Destia Jayden March 23st,20XX

I winced in sympathy as the scientists pushed Archer to re-sync their minds together. At first, it had been to fully experience the new extent of the young guy’s powers, but at some point, the scientists had gotten carried away and enjoyed the feeling of being completely on the same page.

I was sympathetic to Archer having to adhere to their whims, but I was also somewhat envious. Out of all of us, Archer had gotten the most solid grasp on his new powers the fastest.

I had been stuck indoors for almost a week now, and my powers were still as haywire as ever, but thankfully Archer’s breakthrough with his powers had pointed me in the right direction in controlling them.

A little experimentation taught me I could extend my invisibility skill to other people and items. It wasn’t quite as exciting as the changes Archer and Eva had gotten, but it had made controlling it a little easier.

The power was just like a muscle that I constantly needed to re-train to stay loose, rather than tensing up whenever I felt a little scared of anything.

Kaja and Tillo, who had yet to discover exactly how much their powers had expanded, had dedicated their time to helping me practise using my power on others. So far, my limit was about four people. I was most comfortable with two other people aside from myself.

The first time I’d tried to make five people invisible, I’d passed out and Aaron had called a strong halt to the process. I still intended to practise pushing myself a little more, but that wasn’t the only thing that had my attention.

I hadn’t really told anyone yet, especially because we were all so focused on the invisibility thing, but I suspected that I’d gotten faster. And a little stronger.

While I was taking a few laps around the enormous field, I’d stumbled and slammed toward the wall. I’d instinctually put my arms out to catch myself, despite the numerous warnings Danka gave me about putting that much pressure on my arms.

Ordinarily, at the speed I was going, I should have gotten at least a sprain in my wrist, but not only had I avoided that, I had even left a shallow dent in the wall. That wouldn’t have been possible in the past, but recently I felt that if I really went for it, I might be able to cause some more damage than I could before.

Another sign that my body had changed was the heavy shoes that had usually left me at risk for ankle sprains now felt as light as regular sneakers. They were still heavy around the toes and forced me to adjust my running style. They even left light bruises around my ankles, despite the layers of foam padding, but the difference between now and last week was palpable.

I would have to record all of this in the journals the scientists encouraged us to keep.

Anatha had introduced the idea so she could monitor our mental health and how we coped with everything, but the other scientists liked to look at them to find more clues about our powers.

People like the twins actually kept two journals, one for just themselves and Anatha and another for all things concerning their powers.

“D- Kila!”

She accidentally started with my real name again, but she corrected herself quickly enough. I ran over to Kaja and held out a hand to her. She had recently been practising changing how others looked. It was a bit of a long shot, but she seemed very dissatisfied with her current state of constantly fluctuating how she looked.

Even Tillo had taken to staring at the videos they had uploaded onto Squire so he could remember how they normally looked. I could tell that this bothered Tillo the most, but I couldn’t tell why. Kaja could though and she often took time to reconnect with her brother and make sure he was okay.

Once again, the group had somewhat divided into teams of two, and I was once again left all alone. Even though Aaron was here, his powers hadn’t changed much. He seemed to have a better grasp of control over them, but that was more from his hard work and perseverance than anything else.

Well, I got along with everyone for the most part, but when the chips were down, I wasn’t anyone’s first pick.

“Destia! Can you try to stay still?”

Kaja’s impassioned request motivated me to focus more on my body and on keeping it still. I loosened the metaphorical muscles that activated my powers and concentrated on keeping them from activating while Kaja tried to channel her powers through me.

Her bright eyes shone with an uncharacteristic seriousness that made it hard to strike up a conversation with the usually sociable butterfly.

We stayed like that for almost an hour before I started to cramp. Kaja’s hands tightened around my arms as she realized I wanted to get up and stayed tight until I vocalized my request.

“Hey, Shia, maybe we can try again later?”

She let out a guttural whine and slightly tightened her grasp on my hand, but she didn’t look up to meet my gaze.

“Please, I almost have it! I can feel it!”

I’d heard the same desperate plea multiple times over the week, so I knew she wouldn’t give up trying until I sternly called it for the day. While I prepared to get up, I suddenly felt a hot rush of something that ran through my body and pulled me back onto the ground.

Then I felt a sensation that if I wasn’t experiencing it firsthand would have found difficult to understand. Even as it happened, I struggled to describe it with words.

It was like my body became rubber and invisible hands pulled and tucked it into a desired shape. It wasn’t particularly painful, but the hot liquid feeling that ran through my body made me aware of each second of the event.

“I did it! Ha! I did it!”

“I did it! Ha! I did it!”

Two victorious cries rang out at the same time and caught the attention of everyone in the room. Because Kaja had called out first and had the most visible results, everyone’s eyes landed on us first.

I put a gentle hand to my face after the hot feeling receded and felt around for the unfamiliar features that made up a new face.

Kaja fumbled around for her phone with the one hand she had free, turned on its camera and quickly took a picture of me.

She held up the screen and showed me a woman who looked just different enough to freak me out. The woman’s hand was on her face, similar to mine, and her posture was familiar too. It was disconcerting, and my body which I took so much pride in and depended so much on, suddenly felt like it belonged to a stranger.

I unconsciously yanked my hand out of Kaja’s grasp and frantically felt around as my body suddenly became cold, and my face returned to how I remembered it was.

It was only after the process was complete that I could meet Kaja’s eyes again. She held her wrist tenderly, so I felt even worse about my actions. I had pulled away too fast, and with my extra strength recently, it had probably caught her off guard. I hoped it hadn’t sprained.

“… sorry.”

She shook her hands out for a few more seconds before beaming a warm smile at me. I could tell that she was still riding the high of her success, but I could also tell that she wouldn’t have taken it personally anyways.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t think it would work, so I didn’t think to warn you about how strange it can be to look in the mirror and see a completely different person.”

“Yeah, if you ever need to talk about it or anything, you can come talk to me….”

Tillo suddenly jumped into the conversation, and the attention was drawn to him and the two identical items that he held in his hands. From the glaringly bright cases to the scratches across their center screens, they were clearly mirror images of each other.

“Om my goodness! Ernate! How did you do that!”

Ivette, who I hadn’t seen for a while, looked the most stunned of the scientists, but it was a close match. All the scientists looked shocked to the core, but it may just have been the stacking of effects of the twin’s simultaneous discoveries.

Well, that and all of their minds were still linked through Archer. The kid looked pale and like he was about to pass out, but their most recent excuse was they were doing a study on how long he could last and the potential long-form effects of using those powers.

I could tell that Aaron wasn’t particularly happy about it, but the last time he had tried to interfere with the scientists’ proposed tests, I had ended up running myself into unconsciousness. It hadn’t actually been that hard, and it had been fun to go wild on the course; well, as wild as the limits of my shoes would let me, but I could tell he still felt guilty about it.

Instead, he just tried to force as many breaks as he could, and he paid special attention to the two youngest.

Thinking about it, he must have been under a lot of pressure to make sure we were okay and got enough rest since he was the only adult in the room that cared more about us as people rather than as cool science phenomena. Out of the impressed expressions that everyone else in the room sported, his aghast look stood out.

I didn’t know exactly what he was thinking, but I hoped he would control himself before the others noticed and got discouraged.

Although I still wasn’t super comfortable with Archer’s powers, I, for the first time, wished I could borrow them to see what was in Aaron’s head as he beat off the complicated expression on his face.