Thanks very much to Ro-Lee, Patting-Patches, and my lovely guest reviewer.

Superheroes/X-Men

For vampluver19, who asked for heroes meeting villains and possibly superpowers.

It's a pleasant summer night when Cato comes back to life, clawing his way out of his freshly-dug grave and gasping for air. He hacks up bits of earth from his lungs, unable to think of anything except I'm not dead, I'm not dead, I'm not dead.

The skin on his throat is almost done knitting itself back together. He shudders as he flashes back to how his throat got mangled in the first place: curved fangs and bloody claws, yellow eyes that promised death. And death was what he got, at least for… Cato looks at his watch. About three hours, give or take.

But how is he still alive? And how could he have even "died" in the first place? Ever since he was little, people just—just haven't been able to touch him. Humans, animals, they just stopped being able to make physical contact with him once he was five or six, unless he concentrated really, really hard and let them. Father's colleagues were fascinated and had been conducting tests on him for as long as he can remember. The current favorite theory is that Cato has some subconscious ability to manipulate the magnetic fields surrounding his body, which deflects living creatures from making contact.

Every creature, it seems, except the mutt that temporarily murdered him.

A light suddenly appears in the surrounding darkness, and he tenses as he whirls around to face it. A stocky blond boy is holding up his hand, which shimmers brightly like a miniature sun. Several others—teenagers, like the blond, like Cato—are next to him, watching him with varying degrees of wariness.

"Who the hell are you?" Cato growls, voice raspy and throat sore from breathing in dirt.

"You're Cato Wolfwood." One girl steps forward, covered from the neck-down in clothing despite the heat. "Your whole family's involved with the Capitol." She spits out the last word like a curse.

The Capitol? Capitol Industries? As in, the research facility where his father and brother works?

...As in the Capitol that just murdered his whole family and tried to kill him with them? Mutts, he knows, are a special pet project of the Capitol's. And he's positive, positive, that as he lay dying three hours ago, he saw a pleased-looking Coriolanus Snow strolling into his family's blood-covered home.

"Not anymore," Cato mutters, "if the mutts they sent were any indication."

The strangers all look at each other in confusion and suspicion, except the girl who spoke. She never turns those pensive blue eyes away from him. Cato stares back at her, curious and intrigued but also bracing himself for fight or flight at a moment's notice. His strength, his speed, his reflexes, they're all beyond what any normal human can achieve.

But he's not a normal human. He's a mutant, and he's sure these teenagers all are as well, if the guy holding a sun in his hand is any indication. As good as Cato is as fighting, he's not sure if he can take on six other mutants at once—whose powers he doesn't know—especially not after he's just stopped being dead.

The girl with the blue eyes is taking off one of her leather gloves. The others stare at her. "What are you doing?" a girl with a long black braid hisses.

"Trust me," Blue Eyes tells her, still watching Cato. Then, addressing him, "Do you mind?" She wiggles her bare hand.

"Mind what?" he asks warily.

"I'm going to take a quick peek inside your head and see why you and the Capitol have grown apart," she says lightly. "A little skin-to-skin contact is all I need."

Cato narrows his eyes. "I do mind, and even if I didn't, your efforts would be futile."

"Right, you're the one who can't be touched, huh? Wanna bet I can't do it?"

There's a challenge in her eyes, and something dark rears inside Cato in response. Before he can think better of it, he holds out his hand.

A faint smile flickers across her face before she steps forward. She reaches out, and her hand comes within a millimeter of touching his before it stops. Her brow furrows as she visibly tries to press her hand down. Nothing, it continues to hover right above his palm.

"Told you," Cato murmurs.

She shoots an annoyed look at him, and for a moment, Cato forgets that they're possibly enemy mutants. They're just a boy and a girl, and he's enjoying that look of frustrated determination on her face. She takes a breath and closes her eyes, frowning in concentration.

Cato waits, but still nothing happens. He's about to say something like 'Better luck next time' when her hand pushes down and presses his and suddenly his memories of his last moments before he "died" are rushing into her head.

And, as an apparent side effect, some of her memories are seeping into his head too.

Her home. A school for mutants, run by a man with clever gray eyes and a woman who looks remarkably like her. A pair of blond fraternal twins, setting up telepathic defenses around their sanctuary. Teenagers, all of them mutants, sitting in class and sparring in a field and eating together and having fun and laughing.

Then, suddenly, overwhelming sensations of warmth and home and fire and life, and Cato realizes that he's no longer seeing her memories but feeling her. And when she jerks her hand away, equally stunned by whatever it was she felt from him, he has a name. "That's an interesting way to meet new people, Ember Abernathy."

I'm only familiar with the X-Men movies, but I based Cato's powers on a combination of Wolverine's regeneration/healing factor (which seems to make him invulnerable/immortal) and Magneto's metallokinesis, which I believe is based on an ability to manipulate magnetic fields. He also has enhanced senses, strength, agility, etc. So basically, Cato is an untouchable superhuman. He does have ONE weak spot (which I'll keep quiet about for now).

His superhero name? Achilles, of course.

Ember's powers are a combination of telepathy/empathy. The more contact she has with her target, the easier it is for her to open up a telepathic/empathetic link, but it's also harder to control, hence her wearing gloves and long sleeves all the time, because it'd be awkward to suddenly have a mental connection with a random stranger you brushed up against on the street. Her superhero name is Ms. Spock. All the Abernathys have some kind of mental/emotional power, for the record.

The boy who looks like he's holding a miniature sun is Peeta. His powers are based on solar energy.

I have loads of stuff on a Sweetest Mockery/X-Men crossover I once contemplated writing but ultimately gave up on. Everyone gets a superpower, whooooo~

Please submit more suggestions for scenes!