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He rushed over toover his coffee onto an ethics textbook (onto a first edition copy of Jane Eyre) “No, no, Jules, that’s not what Ielse You can’t buy a Julia Ash off the shelf anywhere, at any price I’le”

I still wasn’t like everyone else, not really I wouldn’t find the end of what I could do until years later, at the edge of a white dwarf star

• • •

1:51 AM

I met everyone I ever loved at St Ovidius

We got to pick new na Henry Hart and Lachlan Reed and Lana Kowalski and beca, Pell-Mell, the Maroon Marauder, Snow Queen, Whitewater, Paravox, Ha’Penny Hal Cyon Bruce Force Crucible

Henry My Crucible

After graduation, Professor Yes called a group of us into her office The melted chunks of the bronze phoenix I’d exploded still sat on her desk We sat down—, and Paravox I was the only girl I tried not to let it bother me It was time to take the next step, Professor Yes told us To use our powers for good instead of spinning our wheels She was putting together a teaht, not crime or mustached evildoers or endebirds anted to expose us or enslave everyday normals like our parents Or just plain rule the world, like so before any of them could fly In time, there’d be dozens of us, but just then, in that office, while I stared at the clureen apples swi into make a better world

For a while, that’s just e did Hal Cyon trapped Doctor Nocturne in a pocket dimension stuffed inside the blue whale in the Museum of Natural History Crucible burned down the lair of the Rat Bastard with his arot to Victor Volatile’s Boomsday Device just in ties changed the tied it back with one arm tied behind his back Bruce Force just beat the hell out of anyone and choht-sided rated his webship We battered Miasoleht Lodestone, Professor Yes’s neht out of our textbooks, able to co allbefore any of us were born

Of course, they always came back somehow Doctor Nocturne rode that blue whale into a crowd of philanthropists and turned them all into philanthrozombies Victor Volatile built a new laboratory on the ers, his iron face disappearing back into the shadows But that was the ga It er better? Would they all have whispered like that if Bruce suddenly sprouted neers? I doubted it The world likes a big er and punch harder But even Crucible got quiet when I caeant Pluto started darkening the edges of our little family portrait

Soreed so easily to be Professor Yes’s personal matadors They don’t call her that because she never says no to a child in need They call her that because she can s; say yes to Professor Yes Her psionic strength beats even mine Of course she’d never do it

That would be wrong

She wouldn’t

• • •

1:53 AM