"OK gather round, it's time we left this swamp," I called out to the kids. Proximakinesis and Forcefield Creation reached out in an invisible line less than an inch wide towards the nearest mud pit. There, the field widened and force was applied to its contents. Soil, dust, organic debris, pretty much everything but water was pushed back while the water itself was drawn in much like filtering a liquid through reverse osmosis. Soon I had an orb of crystal clear water about a foot in diameter, drawn in at the end of an invisible tether.

"Whoa Teach, did you develop Telekinesis?" Gabe asked as the three of them got closer, suddenly more interested in what I was doing than their usual roughhousing and boasts.

"Nope! General telekinesis has so broad and varied applications that developing it would either result in a very weak ability, or its cost in power would be so prohibitive it would be the only ability even strong supers could get. That tradeoff between strength and versatility is pretty much the only rule every magical has in common." I gave the Hispanic boy a smirk. "That doesn't mean you can't cheat."

"Oh come on!" Cindy scoffed and rolled her eyes. "You have been recorded to fly, invisibly strike or restrain opponents, create barriers, negate attacks, create and control both heat and cold, reshape matter, add to your own strength, speed and toughness and do dozens of other things. There's no way you can do that many things without a broad thematic skill." The brunette poked at the floating sphere of water but her hand always came out dry. "You've just sunk enough power into it to overpower most people in their specialties, like the Warden or the Red Queen."

"Who?" I shook my head. "Nevermind, it's not important." The girl's arbitrary contrariness was giving me a headache again. "Maybe if I was confident that I could overpower everyone out there I would have done exactly that, but I'm not."

"Then how do you have both power and versatility like that?" she demanded. "You've had powers maybe twice as long as we have, you shouldn't have been able to beat us in ten seconds flat."

"Your powers are not exactly lacking in versatility," I reminded her without correcting her assumption. "If you ever meet a super as powerful as you that only has a single narrow ability, try not to challenge them in their specialty." It would probably end up worse than the fight with the wraiths for her... but maybe Cindy needed to have the arrogance beaten out of her a few more times so I'd give no further warnings. Honestly, my own near-death experiences during the invasion had been the best cure for any belief of invincibility that came with powers. Everyone gaining abilities post-invasion not having such experiences was probably contributing to the abundance of villains and idiots. "But the trick you're missing is this; how many letters does English have?"

"What does English have to do with... no." The girl's eyes widened as she got the implication. "No, that's bullshit. There's no way that would work."

"No, it would," Mark interjected. "My own power's versatility comes through combinations. If you could combine power abilities instead..." He glared at me. "I agree with Cindy, that's bullshit."

"Isn't it? Something to keep in mind as your power grows." The still-floating water sphere nearly touched the ground before widening and thinning into a disc. "Now hop on, there's something I need to show you."

The kids did, the now transparent disc not even budging from the weight as an adjustment of the force fields holding it together made them non-permeable to the four of us. Then they stretched further and bent upwards, thinning and spreading until the end result resembled a giant soap bubble with us within. Our new transportation complete, we started floating away.

"Why water?" Mark asked as we rose rapidly, several gravities worth of acceleration having minimal effect to people who could get through a serious car crash and barely even feel it. "You could have done the same with force alone - have done so more than once. Why the theatrics?"

"Because the theatrics are cool," I told the perpetually serious black boy. "Plus sometimes it's better to have something physical for more complex powers to work on rather than keep everything in your mind. What if you lost concentration, were distracted by something?"

"It's just a fall," Cindy interrupted with a shrug. "Even those of us who can't fly would survive."

"So sure of this, are you?" I asked the overconfident teenager with a smirk.

We were really picking up speed now, breaking through the cloud layer faster than any plane and many missiles, though not quite all of them. In those discussions our military minders thought were safe from being overheard in those remote bunkers, options for intercepting flying supers had been discussed, some of them quite dangerous - for the kids, at least. But that was part of the great list of Future-Maya's problems.

The pale blue of the sky started to give way to the utter darkness and diamond clarity of space, the Earth seeming rounder and rounder beneath us when the kids finally got what was going on. Gabby was actually the first to realize where I was taking them.

"No fucking way!" His face stuck to the now-frozen but still transparent water bubble, taking in the awesome view of more than a hundred miles above the tallest point on the planet. "We're in freaking space!"

The kids, naturally, went wild. Even the most jaded workaholic or deluded pseudo-rationalist would have their first time of leaving humanity's home behind - unless they were putting their all into saving humanity from a giant monster more than two miles tall. Often power and the choices that went with it really ruined such opportunities and since the fate of the world was not on the line quite yet I'd wanted the kids to see that magic could be awesome beyond the fields of combat or worse, politics.

Ignoring another stab of pain from my irregular migraine, I shared the glory of achieving orbit with my students for the next half-hour. The General would have to shift his schedule just a little to account for even people with powers being human.

xxxx

"You're late," was Old Man Rinaker's greeting as I floated into his office thirty-one minutes later.

"A superhero is never late, nor is she early," I quoted back to him. "She arrives precisely when she chooses to."

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"How long were you waiting to use that one?" the General asked with a tired smile. He looked worn, his salt and pepper hair with a few more strands of silver than before, the frown lines on his long face a bit deeper. But the cold, steel-grey eyes still stared out with enough force to nail some brainless fool to the nearest wall.

"Since I sneaked away to see the movie at age eleven. My old man did not approve of such... frivolities." I gave Rinaker a smile that was quite a bit more teeth than mirth. "He was a military man, see."

"Dishonorably discharged, yes. I read his file." The old man's fists creaked as he clenched them hard enough to hurt. "Liz told me he was a traitor to humanity as well. Joining the invaders for more power." He harrumphed as only old people tend to do. "There's fools and monsters in every war."

"More of that going around in this one; it was designed this way." I leaned back, using my powers to sit on thin air. "But you didn't call me here to speak of ancient history." Less than a year was that, the way things were progressing, and I'd rather talk about anything else. Ugh, why had I brought the guy up again? The past gave me even more headaches than the kids did.

"What is your team's readiness? How quickly could they be deployed independently?"

"Let me guess; the politicians are whining again." I sighed and shifted in my nonexistent chair. "They do realize these are fifteen year olds, right? Teenagers armed with a whole army group's worth of firepower, who have been through several traumatic events, were exposed to an ideology that actively, supernaturally brainwashes those it affects, and have had less than a third the training time of recruits that only have to shoot a rifle instead of highly complex powers?" I glanced through the wall at the mess hall where the kids were arguing tuna versus corned beef and their use in sandwiches without a care in the world a mere hour after fighting for their lives. "And they really want to cut them loose inside cities to handle anything more complex than tying their shoelaces? Are they mad?"

"They are desperate, as I remember telling you the last time we had this discussion." The old General pinched his nose, then sat back and rummaged in the drawers of his overcrowded desk. What he came up with was an old-fashioned Zippo lighter with silver designs and a gasoline reservoir instead of natural gas, plus a case of old cigars. "Want one?" he offered. "They're Cuban."

"They also stink and are cancerous." Not unlike politicians in that respect.

"You take baths in molten stone, I doubt cancer is something you have to worry about." He lit the cigar slowly, then took a long, slow draw before continuing. "Then again, you rarely worry about things we all should. Take the economy for example. Do you have any idea what losing a whole state did to our bottom line?"

"No, because I don't need to." I took a fake pensive pose and spoke in a way too cheerful tone. "In fact, as I remember telling you the first time we had this discussion, not having to worry about money is one of the terms of working with you. I put in the powers, take the physical risks, and you and your people deal with non-power-related stuff because I don't want to."

"Cute. Way behind the times but cute." He pointed at me with the cigar. "This whole mess makes every other disaster in the history of ever look like a hiccup. We got over a thousand people with minor powers propping up the economy where we could since the Florida refugees came in. Without them we'd be a lot worse and several other countries are already chomping at the bit to do the same." He grimaced, then snuffed out the cigar against his palm. Either the cancer stick had spoiled, or the General was changing in the same ways that had me taking lava baths if I wanted to feel the warmth. "Problem is, however much the economy is propped up, lack of security is getting to people."

"We both know three half-trained kids won't help with actual security, only with the appearance of security." Because that's what the politicians always wanted in times of crisis; to be seen to be doing something rather than solving the problem, because the problem was usually impossible to solve as quickly as the public felt like it should be. "Your people must have thousands of powered refugees and soldiers from the invasion by now, why not use them?"

"Because none of them actually matter, Wennefer. No amount of guys that can sense danger a few minutes ahead of time or build tech on the bleeding edge with a box of scraps could stop even one moderately powerful threat. For some reason, other than you five, all the powerful people that came out of Florida either disappeared, or became the very problems that we need to solve." He grunted and adjusted his chair as if it didn't quite fit. He'd probably notice his body adjusting soon enough; no need to tell him and spoil the surprise. "In the meantime, people with strong powers have started appearing in half a dozen other places around the globe. It is... disquieting."

"You mean the guys at the big chairs saw all these new supers as belonging to the government and are throwing hissy fits because nobody is getting on with their program." I copied Cindy and rolled my eyes as childishly as possible. There was something about what the General had said that struck me as odd and I'd look things over again after our meeting, but for now I needed to make my position clear. "That's the real reason they want the kids to waive the flag, right? Well, I'm officially telling you it's not going to go well. I want it on the record so I can tell them that I told them so when everything blows up in their faces."

"What, no refusal to cooperate?" Rinaker asked, thick eyebrows rising in mild surprise.

"What would be the point? You wouldn't be insisting if they were willing to take no for an answer." I shrugged. "Pressing the point would mean either taking the kids and disappearing or smashing the government until it vaguely fit my ideas on how it should work. And both of those would be too much work and cause too many problems down the line. I don't want to run the country and I'm pretty sure neither do you."

"Curious... but in a way it fits that image of a blunt instrument you've chosen to present." He gave me a nod. "Just warn me if you ever change your mind."

"If I ever change my mind nobody will need the warning," I told him and with just a look we both knew where we stood with this. "OK, since this is going to happen anyway, you'd better fill me in on the plan for the kids' debut."

"It's less a plan and more of a wish fulfillment on their part. Unfortunately, we have to make it work." He took out an old paper map and unfolded it across his desk, then took out several coins to use as markers. Apparently, the governments semi-justified paranoia about super-geniuses and technokinetics spying them through electronics had reached a new high. Considering how I could spy on them directly through super-senses every time I flew over the capital, they might not be paranoid enough. "This is Devon island in Canada. Used to be the largest uninhabited island in the world."

"Used to be? What changed?"

"Nothing much. Just the CIA's new training grounds, complete with monsters relocated from Florida."

"Awesome. Fantastic. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that statement and everything is copacetic." I facepalmed, feeling another headache brewing. I could swim in fucking magma and only feel pleasantly warm, how the hell was I getting headaches? "In entirely unrelated news, has anyone there in Langley seen the Jurassic Park movies? Maybe any of the Godzilla films? No?"

"It seemed a good idea to them at the time. Unfortunately, the training grounds have suffered... complications," Rinaker deadpanned. "The plan is for the kids to go there, resolve said complications, get filmed doing it. You will keep overwatch, but from far enough that you don't appear on camera if there are no problems the kids can't handle."

"This might actually work... if everything goes as planned," I said and chuckled. We both knew nothing ever went as planned. "Now why don't you share exactly what the CIA did in that place and why do they think went wrong."

He did. Then I really started swearing...