The first blast made the entire building shake. A few seconds later, there was another one. And another. And another.

“Try holding your breath for as long as you can!” shouted an older boy who boarded in the Mansion.

“I tried that!” answered a girl’s voice. “It didn’t dHIC-“

The floors shook. A window broke.

“Whatever!” cried another student. “Go outside before you destroy the whole building! We’ve almost managed to go two years without ano--”

The force of the shockwave caught her off guard. She very much regretted leaving her room.

Kaitlyn ran down the stairs as fast as she could. “HIC-“ BOOM! part of the railing between the second and first floors was blown to pieces. She made a beeline to the front door. “HIC-“ CRACKOOM!. She stumbled through the opening in the front of the Mansion which, until very recently, contained a front door. Now it was just splinters.

This was going to suck to clean up after.

Serena walked around the side of the mansion. She had just spent 3 hours straight working on Biology. She was sure she would be fine with Exams this time around.

Although, it had left her feeling terribly impatient. She wanted to get out and do something. She was walking along the side of the building, with the sunlight highlighting the blondes slender figure.

She felt the building shake. What was that? She carried on moving. Another shake, a loud noise.

Serena picked up pace, she was moving towards the front door. She heard a window shatter. She really needed to see what was going on now. She wondered who or what could be causing so much noise and commotion.

Serena saw several others who had the same idea she did. They had moved towards the wooden doors which were the entrance to the main building that was the mansion.

CRACKOOM!

Serena heard shouting, and saw splinters and pieces of wood go flying. She also saw a small red-headed girl stumble through the opening. This should be an interesting evening at the very least.

Blink, blink, blink.

Up until moments before, the graphic novel that lay discarded on the mansion lawn had been in her hands. It had fallen. She'd dropped it. For the moment, her nice little reading break had been forgotten.

She'd heard the sounds coming, the windows shattering, something that sounded like splintering wood, and she'd outright seen the door become remnants of the door. Whatever had been happening had caught her attention. And now, a potential source was there and stumbling.

The graphic novel stayed where it was. A saner person might've kept their distance from what could very well have been an explosive situation. Amelia wasn't that person. She ran to the redheaded girl's aid. "Are you alright?" She asked urgently. "What's happening?"

Kaitlyn was surprised and upset to find so many people gathering around her. She didn’t have enough time to process the situation. One of the older girls was even running right towards her, saying something urgent. Kaitlyn’s ears were ringing too loud for her to understand any of it. She just stood there, dazed, wasting precious moments trying to decipher what the older girl was saying before she realized that she needed to warn her.

She took a few steps back. “Wait! You’ll get hurt!” the redhead shouted. “Stay HIC-“

Too late. With an ear-splitting BOOM, the shockwave kicked up dirt all around Kaitlyn and sent several students tumbling to the ground. Kaitlyn lost balance and fell over backwards, but quickly scrambled back to her feet. “I can’t control it!” she shouted over the ringing in her ears. “Stay back!”

Several saw the red-headed girl and she saw a black haired teenager run up to her. Wait... She knew that person. It was Amelia! The small red-headed girl on the floor hiccuped again after attempting to warn people, Serena was about to try to help.

...SHINK!

Serena felt something impact her leg and then a warm liquid spread across it. She looked down see a large splinter of wood sticking out of her left leg. That was not good. Serena felt a wave of nausea and pain.

On the brightside, if she continued bleeding, she'd have the ammunition she needed to protect some of the younger looking students from another shockwave.

Several coarse words ill-suited for speaking in polite company ran through her head leading up to, and directly following, a hiccup. As she flew, she concentrated on falling the right way. Her body turned, limbs moving to minimize the impact and prevent anything from breaking. At least the training with Gawain and Quin had helped her with that.

Skid, scuff. Grass stains. She'd deal with those later. At that moment, her mind had focused on the far more important task of helping the redhead, and minimizing injury and property damage. Now, how would she accomplish that best...? Perhaps if the girl couldn't hiccup, she couldn't explode.

"What solves hiccups...?" Amelia muttered, thinking to herself.

Grass-stained hands scraped dirt off on her jean legs as she pushed herself to her feet and got her affairs in order. Her mind was grinding gears. Surely, there had to be some strategy. Drinking water slow sometimes worked. So did controlling one's breathing. But she hardly thought this girl would have the ability to do either. Scaring the person with hiccups sometimes helped... buuuut she seemed plenty scared, already. But hell. It was worth a shot. She'd try a mix!

Her arms rose as she focused, eyes hardening and narrowing, brows creasing and slanting in concentration. Foggy, semi-transparent ghost hands appeared at the bottom of the redhead's shirt, gripping it and pulling the whole thing up and over her head. The goal here was to block her ability to hiccup, to scare her, and all of that stuff. And if it failed, then there was embarrassment, a terrifying side effect. And maybe that would work, too. And if the idea was stupid, then it was still beating the people on the couch for contributing to the help efforts. Flawless. She would apologize later. Maybe.

Lots of people all around her were injured. And they were mutant kids. And it was her fault.

Gulp.

There would be time to wallow in guilt later. Now, she needed to make it stop. Which should be pretty easy; she could just tell everyone else to scatter, then run far enough away from the Mansion within its grounds that she wouldn’t keep hurting people every time she hiccupped. And then everything would be okay.

And then Kaitlyn’s shirt got pulled up over her head, blinding her, making it hard to breathe, and exposing her chest to everyone.

She shouted something that got muffled by her shirt. Arms flailed wildly. She was trying to grab at whoever just pulled her shirt up and knock them away. Failing that, she tried to pull her shirt back down. She tripped over herself in the process. Kaitlyn fell to the ground, but her shirt didn’t.

Now she was on the ground, shirtless, trying to cover her chest with her arms. And she was very upset. For a few quiet seconds, she looked around, trying to figure out who would want to pull a stupid prank like that on her at a time like this. Then, her voice full of cold anger, she sat up and started to speak: “Who the fHIC-“

Boom.

Serena didn't have time to think. She stood up and looked around her. A few other people were bleeding, nothing serious, but due to the amount of people around the commotion, she had plenty to work with.

She stood. The girl would probably hiccup again soon, causing another explosion. More injuries would occur. Serena couldn't let that happen. She tore out the shard of wood and allowed more blood to flow. She saw a few students activate defensive looking mutations, and some took cover.

However there were several younger mutants who hadn't taken cover and were not protected. Serena was vaugely aware of something covering the hiccup'ers face, however she had other things on her mind. She moved infront of the young ones, and spread a wall of blood infront of them, forcing it to harden.

Most of the people in the area were too busy focusing on hiding or stopping the explosive child from blowing more things up to notice the glowing blonde or the wall of blood, the children behind the wall, were in shock.

BOOM!

Several shards of glass got sent flying in addition to the shock wave itself, she stumbled slightly, but regained herself quickly. She stood tall, keeping up the shield in front of the children, with her arms spread across in front of it to help her maintain it.

Several shards were stopped and caught by the shield, several cut or graised Serena, and one embedded itself in her shoulder. A wave of pain hit her, she couldn't think about it.

Cough.

Well. That had been less than she'd hoped for. And she definitely hadn't been hoping for a shirtless teenager today. Without looking, she let the ghost hands she was focusing on drop the shirt, and vanish. The shirt fluttered down on top of the exploding girl.

Again, she would say she was sorry later.

Damn it. What would she do, now? For the moment, she decided getting behind cover was a good idea. She caught sight of the weird red shield, and decided whatever it was would work. Running across the grounds, she moved to crouch behind it, whatever it was. Smelled faintly like copper. Strange. Looked like blood.

The wall made of blood was one of the first things Kaitlyn saw after her head was free of her own shirt. She saw the blood shoot out of the girl’s wounds and turn into a wall. It was probably the most unusual mutations on display, next to some of the shape-shifters and hole-diggers and force-field-makers using their skills to defend themselves. She was too preoccupied with her embarrassment and the burning sensation of her own blushing to appreciate this, however.

As angry as she was that somebody just telekinetically tore her shirt off and made her show her bare chest to a lot of her fellow students, there were more important things for her to deal with at that moment than revenge. She might have already seriously injured the one responsible, along with a bunch of other kids who didn’t even start to deserve it. The redhead pulled her t-shirt down to help cover her chest, but didn’t put it on. That would run the risk of exposing her chest for a few more seconds. She’d had enough exposure for one day.

Kaitlyn noticed that she was surrounded by walls and barricades and large mutants using their own bodies as shields. All of that was making it difficult for her to get farther away from the Mansion without hurting more people.

“You know what?” she announced after a few seconds, “I don’t even care who did that. They’re a jerk, but whatever. I need to-HIC!”

Boom. All of the barricades seemed to be holding. A few windows on the Mansion broke. Still sitting down in the middle of a circle of defensive mutations, she waited for her ears to stop ringing and continued.

“Get that blood-wall-thing outta the way. I need to get away so I don’t hurt you.” She stumbled to her feet, still trying to cover her chest, and started approaching the blood wall. The other kids tried to keep their barriers between themselves and the hiccuping explosive girl.

Serena saw the redhead approaching. Beads of sweat rolled down her face. This was hard, keeping so much blood in place, while getting torn to bits by debris at the same time. Yet some mutants made mutations look so easy...

The redhead looked like she was about to rant. And then hiccuped again. More glass, oh dear. Serena managed to get missed by most of it, however one sliced her cheek, letting blood roll down it.

The redhead still wasn't moving. "What are you doing?!" The increasingly pale from blood loss girl screamed "Get out into the open where there is space so you don't send things flying, quick!"

She began moving towards Serena, clearly intending to try to exit this way. Serena didn't have time to argue, she used the extra blood which had been coming out of her body to reinforce the barrier and pushed it (With the people it was protecting) back up near the wall to the side.

There were a bunch of little kids behind there, and someone else, but the kids had to be around 9 or 10 years old. She made a frontal cone around them, and thickened it, she would not let these kids get hurt.

As the redhead drew near Serena weakly murmured "Quick... I can't... for long..." she looked dizzy. She was dizzy.

For a few moments, Amelia did nothing. Then, she moved to help the girl who was making the blood barrier. Her arms went under her arms, steadying her. She looked pale and dizzy. Using that sort of power probably had dire consequences. She wasn't going to assume this girl would do something crazy like heal herself or something. After this, they were going to Doc Prof.

The redhead needed to get out.

"Move!" She shouted. Then quieter, she said to the blond. "Hey, remember me? Don't fall, now..."

Oh.

Kaitlyn was hoping that, because this girl was using herself as a human shield and could manipulate her own blood, she could also heal herself super-fast or something. So she would be okay. But as it turned out, that was a really stupid decision and why oh why did she think it would be smart to take this way out, of all the ways she could have chosen. If she wasn't so dazed by this whole situation, she might have stopped for long enough to say 'sorry' or something like that.

But the redhead didn’t need to be told twice to hurry. She was running as fast as she could without running the risk of falling over. Because of how similar the earth felt to a ship on the high seas in a hurricane at the moment, the fastest she thought she could safely manage was a slow jog.

By the time the orderling hiccupped again, she was far enough away from them that the worst they would experience of the blast was an unpleasantly loud noise. The involuntary power discharge made her lose her balance and trip over herself. Sitting up and looking behind her, she decided that she’d gone far enough. Kaitlyn lay down on the ground and waited for the hiccups to stop.

Serena smiled at the black haired girl. "Hiya Amelia..." Serena shook herself out of her sleepy daze. Bleeding, blood bad. Stop bleeding.

Those were the thoughts that were chaotically spiraling through Serena's mind as she shook herself awake. She looked at the blood behind her. An ironic idea came to mind. She let the blood barrier drop, splashing on the floor, she smiled the kids didn't seem to have any injuries.

She leaned against the wall, vaguely aware of Amelia near her. She was there wasn't she? Serena didn't have the energy too look. Everything was still spinning. Stop the bleeding. Stop the dizzy.

She focused, seeing spots, she managed to force the blood to spiral around her leg and her arm, moving over the cuts and applying pressure to them.

Voices around her. No, focus, she had to focus. She made the pressure turn into solidifying.

Those around her would see a blue aura surrounding the blood, it moving over wounds and then hardening, effectively becoming bandages made of blood.

Serena sat there for a few minutes. Waiting for the world to stop spinning. She felt numb.

After about 5-10 minutes. She found the dizzy feeling receding, and felt herself able to focus a little more. The red headed girl could not be heard hiccuping, she wondered if this meant she had calmed them down, or was just too far away.

Ten minutes was about as much time as Amelia had needed to get Doc Prof, by a lucky coincidence. The white-haired old man had tottered along behind her to the mansion's front, commenting about stupid children, risking their necks, making him work... really, it was a display of concern more than grumpy complaining. He was happiest when he didn't have to heal peoples injuries. Especially when said injuries were due to stupidity, like some of the things Amelia's Ex-Boyfriend had faced.

"Here she is," Amelia said, directing Doc Prof's attention to Serena. The blood manipulator came first and foremost. Other students, Amelia'd directed to stay close by, if-injured, and to watch over Serena and the redhead, if-not. Serena had been hurt the most. She was in need of urgent attention.

Doc Prof crouched down, clicking his tongue in disappointment and grandfatherly concern. Occasionally, he would shake his head. "Where does it hurt?" He asked Serena. He waited for her to direct give him permission before he laid on hands.