[INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3][COLOR=gray]B R Y N N  R E Y E S  [/color][/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][INDENT][sup]Friday Evening | Orlaith Valley Trail and Park[/sup][/INDENT]
That Jonas Lehrer had powers shocked Brynn even though she’d played with a few scenarios where the strange teacher possessed special abilities of his own. Mind whirling, Brynn watched in amazement as her teacher froze Sebastian with one word and extinguished Aiden’s fire with another. 

[i]Is he some sort of wizard?[/i] she wondered, mind simultaneously finding and rejecting that idea. [i]Preposterous![/i] was her next thought, but Winter spoke up before Brynn could continue bashing herself for something she believed more crazy than what was transpiring before her. 

Winter’s rambling accusations may have been much messier than her normal, composed wordings, but they gave Brynn a lot of information to work with. For one, it seemed that Winter had developed some sort of personal grudge against Lehrer. It wasn’t like Brynn could blame the blonde since she could see herself being pretty happy if some very special Social Conscience teacher disappeared off the face of the planet with a “poof,” but Winter’s grudge seemed a bit too deep to have just developed during Lehrer’s revelation. The key piece was the girl’s statement about the night of the dance, and since Mather Memorial High only had one dance so far in the school year, Brynn doubted that Winter could be referring to anything else. 

[i]My powers existed before the dance, so I didn’t get them on the night of the dance. That said,[/i] Brynn thought, brows knitting as she thought back to the heavy blow to the student council,[i] what happened?[/i] A key puzzle piece was missing, and Brynn didn’t like it one bit. 

All this was before Jonas Lehrer’s rather short, fast, and — on the whole — completely unsatisfactory explanation. Brynn had a sudden urge to throw her hands up and demand where she could find a library’s worth of materials on the whole matter because she had way too many questions and much too little patience to deal with her “Social Conscience Teacher.” The whole scenario was like some [i]Lord of the Rings[/i] junkie’s wet dream, and Brynn despised it. 

Jonas’ revelations about the fire both surprised and frightened Brynn; she didn’t remember anything of the dance, and now she was being told that some ancient, magic-sucking druid had come after one of her classmates? [i]What else am I not aware of then?[/i] she wondered, icy dread sinking into her gut. [i]What else have I conveniently forgotten, or even been forced to forget? Is that a thing? Wiping someone’s memory?[/i]

Registering some faint movement among her classmates, Brynn noticed Aiden making for the fringes of the group, his face a tired mask of resignation. If it had been a week ago — or even two hours ago — Brynn would have considered calling out to him. Now, she figured he could use some guilt in his life. [i]Reckless and thoughtless. Absolutely no foresight and care for others’ lives,[/i] she thought in clipped phrases, her lack of control over the new revelations bringing out her sharper and more cynical side. [i]Lehrer might have made it sound pretty but Aiden could have refrained from torching the forest in the first place.[/i]

Turning a blind eye to the boy, Brynn refocused on Lehrer as Evander voiced one of the questions that had been running through her head. [i]That’s one way to put it,[/i] she thought, letting out a faint snort at the notion of an organization formed to protect Hyperhumans. [i]Can this situation get any more like some Marvel-DC fandom gone wrong?[/i]

[color=gray]“Exactly. What’s in all of this for you?”[/color] Brynn asked, eyes steely as she met Jonas’ gaze. [color=gray]“Surely you have some better reason than simply being a part of some humanitarian organization? Because frankly, I have a hard time believing that you’re just some do-gooder, so what do you get out of all of this?”[/color]