April 24th, NC 2000

-Yours Truly, Jane

I pulled on my dark blue track shorts, which were shorter than what I was comfortable with at first, followed quickly by my white-with-blue athletic shirt, and then my similarly colored tennis shoes.

When I looked next to me to sheck on Rosa's progress, I discovered she was already gone, dressed in her orange shirt and black shorts and out the girls' locker room door. I sighed softly, frowned, and reached up to adjust my ponytail and brush my bangs behind my ear, and then made my way out.

I was immediately greeted by an impatient Rosa, who had her reddish brown hair tugged up in a messy bun and her untidy bangs framing her face, leaning against the hall's wall leading out to the gymnasium.

"Come on, let's go Slowpoke!"

She called everyone 'Slowpoke'. Because everyone was far slower than her - especially when she used her super-speed to get dressed and to charge out of a building.

I sighed and grit my teeth at the obnoxious burst of wind she left behind her.

'NEXTs.' I thought with shake of my head, pushing my hair out of my face again. I didn't have anything against NEXTs, honestly (how could I when my dad was Sky High?) - just the immature ones. I loved Rosa to bits, but she could be so irresponsible with her super speed! It was frustrating!

I took a deep breath - I couldn't stay mad at her, or anyone really, for very long - and made my way out to the gymnasium, where one of our many coaches stood looking miffed beside the door.

"Goodman!" She hollered at me.

My walk stuttered, and I heaved a heavy sigh. This was awesome. Not.

I practically had to drag myself over to Coach McCrellan for the impending rant about how I should be teaching Rosa to be responsible than this. She leveled me a glare that I took as my cue to fake an innocent smile - which came very easily to me - and give a small wave. "Hello Coach McCrellan! Have you seen Rosa yet?"

I really didn't like doing this, but I liked getting chewed out for something - and someone - I wasn't responsible for even less.

This tactic was something of a trade for my family. My dad had taught me that if someone was going to chew you out for the actions of another that you weren't responsible for, just feign having not seen the person at all. It's bound to lower their anger levels at you. We Goodman were a hell of a lot smarter and aware of what was going on than we would ever let anyone else know.

"You bet I've seen her." McCrellan responded, deflating immediately once she realized I seemingly had not seen Rosa recently (thank you Dad!). "When you see her, let her know she has lunch detention tomorrow. She knows that there's no NEXT powers at school unless necessary."

"Yes, Coach." I smiled, slowly sliding pass her. "I'll let her know right away, Ma'am." She nodded and stepped out of my way, and I sprinted out to the track, where the few kids already out of the locker rooms were doing pre-warm ups. I joined in next to Rosa.

"Let me guess: McCrellan caught me." She asked innocently. I nodded and grabbed her foot as she sunk down on her other leg, and elevated it until she told me to stop. "Great. Lunch detention?" I nodded again. "Perfect. My dad'll be thrilled to find out." With that, Rosa shot a glare at her older brother - a Junior - and muttered under her breath.

I dropped her foot and she switched her weight onto that one, and we repeated the process.

Once we finished stretches and the entire group completed their aerobic stretches/warm ups, we all separated into our different activities. Rosa ran off to the dashes and hurtles - which she didn't ever try to cheat at, thankfully - and I made my way over to the long jump and triple jump. In a little bit, I'd go back into the gymnasium for the high jump.

In middle school, I had had the best high jump and long jump in our district for girls, and I had done pretty good at my first two High School track meets. I was hoping to do even better on the upcoming track meet.

I guess I got my 'awesome jumping skills', as Rosa liked to call my talent, from my dad too. He set three records when he was a senior, for the High jump, Long jump, and Triple jump. It was pretty cool. I hoped to beat at least one of his records by the time I graduated, but that might've been my competitiveness talking. His High jump would probably be the best to set my sights on; I was fairly tall, around 5'9", and I was a lot lighter than my dad had been. With the perfect approach and lots of practice, I could definitely beat his impressive record. Ah, but my dad was always telling me that the sky was the limit!

I grinned as I waited my turn for the long jump. I should definitely try to beat all of his records, and not just the one I knew I could. He wouldn't mind if I did that.

It was a few minutes before my turn came. My eleven-step approach was flawless, along with my leap from the board. That jump beat my personal record of fifteen feet and nine inches, landing solidly at sixteen feet. Emily went after me, with the same flawless approach and leap, landing at seventeen and a half feet.

Well, my goal was to beat my dad's record of twenty feet and two inches, not to beat Emily. Still, a little friendly competition with her couldn't hurt my goal.

After her, Kyle went. His approach was superb, his leap was amazing, and his landing at nine feet caused weeds to sprout up in the sandpit. Literally. He groaned at his NEXT powers, cursed them (rudely, I might add), and shouted at Axis, or 'Christopher' as he liked to be called, to "Stop laughing like a jackal, Goldsmith! This isn't funny!" The coaches gave exasperated sighs and the rest of the Long jumpers and Triple jumpers shot him varying looks. Some were dirty or exasperated, some were unamused, and some others were highly amused. Emily's reaction was somewhere between amused and exasperated, and my own was amused. Some of the kids simply sighed and moved over to one of the other sandpits.

Kyle's face was a dark shade of red by the time he climbed out of the weed pit. If Yule were in Track and Field today, she'd be teasing him endlessly for how red his face was.

I merely patted him on his shoulder sympathetically, and then moved inside for my High jump.

The line was short, since most of the High jumpers had already decided to move on after a few rounds with the bar and mat, and I got to fairly quickly. The first jump I did was ten feet, with relative ease.

Then the coach moved it up to thirteen feet because one of the other kids in here had asked him to. Coach Wilson was a very compliant coach; if we wanted to try something harder, within reason, he'd let us.

I'd never successfully completed a thirteen foot-high jump, but I had gotten close a few times when my approach and launch were exceptionally amazing. But most of the time, it was a challenge to complete twelve feet. I shook my head, adjusted my ponytail again, and watched the kid who requested the increase of height as he successfully jumped the bar and landed on the mat on the other side. He exclaimed happily and the coach congratulated him with a pat on the back.

"Can I try?" I asked the coach.

"Go for it, Goodman." Coach Wilson said, nodding his head at the bar.

I nodded in determination, and made my 'J' shaped run at it, and pushed off as hard as I could. Time seemed to slow and I felt my back brush over the bar - it didn't fall though - and then I was falling towards the mats. That was when I heard a whirling sound distinctly like wind, and felt like I just wasn't descending at all. My bangs kept blowing in my face too.

I twisted my neck to look down, and saw what really looked like my dad's wind manipulation. I frowned and when to touch the wind, but it suddenly stopped and I dropped with a yelp.

"Oof!" I hit the mat a little more suddenly than I was expecting.

"Congratulations, Goodman. You completed the jump and you're a NEXT." Coach Wilson informed me, looking down at me sprawled on the mat.

"Oh."

I blinked a few times before sitting up. "Oh." I repeated as it clicked. "I gotta go, see you tomorrow Coach!" I called hurriedly as I ran towards the locker room.

I didn't even dress out - my hands were glowing again, and some of the loose clothes in the room were getting blown around - instead pulling my SBCHS jacket on - it had a black satin 'vest' with dark blue leather sleeves and 'SBCHS' sewn in proudly on the left breast - and tossing my clothes into my bag.

With that, I ran out of the locker room and gymnasium, into the empty halls of the school, and out the front doors (surprising the office workers, to whom I called a sincere apology to). It wasn't a very far to my house, and I was dashing up the stairs in twenty minutes, tops.

"Mom? Dad?" I called, opening the door.

On second thought, maybe I shouldn't walk into the house with lots of breakables. That might not end very well.

"Uh, I'll be at the-the, uh, the park!" I called in, racking my brains for a place. I dropped my back pack right inside the door, shut it, and dashed back down the stairs. I was pretty sure my mom, Marie, opened the door just as I stepped onto the sidewalk - the wind was gusting really bad again - and that she said something that was sadly lost to the wind blowing around me. And I'm also pretty sure she disappeared back into the house to get my dad, or call my dad, or something.

I scuffed my shoe on the sidewalk, sighed heavily, and shoved my bangs out of my face again, and made my way solemnly to the park.

My parents used to take me there all the time when I was little. I had especially loved the swing set. Sometimes, my dad would make some wind to catch me when I wanted to jump off of the swing. That always gave my mom a heart attack, so we stopped doing it, but it was pretty fun.

And apparently I was now sitting in the same boat as Naomi and Kyle, and leaving Emily in the 'not-NEXT' boat. I mean, Yule had photokinesis, Anthony had terrakinesis, Rosa had super-speed, Kyle had botanic-kinesis (to his chagrin), and Naomi had polymorphing, a type of shapeshifting, I think. I'm pretty sure hers allows her to turn into mammals and mammals only, and not other people. Even the twins, Ae-Cha and Dae-Hyun, had powers (sound manipulation, I think).

That left Emily as the only one of us with no NEXT powers.

I groaned, feeling bad for her. She'd wanted to have NEXT powers too. She really deserved a cool power, like, I dunno, telekinesis. That was the one where the user could move things with their mind, right?

I shook my head to clear my mind before I gave myself a head ache.

Looking up from my tennis shoes, I found myself looking at the park. There were very few people here at this hour; most little kids were still at school and their parents were still at work. The few groups of people here looked to be elderly couples with their grandchildren, who were obviously too young to be in school, or were afternoon pick-up.

I smiled, recalling my own grandparents (both my mom's parents and my dad's parents adored the life out of me). They liked to take me to this park, or sometimes out for lunch or dinner or just for icecream. It was always pretty cool.

Sometimes one set or the other would still drop by to take me out for lunch and icecream (which I more often than not declined because of Track and Field, which earned quite a bit of cooing from them), just to spend some time with their 'favorite granddaughter' (I was also their only granddaughter...).

Still smiling, I made my way to sit on one of the unused swings, which was pretty short for me, but I didn't mind at the moment, and calmly observed everything going on around me.

I don't know how long I was sitting there, not very long I would guess, before it finally registered that I was a NEXT with my dad's powers.

"Oh." I blinked a few more times. I'd sort of understood what my coach had been saying earlier, but now it was really sinking in. I couldn't go to any Track meets with a NEXT power until I could control it mostly. "Oh." I repeated softly.

This sucked. Couldn't my powers have waited for the Summer?! How rude of them.

"There you are!" The voice didn't register, nor did the fact that that was aimed at me.

I just sat there, dumbly staring at a tree. Our next Track meet was in two days, on Friday. It was our second to last Track meet for the Track season. And I really wanted to go! "This sucks." I muttered.

"Jane."

I looked up slowly, surprised. "Oh, hi, Dad."

He studied me for a moment before sitting down in the swing next to mine. "What's bothering you, Jane?"

I sighed. "I was doing a High jump and..." I dropped my head again. "I'm not going to be able to go to the Track meet this week."

He chuckled. "Your mother told me. I was at work, but when I told my boss, he agreed to give me the week off."

I tilted my head to look at him - it was polite to look at people who were talking to you - and gave a small smile. "Really? The whole week?"

"Yup," He gave a grin.

Together we said, "And again, yup!"

Then we laughed for easily five minutes.

Just another Goodman thing. It's hard to keep us down for a long period of time.

"At least my powers were polite enough to wait until the Summer." He mused out loud.

I laughed some more at that.

Author note: There ended up being a lot less interaction between Keith and Jane than with Emily and Barnaby, I know. But don't worry, there are plenty of opportunities for their father-daughter time to be aired (ha, haha, I'm terrible). Next chapter is Naomi's, so look forward to that (Rosa's chapter will be five at the soonest). That's it for today (also, sorry for the prolonged update).