“What, are you afraid she’ll show the princess how to actually wrangle you into marrying her?”
I gave him an evil look then said, “Who else you got?”
“Luna,” Mouse replied.
“Luna?” I repeated, frowning. Luna was a League member who derived her abilities from the moon. She was powerful, but drew her name from an ancient goddess who had inspired the word “lunatic.” More to the point, Luna seemed to have a personality influenced by her namesake.
“I don’t know,” I finally admitted after a few moments. “Isn’t she kind of – what’s the word I’m looking for – crazy?”
Mouse chuckled. “She’s not crazy. She’s just extraordinarily passionate about everything she does.”
“I suppose that’s one way to put it,” I muttered, reflecting on a recent incident where Luna literally washed a would-be mugger’s mouth out with soap before turning him over to the authorities because he called her a name she didn’t like. “Who else is on your short list?”
“Why don’t we tackle this from a different angle?” Mouse queried in response. “Instead of me rattling off names that you might ultimately want to strike, let’s talk about the things you’re thinking the princess needs in a mentor.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “For starters, she needs someone who’s going to be patient with her. Remember, despite her appearance, she’s an alien. She’s adjusted pretty well to Earth culture, but she’s still going to have lots of questions and is bound to make missteps.”
“That’s reasonable,” Mouse stated with a nod. “What else?”
“Someone mature. A person who’s going to help her when she makes the occasional social blunder instead of making fun of her.”
“Got it.”
“She also needs a mentor who’s accessible – someone she can reach out to at any time, day or night, if she’s having issues.”
“Hmmm,” Mouse droned. “I’m starting to understand now why you never seem to respect my schedule.”
I grinned, then went on listing the characteristics I thought would be important in any potential mentor for Myshtal. To be frank, I patterned my statements in large part on my relationship with Mouse. That fact wasn’t lost on him; although Mouse didn’t say anything about it, I felt a sense of satisfaction arise in him as he listened to my comments – gratification that he had been doing his job well. (I made a mental note to do something to let Mouse know that he’d been a great mentor – stellar, in fact.)
It took a few minutes, but by the time I was winding down, I felt that I’d provided a pretty good roadmap for fruitful mentor-mentee relations.
“Anything else?” Mouse asked as I seemed to come to the end of my index of qualifications.
“Yeah,” I said. “A good sense of humor. You guys have a tendency to be way too stiff and form–”
I found myself cut off as lights began flashing throughout the lab and something like a mid-volume alarm clock began sounding.
“What’s happening?!” I yelled at Mouse.
“It’s Jack!” he shouted back. “He’s here!”
I was about to ask where when I suddenly picked up a massive surge of emotions. The feelings I sensed ran the gamut, from fear to concern to anger, and I knew based on past experience that I was picking up on the collective emotional responses of a crowd of people simultaneously experiencing a specific event – like an earthquake or a fire. Moreover, the feelings all emanated from a central location: the teen lounge.
I teleported there without another word to Mouse – and almost immediately found myself under attack.
Chapter 68
I popped up in the middle of the teen lounge. The first thing I noticed was that almost everyone in the room – about twenty people in total – was on their feet and facing the far wall, with their backs to me. I also realized that the place was a mess. There was at least one overturned table and another that looked like it had been smashed, along with all kinds of stuff on the floor: smashed glassware, spilled drinks, food and snacks… All in all, it looked like there had been some kind of stampede.
“There he is!” someone yelled. “Get him!”
Jack! I thought, as everyone turned in my direction. Suddenly sensing a bevy of antagonistic emotions coming from the other teens, I shifted into super speed and spun around.
There was no one there.
Confused, I turned back towards my fellows, only to realize that the entire room had seemingly launched a blitzkrieg against me.
The world around me had gone into slow motion for the most part, but from what I could see, there were at least three projectiles headed straight at me: a bolt of charcoal-gray energy that had seemingly come from a guy known as Nightshift, what appeared to be a wooden knife that had been flung by a fellow called Boomstick, and a bottle of water. I almost laughed at the last, until I realized it had been thrown by a teen named Actinic, who could change the chemical composition of materials. That meant that the liquid in the bottle was probably no longer water – a fact proven when I saw that whatever fluid it now contained was already eating through the bottle that held it.
Moreover, although most of their fellows were moving in relative slow motion, I saw three of those present coming towards me at what seemed like a normal pace. That meant they were speedsters.
The first two I recognized as a brother-and-sister team of fraternal twins known as Haste and Hustle. I wasn’t completely familiar with their power set, but apparently super speed was among their abilities. The other person coming at me was Dynamo – a guy who had generally been ranked second only to my brother Paramount when it came to powerful teens.
Trying to prioritize the potential threats in order of importance, it seemed prudent to deal with the people first and the projectiles afterwards. One of my patented methods for dealing with speedsters is
