'sup everyone ^^

just this up front, I know Lamarck has been disproven, I'm just using it because it fits the Story

anyways, enjoy everyone

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Everyone was visibly taken aback. The only one that remained calm during my entire Story until now had been captain Ithild

I had begun with what my powers where. It was only natural that they should know. It had only been the second time that I had disclosed this information and everyone had to chew on that for a few minutes. Afterwards I had kept going with my family tragedy. I did not keep anything back and even told them about my relationship with Zoe and how she ultimately got killed by Lane from the raiders.

Yes I told them the names of the raiders. Every single one of them.

When I had first told them that I had been responsible for Viktor's death Karen seemed like she wanted to say something but simply motioned me to keep going after a few seconds.

I had to stop telling the story of my torturing existence during attack since I still did not want to remember too much about that.

During the entire time I was crying my heart out. Somebody had handed me a pack of tissues at some point and I frequently had to wipe my nose.

After I finished everything with the flashbacks Liam had caused and explaining what the black goo had really been I look at the five of them anticipating a harsh answer.

Through my swollen eyes I notice that everyone is watching Karen, who seems to be thinking, in silence.

Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity Karen starts to speak.

"I am sorry to tell you Alexis, we too have not been completely honest with you. You must understand that we had to test you. We knew a lot about you, we knew that you where part of the raiders and we knew about your power being stronger than what you showed."

She starts laughing.

"I for one did not expect this story. All we wanted to do was check if you where truly honest with you. And what you did was more than anyone would have probably told us. The story about your parents... About your girlfriend. I cannot imagine what it took you to tell us all of this."

Then she turns towards her subordinates.

"I for one trust her. I know we as soldiers should follow logic and orders most of the time. But I will put my faith in her. What about you? I'm not asking if you trust her because I do. I'm asking if you can put your personal trust into her."

A short time passes. Then Rose stands up and forms a fist with her right hand while pressing it against her back. Her other hand mirrors the gesture.

"I do."

Songe is the second to follow. He too stands up and copies Roses movements

"I do."

Liam and Ignar shoot a glance at each other before standing up simultaneously. Ignar gives me a fatherly smile.

"I do."

"Same."

I'm stunned and can't move.

My fath-

My moth-

I was happy.

Now Karen too smiles at me and extend her hand towards me.

"Come, you don't need to fear anything. We are one family nobody outside of A3 will ever know about your power if you yourself do not tell them."

I hold her hand and let myself get pulled towards the kitchen. The other four quickly follow after us.

"Now that we have finished this. How about we eat something? I heard somebody said Rose would cook for us?"

Slight laugher erupts from between my comrades.

"Well...I might've said that sometime...."

Silently Rose moves into the big kitchen and rummages through the different pans next to the metal tables and stoves.

"Don't worry about it. We'll all help. It's been ages since we've all come together and ate dinner together."

With that Ignar leans forwards and smiles at Rose.

"So, what do you plan on doing?"

"Stew." was Roses only answer

"Recipe is over there." She points at a small book hidden behind a counter.

Liam picks it up and quickly looks through them.

"Got it."

He hands me the open book and points at one of the recipes.

"Think you can do some of that stuff?"

Still slightly teary I give them an honest smile.

"Of course!"

That being said we all started to work together to make one big pot of stew. It took us a bit of time but the atmosphere was relaxed. We started to talk with each other and everyone treated me like one of them.

My fath-

My moth-

I loved it.

We laughed, we joked and we smiled together. And then I realized why Karen had the absolute loyalty of everyone. She had taken an aspect of brother- and sisterhood to a avocation that was filled with cold calculated professionalism. I knew that I would to a lot to keep this feeling of belonging.

The stew wasn't perfect. It was more mediocre than anything else. But nobody seemed to care, we just ate it and enjoyed it. The mechanic and the two scientists soon joined in and everyone started to chat about small things in life.

I was of course the most sought after partner for a conversation.

They asked me lots of things about my past, about myself and about what I wanted in the future. Normally that would have made me suspicious but especially Rose did not seem to be interested in my power or anything. She simply asked me about my school time with Zoe and so it happened that we kept talking for hours after the others had went to bed.

Karen was the last one to leave us alone and simply told us to not overdo it.

Just like a mother would to her children.

Though we did not get tired of conversing with each other both me and Rose knew that we would have to go to sleep at some point if I wanted to keep my training routine up.

Though to be honest it would've been the first day anyways.

At 2 am I gave my thanks and good nights to Rose and went to my room.

I got out of my clothes and simply crashed into my new bed. Before I fall asleep I let the entire evening reshape before my inner eye.

Smiling I drift off into a dreamless night.

The next few days went past in a flash. I felt remarkably better after having told them everything and although I had to answer them a couple questions each I didn't feel particularly bad about it.

Pretty much every single day started off with me waking up quite early and training for at least 6 hours with any of the other members. Afterwards I was pretty much left to do what I wanted, thought everyone told me that this would change eventually. As of now I was simply not experienced enough to handle anything they managed. And anyways, everyone was still waiting for the remaining 5 members of A3 to come back from their mission.

During training I would mostly chat with my colleagues when the constant gunfire allowed us to. I learned quite a lot about the other members.

Every single one of them had one thing in common. They all had been exceptional military personnel. Though they did not tell me what military organization they belonged to and to tell the truth, I did not care that much about it anyways.

I talked to them about my powers too. Most of them had simply told me how interesting it was and they even contributed a couple of very interesting ideas to me.

Above all Rose came up with the idea that I was theoretically immortal. Sadly I had to crush those dreams since it was really hard to program one cell entirely new to fit that particular theory.

From what they told me they all had different types of gears, meaning their mechanical limbs.

Ignar, who was specialized in long range assistance and information gathering, had not only special limbs but also his eyes that had an extreme range if used correctly. His legs were made so that he could fixate himself to the ground to fire more steadily, as such they were quite thick along the feet.

Songe was the only person currently in the building that was specialized in demolition, meaning he knew a lot about explosives and the such. Apparently he once messed up during a mission and lost quite a big part of his organs and skin. Interestingly enough everything could be replaced and he was after Rose the second most modified human in A3.

Rose...Well, she basically lost almost her entire body during the mission she was not able to stop. Basically she was more machine than human. Though she told me jokingly that most of her woman parts were still intact making her even able to still carry out a child... At least technically.

Her limbs had a stronger engine than most of the other members and even part of her brain had been exchanged by a quite sturdy computer. She once told me that they had prepared fake tissue to cover her head wound.

When I had asked why they did not use that tissue to cover their limbs she laughed at me and asked me if I though skin could stand the heat the limbs emitted. Well, the answer was no.

Liam was pretty simple. He was only modified through limbs, simple but effective.

Karen too did not have much but since she was the captain she did not have much time to train me. As such I didn't have much time to actually talk to her in private.

I did not do much for three weeks but training. But there was one thing I repeatedly talked about with Rose and Liam. When I had first told them about me being able to copy the power of other espers they had been stoked and asked me how I did it. Afterwards we met repeatedly and got deeper and deeper into the topic.

Today was the day. I had come up with a theory of how I could copy Liams power in a short amount of time and at 8 pm I had asked the two of them to come so I could discuss it with them. Thought the whole thing was a special case so it would not work again with Rose.

I had figured the whole thing out when Zoe had awakened her power.

Although nobody officially talked about this topic anymore everyone had wondered how and why exactly espers awoke in the first place. Was it just by accident? Did they all have something in common? Espers in general would all know at least one precondition of becoming one. It was also the reason why younger humans awoke more easily than the elder generation. The change was connected to something the entire body wanted. It could be anything from wanting to hide somewhere and turning invisible to absolute destruction caused by hate.

During the 19th century a botanist and zoologist Jean-Babtiste Lamarck developed a theory. It stated that beings could develop an urge towards something and due to that urge certain characteristics would from themselves. The most famous where the so called Lamarcks Giraffes.

Even though this theory was supposedly confuted a long time ago it came back to mind since the exact thing would happen with small children turning them into espers. The changes too were much bigger with kids and juveniles. I myself had been eight and due to a simple misunderstanding with my parents I had wished to disappear, not the simple become invisible but to never appear again. As a consequence I developed the power to manipulate my cells... and destroy them in that very moment. Zoe had been unharmed since she did not share any DNA with myself. My parents on the other hand...

Apparently a part of me had still wanted to live and caused myself to regenerate. Since I had taken over and recreated part of my parents memories I could fabricate copies of them that faked a normal family to the outside.

I had lived but unbeknown to me and Zoe herself I had accidentally infected her with my cells in the same fashion as I had done with the members of the Raiders third team.

Zoe had awoken at the age of 10, two years after me. At that time I had figured out that I could see and feel everything and anything that Zoe saw and felt. In the same way I had done with Karif. She had been climbing up a tree, quite high to be honest and I had taken over her senses so I could see the world from there too.

For us it was simply a fun way to do things. At that moment Zoe had awakened and because I could feel everything she felt I did too... for a second time. I had bled from my nose and eyes and had a pretty bad headache. This came from my brain restructuring itself.

Seeing everything from quite far up Zoe had wanted to fly. It could have meant anything. She could have simply developed wings and flown but it became the manipulation of gravity.

The same happened with me nothing big happened in the end, she simply jumped down and had floated to the ground.

Years later I learned more and more about what happened in the brain.

The changes, interestingly enough were stored inside of one's cells and memories. Theoretically the change back was not impossible but simply not investigated enough.

For me it had meant that I needed to relive that precise moment of awakening and find the changes that where made that day. In theory the normal way would be to use my cells to take over the entire brain of a subject and live through their memories until I found that day.

It was possible but it would be hell for me and my already very frail identity.

Liam on the other hand had something that could make this much easier. Sending brainwaves, senses and thoughts? This was perfect, absolutely perfect. The only thing I needed was part of his DNA and I could start.

I explained my plan to Liam and Rose while we were sitting in front of a table. Since Rose pretty much would have nothing to do she was currently disassembling parts of her personal armor.

"If it is how you said it was then this should definitely work. Though I need to know if there is any risk remaining."

Liam seemed concerned that I could take revenge and mess with his brain for a change.

"You don't need to worry about that, I carry the only risk here since I'll be trying to recreate your power inside of me. Depending on what kind of mutation it is I'll be able to do it easily or not."

He shakes his head but smiles.

"Very well, I even asked Karen beforehand that we could do this. We guessed as much that you wanted to try this. She said yes. What exactly do you need from me?"

Karen had given her blessing? Well... should've asked myself to be honest.

"Pretty much only one functioning cell and your entire memory of how you awoke. After that I'm probably going to look pretty shitty but don't worry about it.

"Ok, I can easily do that memory part, it's not that hard but how do you plan on getting a cell from me? Blood? Salv- OW!"

Without us two noticing Rose had extended a hand and ripped a hair out of Liam head. She hands it to me with a small smile.

"That enough? And don't be a baby Liam."

I press the hair against my neck and both Liam and Rose look at me interested while it gets absorbed into my skin. Through my power I created a small spot just next to my shoulder where multiple cells of Liam existed and none of mine. I concentrate only on those cells. I needed to know what part of the cells reacted to the memory. All in all I would dismantle the whole thing afterwards only utilizing the small part that was responsible for the change.

"Liam? How do you control your power?" I ask towards him.

Don't really want to deliver my thoughts to everyone during the first few minutes.

"If it works you're going to feel everyone around you and if you concentrate on one of them they'll be the ones you connect to."

"Ok."

I put my head on the table and close my eyes.

"We can start now. Just show me you own special awakening."

"Sure. I guess this is the favor I own you."

Hearing a small laugh from him I feel a hand touch my hair.

"Don't worry, this just makes it much easier."

I feel like falling towards somewhere but resist the urge to use gravity to slow myself down. Then without a warning I open my eyes and find myself in front of what seems to be a full squad of fully clothed SWAT officers.

The heck?