A CrashCourse

"I'll really be making… all that cash?" I asked, the wonder was evident in my voice.

"It's not half bad, eh?" Allen chimed in from where he was lying on the sofa. I'd honestly thought that the boy had drifted off to sleep. But he was right, it wasn't half bad at all.

"Right, well, with all that cash out of the way… What do you know about the situation in the community?" Lauren asked, leaning back slightly in the chair.

"Do you mean in terms of the other Powered?" I asked, pretty sure that's where the conversation was headed next. "I mean, I've done a fair amount of research on the boards, scanned through all of the wikis for the people that I've heard of. But I'd never even heard of Brainwave, and if that fight with Phet taught me anything it's that you don't really know a damn thing until you're actually out there fighting someone.

Lauren grinned at that. It was a proper grin, too, not one of her sarcastic smirks that seemed to be her permanent facial expression.

"Well, it's nice to have someone else on the team that takes things seriously," She said, "Most don't get that you really need to have been in the thick of it to understand what it's like coming up against another villain or a hero. There's a reason so many new Powereds end up floating face down in the Thames."

"Bit rich coming from you," Allen snorted, "What with you knowing everything as you do."

My breath caught in my throat. "You… you're like psychic or something?" I stammered.

Lauren cackled at that, like a witch on a broom. "What? No! Though that would be pretty great. It's my power, kind of gives me a… hehehe… crash course on everything I need to know."

Allen groaned at that as if he'd heard the joke a million times.

Allen wasn't the only one who couldn't find the humour in the joke. If her power let her know things, then what did she know about me? Did she already know the real reason I'd joined up with them?

"So, what do you um… what do you know about me?" I asked.

She quirked an eyebrow and leaned forward a little bit, "Well," She started, "I know you were at school when you got in contact with me the first time. I know you live with your mum, and you care about her very much. I know that your dad…" She cut off there, suddenly looking very sad. "Sorry, power goes a bit far sometimes."

There was a slight sinking feeling in my stomach, I hadn't expected her to bring up my dad at all.

"S'okay," I replied, "I know you didn't mean anything by it. How does the power work, anyway?"

She leant back in her chair again. "So, you know how there are some Powered with absolutely crazy abilities that let them literally see potential futures?"

I nodded. There were Powered out there like that, just one of the many ways that powers totally broke the rules of reality.

"Well, think of my ability like the opposite. You've got precogs, I'm a postcog. My power lets me see into the past of the things that I concentrate on. Sort of. The big things, anyway."

I stared at her with wide eyes, unable to speak at all. I'd managed to put myself into an undercover situation with a girl who could literally read the past of anyone or anything that she had met. I'd have to be incredibly careful now. She would no doubt know about my conversation with Quasar, but I doubt she could read minds. As long as I didn't do anything to arouse her suspicion I'd likely be fine.

She took my silence for being impressed and gave me one of her sly smirks.

"Look," she said, "It's really not all that great. A lot of the time you can get just as much information from reading a newspaper as I can from using my power. It works on big landmark moments the best. Sure, I can get little details if I want, but it gives me a serious headache and puts me out of commission for ages."

While it sounded like everything she was saying was truthful, it also felt like she was underselling her power just a little bit. A newspaper couldn't dig into the private past of someone just by meeting them. Theoretically that meant she knew the identity of every Powered in the community. It meant she knew all of their routines. How they reacted to certain situations.

No wonder Hypogean hadn't ever been caught.

How do you manage to catch someone who knows your every move at a glance? It'd take someone brand new to take them down. Someone who hadn't had time to make up those routines and habits. Someone like me.

"What about Greave and Allen? What are their powers?" I asked, hoping to move the subject away from Lauren's incredibly dangerous abilities.

Allen perked up at that, and looked like he was about to start explaining his own abilities, but he never got the chance.

I heard a thumping getting closer and closer until suddenly a massive beast had rounded the corner of the corridor. It was Becca.

The creature she had become was different this time around, which revealed the fact there was a certain amount of variance in what the girl could become.

This time she was a tall quadrupedal creature with lithe but muscly limbs. The beast's face was almost lizard-like, with powerful bone plating covering any sensitive spots. Protruding from the back of the beasts head was also a bone plated tail that ended in a deadly spike.

Before I even knew what was happening the beast had crossed the distance of the room and grabbed me in one of its talon tipped claws before shoving me, hard, against the far wall of the room, the barbed tail floating ominously between my eyes.

It looked like she was going to kill me, right here and now.