(A/N: Written for the 12daysChristmas challenge on LiveJournal, prompt "five superheroes". Reviews welcome!)

"So... what is your power, then?" Darrell asked at last.

"Oh." Irene looked round at her, grinned wickedly. "Alicia didn't tell you?"

"Have a heart, Irene," Alicia said from where she was leaning on the back of the sofa. "I may not suffer fools gladly, but I don't reveal other people's secrets without their consent."

Irene laughed. "She'll find out sooner or later - it's hardly a secret, is it? Can I show her?"

"Go ahead."

Irene scrambled off the sofa and hurried out of the room. When she came back, she was clutching a canvas bag which, when she set it down, Darrell could see was lined with neatly folded skeins of wool, each one carefully sealed with a strip of black paper.

"Right," Irene said. "You agree with me that these are all neatly organised? Go on, pick them up if you want. Check for invisible wires -"

"Roll up, roll up, for the greatest show on earth," Alicia put in, laughing.

"Now -" Irene pulled off the gloves she was wearing with a flourish. All the people here wore gloves, Darrell noticed. She thought she could guess why. But even so, Irene's hands were speckled with ink and soot, although they looked very pale against the surface of the bag. She rested her palms on it for a few seconds, then let go and handed the bag to Darrell.

"Go on, look," she said.

Darrell did so, and gasped. All the skeins of wool had come unbound, and were trailing around each other, knotted together, different colours run together like spilt ink.

"How did you..."

"Our dear Irene's power," Alicia said, "is to cause chaos. She's incapable of wearing shoes that lace because they constantly become untied. She can cause any piece of machinery simply to short-circuit by touching it. And while we haven't investigated this, we suspect that she could cause confusion and disorganisation in people simply by laying a gentle hand on their forehead -"

"But there are some problems in testing that," Irene said, "so we can't prove it."

"It certainly seems to hold true for her, however," Alicia said. "Irene takes simple disorganisation to an art form. She's famous at university for - what was it, Irene? Managing to answer a paper on group theory while everyone else was studying metric spaces?"

"I felt like answering a group theory paper," Irene said. "I thought I must have mixed up my timetable."

"Doesn't it..." Darrell swallowed. "Doesn't it make things difficult for you, though? I mean... obviously you can't actually hurt people, but -"

"I wouldn't go that far," Alicia said. "Travelling in vehicles with her, for instance, is always a bit of a risky undertaking." She glanced at Irene. "Not to mention, it's put a damper on her skills as a pianist. When something goes out of tune every time you touch it -"

"Oh, stop it." Irene scowled suddenly. "Don't talk about that, Alicia."

"Whatever you say," Alicia said, lazily. "But you see, Darrell, Irene was my... protege, I suppose you'd call it."

"I wouldn't," Irene said, grinning again as if nothing had happened. "Lab rat, perhaps."

"She was the first person with an unusual attribute I met," Alicia said. "Up until then, I'd been ignoring the signs in myself. Pretending it was just part of my personality. I'm sure you know that way of thinking."

Darrell bit her lip. In some ways, it was worse that Alicia was saying this, rather than asking why didn't you notice that things broke or exploded around you every time you got angry? Because you didn't, that was the thing, you just assumed this was how things were until something so awful happened that you couldn't pretend any more.

"But when I met Irene, I realised what was really going on," Alicia said. "And then I thought, well, why not keep an eye out for others? Plus, it probably helped that her unique skills accidentally caused me to break my leg during a game of lacrosse and my skills meant it had healed after half an hour. It's a bit difficult to pretend when that happens."

Darrell tried not to look too shocked. "You really - you really broke your leg and it - it fixed itself? How do you know it was broken?"

"Because it was like this," Alicia said, making a right-angle shape with the tips of her fingers. "Irene and I watched as it straightened itself out again. It was a very interesting experience, when all's said and done. It certainly cured me of pretending."

"And - and the other two, they don't pretend either?"

"I wouldn't say that," Irene said.

"Mary-Lou's being ridiculous about the whole thing," Alicia said. "She swears blind she doesn't know what I'm talking about, when the main reason she's living here is that her family are too frightened to be near her. She's such a little mouse."

"She's the sort of person who just is mouselike, though, I think," Irene said. "Which makes it ironic, considering what she can do."

"And as for Sally, I have no idea what she thinks she's playing at," Alicia said. "To be quite honest, I think she's one of the most unpleasant people I've ever met."

"She's not that bad," Irene said. "She just doesn't seem to... like people very much. If you want unpleasant, think of Gwendoline Mary." To Darrell, she said, "She's Mary-Lou's best friend. Doesn't have any powers, she just hangs around here because she keeps saying how worried she is about Mary-Lou."

"I think she hangs around here because she wants to know everything about all of us," Alicia said. "She's the sort of person who can't bear anyone except her to have any secrets. Anyway, Darrell - that's us. The North Tower girls, I suppose we would be, although I'm not sure how well we'd do at fighting crime. If you can control that temper of yours, you're welcome to stay."