Author's Note I: Thanks for all the reviews.
Author's Note II: To Crystal113 – Sorry, I thought telepathy was mind reading, while telempathy was reading and influencing emotions without actually hearing what people were thinking.
Author's Note III: To Chris – Have you really tried some of Lexi and Izzy's pranks? I never managed anything so elaborate in real life.
Author's Note IV: To ka-mia2286 – Sure thing.
Mutant X – The Next Generation
Alexis Marie Fox-Mulwray
- Feline feral
- Electrical elemental
- Subconscious telepathy (eavesdropping on and influencing people's dreams)
- Mental domination
Isabelle Emily Fox-Mulwray
- Feline feral
- Electrical elemental
- Subconscious telepathy (eavesdropping on and influencing people's dreams)
- Mental domination
Ryan DeLauro-Kilmartin
- Phasing
- Massing
- Propulsion
- Mild empathic abilities
Bethany DeLauro-Kilmartin
- Telepathy
- Telempathy
I may also give Bethany some molecular abilities at later date, but her psionic gifts will be far more powerful.
Chapter 1
"Izzy-lizard, eat your food don't play with it. Don't even think about it, Lexi." Shalimar reproved automatically.
Lexi giggled, letting the ball of electricity she had been aiming at Jesse, who, bent over in front of the fridge with Bethany cradled in one arm, her bottle in the other hand, had provided a tempting target, fizzle out.
SPLAT!
"Lexi!" Brennan, getting a generous spoonful of soggy cereal flung in his face, scowled at his daughter.
"It wasn't me." Alexis Marie Fox-Mulwray was the picture of indignant innocence.
Ryan, cackling manically, loaded his spoon to take aim a second time.
"Don't you dare. . ." Emma's warning was rewarded with a globule of food to the front of her top.
"Funny." Ryan pronounced solemnly. "Again!"
"NO!" All four adults chorused.
"Don't overdo it, Ryan." Lexi advised solemnly, her voice low.
"Yeah." Izzy seconded her sister. "It's funny once or twice, maybe three times, but after that. . ." She trailed off, trying to find a diplomatic way of putting it.
"It gets really old." Lexi finished for her.
Fortunately for the girls, the adults, busy making their own breakfast – or in Jesse's case tending to little Bethany – either didn't hear their words, or else had wisely chosen not to comment on them.
"Good morning." Adam, armed with a cup of coffee, entered the kitchen, stopping to plant kisses on the twins' cheeks, before taking the pudgy hand of Ryan – who had decided a month previously that kisses were for girls – and shaking it gravely.
"Morning, Adam." Emma responded absently, wiping the cereal from her top.
"What's on the agenda for today?" Shalimar asked cheerfully.
"Any evil villains to foil?" Brennan quipped.
"Nothing so exciting, I'm afraid." Adam's tone was dry. "A group of New Mutants want to join the Underground."
"When do me and Izzy get to join Mutant X?"
"Never."
"When you're forty."
"When your grandchildren are married."
"When I'm dead and buried twenty years."
Shalimar, Emma, Jesse and Brennan responded in unison.
"We'll talk about it when you're eighteen. Twenty-one." Adam amended hastily in response to Brennan's glare.
"No fair." Lexi huffed. "That's ages away. We've been practicing on the dojo and everything. We're ready now."
"Well, we've got a height requirement." Brennan told his daughter solemnly.
"It can't be very tall if Mommy made it."
"Hey!" Shalimar glared at her firstborn.
"What?" Lexi looked genuinely puzzled.
"You know," Adam said in a pacifying tone. "If you girls really want to help Mutant X now you could help out here while your parents, and Emma and Jesse are out."
"How?" Izzy was interested.
"Behaving would be nice." Brennan muttered.
"You could help out in the lab." Emma suggested, ignoring Adam's glowering. "Or you could keep an eye on Ryan."
"Is he as much trouble to babysit for as Uncle Jesse was?" Izzy asked dubiously, not willing to buy a pig in a poke.
"No one could be as much trouble as Uncle Jesse." Lexi pointed out logically. "Besides," She nudged her sister. "I'm sure there's lots of things that we can help Ryan with."
Her sister got the message.
Ryan held out his arms, allowing his cousin to lift him from his chair.
"Don't worry." Lexi assured her aunt and uncle, smiling sweetly. "We'll take good care of him."
The five adult inhabitants of Sanctuary watched the two girls lead the toddler out of the kitchen, with understandable feelings of trepidation.
"I think" Emma said slowly. "That we may have made a bit of a mistake."
"Relax." Balancing baby Bethany in one arm, Jesse put the other around her shoulder. "What's the worst that could happen?"
The looks the other four adults gave him ranged from pitying to scornful.
"You'd think," Shalimar spoke slowly. "That after seven years of living with the girls you'd know better than to ask that."
"Pay attention, Ryan." Lexi, standing in front of a small blackboard, a piece of pink chalk clutched in her fist, looked every inch the schoolmarm as she addressed Ryan, who sat at the small table in the twins' playroom, watching her solemnly.
"What we're going to teach you is very important." Izzy lectured. "And it's top secret so you can't tell anybody. Especially the grown ups."
"Otay." Ryan agreed cheerfully, without the slightest idea what they were talking about.
"Me and Izzy are getting big now." Lexi sighed as nostalgically as a seventy year old. "And we have to go to school, and everything, so we can't play as many games with the grownups as we used to when we were as little as you."
"Games?" Ryan's attention was sparked by the word.
"That's right." The seven year old tutor continued. "Some of your games are funny – like the one with the bathtub – but it's time for you to start putting more thought into them, like we do. Would you like that?"
"Ess."
"I thought as much." Izzy beamed, satisfied.
"To play games properly, and to really make the grown ups mad you need to be able to know their weaknesses." Lexi continued, with a dramatic flair that would have made any comic book villain proud. "You really have to know how to get to them."
"And it's important to know how to use your powers to help you." Izzy chimed in. "You can run really fast, even faster than us, and you can walk through walls." She sighed enviously. "You're so lucky."
"Now," Lexi cleared her throat to gain the attention of her small pupil. "We'll start with Lesson One – Stuff That Really Freaks Your Mommy And Daddy Out'."
TBC.