Joyce Knightly March 21st,20XX

“Wait! Mr. Cyrus!”

Aaron was so visibly on edge that he completely missed the chance to correct being referred to in the same way as his father. I tried my best to calm him down, but I wasn’t in much better shape. The sound of my heart pounding in my ears made it hard to focus, but unlike in the past, I couldn’t just shut down and wait for an adult to take over the situation.

Right now, I was ‘the adult’, and I had kids waiting for me to step in and make everything okay. I forcibly calmed myself down and processed the kid’s early dismissal. They asked so many questions that it was hard not to snap at them to shut up and mind their own business, but I successfully restrained myself.

I handed over the doctor’s note I’d gotten from Danka and explained that the kids may have caught a viral infection from our last field trip. I didn’t forget to add that I’d only sent them to school because of the pressure from the school to send them back. Even though the kids themselves had pushed to go back to school, I likely would have stood my ground if not for the school threatening to get the authorities involved if the kids missed any more school. They were keeping up on all of their school work and had even made friends, so I knew that was just a power move to prove that the school wasn’t entirely cowed by my large donations to their facilities.

On one hand, I understood that the school didn’t want to give the impression that money could compromise their education standards, but the repercussions of their insistence that the sick kids come back to school were quite grand this time.

While the secretary scanned the signed doctor’s report into their system, Aaron walked around the campus and scooped the kids into his arms.

“I’m taking them to the car.”

I picked up the sleeping Eva from his left arm and let him focus on keeping the transfigured Tillo covered with his jacket. Archer hung onto Aaron’s back with whatever little strength he had left.

“I’ll meet you there.”

A strong-looking teacher offered to carry one of our kids, but Aaron reeled backwards. Thankfully, Archer and Tillo were lucid enough to cling tight to Aaron and make it clear that they didn’t want to be carried by anyone else.

Tillo was probably fine, but I knew the oddly prideful Archer must have wished he didn’t have to act like that.

My reinforced car slightly sank as Aaron strapped Tillo into a seat with a seatbelt. While Tillo likely weighed more than that, I could tell Aaron was straining himself to focus on keeping his powers in control.

“Is there anything else you all need me to do?”

The secretary that the principal had left to deal with us and our righteous anger. I didn’t particularly raise my voice since now wasn’t the time to pick a fight, but hopefully the next time I needed to take an extended leave for the kids, the school wouldn’t push things.

“H-Have a safe trip. Mr. Knightly.”

“Yeah. I’ll keep you guys updated on how the kids are doing.”

She winced at my tone but nodded and cautiously watched me walk out of the office.

“I looked around already and asked the kid’s friends. It doesn’t look like anything happened. Everyone seems fine and the kids are just tired. We’ll need to question them later, but for now Idon’t think we need to do anything to the school.”

I nodded and mentally took all of that off my to do list.

“I’ll get someone to wipe the security camera footage from all of their classrooms, just in case, but there isn’t much else we can do.”

Archer had sent me a brief description of what had happened before we got there so I’d gotten the chance to do some damage control, but as Archer described the intensity of their new powers, I couldn’t help but be happy he was already unconscious.

I wasn’t scared of my kids.

I wasn’t.

But it was a lot to imagine so much power being held back by the will power of minors.

I looked over at Aaron in the passenger seat and thanks my lucky stars that his powers were stable. If even he went haywire, I wouldn’t have been able to handle it. Or rather, even if I’d wanted to handle it, i physically wouldn’t have been able to.

Aaron had specifically gotten a tranquilizer dart for me to use on him if the need came about, but I really didn’t love the idea of having a failsafe for my boyfriend. That was one, but two; I didn’t know how well it would work. I only had two of them on me at any point, with each dose being just short of dangerous for a person to take. However, I knew that medicines and drugs ran through Aaron’s body like water and rarely ever displayed their full potency with him.

I shook off the depressing train of thought I had and focused on starting up the car so I could drive home.

The school had technically given another leave of absence for a week, but I’d keep them home as long as I needed to. I didn’t want to deprive them of the chance to socialize with their peers, but as today had proven, it was just so unsafe.

They would attend classes virtually until their powers could settle and would could create workable fail-safes

“Wait! Mrs. Knightly!”

Two children in the matching uniforms of the school ran up to the car and banged on the window until I rolled down. They each had matching anxious expressions and desperately looked in to see the still sleeping kids in the back of the car.

I quickly searched my memory at their familiar faces and realized that they were the kids that had managed, against all odds, to become close to my kids.

I vaguely remembered the boy’s face, but the girl… she was the one Tillo had impersonated during the terror attack earlier. I’d looked into her background and wasn’t too thrilled that my kids had chosen her out of everyone to befriend, but I wouldn’t interfere.

Either way, it looked like she was as good a friend as any, especially considering how worried she looked. I feared she would ask to accompany us to the hospital and prepared a rejection, but thankfully she was more conscientious than she looked.

“Are they okay?”

“What do they have? Is it infectious? Should we quarantine ourselves?”

“When will they be back? We couldn’t contact them at all during the last break.”

“Can we visit them? Will they be at the hospital?”

They both barraged me with questions and didn’t give me an opportunity to respond. I didn’t bother trying to interrupt and waited for them to calm down before answering the same way I’d responded to the school.

“Yes, they are okay, its just a virus they all caught. No, it’s not infectious but if you would like to spend a few days at home, run it by your parents. I dont know when they will be back, it depends on how well they heal. Finally, my home isn’t big on taking visitors right now, but if you call them and they wish to see you two, it can be arranged.”

Tillo let out a groan that made it hard to continue the conversation and Aaron discreetly motioned that I should wrap the conversation up.

“Don’t worry. Your friends will be fine and will return to school as soon as they can. If you’re so worried about them, I’m sure they would really appreciate you two keeping them up to date on events at school and any notes they might miss by taking the class virtually.”

They clearly had more to ask me, but I rolled up the windows and drove off.

The three kids were completely asleep within a few minutes of the drive, but Aaron still motioned for me to raise the partition between the front and back of the car.

“Joyce… I want to take some time off work. This is getting ridiculous. We don’t know what’s going to happen with my powers, and you saw what happened with Eva’s class. Thankfully, her powers were just illusions… but what about me? What if my powers activated, and I ended up taking down a building or something?”

I hated to acknowledge it, but he was right.

Because of how much fun we’d had recently, I’d underestimated how much potential for danger these kids possessed. There was child care, and then there was whatever this was.

As much as I wanted to treat them all like normal kids and give them all the things I could, it was just irresponsible to act like they weren’t any more special than any of the other people in their age groups.

Aaron wanted to take a short hiatus from his activities, and I agreed that would be good. Right now, he was the only one that hadn’t completely lost control over his powers, and I could afford to take over all the losses from him faulting on his scheduled activities.

I… as much as I wished I could justify taking off work to spend all of my time with the kids, I recognized that as someone with no superpowers, I would be most effective where I was. I would make enough money to keep paying the scientists and scouting more people to help them.

My security detail had reported a worker of my father’s going into one of the company’s labs and using the national registered address to purchase some sensitive materials for personal use. I didn’t know what she’d wanted with them, or why she needed to go through all the hoopla when she could have just registered herself as an independent research company with the government, but she had successfully caught my interest.

I’d also found reports of her using the technology in our labs to make things with those materials, but there was no way of knowing what they were. That there was no camera evidence and that she had managed to keep it hidden for so long made me realize how large the holes in my father’s security were.

It would be unreasonable to fire everyone involved, but the company desperately needed some major restructuring and reprimands.

Ordinarily, I would have just fired her right away, but I was prompted to look closer when I realized she had paid for it all with her personal account.

While looking through her company account, I’d found a few designs for some beautiful technology. I’d shown it to the scientists at the dorms and they had seemed excited to meet her and discuss theory, but I couldn’t care less about the theory behind them.

What interested me the most were the specifications for those things. Shoes that could withstand more force than any normal human being could possibly produce, and portable oxygen tanks that could withstand incredible amounts of pressure and could be applied when someone was already underwater.

I needed both her brain and her knowledge, and as my name was Joyce Knightly, I was going to get them both.