I. Trigger

Earth Aleph had been completely sealed off from Earth Bet after the Golden Morning. The story was pretty widely known though. Enough people had escaped that it was common knowledge as to what had happened to defeat Scion.

Shortly afterwards, the triggers began.

Jennifer Stevens was standing in the bank when all hell broke loose. The man in front of her had burst into flames.

"Everyone on the floor!" he yelled. "Get down or I torch this place with all of you inside!"

Jenny, as she preferred to be called, immediately dove for the floor. If he cut loose, she would be one of the first to die.

The flames receded from one of the man's arms as he turned around to make sure he was being obeyed. He looked down at Jenny. "You'll do," he said, before pointing the arm at her. "Listen up! If you don't find someone to open the vault immediately, pretty girl here gets her face burned off, understand?" He grabbed her with the arm which was not on fire, and held his other arm in her face. "Hurry up, people!"

"Why?" Jenny thought. "Why did it have to be me? Or him? He looked so normal, why couldn't I tell he was going to do this? Why couldn't I tell? I'm going to die. Somebody, help meeeeeee..."

Jenny was in the middle of nowhere, watching... something. It was vast, lying on the ground, just sitting there. It suddenly started writhing, as though in pain. Actually, it probably was in pain, given that it seemed to be starting to fall apart. A bright light appeared in the very centre of the... thing, and it exploded.

Jenny flinched as one of the pieces of... whatever it was slammed straight into her.

Jenny opened her eyes. She had a flash of memory of... something, but she couldn't remember exactly what had happened. The man who had taken her hostage had his hands on his forehead, as though he had a headache, and his flames had gone out.

He looked like he might be about to recover, so she kicked him in the face. He crumpled, unconscious.

She looked down at the would-be bank robber, and was immediately faced with a huge influx of information. It was as though someone had plugged her into a computer.

"Flame Shard. Allows full or partial conversion of body into fire. Allows user to manipulate fire at a range of fifty metres. Threat level: Medium. Warning: Shard may cause tendencies towards violence."

She knew his capabilities instantly.

She backed away from his unconscious body, and there was only one thought going through her mind: "Did I just trigger?"

It had been a very long day. After going over what had happened with the police, and then the parahuman division, she was exhausted. She went straight home and went for a nice, relaxing bath.

Had she actually triggered? And if she had, what was she now capable of? She really hoped that it was more than just knowing other peoples' powers. It would really suck to know what someone was capable of, but not be able to do anything about it.

Another thing that surprised her was that the flame man had clearly felt something at (she assumed) the same time as she triggered. Did her trigger event interrupt his power in some way? It was worth considering.

After half an hour of wondering, she finally dragged herself out of the bath. After dressing, she walked over to the mirror to deal with her long, blonde hair, which could get a bit unruly when wet. She looked her reflection in the eyes and it happened again.

"Shard Manipulation Shard. Allows user to identify shards, and manipulate any shard user is in physical contact with. Threat level: Not applicable to self."

It didn't make much sense to Jenny. What was a 'shard' anyway? She assumed it was related to powers in some way. In fact, now that she thought about it, she had been able to tell exactly what the man in the bank's powers were just by looking at him. Her own reflection had given her enough information to realise that they weren't just to do with powers, the shards were the powers.

But that would mean...

"I can't possibly have the ability to manipulate others' powers, can I?"

It wasn't something she particularly wanted to find out. That sort of power could get someone killed.

If that was the power she had, she would try her hardest to ensure nobody ever found out about it.