ERIC VINCENT

THE K VOLUME 1

The meeting

The meeting

Web: http://ericvincent.no-ip.org/

© Eric Vincent 2001. All rights reserved. Every resemblance with having existed, existing or coming situations or characters would be a pure coincidence.

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Since the creation of the universe, the natural mutations never stopped generating new species. The protozoa gave birth to more evolved organisms; the first submarine varieties appeared shortly after. Later, a few daring specimens tempted an incursion on dry land. Score of millions of years passed and another mutation took place, without scientists know really the reason, nor how. In the branch of the primates, a subdivision is born. Some less shaggy beings straightened themselves with the passing of the years, developed the countenance and the capacity of their cranial box, finalized a more and more subtle language. So subtle that appeared of numerous variants. In the same time, other species disappeared from the Earth's surface. Did they have last enough time, did they have become maladjusted or did they degenerate by mistake of inbreeding or by continual weakness? Who knows it? But the fact is there, well in evidence owing our eyes: some species appear and others die. The mammoth disappeared but the elephant survived. How long for? The Neanderthal man disappeared, letting place to the man of Cro-Magnon, ancestor of the modern man. How long for? In the laboratories, the scientists play the sorcerer's apprentice, God the creator. The sheep and other frogs are only the hidden face of a more lucrative activity: to create the perfect human being, the pitiless war machine submitted to the orders, a man not including the least genetic defect, insensible to the pain, to the illness, maximizing the physical performances, programmed to live hundred fifty years. To achieve it, the hazardous experiences must be multiplied endlessly; including infants whose parents will never know that they underwent genetic implants. If the truth explodes one day, it will be denied in block or scientist will advance the medical argument consisting in saving some lives, to justify some acts against nature. Some legal battles will be able to take place but they won't stop the walk of the "progress". What will the survivors become, these poor innocents on which little scrupulous physicians will have inoculated a genetic mixture? A big number among them will be raised by devoted and parents full of love, accepting the child like a test sent by God, not rejecting their difference. Some will have less luck: they will be abandoned to their manipulator in the worse of the cases, to the public aid in the best of the cases. These human beings already exist. Most families evoke the fatality, the lack of luck. The too curious cases are subtracted at the sight of the public, but today, they exist. These are the first mutants, the pioneers of a new generation created by the man. Some appear normal. They only want to live like the other human beings. Unfortunately, people don't let them the choice... In the name of a damned normality! * **

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To disembark in an unknown city to build a new life was not a simple thing. To fill the administrative formalities, to rent an apartment or a room, to assure the lodging, to open a telephone line, to subscribe to gas and electricity, to move in, to achieve the first shopping in the supermarket, to mark his workplace, the journey and the means of transportation to return looked like the fighter's course in every city. We were in the beginning of the 21st century and no one had thought about creating a society specialized in the welcome of a new inhabitant within a city. Martin Lemur would have appreciated the existence of such an enterprise on the place of Poitiers. More than anyone... The chore of the new Poitevin was like a path of cross for him: because of his size, hundred ten centimetres. Martin was dwarf. But there was dwarf and dwarf. Some people affected by dwarfism touched lightly the meter thirty, or even more. His extreme size constituted a particularly heavy handicap. Never mind that! His father, a brilliant inventor, had transmitted him the virus of the creation and the tinkering. Summer like winter, Martin filled his pockets of a stream of gadgets intended to palliate his insufficiencies. Until tonight where his parents had let him in his new apartment, he had been pampered, protected, beloved by them, as rarely a child could have been. Would he have been otherwise if he had not been their lone son? He would never know the answer... Now, in the big studio of the downtown, he should manage by his own means. He should face these inquisitive looks that had come with him during all his education, putting him aside, insulating him from the rest of the world. Since fifteen long years, since the kindergarten, no human being had known how to offer him a treatment on equal terms. The teachers had a similar attitude: what he knew, he had learned it by himself. He had been forbidden of sporty education course because the school administration had estimated that the practice of a sport made him run a danger. After all, why not! The sporty tests kept for the final exam were conceived to penalize people of small size: high jump or length jump, speed race or to throw in forces forbade to him to accomplish the least performance. The swimming would have agreed to him but he didn't look like a speedboat. On the other hand, he would have been all the rage in gymnastics: acrobat, flexible, quick, the Greco-Roman struggle practiced in an independent club of dwarfs had conferred him some advantages. He meant, the throws were badly noted: sportsmen privileged the distance instead of the precision. With him, a javelin didn't pass about twenty meters. In other words, he was far from gleaning some points in this discipline. Yes, but if the maximal note had been offered to the one that would have planted his javelin to ten meters in a target of a fifty centimetres diameter, he would have got thirty points on twenty, reaching undoubtedly the centre of the circle. He always had shown evidence of an extraordinary grant for the precision throw; worse, even, he transformed any object in a dangerous projectile, or even deadly. He would never forget this small plane of paper prepared in class one day of boredom, folded, sharpened and thrown through airs to collapse on the office of a joking pupil whose inkpot flew into pieces. A plane whose nose stayed planted in the tender wood of the desk... Tonight, he had arrived without clutters until the cash desk of the movie theatre called "The Rabelais". Facing the height of the ticket window, he had triggered the opening of his heightening system integrated to hiss shoes thanks to a remote control concealed in an 4

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enormous wristwatch. By way of watch, it was about a computer giving out infrared codes destined to open out the set of the mechanical and electronic gadgets that he carried. The shoes system, it was frankly inspired from the inspector Gadget cartoon. As Ariane Space and the NASA were inspired by science fiction to develop some projects, Martin pricked some ideas in crazy TV series, taking advantage of his inventing talents. Tomorrow, he would start a school degree course in physics and chemistry's university to secure him of the diplomas necessary to the national and why not world recognition! He dreamed to sell his gadgets to whoever would have need of it. After a simple impulse on the dial, he had met in front of the cashier, ridiculing bewilderedly the astonishment provoked by his paraphernalia. A stupendous invention! A simple magnetic flux repulsed or attracted the metallic elements situated between his two soles: the false and the true. He could adjust the flux in order to open out a part or the totality of the metallic pieces fit together. Thus, he sprang in airs to the manner of a switchblade. With a nonnegligible surprise effect! When he penetrated in the movie room, he immediately marked a place isolated from the other spectators. He didn't need to dislocate his hip to climb on an armchair made for standard size men: he raised his feet slightly and let himself fall on the red felt. Of course, in these conditions, it was too low to see the pictures. If a spectator came to seat in front of him, he would embarrass his vision of the movie. However, he was anxious to see this movie based on the famous American comic strips: "The X-Men" These super mutant heroes had built a school for mutants and fought against the Evil for the right to the difference. Their aim, their leitmotif fascinated him. He was a fan of the first hour, a fan of the first teams. He had acquired, for a gold price, the albums older than his birth, of the seventies. He liked the time where there was Phoenix, propertied the powers of the sun, Cyclops, throwing his optic ray, Tornado, mastering the elements, Howler, the flying Irishman able to give out some destructive screams, Colossus, the Russian with the metallic armour conferring him a phenomenal strength, Serval, alias Wolverine, the strange being with a skeleton of metal and sharp claws. The team would not have been complete without his favourite X-Man: Diablo, a hobgoblin with a bluish fur and a German accent, able to abstract himself and to materialize to another place in a cloud of suffers. He liked so much Diablo... Because physically, he was the most unusual, with his blue body, his satanic look and his forked tail. Because he came from a circus, where he had been exhibited like a beast of fair. Diablo was not in the film version: a pity! Tonight, he would know finally if the glimpsed excerpts only put water in the mouth or if they concealed a dark work retracing faithfully the black ambiance of the comic strip. While he observed the advertisers printed on the curtain concealing the white screen abstractedly, a young woman came to sit down by him, only far from a seat. He turned the head as discreetly as possible. He saw her face to half hidden by a scarf covering her cheeks, her nose and her throat. She was of small size for a woman, hardly more than one meter forty-five. For him, it constituted in spite of a whole Everest mount! What surprised Martin, it was the constitution of the young woman. She wore ample clothes but they didn't hide her gauntness. She was extremely weak, as very weakened by an illness. 5

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Martin thought that she didn't weigh heavier than he. Except that he was excessively sinewy whereas she was only bone and skin. She turned the head toward him and told to him: - Good evening! Her voice was weak, nearly inaudible. - Hello! He answered. Fan of science fiction and super heroes? - Yes, she blew. I like the X-Men. I read numerous adventures when I was at... the hospital. - Do you have problems of health? - Regularly. I introduce myself: Viviane Bujol. And you? - Martin Lemur, the concerned person answered, completely dazed. For the first time of his life, a human being questioned him about his identity. Not a common person! A young woman… She sat down not far from him and had spoken with him. Him that nobody noticed! He only saw his brilliant, dreadfully brilliant eyes. - What do you do in your life, Martin? - I begin my first year of physics and chemistry faculty. - Hey well, me, I'm entering in first year of biology faculty. We will sometimes be neighbours! It is nice. - It is nice, he repeated mechanically as if he had seen an angel. - Do you maybe ask some questions about my clothing? She said while lowering the scarf and while revealing surgeon's mask. It is to avoid the contagion. I catch every kind of disease. I resist somehow. - But... the gloves? Is it to avoid to be contaminated while touching the objects or people? - It is about an indispensable precaution... If I touch them, I transmit my illnesses automatically. It can be deadly in some cases. - I see... You can approach since you keep your gloves! Martin's words appeared touching as if she had heard God's speech. Viviane had always been held from afar of whomever, had spent more time in the hospitals being tidy, and observed than in her own house. She had lived in a bubble until her adolescence and had nearly lost of view her parents. They hardly agreed only to pay for her studies, provided to her needs but returned her never visit. Never… She stood some awfully. A strip of young teenagers came to seat in front of the rank of armchairs where was Martin and Viviane. Seeing that he had business with a smaller than him, a big oaf took a shrewd pleasure to kick out two girlfriends of the occupied places and to install himself in company of a pimply stupid other, while laughing of the trick played to the shrimp, according to the expression that he used. - Come on! We are going to choose other places, Viviane proposed. 6

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- No! I never renounce! He admitted while plunging the hand inside his jacket. He came out again two sorts of rubbery pancakes provided with valves and a metallic cartridge appearing to contain gas. - Place it under the buttocks! He added. Viviane executed the gesture while imagining without pain what Martin was going to achieve. He didn't leave therefore ever without a portable heightening system. He fixed the mouthpiece of the cartridge quickly what repulsed the valve. A simple pressure of one second and the young woman met perched on a high cushion of forty centimetres. She dominated the situation very extensively. Martin joined her on the summits allowing them to admire the first pictures of the movie. - I notice that you never are taken to the destitute! - Never, Viviane! My father transmitted me his passion for inventing. Never to renounce is the eleventh command taught by my mother. My parents protected me but they also gave me strength to struggle. I compensate my size by my intelligence and the ruse. Can I ask you a question, Viviane? - Of course. - Do you always have the eyes as brilliant or do you endure a fever? - The both, Martin, the both. I am perpetually sick. My present temperature is about... She consulted her medical watch giving her information about her general state: tension, cardiac rhythm and internal temperature. - I am about forty-two Celsius degrees. - Forty-two? ! Lord! You should be in bed! - Calm down, Martin! I am accustomed. It doesn't make me much anymore. In fact, my temperature can increase well more without I feel the least uneasiness. I can resist everything! - It is surprising and really interesting. So, I guess that you want to study biology to understand your body? - As you will study physical and chemistry to invent and to market some gadgets as the one on which I am seated. - It is exact! Viviane, we both are two cases! The room was suddenly dived in the obscurity. The movie started. They had waited for a long time for the feature film and the computer faking had finally permitted its realization. In the obscurity, a shade slipped itself and stopped at the first met seat. The human being was fascinated by this movie. It was ready to endure the sufferings inflicted by a too elevated resonant volume in the room, in spite of the forcing of a shooting helmet on his ears to attenuate the noise. He came to devour his favourite histories. He waited patiently that his hero of predilection appears: Wolverine, alias Serval: the lone fawn. His skin-deep violence fascinated him. 7

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* ** Curious coincidence, Viviane lived in the same building that Martin. She had moved in two weeks earlier in order to prepare her room. For her, it consisted in installing supplementary glass cabinets and to rob the surrounding pharmacies as well as the pharmacy of the academic hospitable centre of Poitiers to fill them. Martin had been stunned by the quantity of capsules contained behind the windows and the learning of Viviane about their utility, their length of hold, the doses, the medicinal interactions, the contra-indications. She knew how to prepare the precise dosages, enough to make of her a real pharmacist. Her physician's diagnosis was also good: she was proud to discover any pathology at a patient thanks to his symptoms. In front of so much knowledge, Martin wondered if she wanted to become only biologist. She answered hat she was sure to have been the victim of genetic manipulations and that the genetic biology would be the only way that would lead her to the truth. The genetic manipulation... This monstrous practice was current. Martin maybe had been himself the unconscious victim of it... His grants for the throw had something of so supernatural that the explanation of the human genome manipulation was not to exclude. This girl had a conception of the decoration quiet particular. Instead the posters of singers and others television heroes that we could usually found by a young eighteen years old woman, Viviane had papered the walls of her room with watercolours, gouaches and oils representing the bacteria, the microbes and the viruses. Funny artistic taste! After this typically masculine thought, Martin remembered that the decoration of his own room was hardly better. The walls acted as support to display a myriad of plans and his bed was the only domestic concession in the shop of fortune installed on the floor. Viviane was different from the other women and it was what brought him closer to her. She unconsciously felt this sensation of well being with Martin. During a hour, he related her his incurred misadventures at the time of one childhood that he estimated globally happy. He was a happy being, taking systematically the good side of the things. When she had affirmed to him that she would have preferred to live his life rather than hers, he had wondered her why. Because he had a good health, she had answered. - I have a good health today, Viviane, but tomorrow? Tomorrow, a simple flu will maybe kill me while you will survive a virus deadly for the whole population. Your body endure the shock but will stand up, will tame the virus, the bacterium or poison. Imagine you that no one else person could have resisted as well as you! You are exceptional... - Indeed? - Indeed! We both are exceptional. For me, it is less visible. I am champion of Greco-Roman struggle and I am a good inventor. However, I possess another characteristic probably coming of a genetic manipulation. - As me? Which one?

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- My precision. I... can throw any object and transform it in projectile. It reaches its target undoubtedly, if the target is not too far. - A terrific pitcher? For example, if we were prisoners, attached to the bars of my bed, that the order freeing us either would be the key planted in the lock of my door, would you be capable to tinker a harpoon and to catch the key? - Is it a challenge? - It looks like, I mean! Martin stared her with the smile to the lips. He accepted. He took a bug on the office of Viviane and fixed it with the passing of a spool taken in the kit for sewing. He stuck the bug between the nail of his adult right and his inch. With a simple gesture, he projected the improvised fishhook through the room, keeping in the other hand the necessary thread length opened out for the operation. The bug landed directly in the shackle of the key. - Yeah! Viviane blew out, very impressed by the exploit. The tentative was crowned with success but it was necessary that the key came. He pulled slightly in order to block the round part of the bug against metal. Patiently, he pierced the scratch cord until the extremity exercises strength against the key. It turned and he chose this instant to pull suddenly. The given impetus had been sufficiently strong and precise for the key flies in airs in their direction. He stopped its race and blocked it in the palm of his hand. - Lord! You are gifted for this kind of exercise! The young woman admired while shivering, a behaviour that didn't escape the lynx eye of Martin. - Are you cold? - Yes! It is normal! I caught a stump of extremely virulent Asian flu. This one resists many medicines. Reassure you! My mask protects you. If you had caught it, you would have survived about two or three hours, hardly more. It will be the most powerful that never existed. Besides, assimilated once by my organism, I am going to isolate its fastest assets. How to say? In me, it is going to get powerful. I will be capable, in some hours, to reproduce it at will even faster than it can. - As you want? Can you transmit the illnesses that you had in the past? - Yes. It is even my main characteristic and my fatal destiny... I am like a bank of virus, bacteria, venoms, poisons in which I can dig up at will. This flu, for example, after assimilation by my organism, will be able to come out again and contaminate a person in less than one minute. - It is... - Terrifying, I know! - It is not what I wanted to say... - I know, Martin. You had your share of pains, of mockeries, I imagine. However, your parents could tighten you in their arms. Not mine... - I should not have narrated you my family's life. I am confused.

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- No! I have some pleasure to hear cheerful words, filled with joy. I hope to change all this one-day. Who knows? To meet a mutant, like me, that won't be afraid to be contaminated by my germs, to be useful while helping research progress, to serve an aim. - You look too much at the X-Men! - Certainly... But I hope not to remain isolated all my life. Whatever it occurs, tonight was a turn in my life. You are the first person to not to be afraid to speak with me... It is very important. - I return you the compliment and the remark. You know, it is curious! - What? - I have the feeling that we could meet other people. - In this medium-sized city? I have some doubts about it! - It is not certain. I have like a presentiment. - Now that you say it, I can confide a secret. - Which? - In the movie theatre, when the movie started, I felt something. It is delicate to explain... I discern the presence of the bacteria, the viruses, the microbes, as small they are. My nose is a channel for these beats of all kinds. It is also the most sensitive organ than I possess and I am so sensitive that I can recognize human feelings thanks to the body odours cleared by the humans. - Damned! It is interesting! - Indeed! I can affirm, for example, that you are happy in my presence and that you are not afraid. The fear clears a very palpable odour that I learned to recognize with the passing of the years. - I suspect it... - In the room of movies, there was only joy, some very subtle odours of excitation. Except one, suffocating so much the person was reached. - Attack of fear? It was the movies. Certainly very realized but it was not about a horror movie intended to terrorize the spectators. - It was not about fear. A human being endured an intense stress due to the movie. I ignore if it is because one of the protagonists touched him closely, if he identified himself to the story or if the script dove again him in his own existence. He lived a nightmare. - Why didn't he leave? Why did he inflict himself such a torment? - By masochism, by game, by impotence, by desire to repulse a limit, I don't know? There are one thousand and one explanations for this question. - Was he a mutant? - I ignore it... There was yet a curious odour. - Which? - It smelled like coal. - Coal? Did he want to make a barbecue? - It is funny, Martin! No. He suffered. - Did you notice increases of suffering during particular moments? Viviane had not thought to this possibility. It was true that the broadcasts of stress pheromones had known some peaks. During which moments? 10

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- Maybe... But when? I don't know it. I will remember it, surely. - I abused of your sleep time beyond the reasonable for this evening. Let's not forget our respective courses since tomorrow. - Will we meet again? - Of course! What would you say of the academic restaurant? - At the opening, to be... - Calm! They admitted at the same time. Martin left her while laughing and while wishing her a good night and a better health for the following day. Henceforth, it would be a tradition. He would wish him a better health, perfectly knowing that she would stand up systematically. Tonight, the too high walks for him didn't start the rhythm of the climbing. He believed hard as iron to his good star. He met an outstanding being who treated him on equal terms. There would be others, necessarily. It was the exceptional year, the one that would erase the others. Every human being knew a fantastic year in its life, the one where all succeeded, the one that emerged the share and from afar. It would be this one! * ** The sumptuous woman with black, brilliant and curly hair, with the eyes having impetuous darkness, with the blood and defiant mouth, appeared to possess a body sculpted by the hands of Apollon and Aphrodite. Since her apparition, in the amphitheatre, enhancing her skin tanned by a jagged and low-necked quick yellow dress, she had triggered a broadside of hisses of males in rut, outmatching in the boastfulness. In front of this cleanly demonic creature, they felt able to declare their love in Togolese dialect if it was necessary. Martin had attended the stage with fun. The unknown beauty had just been propelled to the rank of muse for the first year of physical and chemistry faculty, incontestably. It contrasted with the welcome that the assembly had reserved for him, the minuscule offshoot of the brood. A remarkable silence had come with his rise of the walks to get settled to the fourth rank. It didn't matter! He could have pursued the ascension until the last rank, by challenge, if it had proven to be necessary. However, he preferred to remain at the outposts, not ignoring that some teachers possessed the awful habit to write down paws of fly on the blackboards. It was not a will about saving the chalk but rather an action destined to cream the assembly by the bottom before the partial exam of Christmas... Martin comforted himself quickly while seeing that his arrival had not triggered as much hilarity as the one of a young man emerging in the premises a helmet on the head. Not any helmet, but... a helmet for shooting! The hilarity tended to make panic more him and he was close to go back the same way. Martin observed him. The young man trembled, avoiding desperately the looks of the other students. He didn't leave his helmet. Dazing! With such equipment, he would not hear much 11

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to the teacher's speech that got settled. He had arrived in last. Like... Like the human being that Viviane had detected in the movies. Could he be the same person? He was only to some metres of him. Like the young beauty arrived a few minutes earlier. Just before the course started, she decided to change of seat. While walking, she marked a light pause by the type with the helmet. She whispered him something to the hollow of the ear and moved away of him under his astonished look. What could she have confessed him so that his attitude changed so radically? He didn't shiver anymore; he dared to raise the eyes toward the students, the professor, the blackboard and his mysterious benefactress. Martin couldn't believe it. She came to seat herself rightly next to him. He internally thanked the Lord to send him a vision as tasty at his sides. Finally, he wondered how he could study with a so perfect creature close to him. He ended up convincing himself that this arrival was rather the work of the Devil that wished to test him in these first hours of study. Worse, even! The devil woman sent him a very fresh Ultrabrite smile and honestly glaring that he was not close to forget. He believed to discover a murderous glance. She opened a folder and took a packet of virgin leaves. She plunged her hand in her student's kit and took out again a cartridge of Parker trademark black ink that she aimed to Martin. - Thank you! The last one said. But I have what it is necessary today! It is the first day of return. - It could be useful! She annotated while seizing a ballpoint pen and while beginning to take some notes. Martin didn't immediately achieve what occurred. Little by little, he understood. The professor had just taken first, hardly his file. The young woman took some notes before even that he doesn't open the mouth. Then, Martin was taken by a doubt. He tempted to write down the name of the professor and the date of the day on his notebook. Nothing availed. His feather pen refused to deliver the least black ink drop. He unscrewed the lodging of the reserve. There was a cartridge but it was deficient. Entirely dry! He replaced it by the one offered by his neighbour who scraped like a frantic. The teacher started his course. By curiosity, Martin threw a look over the shoulder of the young woman. The beginning corresponded word for word to the lecturer's words! She stopped her writing and told to Martin while fixing him with this devastating look: - My name Gwendoline Amoros and I am a mutant. My friends call me "Gipsy", in reference to my Bohemian origins. I don't have only a physical, I also have a brain and I am the pride of all my clan. As for your question on your success to the exams, the answer is yes but you suspected a few of them because you will be the most brilliant regimental adjutant of promotion that this faculty knew in its history. End of the interview for the moment, appointment to the canteen with the other! She had announced that the interview was finished and Martin didn't want to contest this affirmation. But who were the others she had spoken of? How did she know that he had to 12

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meet Viviane in the academic restaurant? How was she able to declare that he would succeed in the exams, in the most brilliant conditions? She had given the answer: she was a mutant. Were the soothsayers the subject of genetic research? Why not... The inventor saw what advantages the army would have withdrawn while possessing a soothsayer: announcements of the enemy's movements, detection of the submarines position and other secret weapons, revelation on the reality of the destructions undertaken, denunciation of the traitors... These motives justified research and the manipulations in the DNA sequences. A question stayed in suspense: what did she make here, at his sides? Did she provoke him conspicuously while displaying her anticipatory powers, of divination under his nose? Did she know something that he ignored? He was in a hurry to pursue the interview. * ** Gwendoline had shortened the presentations. She had unpacked the life of Viviane and Martin in broad daylight, showing evidence of an extraordinary glibness. A glibness that a chauvinist writer would have made to qualify typically feminine early but the author of these words being by extremely talkative nature in friendly or domestic company, he would have made himself cut the tong rather than to utter such a cloth of lies. Viviane laughed of good heart behind her protective veil allowing him to nourish herself. She contained herself as much that possible not to choke herself with her meat and her vegetables. This Gwendoline was hallucinating of realism. She told the misfortunes as if she had lived them truly. She didn't dry up of anecdotes also concerning Martin. Such a grant of divination curled the perfection. He irritated a young man invading their table guests without the least hindrance nevertheless. He threw while putting his tray: - She presented you the nice face of her powers! Did you speak them of the dark side, darling? - Listen to me, Terror, you don't frighten with your sleights of hand, your small measly disguises and your speech of gigolo of the kindergarten! - What compliments! I appreciate, coming of you! Patience, my beauty, I will know soon what is your weak point and you will crack! You will be mine! - Dream always, hooligan of second zone! - I adore this girl! He declared with an amused tone. The funniest, it is that she is crazy of me but she doesn't dare to confess it. It will come in time and hour, baby! You will have the fear and you will take refuge in my bed... Ah! Ah! He exclaimed while leaving the table. - Who is this guy? Martin asked for. - Thierry Mizar. I met him in the train, last night. He is a playboy imagining he is irresistible. - He is a pretty boy, Viviane noticed. - Yeah... But he uses his power to charm and I don't like it. - His power? Martin wondered. - He has the grant to read in the frights of the soul and to take the awful appearance to the eyes of the victims. They panic; they believe to live a true nightmare and dive in his arms since the stop of the visions. He seems to be also capable to take any identity. It is a mutant 13

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who abuses his powers and that doesn't have any morals, no ethics. He brags about to have hundreds of conquests. I apparently antagonized him in his fantastic numbering. - Do you resist his grants? Martin quizzed. - Yes! Divination offers a resistance of mind, a particular protection. - And this dark side, what is it? - My predictions always achieve themselves, since they are plausible. If it is plausible that a human being has an accident, he will have this accident. Even though he had to not have some. - Do you influence the future? - Yes... Martin and Viviane remained dumbstruck. It appeared inconceivable. How could divination turn into destiny crossing, deviated? How to require a proof without danger? Martin had an idea. - Could you imagine that the electric meters stop because it is plausible that the electric installation is too weak to support the intensity of the ovens at full power? - Of course! She said. The electric meters are going to stop... now! The room was immediately dived in the semi-obscurity maintained by one rainy day. The electricity only came back after one minute: at the precise instant when Gwendoline declaimed it. Then, she added that Martin and Viviane were not at the end of their discoveries in this day. She knew some more that she didn't tell to some. She asked for the patience. She was not anxious to influence the destiny. * ** The three students stared themselves at the same time: the refectory was nearly empty at 11 30 but something or someone generated some vibrations in the soil of the building. These tremors intensified in strength for lack of to make it in number. They quickly got the answer. A guy high like a mountain, large like a factory of Norman cabinets, thick like as the layer of snow on the Everest, appeared in top of the staircase accompanied by a young woman with redhead and short hair. - This man's size is stupendous! Gwendoline annotated. How much does he measure? How much does he weigh? Lord! I would not like to put the hand in the wallet to dress him or to feed him. - This is Hubert Tannenbaum! Martin unveiled. - Do you know him? Viviane blew out. - No. I only thumbed the "Book of the Records." It is about the biggest man of all times. He measures close to two meters ninety and his weight oscillates between three hundred fifty and four hundred kilograms! His family doesn't make pain to see, to what one says! The mother is the smallest person, with two meters two. The other family's members spread 14

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between this size and two meters fifty. Except him that is again bigger and even heavier. He belongs to a clan of lumbermen exploiting a domain in the Vosges forest. His strength is stupendous. According to the legend, he would be capable to carve a fir with only hands. I didn't have the opportunity to view the report achieved by the regional television on his clan. According to my sources, one sees some exploits of this man. He took part at the yearly competition of the world strongest man and he won it four times. To give you an idea, they must achieve uprisings of stones weighing more than hundred kilograms, of the castings of tree trunks, of the porters of car, of the tractions of wagons. - Impressive! The young women told at the same time. - This is also impressive! Look at the trays meal that he is preparing! He is going to spend a fortune. Good blood! He has just ordered two whole chickens and at least three kilograms of potato mash! - He must follow a regime, Gwendoline joked. Considering his stoutness, it is nearly insufficient to hold one half-day. I supervise with attention my waist measurement while staying up to ever to clear the rod of the two thousand calories per day, while actively practicing the jogging and abdominal muscling, I guess that this boy swallows at least twenty thousand calories per day... - At least, Gwendoline, definitely! His food and sporty regime fundamentally defers yours! - And of mine, also! Viviane added. Sport is rigorously forbidden for me. Food is safety hazard, especially because I develop some allergies spontaneously. Hey! Did you notice the young woman who accompanies him? Her tray doesn't generate the melancholy... - Ah yes! Martin agreed. There is hardly to eat! On the other hand, there is only wine. Hey! Did you see what I see? The young woman with short hair had just gotten settled hardly in company of Hubert Tannenbaum at a neighbouring table that she eradicated two flasks of colourless liquid of her purse. No mark indicated the nature of the content but Martin, Gwendoline and Viviane would have bet that it was about alcohol. She used two big glassfuls, mastering her gesture badly, of her trembling like a patient reached by the Parkinson's disease. At first view, she was drunken, round like a tail of shovel! Besides, her gait badly insured, as well as her difficulties to head in the refectory and to reach her table, confirmed the validity of this hypothesis. She was intoxicated in her gestures but not in her head. She normally discussed with Hubert, as if her stomach was empty. Unconsciously, the three new friends were quiet approaching the two newcomers. They listened to the conversation, of indiscreet manner, at the lookout of an exploit narration undertaken by Hubert Tannenbaum. At a precise moment, Hubert and his guest perceived some. He stopped to speak and turned toward them: - Does our conversation interest you? - Yes! Martin said. - Who is speaking? - Me, answered the dwarf. - You, the shrimp? What do you want?

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Martin slipped on the disagreeable remark and pursued: - To be introduce with the strongest man of the world, to verify if it is a legend! - A legend? Hey, minus, do you look for me? - No! I guess merely that your reputation maybe was usurped! - Usurped? ! Hubert screamed while straightening himself and while hitting the fist on a neighbouring table that, the poor wretch, flew into pieces. - Apparently not! Martin noticed while noting that a flick of the giant had flattened the furniture. - Calm down, Hubert! The mysterious red-haired operated. It is not the pain to crush him. Everybody knows that you are unbeatable. - Thank you, Helen but I am anxious to remind to Tom Pouce who is the champion of the world all categories! The giant of the Vosges increased more and more. He tempted to catch Martin by the collar of shirt to send him against a wall to some meters from there or to twist him as easily that a rod of iron. The dwarf, quick as the lightning, escaped the large hands as paddles. He slipped through between the tables and the chairs to reach a space cleared to the bottom of the refectory. Hubert followed him without the shade of a hesitation, persuaded not to need a pair of seconds to flatten the gnat. He rushed on the student midget format with the firm intention to reduce him at the state of pancake thanks to the advantage procured by his four hundred kilograms. Martin avoided the assault without pain while throwing himself to soil and while rolling on himself. Thus, he created an ambush on which Hubert stumbled. The giant of Vosges spread at full length on the rough tiling of the cafeteria. Grumbling as much as a bear, he took several seconds to stand up. It was incontestable that this last was at ease in vertical position that in horizontal position. He changed tactics, advancing slowly toward Martin to drive back him in an angle of the room, then while executing trolls destined to hack him. The manoeuvre succeeded; at one time, the smallest was stuck. The giant benefited from this to throw his fists in direction of the dwarf: a technical gesture little convenient insofar as the adversary's head was not located at the usual height, or even slightly underneath but frankly a good sixty centimetres down below! The fists only met the concrete of the wall that crumbled repeatedly. Hubert grinned somewhat, the extremely resistant matter being far from looking like butter, even for strength of the nature. Martin chose to escape while passing merely under his adversary's legs: a real scratch viaduct! The other immediately turned around, showing evidence of a speed enough out norm for his monstrous size. He received the dwarf's feet in full stomach and moved back sufficiently to rebound in the wall situated behind his back. A counter-effect made him topple then forward and Martin benefited from this to place a hold midway between the struggle and the judo that finished to send to waltz the giant on the ground. In less than one minute, it was the second time that he bit the dust. He imagined a favourable exit of the fight at the end of about twenty seconds! 16

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It was not anything of it. The small man put a term to the fight while seizing the arms of the giant. One very applied key generated an intolerable pain, the time to tie the roast with the help of a stringing extremely end pulled from the miraculous jacket. Before even to have pronounced a sigh, Hubert saw his feet hindered in the same way with an identical material. - Devilish dwarf! Don't imagine keeping a bulldozer like me with tips of string? I break some handcuffs to naked hands, my pal! Then... Ah! Ouch! What is this thing? - Some Nylon thread, Martin commented while returning his adversary tied up to soil. This one is used for fishing big pieces. As much to say that it is extremely resistant. Pay attention! Its extreme sharpness makes of it a real trencher if you tempt to freed yourself. In other words, this tip of string is going to refrain indefinitely and will cut you the wrists and the ankles if you try to break it. - Name of God! How did you do? No one ever beat me! - I will explain if you stay calm. - OK! I am a good player and I admit my defeat. After these words, Martin conducted the liberation. Hubert kept word and sat down at the table of Viviane and Gwendoline, accompanied with his redhead girlfriend. Without forgetting his numerous trays that he spread all around him. He began to feast joyously and slipped between two gulps: - Go there! Explain me the inexplicable! We have enough time; I need around one hour to swallow my ration of the noon. Oh! I forgot my duty! I introduce you Helen Duval, student in first year of economy, like me. - Delighted! The other replied. - This is Viviane and Gwendoline. I am Martin. And I give you the explanation, as promised. I am amateur wrestler. I was champion of France in my category. Besides, I am inventor. I always go for a walk with a heap of useful gadgets on me because it is often necessary to me to fill the handicaps bound to my size. Therefore, speed and ingenuity are my two main facets. I never underestimate a person or the extent of his resources. I analyse the situation permanently to see how I can take advantage of it. - In bulk, you are shrewder than me, I am stupid a man without brains that speeds along like a bull without thinking and it is for this reason that you beat me? - Not quite... You thought while changing tactics and while tempting to block me in a recess. Only, you didn't persevere in this way. A pity! It was probably the unique way to defeat me. To wait that I acted to counterattack instead of attacking! You are slow, I am fast. I played therefore on this difference. I didn't think about my strengths, I thought about your weaknesses. The nuance is there. - Could I lose only facing you? ! - Not necessarily. We have all facing us a person more capable to beat us. For example, Viviane can beat each of us. - What? How? Excuse me, Viviane, but you seem so... sick, so weak...

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- Exactly, she admitted. I am so sick that I can contaminate you with any virus. I absolutely catch all: the bacteria, virus and microbes. But also venoms, poisons! I transmit them at will while multiplying their strength by one thousand. - It is insane! Could you palm off to me a flu, which would floor me in some hours? - In some minutes. - Shit! It is crazy! Where do you come from? And you, Gwendoline, you know how to achieve some things in this kind? - Not in this kind but in another. - You are mutants... Helen admitted. Martin and Hubert, your size doesn't have anything natural. Viviane probably underwent the most insane genetic manipulations. Who of other again, to part you and me, did undergo some madness? - You also? Martin asked for. Which? - Didn't you notice anything, Martin? She told while lowering the eyes in direction of her tray where the liquid dominated. I am fundamentally dependent of the alcohol since my birth. My parents are scientists. They confessed to have practiced some experiences on the foetus that I was before the birth. They modified me so that my body requires massive doses of pure alcohol every day. What you see on the tray only represents a weak left of my daily hold. My cerebral resistance to the secondary effects is exceptional but my gait is assured badly. On the other hand, I benefit from an extraordinary luck belonging to the people in state of insobriety. It never happens to me anything troublesome; I avoid all problems, the obstacles. I have... as... of the score of lives standby. Another ominous consequence, it is my breath. I am obliged to speak from afar and the tight teeth because my breath is if alcoholised that I would make explode an alcoholmeter. - Would it ignite if you approached a flame? - Definitely! You would have right to a throws efficient flame! - Impressive! So-called therefore! Between Hubert and his legendary strength, Viviane and her paralysing viruses, Helen and her burning breath, me and my gadgets as well as my grants to throw any object in any target, Gwendoline and her grants of prediction more that realists, we are a sacred skewer of individuals not like the other! - It is true! They last to admit in choir. - Do you believe that other people exist, other students as us? - You want to say... of the mutants? Helen whispered. - Hey! I don't belong to your category, Hubert added. - Are you really sure? Gwendoline asked for. Don't you remember the accident of your fifteen years? - My fifteen years? How… - How? I know it, that's all. I know that you have been taken involuntarily in the crossfire of a fusillade between two rival strips of dangerous men. What occurred when the five bullets reached your abdomen? Why did they rebound on you? Do you imagine that your greasy and elastic skin didn't undergo a mutation to don this incredible characteristic? You are a mutant, Hubert. Like us! Like me who can influence the future insofar as it is possible. Like me that can announce you the rupture of the teeth of your fork... now!

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The instrument of food broke on the plate of mash of potatoes, causing the astonishment and the admiration of the other guests. - I believe that I won't never be used to it, Gwendoline! Martin said while smiling. It is so surprising. Do you have the answer to my question, after all? Do other mutants exist? - You met one a few time ago. - Thierry Mizar? Of course! He creates chimeras bound to the fears of each person. It is a mutant. - I am not afraid of nothing at all! The giant of the Vosges trumpeted. - Reassure you... If you possess in you a hidden fear, he will find it. - A guy who exploits some fears is not very healthy, Helen noticed understandably. I doubt that he can integrate our group. - It is also my opinion, Martin added. However, his talents would be precious. - Precious? Viviane said. Precious for what? What kind of idea do you have? To form a sort of club? - Precisely! - I see the kind, Hubert laughed. The club of the specimens, of the lit guys, of the beastly of fair! - Some cases, able to exploit, together, their grants to protect the citizens, to send the rabble always more numerous in jail. - A parallel police? And why not the army twice or a militia of the National Front ! - Free to you to adhere to the idea or no, Hubert. Unfortunately, the mutants are a little or badly accepted. To form a team acting against the Evil would be a positive thing for people like us. To show the example, to open the way, to welcome the mutants and to help them to be aware of their specificities! It is important. - You take yourself for the X-Men! You watch too many movies! - In fact, I saw the movie. I am not the only one. The idea to create an association of different beings skimmed me; it is true! Think to my proposition! Take the time... - Which name would we take? The X is already taken! And I vote against the P (pee), too delicate! They laughed without restraint. Except Gwendoline that was content with smiling. She already knew what idea germinated in Martin. Since several days, even before she met him. She knew that they should battle to include Thierry Mizar, this ignoble womaniser, in their ranks. She knew who would be their natural chief. But all this was nothing in comparison of the major difficulty that waited for them: to tame a mutant completely apart, with glaring talents, a being that it was necessary to make topple the side of the good definitely if they didn't want to set their group under danger. An indispensable presence to carry through their first mission against a newborn enemy. She had prepared the land and didn't ignore the role that she should play in the team to allow the arrival of this being. She had to succeed; otherwise, they would be swept in two times, three movements... She asked silently the Lord while Hubert gave a living example of the size of his legendary appetite while swallowing some bewildering quantities of food.

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* ** The redhead and gigantic moon rose on the horizon. Its ashen gleam mingled with the orange colors of the lamps staking out the way leading to the downtown. A young man turned him the back, leading of a hurried step betraying a behavior of an ever anguished or paranoiac man. The night had gotten settled since one half-hour about and he didn't like it. The obscurity dragged with her a cortege of troubling shades, a cohort of noises, sighs and crunches too frightening for a being as sensitive as him. In spite of it, he had not hesitated to stay in the library of the campus until closing. He was anxious above all to succeed his first year in faculty of physics, acoustic option. To succeed this year and the following, until the doctorate! He only had this obsession in head since he was in age to hold a pencil between the hands. All this, all these efforts only had an aim: to become doctor in acoustics to create some efficient anti-noise gates, to track the decibels in their last stopping. Sebastian Roger endured a deeply handicapping infirmity since his birth: the sensitivity to the noise. A hyper sensitivity making the torture inflicted by a concert of hard rock look a banal conversation, spitting its stream of decibels on hordes of tattooed long-haired shaken by electric tensions and agglutinated in front of loud speakers high like buildings. The action of the noises on his organism forced him to wear a visible and ungainly helmet of shooting permanently. Only this cumbersome object attenuated the devastating effects of the decibels and brought back the normal sound to an acceptable level by him. However, some audio sources existed that he could not fight: the planes, the horns of mist, the powerful Horns, the electro hammers and other contraptions of terracing hurt his eardrums with an extraordinary violence. These nuisances pushed him to grant a vital importance to his studies. He would complete his lessons with a personal research on Internet, in the books, every time he would have the opportunity of it and would agree some rare moments of calm, like during the previous evening. Ah! Last night... In spite of the cotton balls and the protective helmet, he had endured one thousand sufferings to watch "X-Men" in the movie theatre. Because of these dirty surrounding walls ten thousand times too powerful to restore the sound. However, the script, the pictures, the story, his favorite characters taking life on the screen, all it was worthwhile to suffer. At least, there was his fetish hero. He was even the central character of the story: Logan, alias Wolverine, lone man with the indestructible skeleton, with the claws of shooting metal when the action required it, when the fear ordered it. A lone being, like Sebastian: without past, without identity. Sebastian came out of an orphanage organization. He absolutely ignored all about his parents who wanted to keep their anonymity. His personal investigations had failed systematically, coming up against the powerful state-controlled administration, the D.A.S.S., mute like Corsica facing the terrorist attempts. He didn't know anything, except that he was probably a mutant whose parents had gotten rid since the birth.

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He had grown under the gibes of his misfortune mates. In the orphanage, the children were not tender between them, lacking parental reference marks to learn the respect of others. When one among them revealed some weaknesses, the other members of this caste rejected him and made a scapegoat of him, the humiliating alternatively, confining him in the solitude, the distressing of all imbecile nicknames and covering him with servitude. It had always been some so until his sixteen springs, until... the "accident". One evening, they had come with the firm intention to steal from him some plates of chocolate, his unique greed, and his passion. In the obscurity, they had sprung and had maintained him firmly in his bed, putting their hands on his mouth so that he didn't alert the supervisors by his screams. Panicky, he had tetanised himself. Not a simple tetany of fear, no. Something different. His muscles had gotten the consistence of the concrete, of steel or even of the diamond. His aggressors, seeing it, had tempted to stun him. Uselessly! One among them had broken a half-a-dozen of phalanxes while hitting to the head. Sebastian had struggled suddenly, swinging his adversaries to soil. These last had stood up quickly and had committed the unique mistake of their life: to want to insist, not to understand that they had to stop imperatively now before reaching the point of no return. They had rushed again on Sebastian, alone in his disorganized sheets. They could not have seen that he had opened the mouth to shout without any sound escapes of his vocal cords. It didn't have an importance anymore: they had fallen backwards. The teenager had taken refuge under the covers, terrorized. He had recovered the sleep about one hour later. It was only the following day that he saw the four extended bodies on the tiling sallow, stone dead, a net of blood escaping of their ears and their nostrils. He had not understood how he could have committed such a crime. He only knew that he was responsible of it. Now, he spun to quick pace in a badly illuminated street leading straight ahead to the jail. This place palmed off to him the goose flesh. In spite of the port of the helmet, he discerned the least noise, the least crunch in his environment. The continual and deafening stream of vehicles parading on the boulevard no far from there didn't change anything there: it didn't stop Sebastian's auditory function from functioning at full capacity. He yet made all necessary efforts to concentrate on the marvelous memories let by the session of movies of the eve. Nothing availed. He discerned some voices. They came from the city of the Dolmen, to about fifty meters from there. He also heard other voices coming of the low of the street that he borrowed. Some voices enlivened from laughter, more reassuring than the previous. Those exits of the Dolmen were accompanied by something else: some gasps. Some walkers taking their dogs, very presumably! He precipitated the step, reaching the pace of the specialists of the walk, with their dislocation of the hip so characteristic, practically. He felt that he had to make it, that he had to get ready to escape them. What did it remain as exit? To turn to the level of the jail and to join the boulevard certainly louder but better illuminated and more securing? To run to the meeting of the group going back up the street, less hostile according to the stamp of their voices? He didn't know anymore. He glued himself in the framing of a door and asked the 21

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sky that the other don't see him or disappear as by enchantment. It was not necessary that they see him. Especially not! He was afraid of them. Too late! The guys had noticed a shade slipper himself in the obscurity and the look as well as the silhouette unaccustomed of the mysterious ghost intrigued them. They reached the angle of the street and fell him over to arm abridgment. - Hey guys! Look at this dunce! He goes for a walk with a helmet! Hello the pace! Hey! I'm talking to you! You answer me or I release my dog to see if you run more quickly than he! The others guy laughed thanks to the doubtful jokes of the first and excited their watchdogs in the perspective to hire them in a race tasty pursuit. Sebastian didn't answer, afraid by the looks enlivened of the worse intentions of the attack dogs. He trembled like a leaf, his muteness accentuating the irritation of the masters and animals. At the same instant, the group going back up the street arrived to the height of the attackers and their victim. It was about Gwendoline, Hubert and Helen, coming back of one evening past with Martin and Viviane. They joined their respective dwellings situated on the campus, in academic rooms for the two girls and in a studio close to the faculty for Hubert (his size forbidding him the academic residence forever with rooms of nine square meters and beds of hundred-ninety centimeter long out of seventy of large...). Evidently, the giant was tempted to interfere between the weakest and the three bandits armed of their four-legged mates. To defend the weakest was part of his ethics henceforth and would be soon official within a group of which to define the by-laws, the armories and the declared ambitions had. - Let him in peace! The giant of the Vosges squalled. - What you do have, you? Do you want that our dogs eat your balls and wreck your girlfriends after? - Do you imagine maybe that your waterers of trees can impress me? You clear the land, you and your pals! Otherwise, I guarantee to you that you are going to do a long and painful stay in the hospital! As for your dog, it will finish in flesh to sausage to feed its fellows... - Let it down, Hubert! Gwendoline intervened as recognizing the victim. - What? - He is able to defend himself alone. Sebastian, terrorized, lost a part of his apprehension while hearing these words. He turned the head slightly to stare the person who had pronounced them. He recognized the young woman of the student amphitheatre. That one even that had blown him to the ear, with an infinite gentleness: - Don't have fear, Sebastian. They won't ridicule you when they will know to what point you are stupendous, to what point you possess the grants surpassing them all. They are jealous, that's all! There are many reasons for it!

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She had gotten settled a little farther, close to a small fellow high as three apples and with a nice face. She had passed like an angel, letting in her wake like a magic dust rain. A sort of fairy bell, in more beautiful and in more magic. Her words had acted like a powerful antidepressant whose action had been unfortunately of short length. It was she. But why devil suggested her that he manages alone whereas a giant high like a skyscraper perfectly capable to crush his aggressors, canines also, of a simple flick accompanied her? Why? What did she know? He crossed the look of the Pittbulls cleaning out rage and madness. He believed to read the hate in their dark eyes. He believed to understand their aggressiveness in their barks. Yes, they wanted to bite him, to slaughter him until death follows. The continuation, he couldn't explain it. He gave out a sort of scream mingling the plaintive moan, the clean bark and an inaudible sound for the human ear. The watchdogs immediately quit their demonstration of aggressiveness. - Watch! Gwendoline annotated. The beasts turned around toward their masters, with an interrogatory air. An air asking if it was necessary to pursue their grumbling or not. Facing their masters exhorting them to more of resentment, the animals reacted in a completely unexpected way: they showed the teeth... to the guys holding the leashes! A last onomatopoeia of Sebastian and they agreed to throw themselves on new objectives: their precedents commanders! The bandits last to release the chains and other stringing to take off as rabbits while letting escape of the broadsides of oaths. Hubert remained some the dangling arms, at a time disappointed not to have rubbed the ears of the bandits and at a time amazed by the stage, which he had just attended. When he was able to deliver words, it was to say: - I don't believe some my eyes! He... speaks to the dogs! It is hallucinating! I need an explanation about the achievement of such a prodigy! - No, Gwendoline cut dryly. Let him... He needs to be alone, for the meantime. Joining the gesture to the speech, she took him the arm and dragged him from across on the sidewalk. Sebastian, always sheltered on the step of the door, looked at them to move away. He saw the young woman distinctly to address him a friendly sign before disappearing out of his view. Why did she have let him alone, as he had hoped internally for it? Why did she have spoken with a low voice? Was this a pure luck or did she have guessed, thanks to the helmet that he carried in all circumstances, that he was ear sensitive? Why did he feel confident as soon as he heard the words of the young woman? He felt an incomprehensible well-being for the second time of the day and it coincided with the vision and the audition of the unknown term. Her beauty... Lord! She was so beautiful, what the nature had been generous with her. Her beauty was... animal... feline, more precisely. He didn't ignore that the cats and other members of this family possessed innate talents to hypnotize their preys, like the snakes. Did 23

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she exercise a variety of hypnosis on him? Considering the state of beatitude in which he was dived to each of their meetings, he agreed that the hypothesis was not ridiculous. She was different, visibly. As him... And what about the others? The redhead woman had not opened the mouth. Nothing in her pace indicated that she was different. Set to part the fact that she walked amiss as if she was intoxicated. On the other hand, the giant that his benefactress had named "Hubert", was not unknown and took the plain honestly. He had recognized him immediately: it was about Hubert Tannenbaum, the strongest and biggest man of the world. A guy able to uproot a young fir to naked hands, according to the legend and to carve it at will of the same way! It was her honor to carry him help. The situation appeared effectively desperate to the eyes of any person: a young middle constitution man, scared, facing three strong men and their mad dogs. He questioned his capacities to find a solution facing this problem: Sebastian also doubted some. He had remembered that he had often been capable to communicate with animals while reproducing a number important of their screams and signals, thanks to particular vocal cords, faithfully. He ignored what had been the action of the scientists on his person whereas he was again only a simple foetus of several cells and he knew even less of them on their deep incentives; he only knew that they "had tinkered" his eardrums and his vocal cords to the point to confer them a range of broadcast and receipt of active frequencies of the infra-sounds to the ultrasonic sounds. He could capture any frequency, including the military and navy frequencies, and even some stations of radio in FM. He also had the grant to reproduce these sounds as he had heard them. Thus, he had had fun merely to ape his professors in the school, imitating them to perfection. It was the only side advantageous and funny of his mutation, of the genetic manipulation of which he had been the stake. Otherwise, for what was the rest, he lived it like an infernal handicap. He took his path without shaving the walls as usual. He had taken confidence in himself. Arrived once at the bottom of the street, he joined the luminous but loud boulevard. The martyrdom restarted. The deafening noise, the resonant aggressions of the car motors, of the unforeseeable Horns. The terrestrial hell! * ** The weak voice acted like a caress. For the first time of his life, a normal sound was pleasant. This voice came from his desk neighbor in the library. She didn't express herself particularly discreetly; the high-level being was usually proscribed in this place but he hardly blew. Frankly brilliant! While the young beauty, whom he had made the acquaintance briefly three days ago forced herself to modulate the volume, this puny pale girl seemed unable to scream. To her pace, he guessed that she endured numerous and varied weaknesses. He only had to let the sounds invade him to hear the throbbing of her heart and her breathing. "My God! Her heart beats to hundred forty! When she breathes, she hisses like a pan times!" He noticed silently in silence. "She is sick!" 24

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The young woman rose when she saw a group of students entering in the main room. There was the unavoidable giant of the Vosges, the red-haired of the other evening, a dwarf that he had noticed repeatedly in the amphitheatre and the marvelous brunette with the so bewitching look. They took refuge in the basement, being anxious visibly to meet out of the view of the other students. For what mysterious reason? To work together? No, surely not. The giant and the redhead didn't belong to the promotion of students in faculty of physics. Nor the patient. Then? Advanced by the curiosity, he rose and decided to fit together them the step to a respectable distance. Another type arrived in whirlwind and descended stairs four at a time. He failed to jostle Sebastian to the passage, not worrying of people across his path. He was the kind beautiful youngster, trusting his person, dressed a lot of fashion, very connected. Student's style to drive a GT car, paid and insured by dad and mom. Sebastian approached timorously and listened. He perfectly distinguished the dwarf's nasal voice. - Well! I am very happy that everybody could come. As we know it all, we have them... particular grants... if can say it. About this subject, I can make a fast summary of these grants so that each among us is conscious of the capacities of the other. Then, let's start with the young women! Helen has a constant need of alcohol. She possesses a swayed gait that allows her to avoid the obstacles and the traps. She benefits little from an extraordinary luck and her breath is flammable. I thought about the plan of a light helmet that would permit to exploit this characteristic. Viviane possesses standby or even an incalculable number of virus, bacteria, microbes, venoms that she can transmit at will by simple contact, by the way of airs when they have the capacity of it. Gwendoline foresees the future, can even modify it if it is plausible and masters hypnosis. Let's pass to the gentlemen! Hubert is extremely strong. The projectiles, for most of them, rebound on his skin. Thierry can know every being's fears and can persuade that he embodies this fear truly. Finally, myself, I am gifted enough in struggle, I invent some gadgets but I am especially a pitcher of objects able to transform whatever in weapon and to make fly to every stroke. There are for the presentations! You are conscious of our individual possibilities. Now imagine what our strength would be if we constituted an united, coordinated group, fighting against the crime or acting in cases of natural disasters... We would be an alternative to police's strengths or to the first-aid workers. We would tempt to rally other mutants, like us, in order to avoid that they don't topple in the crime, of the bad side of the gate. - Do you intend to play a remake of the X-Men? Thierry laughed at. - Why not? Martin retorted. Their aim is laudable and their intentions are pacific. - We speak of a comic strip, there! We swim in full delirium! - Not of the all! The mutants are a palpable reality, even though we are far from uniting features as raving as those of our famous models. Each of us is above average a strength. Together, we would be capable of prodigies! - Stop your nonsense, the dwarf! I glue you the fear of the century when I want, my pal! When I want, I put a blue fear to all members of your pathetic meeting of sorcery! 25

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- Really? Try on Gwendoline! - OK! It is the exception! But I am two or three times stronger than she. Nothing stops me from sending him a pie in the head and to stun her! - First, it would not be very elegant with a young woman! Then, you forget that she can play hypnosis and that she can modify the future, your environment. In truth, here, each of us can be beaten hands down by another person. - What? Everybody puts you a steeping, to you, the runt! - Ask therefore Hubert... - He defeated me, the last of the family of lumbermen admitted. - It is insane! I don't believe there! How would you have lost? - He has some gadgets and he is awfully fast. A real elusive eel! - Shit! But then... Gwendoline is the most powerful of us all. Since she can modify the future, she can beat all members of this aid. - It is exact, the concerned person confirmed. But the team is not complete. - Really? Martin said, persuaded to have united all mutants of his knowledge. Who misses? Do you know another mutant? - Yes... He is not far. He hides himself, by shyness. Sebastian... Show yourself... Don't be afraid to join us, you don't have anything to fear. On the contrary, you are welcome. You will be in security by us. The young man agreed to unveil himself while browsing the last walks of the staircase separating him of the basement. He showed the tip of his nose as if he was bewitched literally by the voice of Gwendoline. The other members stared him with curiosity and interest. Gwendoline offered him a radiant smile in manner of welcome. He felt to push some wings. The wings of an angel descended on the Earth. He discerned the swash of the tail of siren swimming in the ocean, a charming and charming siren. He dared to appear to six unknown faces. However, he couldn't avoid the gibes of the service boor, Thierry. - It is the other stupid guy that goes for a walk the whole time with gunsmith's helmet on the ears! - Thierry, Martin intervened, you keep your disagreeable remarks for you. If our friend wears a helmet, it is because he possesses an extremely valid reason to do it. - Precisely! Gwendoline added. I introduce you Sebastian Roger. He studies acoustics. He is able to discern a very extended frequency range and to reproduce them. That explains that he must wear this helmet because his ears are very sensitive. The resonant volume afflicts him intensely; he must protect himself therefore thus. I suggest you therefore to express you in a low voice in his presence in order to not to embarrass him. - OK! Is he your champion, my beauty? Thierry litigated. I don't need to study in the National Administration School or in Saint-Cyr to know that if I persuade him that I am a loudspeaker of excessive size, he is going to urinate in his frock! He is supposed to be a superman and he is the most fragile among us. What would he serve to? To listen to the jangles of a safe with combination? Yeah, good! I bawl him over and he cries as dry!

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- I advise you against playing that game. Effectively, in a situation of crisis, Sebastian closes again himself on himself as an oyster. He takes fear and becomes like a victim of tetanus. His only defense, it is to give out a scream. Not any kind of scream. He can give out a high frequency, made of ultrasonic sounds. Measured out well, very controlled toward an adversary who "would bawl" him over, as you say it precisely, he would reduce him the brains in mash of neurons. Even though you are not a scientist, I am sure that you don't ignore this property of the ultrasonic sounds. You see, in truth, to attack Sebastian, means to expose yourself to an excessive riposte. - Okay! And by surprise, Viviane could contaminate him with a powerful virus! You see, he has also his master! - It could have been the case, indeed! But Sebastian possesses another grant that he ignored until now. The young man opened wide his ears, once was not custom. What Gwendoline would reveal on him that he ignored? - When he is victim of tetanus, his muscles, his bones, his blood vessels and his skin harden to one point, as he is as hard as of the diamond. The pressure reigning in his body reaches thousands of bars. The molecules nearly freeze as if a temperature of zero Kelvin degree had invaded him, zero Kelvin degree representing the absolute zero, the ultimate stage where the atoms quit the movement. Do you know a lot of viruses or microbes that would survive in these conditions? Not me. The explanation of Gwendoline made say nothing about the gossiper student in faculty of languages. Besides, the other didn't pipe a word. Even Sebastian, stunned by the revelations on his possibilities! What would she teach him else? He heard the inaudible, imitated like person but he was hundred miles far to imagine being able to floor an adversary thanks to his vocal cords. The accident of his sixteen years came back him in memory. All of a sudden, the last piece of the puzzle took place in the picture and revealed the reality. It was not an accident; it was a murder. He diverted the eyes shamefully and pretended to leave the extraordinary meeting. He felt a hand landing on his shoulder and this hot and bewitching voice pronouncing insane words: - You didn't know, Sebastian, when it occurred. You ignored your grants. Now, it is necessary to learn to master them not to be afraid. Never. It was Gwendoline. Her hand was like her voice: hot, generating sensations of happiness, of joy and sweetness. Nearly as Viviane's one… Except that the biology student could ever offer herself the luxury to skim him merely without he doesn't risk the death. Except if the fear paralyzed him to one extraordinary point, maybe without return. He accepted the stretched hand of the gypsy. How could he refuse such an offering? He wanted so to know more. Yet, he felt so different from the other that he doubted being accepted one day. Lone he was, lone he would remain, probably. Lone as the diamond of which his fears equaled the strange toughness. 27

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* ** Quickly, Thierry Mizar had left the secret meeting. He had put a unique condition to his adherence to the group and it had been rejected naturally by the set of the members. He accepted to the express condition that Gwendoline came in his bed! Boor until the tip of the nails, that one! Since he had not received the downstream of the members and that he had wiped a clean and straightforward refusal of the gypsy, he had pulled himself with clash. He had sworn to take vengeance before about fifteen days while finding the fear of Gwendoline and while giving her life with a terrifying realism. The mutants had taken the threat to various degrees of seriousness. Hubert, Viviane and Helen had pretended that it would pass him before the following day morning, that he would forget his promise in the arms of some damsels. Martin was not as convinced of it: he extolled a relative vigilance. The object of lusts thought that she was truly in danger: she knew a ray of it concerning predictions and had had the vision of the sneering face of Thierry. Sebastian had been quiet, inaugurating a long set of eloquent silences. He arranged himself secretly at the side of Gwendoline, promising to watch over the rears of the young woman, softly. He was not man to pour out himself, to confide his secrets; his auditory capacity, making him strong and fragile, didn't incite him to enter into the least conversation. However, he would keep an eye opened on the gypsy. Ridded once of Thierry, the other had wondered about their common future. - What do you have in head, Martin? Don't you intend to bring up a group of mutants? Hubert reactivated - Yes! If each among you wishes to be in! - What would we be? The grayish-brown X-Men? The masked avengers? The Zorros of the street? - Why not? I hope that we are going to find a more original nickname! - What kind? What would you see for me? I warn you: I don't want anything like the "Bibendum" or "Obélix" or "The big strongest". - It's up to you to choose... For my part, since I am dwarf, I assume my size and will name me "Minus." Moreover, this nickname starts with the same letter that my first name. - Minus? Yeah! Why not! I could take "Maximus" but I am going to tempt to respect the rule of the identical letter. - Seen what you swallow, Helen suggested, I would call you "Hamburger". - Hamburger? I buy the proposal! It goes me like a glove. It is an English word, certainly, but it sounds German or Alsatian well also. Ah! Hamburger... And who, now? Helen, since you seem in vein, do you have other suggestions? - Of course! Personally, I vote for "Halloween". Phonetically, it reminds my first name and it underlines the major characteristic of my hair: orange, like Halloween colors, like the flame I can produce with my breath. What do you think of it?

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She had the approval of all participants while attending a set of perfectly synchronized nods of head. Her alcoholic breath, so awful in plain time, now justified the birth of a terrific heroine. A terrific heroine... She pursued thus: - For Gwendoline, my faith, I believe that she already possesses a nickname: the gypsy. Gipsy... - Of course, the concerned person said. - Viviane agrees with Virus and strength is to note, my dear, that you perfectly tame our microscopic enemies to us, healthy people. - I believe that I could not dream of baptismal name closer to my weakening reality. They congratulated themselves generously of their finds and congratulated Helen mainly. Only Viviane was forbidden of straightforward handshakes since the research of her contact was like an attempted suicide more than a mark of sympathy. This last raised the voice with one thousand pains in order to make notice that Sebastian had been let aside at the time of the nominations to the Oscar. The other confounded themselves in flat apologies. - Poor Sebastian! Hubert promised. It is not simple for him to go for a walk with this paraphernalia to protect him from the resonant aggressions! Inevitably, he is anxious to pass unobserved and finally, even us, we forget him... - I will try to arrange this detail. Martin's proposition attracted the attention of the young shy man. What miracle could avoid him a perpetual ridiculous? - Sebastian... Viviane blows out. I would like to give you a name of my composition. Do you well want? He acquiesced mildly. The Viviane's voice was so pleasant. To wonder there seriously, it was the first time of his life that a source of decibels delighted him instead of attacking him. She nearly gave him desire of... speaking. Oh! Of course, it would not make itself overnight but Viviane lived loneliness at least as cruel as his. Martin, maybe... All, to various degrees. The solitude was their daily share. Except Hubert, national star but apart in the world. Gipsy was so beautiful and so nice that she attracted people. But her surprising grants didn't they cut her from the rest of the world? Did she feel dissimilarity in relation to the common of the mortals? Probably, in fact. The more to pity was finally Thierry. His life, he forged it with terrors inflicted without discernment, in reaction to the look of the other. He attacked to erect an impassable gate. Impassable to the point to have separated him from the rest of the group. He wondered what nickname Viviane was going to assign to him. - Sebastian... You are alone in your corner, you don't say anything, you are capable to be hard as the diamond then... what would you say of "Solitary"? 29

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- Yes... he murmured. They heard his first words. Gwendoline smiled. This approval was a big victory. The first of a long set of battles to win. The first had consisted in breaking the silence living in the young man in order to determine his desire to integrate their group. Without Sebastian, they didn't have any luck of survival against ominous mutants enlivened of the worse intentions. - A pity that Thierry didn't remain! Helen remarked. He misses a historic instant, the birth of the first group of mutants descended of the frantic genetic manipulations of the scientists. Instead of it, he makes isolation! We could have called him "Terror" since he likes to frighten his adversaries. The problem is that he likes to terrorize his friends also! It is indeed... grieving! Internally, Gwendoline opted for an adjective in order to qualify this itinerant boor: "Traitor." Her grant for the exact visions of the future augured the student's toppling over in foreign languages toward the dark side of the mutants. Except if the future, in perpetual movement, didn't change idea and orientation... She had her small idea besides on the manner to get a happy tight turn, or even a turning around of Thierry. All rested on a fragile game of influences in precarious balance. - Solitary, Virus, Hamburger, Halloween, Gipsy, we are baptized in the name of the father, the son and the holy mind! Minus kidded. It remains to put the hand on a last name, the one of our group. Something short and simple to memorize... I don't know... The terrific mutants? - It is banal, my pal! Hubert noticed. Sorry... I am not with you on this story! I would prefer a more resonant thing: the grinders! - No... I can't imagine myself announcing that I am "Virus" of the "Grinders", Viviane objected. My health, my physical appearance doesn't conjugate itself indeed with this denomination. Besides, Sebastian or Martin or even my girl friends would not glue with this name. Something needs general practitioner besides, knowing that our respective names will be there to remind to the general public our specialties. - We would be the... They drummed the sentence at the same time a good twenty time until to find the logical and original continuation. Sebastian, back, nearly in the shade, didn't participate in proceedings. In appearance, only. In his silent mind, the neurons bubbled with fever. He held an idea but he didn't dare to advance it. By fear of the ridicule, by fear to dare, by fear simply. The fear paralyzed him little by little He perfectly felt the deathly rigidity to invade every muscle, every tendon, every parcel of his body. It was irrepressible and more he thought of it, more he believed that it was irreversible. He was going to remain a statue eternally because some words stayed blocked in his throat. His eyes contorted themselves little by little and sailed on the right of left and from top to bottom of the orbits. He implored internally that one of the members comes to his help.

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- Sebastian... Viviane murmured. Do you have an idea? The voice operated liberation as by enchantment. Instantaneously, the molecules of his body took a normal agitation rhythm. He relaxed, swallowed and whispered: - The keys... Finally, the K, with the K. letter. We are all some keys for problems, no? Finally... I want to say that... Do you see this that I want to say? It is not clever, as proposition... - On the contrary! Hubert adjusted. You are right, my friend, filthily! We are all Keys... The idea to write it merely with a letter is a sacred good idea! Thus, we can manufacture it of the costumes with this only letter. As the Z of Zorro! It will be our mark! Hey, my pal! When you have some ideas in head, don't hesitate to spit them on the floor! We will make the sorting but, in my opinion, you are the style to underestimate your talents. It is not necessary to believe especially that you are going to say some stupidities! Do you know why? The concerned person made sign humbly that no. - Because I am the specialist of the stupidities and blunders in all kinds! The giant of the Vosges guffawed. I am the king of the bad pun and propositions who leads to the disaster. Do never listen to my opinion, it will be worse than yours! You see, all can be said. Solitary looked for the approving looks of his friends. To every questioning of the eyes, he received positive answers. Especially Gwendoline that blew him to the hollow of the ear: - Don't get anymore in such a state... Keep your strengths for the battle! How did she know that he had just lived an interior bodily hell? Her grants... She was so surprising... He would like to attend a demonstration of the young woman. Especially the modification of the future according to the possibilities of the environment. While reasoning logically, all construction, as serious as were its builders, was susceptible to conceal a defect of structure. Therefore, she was able to trigger a cataclysm worthy of the apocalypse according to Paco Rabanne! Or was it necessary that she had knowledge of a real weakness to exploit it? The difference was subtle but modified the extent of her grants radically. He came closer to listen to Martin to throw the bases of their confraternity. He was anxious to attend the birth of the "K". * ** The reason was sensible: they would act with discovered face. Hubert touching lightly the triple meters, Martin being content with the simple, any imbecile normally constituted would discover their real identity comfortably if they tempted to conceal themselves behind the material of a costume of terrific hero. Besides, the super men, they were not anxious to play there in any conditions: the danger, if danger there was, would be run exclusively to save 31

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some human lives, or even animal. They would not play the rectifiers of wrongs except if lives were threatened. However, in their hearts, they stayed convinced that they committed all on an unknown path where they would make themselves a copious number of enemies. The session had ended on very cheerful notes. Some hours later, it had taken by one spaghettis evening improvised at Martin's home. There, the one that imposed himself as the spiritual chief and the team's genius, had sketched holdings for the team. The debate of the evening had been about the following theme: would they adopt individual holdings, as during the old times of the first X-Men or was it necessary to get an unique costume, an unique color, a common logo, as to the present times of their favorite heroes? During this debate, Helen became famous by a crowd of convenient questions. Would there be some spare clothes? Would they carry the costumes permanently? Under their clothes of city or would they keep them close at hand? In this last case, where would they change themselves? Did it imply that they exercise their talents solely in the evening, while patrolling in the streets of Poitiers? Who would maintain holdings? From where would funds of management of the group come, knowing that a part among them didn't roll indeed on gold? Would their land of action limit itself to the prefecture of the Vienna, the fast ultra transportation or the transport by waves belonging to the future and the science fiction? So many questions mainly put by Helen, abjectly convenient but dreadfully near of the sad reality: today's world was not the one idyllic of the comic strip. Martin Lemur promised, cross of wood, cross of iron, if he lied, he would go to Hell that he would open out his inventor's innumerable talents to prepare the most resistant costumes, raincoats, refractory and protective that he would be capable to achieve. And yes, he would manage to store funds destined to sustain their action while patenting and while marketing some of his finds. Curiously, Gwendoline remained strangely silent during the evening. She was not indemnified, nor preoccupied but observer. With these exceptional instants, she took support to project her in the future and to tempt to see their utility there. She looked for the beforehand length, the small advantage allowing keeping her in life, to keep them in life, all. Finally, nearly all. Necause someone missed. Thierry... And this, she had not foreseen it... * ** The silhouette rebounded harmoniously, the feline gait, the young woman strolled from the spacious and functional kitchen to the lounge extensively brightened thanks to the presence of a large glass window. She could see the cathedral of Poitiers and a few farther, our Lady of Poitiers, on the market place. The sun shaved the horizon and shot its rays of gold on the statue dominating the old city, on the heights, no far from the barrack of the soldiers. No one suspected that at the last floor of this building, the four doors of entry cleared in fact on same and unique lodgings of about three hundred square meters. And yet... It was there about the main residence of the owner of the places. The rest of the building also entered in 32

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her belongings and was filled of hidden stairs, of carefully hidden passages, of discreet outlays. A star in view, a person under the influence of the justice or a paranoiac honestly disrupted would have had resort to this kind of eagle nest: Saphira Mischief was at a time a little the three... At every stop in the kitchen with the roughcast bruise blade, she seized the bottle of mineral water and swallowed a mouthful. She was anxious to hydrate herself appropriately: it was the effort to accomplish to arrange in all times of a soft and exempt skin of ungainly wrinkles. Her physics was not her only asset in life: her parents, prematurely deceased in dramatic conditions (they had perished charred during their sleep, victims of an apparently deficient oil-fired furnace), had let her a fortune in actions, obligations, jewelry, investments in real estate and dividends of a high technology society in which gentleman Mischief exercised the highest functions. Money, she didn't miss to some and spent it without counting indeed, since it served her personal projects, her ambition. Some ambition, the siren with the flaming redhead hair had some to resell. To begin, she held more that all to conquer all parts of the society of her late father. The death of the fifty years old man, in full strength of age, had dispersed a part of the domestic heritage between partners greedy to store the dividends of a juicy business. The ten most important senior executives had shared ninety percent of the cake and had guzzled regularly, playing to astound it as much as possible, with Porsche, Ferrari and villas. Saphira, as for her, had to be content with ten percent and had no voice in the council of directors. The adequate portion ulcerated her to the highest point. The bass buzz of the intercom sounded until in the kitchen. Instantaneously, she was delighted to the idea that he was going to join her. He, it was this charming student in foreign languages that she had met some weeks before, in October. More aged than he, she had attracted him by her experienced side, her poisonous and incendiary charm, her advantageous social standing. On his side, the youth of Thierry had operated, his cunning was not stayed unobserved and his burnt head attitude, daredevil and without hindrance had functioned at full capacity. These two were made to get along... She unlocked the reinforced door and hung herself to his neck with a profusion of caresses, kisses and effusions able to make melt Greenland and Miko united. - Oh my love! She started. I missed you... Did you spend a good day? - Very long and exhausting... I sometimes wonder why I enrolled in faculty of foreign languages. And you? - Oh... Once besides, I have not been listened... The committee of directors ousted me. The society runs to its loss if they carry on like that. - Really? Thierry worried with an abnormal renewal of interest. What do you want to say? - Hey well... she hesitated; I don't know if I must get bored with my problems... You must be tired... - No, no. Explain me... I can make something maybe for you!

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- Oh! As it is kind! You are adorable... she said while accentuating the intensity of the body to body. But you know, I question some indeed. They hire little by little the society on a soapy slope and I don't have the least to be able to prevent for them of it. - How could you make it? - It would be necessary that I have at least thirty-three percent of the capital in order to exercise a right of veto. The ideal being the majority! - You need some money? - Money is not the problem; I could pay for the whole society. No... The boredom, it is that none of them wants to sell. They get along like thieves in fair on my back. - I am sure that I could convince at least one or two of them. Would it be sufficient, no? - You are so kind... But these are dangerous businessmen, some professionals of the negotiation, some sharks. They won't even grant you only one minute of attention. - Tell me which among them is to convince in priority! I make a point of honor of it. - You are adorable... Go! One never knows, after all! The most important is Hugues Ugo. He possesses thirty percent. And then, he is finally, maybe the most attentive among them. - Give me his address! I go there at once! - What? Tonight? Without appointment? You are going to be thrown out! - No. Have confidence! You know well that I would make whatever for you! He said while gargling. She agreed to deliver the address on a self-sealing reminder. He hurried to take holidays to accomplish his mission, such a valiant knight. He would make whatever for her... She smiled until the ears while thinking that she didn't wait for less. * ** The discussion had turned short very quickly. Hugues Ugo, the very huddled up quarantine, didn't need this young whippersnapper, importunate, inconsiderate and suffering from ringworm come to harangue him at the foot of the wrought-iron grid, obligated passage to reach a home of city to the ostentatious luxury. Besides, he ignored what could have pushed him to listen to this boor man. He didn't present the least professional interest since he was simple student of first year of faculty, he didn't have a traitorous coin to invest in his business, he was even less the boyfriend of his own girl. Then? More the time passed, more Hugues Ugo questioned himself on the deep incentives of his opening gesture towards this stranger. Actually, the young man irritated him to the highest point. - Listen! He ended while changing his tone loaded of compassion distinctly for a tonality more resonant and aggressive. You bore me stiff! My parts of this society are not to sell. Nor these, nor no other! And especially not to this crane of Saphira Mischief! This small shameless doesn't have anything to make in the business community. It is only a vulgar dad's girl, just good to carry the newspaper and coffee.

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The blood of Thierry Mizar had only made a tour. Until now, he had contained himself, had adopted a polite tone and had exposed the arguments descended from his beloved girl. But that a guy without education allows insulting Saphira, without any justification, this was some too much! This fool had just provided him the incontestable proof that the society was in danger with a heap of dunces similar to its head. The injury was intolerable and he couldn't contain his anger more. He closed the eyes and immediately knew what Mr. Ugo, this imprudent, feared above all. The other had instantaneously the eyes wide opened. The student had just vanished before him, such a hobgoblin in direct source of kingdom of the shades governed by the main roaster in person. Instead, a dark and humming mass advanced quickly. - Name of God! He squalled. A swarm of hornets! A cloud of long and streaky bugs rushed on the senior executive. He tempted a backward flight, just to beat a retreat behind the windows of the verandah. He stumbled and spread at full length on the lawn, right in the middle of the dwarfs of garden. The earth stuffed of water stained the last-born of the range of a trademark jogging with a rooster very carried on sport. He turned around and was paralyzed by the vision of a myriad of stings poisoned impaling on his chest, his members, his throat and his face. Thierry, satisfied of him to have terrorized, advanced to carry the fatal stroke. Now, he was sufficient to him to assure the "customer" to review the charming insects if he didn't immediately present some apologies to lady Mischief and if he didn't sell the entirety of his parts, especially at the low price. Only, his predator's carnivorous smile froze suddenly. The stop of the frightening vision should have freed the senior executive of his anguish but this last didn't move anymore. - Shit! It is not possible... He advanced and took the man's pulse. The absence of throbbing indicated without the least doubt that gentleman Hugues Ugo couldn't be deader. He was on the lawn, floored by his own terror. Taken by panic, Thierry took ran like a rabbit. He had just killed a man while terrorizing him. He had just killed... * ** Thierry had comforted himself quickly in his companion's arms. For several reasons: first, she had liked that he made his subject restore the disagreeable words of Ugo. Then, she had confessed him that this guy endured stern cardiac unrests, that he had been operated of a triple coronary bypass surgery and that it didn't stop him from smoking like a fireman, scornful the most elementary rules of the medical and scornful prevention also, by way of consequence, work and the devotion of the medical profession in his whole (he also ridiculed 35

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the social security, too good and too charitable when it repaid this extremely rich dunce poisoning himself voluntarily instead of helping an unemployed person at the end of rights...). - You could not know, while jostling him that he would slap between your fingers at the first stroke. Even though somebody would find your prints, your couldn't be accused for murder. You defended a woman's honor. - I didn't jostle him... - No? - No. - So, why did he die? - I gave him... some... fear! - Fear? I doubt that a simple threat, even uttered with the biggest seriousness, could entail his death. There are some limits... - It is yet the reality... I... I have a... particularity, Saphira... The young woman approached a little closer to him on the sofa. A confidence... The confidence! She was waiting for this instant since a very long time. The continuation, for a long time reflexive, studied, would finally have the opportunity to get in place. - What kind of particularity? - It is difficult to explain, Saphira. - Try it. I am ready to hear everything! She added while making herself softer, cuddlier and more pussy than ever. So feline that he would nearly have been able to hear to purr him and to coil up against him. - It is... the fear... I have the grant to know that whose people are afraid. - Do you read in the thoughts? - Not indeed. It doesn't appear systematically for all and whatever. It is... exclusively linked to the fear. I discern the frights of them... human and... I don't know by what process I can achieve to this result, but they discern me, they see me as the source of their sudden terror. It is what killed Ugo... - Let me guess... Did he discern you like a bug? - Yes... Like a swarm of hornets! How do you know it? - I saw him panicking at the office for an unhappy and innocent bee entered by misfortune in the premises of the society. - You don't seem surprised by my grant so particular. Am I mistaken? - No. Who looks alike assemble! - What you want to say? - I am a mutant. She revealed him an incredible history then: her. She possessed an inestimable talent, an incredible characteristic that would have made scream José Bové, the muse of the movements agricultural anti-internationalization, the eternal objector to the bad eating: she had received genes of transgenic corns that allowed her to resist innumerable illnesses, to 36

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repulse all the insects and to turn into a multitude of popcorn when she felt attacked. While exploding and while distributing herself at the four corners of a piece, she avoided the direct attacks. Of course, she had necessary mental strength to gather the minuscule white particles exploded in order to take human shape. Such the corncob to the extremely tight and compact grains, her body displayed a remarkable density able to resist the aggressions. To see to become she yellow orange, to be angry all red and to fart under the action of the heat in white and leaping grains was a matter for the burlesque but was awfully efficient. The laughter of Thierry reassured her besides when he saw her to backfire all azimuths. She only served him a simple sample of her power. The corn possessed other properties, quite passionate and promising. The young man felt completely in confidence with Saphira. She spoke him then of her dreams, her maddest projects. A world where the justice would not embarrass itself of the long and useless procedures, a world where the strong would castigate the corrupt, the mafia, the swindlers, the thieves. A world where they would raise a generation in love of order, of discipline, where they would sweep the old dusty institutions and where those that would get across their road would become automatically their enemies. A perfect world where they would embody superior beings… If Martin Lemur and his mates had heard this speech, they would have agreed that it seemed of already heard in the 30-40 years, in a corporal's mouth with murderous ideas... * ** Seated at a round-table of the library, a place of appointment a thousand times less smoky than the bars of Poitiers, Martin finished the reading of his daily press before slipping it until the eyes of Gwendoline, as to his habit. Viviane, leaned on a particularly arduous duty, would read it in last. She always read it at last, outside, at the free air, followed like her shade by Helen. When she had learned about the stocks and interesting articles, she crushed the newspaper and put it in ball. Then, she made a projectile for Helen who, with a fast gesture of the head, transformed herself in Halloween, the heroine with the alcoholic and burning breath, burning the heap of paper in a wink of eye. It constituted a surprising exercise for Helen and a precaution of use for Viviane intended to avoid that the paper transmits a virus to any walker collecting the leaves of cabbage in a trashcan. Martin drank so much and so much a rare scientific page dedicated to the meaningful progress of the last jet-propelled motor of Airbus Industries that he didn't pay attention to the movement of Gwendoline. The young woman felt... attracted... attracted irresistibly by something being in the newspaper. With the eyes, she looked for the words, the title capable to trigger an attraction phenomenon as surprising. Martin, the leader and brilliant inventor of the K, finally noticed the dislocation of the hip accentuated of her stance. - Do you want to see a page? The horoscope, maybe? He proposed while smiling of his good joke.

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- No... Gipsy nearly replied with sweetness, a trouble and a completely unaccustomed apathy. I... feel... Something... attract. - Hold... Minus added, henceforth known in Poitiers and its vicinity for his mind of cooperation with the police. Hardly she had skimmed the black ink that attacked her brutally of crotchets visions. Waves of terror surged in her. It was not question of hers own terror but one tried by another person. She must force herself to move away her hands some instants, the time to digest the initial shock. - Gwendoline! Martin exclaimed while sustaining the back of the young woman. She had broken herself in two as if her strengths live had abandoned her. The face plated against the cold surface of the table, pale imitation of wood, some spasms agitated her skin and distorted her face. Her perfect features, her impeccable tan, everything that usually made a creature of dream of her had just flown off suddenly. Martin couldn't add the least word when he discerned red stains distinctly, some puffiness sprinkling of here beyond the Gypsy body. He turned the head in all senses, he didn't see hopeless bug close to the places, which could have caused a similar disaster. As for Viviane, the greatest ashamed illness vector (far behind the extreme right party, it is true), she was held from afar and carried gloves and required mask. - Gwendoline! Martin repeated, taken by panic. She had not died but shocked, dreadfully in bad shape. She moved slightly, proof i that she had not kicked the bucket. The legitimate chief of the K shook her like a plum tree without getting the least result. Viviane came back urgently. - What occurred? She worried. The continuation of the sentence didn't immediately come. She gathered the eyebrows while discovering their common friend. She bent toward the victim to observe the pocks. She knew enough about illnesses to determine the origin of the pain. - Lord! It is incredible! When did she get this monstrous redness? - Just now, there isn't one minute! - It is necessary to evacuate the room! A swarm of hornets, it is extremely dangerous. Three stings and farewell! - Some hornets? But I didn't see any hornet! I didn't move from there! She wanted the newspaper, she had it in hands and she has been agitated of violent spasms. - The newspaper? Did you also touch it? - Yes.

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- I don't understand. Gwendoline is not allergic to ink since she has many times read this kind of daily. Even an allergy would not give it: some pocks due to stings of very big bug. Or then... Give me this newspaper... Viviane intended. - Hold! What do you look for? - If the venom of hornet has been extracted and widespread on this leaf, I am not going to linger to the knowledge! - You don't risk to... - No risk, don't worry... It is curious... Nothing happens... - It is normal! A person that nobody was waiting said. It was Gwendoline. Even though the purulent red marks had disappeared mysteriously, the veil of weariness and destruction of the quick strengths stayed anchored on her beautiful face. - Lord! It is a crazy story! Explain us! Two minutes ago, you were in good shape. One minute later, you were at death's door, disfigured nearby by buttons of which a chickenpox would have passed for a banal erythema buttock. And now, you play us the return of the deathsliving... - I have... felt... to the deepest of my being the pain of a deceased person... She is somewhere in this newspaper. - Really? It is merely incredible! - I never saw someone to endure pain like this, Viviane noticed. You were covered with stings. - It is precisely what I saw when I entered in contact with the paper: a man was attacked by a humming swarm of long insects of several centimeters. It was monstrous... I felt the stings penetrating in his flesh and the terror that resulted some at a time, his conscience to lose life inexorably. And yet... It is...strange... - What therefore? - This impression of... lie. - Of the lie? What lie? - I don't know. I don't dare to enter more in contact with the newspaper... I have too fear to feel these brutal and sudden attacks... It is too much... destabilizing! - Wait... Martin thought. If I read you the necrology category, one of the names will speak to you maybe... No? - Try it! He opened the category in question and named the subscribers of the day (payment for only one passage, that goes without saying!). When he pronounced the name of "Hugues Ugo", Gwendoline raised the hand in sign of session suspension. This name agitated an orchestra of bells in her brain and the sensation of pain accompanist didn't let any doubt subsist on the answer. - It is he! What did he die of? - It is not specified. 39

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- He was not very aged. I see it forty years old. - It is exact! He was forty years old. He is rather young. It is indicated that he prematurely died. Prematurely... Evidently, when you loose the life, it is always too early. - He died of stings of bugs. Hundreds of stings! - What is extraordinary, Viviane noticed, it is that an attack of hornets never passes under silence in a newspaper. It is necessary to fill the pages with the few of unaccustomed occurring in a small region well. Us other, the K, let's not hold one every day and it is so much the better! It is sign that our action warns the wrongdoers to act. It is as reassuring insofar as the Vienna is not Paris: criminality is there least, in quantity. No. Why don't they speak of an extremely virulent attack? - When will happened the ceremony of funeral? Gwendoline asked for. - This afternoon. About what do you think? To touch the coffin and to confirm that he died poisoned? To prove that somebody hid from us the truth about the presence of these dangerous bugs? Let's go... Gwendoline... - The truth is other... the young woman dropped. I feel it and... I know that it is important! It is necessary that we go there. - Us? Why? - Viviane will be useful. While approaching closer to the deceased, she will be able to affirm if yes or no poison drags in the mortuary exhalations of late gentleman Ugo. She has the smell sensitive to this kind of… rare gas. - It is true, Martin, the concerned person objected. We make our tour over there, just to prove the theory of Gwendoline. They convened Helen to assure a team with the minimal security. Martin would abstain from participating in the procession, remaining voluntarily back. His small size didn't pass unobserved and he was anxious not to awaken the curiosity of the deceased's family. Hubert, inversely commensurate, would not follow either the cortege. Sebastian would stay on the outskirts of the cemetery in order to listen there, to good distance thanks to his extraordinary hearing, the gossips and commentaries in all kinds from where a parcel of truth emerges well often. As for the women of the strip, they would play the ex-colleagues or vaguely tearful ex-friends but in black and endowed all the same of dark veils. This required holding imposed itself more to conceal the protective mask of Viviane that to hide the tears released with sincerity. All was organized marvelously so that the plan would be accomplished with any problem. A road paved of good intentions... * ** The operation "visits at the cemetery" passed first by the stage "church." Gwendoline had cleared the doorstep of God's house as the doorstep of her own home. She discerned her grandmother's presence in this holy, floating place no far from her, protecting her with her positive and beneficial thoughts. She spoke to her as to the faraway time where she lived among the other trailers, in a wild camp, in border of a forest, close to a byway lower-case 40

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letter. Her grandmother, who taught her to read tarot cards before even to read the letters of the alphabet. Real sponge to pain, to feelings, Gwendoline had owed to make herself violence and to close herself to the crowd. She had been patient until the instant where the participants had been invited to do a last homage to the dead. Tired to be gnawed by the uncertainty, she had advanced with the firm intention to clarify this mystery. The coffin was not sealed: the victim's face, livid, of mid-gray, mid-greenish color, displayed a funny expression. The tense features didn't present asperity or recent trace of sting. Yet, so close to the dead, she let herself to the progressive invasion of the vestigial memories of this body to the limit of the putrefaction. The result was a sensation painful of attacks coming from bugs, the savagery of the first episode to the library in less. The emotional print of the dead faded away little by little and soon, it would not remain more anything of this future skeleton, emotionally talking. This new revelation let Gwendoline perplexed. No sting and however, an analogous pain... When Viviane came to accomplish her report, trouble intensified. - Not of poison trace... Nothing... I am categorical. - I don't understand... - I do! Helen murmured. I heard something about a heart attack. He was simply cardiac. While supposing that he saw a swarm hurrying on him, that he panicked to the point to slap his palpitating of a dry stroke, without receiving the least sting, it would explain your visions. Gwendoline was seduced by the hypothesis of her co-team member. It didn't last anymore of some seconds. - My vision was precise, very precise. He has been pricked. An incalculable number of times! He can't have dreamed a similar thing... He cannot have... dreamed... Her words remained blocked in her throat when she understood the hidden sense of the words she had just pronounced. Quickly, with the look, she swept the crowd. She only put a poor wretch ten of seconds to find what she looked for. Oh.... As she would have liked to be wrong in these instants! - Thierry Mizar... - What? The two other said in choir. - There... Gwendoline explained while designating him with the finger. - What does he do here? Does he belong to the family? Helen suspected. - Oh Lord... Viviane dropped. Don't tell me what you think about! - Illuminate me, Helen implored. I took the moving train or the loco unhooked to me the convoy. - Gwendoline... Do you imagine Thierry creating an illusion so perfectly awful that this poor gentleman Ugo cracks under the influence of a heart attack seriously? You are not serious? - You cannot know to what point he can be ready to accomplish whatever to reach his goals. 41

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- Not the murder, Gwendoline. Not the murder. - I know, Gipsy admitted. Deep in her, even though she hated the character of Thierry Mizar, the boor treating the women like a source of cool flesh, of potential pleasure, the sufficient and narcissist student dredger, she was convinced that he was not a murderer, irretrievable. She had disregarded his refusal to integrate the K and it was a mistake that it would be necessary to repair to the earliest. Since the completion of the funeral, to the cemetery, she would be going to take his news innocently. His reaction would be determining. * ** The meeting had been marked by the briefness and coldness. Thierry was little himself strong cheery of the vision of the students and had avoided to enter in contact with Gwendoline above all carefully. He knew her able how to feel some visions and therefore, to see his involuntary crime. He had beaten a retreat therefore wisely behind Saphira. On their side, the feminine members of the K had not learned much about his case. He frequented this beautiful redhead, silvery woman, proving his climber side prevailed one more time over all. Since Gwendoline could not have used her powers, the girls made their brains operating. Even though Thierry had declined the invitation of Martin and the other to integrate the K, why did he feel as much uneasiness to their simple view? Especially when one knew that Helen and Hubert had crossed him no far from the faculty of economics and that he had congratulated them for their action under the mask of the K. This behavior dating of hardly about fifteen days had the tendency to prove that he granted them of the sympathy but that to belong to a confraternity, to a group, any association was above his strengths or simply not his cup of tea. Then? Why this attitude of dismissal, of flight today? Viviane had an explanation that held up, contrary to Helen whom stopped strolling nervously while staggering: - I believe that he feared that you probe him, Gwendoline. - Yes but why? - Because he has something to feel guilty... Because he believed, understandably, that we inquired into him. - What secret can he make well so him distrustful? Would I have been right to believe that he is there for something in this death? - Probably... Sebastian advanced without making the least noise, as to his habit. He waited that one questions him to take the floor. - Ah Sebastian! Viviane murmured.

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An useless whisper since Martin, brilliant inventor, had endowed Solitary with auditory prostheses allowing to attenuate the ambient noise in an automatic way. Electronics could also fade away in order to allow the powers of the young man to express themselves fully. - Did you find something? Gwendoline asked for, taking her most beguiling and cuddliest voice, the only one able to soften Sebastian. - Yes... I believe... This Hugues Ugo was a big heart patient. Several participants confirmed this rumor. He died of heart attack, it is certain. I have... I heard to say also that this man was very rich, that he had some parts in a society in full growth. Helen and Hubert will be surely more capable than me to judge the good health of this society. Other people said that a certain Saphira Mischief had offered to purchase the parts to the widow for a tidy sum, presumably above the true value of the parts. - Bravo, Sebastian! It is excellent! Your hearing is worth my grants of clairvoyance very extensively. And if we were interested in the identity of this Saphira Mischief that insists in a suspicious manner buying an excellent business? - Well... Sebastian continued. - Excuse me... Did I cut you? - Well... I... Gwendoline, I have... I know who is Saphira Mischief is. It is... the redhead woman who came with Thierry. The other remained dumbstruck. Gwendoline was thinking that it was necessary to warn Martin and Hubert. The K had to be to the suit to solve this business. One heart attack maybe not fortuitous, a woman with the possible release of the so-called crisis, a woman being interested of very near to a man's belongings before even that he was buried, it constituted a bundle of curiosities to not to let a side. * ** Between two courses, the students had thrown themselves fervently in the harvest to information. The stains had been assigned with fairness. Hubert and Helen had assigned to glean all information on the activity and the health of Systems euro, an entirely devolved enterprise to the data originations high-speed, implanting networks of fiber optic, creating some footbridges where some computer crossroads saw some traffic jams creating themselves. Effectively, the box having belonged to the father of Saphira Mischief, prematurely deceased, walked of God's fire. Its growth flirted joyously with the fifty percent each year... Gwendoline and Viviane had frequented the faculty of languages repeatedly in order to lead a sort of neighborhood investigation. It had revealed them a Truism according to which Thierry Mizar was or even a confirmed, chauvinist dredger, to the heavy humor, unhealthy. He frequented a woman outside of the academic campus but everybody ignored his identity. He very rarely spoke of her and always under the denomination "my chick." This appellation in back slang didn't have anything flattering and he didn't hide to confess that it was solely

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for the money and for the trifle. Of the general opinion, feminine as masculine, it was a cad as worthy of interest like a speech of the National Front. However, his attitude had changed radically since several days. He was folded on himself, abstained from sweeping, attended the courses without giving himself in spectacle and left the amphitheaters as discreetly that he had entered there. Nobody had understood the origin of this turning around. Martin had thought for a long time about all this business. So Thierry had soaked in this gluey soup, the risk to face him directly emerged. The past of gentleman Mizar, composed of pensions, of reformatories, whereas he let believe that he came out of a bourgeois family, didn't plead in his favor. Even though it was not a proof of his guilt, it was not a negligible burden on the balance. He had gathered all elements of the puzzle and had convened the K in extraordinary meeting. This time, the appointment had been given at Viviane alias Virus. This last had made her purchases to receive his friends but the heart was not there. Same Hamburger had nearly lost his legendary appetite and Helen didn't make honor to a brandy of plum worthy of this name titling sixty degrees. - My friends, started Martin, the picture to brush is not well gleaming... He brightened the throat repeatedly, while fingering a ballpoint pen nervously and granted to rush to water: - We have a man possessor of parts in a gold business, a heiress dispossessed of a very domestic that covets these parts and that knows a mutant able to unleash the death if needed, a mutant with a boiling character before the death of the rich manager, with the drab mood or even scared after the big money fellow's death, a woman who emerges with a jackpot to make crazy a banker and who, after many negotiations with the tearful widow, carry away the piece making of her the major shareholder of the society. A major shareholder but not full majority since she only accumulated forty percent of the pieces of the cake! What do you believe that it is going to happen now? - She won't to remain some there... Viviane annotated. - Oh? Do you believe? Hubert exclaimed. Is she going to finance a murder? - Thierry Mizar won't be the murder weapon, I am nearly persuaded some... Gwendoline protested. I am certain that she pushed him to tip while manipulating him. Like this: "they want to make me some pain, do you understand? They are going to oust me... " and he answered: "Don't worry, I'll take care of you." While swaggering, he certainly ignored what he was going to commit. It explains his spectacular turning around of behavior. He shut up but she holds him... She knows that he committed a murder. Even though to demonstrate that Thierry killed Hugues Ugo raises the legal prodigy, she persuades him presumably to be bound to her by their common secret. Even though I doubt that she succeeds in pushing him to commit a new crime, it is not excluded completely. - That is my trouble, Martin released. According to information provided by Sebastian who hid during long hours, during some days, on the outskirts of Euro Systems, it would seem 44

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that the shareholders received new offers of purchase emanating from mysterious correspondents. In other words, she won't stop her work of buying. I ignore on what occasion she discovered the grants of Thierry Mizar but between this manipulator's hands, he embodies a dangerous adversary. He can hit again. We risk facing him. - I know, Gwendoline commented. When she pronounced these simple words, the other knew that she made a personal fight of it. She was the only one able to resist his power of absolute suggestion, the only one to be able to block him the road. Except if… Finally! To beat him, it was another business. Nothing proved that he would not end up discovering what frightened her to the highest point. - In spite of all, in spite of the fact that we know that he can terrorize us to the point to die, we won't let you fall, Gipsy. It will be necessary to drag us together, to elaborate the strategies, some various sequences to succeed in beating him. We are all team members and it is our strength. To play in solo, it is to run to the failure. It is necessary to combine our powers absolutely to the instant to cope him. Think well! He won't be able to terrorize everybody at the same time! - Are you sure of it? Helen asked for. - I only hope for it... Sincerely, I don't know anything about him but I don't see how he would succeed in achieving the prodigious act to be in the mind of each of us, to extract his terrors there and to concretize them to the eyes of all. An awful picture for each among us, at the same time? Difficult to abound in this sense... - Bah! Do we know only where and when he will hit? No! Hubert said while shrugging the shoulders. - Where and when, no. Who? The name of the next one on the list is Joseph Jausselin. It is the only one possessing the ten percent fateful and necessary to get the absolute majority. Evidently, this Saphira Mischief could eliminate two or three other minority shareholders and could accumulate enough points to reach his objective. I don't believe her enough stupid to multiply the useless and suspected deaths. A dead by heart attack, it is discreet. Two, it would begin to become suspicious. Four or five, excuse me Viviane to use this term, it would look like an epidemic. Now, our job is going to consist in tracking the next fellow man of the list. His car has been equipped "discreetly" with a beacon by my cares. I succeeded, while following him to the swimming pool, to introduce another tracer in his watch. Let's hope that it will be sufficient... Track him will begin as soon as he is alone. To his work or to his domicile, surrounded by his collaborators or his family, our thirsty vampires of actions won't attack him. On the other hand, if he is isolated some seconds, he will embody a target of choice then. The K suddenly measured the complexity of this mission. To protect a target who ignored the danger, moving, unforeseeable, while remaining invisible to hiss eyes and susceptible to be attacked at all times by a being able to beat all them hands down. Some began to regret the nocturnal patrols in black costumes hit of a red K surmounting their patronymics of battle. 45

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The general exhaustion didn't escape Martin. He was anxious to inflate the state of mind of the troops. - Hey! Wake up! We won't let ourselves mist over by the other red-haired. Imagine that... Halloween blows him a burning air in the nostrils. Even though he shows her rain or a gigantic Breathalyzer, Hamburger will have enough time to send him a great punch. And even though he keeps his stroke because the adversary makes him believe that he was going to hit from afar in an anvil of diamond, Solitary will be able to inflict him a scream stuffed of ultrasonic sounds which he possesses the secret. Then, Virus will finish work while skimming him of her naked hand, managing him a cocktail of microbes overwhelming him definitively. I place him this on the skull and his power will be blocked, Minus finished while waving a light helmet. - What is it? The other exclaimed in choir. - An invention especially made for our friend, the leader protested proudly. It is supposed to block his cerebral waves. Besides, being maintained tightly in the obscurity by the cockle, he will be able to immerse himself more in the look of his victims. - When you said that it was supposed to block him, did you let hear that you were not sure that it functions? Helen worried while reversing a little brandy of plum on her dress. - Yes... It functions on me, on Sebastian... I didn't test it on the other terror; you suspect it! - It is rejoicing... All rests on suppositions. - Sorry, Helen! I don't have any certainty to offer you except that... our action won't always be simple. The risk exists, in spite of our grants. Everything that I can intend to reassure you, these are spare plans, some combinations of our powers, to repeat, to be as ready as we will be able being never. They nodded the head in sign of approval. Including Gwendoline who didn't stop harping on the same words deep in her heart: "Why, grandmother? Why didn't I see this situation? Why didn't I know that he would become our enemy instead of being one of ours? Should I have yielded to his sexual proposal so that he topples the side of the defenders of the justice? Why? Answer me, please! More than ever, I need your advice, grandmother... " * ** She had had a vision about Joseph Jausselin. Gwendoline had felt that a deadly danger watched him on the road leading him from Poitiers to the surroundings of Gençay, no far from his home. A real godsend, this vision! Secretly, she had thanked her grandmother for having guided her on the path sowed of ambushes of the clairvoyance. They had joined by telephonic messaging, letting the portable systematically on eve and had jumped in the old monospace car paid with their savings. The venerable antique, two hundred thousand kilometers at the meter, had driven them right to the exit of Euro Systems. There, they had been patient until gentleman Jausselin points the tip of his nose 46

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toward twenty hours. The powerful Mercedes had charged down the underground garage and had given to join the bypass south of the prefecture of the Vienna. Behind, heavy heavily on the directional train of their Renault, especially because of Hubert's four hundred kilograms, the K worked hard to follow the senior executive with the nervous wheel stroke. The mill spoiled seriously when they joined the departmental road leading to Gençay. Joseph Jausselin, forgetting the moonless black night and the numerous car radars in this region greatly of policemen, went faster. The silver arrow flew in the country at the speed of the ligh. * ** The radio poured an uninterrupted stream of decibels in Joseph's ears. He beat the measure with the hands on the wheel, keeping all his confidence in his auto and in his faculty to keep the straight cape, even at hundred sixty kilometers per hour. The road was desolate, the weather dry and clear. Set to part the irruption luckless of a beast from woods, he estimated not to risk much. He sang, increasing the ambient resonant volume with a voice of pan able to make scream a dog. Very fortunately, he said to reassure himself, the ridicule didn't kill anymore and no one heard him to slaughter this old song of the Bee Gees. The ridicule, maybe... Suddenly, he screamed of terror. A tyrannosaurus stood up right in the middle of the road, in front of him, just after a curve. The full lights revealed the fate that waited for him instantaneously: the animal had bent and had opened the muzzle armed of an incalculable number of tapering teeth. Instinctively, he turned the wheel on the left to avoid it. A very complicated maneuver at fifty kilometers per hour, despaired at hundred sixty... The Mercedes lost contact with the asphalt, over flew the ditch and rolled up itself around a tree, pulverized. The silver arrow had found its target. When the K arrived at the scene, they understood that it was too late. Martin, the driver, stopped the car at a respectable distance of the accident, just in the event the wreckage would have scorched itself suddenly. He let the lights of his vehicle aimed on the place of the impact. Gwendoline immediately called firemen and policemen. In ten minutes, not more, they would be there. Alas! It would be only to recover the rests dislocated of gentleman Jausselin. - Lord! Minus exclaimed. At what speed did he drive to reach such a result? It is awful! Why did he leave the road? Virus, try to see if he is still alive. But before, Solitary, probe the wreckage to verify that there is not a flight of oil. Sebastian executed the command. With the nod, he indicated that all circuits were out tension and that the risk of an accidental explosion was separated. It is whereas he pushed a howling so intense that everybody was affected and plugged itself the ears. He collapsed,

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taken by violent spasms. Terrorized by the view of a hard rock scene barded of gigantic surrounding walls of a total power of several millions of watts. The time to be aware of the stage, Martin panicked at the idea to be stagnated by the gigantic Gulliver, paying no attention to his screams intended to attract the attention, preamble him like a vulgar amoeba. All was the work of only one man, Thierry Mizar. He came out of wood, satisfied, followed by his redhead companion, Saphira Mischief. She was clothed curiously of an orange yellow leotard, enhancing her harmonious shapes. His partner had disguised himself to the manner of count Dracula, way Christopher Lee, hairs glued with Gomina and drawn backward, dark mantle enveloping a dark costume. He seemed... dirtily satanic. - Two less! Is it therefore the famous K? You see, love, they are not worth. I hardly had two of them in ten seconds. Hold! Look at her, she! Yeah! The aimed target, it was Virus. She was confronted to a blank woman who approached of her and told to her merely: - You are condemned, lost. This virus is not... human. It is extraterrestrial and has been conceived to annihilate you. Especially for you! Viviane collapsed in tears, victim of tetanus, unable to do the least movement. She felt the death infiltrating her body. She waited for her end. - You are going to see what wood warm up the Tannenbaums! Hamburger squalled. I am going to put you a thrashing of which you are going to remember! - It would astonish me! The red-haired started. He didn't have the opportunity to reach Thierry Mizar. Saphira interfered between him and the fist of the giant of the Vosges. Her face, her whole bodies hardened instantaneously, taking the aspect and the orange yellow color of the corn with the extremely tight grains. Her density, her compactness broke the giant's impetus. He pushed a long howling of pain while holding the phalanxes. In return, he received a great kick to the chest that made him vacillate slightly. By luck, the absolute springiness of his skin allowed him to cash the shock waves, or even to deaden the projectiles as bullets or lead. In spite of a right fist in marmalade, he threw himself on Saphira with the attention to crush her of all his weight for lack of to be able to hurt him. During this time, Halloween and Gwendoline, the last master card of their game, would assign to track and to annihilate this miserable coyote languages student's. As he should have enclosed Saphira and should have flattened her like a crepe, an extraordinary phenomenon occurred. Halloween had just lent him a helping hand while spitting a flame of several-meter long in direction of the enemy. Was this the effect of the heat or something else, Saphira had whitened and split in a myriad of grains of popcorn. Pop! A characteristic noise had come with the surprising metamorphosis. And the sound "plaf" had emanated from the body of Hamburger while biting the dust. A tonality himself changing in a scream of fright when he had met tied up to a table and he had seen a gigantic 48

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circular saw approaching to make of him a puzzle of Ravensburger representing a dead nature. Some meters far from here, molt by an invisible strength, Saphira had gathered the pop corn and had taken human shape. Just in front of Halloween. A fatal error that the young woman with the swayed gait immediately exploited! She blew a highly alcoholized breath on the flame in eve of the blowtorch fixed to her helmet close to her mouth. A fraction of second too late, unfortunately! A lack of reflex due to the alcohol, paradoxically! A micro fraction sufficient for Saphira, allowing her to unveil a new trick, a property of the corn! She vanished in flour, in suspension in air. However, as everybody knows it (and for those that ignore it, they are going to know now), the dust of cereals is very flammable. Exploding, even. Halloween paid her gesture dearly. The explosion projected her some meters afar. Thierry finished her while diving her in a burning desert without the least mouthful of liquid to drink: some score of kilometers of sand dunes, the most arid nightmare than she could imagine. - Finally! Thierry trumpeted to the attention of Gwendoline. Hey yes, dear and delicious Gwendoline! Or would I have to call you Gipsy rather? We are going to deal the serious things. If you want to follow us in this perfectly free field... What? Are you surprised? Of course, you ignored that Saphira was a mutant, like me! We were not going to knock our cards as easily down... Minus embodies a very very mediocre leader. To patrol in the streets of Poitiers in search of the thieves, it is good for the amateurs. With Saphira, we feed other ambitions. Certainly, I had difficulty in the beginning, understanding the merit of her action. But her intentions are noble: to rid the Earth of the criminals, of the swindlers, to start with those that stole what belonged to her. - You became a criminal! - A criminal? Me? No! Me... I am not a criminal! He exclaimed vehemently. I tempted to convince him to sell his parts and he insulted Saphira. - An insult paid by an awful death? The addition is heavy... Gwendoline noticed while noting that Saphira was quiet strangely and stood back. - Bah! He died of a stop of the heart. Clean and trim. It is worth better than to burst a dirt of cancer, slowly, slowly, while keeping all his lucidity. - And Joseph Jausselin? Did he also have insulted your girlfriend? - I... No... He... Darn! It is an accident! - I see… Except that the state police will wonder about to see the car embedded around a tree on the left of the pavement, in exit of a left curve. - Why? - Because if you possessed a minimum of knowledge in physics, you would know that the centrifugal force always drags outside you of the turn. Either on the right in the case of a curve on the left, big shrewd! - But how I could know that he was going to come at this speed! Saphira... Explain to him that I had only to frighten him, to make him brake violently! - To frighten him without risk, it was sufficient to put yourself on the right line and during the day, dear friend terror! You are guilty for the second time! I am going to nail you the beak and to deliver you to the authorities... 49

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- No...I... I didn't want! - But attacks her first! Saphira squalled. You possess the advantage of the land. In this field, she won't be able to trigger anything, nothing to modify. - I am not able to wound her... - Species of dunce! Clear! Saphira exclaimed. The insult spilled in the student's mind. It acted slowly, like a therapy of group. His face decomposed itself little by little, it dove in the bitterness, the reflection, the doubt. At the same time as Saphira had ordered to her lover to clear, she had scattered herself everywhere, without Gipsy could determine where she was going to reconstitute herself. The seer concentrated and threw a kick at random. Finally, not quite. She hit precisely as it was necessary. To the exact fraction of second where the enemy's body had consistence sufficiently to be hit with efficiency and not too much not to represent a mass nearly indestructible. Completely shocked, she didn't see the coming of the last attack. It came from... Thierry. He had recovered his minds. - So, am I a dunce? Since the beginning, you played with me... - What? - It deserves a small fright, no? A hen on a wall, which pecks some hard bread... - No! Saphira squalled. Hundreds of poultries, hens, chickens, roosters, gobblers, greedy of grains, threw themselves on her with the will to peck the corn that she embodied. She fainted under the strokes of imaginary beaks that she really felt. Little by little, the K stood up one after the other, escaping the multiple and powerful ascendancy of Terror. Policemen and the firemen arrived at the scene, long after the battle. The help candles more than one hour to free the bloodless body of Joseph Jausselin. As for the police, they had some difficulties to swallow a completely incredible narration. How this redhead woman was able to have accomplished the prowess narrated by the K? How the deaths by heart attack and accidental had they been provoked without no indication confirms these smoky theories? Why did Minus want a perfectly closed jail car to transport Saphira? Why would the jail have to include a cell as inaccessible? In manner of answer, they only had one gesture: Thierry stretching his wrists for the handcuffs, thankful his responsibility in all this business. He was ready to expiate his mistakes. While climbing in the cellular van, maintaining the terror in the mind of Saphira, he had a last look for the K. A look imprints of bitterness, of regrets, the certainty to fret a long time to the bottom of his future jail. He had a more insistent look for Gwendoline, a lot heavier of feelings. He let escape some tears at the corner of the eyes. He thought that Saphira was right on one point: he was a dunce. A dunce having darkened fallen head in the larks mirror, passing next to the essential. They would not see them again. He would never see her again. * ** 50

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