Part 8 is up and awaaay. And it's back to school in less than two weeks for me. Enjoy.

Also, please leave reviews, I know that more than one person is reading this. Come on, stroke my ego a little.

"I need to talk with you about a few things," said Victor. "Right now if you don't mind."

Nico gave another sigh, this one intentionally long. Victor could be frustrating or naive at times, but he was also very practical. He had once described himself as "the sanest person on this team," something not entirely untrue. Nico figured that since they were crashing at his old apartment, the least she could do was hear him out. Although now he had no excuse to kick her out of his bed, she decided.

"Here. Come sit." She pounded the mattress. Victor complied and sat next to Nico, who was still lying down with her eyes closed. "What's going on?"

"It's this Kenny guy."

"Kenyon."

"It's just that for someone with a previous history of paranoia, you're suddenly pretty trusting."

"He helped us rescue you guys." Nico paused before her next sentence. "I mean, I was seriously scared. I was afraid I had lost you guys, like I had lost Alex and Gert."

"Losing someone else would ruin this team," Victor admitted. "Even Old Lace. But I don't trust this guy, Nico. It's something I feel in my gut."

"Your robot gut?"

"Come on, Nic." Victor smiled. "You know how human I am better than anyone else on this team."

"Hardy-ha-ha, tinman." She rolled further away from him. "I trust Kenyon. I didn't say you had too. Is there anything else we need to talk about?"

"I'm not dropping this," he said. "I know that you want him to strengthen your magic."

She sat up and looked at him. "And how do you know that?"

"Chase told me. He said Kenyon promised to teach you how to resurrect people."

Nico twisted her face in annoyance. Chase needed to keep his mouth shut. "Yeah, well, so what? Having more magic would be good for the team, wouldn't it? And bringing Gert, or Alex back… what would be wrong with that?"

"I just want you to be careful. You said yourself that you try to find someone to cling to whenever you're stressed, and I'm afraid that now Kenyon is that person. Also, let's not forget that the last person who strengthened your magic was a witch in 1907 who tortured you." Nico had no response other than to nod. She lay down on the pillow again, so Victor continued, "There's something else I'm curious about: why do you care so much about Alex?"

Dammit Chase. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, even if you learn how to resurrect someone, you're going to need a Staff of Two to cast it twice, and why did you consider Alex as well as Gert? I never meet the hombre, but the other guys seem to hate him. Apparently he betrayed you guys."

"Damn right," said Nico. "He tried to kill us all."

"Not all," said Victor. "I've heard the story. He wanted to keep you alive, you and your parents. He was in love with you, wasn't he?"

"If you think I still have feelings for him, you're wrong. If he comes back, the first thing I'll do is punch him in the nose. Scratch that, the balls, and since I've been a man for a day I know how it feels too."

"Why bring him back just to hit him?" Nico, almost asleep, did not answer. "You do still have feelings for him, although you won't admit it. It's subconscious; he was your first love. He hurt you but you didn't feel like he deserved to die."

This was territory that Nico did not want to explore. She brought up a topic she knew she would later regret. "Funny how you should talk about love and getting hurt, after that redhead you cheated on me with."

Victor momentarily turned pale. When he regained his color he said, "You told me you were okay about that."

"Well sheesh Victor, I admit that I was never really into you but… it still hurt. You just ran off with her without so much as a sorry to me; how do you think I felt when you asked her to come to the future with us? Is chauvinism in your programming?"

"Hey!" said Victor. "This is exactly my problem with you: you're so neurotically defensive about everything."

"I have to be." All hope of ending this conversation by falling asleep was out the window. "We have to be to survive."

"Then don't trust this Kenyon guy. He has bad news written all over him. And bringing back people from the dead, that's dangerous brujeria right there."

"Get out, Victor," said Nico briskly. "I'm too tired to argue anymore with you."

Victor got off the bed. "Fine, don't take my advice. And it's too bad you're so prissy, because I was really into you."

He walked out, turning off the lights and closing the door behind him. Prissy, thought Nico, he calls me "prissy". She tried to put her thoughts in order as she watched a Captain America figurine on Victor's wall. Then she slowly fell asleep.

Karolina sighed as she saw the rising sun line touch a bed of flowers at the foot of the apartment building. She wished so much that she could just jump out the window and fly across the clouds, but she knew that the team needed to lay low for a while. Chase yawned as he worked at the computer, trying to find places the team could escape to. So studious, thought Karolina.

"There's the new X-men base in San Francisco," he said. "We fought once. They might let us hang for a while."

"I don't think we should draw attention to them," Karolina answered. "Besides, I don't want to leave LA. This is where we grew up. There's no reason we shouldn't be able to stay here."

"We may be able to. Most of California is under-policed. You want some coffee?"

"I had herbal tea earlier."

"Alright." Chase took a big gulp from his mug and wiped his lips with his sleeve before continuing. "A lot of supers hide from the government. 'Course they have secret identities and stuff."

"Yeah, but… superheroes. That's it." Karolina beamed with rainbow energy as the sun hit the window. She turned and spoke to Chase. "That fat police chief can't defend the city from all the weird stuff that the Pride kept out. We just have to wait for something to happen."

"Yeah?" said Chase. "And how long is it going to take for something to happen?"

"Well, with that robed man and spellbook that Nico got," said Karolina, "I hope it isn't as soon as I think it might be."

"What the heck is this?" asked Nico as she studied the open spellbook. "I can't understand a thing in here. And even if I could, the letters are all blurred."

"It's an enchanted spellbook," explained Kenyon. "It takes magical perception to read."

The two of them were standing in an open field Kenyon had taken them too. There was not another soul around for miles, which meant lots of room for practice. Nico was wearing a rather drab, grey set of clothes for the occasion; if something weird happened she didn't want another one of her dresses to get ruined.

"Take out the staff," said Kenyon. Nico complied and made a small cut on her arm. When the staff came into her hand, the letters suddenly became legible. "Most of your magic is contained in that staff," Kenyon continued. "It is your strength, but also your limitation. You can only do spells that the staff does on its own. Once you release the magic of your ancestors, the staff will merely be an enhancement to your own power."

"Sounds good," said Nico, "is that where the spellbook comes in?"

"Yes, it contains the secrets of your family's magic. With study, you should greatly increase your powers."

"I don't know. Some of this is still hard to read. Here's something: 'If in the mind a form is made, master an object and the two will trade.' What does that mean?"

"Try it. Imagine a loaf of bread in your mind, thinking of as many details as possible." Nico did so. "Good. Now place your right hand on this rock, and try to think of it as your own." Nico again did so, and the moment she touched the rock she found her mind immersed in all its features from its color to every jagged edge. But when she looked down she saw not a rock but the bread she had imagined.

"That was a simple transformation spell," said Kenyon. "But I was never in favor of wasting time mastering the basics. Is there anything more advanced in there?"

"I can't tell," said Nico. "A lot of it is still blurred or written in this strange language."

Kenyon looked disappointed. "Maybe you should take some time to study it. I'll take you back to your friends and leave you alone for a bit."

Nico, who had asked not to be disturbed, was flipping through the pages of the spellbook, making notes on which pages had details that she could read. Feeling frustrated at the material in the front, she skipped to the second half of the book, and was delighted to find that more of this section was readable. But not all of it was about magic.

The Secret History of Fei-Hua Minoru. I have killed ten men to complete my initiation into the Dark Arts. My grandfather, Jei-Hung Minoru crowns me with family crest as I revel in my new powers. The daimyo of the Satsuma Domain had ordered my family to help suppress a rebellion; it seems that although our "wicked" practices are rebuked in public, in private we are the secret to many military successes.

The more Nico read the more she wanted to put down the book. There was an entry for every ancestor of importance she ever had, describing in pride the horrific things they had done. She flipped and flipped through the pages, all completely legible, descriptions getting more and more unsavory. Finally she slammed the book shut and slid it away from her.

"Why the long face?" someone said. It sounded like her mother's voice. "Don't you want this power?" Nico noticed that the book briefly jumped whenever it spoke. She backed away, but then the book opened up and a face began to rise out of the pages. "I told you before," the face said, which was becoming more and more like her mother's.

"Get away from me!" yelled Nico in fear.

"You will always be a Minoru. If you want our power…" now a full figure was rising, "You will have to become like us. Is that what you want?"

Nico clutched her head down and screamed, "Get awaaaay!"

"Nico!"

Nico awoke with a start to see Karolina and Molly looking over her. She was lying down on the floor, the spellbook still in her arms.

"You were screaming in your sleep," Karolina said.

"It… it was a nightmare." I must have dozed off, she thought. She got up and calmly tossed the book on the bed. "I need a break. You guys wanna go out to eat?"

"Aren't they looking for us?" asked Molly.

"The police are looking for us Molly, and I doubt they've had time to get a wanted poster in every restaurant in LA."

Molly beamed. "In that case, I want Chinese food."

"Sure thing. Chase has some cash left; it'll be his treat." Old Lace walked into the room, frightening Karolina. Nico smiled. "You stay here, alright?" she said. "And we'll bring you back some General Tso's chicken."

So the runaways all walked to a local Panda Express together. As Karolina and Chase chatted and Molly tried to explain cell phones to Klara, Nico found herself in the uncomfortable position of sitting across from Victor. Luckily he had the decently to break the ice.

"So did everything go okay?"

"So far. I hope it works out." She stirred her uneaten rice with her chopsticks. "I'm sorry I said you were programmed for chauvinism."

"I'm sorry I called you prissy and neurotically defensive."

"Do you even know what prissy means? I looked it up. It means overly prim and proper."

"Sorry. When things get heated words just find their way out of my mouth, and I didn't want to call you bitchy or anything mean like that."

"That's appreciated. You going to eat those snow peas?" Victor shook his head and she grabbed a couple with her chopsticks. Victor, having never learned how to use sticks, was trying to poke through some broccoli with a plastic fork.

"So we're cool then?" he asked.

"Victor, if I couldn't have someone sane like you to rely on, these guys would get us caught in less than a week." She motioned to Chase, who was making Molly laugh by putting straws up his nose. Nico and Victor both smiled.