By your window

24.

                                       .oO°Oo.

"It was your father that organized the school exchange I'm taking part in" said Marben that same evening, slamming a thick pile of photocopies on her table; behind her, the sound of a sneeze, a crackle and then the most absolute, unexpected silence.
"Five? Why are you...". Turning to look for her boyfriend, the girl faced an empty room: for a moment she stood there, dumbfounded, but then...
"Oh" she whispered, confusion turning into astonishment, "The sneeze!".
Another crackle and a flash of blue light made her turn abruptly towards the door, where a visibly flustered Five reappeared looking at her with wide eyes and flushed cheeks. The two exchanged a long glance, somewhat amused on the girl's part and painfully embarrassed on the boy's, who was leaning against the desk with his arms crossed and ostentatiously, stubbornly feigning easiness.
"Not a word" Five snarled eventually, and Marben gracefully indulged him, drawing the attention back to the documents as if nothing had happened.

"Look here" she said, pointing to a particular paper. "Hargreeves designed the project, spotted the schools to which allow access, set the conditions, donated the sums necessary to finance it all and...".
"And?" asked Five with a strange, hard stare that Marben had never seen before. It gave her a bad feeling, but she had to tell him what she knew at all costs, even if she was afraid.
"...he also personally chose the students to which assign the available places". Five gave another look at the document in his hand and then frowned.
"How...how did you get your hands on these papers?". Marben shrugged and tried her best to look elusive.
"With my cousin's and other two friend's help...I couldn't get out of my head what you said about your father, that he never does anything without a hidden agenda, and so we dug around a bit in the secretariat and found out why the Headmaster acts as if your father owned this School".
"He finances it".
"Yeah...it took us a bit to get to have real evidence...but in the end here it is. And there is no room for doubt, the bank account details on these checks are the same reported on the documents for our scholarships. We checked those too".
"So, he he had already chosen which students would have been arriving here...but why would he do something like this?" wondered Five, glowering at the photocopies like all that mystery was their fault. As an answer, with trembling hands Marben fished a paper envelope from under the pile and gave it to him: inside, a multitude of plastic document holders filled with photocopies of birth certificates, photos and personal documents, slips of notes about families and distant relatives. One for each of the students partaking in the exchange.
Five browsed the whole stash of papers a couple of times back and forth, analyzing the marks scattered here and there, trying to connect some of them or generally to understand why his father could have wanted this specific group of people to...
"Oh" he said at some point, sounding mortified; Marben looked up at him, trying to ascertain if the two of them had drawn the same conclusion. "Oh, shit. This...this is so, so fucked up!".

Swiftly, Marben caught the chair and placed it behind her boyfriend; Five, indeed, let himself fall untidily on it. She caressed gently his hair, and the boy turned to bury his face in her chest, hugging her waist.
"I suspect that, based on our family history, your father thinks we have some sort of hidden potentials...and has come up with this plan to bring us here and observe us" the girl said softly, vaguely, not wanting to upset him even more. Five pushed his face down on her clothed bosom.
"He's obsessed" he mumbled on her. "He wants to find other people like us from the Academy, and train them, to enlarge his project and make an army of Umbrella Kids".
"But it doesn't make any sense! Come on, everyone knows your story, what the heck should all of that have to do with kids born in other years/months/days and whatever comes to your mind when you think about it? Agreed, it's an absurd story, but absurdity must also have a limit!". Reluctantly, Five unstuck his face from Marben just to look up at her.
"I don't know, Doll. What I said it's a guess, but knowing my Father it may very well be the truth" he admitted feebly "I think he has already started to observe all of you too, individually. That's why he comes to rehearsals. And if someone catches his eye...I fear he'd want to know for sure if she really has powers. Through testing".
"You mean medical tests?".
"I mean psychological torture. Or even physical". Marben gasped, hands going to Five's shoulders to support herself.
"Is...that how he started to train you as kids?". Five made a face that she didn't like at all.
"It went rather smoothly for me, to be honest. My spacial jumping was uncontrollable, often self-aborted, and a few times I got lost in the city...but at least it came naturally. For other of my siblings...well, it wasn't so easy". Right then and there, a thought struck Marben with the force of a slap.
"Klaus!" she wheezed behind the hand that had flown to cover her mouth; Five's eyes became impossibly sad, then he lowered his head and nodded.
"I have my suspicions about Vanya, too" he admitted, never looking up. "When we were very young...about three or four years old, maybe, she stopped getting trained and was suddenly put to live...I never knew where, exactly. Father, Pogo and Grace told us she was severely ill and needed to be kept isolated for her own good, and for ours too. But over the years I've never been able to stop wondering if instead it wasn't one of my Father's usual schemes to...force her to coax her own power out or...or to punish her for being born normal". 
"Oh my god, Five...". Shocked, Marben enveloped him in a tight embrace, dipping her face in his hair and wanting to never, ever let him go. He too held tight on her, breathing deeply in her scent.
"How...however frightening this whole story may sound...I'm sure it'll end quickly, and with nothing. You'll see" the girl forced herself to say, caressing her boyfriend's back reassuringly.
"If...something ever happened to you..." Five whispered from deep down between their bodies, but Marben cut him off immediately.
"It won't. Don't worry, my love, I'm a perfectly ordinary, uninteresting girl with no special qualities" she said.
"You're all but ordinary. Or any of those things" Five hissed sharply, lifting his head to look furiously at her from below.
"As you wish then, darling, but to your father's eyes I am just a musician. And that's no superpower at all" said Marben in a gentle tone, smoothing his hair, not having the heart to tell him that Sir Hargreeves apparently saw it differently, and was already breathing down her neck.

I wanted to include in the chapter a spectacular headcanon I found rummaging the internet (I can't remember who posted it, so I can't give him/her the credit, however...just know that it's not my idea!), the one in which if Five suddenly sneezes can't control himself and jumps. ADORABLE.