James POV

"I'm can't- I'm done, going to take a nap."

Three pair of eyes followed the slouching blonde as he went up the stairs, his footsteps dragged along the carpet before one of the doors on the second floor slammed shut. We cringed at the force of the action itself and I sighed.

"Maybe getting him to look through Dad's stuff with us was a bad idea," I said, gathering the notes I was looking at and tossing them into one of the boxes next to the table. Wordlessly, my baby sister shoved another stack under my nose, ignoring the pained whine that came from me. "How many more of these observations are there?"

Allie shot a glare at me. "That's the last one, I believe. It's the one Shane here handed to you a while back. I see you haven't gotten around to reading it and I've already finalised the information in it to the best of my ability so might as well."

"It could be useful when it comes to dealing with Kendall." I turned to the other brunette sitting across from me on the floor, arching an eyebrow at his choice of words. Shane, noticing this, immediately rephrased himself. "I mean, he seems to be doing fine with his powers so far but- well, you should read the rest. It has some things to do with us, too, I presume."

"If you guys are done, go ahead and order some pizza or whatever it is that you two want to get. We'll talk about what we've learnt over dinner, yeah?" When my two siblings nodded, I tossed my phone at them, nearly missing the jealous look that flashed across Shane's face when they unlocked it. Allie just looked at it and sniggered. "Oh, right, sorry. The homescreen picture is slightly indecent but I hadn't counted on new siblings using my phone. My bad."

"Yeah, showing us a picture of you and Kendall sucking faces with barely anything on is definitely indecent," my baby sister mused, smirking eyes playfully before turning and walking towards the kitchen, my twin trudging along with his head down, his wavy brown hair covering part of his face.

I cocked my head sideways at the boy's sudden change, then shaking my head and glaring back at the new notes I had to look through as though my eyes could burn them to ashes and lighten the workload.

We've spent nearly half the day skimming through three boxes filled with different sized notebooks and straying pieces of paper. I wasn't surprised Kendall decided to take a breather before any of us did; while we had inside knowledge and were familiar with the experiments elaborated in between the lines, my boyfriend had zero experience to anything other than what he had gone through. He might as well be as clueless as a boy trying to buy pads for their girlfriend for the first time.

I shuddered at the thought and nearly slapped the mental image out of my head. Thank God Kendall's a boy with boy parts that doesn't bleed every month. The horror.

Returning my attention back where it should be, I read through the lines of the notes Allie had passed to me, which were initially the ones Shane chucked at me when his attempt to flirt with my blonde resulted in a near-murder. I couldn't help the small smile that stretched my lips at the mere memory of my twin brother cowering from Kendall's icy glare.

It turned out to be one of Dad's newest entries, heavily edited with a red pen that Allie left lying around under the mess on the coffee table. I sighed, already fearing that it would be another blank.

The only reason we were frantically looking through our Dad's old stuff was because we needed answers on why exactly did the cure not work; instead causing the pain and suffering to slam back at me tenfold. My body was still sore from the impact, bones aching after having to accommodate a larger form for a few minutes before I was able to regain control and shrank back to my usual size.

However, it did shock me how, instead of tearing out my lover's throat, the demon that controlled my body during the extreme phase did nothing but trap Kendall under its massive body mass, rendering the poor blonde helpless until Shane's arrival. As though it was protecting him, the way I would.

But, demons don't fall in love, right?

I slammed my head on the table, groaning in frustration on everything that had been going on. When I finally decided to stop snuffling the crumpled writings in my hands, my eyes landed on a certain mesh of words.

Experimentation has been further improved, complications from previous attempts have been corrected. While electric and water do not belong together, there is a way to accommodate the elements into a vessel; all I need is a human who has a bond with another one of my tests, the only successful- and still alive- ones being my own sons and Allie.

The next vessel will be physically stronger with the DNA of another etched onto it, just enough to amend the human body's vitals to accommodate a harsher flow of power. As it is, the second a connection is made between two individuals, the powerless would have contracted some of their spouse's elements. It is due to this that Electrike would be the best superhuman I've created as of late. The most powerful human weapon.

I paused, my mind reeling to patch together the information I managed to make sense of. Kendall was already part mutant because of the relationship we had? It would explain the peculiar urge to get close to him the second I saw him on my first day of school; a 'connection' must have been forged at that moment, intensifying after the first kiss and growing as the days passed.

I hastily flipped through the pages, paling with each grotesque diagram revealed, detailed descriptions accompanying each drawing on what was going on within my lover's physique. Unlike my massive built, Kendall's change is only apparent under his skin. His blood electrifies, weakening his soul before a different one comes forth, its main color scheme shades of blue as electrifying as itself.

The only external alternation that could be seen was the way his bottle green eyes diffuses into a stunning bright blue, and streaks of his hair stained by the color of his elements. His voice would sound deeper and more sinister than usual, chilling his intended target to the core.

My breath hitched as the rough sketch on the last page fell out of the cluster, landing face up to show me what monstrosity my father had created now. A ghostly humanoid figure stared at me, the ends where a person's feet should be was emptied, a black circle surrounding the space with illegible annotations next to it. Empty blue sockets replaced what would be the eyes, and swirls of what I assumed would be the elements twirled around the bearer's skin, the ones at his fingers protruding out and dimming as it elongated.

What is this? I wondered, fingers shakily tracing the outline of the body and lingered at the missing feet. Where are the legs?

"That's called the Ultime, some kind of evolved form for Kendall's powers." My head whipped upwards, my neck cracking loudly, as I looked towards the source of the voice. Allie stood there with my phone clutched in one hand, another wrapped around her stomach. Her gaze averted to the floor, an uneasy expression on her face. "It's- uh, it's still unknown how it's activated and how bad things would turn out for him. The final look for him remains a mystery as well. I overheard Dad saying something about the merging of four different elements in that form previously when he was talking to one of his minions."

"Four?" I enquired, feeling my stomach drop. "So, that means…"

"Fire, ice, water and electric." She nodded numbly, still avoiding my eyes. "For Kendall, anyway."

"There's no way to stop this?"

"The only way was the cure," Allie explained, sighing before fixing her blue orbs on me. "But we all know that didn't work. Even if it did, the cure wouldn't have healed Kendall's powers, only cancelling out yours from his body. The aftermath of that may inevitably mean his death because the only reason the elements were suitable with his body was due to the bond between you and him."

"Is Kendall aware of this?" I stretched my arms upwards, easing the lingering tension that resided in my muscles from hunching for a long period of time. My heart, however, was still racing. "Does he know how fatal his powers are?"

The blonde girl looked guilty as she shook her head. "I didn't get the chance to. Plus, Kendall's been handling his powers well enough without an issue so I thought maybe Dad was wrong; maybe Electrike won't turn rogue. I also assumed you didn't want him to worry about his powers any more than he should."

I sighed, running my fingers through my hair irritably. I gestured her over to my side, allowing her to shift and settle down next to me, close enough to feel her warmth. A small smile spread across my lips at the heat, before I noticed the way her eyes were narrowed at the paper in my grasp, distracting her from her earlier regret.

"I swear Dad has the most horrible handwriting," she mumbled to herself, her face inches away from kissing the sketch. "Why did I even bother bringing this over?"

It feels good to have you back, though. Even if you did come back as a different person. "Because you wanted me to know?" I offered, flicking her forehead lightly to move her away. "Where exactly did you get these, anyway?"

Allie shrugged. "Dad's laptop."

"So you were sneaking around Dad's-"

"It's not like I meant to! No one was paying me much mind and I was bored out of my skull," she complained, puffing out her cheeks in frustration. Her face fell again. "Dad left his laptop running, after he sent Shane out to look for Kendall- who none of us knew about at the time-, with the file open and I was just drawn to it. When I read through the document, all I realised was that this wasn't Dad's usual jotting down of notes. He literally planned the existence of a new species, even if it kills the experiment."

I arched an eyebrow at my sister, questioning her actions. She looked at me and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I printed out a copy and kept track of any changes made until I got Shane to send it over. Dad tended to leave his files open whenever he's inspired and runs down to his lab to get whatever he's discovered implemented into whichever experiment it correlates with. He takes days, too, so I've never had to worry about being caught."

"And Dad doesn't realise you running in and out of his study at all?"

"He doesn't care about me." Her voice came out barely in a whisper, filled with pain and disappointment as she hung her head low. "I've been the bane of his existence from the day I awoke with my powers."

I opened my mouth to comfort her, the way I would back when Allie was five and in fear of the dark, but was rudely interrupted by my twin's sudden presence barging into the living room, two flat boxes balanced on his hand, arm bent at an angle.

"Pizza's here! Do you want to call your boyfriend down?" His hazel eyes narrowed when the situation dawned on him, seeing our sister's upset expression, before Shane turned and glared at me. "What did you do?"

Allie answered before I could utter a single word. "He didn't do anything, Shane." She stood up and stretched her arms with a groan before making her way to the boxes balanced on Shane's palm, snatching them before either of us could react to her movement.

She swept some stray notes off the table messily with her free arm and set the food down on the table. "I just told him some stuff he needed to know about the notes I stole off Dad, is all."

"Even about the missing legs in the diagram?" Shane quirked an eyebrow at her, sighing as he watched the blonde take a ridiculously large bite out of a triangular piece of dough. "And what did I tell you about your eating etiquette?"

Our baby sister rolled her eyes, her cheeks filled with food that she hadn't swallowed. "It's disgusting, I know," she spoke, bits of chewed pizza flying out of her mouth gracefully. At Shane's unamused look, Allie gulped down what she had and frowned. "Jeez, I'll work on it, okay? Anyway, about the legs… I can't really tell you two because I don't know, either. I haven't been back home since James was temporarily cured and who knows what Dad's found out since then."

A jolt went through me, from the chill of the news or a disturbance in the air, and I shivered. My senses were perked and I knew what it meant before I heard the footsteps walking down the stairs. I grabbed the notes I got from Allie and shoved them at the bottom of the box filled with Dad's things, before turning to them and whispering in a low, harsh voice.

"Whatever he asks, do not tell him about this. I don't need Kendall freaking out about an evolution that may not even happen. Understand?" Shane was about to disagree before I growled at him, forcing him to shut up. "He does not need to know."

Allie was the only one who obediently nodded, her fingers clasped on my shoulder tightly. "We won't."

A/N: OOOOPS, I forgot to add this before uploading the first time. Welp. Hi, welcome back to Electrike (if you're still reading that is). It's been on an unannounced hiatus since school started bc it's been HELL. On Earth. On my puny little soul.

ANYWAY, I'm doing a major time-lapse from this chapter to the next. Next chapter would be Prom Night for the guys xD

Still have yet to make a design. I'll do it when I have the time. My schedule's been packed tight.

REVIEWS.

winterschild11 - heheh yeah she is. I'll reveal more once the prom chapter is up (I GUESS). Dx

Chey21 - Lucky you! I need a break now D': Hahaha it's been early-til-late school hours for the new semester. It's a pain D:

annabellex2 - :3

EagleAce11 - All the hints! Hehehe :P