Chapter 2: Can You Hear It Too?

"So as we learnt from last lesson, this S shaped line means integration and so you would put the expression after this line and then write 'dx'. So for the expression 12 X squared you would write the line then 12 X squared 'dx' and to figure out…" The teacher droned from the front of the classroom, Tara McNeil sat at her desk in the middle of the room, tapping her pencil on the desk while she stared at the clock above the teacher's head, counting the seconds until the lesson ended.

"…making it cubed rather than squared and then divide the 12 by the power to make 4" The teacher continued, pausing as a strong breeze swept through the classroom's open windows, before carrying on. "Which will give the answer of 4 X cubed. So from this we can find the area under the graph…"

Tara stopped tapping her pencil, something felt wrong, why was the teacher shouting? Where the birds outside getting louder? Did someone just fart because Jesus!?

Her head started to spin, her senses overloading. Her pencil felt weird, her clothes constricting and uncomfortable as she moved to take off her glasses, her vision blurring behind them. Why could she taste coffee?

As her head began to pound, she began to freak out. Her hand shot in the air, the teacher pausing to look at her.

"Yes Tara" She seemed to shout.

"I. Can I go to the nurse" Tara replied quietly. The teacher stared at her as though she hadn't talked.

"Are you okay?" She shouted.

"No..." Tara said slightly louder, her headache getting worse and worse with every passing second, "Can, Can I go to the nurse?"

"Sure" The teacher said, eyes worried as Tara practically ran from the classroom.

In the hallway it got worse, she could hear the teachers in the classes surrounding her, could hear the gossiping girls in the class down the hall. The rustle of paper and the scratch of pencil in the next hallway over.

"What is happening to me?" She whispered to herself as she opened the door to the bathroom, wincing as it creaked loudly. She turned on the tap, the dripping of the water painfully loud, and splashed her face.

Looking at it she could see every pore, every imperfection. She could see the imperfections in the glass too, and in the stalls behind her. She could see the dust floating in the air, the light that reflected off it.

She could hear the water in the pipes, the sound of a printer, the rumble of a jet overhead.

She could smell the sewage, the perfume left in the air, the grass from outside the window.

She could feel ever imperfection of the basin beneath her fingers.

She could taste the air, could taste what she had for breakfast two hours earlier.

She ran.

She ran to the closest place she could think of that would help her.

She ran to Avengers Mansion.

She'd forgotten about the gates, of course there were gates! Why wouldn't there be gates!? But she'd forgotten about them.

She stared at them, looming high over the top of her head, and crouched to the ground, openly weeping.

"Help!" She screamed through her tears. Willing someone, anyone, to help her. "Help!"

She could hear heavy footsteps from ahead of her, the sound of metal against tarmac, but she didn't look up or open her eyes. Even the light shining through her eyelids was almost unbearable.

"Hey, hey you okay?" She heard the unmistakeable voice of Iron Man ask loudly, his voice tinny through his helmet. She didn't answer, her hands covering her ears and her eyes screwing even more shut.

Tony called Pepper.

"What Tony?"

"Uh, Pep..." Tony paused as he gazed at the girl on his doorstep.

"I'm in a Library!"

"Yeah I know but, there's a girl outside Avengers mansion freaking the fuck out... and I'm pretty sure I haven't slept with her."

Tony looked closely at the girl, his suit was detecting some sort of radioactive energy surrounding her.

"And she seems to be giving off a similar radiation as Bela…"

*Page Break*

The Avengers -minus Bruce-, Bela, and Pepper sat around the conference table at Avengers Mansion, a hologram of Tara in front of them, a soft glow surrounding the image.

"I've put her in the Hulk chamber" Bruce said as he entered the room "It's the quietest and darkest place in the mansion, it shouldn't aggravate her senses too much."

"Okay, good" Tony said as he stared at the hologram, "So, I'm guessing the Radiation that Bela gave off somehow managed to affect this girl." He put up a hologram of Bela, the same soft glow surrounding it.

"The radiation seems to be exactly the same, I'm not entirely certain what type it is…" He looked at Bruce expectantly.

"I don't think I've seen radiation like this before, it, it's slightly weaker than Beta radiation, but isn't as weak as Alpha as it obviously penetrated the skin…" Bruce turned to Hank. "Any ideas?"

"I'm as clueless as you are, I think our best bet is Richards to be honest, but even then… it's nothing either of us has ever seen." Hank looked at Bela "You don't happen to know if there was any sort of scientific discovery between now and 2062 to do with radiation, do you?"

"Not that I know of, sorry." Bela told him before turning to Tony. "So I caused this, that poor girl's in so much pain, because of me?"

"It's not your fault Bela" Steve told her as Pepper laid a hand on her arm, "We'll find a way to help her, right Tony?"

"Of course!" Tony exclaimed, his eyes focused on the hologram as he typed equations into the keyboard "She'll find a way to control her senses soon, this sort of things have happened to mutants and stuff a lot. She'll be fine in a few hours probably. But what I'm wondering is, if she's affected, is anyone else?" The hologram shifted to show a 3D map of the Earth. Some points glowing.

"Ah ha! Okay so I'm tracking the energy signature from the radiation." He zoomed in to New York, which seemed to be giving off a very high amount of radiation, "Most of the people affected seem to be in the city," He zoomed in a bit more "Here's us, that's Bela, and that's the girl, we really need to find out her name. Their energy signatures seem to be the strongest in the area, I'm guessing it's because they've already used their power. There are… 4 others in New York, the energy surrounding them doesn't seem to be as strong, so I'm guessing they're not using their powers yet" He zooms out to show the whole of America, "There's an energy reading just outside Westchester County, near Xavier's School, depending on their ability, I have a feeling they'll head there, but their energy signature is faint. And there's another in… either Oregon or Washington, I'm not all that great at geography." The map zoomed out once more, "And finally there's a strong energy signature in… Ireland, of all places. It's the strongest one, stronger than Bela's or even… we really need to find out that girl's name. But anyway, we should probably go there first…"

"Well then," Steve started "The Avengers are going to Ireland."

Author's Notes:

So here's chapter 2. I was going to have it up about an hour ago... but i got sucked into a book.

Hope you like it, my friends did...

Katy

(any mathematical errors are my brothers fault... not that that bit really matters)