Guilty hands were raised. Eyes shunned away from angry lights.

Caleb blinks at the cops. His unsteady feet back away from the piercing eyes glaring at him with sheer intensity.

"Listen," the telepath grunts, squinting his eyes. "Can anyone turn off that damn light?"

One of the officers complies by heading over to her car and switching off the sirens.

"Hey, are you kids lost?" a cop spoke.

When the children did not answer, he merely lowers his Smith & Wesson pistol and shifts towards the kids.

"We are here because we heard an enormous explosion." the officer went on. "The store owner told me that you guys were down here, looking for someone."

His hazel-green eyes glanced over Brooke's shoulder to see two burnt delivery trucks and dead Yakuza gangsters.

"What the hell happened here?" another officer asked.

He was a bulky African-American man with a navy blue police uniform, an ugly orange tie, and uncomfortable black shoes.

Brooke blushed. "We don't know, sir. It was like that when we first got here."

The husky cop aroused his left eyebrow.

"You're kidding?" he scoffs in disbelief.

From the corner of his eye, he noticed Apollo standing behind Johnny.

Dark gray hoodie cloaked his head, hair, and blue eyes. Icy white hands hid deep inside his broad pockets. Apollo's lanky body trembled like a fragile leaf.

Warm orange light brightens the children's faces, weapons, and sweat oozing down their foreheads.

To the authorities, the kids seem too young to be out here by themselves. But even so, their aloofness startled the police officers.

It is as though these teenagers were trained killers; their bold postures and hardened looks terrified the police officers.

Then, in a brief second, all the pieces begin to click inside the cops' heads. They recognized Apollo, Johnny, and the other kids from the wanted posters.

Caleb has a rap sheet a mile long; Brooke and Nessa did some petty crimes-but for good reasons. And as for Johnny, he sometimes keeps his nose clean.

But the only crime Apollo had committed was not procuring a mutant visa at a terminal.

"Oh, fuck." Nessa thought.

She witnesses the stunned policewoman fixing her unrestrained gaze on an anxious Apollo and the kids.

"I know those girls." a Cuban-American cop declares candidly. "They were the deranged waitresses who shot those two men."

Nessa couldn't believe what she had just heard.

"What?" she snorts. "You're arresting us for defending ourselves? Those idiots were trying to rob a shitty diner for God's sake!"

The policewoman ran her fingers across her wrinkles and scowled. "Did you four kids have something to do with the incident?"

She gestures her finger at the dying flames roasting the crime scene.

The kids couldn't help but drop their jaws; Caleb, Brooke, Nessa, and Johnny were not capable of burning criminals alive.

But let me remind you that these teenagers are neither guilty nor innocent.

They do not use their powers to motivate communities or help the police solve cases. Instead, the juveniles simply minded their business and use their abilities, wits, and street smarts to survive.

"No!" Johnny blurts after he cautiously ambles towards the five officers. "Of course not! We were looking for our friend-"

"And what's his name?" the policewoman cuts him off.

Johnny opens his mouth to speak, but closes it. There was no use in telling the cops their side of the story.

First, the kids were often ambushed by the police officers. And second, they were at the crime scene. Therefore, if the youngsters tell the cops what happened, their words will be used against them in court.

Soon after Johnny refused to answer the cop's questions, the authorities ushered forward and coerce the juveniles to lower their weapons.

Begrudgingly, the juveniles did as they were told. Johnny dropped his katana, Brooke sets down her whip, and Nessa and Caleb calmly placed their guns on the floor.

"There," Johnny says finally. "Here are all of our weapons. Now, we don't want to cause any trouble, alright?"

Nessa gapes at her brother as if he was crazy.

"But please let us explain," he continued. "We do not attack people."

Apollo was soon impeded by two officers throwing him on the floor. Tightening her bare fists, Nessa screamed, "Hey, what are you doing?"

Calm yet irked, the Hispanic policewoman pulls her menacing glare away from the boy.

"He is dangerous." she reasoned, slapping the silver handcuffs on Apollo's wrists and pushes him to the unoccupied police vehicle. "In case you haven't forgotten, he went to an airport without any identifications."

Peeling him off the soil, the stern police officer unlocks the door to shove a fragile Apollo into the car when Brooke stepped in.

Picking her extensive whip, she threw the black cord around the officer's right wrist.

"Hey!" the policewoman growled. "What the hell are you doing?"

Brooke responds by casting the woman on the floor and slashed Apollo's silver-gray handcuffs. Pieces of metal dispersed across the concrete.

The Phoenix siblings and Caleb both awed at her boldness. Horrified, the authorities point their guns at Brooke.

"Who the hell are you?" one spoke up. "Are you a freak sympathizer?"

The young prophet sneered, "Something like that."

After yanking his firearm aside, the officer takes a swing at Brooke, allowing her to block his fist, put her legs around his beefy neck, and tackle him to the ground.

"Get the hell off of me!" he growls, coughing up blood from his mouth.

"Honestly," she frowns, tilting her head to the side. "Is that how a man talks to a lady?"

An army of police officers whipped out their firearms and aimed at the girl. They clamor in unison, but Brooke understood what they were saying.

"Let him go!"

"Freeze, mutant freak!"

"Get your filthy hands off of him!"

Unsurprised, Brooke eventually obeyed the officer's wishes by uncoiling her legs off his neck.

"Get up!"

She got up.

"Put your hands in the goddamn air!"

Once again, Brooke drops her leather whip and raised her hands.

Arrogant smiles on withered faces. Handcuffs hurl towards flexible hands as cops approach Brooke.

Then, in an instant, Nessa scrambled into the scene by assaulting the female police officer first and wounding another with her heel.

Her unkempt hair is wild; clothes and boots splattered with dirt and blood. Angry fists pound the officer's face until fresh blood caked her skin.

Angry, his partner cocks his firearm at a distracted Nessa until Caleb executes an effortless barrel roll, dislocates the officer's arm, steals his gun, and brutally pistol whips him across the face.

"That's for touching my girlfriend!" Caleb seethes.

Dominant, a third policeman yanks Johnny by his black hoodie and drags him backward.

He tries pushing the boy against the wall when Johnny vanished into thin air.

"What the fuck?" the cop searched high and low for the boy until he was clocked out by nimble fingers jabbing his skin.

While the kids were clashing with the local authorities, a dumbfounded Apollo crouched behind one of the police cars.

"Holy shit." he was thinking when Apollo saw Nessa shoving an obese officer against the car and slamming it on his arm.

The cop shrieked in pain, but Nessa defeats him a brutal blow to his face-much to Apollo's chagrin.

Later, as their battle was over, Nessa clenches Apollo's painful arm and dragged him off the floor.

He attempts to move his arm from Nessa's grip, but she was a lot stronger than he thought.

"Jesus Christ, Apollo!" moaned Nessa. "You should be moving-not standing there like a fucking tree."

Apollo gawks at the injured cops. Blood leaked from smashed lips and broken limbs.

"You hurt those cops. . ." he gasped. "They were just doing their jobs.

A grumpy Caleb rolls his eyes.

"Get over it, man," the telepath snorts.

Apollo's eyes grew wide. "Get over it?!"

He didn't understand why these kids were acting calm. He had just witnessed them beating those cops into a coma!

Listening to his thoughts, Caleb did a cold chuckle and moves towards Apollo. His index finger jabbed into Apollo's chest like a knife.

Brown eyes studied the sweat pouring on his face. After scanning his face, Caleb asks him a strange question: "Do you want us to leave you behind?"

Apollo casts him a perplexed look. "What?"

Being an easygoing kid, Caleb repeats his question again.

"Do you want us to leave you behind?" he asks again. "Because to me, you sound like one of those white privileged assholes who don't give a damn about people like us."

"So, if you want us to leave you with these pigs, I am up for it. But if you do that, you might go to jail and spend the rest of your shitty life getting your ass kicked by drug dealers, rapists, and murderers."

The fire-wielding mutant was bewildered by Caleb's casual smile.

His words were brutal, but his attitude was very relaxed-unlike Johnny's.

"What's it going to be, kid?" Caleb leans his back against the police vehicle. "Do you want to escape this hellhole or do you want to be murdered in your own jail cell?"

Apollo glances at Johnny and the girls, who didn't entangle themselves in their serious discussion. Instead, they watch quietly-almost like an audience sitting in a movie theater.

Groans utter in the burning air, compelling Apollo to make an impossible decision.

"I want to leave San Francisco," he finally mumbles.

Caleb leans his ear to Apollo. "I'm sorry. What did you say?"

"I want to leave San Francisco."

That's when Caleb's smile became sinister.

"Good decision," he says. "Now, grow the fuck up, show us some goddamn appreciation, and let's get the hell out of here."

And so, the blond-haired boy clamped his mouth shut.

He wanders over to the kids when he caught the cops' hands soothing sore backs, torsos, and foreheads. Some manage to get up while others tumbled on the concrete floor.

Blood soaked on black ties. Eyes regained their lost vision. Apollo wants to leave, but the four youngsters had given the police officers a chance to recover themselves.

Casually, the mind reader stares at the cops and begins to control their minds.

"Hey, before you arrest us for whatever bad shit we did in the past," he began. "First, I need each one of you to plant all the evidence in your cars."

"After you are done, drop all the charges on us-especially Apollo's." Caleb jerks his thumb at the blonde-haired boy then went on with his instructions.

"Next, you guys are going to go to your boss and admit that you were involved, helping the Yakuza's drug trade. And lastly, I prefer you guys to forget that we were never here."

Soon afterward, the brainwashed cops followed Caleb's proclamations.

They seized the business suitcase and three bags of manure off the floor. Next, they began planting the bags of cocaine on the back of police vehicles.

After appreciating Caleb's handiwork, Johnny notifies that everyone has to clear out of the premises immediately.

"More reinforcements are going to be here if we don't move." he reminds them. "So unless you want to eat prison food, Apollo, I know a guy who can help us out."

Apollo's eyes sparkled. For a couple of defiant teens, they sure know how to help a kid in need.

"What?" he asks as the kids collect their weapons. "You know someone who can help me?"

Johnny glares at him. "Isn't that what I just said?"

Apollo blushed. He follows the kids out of the basement and through an opened door.

* * * *
Police officers and cars flocked in every direction. Searing blue and red shone on the distraught civilians, who are desperate to know what is going on.

Blending in the crowd, Johnny and the others avoided prying eyes. The cops try to reassure the crowd, but Brooke could feel the tension increasing.

"What the hell happened?" a Chinese woman shouts.

"Are we safe?" another voice yelled.

Some tried to go past the yellow crime tape, but the officer pushes them back.

"Sir, with all due respect," he says. "We don't want you or anyone else contaminating the crime scene."

Nessa rolls her eyes as she pushes Apollo through the sea of anxious people. Though the air was tight, the children manage to wriggle through small spaces while keeping their heads down.

But what impressed Apollo is their ability to be inconspicuous.

In Idlewild, Headmaster Prometheus had educated the four teens on how to blend in society without causing a scene.

And they did it perfectly. Brooke, Caleb, Nessa, and Johnny were as quiet as mice.

Pockets warmed their hands; the kids merely exchange heated stares at the officers or civilians.

Instead, Brooke navigates Apollo through the crowd until they reach an abandoned Chinese restaurant-far away from the police, press, and nerve-wracking people.

Nessa ascends on the front passenger seat, whereas teenage Bonnie and Clyde settle in the back next to Apollo, who is busy fastening his seatbelt.

"Look, I know your names." he starts to say. "But what I don't know is-"

"-why we are saving your lives." Johnny finished. He swerves the key into the ignition and starts the car.

A surprised Apollo looks up from his soiled pants.

"We love to answer your questions, but first, we need you to get the hell out of California."

"Why?"

Nessa hurls Apollo a distasteful stare.

"Because we want to, alright?" Her red nails dug through dark leather. "In case you lost your memory, you spent your entire life rotting in a cell."

Apollo became silent for a moment until he asked: "Do you guys have superpowers like me?"

Johnny swivels his eyes to the ceiling. "First off, we are not in a fucking comic book. So don't say 'superpowers'. Second, we have powers, but Nessa doesn't."

His little sister glares in his direction.

"Screw you asshole," she snorts. "At least I can throw a knife. That's even better than teleportation."

Apollo's inquisitiveness increased. "You can teleport?!"

"And phase through walls," Nessa adds. "But Johnny does not do it very much."

In response, Johnny pinches her left shoulder.

"Ouch!" she squeaked. "Quit it!"

Grinning, he sticks his tongue out like a spoiled child and backs out of the parking lot.

Blistering winds flowed inside the car.

Brooke leans her back against the chair. Her backpack sat on her bare feet. She rests on Caleb's shoulder whose fingers massage the back of her neck.

"You okay, babe?" Caleb asks Brooke.

She responds by bobbing her head. Sweet fingers ran inside his sore hand as Brooke vows to give Caleb some medicine when they get home.

But as they confront congested traffic, Brooke believes that the medicine must wait.