… my safe haven.

Title: Six Words

Rating: T

Genre: Friendship, adventure, family, etc.

Characters: Everyone

Pairing(s): (Almost) any one suggested

Summary: … tell an impossible story. A collection of one-shots based on six words each.

Warnings: Well, none in general. If there ever are for a particular story, I'll tell you.

Notes: So, my new English teacher (who is awesome, by the way) introduced my class to six word stories. Needless to say, I was inspired. (Ha, there's one right there!)

Basically, you (yes, I'm talking to you, the readers!) can submit six words in a comment, along with a theme and/or characters, and I'll write a one-shot based on it. (I might do a few Elite Force ones, or other crossovers, despite this being in the Lab Rats archive, if the prompt is really good.) I'll occasionally throw one of my own in there, or one my IRL friend (who doesn't have an account and shall henceforth be known to ya'll simply as Peyton) wrote. (They're helping me out from now on. For pretty much everything.) My sister, SapphireRose0417, also might help out.

They vary in length—probably 500-2,00 words each. It depends. And I'm challenging myself to write them in an hour and a half or less. We'll see how that goes.

If you have any questions - about the six-word stories, how to submit, where did Peyton come from, since when did Sapph have an account, etc., just PM me and I'll answer all questions!

Without further ado, I'll begin my first prompt, by Peyton!

Prompt: "The world isn't my safe haven." The Dooley-Davenports; moments of realization

When you're out in the field every single day, rescuing people from impossibly horrible situations, it's inevitable that you stumble upon the truth.

—

Chase realized it first, despite being the youngest. Even before they started going on missions, he knew.

Calculations showed him that, if his and his siblings' bionics were revealed to the world, the amount of damage at crime scenes would go up by at least twenty percent due to both challengers of theirs and the intensity of the disaster they were facing matched with their powers. Then again, their abilities would counteract most of the damage, but still. Chase knew that just the fact that strangers would await to defeat them simply because of their abilities showed something about the world.

At seven, the simplest conclusion he could come up with was simply: the world sucked. If he allowed it to, the world would snap him up and spit him back out again, telling him all the while that he was worthless, useless, helpless.

He tried to become smarter, worked faster, became stronger.

—

Bree realized in the midst of their first mission.

Because who ever thought a high speed train carrying nuclonium was a good idea? (Oh, right, that would be her father.)

They were going to die. They were going to get blown to bits just because the train conductor messed up and then jumped ship. He abandoned them, leaving a city to get wiped out and children sacrifice their lives, just so he could be okay.

And that made her realize.

The people didn't care. They would sacrifice anyone if it meant saving their own lives. That train conductor didn't care that he doomed a city full of people, with children and jobs and spouses and friends and lives, to die. He didn't care that he jumped off the train. He only cared to make sure that he could live.

And what was the purpose of that? How could anyone live with themselves if they let others die?

She couldn't trust anyone but her family. Anyone in the whole rest of the world would let her suffer and wither away if it meant that they would live, even if she could save a thousand more lives after.

She wouldn't let anyone die. She couldn't even fathom it.

So she trained. She had to be faster.

—

Leo was the next one to realize it.

He'd grown up normal. His mother loved him unconditionally. But he hadn't known that she had shielded him—maybe too much.

The missions, the "adventures"… it was all just a game to him.

So when S-1 almost succeeded in killing him, it was a shock to realize that the world was not the safe haven his mother had always made it out to be. It was a cold cruel world, and though there were always those who would help, like his siblings, his stepfather, even those firefighters who rescued him from under that beam, there were those who would seek to only destroy.

Like Marcus, or Krane.

And how could he protect his world? He was normal. His siblings could make a difference with their abilities… how could he?

(Of course, Douglas helped him get the power to make that difference. If the world wasn't his safe haven just yet, then he would make it.)

—

Adam. Sweet, gullible, innocent Adam.

His family had protected his mind from the truth for a while. There were bouts, of course—when he thought Leo was dead, or Chase, or when Bree was left powerless—but it never lasted. But when Chase—his baby brother—volunteered to go on what was almost certainly a suicide mission to stop a missile, Adam knew.

People like Dr. Gao would always exist, and they would always work to destroy everything he loved. The world was not as rosy as his family had painted it. He couldn't let anything happen to Chase, to his family.

He volunteered his life, knowing that there was no certainty in his return. Knowing that life wasn't as he'd always thought it was. Because the world… it mattered.

And he realized: he was willing to die for this cold, cruel, unforgiving world. Because he couldn't imagine it gone. And he was proud of himself for that. He was willing to die for a world that wasn't his safe haven.

Hmm… not bad, for a warm-up. So, I'd greatly appreciate it if you were to leave a review with what you thought of the chapter, your thoughts on the challenge, and a six word story and prompt fill!

(By the way, I am still working on Simulation, this is more of just a side project that will be updated in between Simulation postings.)

See ya'll next chapter!