The Pre-Powers, chapter 9
HI, PEOPLES! Got a new chappie up! Disclaimer!
Kathleen- Clary doesn't own the Avengers! Or "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen
~L~I~N~E~B~R~E~A~K~Y~A~Y~~~~~~~
Six of the Seven Pre-powers teenagers were now sitting in Conference chairs, pouting and sulking that they had gotten caught fighting by the Earth's Mightiest heroes. Even Bailey knew that they were in trouble, and surprisingly, she wasn't dead!
"We know you all didn't plan on being here. And thank you for those of you who cooperated," Fury glanced at Bailey and Bella, who were looking smug that they were bring thanked by the head director of SHEILD, "For those of you who didn't, you just have to suck it up. You have nowhere to hide, and have information on you that will be sent out to the entire world to see if you try to leave." Felicia's jaw dropped in angry awe. "When I say your name, stand." None of the girls dared to argue.
"Felicia Liberty Jones." Felicia cringed at her girly and frilly middle name and glared at the ground, but she stood up nonetheless. "Powers- necromancy, and summoning." Bailey's brow furrowed in confusion.
"A necromancer, Ms. Mackintosh, is a person who can raise the dead," Fury answered to Bailey's unasked question. Everyone's faces scrunched up in disgust at the thought of zombies, but Felicia continued to glare at the ground, seemingly oblivious to everyone's opinion of her powers.
"Bella Rachel Narcoda." Bella stood up, her hazelnut eyes bright with the same cocky arrogance she showed off proudly during a sports match. "Powers-super strength, super speed." Bella smirked and examined at her nails with apparent pride.
"Yeah, it pretty much makes me the perfect athlete," she boasted breezily, flashing a grin at her fellow Pre-Powers. Felicia and Kathleen rolled their eyes at this accusation.
"Bailey Ava Mackintosh." Bailey jumped up and smiled happily at her new co-workers. The girls smiled back, even Felicia. Bailey might have been a ditz, but her happiness and overall warm character was contagious. "Powers-extreme precision, animal communication."
"Alyssia Catrine Stolker." Alyssia stood up, looking proud, and almost prestigious, like royalty. No wonder Thor was her mentor. "Powers-control over the four main elements."
"Niklas Stolker." Niklas stood up, looking indifferent to this whole situation. "Power-manipulating sound waves." Everyone looked confused on this one. Niklas sighed, as if used to this.
"Sounds make waves. I multiply the waves and the waves' power and turn it into a force," he explained. Everyone nodded, seeing that sound could be used as a weapon. Except Bailey, who had no idea what Fury or Niklas just said.
"Kathleen Evangeline Rays." Kathleen stood up, glaring just like Felicia, but she was glaring straight ahead daringly. "Power- shape-shifting." Everyone nodded, impressed.
"Ally Katrina Matthews." There was no response. Fury growled, irritated by this girl's desire to disobey his command. "Ally Katrina Matthews," he said again, slower, trying not to show how pissed off he was. Felicia looked around the table for her ally, and smirked when she realized that Ally had evaded capture.
"Smart girl. Bet her other power has to do with being psychic," Felicia thought. Fury frowned deeply, before doing a quick head count of the girls in the room. There were six, but there were supposed to be…
"Seven," Fury mumbled. The teens just looked at him, confused by what he meant. "There were seven of you. Seven of you were fighting. Where is the seventh Pre-Power?" he asked, directing it at them. Everyone looked confused, including Felicia, though her look was fake.
"Seven? I could've sworn there were only six of us to begin with. What does she look like?" Bella asked, truly curious. Fury took out Ally's profile and passed it to Bella. She scrutinized the picture, like a detective might a piece of clothing. She disappointed Fury with a shake of her head.
"Nope, doesn't ring a bell." Suddenly every teen clamored to see the photo. Niklas caught a glimpse of the girl. Her long brown hair was in a side ponytail, and her coke-bottle glasses were slightly crooked. He could see glimpses of the freckles scattered across her nose. Though the girl seemed to have a charming sense of innocence to her, he didn't recognize the face.
"I don't think I remember seeing her," he told Fury honestly. Kathleen shrugged apologetically.
"Me either. But then again, I was happy-high about having thumbs again," she reported, stretching her arms above her head lazily. Everyone stared at her with the, "boy, this chick is odd" kind of look.
"Why were you happy about having thumbs anyway? Humans have always had thumbs. Did you cut them off by accident, and have them grow back?" Niklas questioned curiously. The female PrePowers' noses all scrunched up at the mentally scarring image. Kathleen shook her head.
"Oh, God no! My power is shape shifting, and I had turned myself into a German Shepherd. I couldn't turn myself back to my regular state. I had paws, meaning no thumbs. Make sense?" she asked, slightly turning red at her own explanation. Everyone nodded, and turned back to the subject at hand.
"Ok, it's obvious none of you know of the seventh PrePower. Stay here." Fury went into a corner of the room, and dialed Tony.
"Stark! Where is she?" he barked quietly. Tony, on the other line, raised his eyebrows in dry amusement.
"You'll have to be a bit more specific, Fury. There are lots of 'shes' that I know about. If you mean Pepper, she's out at the store," he said, holding the cell between his shoulder and his ear as he examined piece of Hannah's wiring under one of Bruce's microscopes. Sure enough, it was steel and copper, just like Ally had promised.
"No, I'm not talking about Potts. I'm talking about your PrePower, Stark. Ally Matthews? She's not in the room. I'm going to assume she's not with you?" Fury asked, pinching the bridge of his nose. Sure, it would be easy enough to locate her, but it was still an unnecessary hassle. Tony's back straightened.
"What? I thought she was with you! I couldn't find her during the Sixth Floor Fun Fest, so I'd assumed you had already taken her to Conference Room D." The
Genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist sighed, irritated. "Damn, I see where this is going. Look, I'll go and try to find the squirt, happy?" Fury shook his head.
"No. Now get going," he growled, then proceeding to shut his cell. He turned back to the teens, who were looking at him expectantly. He reached into his coat and pulled out a folder, filled with off-white, official looking papers.
"These are basically questionnaires. Follow the directions, complete them, and give them to your assigned mentor at dinner," he commanded flatly. With that, he strode out the door, locking the door behind him. Everyone stayed like a stone, still and silent. Once again, guess who broke the silence?
"Does anyone else think he's, like, a total jerk-face?" Bailey asked, no amusement at all in her tone. Everyone nodded, but had their heads hovering above their superhero 101 questionnaires.
~L~I~N~E~B~R~E~A~K~Y~A~Y~~~~~~~
Ally watched as Tony strode out towards the lab floor's elevator. She heaved a huge sigh of relief when the elevator doors closed. Slowly and cautiously opening the door, she scoped out the room, trying to find Hannah. Eyes as bright as a spring leaf, she spotted a very familiar pink and purple metallic pattern.
She crept in, not being as cautious, but being careful enough not to trip over anything. She twiddled her finger as she searched for Hannah's control panel. Ally's face lighting up, she pushed one of the buttons, and switched on the red mini lever.
"HW activated. Service required, Miss Matthews?" Hannah's robotic voice asked. Ally nearly squealed in relief.
"Flight mode." Hannah walked over to her, and picked her up, right under the armpits. Just as the mini rockets in Hannah's feet were in the preparation to launch sequence, Tony's science buddy came out, holding sheets of paper that can be only assumed to be lab results.
"Tony, I got some interesting factors on-" Bruce looked up, seeing the second youngest PrePower, and her cyborg. "You're supposed to be in Conference Room D," Dr. Banner told Ally flatly. Ally nodded curtly like a professional, but the nod didn't quite meet the uncertain fear in her eyes.
"Probably, yes. Unfortunately-" The roar of Hannah's rocket feet blocked out the rest of Ally's response. Hannah hovered for a few seconds, before knocking into Banner, making him fall to the ground, and flying at super sonic speed out the door. Bruce got shakily to his feet, and contacted Tony and Fury.
"I found the other PrePower. She should be arrested for flying a robot without a license," he said simply, before hanging up, going back to his microscope, and looking at Hannah's navigation wire.
~L~I~N~E~B~R~E~A~K~Y~A~Y~~~~~~~
Ally flew around the building, trying to remember what floor the emergency exit was on, with the main fire escape ladder. While in the air, her thoughts couldn't flow as fluidly as she would have liked. Suddenly Hannah lurched to the left, hitting a wall. Ally held her nose, which was now starting to bleed. "Ow! What the heck, Hannah White?" she seethed.
"Current malfunction, current malfunction." Ally groaned irritably.
"Why did you have to have a wire missing now? I'm trying to escape for my freedom, dang it," Ally hissed. Hannah lurched again, his time to the right. Ally tucked her chin onto her chest to avoid being hit in the face again. Instead, the crown of her head took the impact. She shook her head, trying to shake the pain away. A blast of light hit the wall beside her, making her squeak. Ally craned her neck to see none other than Iron Man.
"What's up with you disappearing on me?" Tony demanded lightly, hovering above the ground with his arms crossed, like a stern parent reprimanding a toddler for painting on the walls. She glared at him, but that stupid stuttering problem came back.
"W-w-well y-you did k-kidnap m-m-m-me," Ally tried saying firmly, trying her absolute hardest to ignore the gross taste of metallic nose blood running into her mouth. Tony shrugged nonchalantly.
"Y-yeah, I d-did. I thought I had earned enough of your trust," he retorted, mimicking his charge's stuttering. She flushed a deep red.
"That's so not cool," she muttered spitefully. Stark smirked with a short chuckle.
"Oh trust me, honey, I've done things that people thought were a less lot cool than that," he promised. She bared her teeth and tried to direct Hannah the opposite way. Instead, she went straight ahead, and rammed right into Stark (who didn't even flinch), then proceeded to run into the next wall.
"C-current-c-c-c-c-current mal…funct…tion." Hannah's monotone speech slurred and slowed down before dropping to the ground, right on top of Ally. Ally remained under the cyborg-ette, not moving. The other Avengers ran up behind Tony, breathing easily.
"Great timing, guys," Tony noted dryly. Suddenly, a fast breeze rushed past them, and all six of the PrePowers looked like they were going to be sick, with the exception of Bella, who had carried and ran all of them to Ally's destination.
"Don't think I'm going to have you give me a piggy back ride any time soon," Kathleen muttered, face looking vaguely green. Everyone nodded in agreement, except for Bella who looked slightly offended.
"Wait, how did you get out? Fury locked the doors," Clint demanded, glaring at Bailey and betting that she had pulled out yet another talent that no one knew about. They PrePowers all shrugged, but Felicia looked especially smug.
"I shot the door knob with a caliber .22 bullet," she stated cheerfully, smiling wickedly at Captain America. Her smile grew wider when Cap put a tired hand to his eyes, exasperated with his charge's "fun" mischievous tendencies. Her smile faded when she saw Ally getting her breath back and struggling to get Hannah off of her. She pushed off Hannah with a medium amount of effort, and pulled Ally up with one hand.
"C'mon Matthews, let's get you up." Everyone was marginally surprised Felicia's soft and mildly caring tone. "You ok there, Cadet?" she asked. Ally nodded, wiping her nose on her flannel pajamas, staining the sleeve with blood.
"Yeah. Thanks, Felicia." Felicia seemed surprised by the fact that she was being thanked graciously, but she gave a marginal smile in return.
"Wait, I thought you said you didn't know the other chick," Bella claimed angrily. Felicia just shrugged, while looking vaguely amused by the perfect athlete's angry demeanor. A small laugh escaped Felicia's mouth, her hazel eyes actually sparking with the adrenaline of an argument.
"Damn it, what's so funny? You lied to Director Fury, and all of us! How the hell are we supposed to trust you?" Bella seethed, clenching and unclenching her fists, obviously pissed off.
"First, I didn't say anything about Ally, so I technically couldn't have lied about knowing or not knowing her. Second, why should I give a crap whether you trust me or not? I just met you." Kathleen had a wide grin on her face.
"AND THIS IS CRAZY! SO HERE'S MY NUMBER," Kathleen sang, blurting out the first thing that came to mind, one of her favorite songs. "AND CALL ME MAYBE," Kathleen and Bailey finished happily in unison, leaning on each other for support when they starting laughing hysterically.
"Hey, you're not half bad! Want to be my friend?" Bailey asked cheerfully, forgetting the situation, going on around her. Kathleen nodded enthusiastically.
"Sure!" Felicia was still calmly conversing with Bella, who looked about ready to explode.
"Third, if you want to trust me, look at it this way. I haven't seriously injured any of you yet, or murdered you for that matter. In this world, isn't that enough?" Felicia all but snarled.
"So you're Ally?" Bailey interrogated, leaning into Ally's personal bubble. Ally scooched back, aware of Bailey, Kathleen, Niklas, and Alyssia in her personal space bubble.
"U-u-um yeah."
"What's your power? I'm a shape-shifter, and my name is Kathleen" Kathleen added, thrusting her hand into Ally's face. Ally took Kathleen's hand and shook it hesitantly.
"Hi. I, well, I don't really know how to explain it. I sort of do stuff with technology, and stuff," Ally tried to explain. It had over six years since she discovered her ability, but she still didn't know how the heck to describe it.
"She's a mental technopath," a voice informed them. Everyone spun around to stare at Director Fury, who looked as stoic as ever. Ally paled. Hopefully she hadn't managed to piss this guy off somehow.
"A technopath is someone who controls technology. She just can't control it. She can see into buildings, cars, animatronics, robots, cyborgs, any work of engineering, and see all of the parts, and make sense of how it works with a single glance." She stared at Fury, shocked that he had made sense of it, more than she had. She ended up nodding.
"Yes, that's the gist of it." Bella snorted and flipped her hair, unimpressed by the newest PrePower's abilities. After all, she was the exact definition of brute strength. She had always thought that science, math, ah hell, school in general was a total waste of time. She just couldn't believe there was a power fully based on all of it.
"Well, if you can't do anything with the technology, then what's the point of you being here? I'm not trying to be mean or anything, but what good is that going to bring to the world? So you can bore the bad guys to death with an endless arsenal on the French War?" Bella asked, genuinely curious, but to Ally it came across as an insult. She blushed angrily.
"If you ever focused on something else besides sports and futile activities, you would know that it's called the French Revolution. Some of us can't get by with athletic abilities or looking sexy," Ally defended, her cheeks still red.
Niklas and Alyssia were just observing. Alyssia had realized that she had seen Ally before, when trying to help find her brother. She felt kind of guilty, but it didn't look like Ally cared, so she tried to ease the guilt from her shoulders. Niklas, on the other hand, was in awe. All of the girls he had ever met, had nothing but looks and athletic abilities. This girl had brains. He now felt bad for stereotyping girls into being only athletic and only pretty
Bella clucked sympathetically. "I know why you're so bitter now! You're jealous that you have nothing to offer the world, so you came to them for help!"
"Do you want to get bitch-slapped?" Felicia finally intervened, glaring at Bella. When she had gone to school, she had gotten As and Bs, so she took pride in being the 10% of girls that cared about intelligence.
"Oh my God, if you guys want to continue the mini soap opera, at least do it in your lounge. Twelfth floor," Tony grumbled, putting a hand to his forehead. The teens brightened and rushed to their new hang out spot.
"Shouldn't we try to get them to get along?" Steve wondered. Clint waved his hand dismissively.
"Nah. If they're going to have to work together, they'll have to solve their stupid problems on their own."
