Chapter 8

The next day I was keen to get into school for the first time in as long as I could remember. Dad was quite bemused by my eagerness to get there. At points I was practically dragging him along to the car.

Once we had arrived, and the car had mostly stopped moving, I was off and up to our house room, sparing barely a moment to wave goodbye to Dad. Predictably I arrived long before anyone else and then had to sit waiting impatiently for Vicky to arrive. After what felt like an age of sitting fussing, Vicky walked in the door, giving me a big smile and scampering over to join me.

We talked about our evenings. I was bursting to tell her of my improvised tools but couldn't, at least not yet, which was maddening. Instead I told her about what TV programs I had watched and how I had found the homework. The room filled up around us and I barely noticed until my hearing picked out my name.

"He calls himself Lexi! What kind of name is that anyway? Now he's teamed up with that freak show. The two of them make me sick!" I recognised Tara's dulcet tones.

"Come on Tar, why are you always so down on those two," said one of her friends.

"What! You one of them now Debbie?" spat Tara.

"What is this them and us. bullshit Tara? You didn't used to be such a bully and a bigot! Those two have done nothing to you, and you've been tormenting them for ages. I'm just sick of it. I mean, how'd you like to wake up with tentacles for arms and legs one day or change sex?"

"You don't know anything, Debbie! You shut your mouth!"

"Or what? You going to beat me up too?"

They went silent, both parties seemingly angry with each other, but a sort of angry brooding silence filled with tension that would end in an emotional outburst of one sort or another. It probably was bad news for me and Vicky. We were, after all, Tara's favourite punching bags. In my distraction I had stopped talking in the middle of a sentence and sat there staring into space as I listened in.

"Hello ... Earth to Lexi." Vicky waved a hand in front of my face and I snapped back to awareness. "You sort of spaced out there for a moment."

"Oh, I heard my name. Tara and her friends were talking about us."

"Really? I didn't hear anything."

"Her and Debbie had an argument about us."

"I can see they are staring daggers at each other. You must have really good hearing."

"Pretty good. It came with my sharp new eyes, altered sense of taste, and my teeth."

"You got the whole package then of sensory upgrades if you will."

"I guess, I sometimes forget it. I'm staring at something and don't realise it's just a dot to everyone else. I haven't really worked out how to consciously use any of that. It just sort of happens."

"Well sneaky lady, you hear any good gossip, you let me know."

I laughed and turned to see Tara glaring at me. In a fit of pique, I stuck my tongue out at her, which probably wasn't the best thing to do to diffuse the situation. Still it made me feel better and made Vicky giggle. Shortly after that the school day kicked off in earnest, and I barely had any time to talk with Vicky till morning break. We sat together in every lesson and shared what moments we could. Some of the lessons where I had to work with a partner were interesting. Normally in language lessons, or science lessons, or anything where there was group work, I got stuck working on my own, with the teacher, or with someone who didn't want to have anything to do with me. These experiences were not really all I could hope for. Working with Vicky instead, was great. She was curious, and we worked together finding answers or interacting to get the task finished. It made these exercises that I had dreaded, a joy and made me sad that I hadn't known Vicky before this. Still, I wasn't sure that she would have liked the old me.

I was happy when lunch time came and I could have a proper talk with my friend. We were talking almost continuously as we queued and got our lunch, and continued when we sat down to eat it. In a break in conversation where we were actually eating some of our rapidly cooling food, I glanced over and noticed something odd. Colin, or Scan, was sitting on his own, away from the little gang. Tara and co. were looking over at him angrily. Eventually, they finished their lunch and began leaving, walking past Colin on their way out.

My hyper sensitive hearing picked up a series of insults as the gang past him. "Loser!" spat Tara. Lump cuffed him across the head and Amy Zap gave him a shock. He barely reacted to any of it, just staring down at his tray.

I suddenly found myself on my feet, picking up my tray.

"Hey what's up? You done already?" asked Vicky.

"No, come with me," I said, not even sure what I was doing.

Vicky looked at me quizzically then shrugged, grabbed her tray and followed me. I walked over to the table where Colin was sitting, and sat down opposite him. Vicky gave me a look, but sat down next to me.

Colin suddenly looked up at us with a scowl. "What are you two freaks doing here?" he asked, though the words carried none of the weight or bile they normally did. He sounded tired and fed up.

"I saw you had a falling out with Tara and her gang, and wondered if you needed a friend," I surprised myself but realised I was serious.

Vicky and Colin both stared at me like I had grown a new head, which I suppose, given MORFS unpredictable nature, wasn't impossible. After a while Colin shrugged and went back to eating his food, pretending to ignore me and Vicky. Eventually Vicky and I began chatting again. We talked about many things, but it wasn't till we came back to TV programs that Colin said anything. Vicky was talking about an episode of some old MORFS themed super hero show.

I was mentioning I was not really a fan, but enjoyed the show when I saw it, when Colin suddenly chipped in. "I always liked that show," he said, "All the others thought it was stupid. Like they thought I was stupid."

"Well you're not the sharpest tool in the box," I said honestly, causing him to stare at me sharply. Since he could read my mind I didn't feel like there was any point trying to deceive him, even for white lies, "But you're smart enough to know that they were just using you."

He stared at me for a while then gave me a nod as if accepting what I'd said, "At least you're being honest with me. They all think I won't be able to tell they're lying. Like their smarts make them immune to my powers."

He sighed, "The only reason I was with the supers was I just wanted to fit in and make some friends. Most people were terrified of me finding out all their secrets, not like I asked to have this power, not like I want to know all the surface thoughts of everyone nearby. But they never treated me as one of them. I tried to walk the walk and be tough, but that didn't get me anywhere. I tried to ignore their smug attitude and get by, but they never treated me as an equal, just treated me as some sort of tool."

He picked up his tray and made to leave. Just before he did he turned back and gave the two of us a look. "Listen, for what it's worth, I'm sorry for being part of that lot, for what they did."

He turned and headed off.

"What was that about?" asked Vicky.

"I don't know. I saw them treating him badly, and thought he could use someone to talk to," I replied with a shrug.

"You're a better girl than me, Lexi. If I saw any of them lying in a ditch bleeding, crying out for help, I'd probably kick dirt on them and walk on by."

It sounded like my new friend was an unforgiving type and had a streak of ruthlessness in her. All good super villain qualities. She definitely had potential.

I smiled at her and tucked in to my now cold lunch. We finished our lunch and got some work done in the library. I wanted to get ahead so I could work on my armour suit tonight. I was bursting to tell my friend about it but wanted to be ready before I did.

The rest of our day was fairly mundane, and to top it all, Vicky couldn't come back that night as she was helping her mum with something. She promised to come over the next day though, which cheered me up.

Dad gave her a lift, which allowed her to stop in for a cup of tea, which was nice, but then she had to dash off again. Mum had invited her to dinner the next night and she promised to ask her parents if it was OK.

After she was gone I helped with dinner, and once we had finished eating I rushed off to try working on my project. While we were eating, I had gotten an idea for how to use my powers to allow me to do without the welder that I could only use with supervision. Dad had been talking about a class he had been giving on induction, and it occurred to me I could do a similar thing with my powers. I could spin a magnetic field cutting a conductor with lines of force to induct a current in it. If I could do it enough I might be able to create a strong enough current to do some welding.

Once the dishes were clean I scampered off to try. I put on all my protective gear knowing that I had to be careful. I made a simple loop of thick copper, made the end smooth and made it able to clamp together, my idea being to mimic a spot welder.

I took two bits of sheet steel and clamped it in my metal construction. I adjusted my safety gloves and flipped down my welding goggles, then created a powerful magnetic field and spun it as fast as I could. It looked like a rainbow coloured blur to my magnetic senses. There was a blaze of sparks and a sizzle of metal as the current heated the metal till it melted.

I stopped and took a look. Unfortunately, it had worked too well and had melted completely through the metal, rather than fusing it. Still, it seemed my idea had merit, so I looked on it as a partial success. I left things to cool, then tried a different spot, this time not spinning the field quite as fast.

After a long series of experiments I had perfected the technique. I used it in earnest to attach some more of my machine's components but the extended period of experimentation had worn me out and used up most of the evening. So I didn't get much done. My machine was coming together though. Maybe another evening's solid work and it would be complete enough to try.

I went to bed tired but pleased with my progress.

Come morning I was once again keen to get into school. The novelty of this hadn't yet worn off for my parents, so I got some good natured teasing from my mother. This time Vicky was there waiting for me when I got into school. She told me she could come over for dinner, so I sent my mum a text message to let her know, then got right into chatting with Vicky.

She was interested to know what I had done the previous evening, and I had to make something up, since I wasn't ready to let her know about my project. She seemed to sense that I was being a little evasive but didn't push me, which was nice of her. Our arch nemesis Tara was there, but didn't do anything more than glare at us. Once again we had little time to chat once school kicked off in earnest.

At morning break Vicky and I went for a walk around the school field it was a nice day and lots of people were out running about and playing. We walked about enjoying the sunshine. We didn't see Tara and her gang approaching from behind.

The first I knew of it was Vicky crying out as Lump bumped into her knocking her sideways. "OUTA MA WAY FREAK!" he hollered.

He knocked her right into me, and by pure luck I managed to catch her and not take a tumble myself. We stood there clinging to each other for a few moments.

"Oh, don't they make a lovely couple," snickered Tempest as the rest of the gang walked past us laughing.

I felt my cheeks redden as I realised how tightly I was holding on to Vicky. It wasn't helped by the fact she had instinctively wrapped her flexible limbs around me, gripping on the moment I had caught her. We carefully detached ourselves.

Vicky gave me a small smile blushing a bit herself and thanked me for catching her. I smiled back, saying it was nothing, trying not to think about our unexpected hug or how nice Vicky had smelled to my enhanced senses when she was so close to me.

We carried on with our walk, awkward for a bit but soon chatting away again as if nothing had happened. Break was over all too soon and we were back to lessons. It wasn't that long till lunch though, where we got a more significant break.

For some reason I was famished and I wasted no time joining the queue, pulling Vicky along for the ride. As a result we sat down to eat quite early. Amused, Vicky asked, "What's the rush, Lexi?"

Before I could answer my tummy made a grumbling noise. I guessed my exertions the night before had used up more calories than normal, and I was extra hungry as a result.

"He he." Vicky giggled and poked me gently in the tummy. Her lack of bones meant she couldn't really poke anything hard even if she tried, "Sounds like you could eat a horse."

Rather than make a snappy comeback, I tucked in to my meal with more gusto than usual. As a result I was less careful about my teeth showing.

"Damn, you look like you're going to bite clean through the fork! Seriously Lexi, it's like watching a car crusher or something," Vicky observed.

I slowed down a little and tried to cover my mouth so as not to scare any little children. I looked about, hoping my activities had gone unnoticed. I spotted Colin, who was looking for a place to sit. I waved to him and after hesitating, he walked over and sat opposite us.