Overcharge

Disclaimer: I own no intellectual property claimed by Marvel Comics or whatever media giant is currently controlling them. If I did, we would have less incoherent ramblings about whatever social problem they ran across on their twitter feed and made into a story arc only to make it rendered non-canon later when something else caught their eye.

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Jack awoke with a start, his pajamas constricting and the neck of his top strangling him. He felt like something was being drained from him and in his half-awake state yanked back with everything he had. There was a flare of energy as his top disintegrated and he slammed against the wall in a flash of rainbow light, awakening him fully as he struggled to regain his breath and figure out what was going on.

The door to his room burst open and the light from the hall revealed his older brother Alex on the floor, next to his bed, clutching an injured hand.

"Alex, are you alright?!" Jim asked, as he and his wife Maggie checked on their eldest child.

"Yeah… just hurt my hand a bit, it'll heal in an hour," Alex assured him as he was helped to his feet.

"What did you do to your brother?!" Maggie demanded.

"No…" Jack slowly shook his head as he puzzled out what had happened, "the question is 'How did I do that to my brother?"

"Um…" Alex scrambled for what to say, all three of them looking guilty as Jack shrunk down a couple of inches so his favorite pajamas that he'd outgrown, weren't cutting into his skin.

"You tried to steal my powers," Jack realized, "and you already stole Katie's and Julie's. Why?" He glared at his older brother as his sisters appeared, woken up by the noise.

"Listen," Alex said, clearing his throat and straightening his shoulders, the way he did when he was trying to play leader and order his siblings around, "I'm heading off to college in the morning and… it was decided that you guys needed a chance to be normal for a while, so… we decided I should take all our powers with me."

"We?!" Jack demanded. "I don't recall anyone asking my opinion. How about you Julie? Katie? Did anyone ask you if you minded having Alex steal your powers before he left for college?"

Katie looked down at her hands and frowned as she tried to create a spark and nothing happened.

"Well…" Julie shrugged uncomfortably, trying to think of how she could defuse things. "It would be nice to just be a normal girl for a while."

Jack stared at her in disbelief before shaking his head.

"We're your parents," Jim told him firmly, "and that means sometimes we have to make decisions on what's best for you."

"I'm about half a year from being sixteen, at which point I could move out," Jack said, deciding the only one who hadn't been in on this was Katie.

"That would require our permission," Maggie said, "and sixteen is way too young to live on your own."

"Well, let's see how I do at fifteen then," Jack said. "Costume on!"

"Jack, wait!" Alex yelled, leaping forward to grab him as Jack's remaining night clothes were replaced with his blue and black costume, summoned from its extradimensional space.

Jack dodged to the side, flying across the room and slamming shoulder first into the wall as he accidentally activated Julie's acceleration ability, having no real experience with it unlike the others. "I don't think so," he said as he rubbed his shoulder and glared at his family. "Since sixteen is too young, I guess I'll see you when I turn eighteen."

"Jack!" his family screamed as he shrunk down to the size of a doll and crashed through his bedroom window, a small ribbon of fading light marking his path into New York's night sky.

"Sorry Mom, Dad," Alex said, shoulders slumping, still cradling his right hand, "this didn't go how I planned."

"I didn't think he was such a light sleeper," Maggie said, "he certainly wasn't that easy to get up to go to school."

"He was shrunk down, wearing clothes that were too small for him," Alex said. "He grew as I was taking his power and it woke him up."

"He trapped his clothes in case someone tried to steal his powers in his sleep?" Maggie asked in disbelief.

"Like Alex just tried?" Julie pointed out, while she would have given her powers to Alex if he'd asked, she was a little annoyed that he'd simply taken them without asking, even with their parents' permission.

"His most comfortable pajamas are the old ones that don't fit him unless he makes himself smaller," Katie offered, worried about her older brother and also a little angry that her powers had been taken from her without anyone talking to her about it, even if she did trust her parents to make decisions like that.

"What do we do now?" Maggie asked. "Who do you report a runaway child with powers to?"

0o0o0o0o0

"What the hell was I thinking?" Jack cursed himself. "See you when I'm eighteen… Now I have to find someplace to live for the next three years."

The teen cursed his poor impulse control, something he knew was occasionally a problem as he got used to flying using the acceleration ability. Flying using density control was a lot slower and easier to handle, though probably a lot less intuitive. He slowed down and found himself falling, having reached the lower end of the speed he could fly at before the power cut out. He knew he should be able to hover, but he had zero practice with Julie's ability, it being the one power he hadn't ended up with while they were switching them around.

Exploding into a cloud he suddenly shot forward and sighed as he spotted the enormous rainbow of light left behind by his massive form. It took him a few tries before he managed to get things under control and just drifted over the city without causing a massive spectacle. He blamed lack of sleep for screwing up what he was trying to do. Deciding he needed more sleep before making any more life changing decisions he scanned the skyscrapers below him.

There were very few places he couldn't access with his powers, and even fewer now thanks to the addition of Katie's, but breaking into a hotel room or empty apartment wasn't all that heroic. He supposed he could shrink down to the size of a doll and sleep nearly anywhere in public without anyone noticing, but that wasn't all that safe an idea.

He drifted with the breeze out over the ocean before he realized what or rather who he was forgetting. "Friday," he called out, activating his suit's communicator.

"Yes, Jack?" came the instant reply from the Kymellian smartship.

"Are you in the neighborhood?"

"I'm behind Earth's moon at the moment, but I can reach you in under seven minutes if it is an emergency," the ship replied.

"Not quite that big an emergency," Jack assured the smartship, "but I need someplace safe to sleep before I make some plans."

"I have sufficient quarters for your entire family already prepared. Do you require more than that?"

"I just need a place for myself at the moment," he replied.

"Are the others alright?" Friday asked, concerned.

"They're fine," Jack assured him. "Apparently our parents decided to have Alex steal our powers while we slept and… I objected. Long story short, I need to find a place to stay for the next two and a half years, but before that I need some sleep."

"I believe I require a bit longer story than that, if you don't mind," Friday requested.

"In a handful of months, I'll turn sixteen, which is legally old enough to live on my own," Jack explained. "Normally we stick around till we're eighteen, but I don't trust them enough to stay with them anymore. Of course, I can't exactly tell the courts I want to be emancipated because they tried to cripple me by stealing my powers, so I'll have to lie low until I'm eighteen. Basically, I need to figure out where I'm going to stay and what I'm going to do for the next two and a half years while hiding who I am and avoiding Alex who plans on stealing my powers."

"That is quite a mess," Friday said after a few seconds.

"Yeah," Jack agreed with a sigh. "The only member of my family who didn't betray me is Katie, who they betrayed as well. I'm not sure how much more screwed up things can get at this point."

"I see," Friday said. "And Katie is alright where she is?"

Jack sighed. "Alex stole her powers before he came after mine and even though she won't like it, the fact that our parents will tell her it's for her own good means she'll go along with it. I'll see if she wants them back when she's old enough to tell them off and make it stick."

"If Alex stole her powers, how will you return them?" the smartship asked.

"I woke up while Alex was trying to steal my powers and yanked them back, getting Katie and Julie's," Jack explained.

"Oh dear," Friday said, concern in his tone.

"What?" Jack asked.

"As you'll recall the snarks have attempted to steal the powers of you and your siblings multiple times and have had difficulties holding the multiple aspects, leading to them being overwhelmed. Alex was altered to allow him to hold all of your powers, just in case the snarks were ever successful or realized they should spread the powers over multiple snarks, so he could steal them back," Friday explained. "You however have not been altered to hold multiple powers."

"Well… crap," Jack said with a sigh. "I feel fine, but I haven't had all three of them for very long."

"Try not to panic, I'll be at your position shortly and we can monitor your condition in the medbay; it is entirely possible that three powers is not beyond your capacity to contain."

"Well, I hope so," Jack said with a sigh, "because I can't exactly return them."

"I don't believe that's true," Friday told him, "I believe you could return to your home right now and they would not turn you away."

"Yeah, but then they would feel they were right to do what they did and would steal my power, so let's call that plan z," Jack said tiredly, watching the moonlight glint off the waves below him.

"I'm hovering right above you," Friday announced, waking Jack from his semi-daze.

"That was quick," Jack said as he rolled over onto his back, and looked up at the silently hovering spaceship, its skin a dull non-reflective black color unlike its usual white hue.

After their last fight with the snarks, Friday had been badly damaged so the Kymellians had given it a more advanced body, turning it from a rectangular spacecraft the size of the Power Family's old four bedroom house into one that was nearly twice that size. Although Jack wasn't sure that was a good way to judge the true size of the ship, as Friday could reshape itself at will, changing its dimensions as it pleased.

Jack marveled at how quiet the massive ship was and wondered briefly what kind of engines it had, even though he knew he didn't know enough to remotely understand how they worked.

"I deemed the situation urgent enough to rush," Friday replied, a hatch opening in the underside of the ship to allow Jack inside.

The large cloud that made up the super powered teen funneled itself through the relatively small entrance, his form condensing back into a human once more, finding himself inside a featureless blue walled room with a floating ovoid sleeping pod that he knew from experience was very comfortable. "You can scan me while I sleep, right?"

"Yes, Jack," Friday agreed, his voice now coming from somewhere near the ceiling rather than the communicator, "you can sleep while I make sure you'll come to no harm from containing your siblings' powers."

"Man, I am glad to hear that," he said with a sigh, before ordering his costume off and wincing, as he'd forgotten he'd had on pajamas that were a size too small when he'd activated his costume. Jack shrunk down and took them off, dropping them on the floor beside the pod as he climbed in, glad he was wearing clean underwear. "Don't let anyone know where I am, please. I don't know that they'll be smart enough to check with you or ask if you can track me through my suit's communicator, but I don't even want to talk with them right now unless I have to."

"I promise, Jack," Friday replied as the pod closed and sleeping mist began to fill its interior, "you can rest easy now, I'll give you the results when you wake up."

"Thanks," he said with a yawn before closing his eyes and falling instantly asleep.

Beta by: Abyssal Angel and Mist of Shadows.

AN: Alex stealing everyone's powers and running off to join the New Warriors never sat right with me, but you know how it goes, a new editor comes in and decides Marvel needs to go in a whole new direction… based on whatever focus group he last listened to. Personally, I liked Power Pack the way it was before they started messing with it to try and give the kids mental problems to make them 'relatable'.