[hider=Dare you to Move by Switchfoot][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qbnsk2_F5g[/youtube][/hider]

[i]September 1st, 1992[/i] 

	Room 205 of Leesburgh General Hospital is a flurry of activity: nurses shuffling past one another, doctors donning gloves and gowns and masks at the door. The room is bare and beige and a fluorescent light hanging from the ceiling illuminates it in stark, sterile white light. In the center of the room is a hospital bed, and in that bed is a woman who is giving birth to her son. The woman is screaming and crying, her face a contorted red mask of pain and pressure. Her husband stands at her side, his face a porcelain white mask of fear, drenched with a healthy dew of sweat. The woman’s mom sits in a corner with a camcorder in her hand, recording the birth for some godforsaken reason. The doctors and nurses move around the woman in a flurry, checking vitals, whispering words of encouragement. Pulse? Elevated, but healthy. Cervical dilation? Sufficient. Spinal injections? Administered. Everything fell into place like cogs in a machine; the baby would be healthy, the mother would make a quick recovery. 

The doctor whispers something into the woman’s ear. She begins to push with all her strength. The nurses gather around with scalpels and suction tubes and thick blankets for swaddling. The father is pushed out of the way like a stray shopping cart, his hand now sandwiched between two nurses and his fingers going white from the pressure of the woman’s grip. The woman cries out, a mixture of pain and barbaric might coursing through her. Within her womb, muscles contract. Fluid shifts. A new life is about to be abruptly hurled into a brand new world. 

The doctor gasps as the baby’s head begins to emerge. Like a spotlight, a burst of light erupts from beneath the woman’s gown. The doctor stands stunned, his pupils dilating with the blinding light but unable to look away. A collective burst of shock and fear comes from the nursing staff. The mother of the woman, jockeying her camcorder between medical personnel, screams “WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?” She is pushed out of the way as one of the nurses moves to act. The doctor, confused and stunned, stumbled to the side as the nurse springs into action. The baby comes further and further out. He is crying, and his whole body erupts with light to the point where it burns to look at him. The nurse does it anyway. She delivers the baby single-handedly, the rest of the staff too shocked and confused to act. The umbilical cord is cut. The mucus is gently sucked from the baby’s mouth by a vacuum tube. He is wiped and wrapped in blankets and a little hat is put upon his head. The baby is still glowing. Its eyes are like looking into the sun. The woman looks down, exhausted and dizzy from the pain and pressure. She sees her son for the first time, and sees that he is glowing bright. Her jaw goes slack. 

In other parts of the hospital, similar things are unfolding. In Room 207, a green baby girl is born. In 208, a baby slips through the doctor’s hands as if it’s made of maple syrup. In Room 210, a doctor towels wet cheese dust off of his face and gown. No one knows what is happening. Most people are too shocked to act. But the births happen anyways, and soon there is a maternity ward filled with very, very strange babies. By the end of the day, the hospital is more crowded than an ant hill. News reporters and FBI agents elbow eachother out of the way. EPA agents in full protective gear sweep maternity ward floors with Geiger Counters that buzz like beehives. Nobody knows what is going on, but it keeps happening: babies are born, and they are not normal. 

The age of the Children of Lee has begun. 

[hr]

[i]September 3rd, 2010[/i] 

[hider=Magic by B.O.B.][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FlziHpCJFM[/youtube][/hider]

[i]3:00 PM[/i]

Jack Kirby High School looks pretty much identical to every other high school in America. It’s two stories, a single large rectangle building with the gym sticking out of the right end, making the crook of an L shape. It has a bus loop in front of the glass double doors, a parking lot to the left, a soccer field, a football field with a red asphalt track around it and a set of rusty bleachers. Right now, a line of yellow school busses sit outside the front double doors in a neat row. A series of plastic tables sit to the right of the central stairs from the front doors, covered in various baked good. A boy and a girl sit behind the table. They have identical blonde hair and wear identical robin egg blue blouses. The distant sound of a monotonous voice over an intercom echoes through the doors and windows.

“Good afternoon Snow Leopards,” the voice says over the crackling intercom. “I hope you all had a good first week of school. This is Vice Principal Withers here, filling in for your afternoon announcements. We have just a few quick notes this afternoon: remember that there will be no school this Monday in observance of Labor Day. Please don’t show up to school that day, no matter how badly you want to.” The intercom cuts for a moment as VP Withers giggles to herself. She is the only person in school who laughs at the joke. “In addition, please note that school picture day will be next Tuesday. Pictures will be used for this year’s yearbook and for Student IDs. The Kirby Klefts, our brilliant and glee club, will be holding a bake sale outside of school to raise funds for their annual trip to the Pennsylvania Sing Off. Students reporting for detention should meet me outside of the Principal’s office immediately after announcements. With that, classes for the day are completed. Have a great Labor Day weekend Snow Leopards.” 

The intercom clicks off and the school bells ring. Students explode from their desks, elbowing past one another as they rush through the doors and out into the linoleum halls. A sea of writhing acne and body odor erupts from the front doors of the school, accompanied by laughter, shouts, and the rhythmic bump of a handheld speaker blaring the musical stylings of B.O.B. It is sunny and warm, and the weekend looks full of promise. 

[hr][center][h1][color=SpringGreen]H E L E N[/color][/h1][/center][hr]

The sky was clear as glass in the gaps between the branches of the trees. A warm wind blew between the trees, rustling the grass and lifting the first few fallen leaves of autumn skyward. The grass rippled along the hillside as dandelion spores danced in the summer wind. In the trees above, robins and blue jays and cicadas sang a discordant symphony of life. In the center of a circle of trees, Helen Hart lay in the dirt, hands behind her head and eyes closed gently. The wind rippled her green sundress around her knees and whipped her mess of straight red hair into a bird’s nest. Beside her, on an old tree stump, sat two books: a leatherbound journal with a heavy-duty strap on it and The Collected Works of Emily Dickinson. This is how Helen planned to spend all of her free periods as a senior: fully relaxed, at one with nature. 

As the bell rang in the distance, Helen’s eyes fluttered open. On the tree stump next to where she lay sat a pudgy crow which eyed her books curiously. When she saw it, Helen’s eyes grew large; she had been waiting all her life to get this close to a crow. Slowly, she reached over to her backpack, a green canvas pack covered in pink flowers a mere arm’s length away. She grabbed the side pocket and pulled out a granola bar. The crow turned to look towards Helen. She froze, terrified of scaring it away. Instead of running, the crow hopped its way around to face her and looked down at the bar quizzically. Helen pointed at the bar and then the crow. It blinked. She assumed this meant the bird understood. She ripped the plastic packaging off the bar, crushed it in her hands, and held it out to the crow. It turned its head sideways in that way animals do, then pecked gingerly at the granola. 

“Well what a beautiful boy you are!” Helen said. “What a gift from the Mother to see such a pretty bird up close!” The bird continued to eat, gulping down chunks of the granola neatly. Slowly, Helen shifted the food into her left hand, and with her right began to move to pet the creature. Before she could, though, there was a rustle in the grass nearby and a masculine grunt. A streak of grey shot across Helen’s vision and impacted the bird. It cried out in pain and stumbled with the weight of the impact, from the edge of the woods, a teenaged boy screamed:

“WORLD STAR” 

Helen looked over to see two boys: one skinny and dressed in a dirty wife beater, the other fat with a mullet and literal tusks sticking out from the corners of his mouth. Helen’s eyes widened. She grabbed for her backpack and her books as the two boys ran forwards. The crow, aware of the mortal peril it was in, flew off, though its left wing twitched a bit. 

“Nice shot Jack!” Mateo roared. His voice was nasally and deep.

“Thanks! Missed the other bird though!” His voice dripped with aggression. Mateo laughed, snorting a little as he did. Jack reached down and grabbed the empty beer can from where he had thrown it. Helen dashed off fast as she could as the two boys laughed and stood in what had before been her peaceful glade. She knew they wouldn’t bother chasing her- Jack and Mateo only got away with their behavior because they were just annoying enough to make you hate life but not dangerous enough to make your parents call the principal. For a split second, she considered turning around and giving them a facefull, but no, it wasn’t worth the risk. 

After a few minutes of downhill jogging, Helen reached the parking lot of Kirby High. She darted past a moving school bus, the driver leaning on the horn as she did, and ran to her car. Helen’s car was, to put it gently, an acquired taste: a 2004 Toyota Prius painted pea green and covered hood to bumper in flower decals. On the back of the car, Helen had added some of her own personal touches to the deluge of decals: a pentagram, a Pride flag, a UFO, one shaped like a whale’s tail that said, fittingly, “Save the Whales”. The car was speckled with rust and peeling paint, but it ran like a charm (if you ignored the squeaky brakes, and the shitty AC, and the faulty gas gauge, and the solid minute it took the car to start some days). But Helen loved the car anyways. It was a gift from her mom for her sixteenth birthday, and to her the car was like a sibling. She called it “Doug”, which stood for “Da green car.” 

Upon reaching Doug, Helen opened the door and sat down in the driver’s seat. Willow would be there soon, she knew, and then the two would commence their Friday ritual. Helen would drive to Mooncash, where she had a part-time job. She’d work four to eight while Willow occupied herself, and then the two would go out into Main Street and find something to spend their evening doing.