Leni sat on her bed, still in costume, rubbing her eyes after removing her mask. The crowd in front of her was silent.
They had let themselves in when she got back, standing in front of her and awaiting the news. She barely had enough time to make a call to her workplace, making up some excuse about having to go home.
Which one of us gets superpowers? She could hear the question her siblings silently posed.
She couldn't bring herself to look at them.
"Uh," one of them said, "Leni…"
"Guys," she interrupted, finally setting her hands down to face them. "I can't. I mean… I know getting superpowers sounds cool and all but… I can't take that deal. I mean… I don't know what will happen to you guys if I do, and…"
Lynn stepped forward.
"Actually," she said, taking her hand. "What I was going to say, was that I'm sorry. I got excited and… I didn't think about what would happen. I didn't mean to stress you out like that. I'm one of the older kids, I should have been more… well, responsible. I'm sorry."
Leni looked at her. Lynn was not one for emotional vulnerability. She swallowed her pride to say this to her.
The elder girl reached out to her, and pulled her in for a hug.
"Thank you," was all Leni could bare to say.
When Lynn stepped away, Leni looked to the others. She wiped her eyes and stood up.
"No one gets superpowers," Leni told the room.
"Unless we already have them," Luan joked.
"Dang it," Lola muttered. She pouted her way out of the room, followed by the others.
A few lingered behind them. Lincoln, Luan, Lisa, and Luna. Luna patted her roommate and brother to usher them out of the room, and they reluctantly obeyed.
"Hey," Luna greeted as they got some privacy.
"Hey," Leni greeted back.
"I wanted to apologize too," Luna explained. "I just… I'm trying to keep everyone…"
"I know," Leni put a hand on her shoulder. "I was listening."
Luna furrowed her brow, so Leni explained further.
"You had a talk with Mom and Dad, and Lori," she told her, "A while ago. I overheard."
As Luna tried to piece together what Leni was saying, Leni ushered her out.
"Leni," Luna wondered. "What are you-?"
"If you don't mind," She interrupted, "I need to be alone. Right after I speak with Lisa."
Luna, seemingly stunned to silence, was escorted out of the room. Leaving the eldest child in the house with the second youngest.
"How can I help you this time?" Lisa watched her critically.
"Have you figured out how my powers work?" Leni asked her.
"Scientifically speaking…" She sighed. "the art of sorcery makes more sense. I'm afraid I don't have anything new to share."
"Is there any way to, like… take them away?"
"…How do you mean?"
"Like," Leni fought for the words in her head. "These villains are a problem because they keep using their powers for bad stuff, right? So I thought, if there was a way to take them away, then they wouldn't be able to hurt anybody."
"Are you talking about a cure?" Lisa wondered.
"Well, I mean," Leni tried to explain. "I'm not really that smart, but I know coming up for a cure will take... a while. I was thinking about how one of TJ's new gang looked like this one boy I knew in school last year. He, like, had some ADHD and behavioral problems. He got kicked out after a little while, which was kind of a shame. He was kind of cute, like, in a roguish kind of way-"
"Leni," Lisa interrupted. "Focus."
"Right," Leni blinked, hard, before resuming. "He kept forgetting to take his medicine. But when he was on it, he was fine. So… is there a way to make that kind of pill for super-people?"
Lisa held her chin and looked down in concentration. She took her time answering.
"…Not a pill, per se," she answered. "but you do constantly generate an unusual type of radiation. In theory, if we suppressed the radiation…"
She muttered some other things that Leni couldn't follow. Then, after a moment, the five-year-old snapped her head to the older girl.
"I need more data," she decided.
"Okay," Leni agreed. "Just tell me what test you want me to-"
"Not from you," Lisa dismissed. "I need to see the numbers they were crunching that day. I need to see what they were trying to do."
"They…?"
"I need the data from the reactor before it exploded."
Leni drifted over to the site. Seeing it was… she didn't know how to explain it. It was haunting. It was fascinating. It was alien to her. And yet, it was the reason she can do the things she's doing now.
Lisa cleared her throat.
"We can set down whenever you're ready," she shivered in Leni's arms. "By all means, take your time."
Leni smiled down at her. Holding her tight, she drifted down to the forgotten base.
She had forgotten the official name of it, but the media and public had dubbed it Fort Hard Knocks. Leni once heard Luan call Fort Knox 2: Electric Boogaloo. She didn't get the reference. It was located north of the city, closer to the Canadian border, and in the middle of a forest. Much the roofing of the place had been blacked and scorched. A part of the roof had collapsed in on the inside of the structure, exposing whatever technology inside to the elements. As hard as she tried, Leni couldn't hear anybody inside.
They touched down at what must have been the front entrance. There were no guards, and no one was sitting at the reception desk inside. No activity could be heard, apart from the birds and animals living their lives out in the woods beyond the perimeter fence. This whole place felt like a haunted mansion, except even worse, somehow.
"So, tell me about this place?" Leni asked her sister, hesitant to set her down. "Maybe with smaller words?"
"This facility was constructed to house a machine that could- Would you put me down?!" She kicked the air under her sister's grip. "Thank you. This military base was built to safeguard new scientific secrets for the military. The Generator they were testing was highly experimental, and was rumored (among the scientific community) to have enough power to dwarf the hadron collider currently stationed in Europe."
Leni's head started to tilt to the side. Lisa sighed.
"They were trying to unlock unlimited power," she summarized. "Effectively eliminating many crises with what would use to be an impossible solution. Then it exploded, and we have this."
Leni looked to the building. Lisa was pulling out some flashlights and some kind of measuring machine out of the supplies she packed with her.
"Here," she gave the teen a flashlight. In her other hand, she held a thumb drive. "The sooner I can get to a computer, the sooner I can get the answers I need for our little project."
Leni smiled. She thought about her sister as they approached the front entrance.
"We don't really hang out that much, do we?" Leni thought out loud.
Lisa, taken aback, answered, "Ah... I suppose."
"You picked on me for a while," Leni recounted, "Using me for your little experiments."
"I, um..." Lisa seemed to be looking for a change in subject. "Let's not ruminate on past mistakes. That was an entire year ago. Let's find the entrance."
"I'm not mad, Lis," Leni tried to reassure her, "You may be a genius, but your still a baby."
"Please," Lisa found the resolve to correct her, "I qualify as toddler, thank you very much."
Leni laughed, and Lisa held an amused smile on her face.
They entered the building, their beams of light sweeping across the room. Lisa's light made a slow sweep, looking for smaller details. Leni's was a little more frantic, looking for more immediate threats like spiders.
"Hello...?" Leni called out into the empty room. "Anybody here...?"
"Sister, please." Lisa pleaded. "A little tactical sense would go a long way."
"What if someone's hurt?" Leni wondered. "What if they need help?"
Lisa silently walked into the lobby. She clearly had an answer for her, but didn't say it. She walked past the desk to investigate a hallway.
"Surely there's a directory somewhere..." she muttered.
"Hey!" Leni realized, "I found a computer!"
Lisa turned and saw her costumed sibling smiling from behind the receptionist desk. She went over to investigate, and sighed.
"Leni, the power is cut," she explained. "And these computers wouldn't have the work I'm looking for anyways. We have to go deeper into the complex."
"Oh," Leni's demeanor drooped. "Sorry, I just thought..."
"It is forgiven," Lisa waved it off. "Now, the first thing we need to do is restore the power. Then we can go wandering about."
"How do you know so much about this place?" Leni asked the toddler. They walked down the hallway, looking for a maintenance hall for a fuse box.
"I was consulted on it," Lisa answered. "A government representative approached me, asked me to crunch some numbers, and paid me a rather large sum of money once the task was completed. He let it slip that the numbers involved were for a nearby secret facility. So far, this is the only secret facility I can find."
"A large sum of money?" Leni wondered.
"I forwarded it as a part of your collective college tuition," Lisa added.
"Oh," Leni blinked. "Well, thanks."
They continued onward, finding a back hallway that wasn't carpeted, and a fuse box hanging on the wall. Lisa immediately set to work, having Leni hold her up to the box with one arm while holding the flashlight with the other.
"Just a moment here, and..." The lights flickered on with a series of whirring thuds. "Eureka!"
As the lights came on, Lisa started to head back.
"We can use the computers in the lobby to find where the data is being kept," Lisa explained. "Hopefully, we can see what occurred after the generator detonated."
"Okie-doke!" Leni agreed.
As they made their way back, Leni hesitated. She kept hearing a noise that was hard to identify.
"Is something troubling you, sister?" Lisa prompted.
"I keep hearing this buzzing sound," she complained. "Like a really angry bee is buzzing all over the place."
"…That could easily be a systems failure," Lisa dismissed. "There was a major accident not long ago, after all. Honestly, we'll be lucky if the only thing functioning maliciously are a few faulty lights."
"Okay…" Leni still looked over her shoulder. That buzzing was still bothering her. Was it supposed to be… moving around like that?
Lisa sat at the computer and typed away at it.
"Hacking isn't really my forte," Lisa confessed. "But even so, I think I should be able to…"
The computer thrummed to life with a logo.
"Ah," Lisa sighed, content with her own intellect. "Child's play."
She tapped away at the computer screen, her little fingers moving much faster than Leni would initially believe.
"It seems the data we're looking for…" She soon surmised. "Is located in observation lab 1, section B."
She spun in her chair, hopping back down and strutting away with her chin held up high.
"I can take us there now," she declared. "On some days, it just feels good to… What is that sound?"
Leni paused with her, listening. The buzzing was almost thunderous, now. It crackled in the air, and it seemed to be whispering half spoken words to itself.
"The angry bee." Leni answered. She could smell something burning. She could smell heat, and ozone, and it was coming from the fuse box they flipped on in that maintenance tunnel.
Leni scooped up Lisa and held her in her arms, her feet left the ground as she soared through the air, flying in the opposite direction of that menacing sound.
"What is that?!" Lisa cried out. The five-year-old had one of her rare bouts of emotional fits. It usually took a lot to get her to be this emotional.
"I don't know," Leni answered, "But I think its behind us!"
She flew through the halls, flying ever deeper into the complex. As the lobby faded away, it was replaced by service pipes and paved walkways. The halls were extremely wide, serving as lanes for indoor loading cars. Some of them were flipped over.
As Leni flew through this indoor roadway, she dared to look over her shoulder. Their pursuer was now in view, and it befuddled her.
The creature had no sense of shape, forming as a ball of light and electricity, with occasional limbs forcing their way out to latch onto the floor to thrust itself forward. No matter what side of it Leni faced, some lines of electricity formed at least two or three human looking faces. The faces didn't have much detail, other than two eyes and a mouth; consistently opening for a scream or a moan of haunting pain.
The thing was a monster, through and through.
And yet…
Leni flew harder, faster, doing everything in her power not to get caught by that thing.
She took a hard right, spotting a red metal door, throwing it open and slamming it shut behind her. She immediately flew up, floating over some pipes in a smaller, more personalized maintenance hallway. She watched, with one hand covering Lisa's mouth, as the monster smashed the door open, pouring itself into the cramped space like a flood of lightning, and surging down the hall where the girls supposedly flew off to.
When the buzzing faded enough in her ears, Leni let go of Lisa's mouth. And allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief.
Her heart was pounding. She had worked completely on instinct, not even thinking about anything other than saving her baby sister.
Lisa heaved next to her. Her eyes were wide, her breathing was labored. Leni lowered themselves down to the ground level.
"No!" She panicked. "Don't! It'll find us!"
Leni shushed her and held her over her shoulder. She patted her back and held her tight.
"It's okay… It's okay…" She told the younger girl. "I got you. It's gone. I've got super hearing, remember?"
Lisa gripped the girl's costume and her nails dug into her shoulder. Her breathing hitched and she sobbed into the teen's shoulder.
"Shhhh…" Leni cooed. She continued to reassure her. "That was scary, huh?"
Lisa nodded into her shoulder.
"It's okay," she told her. "I'll take you home. I can do this some other time."
Leni carefully drifted back out the way they came. She looked down both ways and floated through the hallway.
"…" Lisa shifted in her grip. "Wait."
Leni paused. The young girl started to speak but was shushed by Leni. She looked around and spotted a different door leading to a different room. The wooden frame and glass paneling told her it was supposed to be an office. She flittered over to it, her feet not once touching the floor. She cracked open the door, entering the room slowly; fully prepared to slam the door and make a run for it if anything seemed dangerous. Nothing stuck out. Just a wide room with a lot of cubicles and abandoned computers.
Leni went to one of the cubicles and crawled under the desk.
"Okay," she said to the toddler. "What's wrong?"
"We can't abandon this mission," Lisa informed her. "I have no way of knowing if these systems will be scrubbed clean a week from now. I need the data stored here if we're going to…"
She shuddered.
"If we're going to save the city," she finished. The poor thing was shaking.
"Lisa…" Leni argued. "We didn't know that… thing would be running around here. It's too dangerous."
"What is dangerous, sister," Lisa snapped at her, "Is letting those hooligans run amok in our home city."
She took another shuddering breath.
"I am…" she confessed, "Moderately alarmed. My fight-or-flight responses are triggered to the nth degree, but…
"We need that data," Lisa finally pushed herself off of her shoulder. "And I'm not l-leaving without it."
The two sisters looked each other in the eye. For the first time in a long while, Leni felt like she could understand her younger sibling.
"Lisa, are you sure?" Leni sounded unsure. "We don't have to do this."
"Yes," Lisa nodded. She tried to look fierce behind her glasses. "We venture on."
Leni stared at her.
"You are the bravest fiver-year-old I have ever met," she planted a kiss on her sister's forehead. "What lab are we in now?"
She must be the worst sister ever. Lori would never do this. Lincoln would never do this. Heck, any one of her sisters would prioritize getting Lisa out safely. But not Leni. They came here for a job, and now they're going to do it.
"That door says section A," Lisa pointed out as they both crawled out of the cubicle. "We need to go deeper."
Leni, staying low to the ground, drifted mere inches above the carpet. She held the prodigy to her chest, hugging her tightly, as she peeked through the window. The glass had a fog design over it, but Leni could see out far enough. She couldn't hear the monster either.
"What do you think that thing was?" Leni asked her sister.
"My best scientific guess?" Lisa trembled. She was so scared and trying so hard to hide it. "I have yet to see an instance where a subject exposed to the radiation wasn't afflicted in some way. You, the villains, the other… victims on the news… they were all exposed in one way or another. Given that this is… ground zero, for the Event, I can guess that the faculty here were all exposed to the energies unleashed. The result being that their bodies and collective, panicking minds all coalesced into a singular entity. One forged out of electricity."
"Meaning…?"
"The staff that worked here," Lisa clarified, "became that monster."
Leni gasped in horror. What an awful thing to happen. Whatever that thing is now, it must be terrified.
The girl fished her phone out of her pocket.
"What are you doing?"
"Calling Linky," she answered. The phone was already ringing. "He's pretty creative with this sort of thing."
"Well," Lisa muttered. "A new perspective might help."
Lincoln soon picked up the phone. "Hello?"
"Hi, Linky," Leni looked out the window again. "Do you have a second?"
"Sure. What's up?"
Leni explained the situation as best she could, with Lisa jumping into the conversation with a little more exposition. When they were finished, Lincoln took his time before answering.
"Well, uh…" he stalled. "You said he was made out of electricity, right? So what if you turned on the sprinkler system? A lot of water normally shorts out villains like Power Grid. At least, in the comics it does."
"Power Grid?" Leni wondered.
"Oh, sorry," he answered. "Now's probably not the time for super names."
"Or," Lisa interjected bringing the conversation back on point. "The sprinklers could provide with an easier method of killing us.
"Besides," she added. "It looks like the sprinkler system went off already."
"How can you tell?" Lincoln asked over the phone.
"You smell that?" the younger girl asked. "Mold. All over this room. The sprinklers went off and nobody was here to clean up this mess."
"Well there has to be something there you can use!" Lincoln argued. "Some places have a fire hose built into the wall."
Lisa thought for a moment. "Yes…" she seemed to recall. "I remember bringing up that particular redundancy. I didn't deem it necessary, but they insisted that it may be."
As the two discussed this, Leni felt the buzzing in her ears again. She looked out and saw more than a couple of lights flickering.
"Uh, guys," she said. "I can hear it coming back."
"What?" Lisa stammered.
"Its definitely coming back," Leni confirmed, as the buzzing was getting louder.
"B-but… how?!" Lisa demanded. "It found us the first time because we turned on the power. How could it find us this-"
The both of them looked at Leni's phone.
"Guys?" Lincoln wondered.
"Hang up!" Lisa smacked the screen, in her desperate bid to shut the phone off. In her attempt, she only ended up hiding the button she meant to press.
Leni locked the screen, shutting the phone off and hanging up the call. She opened the door, stepping out and taking flight in the hallway. All just in time for Power Grid to lurch around the corner and roar with the sound of a hundred lost souls.
Leni fly back the way they initially came in.
"Wait, Leni!" Lisa cried out. "Other way!"
"Oh! Right!"
Leni dove down, making a vertical U-turn in the air and flying in the opposite direction. She flew under the several arms of the electrical beast, zipping past it and as it tried to swat at her.
Its skin was still a sea of surging electricity, but the mass had decided to use some of its glowing limbs to lift itself off the ground; balanced on four "legs" with individual digits. The four "arms" it had flailed wildly, with little control and direction. The electrical ball that connected it all constantly shifted around its limbs; showing vague resemblances to people Leni had never seen before. The more Leni looked at this creature, the more pity she felt for it.
Priorities first, though. They both had a job to do.
Power Grid stumbled over itself, but regained enough footing to turn around and give chase.
"Section B. Section B…" Leni looked for some obvious sign that would tell her where she needed to go. She ended up singing to herself. "Where are you… Section B…"
"There!" Lisa pointed out. "Observation lab!"
Leni followed her finger, and sped over to the door. She flung it open and set Lisa on the carpeted floor inside.
"Be right back." She said, closing the door behind her.
Leni flung herself to the air, as Grid tried to grab her at the spot she was standing just a second before.
She flew over to one of the abandoned cars, with a bed full of metal rods and other construction equipment. She slipped out one of the metal pipes and levitated to the roof. She banged the metal in her hand against the metal above her head.
"Hey! You-who!" She gave a whistle for added effect. "Over here, boy! Girl! Whatever you are!"
The Grid moaned in displeasure, charging at her with a staggering gait. Leni fluttered away, the beast swatting and flailing at her like an insect. She didn't have the time to think it over: her actions or her situation in all of this. Everything became based on instinct. Her ears, eyes, and even her nose tracked every burning movement of the monster made, and did everything they can to keep her alive.
As she flipped and twirled, leading Grid down the hall and further away from her sister, she spotted what she was looking for. A red box on the wall, with its red metal cabinet opened and beckoning her.
She dashed over to it, making a b-line to the container. She flung it open, grabbing the head of the fire hose inside. The rest of it spilled out onto the floor, and she pulled the lever to turn on the water.
The hose exploded with water, immediately wrestling itself out of her grip and spraying water everywhere. Leni shielded her eyes, and the Grid shied away. It was working! She just needs to focus the water.
Leni tackled the snake to the ground, worming her way up to its head. Meanwhile, the spray was starting to soak the ground, creating a massive puddle at Power Grid's feet. She gripped the hose's head, finally aiming it at the intended target.
Grid cried out, like a hundred voices screaming all at once. Leni fought the urge to cover her ears. The water burst into steam as it struck their surface.
The Grid disappeared from view, and Leni found the second latch on the hose that stopped the water from flowing. The steam cleared, and a significantly smaller mass of sparking electricity laid on its side. It looked like it was heaving.
Leni flew around it, giving the creature a wide berth, ready to grab her sister and leave this place forever.
"Help… Us…"
Leni paused and turned to the thing. There was no mistaking where the voice came from.
"Please…"
Leni took a breath, having just explained the whole situation to Luna. The musician wore a skeptical and disturbed expression the entire time.
"So… what happened to the monster?" Luna asked.
"It's… it's still there," Leni sighed. "I'm sorry, but I didn't know what else to do. We couldn't bring it back into the city. And we can't just keep it in our basement. At least there he has a little bit of elbow room."
"Don't worry about it," Luna placed a hand on her shoulder. "We'll make an anonymous phone call. Government's got access to all the scientists. Maybe they can help them."
"I hope so…"
Luna looked at Leni. She looked like she wanted to say something to the older girl, but were interrupted by Lisa.
"Eureka, again!" Lisa declared.
The two looked to the toddler, turning from her desk.
"I have discovered a way to neutralize the powers of the afflicted! However temporary!" she explained excitedly. "All thanks to that possibly psychological trauma I experienced at the research base!"
The two older girls looked at each other before looking to Lisa once more.
"Also," Lisa then added. "Can I sleep in one of your beds tonight? No particular reason."
Luna sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.
