By the time September had rolled around, I was down to a schedule. Mondays and Wednesdays were my free days, Tuesdays were Y.A.K.S. meetings, Thursdays were my training days with Edward, and Fridays were meeting days for The Unmaskers, where we met at an arcade closer to where Damian lived so he could join us. Even Dad was down to a schedule since one of his coworkers was giving him a ride to work. It was like things were finally finding a balance in our lives.

At least, the balance was there until the inevitable happened.

At this point, Edward was having me wear my glasses to school less and less so I could get used to stopping the premonitions myself. I still had some accidents throughout the day, like seeing all of the answers to the math test or seeing that my history teacher was giving us a pop quiz on one of the multiple movies he was forcing us to watch, but I always managed to reign myself in.

That was, until I saw another death.

It all started after school on a Wednesday in late September when Erika found me after school getting my things out of my locker. We had made plans earlier that week to do our math homework together at her house, so she ran up to me, clearly out of breath, and stopped at my locker.

"You okay Erika?" I asked gently.

"Yeah, I’m fine." Erika said, bending over as she tried to catch her breath. Her mousy brown hair was in front of her face, and when she stood back up, her hair fell on her shoulders revealing the blue headband she was holding it all back with. She smiled at me with a braces free grin since she had gotten them off recently. "Just wanted to make sure that you hadn’t left with Becky again."

"That was one time!" I complained, smirking at Erika as I put the last of my school books in my locker. I shouldered my backpack as we walked down the hallway to where one of her moms was picking us up. "You are never gonna let me live that down, are you?"

"Never in a million years!" Erika said, laughing happily.

We both laughed as we passed some freshman putting up some posters for the Homecoming dance in the middle of October. I rolled my eyes. "Isn’t it a little too early to be putting up posters for Homecoming?"

"Ironically enough, they’re late this year."

"Really?"

"I don’t know how things were in Chesterfield, but here, Homecoming is a huge deal." Erika explained. "Homecoming is essentially three weeks of nonstop partying. There’s a parade, a carnival, tons of free movie showings at the drive-in, and it all concludes with the Homecoming dance, which is also the same day as the Super Awards."

"Jesus." I said, remembering that Callum said that the plan was for Y.A.K.S. to debut at the Super Awards as the first teenage hero team that was only supposed to be sent out for extreme emergencies. I guess the crunch for us was going to be real that day. "I thought that Homecoming was just for people to get drunk and lose their virginity."

"Is that how things were in Chesterfield?"

"Sadly, yes. There was also an increase in golf cart sales."

"Well, our Homecoming always centers around the founding of the Treatorian Collective since that’s also when Megatropolis was founded. You know people and wanting to celebrate the founding of things."

"Any excuse to party."

"Exactly." Erika said as we climbed into her mom’s van. Yukiko Hamada, who Erika explained was Lava Rock, was behind the wheel. She looked at us from her rearview mirror.

"Hey kiddos!" Ms. Hamada said happily, her dark hair held back with a simple clip. "How was school?"

"It was good, Mom." Erika said happily.

"Nice to see you again, Ms. Hamada."

"Now Anneliese, I told you to call me Yukiko!"

"Right. Sorry Yukiko. I’m just used to-"

"It’s fine, I’m just teasing." Yukiko said happily. "So, what is the plan for today? Are you staying for dinner?"

"Not planning on it. It’s Pasta Night tonight, so my dad and I are gonna be making some pasta for dinner."

"That’s cool. Erika, Your mother and I are gonna be working late today, so make sure you have your school work done before dinner."

"I will Mom, don’t worry." Erika said happily.

"Good." Yukiko said as she pulled up to the house. "Now you girls be good, okay? No trashing the house."

"Mom, we’re not gonna tash the house."

"I’m just saying."

I quickly got out of the car, looking at Erika’s green paneled house with a small garden outside. Everything about her house just screamed that they were a garden household. Once her mom was gone, Erika looked over at me and smiled. "Come on! I wanna show you something!"

"What?"

"It’s not bad, I promise!" Erika said, grabbing my arm as she unlocked the front door and led me up to her bedroom. Her bedroom walls were green and her bed sheets were blue, the blades of her ceiling fan painted different colors. Erika forced me to sit down on her bed as she grabbed a small pot that was shaped like an egg from her window shelf that had a bunch of plants on it and a pack of seeds from her bookshelf.

Ever since I've known her, she's been a rabid plant fanatic. Most of her windowsills are crowded with plants, and I've helped her cultivate the garden out front a couple weeks ago. Why she was showing me a simple pot with dirt in it, I had no idea."That’s what they all say, Erika."

"Okay, but this one really isn’t bad. I promise." Erika said, holding the pot and the pack of seeds up. "Now, what do you see here?"

"A pot, and are those daisy seeds?"

"Yes." Erika said, using a spoon to dig a tiny whole into the dirt of the pot, then put a couple seeds inside, covering it back up, placing the pot on my lap as she wrung her hands together. "This is gonna sound completely crazy, but I got my superpower last Sunday."

My eyes widened. "You did? Talk about being an early bloomer."

"That’s kinda the point." Erika said, holding her hands above the small pot. "Now, prepare to be amazed!"

As I sat on her bed, I watched as three daisies sprouted out of the pot, growing to the level of my head on her lap, so maybe a couple feet. The heads of each of the flowers were easily as big as my human head for each one. I felt my eyes widen. "Woah."

"I know!" Erika said excitedly. She pointed to a plant close to her bed that had overgrown it’s pot since most of it was dripping onto the ground. Last time I was here, she was struggling to keep the eucalyptus alive, and now it was flourishing. "When I woke up Sunday morning, my hand was touching that plant. It wasn’t growing before, and when I woke up, it had literally outgrown the pot. I tried it with a couple plants outside, and I think that it works with my hands tricking the plants into thinking that they have enough nutrients and what not to grow, making them grow way quicker than they normally would."

"That’s crazy..." I said as Erika moved the pot off of my leg and put it back on the shelf.

She came back over and gripped my hands tightly. "Haven’t you ever wondered what your power is gonna be?"

My vision darkened and I saw Erika in a crowd of people. I couldn’t see much of what was going on, but someone in a dark red jacket held out a gun at Erika, pulled the trigger and shot Erika in the head, causing her to collapse on the ground as everyone started running around her. She looked exactly the same as she does now. This was in the near future.

"Anna, are you okay?" Erika asked gently, still as alive as ever, her skin warm to the touch. "You kinda zoned out there for a second."

"Yeah." I lied. I had, for the most part, gotten the glowing eye thing under control, so hopefully this was one of those times where my eyes weren't glowing when I had a premonition. "I’m fine."

"Did you hear my question?"

"Could you repeat it?"

"Haven’t you ever wondered what kind of power you’ll get?"

"I… I already have my power."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"What is it?"

Sensing dread, I held out my hands as electricity arced between my hands, switching between orange and purple. Edward and I figured out rather quickly that the changes in color only happened when I was feeling intense emotions. Most of the time, it was a shade of pastel blue, but if I was feeling something intense enough, like I was right now, that was when they switched colors. We haven’t categorized all of them yet, but I knew exactly what orange and purple meant. Anxiety and fear. "I can do lightning."

Erika gave me a concerned loom as she backed away a centimeter. "You're not the one causing mayhem in the city, are you?"

I froze. What kind of mayhem? "What do you mean?"

"Someone with electricity powers has been breaking into banks and other big businesses recently. That’s why most of the heroes are working overtime right now. Most of it is on the DL, but some of the info is coming out. Power shortages, overloads of the power breakers, those kinds of things. You’re not the one doing that, right?"

"Of course not! I just found out about this now!" But that left the question of who was doing it.

"I just wanted to make sure." Erika said as she started getting out her school books. "Anyway, that’s a little weird, right? Does anyone in your family have a history of electricity powers?"

"No. I honestly don’t know how I got them." I said, taking off my backpack and started rummaging through it. "I was walking home from a football game last year and passed out on the way home. When I woke up, I had these powers."

"Jesus." Erika said, opening up her math textbook. "I’m actually kinda happy I got my powers."

"You are?"

"They get me one step closer to figuring out who my parents are."

"You actually want to figure that out?"

"Of course I do. Yukiko and Emily are good people, don’t get me wrong, but I want to find out where I come from."

"I get it. If I was you, I’d want to figure it out too."

Erika smiled, looking down at her books. "I promise I won’t tell anyone about your powers if you won’t tell anyone about mine."

"I promise." I said, nodding. We worked on our homework in silence for a few minutes before I cleared my throat. "So, you got any plans this weekend? Any plans at all?"

"I have plans on Friday."

"What plans?"

"So Zacharias has been nice to me recently-"

"Really?" I asked exhaustedly. So far, this did not sound good.

"And she invited me to this party Friday night that I’m going to."

I sighed heavily. It sure did look like she was at a party during that vision. "Are you sure that’s a good idea? She is one of your bullies..."

"Anna, I’ll be fine." Erika said quickly. "If you’re so concerned, why don’t you come with me?"

"Where is this party anyway?"

"Downtown. I have the address if you want me to text it to you."

"Please do, and I’ll think about it." I said, looking down at my math homework. "Let’s just focus for right now, okay?"

Erika nodded. "Fine."

By the time Dad picked me up, everything in my mind was practically destroyed from the anxiety of seeing Erika get shot. I had to think about the best course of action. I was not going to let her get shot. If I was going to think of a way to stop these deaths from happening, this was going to be my first chance, and I wasn’t going to let it go to waste.