Gen13 Mystic Training: Fairchild

by Joshua The Evil Guy

Side Story to Gen13: Mystics. After discovering they each have magic, Harry Potter set about getting special training for each of his teammates. This is the story of Caitlin Fairchild's training as a Shield.

Title: Gen13 Mystic Training: Fairchild

Author: Joshua "The Evil Guy"

Rating: M (Due to Language, Violence, Brief Nudity, Adult Content)

Disclaimer: Gen13 and all associated characters and events were created by Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell, and the original comics/events this story covers distributed by Image Comics, though are now owned by DC Comics. There will be brief mentions of Harry Potter, but he doesn't show up in this story. Other crossovers, mostly from concepts and magic powers will be mentioned. Niklaren "Niko" Goldeye belongs to Tamora Pierce, drawn from her "Circle of Magic" series. I don't own any of it and I'm not making any money from all this, so don't bother suing me. No spoilers in this one, just character development and a bit of rewriting.

Summary: Side Story to Gen13: Mystics. After discovering they each have magic, Harry Potter set about getting special training for each of his teammates. This is the story of Caitlin Fairchild's training as a Shield.

Fairchild

Caitlin Fairchild was superhuman. More specifically classified as a GenActive. She is the daughter of Alex Fairchild, one of the more successful test subjects of Project Genesis's Gen12. She was raised by her Aunt Sophie and Uncle Nate in Portland, Oregon, from the age of five until she graduated High School, Valedictorian, and went to Princeton University.

Throughout her childhood, and most noticeably the latter years of High School, Caitlin was a thin, waif of a girl, very petite, and looked down on as being the stereotypical nerd, geek, and other synonyms for social outcast. She had a nightmare of a roommate, and while she was doing excellent in her core classes, she was no closer to figuring out what she wanted to do with her life or what her Major should be or pretty much anything that one was supposed to figure out in college. Near the end of her Sophomore year at Princeton, she was approached by men identifying themselves as agents of the NSC, National Security Committee, and that she'd been recruited for their Gen13 program. They then shipped her off to a Compound in the desert somewhere and started her in the latest version of Project Genesis.

Nothing much changed for her over the course of several months, until the time that it came to an end. She'd been feeling sick, went looking for the infirmary, and instead found an open file on a secure computer about her father! Shortly after that, she and her friends were threatened by some nameless, faceless security guard and things... got out of hand.

Things actually got a little more than "out of hand" actually, as in the space of a few seconds, she grew from a barely five-foot rail-thin waif of a geek, into a six-foot-plus amazon beauty that would make supermodels stew with impotent jealousy! On top of that, she was super-strong, could run faster than most low-mileage vehicles, and discovered she was at least highly resistant to close-range explosions.

The latter, actually, was ultimately discovered not to be a part of the Gen-Factor powers she'd just had triggered, but by her innate magic. One of her teammates, who just so happened to be a wizard recruited much the same way she was, discovered that they all, inexplicably, had magic! To make things even more interesting, despite having no idea what to do or how to use it, it turned out that Caitlin had the most out of all of them in terms of raw magic to call upon.

Once they'd escaped the Compound and gotten to a Safe House, ironically enough in a town that was placed on a mystical convergence, their wizard teammate brought home a powerful mage that helped them identify what it was they could precisely do with their magic. As it turns out, Caitlin's "specialty" was Protection Magic. Which went a long way toward explaining just how she survives explosions and gunfire and other modern weapons that should've killed her a dozen times over. Of course, this wasn't obvious until after extensive testing done by the mage. Quite extensive testing...

Lynch Villa

Sunnydale, CA

April 1999

"Right this way, my dear," Niko gestured and allowed the sundress clad amazon to precede him through the doorway. With the glass sliding doors shut behind them, he gestured and said, "I've actually set up in the office just down the hall, on the right. The same tools that helped me identify Roxanne and Ms. Rainmaker are all in there."

"Didn't you say that you already knew what Sarah's talents were? Same as with Grunge and Bobby?" Caitlin questioned as she walked in and sat down along the empty side of the conference table.

"I recognized their auras, yes," Niko replied in answer. "However, just because I saw a similar aura to other witches around Ms. Rainmaker did not mean there wasn't more to her power. Some of these tools help in specifying any talents she may have beyond the standard. With Mr. Lane, well, there is no mistaking a Pyromancer's aura for any other. Mr. Chang, on the other hand, well, in all honesty, he is the first true kekkaishi that I have met face-to-face. I know all the theories and research behind it, but..."

Caitlin nodded, finishing for him, "Theories and research can't actually do anything, especially not when faced with a practical problem."

"Quite," he agreed. "Now then, we'll start with narrowing down which branch of magic-user you actually are, Ms. Fairchild. Please hold out your hands, both of them together. No, not like that, my dear. I will be placing various objects in your hands. You don't need to cup them, merely hold them flat and keep them still for a bit here." He smiled at seeing her nervous expression, even as he placed a simple wooden stick (with a leaf twig still attached) in her hands. "Not to worry. If anything were to actually reveal itself in the results, I will let you know... hm, immediately..." he trailed off as he observed the stick.

"Um," she started to say, but silenced herself when he snatched the stick away and placed a crystal orb in its place. There was no sudden glow or shining light or images appearing at the center of it, so she merely held it steady and observed Niko for the time being.

Frowning, he squinted back and forth between the orb and the redhead's green eyes. After a few seconds more, he removed the orb and placed a circuit board in her hands. Seconds later, it was replaced with a burning candle, which at most flickered only from the breeze of their individual breathing, if even that much. The candle was then switched with a small bowl of water. Caitlin did her best to hold it as steady as possible, but she had to figure that any ripples were from any uncontrollable trembles in her arms. An unpolished rock followed the bowl of water, which was then followed by a large polished stone of what she guessed was pure obsidian, followed by two pieces of hematite one for each palm, followed by a straight copper wire, a glass tube, a fiber-optic cable, a set of prisms, a strip of linen cloth, an empty clay pot, a softly-glowing green crystal, a brightly-glowing red rock, a metal bar of what she assumed was bronze, and then a solid gold bar, an ornate rod carved with runes with a crystal headpiece at one end, a bone carved with different yet equally ornate runes, an apple, a potato, a ceramic plate with even more runes, a stone plate with very different runes, and finally a porcelain figurine. After taking the figurine away, Niko sighed and ran his hands over his hair before tightening his ponytail just a bit.

"Well, Ms. Fairchild, you are the conundrum, aren't you?" he said, stroking his beard as he looked her over. She felt the odd impulse to both blush and preen at his comment.

"How do you mean, sir?" she inquired, lowering her hands.

"Hm, let me try one more thing here," he mused, reaching down into the open bag that he'd been pulling all these objects from in the first place. Out came another object, a heavily decorated, and quite beautiful, Native American Dream Catcher. "This may tickle a bit, but it cannot hurt you. It is merely a diagnostic tool in this case," he assured her even as he ran the lengthy strands of beads and feathers over the top of her head in a somewhat complex pattern.

Once that was completed, he held the dream catcher between them and gestured at it with his free hand. The interior net of the dream catcher lit up with arcane power, burning the pattern of the strands into her retina before coming together into an all together different image. One that she did not understand.

Well, she could see perfectly well that it was hazy images of herself, all during moments when her invulnerability had been tested, but she did not understand why those images were showing up.

"Hm, yes, I begin to understand," Niko said, quite apparently one step ahead of her in that regard.

"Well, I don't," she freely admitted.

"Narrowing down your type of magic will take a bit longer, I'm afraid," he explained. "I'll need to actually construct a spell to reveal that. In the meantime though, let us instead focus on your specialty. Quite obviously, your... shall we say, durability? That is, as Harry surmised, most assuredly a consequence of your mystic talents. Knowing that, we can specify if it is Physical, Psychic, Power, Nature, Elemental, Techno, or Dimensional. Let's start with the most esoteric, shall we?" He grinned and then had her stand up.

"Now then," he began, laying out a series of face-down cards, "You mentioned receiving a psychic vision from Roxanne when she was in trouble. Let us determine if that is genuinely her magic, or yours. There we are. At your leisure, and just go with your instincts, turn over the cards, in whatever order you wish."

Shrugging, and figuring there must be a purpose behind this, Caitlin did her best to relax and silently observed the face-down cards for a few seconds, before shrugging again as she hid her frown and just turned over the top left of the three-by-five rows of cards. Feeling no whimsy, nor burst of insight, and surprised to see they were just ordinary playing cards. She turned over the last of the fifteen cards and was further surprised to see that they were all of the Heart suit, and she'd turned them all over in order from the Ace to the two Jokers at the end.

"Hm, some psychic talent, but not enough to account for everything," Niko remarked, gathering up the cards. He then put down a small box filled with Legos, except every single piece was the white four-peg-square piece. "Build something with these. Doesn't matter what. Do it the best and most efficient way that you can think of. Again, don't try and force it, just go with your instincts."

Nodding, Caitlin grabbed two of the blocks and put them together and after that she seemed to lose track of time and the next thing she knew, she was looking down at a life-sized Lego parody of Captain America's Shield! Which was confusing, because she'd thought there had only been white bricks in the box, and the box itself wasn't big enough to have held all the pieces needed to make... this!

"Well, not Dimensional, fortunately," Niko said, taking the Lego shield away from her. "Although I find it interesting that your magic manifested a shield of all things. I wonder..."

He dug around in his bag for a few moments, before ultimately pulling out a pot of dirt and a pack of seeds. From their size and shape, she deduced they were mustard seeds, but the coloring was off. They were all pure white.

"Plant this seed, please," he requested, placing the pot before her and putting a single white mustard seed in the palm of her right hand.

Curious, despite her reservations, Caitlin did as requested, digging out and pushing aside a small amount of the dirt in the pot before dropping the seed in and covering it back up. Then they both stood back and waited. Like magic, within seconds a plant sprouted from the pot, but it was not a mustard plant. No, it was a cactus, one that quickly grew to fill the entirety of the pot's limits before it began to sprout full and luminous blooms, which themselves were attached with both thorns and prickles and what Caitlin judged to be trichome. In short, it was the most defensive plant she'd ever seen, and she doubted that it could even exist outside of magic as it would put a stranglehold on nearby flora and fauna life.

"Intriguing," Niko said. "Not Nature either, but still influencing it."

"Wait, the plant just grew from me planting it, how can you say that I didn't make it do that?" she asked.

"It is actually the pot and the fertilizer that made it grow so quickly," Niko explained, waving his hand over the still-growing cactus, the result of which was the sudden cessation of its rapid growth and signs of it now wilting just as quickly. "The seed took a sampling of your magic and used that to determine what plant it would become. If your talents had anything to do with Nature, then it would have grown into the very plant these seeds come from. But it did not stop at merely becoming a cactus, it created a whole new plant, meaning that your magic is highly unique, and while it has some Nature aspects, that is not everything. Ah, here we are!"

He pulled out a hand-held version of one of those palm-reading-love-machines you see at carnivals everywhere, where the lights light up why holding your hand on the metal plates. This one only had a single light on it, LED rather than old-fashioned vacuum tube.

"This will tell us if any of your magic lies under the Power talent school," he explained, setting the plate in front of her.

Sighing, she nodded and put her appropriate hand, her right, on the metal plate and waited.

They didn't have long to wait, as the LED light immediately lit up with a bright white light, and then a very loud hum began to emit from the light. Niko took a step back, but Caitlin kept her palm on the plate, but prepared to jump back in case this thing exploded. Not that she was that worried about it. Come to think of it, maybe she should crouch over it so that Niko wouldn't get hurt if it did explode. She certainly wouldn't get hurt from an explosion, magical or not.

Rather than the whole thing exploding, however, the LED merely shattered after about thirty seconds, but the light it had been producing remained and continued to get brighter and brighter still. Shielding her eyes from the glare, she called out to the mage over the hum, "Um, Niko?"

She was surprised to see him staring straight into the glaring light, as though he weren't even seeing that, but something else entirely. "Niko?" she tried again. "Should I let go of this yet?"

"No," he said, unblinking. "It has almost finished calibrating to your magic. I must say, Ms. Fairchild, it is truly remarkable how much raw magic you have at your beck and call. There are some minor gods that do not have half as much as you have demonstrated with just this. Fascinating!"

"Uh, thanks?" she replied. "Just, uh, this is getting kinda bright. Let me know when I can let go, OK?"

"Of course, of course," he assured her, still staring straight into the light without blinking once.

After about a minute or more, the light more blinding than ever, enough that she still felt the pain of the glare even having turned fully away with her eyes squeezed shut, he finally told her she could remove her hand. Instantly, as fast as a light-switch being turned off, the glow from the box vanished and Caitlin was left blinking away multicolored spots from her eyes for a couple minutes.

"So, uh, what were the results?" she asked, still half-blind.

"Again, you are powerful, Ms. Fairchild," Niko commented. "Unfortunately, you do not wield Light, Lightning, Ether, nor Darkness. It would seem that, whatever your true skill, it seems to partake of each and every discipline and talent of Magic. Three disciplines remain; Elemental, Techno, and Physical. Let's go with the obvious for next, maybe it will at least provide some insight. Here we are. Same as with the blocks, make something, it doesn't matter what, just go with your instincts." He handed her a block of brown clay.

Shrugging, the redhead sighed to herself and started molding the clay in her hands, deciding to go with a statue of her friend and team leader, running. To her immense surprise, after she was done, she held in her hands a hollowed out square in the shape of a rather detailed castle wall, minus the castle inside. Setting it down, she took a nervous step back from the clay, wiping her hands clean.

"That... that wasn't what I was trying to make!" she told him. "How... how did I even do that?"

"Magic," he replied, picking up the four-sided wall structure. "The clay itself is enchanted for tests like these. No matter what you intend to make with it, you always end up making the most basic representation of your physical magic. That is what all of these tests do. They demonstrate and provide representation of your magic talent, in regards to the individual discipline. We'll do Techno next, I think."

Niko then put most everything still left on the table back in his bag. She truly had no clue just how much stuff there was until she watched him put it all back in. It amazed her how much could fit into that little bag, but the answer, she realized, was and would always be; Magic!

Once the rest of it was put away, he began pulling out whole new tools. These, at least, she was somewhat familiar with. Electrodes, wires, EKG, Respiratory, Hemodynamic, and Thermometer monitors. Even something that looked kind of like a portable X-Ray/MIR machine. He then began hooking her up to all of these different monitors and devices and detection tools. Five minutes later, when all was said and done, she was still standing by the table, but she had sticky pads covering her arms, neck, chest, sides, legs and head, with wires running from them to each of the machines arrayed on the table.

"What is...?" she started to ask, but Niko shushed her.

"Shh," he whispered. "This is to determine your talent within the Technomancy discipline. It is still relatively... new, but it is a true art of magic. Now, when I turned these all on, one of two things will happen. One, and admittedly the ideal result, is that you'll suddenly be able to feel and control each of these machines, thereby unlocking your Technomancy powers. Or two, they'll all blow up and short out. But before that, we'll have about two or three seconds of raw data that I can analyze to help us further narrow it down. Ready?"

Taking a deep breath, Caitlin nodded her go-ahead. Niko waved his hand over the table and suddenly all the machines came to life. She really did not want the machines to blow up, and was actually focusing most of her energy on preventing just that. To both hers and Niko's surprise, none of the machines blew up, nor did they short out. As a matter of fact... neither could she suddenly sense or feel anything about them beyond the pads stuck to her skin.

"That's... odd," Niko said, taking a closer look at some of the machines. "They, they all have zero results!" he exclaimed. Looking up at her, he gave her the hairy eyeball, so to speak, before giving a sigh of frustration. "Ms. Fairchild, may I ask what it is that you are focusing on right now?"

"Um," she flushed pink around her cheeks. "Not blowing the machines up?"

"Uh huh," he nodded. "Please stop. And yes, I know, you don't know how to 'stop' as such. So let's make this simple. What does Harry look like in a swimsuit?" Niko grinned cheekily at her.

Now blushing red, she lost her focus and within seconds, sparks shot out from each and every one of the monitoring devices, mere moments before they all went dead.

"Extraordinary," Niko laughed, reading the few seconds of data that had been recorded. "At this point I almost don't need to do the last test, but it is always best to be sure. Tell me, Ms. Fairchild, can you bleed?"

"Excuse me?" she snapped, ripping off all the sensors attached to her head.

"Your, pardon the term, invulnerability," he elaborated. "Does it make your skin absolutely unbreakable, or is it possible for us to get a small drop of blood? I assure you, it is required for the final test, otherwise I wouldn't ask."

"Well, I've never actually tried to test that," she admitted. "I've just assumed that it was because of my mass-increase that allowed me to survive everything. But now that you mention it, I have been cut before, but it was usually from a bullet graze, or something that should have completely pulverized me."

"Ah," Niko nodded. "Try this pin. Just a small drop is needed for the test. Let me go ahead and set everything up here."

"All right," Caitlin acknowledged and proceeded to try and get a drop of blood from her fingertip.

Surprisingly, it wasn't difficult or 'impossible' at all, although she did take note of the fact that her blood did coagulate rather quickly, fast enough that the blood barely had time to pool around the wound before healing over. Nevertheless, by the time Niko was ready, she did indeed have the required drop of blood.

He'd pulled out a black mat, then drawn on it with magnetic chalk; a wide circle with a cross going through the middle of it. At the points where the cross intersected with the circle, he'd placed a pile of dirt, an ice cube, an open flame, and a small fan blowing downwards onto the mat. She recalled what the remaining test was for; Elemental. Earth, water, fire and air.

At the center of the circle, where the cross met, he put a small blob of gray clay.

"Put the drop of blood on this, please," he ordered, stepping back.

Taking her cues from him, she nodded, dropped her blood on the piece of gray clay, and then stepped back. Fascinated, she watched as the clay absorbed her blood and changed to a flesh-toned blob of clay. A blob that quickly reformed itself... into a small clay figure... of her!

At least it wasn't detailed enough for her to worry about the fact that it was 'naked', she thought silently.

And then the real magic began.

At first it was the dirt, or at least that is what it looked like, until she realized that the 'air' from the fan was actually blowing and picking up the dirt and drawing it in toward the clay figurine. Drops of condensation, 'water', from the ice cube were likewise picked up the by mini-cyclone starting up on the table before them, conveniently avoiding snuffing out the flame, which was also drawn in and some how extended toward the center of the elemental circle. Within seconds, the clay figure was surrounded by the effects of the four elements, but they were not hitting or cutting into it, in fact they weren't even touching it at all! No, the best description that she could fathom as she observed the phenomenon was that... each of the elements, individually and collectively, were... protecting the clay representation of her.

"What," she asked, clearing her throat slightly, "What does this mean?"

"Let's test that, shall we?" he asked, and then snapped his finger over the elemental display and cast a spell, the immediate effects of which were a bright, blinding flash of light, and a bolt of power striking down at the clay figure.

Instantly, all of the swirling aspects converged and created... Caitlin didn't know what, but the best description she could come up with was some kind of shield appeared, except it was neither solid nor fluid, nor even gaseous, but at the same time all of the above, and more! The clay figured remained untouched.

"So...?" she trailed off, looking to the mage expectantly.

"Protection," was all he said.

"Protection?" she repeated.

"Your magic," Niko said, drawing in and letting out a deep breath as he ran his hands over his black hair, tightening his ponytail, "which seems to draw upon and invoke multiple disciplines, is centered around one, singular concept; Protection. Defense. Security. Preservation, Safety, Stability, and however many other synonyms you wish to use. Your power, your magic, Ms. Fairchild, is quite simply your invulnerability. I would surmise that your, what do you call it again? Gen-Factor? It was heavily influenced by your innate magic, which responded to the activation of your genetic powers."

"That..." Caitlin started to protest, but trailed off in thought as she considered all that she knew about her powers and how they worked. She survived point-blank explosions, and walked away without so much as ringing ears. Nothing in nature, Gen-Factor or not, could do such a thing without a huge energy differential. Superman did it, quite simply because he was an alien that absorbed and redirected the sun's solar energy, creating a field around his body that was as resilient as a yellow star. Caitlin, on the other hand, was all too human.

Magic, well, that actually made more sense than blaming it on some kind of psychokinetic quirk from the Gen-Factor that just so happened to make her super strong and super beautiful at the same time.

And that was the other thing... why make her beautiful? Why not make her a rock-monster like Ben Grimm, aka The Thing? Unless it was her magic, acting to, as Niko said, preserve and stabilize her body and genetics? It... made a lot of sense, now that she was thinking about it.

Sitting down heavily in the chair behind her, the redhead looked up at the dark-eyed mage and asked him, "OK, so... my magic has to do with... protection. What do I do with that? What can I do with that? Aside from what I'm, apparently, already doing unconsciously?"

"Well, let's see here," Niko remarked thoughtfully, already cleaning up from their latest test and digging through his bag once more. "I brought the grimoire for Ms. Rainmaker, knowing one of you would be a natural-born witch. As for Mr. Chang, well, I've observed Kekkaishi, from a distance mind you, in action often enough to know how their most common spell works. However, I must confess, I've never seen anyone, or anything like you, Ms. Fairchild. At least now I know why I had visions forcing me to prepare such a... diverse range of spell preparations."

"I... don't understand," she confessed, hating to admit that much, after having pretty much the highest IQ in the entire building, if not potentially the city.

"I don't often go around with all of these testing materials," he indicated the test results that he was still cleaning up and putting away. "Even with the forewarning Harry gave me, of coming here to determine precisely what magic each of you wield, I would normally have only brought a third of what you've seen me employ here. Part of my own magical abilities, Ms. Fairchild, is sometimes I get visions of the future. Which, believe me, is not all that it is cracked up to be. In the time since meeting Harry Potter, I have been, shall we say assaulted with visions of this day. Without them, I fear I may have come here far less prepared than I needed to be. I'm telling you this, Ms. Fairchild, quite simply because I was able to help your friends and teammates so quickly and adequately because of those visions."

Caitlin's eyes went wide as the implications ran through her mind.

"I foresaw Mr. Chang using kekkai magic, so I read up on me notes and reached out to a few kekkaishi that I've met over the years. I foresaw Ms. Rainmaker being a natural-born witch, so I brought the grimoire with me to gift to her. I foresaw Mr. Lane wielding magical flames and knew to prepare myself for teaching a novice pyromancer. I foresaw Ms. Spaulding's gifts and her reluctance in practicing, and well, perhaps that lead to my own apprentice's rebellion as I held onto her a bit too tightly. In the end, I suppose it all turned out as it was meant to."

"So," Caitlin hesitated in actually asking, but finally did, "what did you foresee about me?"

Looking her in the eye, Niko closed his bag with a snap and replied, "Nothing."

Blinking in surprise, the redhead shook her head and blurted out, "What?"

"I never had any visions of you, Caitlin. Only my own fruitless attempts and uncovering an unknowable secret. I saw all of the tests that we just performed. Only some, to be honest with you. I brought far more than I had foreseen. Never seeing the results, only that I grew more and more frustrated with the lack of results. In seeing it for myself, and deducing what your magic truly encompasses, I now have the answer that my foresight failed to provide."

"Which is?" she asked.

"That your power protected you from mine," he answered with a mysterious smile.

Frowning, she repeated her earlier statement, "I don't understand."

"Your power, your magic protected you from my psychic visions," he reiterated. "I had no idea what your power would end up being before coming here, Ms. Fairchild. I did have, at the very least, some inkling of what the others could do and prepared appropriate teaching materials. With no insight for your gifts, I had no way of preparing anything for you."

Caitlin stared at the dark-haired man, his dark eyes twinkling in the twilight of the room.

"Why doesn't this feel like an apology on your part?" she wanted to know.

"Just because I didn't have anything prepared ahead of time does not mean that I cannot help you in learning the basics of your power," he was now grinning.

"I'm all ears," Caitlin said, eagerly leaning forward, elbows on the conference table, eyes sparkling with the desire to learn.

"Do you remember the spell that Mr. Chang demonstrated earlier, casting a kekkai, a magic barrier?" Niko questioned, sitting down on the other side of the table, just as eager to teach.

Continued...