Perfect Synergy

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." - Albert Camus

Never did go to the grocery store with Alex. He went, I just locked myself in my room and refused to talk to anyone. Several times during the night I felt Charles probing my mind, many of which he had tried to get me to talk to him. I just couldn't do it. I'd just start bawling again. Charles also reassured me that crying was a perfectly acceptable thing. I still couldn't bring myself to do it. And more than once I heard whispers from out in the hall. Most of it was Raven, but every now and then I heard Hank speaking in hushed tones. I hated hiding myself, I never did before that day, it's just something I had to do. I guess I got my emoting skills from my dad who just grabbed a pint of beer and mumbled into the froth, covering his bushy moustache. God damn, here I am, thinking about my family again.

Back to the problem at hand, it was six AM, October 24th, 1962. Somehow I managed to doze off and I jolted up from my slumbering cocoon, head a complete mess. I had an internal clock ever since the accident, not that I actually needed sleep. I was a ball of pure, natural, energy. I just slept so I could give my reality sensor a break and so I wouldn't start hallucinating (tried it, not pretty). Again, at that moment I wasn't thinking about any of this, I just wanted one thing. Bacon. Nothing like bacon to keep your mind off things. Hopefully Alex picked up a bucket load of it. Quickly I threw on a pair of sweat pants and I made sure I wasn't going to flash anyone by a lopsided shirt. I was all good. I jumped, well, more like wrestled, out of my blankets and headed out my door. At least I tried. Before I could run off to the kitchen I had to step around a slumbering corpse. I looked down and saw, "Sean?"

The red headed goofball snorted and shot up, red hair everywhere.

"The fuck you doin' down there?"

"Wai... minneh..." He flustered, trying to form actual words instead of that garble that was supposed to be 'Wait a minute my dear lady, I seem to have fallen asleep just beyond your threshold. How about I give you a foot rub every day this week to repay you for my despicable crimes? No? How about foot rubs and all the bacon you can eat?' or something of the sort.

I nudged him in the face with my foot. "Come on, wake up, spit it out. You worried 'bout me 'r somethin'?"

"Yeah," he prepped to hack a loogie, "heard you were having at rough night so I decided to see if you were okay." He snorted again, pulled out a hanky, and spat the loogie into it. Gross. Then he yawned, stretched, and stood up.

I shook my head at my lanky friend. I wrapped an arm around his waist, he wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and we started walking. "Thanks for checking up on me, but I'm fine now. Just needed to sleep it off." I gave him a sleepy smile and he gave me one back.

"That's good." He snickered. "Lucky for you I have the perfect test." We kept walking, hopefully towards the kitchen, I just felt a bit uneasy about what Sean was insinuating.

He cleared his throat. "What do you call a fish with no eyes?"

I thought about it for a second. Not really. "Shit outta luck?"

"A fsh."

I just looked at him like he was a dumb ass. Which of course he is but I wasn't about to argue that.

"Hmmm, you're worse than I thought. Almost terminal. How about this: Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love, and got married. The ceremony wasn't much but the reception was excellent." He said as we turned a corner.

That one got a little chuckle from me. That chuckle also nearly caused me to fall down a flight of stairs. I made a very un-ladylike noise and glared at the dumb ass responsible.

"Now we're getting somewhere! Try this one on for size," He cleared his throat again, "you know what I love to do more than anything? I like trying to pack myself into small suitcases. I can hardly contain myself."

I didn't understand it at first, eventually I did and when I did I barked out a laugh. "Nice one."

Now he was the one to laugh. "Oh I'm not done yet! I've saved the best for last! Okay, you ready to laugh your mother loving ass off?" He asked when we came to the bottom of the stairs and as he placed his hands on my shoulders. This must've been one funny joke.

I reached up and clasped his shoulders in turn. "Hit me with it."

"Alright: I tried water polo once, but I must be pretty bad at it, my horses keep drowning."

That wasn't a really funny joke to most people, it was just my humour. I clutched my stomach and started laughing moronically. "That's terrible!" I managed through bouts of laughter.

"VICTORY." He yelled, it echoed, and raised both arms in the air to represent his victorious win. Finally, I stopped laughing. This is why I've always loved Sean. Before I could think myself out of doing so, I hugged him for all I was worth. My arms linked around his waist and he wrapped his arms around my neck, after some struggle. He was still a giant. After a few seconds I broke away pretending like it never happened. I then waltzed into the kitchen to see mommy and daddy sipping coffee and reading the paper. The funny thing was they were sitting at the small breakfast table facing each other with the opposite legs crossed.

I waved to them before heading towards the fridge. Please let there be bacon please let there be bacon! There was bacon! And eggs, and milk, and yogurt, fruit, juice, more bacon, some sausage links thawing out, and an assortment of jams. Breakfast heaven! I looked to the counter and saw a couple of nice loaves of bread waiting patiently for me next to a ceramic container filled with whisks, spatulas, flippers, wooden spoons, and bacon pokers. Then I glanced around for a toaster. I saw it on a shelf behind me. It was unplugged but I could work with that. I am the goddess of electricity after all! That was actually a really cool idea. I used my electrical field manipulation to put four pieces of bread in the toaster and I used my electrical powers to force the toaster to toast.

"Nice utilizing." Sean said from the table. Charles looked up for a second to see me focusing on the toaster with my left hand and moving eggs, bacon, and sausage with my right. He chuckled though I could clearly tell he wasn't happy that I was using my powers. Suck an egg, Charles!

I stuck my tongue out at Sean. "Go get everyone; I'm makin' breakfast!" I waved my spatula at him like Mickey Mouse did in Fantasia with his wand which got me a laugh.

He nodded. "Sho' thang. One group of mutants, coming up!" He saluted me and ran off in that weird lanky way he always did. My eyes rolled naturally. But again, I loved that guy.

To my right I heard one of the two shake their paper slightly. "You missed target practice last night." Who other than Erik would start that?

Did I actually have target practice? I looked at the schedule posted on the wall. Apparently I did. "Well, I must've forgotten." I shrugged and continued making everyone breakfast.

"Now's not the time to be forgetting something so crucial in your training." He said, not looking away from his oh so important paper. Seriously? Was he completely oblivious to what happened to me not twelve hours ago?

Well now was the perfect time to show him that I didn't need any freaking practice. I grabbed a fresh pack of toothpicks and opened them. My fingers clasped around a handful and I surrounded each one individually with my own electrical aura. Try and tell me that I needed target practice and I'd make you eat those words. My arm shot out in his direction and each one of my projectiles missed. Erik didn't even move, he just shook his paper.

"See? You needed that practice."

I laughed, crossed my arms, and pointed to the wall behind him. Erik turned slightly to see a perfect silhouette of his sitting form embedded in the wood. He smirked.

"Could still use the practice." He sipped at his coffee.

Oh really? I grabbed another handful of toothpicks. One by one I flicked them at his paper. I didn't flick them hard enough for them to be threatening so Erik still didn't flinch. Ass. But hopefully he got the message I embedded in his paper.

'Oh really? Fuck off Papa German.'

He laughed at that. "Fair enough. But I'd get back to cooking before you burn everything to cinders."

I turned just fast enough to see the smoke. "Shit!"

Okay so it turned out that the smoke wasn't the burning food sort of smoke it was Erik being an ass. My breakfast feast turned out perfect, crepes, pancakes, omelettes, eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, English muffins, a whole medley of fruit and juices, and laughs all around. Everyone appreciated it too and everyone was kind enough not to bring up what happened the previous night, not that I couldn't see it in their eyes. They all desperately wanted to know why the tomboy went off the emotional deep end. Too bad I wouldn't give them that pleasure. I would stay silent on my private matters until the day I was pushing up daisies. Sometimes I wished I wasn't like this, sometimes being the times when I caught Hank looking at me in the loving, caring, way that he does. Sorry babe, nothing personal.

Once everyone was done we all piled the dirty dishes in the sink and marched off to do whatever we were going to do. I, for one, was sticking to Charles again for the day. Since I was, I was forced to help him wash dishes. Why? No idea, I made it. See if I ever cooked again for that miserable lot. Several times during my washing of dishes I flung soap foam at the 24 year old next to me. I needed some way to entertain myself.

"Hank made a device to help channel Alex's powers so, hopefully, today there will be less fire and, therefore, less extinguishing on both our parts." Charles said suddenly in response to my evident boredom.

My lips smiled without me even trying, "That's great, maybe Hank can make something to amplify your massive brain. Or something to keep you out of everyone else's heads." I said smugly with a glare and a sickly sweet smile. I was clearly talking about the past twelve hours when he was trying to get me to open up. No way.

He chuckled. "Now wouldn't that make bothering you all all the more difficult?"

I flung my rag at him. That man didn't deserve my words.

"Now now, none of that." He continued to chuckle. "But in all seriousness, if I hadn't probed your mind last night how would you have felt? Independent or just lonely?" He said with a side glance towards me.

My hands stopped working with a sigh. "Charles, I'm emotionally inept. I admit it, I embrace it. You can't expect more from me than I've given. I allowed you in last night because I needed someone else's voice besides my own to keep me from driving myself crazy. If you hadn't been there I probably would've gone home. Is that what you wanted to hear? Because it's true. I tell the truth when it's better for all involved, usually the truth about my feelings isn't included in that." I explained to him just as my hands remembered how to function again.

As I scrubbed away syrup and grease I felt Charles staring at me solemnly. That's it. I can't take it anymore. Fuck it. "You know what, I'm heading down to the bunker. When you're ready to start focusing on people who actually have a chance of living give me a call." I finished my rant with the slam of a scrub brush and the explosion of the light over head. I marched down to the bunker where I was finally alone. I saw the mannequin down the length of the concrete shell and blasted it. Damned plastic slut deserved it.

"Still have some steam you need to blow off?"

I turned to see Alex leaning against the wall in his grey sweats. He had a raw look on his face that made me want to scream. Even though I was, truly, emotionally constipated my emotions were giving me hell those past three months. Everything was full scale all the time, either I was really happy, really sad, or really pissed. It was exhausting. Right then, as you probably guessed, I was one pissed off chick.

"The fuck it got to do with you blondie?" I swore at him as I lowered to the ground in a huff. "Gonne give me shit? Cause I feel like it without you talking." I pulled my knees into my chest and pretended nothing mattered. How did I get so pissed? I was perfectly happy not an hour prior.

Alex didn't say any more. He just stayed where he was not even bothering to look at me. We spent several minutes like that before I finally snapped.

I didn't even look at him as I said this. "I'm dying."

He scoffed. "No you're not, you just feel like shit."

My eyes rolled on cue. "I'm serious Alex. I've been dying ever since the night Darwin died." I snorted. "Wow, that'd be poetic if we had been romantically involved." I pulled my knees in tighter. I couldn't believe that I was admitting to him my deepest secret but, to tell the truth, he reminded me of the only brother that was actually related to me and closest in age, Collin. Collin was a real toughie on the outside but cared about everyone around him a bit too much for his own good. But then he'd also trip you the second he got the chance.

Alex came over and sat by me. "You're not making a metaphor, or whatever, are you." He stated rather than asked. I shook my head.

"Unfortunately, no. I wasn't born with my 'powers', like you guys all were. I came across mine by some freak accident." I lamented with a sigh.

"I don't see how that makes you 'dying'."

I sighed again. "I wasn't born with the immunity to my powers that you were. Or Sean, for that matter. You don't burn when you light up and Sean's brain doesn't fry when he screams. My body roasts whenever I utilize my powers, it's just happening at a much faster rate than before that night when Shaw caused my body to go into overdrive."

And that's when I told my whole story for a second time. He took it in with ease; there really weren't any bumps or hiccups. He didn't interrupt me. He just let me let it all out, again. I explained to him what my body chemistry was currently doing, turning into electricity, molecule by molecule (I was up to tendons and ligaments turning into electricity by that point), and how I couldn't stop it even if I wanted to. He seemed sad when I said "even if I wanted to". I assured him that I didn't want to die but I knew it was coming and, as I told Charles, I would die protecting the world from people like Shaw. After that I swore him to secrecy, naturally, I couldn't have him telling everyone else and having everything go to shit. He promised me that I had nothing to worry about. But he did insist that I tell Hank, at least. That was an immediate no. I couldn't bring myself to put that on Hank, or Raven for that matter. Those two meant the world to me. I couldn't mess up that beautiful picture I had of everyone smiling in my mind. Hopefully I would pass after the battle and I wouldn't have to see the heart wrenching faces of everyone else around me.

Jesus damn, that's four days away, you're perfectly safe for another couple of weeks. Stop freaking yourself out! I thought to myself angrily. I was such a twit, psyching out long before I was to die.

Back to reality, Alex was hugging my shoulders while staring straight in front of him. Guess this was his way of coping, silence. That's when he pulled my head towards his and whispered. "Thanks for telling me."

Fuck. I didn't expect him to get all sentimental. I punched him in the arm. "Don't get so touchy feely on me. I'll puke on you."

He laughed. "You sure you're a girl?"

"Positive."

We both laughed and both helped each other stand up. Good timing too, Charles just opened the door with Hank trailing behind him holding a vest of sorts with a circular disk in the middle of it. "Ah, good! You're already here!" Charles exclaimed. "Hank, help Alex suit up."

Hank happily did as Charles commanded and even smiled in my direction. Adorable. That's when the telepath approached me.

"I'm sorry for pushing you like that earlier. I've learned that you need to accept this at your own pace and that I can't be playing your doting mother all the time." He gave me that look of understanding of his. "So when you're ready, I'll be wherever you need me."

I nodded. 'Thank you.' I projected at him. We then returned to Alex who had just finished getting his vest thing on.

"Sexy." He muttered.

"I'd lick ice cream off that." I said rather nonchalantly. Alex gave me a weird look. "Oh, I thought we were talking about Hank."

Oh did Hank blush. Alex smiled at me, happy that I was getting back to my old self, I assumed.

"You shore this will work?" Charles asked tentatively. Okay he didn't say 'shore' there, he said 'sure'. It's just that accent that did it.

"Anything's possible." Hank muttered, clearly still embarrassed. And very unsure.

Charles smiled. "That's good enough for me."

Hank cleared his throat. "Aside from the verbal sexual abuse, well, this is just the prototype. The real one will look considerable better. It will be a whole suit. See, these sensors measure your energy output. This panel focuses it and the excess is absorbed." He said rather matter of factly as he pointed to the different mechanisms in the device.

I looked down to the other end of the bunker where three mannequins stood, the one I shot was on the left. Looks like we're going to ignore all that. Thank you.

"Try hitting the one in the middle. Just the one in the middle, mind." Charles said while trying to usher me out the door with Hank, "Good luck!" And with that we were securely protected by the steel (probably something stronger than steel but I never did pass Chemistry... or Geology, whichever one it was) door. We heard him blast once, then another time. Charles opened the door to a moderately flame free bunker! Huzzah!

"Hank, Hank? Can you go take care of that?" Charles asked pointing to the two mannequins on fire.

"Y-yeah." Was his response before he grabbed one of the extinguishers and got to work.

"Are you alright?" Charles asked Alex who was on the floor.

"Yeah."

"Are you shore?"

"Yeah."

"Can you stand?"

"Yeah."

"'Atta boy!" I suddenly screamed and then pounced on Alex, causing him to fall back down on the floor. He oomphed when my 106 pounds connected with him. I practically wrapped around him like a sloth hugging a tree and I refused to let go. This was a huge milestone and I didn't have to extinguish nearly as much as the day prior.

"Wait a minute..." I paused, looking over my shoulder. "FIRE!" I grabbed my trusty fire extinguisher and ran down to the other end of the bunker. "Momma's back you flaming sons of bitches!" I yelled as I practically jumped on the flaming mannequins. Did I ever mention that I was a dumb ass?

For the next three hours or so after Alex threw a tantrum about energy diapers he kept trying to control his little disk thingy. He got pretty good at it after awhile. He just kept missing his central target; his blasts always veered left or right. He at least nicked his target once or twice. But now it was time for Sean's practice. Hopefully that would be more fun. We said goodbye to Alex as he went off with Erik for his night of target practice and we were greeted by Sean, clad in his sweats. Glad I don't have any more training, no more sweats for me!

Sean turned to Charles who had three sets of those headsets to see people wearing when they mow their lawns. "Who's our third guest?" He asked.

"That would be me, sorry I'm late." I turned to see Moira.

BLEEEEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEH. Charles gave me a telepathic kick and I sent a small stream of static at his ass. 'I can think whatever I want about that old hag and you can't stop me!' I thought smugly. I heard Charles sigh. Good thing Moira was living in town and not in the Palace because I wouldn't be able to contain my "gift" and I might've accidentally purposefully electrocuted her. Accidentally.

"Yes, Moira wants to see us in action but she could only come this afternoon and two days from now." Charles informed us.

'Charles,' I thought, getting his attention, 'that woman is not ruining my birthday!' I gave him an exasperated look.

He gave me one right back. 'She's only staying for President Kennedy's address. Nothing more.'

I humphed. 'Good.' I don't know why I disliked Moira so much, I just did. Something about the way she talked to us. It just made me feel like- well, like a child.

"Alright, Sean, you're going to shatter that window pane of glass." Charles informed the red head while pointing to brass window frame decoration with several small panes of glass out about ten feet in the lawn.

Sean shrugged. "Easy enough." He motioned for all of us to put on the headsets, which we did. We didn't want our brains to turn to stew.

"Ready?"

Sean let out a quick screech and the glass was reduced to dust. Moira let out an amazed sound and Charles laughed slightly. We all removed our brain protectors. And I patted Sean on the back.

"Alright, that's very impressive but now it's important to learn control. What you're doing is incredible. You're hitting a pitch with sound waves," he pointed to the frame, "that have the same resonant frequency as the glass." He looked directly at Sean with pride in his eyes. "That's why it shatters. But this," he pointed to his own throat, "it's like any other muscle in the body. You can control it."

Sean smiled, proud of his accomplishment.

"Alright, try a higher frequency, much higher." Charles commanded as he put on his headset again.

For a second, Sean said nothing. "There's no glass." He informed Charles, too bad the telepath couldn't hear him.

I tapped Charles on the shoulder and motioned towards Sean. He removed his noise cancellers. "I'm sorry, what?"

"There's no glass."

Moira chuckled behind him. "Trust him. He's a professor." She gave him an encouraging look and I resisted giving her a vulgar hand gesture.

But it seemed that Sean was just the slightest bit pumped after Moira looked at him the way she did. Just before Sean started to inhale Moira and I replaced our headsets as well. Charles stopped Sean though before he could really get started. Good thing because Charles's brain was still exposed. We couldn't have that turning into soup, we depended on it.

"No no no," he gently placed his hand against Sean's throat, "this."

Sean looked a tad bit dejected but he exhaled a large amount of air and rubbed his chest, the usual source of his wind. He then gave Charles an uncertain look and was received with a nod of encouragement and two thumbs up from me. Sean chuckled a bit and started massaging his throat. He then let out a true scream, not the usual screeches, his face started to turn red, and my stomach started to churn. It took a few seconds before the brass structure collapsed but by then Charles, Moira, and I were clutching our stomachs on the ground. Sean joined us seeing as he fell backwards as if he were a plank of wood. A big thick one that got hit with a hammer.

He looked to all of us. "What happened?"

"Fluids in the inner ear canal, apparently disruption causes," he paused a second to gag, "nausea. That can be quite handy. Well done."

Sean laughed and nudged Moira playfully. Am I missing something? If so, oh well. I'm going to puke. I quickly crawled over to some nearby bushes and emptied the contents of my stomach. Goodbye delicious breakfast. I knew thee well. I turned back to Sean and jumped on him. I pounded on him until I felt satisfied and then went off to puke again. Why my newly 400% more productive body couldn't stop me from puking, no clue. I wasn't all that good at Biology either. All I knew was that I should never get on Sean's bad side, if he even had one. That boy could mess some shit up. All in all, a very good day. I took an emotional laxative for my emotional constipation and now I was starting to open up. Hope I don't turn into one of those touchy feely persons now. Not my scene.