rachael was being his guardian. He wasn't going to stand for it. He grabbed the saw tighter, tensed up, reared back, and then hurled it into a laser, chopping the barrel neatly in half.
"Go! Help Tom! He's more battle worthless then I am!"
She nodded, dissapeared, and he was alone again. He surveyed the damage they had dealed, and was shocked. For all the ones they had destroyed, there were AT LEAST thirty times as many. Suddenly, a laser activated near Steel.
"Cassandra! Steel! Move!"
But she was too focused. She could barely even hear him, and one of them slammed into her, burning her shoulder, and knocking her out. With that, the laser weren't being held even slightly still. They started to move amazingly fast, like arms to a big octopus, launching spikes, saws, laser blasts, everything it had to destroy them. Ink was hit almost instantly, surprised from behind. They all were systematically knocked out. The system was efficient. It would attack one until it was overwhelmed, then move on.
"No... this is not happening. This is not happening! THIS IS NOT HAPPENING!"
Suddenly, the entirely room seemed to light up as all the energy in the room, the laser blasts, the mutant's attack, everything focused at one point.
"Let's.... end... this!"
The ever growing sphere of energy near the ceiling started to launched out lightning bolts, striking like tentacles, devestating the lasers. They couldn't attack, and they were being destroyed. They didn't stand a chance. One of the only ones that were uninjured, Nightshade, came over to him, coming visible only when the lasers had stopped. Ender didn't need her to come visible, though. He could sense her energy system.
"Now, Kenneth, I know why they call you Ender."
Kenneth Iles
A.K.A: Ender
Brown Eyes
13 Years Old
Black hair
6 feet, 2 inches
Mutant power: Energy detection, Energy diversion