Chapter 13: Frosted Future

'Carter, could you please pass your brother the cutlery? Finn, this is a home not a zoo, do eat properly,' Mrs Shorecoat scolded lightly as her eldest son looked up at her innocently, 'Sera honey, I expect you to eat a bit more in the way of carbohydrates. Alec, please stop inhaling, dinner is a family occasion, not a "how much can I eat in the least amount of time?" occasion. Hayden, Hunter, please stop stealing your brothers food, Roy sweetheart, watch your plate. Allison, don't drink too much water, you won't be able to eat.'

Ally looked at her mother from where she was sculling about her fourth glass of water, and nodded, quickly putting it down, 'I'll still be able to fit it all in,' she said.

'Honey, you've drunk half the jug,' her mother pointed out gently.

'Can I have one more glass?' Ally asked innocently.

Her mother gave her a hard look, but nodded and Ally grinned, pouring another glass of water and drinking half of it, 'Sorry, I'm really thirsty,' she commented.

'It's all that sugar you eat little sis,' Finn remarked, popping a small tomato in his mouth.

'You eat a lot of sugar too Finn,' Carter pointed out.

'You all eat a lot of sugar,' their father commented as he came in with his plate and sat down, 'I think we should monitor how much you do eat, it's not very good for you.'

The Shorecoat children, minus Alec, all looked at each other, before all laughing at that idea as their parents sighed and went back to eating. A few minutes later, after the Twins had finished filling everyone in as to why the laundry smelt like a stable, Mrs Shorecoat turned to Ally, who was trying to make her lettuce leaves into a house.

'So Allison, I forgot to ask earlier. Where were you yesterday afternoon?'

Ally looked up dazedly, 'Huh? I was at home.'

'You got home very late, and you didn't tell us where you had been,' her father reminded her.

'I didn't? I thought I told you...' Ally blinked at them, 'Or maybe I imagined I told you, that wouldn't be unusual, I forget a lot of things and image I did them later.'

'So, where were you then?'

'I was at Toby's place,' she replied, before suddenly going back to building her lettuce house.

That made pretty much every member of the family look up, 'Who's Toby?' Carter asked.

'My friend…well, not really friend as such, he's weird about it, especially the idea any of us would consider calling him a friend, I think he's more of an acquaintance,' she said, tilting her head to the side as she thought.

'All the same, you went to his house?' Sera asked.

'Uh-huh, along with Seb, Orion, Lyra and Mina,' she nodded.

The whole family just looked at the youngest child as she smiled at them brightly, none of them quite knowing what to say, 'So, are they your friends?'

'Yup! You remember I told you about Lyra and Orion right? And Seb being here,' Ally looked around at them, 'Or did I just imagine telling you that as well?'

The rest of them looked at each other before Finn suddenly piped up, 'Oh yeah, I remember. You were really excited last Friday so I asked and you told me you had friends.'

Ally nodded happily, face lit up in the expression that Sera had always joked could blind someone who looked at her too closely, 'Uh-huh, I do have friends. And they're all really weird!'

'That's nice. So what did you do at Toby's place?' her mother asked.

'What did I do at whose place?'

'Toby's?' her mother sounded a little exasperated and Ally giggled slightly, and opened her mouth to say something, when she stopped and thought for a brief second.

It wasn't as if she could tell her parents, or her siblings about their real conversation, after Mina had woken up and they had all decided that they could only take so much freaky-ness, Toby had pretty much made all of them swear to not tell another soul, especially the fact he was involved. And whilst Ally wasn't overly good at keeping small things quiet, big things like this were impossible to get out of her.

'Oh we were just talking, Mina and Toby were telling me a bit about some the good places to go in Hillsdale, and the others were just sort of helping out with the introduce the new girl thing,' Ally said, and it sounded like a reasonable excuse.

She knew she hadn't imagined the slight looks of disappointment on a few of her brothers faces when she told them that, although she couldn't imagine why, 'So will you be meeting up with them again?' her father asked.

'Uh-huh,' Ally nodded vigorously, doubting that it would be possible for them to deal with what was going on in a solo way.

It was then, that she felt the all too familiar tingle in her nose of an up-coming sneeze. She didn't quite manage to get her hand in front of her mouth though before she sneezed loudly. At once, she grabbed a tissue and smiled sheepishly at her mother, who had a small fetish about covering your mouth when you sneezed.

'Sorry mum,' she said innocently as her mother shook her head.

The conversation moved on from Ally then as Roy started talking about how excited he was for the end of the exam block at his college, although Alec did point out grouchily that he still had over a month until the exams even started so he had nothing to be excited about.

As Ally giggled at Roy's accusations of Alec being a spoil sport and the twins once again pushing that he was adopted, she reached out to get a drink, but when she tipped the glass, no water came out. She frowned; she didn't remember drinking the last bit. She looked up into the glass and was instantly confused when she saw that her water had completely frozen solid inside the cup and the glass itself was condensed and coated in what appeared to be fine frost.

She was about to comment, or more so, freak out, when she felt another sneeze building and this time she slammed her hands over her nose and mouth. When she sneezed though, she felt a blast of icy cold air against her palms and when she moved her hands away her heart skipped a beat. Her palms were covered in frost, as if she had just dipped them into a pond in the middle of winter.

'Ally, I thought we discussed years ago, that the boogers that come out of your nose are not related to the bogeyman,' Finn said, in a condescending, but joking voice.

Ally looked up, 'The bogeyman is real!'

'Yes, but he doesn't come out of your nose.'

Ally just scrunched up her face in a childish glare and Finn laughed, but not in a mean way, which was why Ally liked him so much compared to her other brothers.

But of course, this little conversation could hardly subtract from the fact that her hands were coated with ice, and as she assumed, had just frozen her water when she sneezed. She wracked her brains, thinking hard about what she should do. She knew that she needed to talk to the others, but it was a Saturday night and she doubted that any of them were available. But she had to try.

'I need to wash my hands,' she said abruptly and stood up.

Grabbing her frozen glass from the table she raced up the stairs as quickly as she could, before grabbing the long hook and pulling open the trap door so the ladder to her attic bedroom slid down. Once she was upstairs she quickly began rummaging through her school bag, searching for her phone.

'Come on, where are you…ah-hah, there you are! Come to me,' she grinned as she at last fished it out from the very bottom of her bag.

For a few seconds she was at a loss for what to type, she didn't think she could explain via text to them what had happened; she had frozen a cup for Pete's sake.

As quickly as she could she typed in a brief, somewhat panicky text, because if she was honest to herself, she was panicking.

SOS! Emergency! Something weird is happening. We really need a code word for this. Can we please all meet up ASAP, because I need to show you this!

'Okay, now I just need to wait to see if anyone replies. If they do, I then need to find a way to escape the house…which is far easier said than done,' she slouched down on her bed in dismay.

...

Toby sat in the change rooms, it was less than twenty minutes before the game began and he tried to concentrate on the matter at hand. But his mind kept floating to the conversations from yesterday that had preoccupied his mind even when they'd been gone for hours, keeping him up well past three in the morning. What if something happened in the game? What if he was about to get tackled and he freaked out and teleported to Barbados in the middle of the match and took the football with him?

He still didn't know what triggered this thing, he didn't think it was quite what the others had told to him to do, concentrate and wish he was somewhere else. Because when he did that, it wasn't quite it. He had just felt like he couldn't stuff it up, like he couldn't look like an idiot and not be able to do it in front of them. He'd just been thinking so hard, desperate to get it; he had found a place in his brain that almost seemed to be empty of all that worry and the next thing he had known he had been sitting at the top of the stairs.

But what if he went to that place again? What if he just disappeared and everyone saw it? What if he just disappeared and... everyone realised that he was a freak? A freak with freaking powers. Everyone would know! And then everything would change. And not that he enjoyed this life all that much, but he didn't know how much abnormality he could take.

'Toby?' came a voice, and he felt someone shake his shoulder.

Toby jolted out of his trance looking around till he realised that it was Falcon who he realised had waved his hand in front of his eyes several times, 'Yeah?'

'Are you okay man? You've been out of it all day.'

'Out of it?' Toby questioned, he knew he probably had, but he wasn't going to admit to it, 'Quiet maybe, but I have not been out of it.'

'Toby seriously, you being quiet is essentially the same thing. Unless Lucas is being a particular bastard, you don't really shut up, and even then you're not this quiet,' Falcon pointed out.

'I just have a lot going on right now,' he sighed bitterly, 'I'm fine, just trying to concentrate before the game.'

'Alright team, huddle up!' came the loud call from the coach, interrupting their conversation.

'Then you better do it quickly,' Falcon commented rolling his eyes, before moving over towards their coach.

Toby was about to follow him, when he heard his phone go off in his locker, and he realised that it was the ring tone he'd assigned to the people he was now unfortunate enough to have in his contact list. Knowing it was probably important, he opened his locker even as he saw the rest of the team glare at him, motioning for him to come over. Irritably he raised one finger for them to wait for a second before he checked the text he'd gotten, which was from Ally:

SOS! Emergency! Something weird is happening. We really need a code word for this. Can we please all meet up ASAP, because I need to show you this!

Toby looked at the text, feeling the annoyance swell in his chest. He bit his lip hard to stop himself from swearing, forcing himself to remain calm as he re-read the text twice to make sure it sounded as freaked out as it had the first time he read it.

'Toby, what are you doing? Get over here,' Coach snapped at him.

Toby sucked in air before he eventually realised he had very little choice in this scenario, 'I'm sorry coach, I gotta go.'

'WHAT?!' Came the demanding voices of the coach and the entire team.

'I'll try to make it back for the second half of the match,' he offered, 'But I've really got to go. It's a... family emergency.'

And before they could say anything else he grabbed his bag and walked briskly out of the room even as he heard coach yell, 'What the hell are you doing!? We've already lost Lucas, you can't expect us to win without both of you!?'

There were some protests for the rest of the team, but Toby blocked it out, muttering to himself, 'This had better be good Ally.'

'GET BACK HERE!'

'And I still question why I hate football?'

...

Seb was struggling to hang a bundle of freshly ironed suits up on the collection rack when the phone on the front desk rang. Slinging the remaining suit over a small pile of boxes in the corner he scampered forward, leapt up into the chair and picked up the phone.

'Good evening, Hillsdale dry-cleaning services, how may we help you?' he said, trying to keep the monotone out of his voice as he spoke the repetitive phrase, which he had been saying every time he answered a phone call for the past few years.

'Wow, you sound so bored,' was the only reply from the other end.

Seb at once recognised the calm voice, 'Orion? What the heck are you calling here for?'

'Well…Ally sent round a mass text message, which basically translates to something is up, I'm not going to bother repeating it, it's Ally, you can imagine what it seemed like. And seeing as you don't have a phone, I thought I should call you at your work,' Orion explained.

'I see…' Seb said slowly.

'Seriously though, if she has discovered her powers, we all need to be there. Do you think you can get away from work?'

Seb flinched at the mention of leaving work early, before he looked up at the clock, 'my shift finishes in fifteen minutes. I'll be there as soon as I can.'

'Good. We're meeting at Toby's place, again. I hope he doesn't mind.'

'You don't care,' Seb reminded.

There was a pause from the end of the line, '...no, I don't. See you when you get round there.'

'Yup…' Seb started, then suddenly realised with a small shock that his boss had just come out of his office, and quickly rounded up the conversation with a half-way professional sounding line, 'We'll send someone round to pick up your order as soon as possible.'

'Would it be safer not to ask? Is your boss there?' Orion sounded slightly amused.

'Yes sir,' Seb replied, then quickly hung up, placing the phone back on the hook.

'Which customer?' his boss asked curiously.

'New one…I think…he sounded a little unsure about it,' Seb shrugged, then jumped down off the seat and hastened off into the back to continue hanging things up before he could be asked anything else.

The last fifteen minutes of his shift seemed to go on for ages, but at last he could clock out. Saying a hurried goodbye to his boss, he pretty much ran out of the stuffy, noisy shop so he could grab his bike off the rack to the side. He never bothered chaining it, it was such a rusty, clunky thing that no one in their right mind would want to steal it, so it didn't take long for him to run out onto the street with it.

Unfortunately though, Toby's place was right on the opposite side of town, and it was getting late, so he wasn't prepared to ride all the way over, so he peddled up to the bus stop that was a few hundred meters from the shop, just in time for the bus to pull away.

He braked hard and glowered after the lights of the disappearing bus, 'Thank you universe, I love you to!'

After quickly checking the bus timetable and seeing that there wouldn't be another bus that went the route he wanted for another three quarters of an hour, he at last resigned himself to the fact that he would have to cycle all the way to Toby's. It didn't actually take him that long to ride to there in the end, but that was mainly because he pretty much sprinted and he didn't obey any of the road rules, which nearly ended up with him being hit by a cranky looking four-wheel drive.

By the time Seb pulled up outside Toby's mansion, he was breathing heavily and was pretty sure he had lost feeling to his legs about fifteen minutes prior to arriving. Pushing his slightly damp hair off his face he dumped his bike just inside the gate and plodded up the side path, and knocking on the door.

A few minutes later Manuel appeared and smiled down at him, 'Good evening mister Sternschrei. Please come in.'

Seb didn't have the breath to say thank you, so he just smiled politely as he stumbled in through the door, 'The others are in the living room. I'll go and get you a drink of water, you look like you've just run a marathon,' Manuel gestured down the hall to the living room, then walked off.

Seb entered the spacious, beautifully lit room rather awkwardly, to see a very flustered looking Ally, a confused Mina, an ever calm Orion and an exceedingly pissed off Toby.

'Hey Seb, you got here at long last,' Orion commented, sitting up properly, instead of upside down.

'Well…at least I'm not last to arrive right?' he observed

Mina shook her head, 'Lyra's not picking up her phone, which is kind of weird. Even when she's asleep she's somehow set her phone to instantly send a text when she ignores it saying, "Leave me alone." she hits one button to ignore it and off it goes, and she doesn't even wake up.'

'Oh that explains a lot,' Orion realised, 'but wait, why wouldn't she respond?'

'Well as someone who doesn't care about why the big mouth hasn't shown,' Toby interrupted, 'Why the hell are we even here Ally? I'm missing my football match?'

Ally, who for once wasn't attempting to steal anything shiny off one of the shelves looked up straight away, seeming for once, fully alert, 'I think I've discovered my powers,' she blurted out, sounding a little bit freaked.

Mina responded with enthusiasm, 'Oh, what are they? Is it something cool or lame?'

Ally shrugged, then pulled a face as she obviously thought hard about how best to explain it to them.

'Well... I'm not entirely sure what happened, just...' Ally began, not sure what she was supposed to say, 'Well, I think I-'

Toby cut her off looking bored, 'Stop rambling, I'm missing the game-'

'Leave her alone,' Orion said forcefully but calmly, 'No one cares about your little football game.'

'We're versing St Evans,' Toby put flatly.

Orion swore slightly looking irritated, apparently even he didn't like the idea of losing to them but then looked up at Ally with an awkward grin and said, 'Really Al, go on, just tell us what happened.'

Ally looked like she'd just bitten a lemon, before she blurted out, 'when I sneeze ice comes out!'

That made everyone in the room look at her very oddly indeed, and Toby just snorted, 'When you sneeze, ice comes out?'

'Yes! I was at dinner, and then I sneezed and my glass froze over and I didn't notice and when I sneezed again my hands were all icy and my breath is really cold!' Ally babbled, looking very freaked as she explained.

'Are you sure?' Orion sounded a little sceptical.

'Mm-hm, feel my hand,' Ally blew on her hand roughly, then placed it against his face.

'...Ah Ally, sorry to tell you but it doesn't feel that overly cold,' Orion offered awkwardly.

'Great, she's wasting all of our time,' Toby complained loudly, leaving Ally with a rather crushed look on her face, 'The little over-excitable toddler got so jealous that she might not get an ability like ours she made one up in her head and convinced herself it was true-'

All of a sudden Toby was cut off, because Ally had sneezed again, and he didn't quite seem to be able to move before his entire face was covered with a cover of snow and ice, 'Whoops,' Ally offered, 'Guess I wasn't over-excited after all.'

Toby growled as he wiped the snow away and glared at her as she spun sweetly from side to side. Orion just took one look at Ally's innocent little girl expression and Toby's murderous gaze and let out a small chortle of laughter.

'I think this is where Ally gets to say "I told you so," Toby,' Mina smiled at him as she threw the tissue box in his general direction.

Toby didn't reply as he grouchily wiped his face off, obviously making a point of ignoring Orion and Seb who were both laughing quietly at him.

'Question,' Ally quipped, 'Does this mean I'm going to have to give myself a permanent cold if I want to be able to use this thing?'

'Doubt it,' Seb said carefully, 'What you've got is called Vortex Breath-'

'And attack of the wild nerd,' Toby commented.

'I don't know what you're playing at Toby, but there aren't any of your cronies here to laugh at your highly uncreative jokes,' Orion said forcefully.

Toby just glared at him, but didn't comment and Orion looked over at Seb, motioning for him to continue, Seb looked a little nervous but spoke up, 'If this is what I think it is, you should be able to inhale and exhale with enough force to pretty much create gale force winds as well as being able to regulate the temperature of your breath, so, like what you're doing at the moment, you can generate ice.'

Ally just looked even more confused, 'I haven't made any cyclones yet.'

'Ally, you got your abilities less than five minutes ago,' Orion commented.

'But... true... you have a point, I can't exactly expect to be scary good first time round,' Ally said awkwardly, but then brightened, 'Well either way, this is kinda fun.'

'So let's see then,' Orion began, 'I'm intangible, Seb's levitating, Mina's morphing, Toby's teleporting and now, Ally's got vortex breath. It's kind of funny, Lyra is the last one to get her abilities, if anything is going to happen.'

'Well, maybe seeing as Lyra seems to decree herself the reigning queen of specialness, maybe the universe has finally decided to take her down a peg by not giving her anything,' Toby sighed scathingly.

'No, but the universe clearly hates me judging by what I got.'

At once everyone turned in their seats to see Lyra standing in the door way, looking like death walking. But most oddly, none of them failed to notice that, despite it being a warm day, she was wearing thick, winter gloves.

'Lyra? What happened?' Orion asked at once, getting to his feet in concern as he studied her.

Lyra just looked at him, and where she would have usually pushed him good naturedly, she didn't move, instead flinching openly when Orion rested a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged him off quickly.

'Don't touch me,' she said quietly, 'No one, touch me.'

Orion looked at her in concern, as everyone else in the room looked confused, usually they could look to Orion for a translation, but he was just as confused as they were right now, 'Lyra, honey,' Mina said carefully, 'Why are you wearing gloves?'

'I told you, the universe hates me,' Lyra said bluntly, and moved away from Orion, sitting down in the space chair, 'You guys, are so freaking lucky.'

'Why?' Orion asked, bluntly, but gently, 'What's wrong?'

Lyra just shook her head, bringing her knees up to her chest and resting her chin down on them, 'I know what my gift is…' she wavered.

'What? Have you suddenly grown talons or something?' Toby asked boredly.

'Toby,' Mina said gently.

'Yes?'

'Shut up!'

'Oh Mina, don't we all know that's impossible?' Toby asked casually, but then slowly became silent as he became more aware of the look on Lyra's face, 'Okay, what is it?'

Lyra looked deeply pained, and it wasn't until Mina came around to her and gave her a hug, that Lyra irritably shoved her off her that she actually said something, 'I'm psychometric.'

'A tall psychic?' Ally asked clearly having no idea what was going on.

'It means that when I touch something, it triggers a vision,' Lyra said quietly.

'And why does that have you so freaked out?' Orion asked patiently.

'Because I have no control over what I see!' she snapped, before shaking her head, 'My first vision was this morning, when I woke up, and I touched my alarm clock to turn it off, and I saw that it was made in a sweat shop, I saw the person who made it like I was standing next to them. I tried to shrug it off like it was nothing at first, but everything I touched I saw…something…and true they weren't all horrible, but some of them...'

At this, she buried her face against her knees again and drew in a deep, shuddering breath as the others exchanged glances. Orion came and perched awkwardly next to her and he looked like he was going to pat her on the back, but his hand stopped, hovering above her back unsurely.

'Is it when anything comes in contact with any part of your skin?' he asked quietly, 'Or, is it just your hands?'

'...I can feel it everywhere, I can feel it like it's going to happen everywhere, but so far the only clear visions are when I touch them with my hands,' Lyra said barely above a whisper, 'But with my luck I won't be able to touch anything soon enough.'

'Hey, calm down, you don't know if that's going to happen,' Orion tried but Lyra was not in the mood to listen to him.

'Oh really? Do you know the stuff I've been seeing? It's all bad! I went to buy the gloves because I couldn't take it anymore, but I nearly ended up running out of the store. When I got the money out of my wallet, I saw the shop assistant later spending it on drugs, and when he took it out of my hand I saw him getting gunned down on the street in front of his three year old son!'

Everyone in the room looked mortified as Lyra curled up into a tighter and tighter ball; no one had any idea what to say. They all just stared at her, shocked, it was one thing to be doing "little tricks" as Toby called them, they could hide them or they could just not use them if they didn't want to, Lyra on the other hand, she was stuck with it, at least until they figured out some way to control them.

Orion seemed to be thinking about what to do, when Mina came forward, and literally shoved him off the seat, onto the floor, before climbing into the space chair with Lyra, and, ignoring her flinch, hugged her tightly.

'You poor thing!' she squealed, hugging Lyra tightly, 'That is so sucky!'

Lyra tried to unwind herself from Mina's arms, but Mina's grip was so unbreakable it was ridiculous, and she couldn't pull away.

'Mina, I'm fine…' she tried.

'No you're not!' Mina shrieked, and it was then that everyone saw that she was crying.

Lyra seemed confused, 'Why are you crying?' she demanded.

'Because you won't, so I'll shed your tears for you,' Mina said matter of factly.

The look of complete and utter disgust on Lyra's face was obvious, as she tried to squirm out of Mina's grip, 'Get off me!'

'No!'

'If you don't I swear to god I will tip your father off to your next drinking exploit with Scarlett,' Lyra warned.

Mina let go before muttering as she sunk down to the floor, 'That is so not fair...'

'Life isn't! So get over it!' Lyra screeched.

Mina looked more than a little hurt, and no one could fail to notice the streak in her fringe turning a shade of blue, 'I was only trying to help,' she said softly, before getting to her feet and beginning to move away.

Toby looked enraged as he rounded on Lyra, ready to snap at her, 'What is your problem you little-'

'What is my problem? My problem just so happens to be that whenever I pick something up I end up seeing horrible things happening,' Lyra shrieked straight away, 'So don't get pissed off at me!'

Toby was about to retort, when Ally suddenly jumped in-between them and held up her hands, 'Stop it, stop it, stop it! Stop it right now, this is not helping matters in the slightest!'

'Ally's right,' Orion said calmly, 'Look, so we've figured out what's happening, and that's all good, which leaves us with two things left to figure out, how do we control what's happening to us... and most importantly of all... why?'