Trip

Okay, I'm finally awake, so I'm going to attemp to write a decent introduction.

Trip is a story that I wrote that started out as an ongoing joke between me and two of my friends. That ongoing joke inspired, two other stories that I wrote. They are not good quality, and they are quite horendous, however, I enjoy them, and they are the basis for Trip. Trip covers up all of the holes that were left out in the open in the first two stories. It doesn't really mean anything because you won't know about those holes, but at least you know why Trip was written.
And now for the disclaimer. Trip was written either during the middle of classes or when I would get verry bored while at my house. What's even worse is that it got typed up late nights at college when I was running on verry little sleep. Put this all together and you get a story that doesn't have the best gramar and spelling. The meaning of this is that I know that some of the words are not spelled correctly, I know my grammer is not perfect, and I know that sometimes I tend to ramble along, please just deal with it and if you're daring enough, edit it as you go along.
Okay, here we go for the final blip, and then you can get onto your reading. PLEASE leave a message. Even if you only read the first few lines, leave a message. I want to know what you think. If you ever want to talk with me, it's not too hard to get in touch with me. AIM screen name Adrillf, email adress Adrillf@glowsticking.com. Just remember that if you're going to go through one of those to talk to me directly start off with something along the lines of, "I read Trip" or "I have a question about Trip" and hopefully I won't think you're some random stalker that's trying to talk to me.
Thanks in advance.

1-10

Trip
Most people say that their life is boring and that there is nothing neat that happens. For me, I wish that my life was boring and monotonous.
My life was at one time as normal as the world around me could get. I had two parents, went to school, got A’s and B’s, had a few friends, and occasionally something would come along that would spice life up just a bit. A group of rebels attacking, the leaders killing off an entire town, some Asians raiding New York, or something else that would change my plans just a bit.
My mom and dad said that it was different before I was born. Every one was considered equal, you could live where you wanted, do what ever you willed, do whatever job you liked and the number one thing that they always talked about the most was the food. Whenever we sat down for breakfast, lunch, or dinner they would consistently start out the conversation with something about how they wish that we could actually get some real food.
Personally, I really didn’t mind how life was back then. The food packets always made you full, the leaders always seemed to know what was best, and you didn’t have to deal with all of those lesser people. The leaders always had their heads on straight, even when they first started their big plan to take over the world. When the leaders took over they knew what they were doing. It sounds a bit Hitlerish, but they basically made white males the ultimate. I didn’t mind this while I was growing up because I am white and I am a male.
The leaders had a novel idea when they took over the world. What they did was simple, yet very effective. From what I could understand from my history classes, which I slept through half of the time, they made super villains. Somehow they figured out how to clone people with… well, with super powers. They then sent those super villains to the economic strongholds of the world, (U.S., England, France, Russia, China, etc) and in those countries, the super villains destroyed the economy from the inside out. After the economic forces of the world were taken over by the leaders, the rest of the world crumbled underneath.
The leaders then separated the world apart. Any white male that was Christian, was forced to move to certain cities with their families, if they had any. Single women and families of other races, or religious beliefs stayed in their towns, and then all recourses electricity, plumbing, gas, were turned off. Those towns literally went to ruins and a few people started a little group that has had some success in overthrowing the leaders simply called the rebels.
As far as jobs went the leaders decided everything. It wasn’t the actual leaders just more like their lackeys that were forced to rule over an area. Jobs were usually always given to white males, on rare occasions, like with my mom, women who were married to a white male, but they always got a lower position. In even rarer events outsiders got a job, but I had only seen that once, and the Asian was just a window washer.
My family was lucky, not only did the leaders let both of my parents have a job; they also gave them decent jobs that paid okay. My dad was a dean at a college near our house and my mom was a chemistry professor under him. They may both be teachers but it was better than my friend whose family of three kids depended on the father who was a construction worker.
I liked this life, we didn’t live in a mansion but the house was a good size and we lived well. My life was nice, boring, and repetitive, until he showed up.
The first day that I saw him was after school in November. He rang the doorbell and I was the only one home so I ran to the door and answered it. When I opened up the door, I politely said hello and he just stood there and stared at me. I didn’t really care about him looking at me but it just seemed a little creepy so I waved my hand in front of his face again, “Hello?”
He blinked a few times and seemed to snap out of his trance, “Oh, hello. Is Michelle here?”
“No,” I said flatly.
“Well, then may I come in, I’m a person that I think she’ll want to talk with.”
I looked him over, and I knew that he had to be lying. He could have been my age, possibly a bit older, but not by much. He was a bit shorter than me, maybe 5’ 9” while I’m about 5’10”. He looked a bit like my mom, emphasis on the bit. “How do I know that you even know my mom?”
He slouched down as if to say to me, ‘come on you idiot just let me in’ but he put up with me. “Her and I have shared a few close times. Let my just spout out a few facts that no bum off the street should know by heart. Your grandpa, her dad, was Adam Wesley Walters. He was born in 1986 in Las Vegas Nevada. His least favorite subject in school was in English but his favorite was math and history, because as he said, ‘math and history are the same year after year’.”
My jaw dropped. I didn’t know half of those things that he told me. He could have been lying but someone that has spent that much time to come up with a lie deserves something, so I let him in from the cold New York, November air.
I held out my hand for a handshake. He grabbed it and we shook, “I’m Trip,” I said introducing myself. He gave me a weird look and I explained my name, “With the name, it’s really Timothy but it never really stuck. My mom started calling me Trip once I started walking because I was always falling, and it’s been with me ever since.”
“I’m Adam,” he said flatly. He started to look around the room like he was looking for something, “when do you think your mom will be home from work?”
I looked down to my watch, “Ten minutes maybe less.”
Adam was still looking around the room like the small little entry interested him. I finally realized that we were just standing around in the front entrance so I invited him to the living room. As I gave him the quick tour of the house I noticed that his clothes were connected like a jumpsuit. I just thought that he was wearing blue warm up pants with a matching hooded sweatshirt but I realized that it really was just a jumpsuit. What really interested me was the embroidering on the top of his jumpsuit. Over Adam’s heart was a pair of scissors.
As we sat down in the living room I pointed at his jumpsuit, “That’s a weird jumpsuit. Where did you get it from?”
“An old friend.”
“Just an old friend? Are you going to tell me more, like who it is, how a teenager has an old friend, what the jumpsuit even means?”
“It’s an old friend of both your mom and me. She should actually still have her own jumpsuit, and most likely she’s even wearing it right now underneath her clothes. The rest… to put it simply, is a really long story.”
That got me a little worried about this stranger that I had just let into my house. He was a stranger that I had never heard my mom say a single thing about and he was saying what was underneath my mother’s clothes as if he knew. I thought that he was wrong, but what proof did I have against him? It’s not like I sit and watch my mom change clothes. This little glimpse of knowledge about my family just made me want to know more about this strange kid that was sitting in my living room. “When you say long story, how long? I have some time to kill.”
Adam stood up from the chair that he was sitting in and walked over to the bookshelf. He bent down and started to search through the lowest level of books. He pulled out two books, one was a dark royal blue, that matched his jumpsuit, and read in white letters on the side, The Watcher. The author of it was my grandpa, who had died before I was even born. The other book had a dark red cover and the title was Pyra. The author of that book was my mom. He brought the books over to me and dropped them into my lap, “Add those together and you may get some of the story,” he said walking back to his chair.
I lied, “I’ve read those before. What does your jumpsuit have anything to do with them?”
Adam called my bluff, “You haven’t read a single page of either one of them. You couldn’t even tell me who Mike Scavetta is.”
“Okay, so I lied, big deal.”
“It should be for you, because you should be Mormon.”
“How did… how did you know that?” My religion isn’t something that I announce to the world. It wasn’t against the rules of the leaders but religion doesn’t seem to be that big of a topic when everyone that you know is Christian.
Adam just gave me this smile that I didn’t like. It was one of those smiles that people give you when they know something that you should know but they’ll never tell you. It’s a mean smile to use, even if you’re bluffing, but I could tell he knew something about me that wasn’t public knowledge. What that thing was, I had no clue.
Before I could ask Adam any question I could hear the front door start to open up. I dropped the books in the chair and ran to greet my mom at the door. As soon as she walked in I grabbed onto her arm and started to drag her into the living room so she could see Adam. I didn’t explain myself so she was a little concerned, “Trip what are you doing? I know I just got home and you want to show me something but I can walk on my own.”
I let her go and just guided her into the living room where Adam was still waiting, “There’s someone here who wanted to see you.”
As soon as we entered into the living room my mom saw Adam and tripped out. She dropped all of her papers and books to the floor and turned and faced me, “Trip get out of here! Don’t ask any questions right now, just get out!”
I tried to slow her down because I knew what her temper could do when she got upset, “But…”
“Get out now, if you don’t you may get hurt.”
Adam spoke up, “I won’t hurt him…” My mom cut him off, “You’ve already hurt me and my family, how did you get that jumpsuit? No one should be wearing that.”
“Michelle, calm down, it’s me, Adam.” Adam tried to soothe her down, but I knew that once my mom was upset, it took an army to calm her down, but then things got a bit stranger. It only lasted for a fraction of a second, but Adam’s eyes glowed blue.
My mom suddenly changed attitudes, and just stared at Adam like she had seen a ghost, “Is it really you?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
My mom ran over to Adam and gave him a bug a hug and just started to cry and babble. “I didn’t think you were coming back, I thought after the Dameon thing, you guys were done. What about Mike and Johnny, are they back too?”
“I don’t know, I think I’ve found Mike but Johnny is still in hiding,” Adam looked over to me, “is he safe?”
“No but we should break it to him, I think that he may have something going on.”
I was a bit confused. First off a complete stranger walks into my house, does some crazy stuff and then my mom’s talking about me as if I wasn’t even in the room, “Hello Mom, I’m right here, you don’t need to talk about me as if I’m not here. What is it exactly that you have to break to me?”
My mom looked over to Adam and Adam lipped very vividly, ‘not yet’. “Nothing honey. I’m sorry that I yelled at you earlier, but could you please leave me and Adam alone for a few minutes, we need to catch up on a few things.”
“Okay mom,” I said walking slowly out of the living room trying to comprehend what exactly just went on. I couldn’t get it. A stranger came into my house and when my mom saw him she looked like she was about to kill him. Suddenly they’re best friends as if they had known each other for ever. I was confused and decided to wait around the corner and just listen into the conversation.
Once I was around the corner I heard Adam, “I’m sorry about how subtle I was about coming here, I know that there would have been better ways to introduce me being back, but I needed to talk to you. Also sorry about the papers, here I’ll fix them.” Near me all of the papers and bags that my mom had dropped onto the floor floated up into the air and hovered towards where Adam was sitting. They seriously just floated off of the ground and into the air without any one touching them.
“You need to fill me in. I get what happened with the leaders and all but is SN still around?”
My mom answered with a simple straight forward, “No.”
“Huh? I may be close to 500 years old but I think I heard you just say no.”
“I did, they took out SN.”
“How?”
“Most of it came from the entire economy falling apart and collapsing around us, but a bit of it came from insiders that were working for the leaders and infiltrated SN.”
“Is there any one left?” “Officially, no. A few of us have tried to keep in touch but most people are dead or too far into hiding that they wouldn’t blow their cover to come out and fight even if it was a matter of world security.”
“Who do you have then, that I would know.”
“Bethany, but that’s about it. We have the slayer…”
Adam cut my mom off, “The slayer? I can’t believe that you guys haven’t tried something with the slayer.”
“Sorry but all of us know that if we die, we won’t come back. Plus right now we’re trying to build up more power, like Trip. I know he has something going on with him.”
“With that, why is my grandson named Trip? No offense to your naming of my grandson but I still can’t believe that his name is Trip.”
Grandson? I couldn’t understand right then why Adam was saying that I was his grandson; I had some questions to ask about that.
“It’s just a nickname, just like with me. How many times have you called my Pyra?”
“Good point, I’ll let it slide by, for now. But you said that he is already manifesting powers, how do you know?”
“First, not only did he come from you gene pool but I did my researching and my husband’s how many ever great grandpa is Mike, when you guys were in India.”
“Dang, he’s got some potential.”
“Then get this, know how for us it took a whole bunch of work to get our mental game going? Well I think he already has some powers going.”
“How so?”
“Occasionally he’ll respond to my thoughts. For example one time I was walking down the hall and I was thinking about an old song that they don’t play on the radio any more. Suddenly as if on cue Trip starts humming along from his room. He didn’t even know the song but he was singing the melody to the song. Then it gets better. Other times I’ll be sitting around the house asking questions to myself in my head about random things and he’ll answer them as if I was saying them out loud to him.”
“How old is he?”
“15”
“Same age as me when I started my minor power.”
“But that was only your body, you were mentally over 300 years old.”
“True, so if you’re telling the truth this has to be one of the earliest powers I’ve ever seen.”
That’s what I was thinking. So why are you really here. I know that you wouldn’t risk exposure to the world just to catch up with me.”
“You know me too well. To put it simply. I found out a way to make it the way it was. I can make Vegas come back, Hannah come back, SN come back, and even that old crazy guy down the street come back. I’ve found a way to make the leaders never happen.”
My mom thought about how Adam could do that, and seemed to hit onto what he was saying, “Time travel? But I thought that the MIB made that illegal. If they catch you that’s punishable by death, and SN’s rules about not getting in trouble with federal law won’t work out because MIB aren’t the feds.”
“MIB is still around? Bastards. I thought you said SN was disbanded.”
“I did but MIB… well MIB has their ways. But how are you even going back, I thought that they only way to go back required you to pilot yourself into a super nova.”
“That’s one way, but at the end or near the end of our last life, Mike and Johnny were working with SN on how to time travel. The farthest back they got was back to Dameon’s battle, but that had to have been 30 years ago when they were doing it.”
“So you want Mike and Johnny to time hop back into time and kill the leaders?”
“There’s more to it than that, but that’s your basic plan.”
“And you want me to help you out?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll do it.”
“I thought you were going to say that.”
“What about Trip and my husband?” “I’m not worried too much about your husband because I think he knows already about you and SN, but your son… I don’t know what to do with him.”
“Should we tell him?”
“I think that we should train him a bit and even bring him with us.”
“That sounds good, I’ll go get him, he’s probably in his room.”
“No need, he’s already here, aren’t you?”
I didn’t know if he was talking to me but I kept quiet.
“You don’t need to hide behind the wall any more,” Adam said directly to me.
I slowly walked out from behind the corner. My mom was a little upset at me for listening into the conversation, “You were listening the entire time?” “Yes, but only a few things actually made sense to me, the rest just confused me. I was listening but the only thing I learned was that there’s a whole lot that I don’t know.”
“Just come over here and sit down, we’ll try to explain everything,” my mom said patting the cushion next to her on the couch.
I slowly walked over and sat down next to her. She turned, faced me, and looked me straight in the eyes, “Do you think that it is possible to be born with powers, and not cloned with powers like the leaders have done?”
I thought about this and it made some sort of weird sense to me, “It could be possible.”
“To put it simply, because I don’t want to beat around the bush,” my mom said looking me straight into the eye to make sure I understood every word that she was saying, “I have a power.”
It took me a while for this to sink in but then all of the sudden I had a million questions about everything. I tried to get a few of them out but Adam cut me off.
“I have a power too, and we both think that you have a power, and we want to train you. And for your last shocker of the day, I’m your grandpa.”
“What? I have a power and you’re my grandpa?”
My mom tried to calm me down, “Trip take some deep breaths. Let us show you first before you start asking questions. You don’t even know what we can do and you’re already creeping out.” I tried to calm myself down, “Okay, go.”
Right when I said go, my mom’s clothes went up into a burning inferno leaving her standing in a dark blood red jumpsuit that looked a lot like Adam’s but it had a flame over her pocket instead of scissors. In her hand a ball of fire appeared. It floated over to me and it hit me against my cheek. I was expecting it to burn but it didn’t even produce that much heat. “I have pyrokenisis. I can start and control fire at will. At full power with this I can burn everything within this house and the house it’s self to the ground within a minute. When it deals with me, everything burns.” The orb of fire fizzled out and I looked over to Adam.
He started to float out of his chair, “I have telekinesis. I lift things with my mind. I can push hard enough with my mind that I can send myself flying through the air at Mac 3 or 4; we’ve never actually clocked me.
“Okay this is nice and all but just give me a minute to think out loud, because this is a lot to try to understand all in one sitting. My mom can start fires at will, okay; I think I can handle that. What is with my grandpa being a 14 year old that has telekinesis, that bothers me a bit. I can get the telekinesis, but the age thing, that I have some problems with. Then I also have question about what you were talking about, what is SN, who is the slayer, who in the world is Mike or Johnny. Then also, why is a person named Bethany still around, that is if this kid is as old as he says he is.”
“It’s true that we haven’t told you much about things, so let me try to answer a few questions and just give you a general background on the world that no one really knows about unless they are members of it,” Adam said bringing his feet up from underneath himself so he was sitting in the air cross legged. “Close to 500 years ago three people were sent here to destroy pure evil from the earth. That evil was named Dameon, and all three of those people were special. All of them would get reborn after they died, however there is a catch, only one of them would be able to remember their previous lives and he would have to remind the other two about their past lives. Those other two are the firepower of the group. They are able to harness the earth’s energy and control it. The two with powers have adopted the names of Mike and Johnny just because it would be a bit confusing for all of us if we changed names for different lives, when we were talking about the same person. The person that follows them around is me, their watcher. We went through a few lives then we finally wound up in the U.S. In the year 2001 in high school, we killed Dameon, so we assumed that we wouldn’t come back, but obviously we did because I’m sitting here and I can remember the first time I ever saw Mike and Johnny, back 500 years ago in Japan. As for my jumpsuit, sense you were asking about that. They were given to us by a person that put an enchantment on them that basically maxes out our powers. Before I had my suit I was barely able to lift a piece of paper with my mind, now I can take down entire buildings. Then onto our next question, SN. Well, while we were running around, we got into a bit of trouble with the law but basically we talked to a few people in the FBI and started our own organization called SN, short for Super Natural. Quite simply everything and anything out of the normal was accepted in SN. For a while SN was sort of a guardian against people using power for evil but from what I hear we failed and we’re living in that consequence right now.”
“How did my mom get a jumpsuit?”
“It’s really quite simple, she’s part of the family, we got Jason, the maker of the jumpsuits, to make her one. She put it on, not knowing if she had powers or not, but once she did she learned she was a pyro.”
“Are you going to make me get one?”
“No, it’s completely voluntary; because once you get it you’re stuck with it, forever. Plus we don’t even have one for you because Jason sadly is dead.”
“This is starting to make some sort of weird since I just have to think about it for a bit, but who’s Bethany and the slayer?”
“Bethany is a shape shifter. Because she has no organs or anything that ages her she will live forever, unless she gets destroyed cell by cell. The slayer is just that,” my mom said trying to explain what a slayer was, “She kills vampires and other demonic things.”
I knew what she was talking about because I saw a rerun of an old show a few weeks ago on the TV. “You mean like… um… Buffy the Vampire Slayer?”
“Exactly like that just without all of her side kicks. She goes out and tries to keep the demons and devils at bay. She may not stop the leaders but when it comes to demons and devils there’s no one better for the job.”
“Vampires are real too?”
“Yeah,” Adam said as if I should have known that, “Aliens are real too.”
“Little green Martians are real too?”
“They usually aren’t little or green, but yeah, Martians and aliens exist
“We should take him to MIB,” my mom said to Adam, “They may have a few toys that he’d like to see.”
“I doubt that they would let us in. Even when I was a good friend with X I never went in. I don’t even know where their hide out is now days,” Adam said.
We sat there in silence I had about every question running through my head but I was afraid to ask them in fear of another history lesson from Adam or my mom. I was finally gutsy enough to ask, “What do we do now?”
“We do nothing; me and your mom are going to hunt down Mike and Johnny. If we want to do anything we need both Mike and Johnny, “Adam said floating to the ground and landing on his feet near my mom, “are you ready to go?”
My mom looked over to me, “Trip, stay home. When Dad gets back from work tell him I’m with an old friend and that he needs to set the table for three more people and make sure that we have enough room and food for them. Mike and Johnny are coming over to eat dinner.” My mom held out her hand and looked over to Adam. Adam grabbed her hand and in an instant they were flying out of the house.
I was actually glad that they were gone, it game me time to think everything over. I laid down on my bed and just stared at the ceiling fan go around in circles while thinking about everything I had just learned.
I must have dozed off because my dad woke me up, “Trip, where’s Mom? She didn’t leave a message and she was supposed to be home by now.”
I sat up and relayed the message to him. He seemed to get worried. “She’s out on the streets right now? It’s 6:00 and she’ll get caught in the sweep,” my dad said referring to the security sweep that happens at 6:00. Any person that is not authorized by the leaders can not be out of their house after 6:00. Any person caught is instantly prosecuted and arrested.
“Don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll be home. Even if she dose get caught she said that she’ll be okay.”
“Okay, I’ll start getting the packets ready, you need to help set the table.”
I set the table for six people and I even had to get chairs from other rooms just to get enough places to sit. It was 6:30 when the food was ready but it wasn’t until 7:00 when people started to walk in. The first two in the door were my mom and Adam, after him three people followed him, two teenagers and one adult. I thought that they had gotten caught by the sweep because the one adult was a bulky guy in a cop’s uniform.
The first teenager was my height with brown hair and light blue eyes. He was wearing a black jumpsuit with a green weed leaf, that was upside down. The one behind him was black. He would latter tell me that he was Porto Rican But to me he was black because previous to that night I had only seen two or three black people from a distance. He had a short layer of fuzzy hair on his head and was a bit shorter than me at 5’9” or so. He too was wearing a black jumpsuit, this one with a normal weed leaf on it.
The adult was a he when I first looked but turned into a she when I was looking over the two teenagers. I didn’t even know if I could trust these people but I instantly placed her as Bethany, the shifter.
My mom introduced me to each on of them, “Trip, this is Mike, Johnny, and Bethany.”
I shook all of their hands and when I got done Mike looked over to Adam, “It’s creepy, I can see what you’re saying.”
My mom didn’t like the uneasy silence so she gathered us all together in the dinning room. We all sat down in our chairs and Bethany sat on a chair that was really herself. My mom heated up the cold food with her power, we said a prayer and then we started eating.
When we were almost half through dinner the stories started coming out. The oldest person there looked only 35 but one of the youngest looking, mentally was centuries old.
Bethany had a story I couldn’t believe, “One year I shifted into a guy and ran for mayor. I had absolutely no political backing or background but I had SN and they sent the word out about me and I won. The weirdest thing about this was that I found out that two of the big pushers back then for normal people, no gays, no powers, not only were they bed buddies, but they were also both aliens.”
“I have on,” Adam said, “the first week that Michelle had powers she went on a hunt with Angie, the slayer, and she tried everything to get out of it.”
My mom interrupted the story, “I did not, I was just uncomfortable.”
“Uncomfortable? You hid behind a pile of boxes the entire time and almost ran the other way when you saw Angie walk towards you.”
My mom was visibly upset, “Don’t worry Michelle,” Mike said, “You think that sounds bad just what till you hear what you dad did. We were in France trying to clear up a little dispute for SN and we were flying. We were fighting and flying in the air, and as we all know after a bit of training you can do that. Well your dad ran into the Effie Tower. Full force, straight into the tower. If we went there, there would be a body print on the side of near the 53 floor mark.”
Every one laughed, Adam tried to defend himself hard flying backwards,” but his defense was only covered by even more laughing.
Once the laughing died down Adam started another story, “At least I wasn’t like Johnny who got so scarred that he almost wet himself just because some natives speared a wild pig.”
“Did you have to bring that up?” Johnny asked, “It was just every one had been talking about how powerful Dameon was and so when you’re walking through a forest and all of the sudden a pig that you had been watching gets speared from the middle of nowhere you tend to worry.”
My mom must have knew something was about to happen because she started to break things up, “It’s getting late not every one is immortal. Trip has school and seminary in the morning and others of us need our sleep.”
I stood up from the table, “Don’t worry. If we could we’d change it but we’ve all been there,” Bethany said.
“Some more than once,” Johnny added.
I went to my room and laid in my bed listing to them talk in the kitchen. “Adam you’re right, I shake his hand and I can just feel the power pulsing through him,” Johnny said, “We need to train him, he’s too strong of a power not for us to use.”
“You want to bring my son with us into the past?” my mom said with concern in her voice.
“We need as much power as we can get. If what I hear about the leaders is right we need as much power as we can get,” Adam said.
“Lets worry about this latter, I need to charge up all the way. I haven’t been this young with this much power for a long time. I just want to feel the power pulsing through me again, plus I want to go out and have a night out on the town,” Mike said.
“I’ve been thinking about that too,” Johnny said, “getting caught in a sweep and running just to see what would happen. I just want to do something with the power, we need to get out of here.”
“I’m in,” Adam said.
“I’ll go,” Bethany chimed in.
“Of course I’m coming,” Mike said.
“You don’t even need to ask me,” Johnny said.
“I’ll go just to keep track of you guys, and make sure that you don’t burn anything down without me,” my mom said.
“What about me?” It was my dad. I think every one forgot about him even being there.
“You’ll be with me,” Bethany said, “Don’t worry nothing will happen to you.”
“Great let’s go,” Mike said then in an instantly the entire house was strangely silent. I had so many questions in my head that I knew I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep so I decided to catch myself up with what was going on. I went into the living room and started to read the book that Adam had pointed out earlier, The Watcher.
I read it for about an hour or two in my bedroom. It cleared up a few of my questions about Mike, Johnny, and Adam but I was only half way through it so I didn’t expect all of my questions to be answered. It was 10:00 by now and I knew that I needed to get some sleep but from what I read I knew that if I charged up that I’d have enough energy to keep me awake.
The first half of the book only talked about Mike and Johnny getting their powers. It was a little vague because Adam didn’t need the training but there was enough information. Basically I learned that all the powers that Mike and Johnny used worked off the energy of the earth and before you use it you have to keep it inside of you, and doing that is called charging up. The only thing I could expect was me glowing. From what was described by Adam was that when I charged up I would be surrounded by a light. The more I charged up supposedly the brighter I got. Other than that I didn’t know what would go on or how it would feel.
I stood up in my room next to my bed, dressed in my pajamas. I stood with my feet about shoulder width apart and tried to follow what I had read.
What I needed to do was to just think about the earth’s energy being all around me, flowing through everything, some items having more energy than others.

11-20

I tried to get the sensing of the power down but to no success. On my last I try I thought I got a glimpse of it but I doubted it because just for a second everything went yellow.
I was tired and my family wasn’t home yet so I went to sleep. That entire night all I dreamed only about people with powers. Mainly it was just Bethany, Adam and my mom because those were the only ones that I have actually seen in use.
Midway through the night, literally mid way, at 12:00 Mike and Johnny woke me up. They didn’t yell my name, they didn’t shake me, what they did was a little different. Form what they told me Mike basically super charged me with a small dose of energy.
“Come on Trip, wake up, we decided that we need to train, and you get to come with us,” Johnny said.
I rubbed my eyes and Mike said, "Don’t give me that. I know you have energy, I just put in at least a day’s worth of energy into you.”
I got out of bed and grabbed a pair of pants and a tee shirt and started to change. Mike and Johnny were smart enough to turn their backs to me. “So why is it that I have to come with you?”
“Because you have the power,” Johnny simply said.
“How do you know that?” I said pulling my white tee shirt over my head.
“Because you took in all of that energy. Only people that have the power can take it when people give it to them. If I did that to Adam nothing would have happened,” Mike said.
“But I thought that he had a power,” I said pulling up my pants and zipping them up.
“He dose it’s just his powers run on mental power, not the earth’s power. Do you get the difference?”
“Yeah, but what about me, I hear you guys saying that I’m both,” I said sitting down on my bed putting on my socks,” by the way you can turn back around.”
They both turned back around. “That’s right buy we talked with your mom and Adam and they both said that we could get you first. I think it’s a little bit better anyways, that mental stuff gets too confusing,” Mike said.
I put on my shoes and laced them up, “okay I’m ready.”
“Hold on because this is going to get bumpy,” Mike said, “But don’t worry after your first time it gets better and by your tenth time it gets fun. Here we go.” Mike grabbed my shoulder then the world shifted around me. My room melded together into this blur of color. It wasn’t like the acid trip, hippy blur it was more of the just a dark, every color out there blur. Then suddenly we stopped and the three of us were on a beach. It was just about to be dusk and the view was awesome, but as I stood there me stomach finally caught up with me. That little trip form house to island was making my stomach do more flips than a professional gymnast on a trampoline. My knees started to fall out from under me, luckily Mike and Johnny reacted fast enough and each one grabbed me underneath my armpits and kept me standing up. I got my feet back underneath me and slowly I started to walk around the beach.
“This brings back some memories,” Mike said.
“I know it’s almost like s tradition that new powers are found here. The only person that didn’t get their power here was Adam,” Johnny said.
I realized what they were talking about. In the book they got trained on how to use the power on an island and they practiced on a beach. I took a wild stab in the dark, “Is this where you guys originally trained?”
“Yeah, even Pyra learned how to use her power here,” Johnny said.
“Not only is it just a good view but there seems to be really easy to connect to the power here. You probably don’t know what I’m talking about so let’s just start with training you. The first thing that you need to learn is how to charge up.”
“Just as a warning once you start you’ll see everything flash into a color. The brighter the item the more energy is stored in it, but don’t worry about that, hopefully you’ll never have to deal with that. So just don’t be surprised when the entire world in front of you turns orange, or some other color.”
“Not to sound naive or anything, but how do I do it? It’s not like I just say, ‘okay I want to have power’ then I have it,” I said, “you guys are the masters at this, so how do I do it?”
Mike tried to explain, “Okay remember how we said that everything has a little bit of energy in it?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, close your eyes and imagine the world around you.” I shut my eyes and imagined the beach around me in my mind. “Now in that image in your head fill everything with a color, that represents the power. Once that’s done, try to get all of that surrounding energy to drain out of the world around you into you.”
Yellow was my obvious color of choice because of the results of my previous attempt to charge up. I just imagined all of that yellow light coming underneath me then entering into my feet.
In my mind the light started to enter me, I started to feel weird. It was like every nerve in my body just jolted to life. It wasn’t painful or pleasurable it was just an uncomfortable feeling. It almost felt like when your foot goes numb and then all the blood ruses to it, but it was all over my body, half as painful, and twice as weird feeling. It almost felt like jumping into the ocean up by New York in December but it wasn’t as cold, it just had that shock effect over my body. I doubt that through my entire life I will ever find the right words to describe that first time.
As I started I heard Johnny, “Oh, my….”
I opened up my eyes and stopped concentrating. When I opened up my eyes I saw a yellow glow dimming from around me.
“Why did you stop?” Johnny asked.
“Why did you say that? I though something was wrong.”
“It’s just we’re a little thrown back,” Mike said, “It’s just that the only people that we’ve seen or known of that could learn the basics that fast is us, and we’re the inventors of this.”
“Huh?”
“You did that faster than any beginner we know,” Johnny said bluntly, “You didn’t grab that much energy but still, most people don’t’ do that well their first time.”
I must have had a worried look on my face because Mike tried to calm me down and get my mind off of being on top of the learning curve,” Don’t worry this time just keep going and don’t stop until you think you can’t take any more. Also try to keep your eyes open this time.”
I stood there and tried to keep my eyes open. I imagined everything around my having energy attached to it and I dragged it over to me and shoved it into me. Once I mentally shoved the power to my feet I just seemed to flood in, filling me up with just raw pure energy. As the energy level in my body got higher I noticed two things. One which was very obvious to me, was that after that fist little split second of discomfort things got feeling a little bit better, but the sense that came over me after that was that I was like a water balloon and someone was trying to fill me up with energy until I bursted. I didn’t know how I was going to stop the flood of power but I knew somehow it would stop. The other thing was my vision. It was like I had one pair of eyes but I was looking at two different worlds. One was normal and colorful, except for the yellow tinge that surrounded my vision. The other world was blacks and grays. Inside of everything there was a little bit of pure white. Some of that white dropped out of whatever the item was and made a line over to me. One thing was wrong thought, when it got to me the white little line would turn yellow, and absorb into me creating a yellow glow that surrounded me, in both ‘worlds’.
I was only a half second or two into charging up when I started to look around. When I looked at Mike and Johnny with the black and white vision they both radiated white and green, in that order. (Mike was white, and Johnny was green) They dwarfed my puny yellow glow. It was like I was a first grader and they were professional football players. There was no doubt in my mind that they had a lot to teach and I had a lot to learn if I would even learn to be just half of who they were.
By then I was two seconds into this and my mental balloon was about to explode if I tried to push it any farther. It may have been only two or three seconds, but it seemed to last a life time for me.
When I came out of it, it felt like I had just slept for 12 hours and then set up an IV that pumped pure adrenaline for another hour, “Do you two ever sleep because right now, I’m wired.”
“When we’re bored or we’re forced to, we go to sleep but other than that we never sleep,” Mike said, “Now you know why we’re doing this little lesson during our middle of the night.”
“Our middle of the night?”
“Yeah it’s simple, it’s only on the east coast that it’s midnight over here it’s on 6:00 or so. Once you learn how to teleport you’ll never wear a watch, because it just gets too hard to change it all the time,” Johnny said holding up both of his wrists, both bare. Mike held up his bear wrists just to get the point across.
“So what do I do now with all of this power?” I asked knowing that the power running thorough me could do more than just keep me awake.
“We’re going to start with the basics, the fireball,” Mike said. As a side thought he added, “Have you ever seen DBZ?”
“DBZ?”
“Yeah, Dragon Ball Z, they only stole close to everything that we do,” Mike said with a hint of hatred in his voice.
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“We’ll have to change that,” Johnny said grabbing my shoulder. In an instant we teleported and I was standing in a mansion. I couldn’t tell if it was a mansion considering I was inside of it, but from where I was standing, it better had been a mansion. I was a little shook up because of the fast teleport but I shook it off. As I walked around the dark room looking around I asked, “Where are we?”
“At our house,” Johnny said, “in Holland.”
“But Holland has no big town in it. There isn’t a single house in this entire country that has electricity. Then again there shouldn’t be a single house within miles of here, wherever here is.”
“You underestimate us Trip. Mike and I planned this out just in case something like the leaders happened. We have a person watching out for the place and any second now, Mike will get the reactor core going,” Johnny said dusting off a leather lazy boy chair and sitting in it.
“Reactor core?”
“Yeah, no house is quite a home until you have an antimatter reactor in your basement. Don’t worry it was a gift from our friends over on Neptune, an illegal gift to have on earth, because it could destroy the entire earth, but a gift none the less.”
Mike appeared out of no where, “Try the power now.”
Johnny reached underneath his cushion, dug around, and found the TV remote and clicked on a TV, “Good it works, Now for the DBZ marathon.”
Mike walked over to a wooden cupboard and pulled out a tape that was labeled DBZ episode 1 year 1. I won’t go over the six hours of mind numbing animation but by the end I caught the point. DBZ was a rip off of Mike and Johnny’s life, but with a story line that could go on forever. The story line for DBZ was simple, get all the balls, make a wish, get all the balls, make a wish, try an attempt at a real emotional conflict, get all the balls, make a wish.
Midway through episode 10 or so, I looked at my watch and it was 5:30. “Hey Johnny, it’s 5:30 in New York and I have school at 6:00 can one of you get me home?”
Mike got up from where he was sitting, “We need to teach you how to teleport, I hate being a showfure.” He grabbed my shoulder and we teleported back to my bedroom.
Two minutes after Mike teleported out of my room my alarm clock rang. I quickly got ready, I changed out of my clothes, and charged up full just because only a little bit of my energy was gone and I wanted to keep it full. My thought process was that the more I charged up and the longer I kept my level at full, the more likely I was able to hold more power. I was dreadfully wrong, but it made since at that point.
I walked out of my room and outside in the hallway Adam was already up and walking around, “You’re up early,” I said to him, “If I had a choice I would be sleeping right now.”
“I would have been sleeping but I felt someone tap into the energy, and from what I can tell you were the one. So, now that you’ve woken me up, what’s your color”
“I was paying attention, all until that color thing. I don’t get it.”
“Your color, I glow blue, Mike’s white, Johnny’s green, Michelle’s red, and you are…?”
“Yellow.”
“Yellow?”
“Yeah, yellow, why?”
“I’ve never seen yellow.”
“We now you have.” “I haven’t seen a single thing yet,” Adam said, “but where did you learn this where you up with Mike and Johnny last night?”
“Yeah.” “Okay, I’ll go back to sleep I did this once and I never want to do it again,” Adam said walking down the hallway, “By the way, tonight it’s my turn. Your mom and I are going to work your mental power tonight.”
I just sort of grunted an okay and followed him down the hall because the living room where he was sleeping and the kitchen were connected.
He made it into the living room before me and I wanted to say something to him so when I passed by I looked in. I looked around the room but I couldn’t find him. I double checked the couch and chairs and he wasn’t there. As I was walking out I looked up and there he was sleeping on the ceiling. I continually thought he was going to fall but he stayed up there. I didn’t dare wake him up so I walked out and finished getting ready for school.
It felt good to finally go somewhere knowing that nothing would go wrong. For once I considered school the most peaceful seven hours of my day.
When I got back home after school a woman in a very skimpy French maids outfit answered the door, “Bonjour monsieur, how can I help you?”
I just stood there with a puzzled look on my face. The busty French maid changed into a very large body builder, “Come on puny man let me help you with that bag.” I pinpointed the muscle man as Bethany as she reached over my head and lifted me up by my backpack and dragged me to my bedroom. As she dropped me to my bed, she shifted into my dad, “And I don’t want you to come out until you’re done.” Bethany then turned into her normal form and just started laughing as she walked away. I didn’t really get the humor of this, so I just sat down and started to work on my homework. Two hours latter I sat down by the TV and tried to relax while flipping through 156 channels of entertainment. I finally found what I liked and sat there and watched. A few minutes into the show Bethany shifted from a fly or something equally small into herself, and sat down on the couch and started to watch TV with me.
During one of the commercial breaks Bethany looked over to me, “Trip, I’m sorry about what happened when you came back. It’s just that I haven’t been able to use my power for a long time, and when I do it isn’t that long. So, sorry if I went a little over board.”
“Just fine,” I said, “I just thought that you’d gone off the deep end.”
“Get use to it. Every on with a power deals with a hint of insanity every now and again. Once you use you power and kill someone you’ll be changed for the rest of you life. Just don’t let it get to you or else you’ll snap. Once you snap things get messy.”
“Messy? How messy? My brain blowing apart messy or a dog throwing up messy?”
“Messy as you go insane, start killing anything and every thing and it takes a few other people with powers to stop you.”
“I defiantly don’t want that to happen to me so how do I not do this?”
“From what I’ve seen. Fight something big and that could and almost has killed you or has threatened your family. Do not start out with someone that plays mental games. The ones that screw with your mind while they’re alive seem to have their way still after they’re dead,” Bethany said pausing for a moment to think, but there are always exceptions to the rules.”
The show on the TV came back on so we both turned our attention to the show. A while latter commercials came back on so Bethany and I started to talk again.
“Since our ultimate goal is to time travel, do you have any warnings about the past?”
“Don’t ever use your powers in public unless you have to. Right now I could go outside and change into an elephant and people would just think that I worked for the leaders. Also just get ready for a culture shock. Nothing will prepare you for the sights, sounds, and the smells, oh the smells. You’re just so use to your sterile world where every one is white, everyone believes in the same thing, and you all dress close to the same. You will flip.”
“You act as if I don’t smell or I can’t see.” I said trying to defend myself, “I learned in history what it was like then, and I like the way it sounds.”
“No you don’t. You’ve never had even the smallest of pleasures: Burger King, Techno, Rap, sushi, lasagna, roller coasters, cereal, and perfume, you have never experience. Trust me history books do no justice to the mass chaos and pleasure these are. Just don’t say any other thing until you know what a good fun time is.”
She was right I didn’t know a thing. Techno, and rap meant nothing to me, the only music I knew was classical. Beethoven and Vavaldi were the things I knew by heart. Then things like sushi, it sounded like she was from a different planet. I was a little worried. I wanted to see what all of this stuff was but I was just afraid to see if people were as harsh as I thought they were. I was also just afraid to break out of my little safety bubble. I didn’t know anything else besides every one being white and everyone being quiet and reserved. The thought of kids rebelling or dressing how they wanted was astounding. It just sounded too weird.
The show that we were watching was just finishing up when my mom walked in the door, “Trip do you know where Adam is?”
“Yeah, he said that he was going to be at Mike and Johnny’s house.”
“Their house?” her face went pale as she said it, “Do you know where exactly the house is?”
“Yeah, I was there yesterday, they said it was in Holland.” “Oh, my.”
“What? What’s wrong?” I asked, “What’s so bad with them living in their house?”
Bethany started to laugh, “The question is, what won’t they do now that they have that house back.”
“That house, I mean that castle is their playground. It’s bad enough with Mike and Johnny running around in it but you add in Adam and things get messy. They are always playing around in there. One time they flooded the entire basement just because they wanted to try scuba diving.” My mom said sitting down on the couch. “They never keep one thing for too long. One week it may all look like a club while the next it could look normal, but in the back yard they’d have a roller coaster.”
Bethany looked over to me, “Remember how I was saying that after a while, some people just need to unwind? This is how they unwind. Back in the day those three did a whole lot so they needed some sort of release. I doubt that they’ll make the same wild changes now for two reasons. One, they aren’t killing any one and two they actually will have to pay for it.”
“They didn’t pay for it before?” I asked, wondering how any one could get that much stuff and not pay for it.
“No, SN paid for it. Joining SN had its perks. Not only did you get to save the world, you also got a monthly paycheck that came in the mail even if you didn’t fight evil. Better yet being a member of SN made you immune to all laws within the US.”
My mom let out a deep sigh, “Mike and Johnny occasionally over used the immunity. Just to pay for renovations they would rob banks, lie, and swindle, to them it was all legal. They could be drug trafficers, which they were for a while, and they government couldn’t do a thing about it. I make them sound bad, but they only did those bad things when the paycheck wasn’t enough. If you want to know how much the paycheck was for them, let me put it this way. With both of their paychecks within four months they paid off everything dealing with the house, they owned it, and the land it laid on.
My jaw hit the floor. That house was huge. I only saw it from a few rooms on the first floor, and it was gigantic. It was surely no castle but it was pretty close to one.
My mom reach over to me while I was thinking about things and stole the remote for the TV out of my hand and changed it to a news program. We all sat there and watched the news. Nothing important happened.
I sat there in the chair and let my mind wander aimlessly, giving it a break from trying to comprehend everything that was going on.
Midway through the broadcast my mom got up and set the table and pulled out the packets of gray goop that made up our dinner. It didn’t taste bad because there was really no taste at all; all it did was fill you up.
As if by magic right when she got done my dad walked in. He almost yelled loud enough for the next-door neighbors to hear, “Honey, I’m home!” As he walked in he had a smile from one ear to the next, he actually looked giddy. He walked up to my mom and gave her a long hug and an even more passionate kiss.
My mom was a little shocked, “What was that for?”
“The president of the school gave me a raise, and I get to work less hours. Basically, I do three hours less of work, and I get paid the exact same amount on my pay check!”
“Good job. I wish we could go out and celebrate, but there isn’t really any place that we can go,” my mom said. Then she leaned over and whispered into his ear, “but from what I hear, Trip won’t be here tonight.”
This whole ordeal shocked me, “Hey you two, break it up! I’m not quite gone yet, and hearing you say those things, creep me out.”
My mom gave my dad a quick kiss and they broke up their embrace, “Lets have dinner,” my mom said sitting down at the table.
We all sat down and my dad said a prayer blessing the food, or at lest the semblance of what our food was. Once we got done and cleaned up the table my mom walked over to her bedroom and closed the door. About a minute latter she walked out and came into my bedroom. “Hey, Trip, get ready Adam’s going to be here in a few seconds.”
“How do you know, did you call him all the way in Holland?”
“Well… sort of. I basically just started a fire all the way over in Holland and wrote in it, ‘Adam come get Trip,’ and then I knew it got through because a pen that I had near me wrote on a pad of paper, ‘okay’.”
“You can control things world wide?” I said shocked thinking that she could only control fires close to her.
“Yeah, I do, but enough talking get ready because Adam should be here any second now,” right when she said that a nock on our from door echoed throughout the house. “That’s him hurry up and get your shoes on.”
My mom left my room and went down the hallway and answered the door. I put on my socks and shoes and ran to the door. As usual Adam was in his jumpsuit ready to go, however it looked a little bit different that day it didn’t look as bulky and it didn’t have it’s hood any more.
“Trip, you ready to go?” he asked me, “Today we get to go to Australia.”
“Yeah, lets go.” As soon as I said that without touching me we were flying out of the door and through the air.
It was weird flying with Adam. The world beneath us became a blur because we were moving so fast, but not a hair on my head was moving. The way Adam said that he did it was that he just surrounded us mentally with a field that guarded us from the wind.
The blur of color started to slow down and wee were above a forest that was alive with noise. Birds were chirping, bugs were buzzing, and occasionally as we were floating to the ground a larger animal would growl.
Once we were touching ground I looked over to Adam, “How fast were we going? I don’t know of a single forest that is nearby New York.”
“Don’t know. Fast is all I know, I’ve never measured, but considering that we just went from New York to Northern Australia in only a few minutes, we were going fast.”
“Where exactly are we, and why in the world are we her?” I asked looking around me not being able to see the sky above me because of the dense amount of trees.
“That I do know. We’re in Northern Australia and we’re here simply because from what I can understand we’re trying to get you to project your thoughts. Instead of dealing with people we’ll be dealing with animals, because from what I’ve been told, animals are easier to communicate with mentally.”
“Animals?”
“Yeah, animals. We’re going to try to get you to get these animals around you to react to your thoughts. Most animals are stupid enough that if you just mentally say something to them as basic as ‘go away’ they will go away. It won’t really work all that well on people, they’ll just hear your voice in their head saying go away and wonder why they can hear you in their head. To push a human takes a little bit more work.”
“How do you know so much, I thought that you could only move things. I didn’t know that you could control people,” I said thinking I missed something in a conversation.
“I can’t but two of my old friends from SN could push people. Ari and Tati, they were twins, very powerful twins, when they were together…” Adam just sort of ended his sentence and started to think about when SN was around.
“Why do you keep on saying pushing people?” I asked interrupting his thoughts.
“You don’t control people. Controlling people even Ari and Tati couldn’t do that. You just push people. Pushing is just sort of like pushing their will or their ego to believe something that isn’t there. With pushing people you can make people believe that they see something or feel something. They may react a certain way like running away but that’s about as much as you can do. Controlling people is the step above pushing. With controlling you make people run, just because you want them to run. Controlling people is like living another person’s life. You control everything, if you want them to jump, they jump. I tried to figure things out, “So when I push people I just affect their senses. I can make them feel things, but I can’t make them think things. When I control things there are no limits, I can make them do anything?”
“That’s what I understand, but then again I may be completely wrong, but before we get to that, let’s start out with the easy stuff, getting your voice into their heads. Don’t worry about the language, from what Ari and Tati could figure out, it gets translated into whatever language the person or animal uses.”
How do I even reach out to them, and where in the world do I get the power for this?”
“You already have the power. It’s your brain power. Right now it may get a little rough and you may get a slight headache after you use it, but just live through it and the next time you try it, it won’t be as hard. How you get inside their head I don’t know but lets just start out with one thing first, then we can get to affecting mass groups of people or animals.”
Adam then leisurely floated into one of the trees and grabbed a bird and brought it back to the ground, “Start with this. It seems really stressed out not being able to move so try to get it to relax.”
“How do I do that? You still haven’t told me how to do this,” I said a little upset.
“That’s because this is new ground for me. This is all up to you. You have to find out how to do this, just like the rest of us had to do.”
“I realized what he was saying and set to work on trying to calm down the bird. I tried everything I stood, I sat, I touched the bird, I stood way from the bird, I closed my eyes, I concentrated on the bird, I thought the words over and over in my head trying to project the words, I said the words, I did everything, yet nothing worked. About two hours through this, I stopped and sat down on a near by fallen log, “I need a break.”
Adam let go of the bird and let it fly away, “Okay, is there anything that you need help with?”
“Not really, I just need to sit and rest.”
“Do you want my advice?”
“Go right ahead, I’ll take anything that you have.”
“Don’t be afraid. Just use every ounce of emotion and energy and just push it all out. You won’t get anywhere until you’re willing to give it all up.” Adam said, “and you won’t just hear this from me. The only way that you’ll get more power, with Mike and Johnny is if you give it all up.”
I sat there for a second thinking about his words of advice, “Okay then, lets give this one more chance., all or nothing.”
“I’ll go get the bird.” Adam quickly flew into the trees and grabbed a bird and flew back down. “Okay here’s your bird, it’s just as startled if not more so than the last one so get going before it gives itself a heart attack.”
I slowly walked over to Adam and touched the bird. I let my eyes close and mind go blank trying to calm myself down more than the bird. Then mentally I yelled, ‘calm down. When I say mentally yelled I’ll try to relate it to every day life.
Okay every day you wake up and you mentally just hear your thoughts. Your thoughts are sort of like a mental talk. Well, in my mind I changed that talking up a few volume levels to yelling, and that’s what I did to this bird.
I still had my eyes closed when I heard Adam, “Wow, that was intense. I could even hear that.”
I opened up my eyes, excited, “You could? What about the bird?”
Adam pointed to the ground where this bird was standing pecking at the ground and occasionally cooing. “I did that?”
“You must have because I know that I didn’t do it.” Adam said, ‘but what’s with you yelling? I was just sitting here trying to keep the bird still when I just heard your voice rattling through my head, saying ‘calm down!’ I nearly dropped the bird because it startled me so much.” Adam took a closer look at me, “but how’s your head, you don’t look too good.”
I realized that a minor headache was starting up and I could tell that it was going to get worse. It was one of those headaches that start out behind your eyes and just work around your entire head and by the end it feel like a herd of elephants were doing the tango on your skull. “I’m good for now but when I get home I know that I’ll need some morphine or something to kill this pain.”
“That’s the joy of having a mental power, but at least we’re going about this the right way and not cheating with a jumpsuit.”
“How can you cheat with a jumpsuit?”
“Besides giving you unlimited power, or at least close to it with either mental or normal power, not much,” Adam said sarcastically, “Let me put it this way, after I put on my jumpsuit not once have I even gotten a headache like yours, and I’ve moved some heavy things in my time.”
“So why don’t I just put on your jumpsuit and get all of this pain over with?” I said sitting down and rubbing my head trying to slow down the oncoming pain.
“It isn’t that easy. The bonus only works once and I’ve already taken the bonus for this jumpsuit, and they’re there forever. Even if I wasn’t wearing this right now, I’d be able to flatten this forest. If you put it on, nothing would happen. Plus personally I think that it’s just better to learn without a jumpsuit because then once you have the basics down you can skip to the jumpsuit.” Adam then went into an analogy of how the power is like a gun and if you train with the basics first it’s easier to advance to the bigger gun, but I wasn’t paying too much attention because I was trying to stop my ever growing headache.
Once he was done he took one look at me and simply said, “We need to go back now. Pick up your bird so we have proof of our progress so we go back home.”
I slowly bent down, as if not to irritate my headache and picked up the still calm bird, then without warning, my feet were off of the ground and the world around me became a blur. Suddenly we were on the front steps by my house. I hopped that none of the neighbors saw us fly in, but then I looked at the time, and realized that not one of our neighbors would be up at 10:00 at night.

21-30

As we walked in the front door my mom must have heard us because she came running out in her pajamas, “How did it go?”
“He did it.”
“What exactly did he do?”
I held out my bird for her to see. Adam spoke for me,” About five minutes ago, it use to be wild and wouldn’t let you touch it.”
I placed the bird in her hands and quietly said, “I’m going to go to sleep now,” and headed down the hallway. I went quietly and quickly to my room, changed, and fell asleep. Physically I wasn’t sore or drained but mentally I was falling apart.
When I woke up the next morning the attack on my head was just starting to die down. By the time I had showered, dressed, and eaten it was close to gone. I was about to charge up to keep my level at full but I remembered Adam’s little rampage of loosing it all before it could grow, so I decided not to.
I walked to the subway station and rode it to the street that was only a few minutes away from my school. I walked to school and let my brain rest a bit. At school nothing much really happened. However in history I paid close attention because we started to talk about the beginning of the new century, 1900’s to 2000. I decided that if I we were heading back into time, I might as well know as much as possible about the subject.
At the end of school I went to my locker to put away my books, and as I opened it a piece of paper fell out that simply read, ‘Wait by the choir room, we’re coming to get you.’ I didn’t know what it was all about but I wanted to see what was going on so I decided to go.
As I stood next to the choir room I thought about who it could have been that wrote me the note: a bully, a teacher, or even possibly a girl? Mid thought I felt a hand grab onto my shoulder then in a quick instant the world was a dark blur of color. I looked to see if it was Mike or Johnny and saw Mike.
We finished up the teleport and we were in what I assumed was Mike and Johnny’s back yard, considering that when I looked behind me there was a lit up mansion and in front of me was a large grass field where Johnny was cleaning out the yard. It was definitely a weird was to clear out a grassy field. What Johnny was doing was throwing large balls of fire that burnt the grass down to the ground. I couldn’t exactly see how Johnny was doing all of it, all I could see was a large ball of flame, followed by a burning trail of black grass behind it.
Mike saw what I was staring at, “Hopefully by the end of this week you’ll be able to do that.”
I turned my attention to him, “Really?”
“Hopefully. It may be a longer time, and no matter what the ball will be a bit smaller but yeah, hopefully in the next week you’ll be throwing.”
I couldn’t wait, “Let’s do this then. What do I need to do?”
“Charge up. It may be a bit harder here, the energy isn’t as easy to access since we aren’t on the island.”
I didn’t care where we were, I stood there and with my eyes open and started to force energy into me. The yellow glow quickly surrounded me and lit up the porch around me. As I looked out into the grass field a green glow came from the field and whenever a fireball was thrown the glow dimmed just a bit.
The raw power that was flowing through me was almost full so I cut off the flow and the yellow light faded down. As soon I was done Johnny appeared next to me, “Trip, when did you get here?”
“Mike just teleported me here, from school.”
“We’re teaching him how to throw a fireball, right?” Johnny asked Mike.
“That’s what we’re doing.”
“This will be fun,” Johnny sarcastically said, “It only took us a week or two to learn it. It should be simple for us to teach Trip, who isn’t even a super sain.”
“At least we can start working now,” Mike said, “We start now, and then we end sooner. Hopefully he’ll also catch on with us teaching him. Needless to say I’m sure that we have a bit more experience than Zenif.”
“True, true, let’s get started,” Johnny, said walking over to me, “Lets start with the basics, and you’re all charged up, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You have all of that raw energy pulsing through your body and it wants to get out right?”
“It feels that way, that would explain why I’m so hyper with the energy inside of me.”
“Well, you need to learn how to let the energy out, but before you do you have to change it to something to throw around,” Johnny said trying to explain this abstract concept to me. “What you need to do is simple, take a part of the energy and in your mind convert it over to an energy type, or element, the simplest one to convert to is fire.”
“Let me get things straight. I have to take a chunk of my energy, change that chunk to fire, then… I … do what?”
He put his wrists together and slowly pulled them to the right side of his body. Quickly he threw his hands out in front of him and yelled, ‘Fireball!” Immediately a large ball of fire flew from his hands and went through the nearby grass burning down anything that got in the way. About ten yards later the fireball died down and the smell of burning grass filled the air.
“That was just a whole lot of heat right there, I would never use something like that in a fight,” Johnny said almost sounding like he was trying to cover up a bad job at doing something.
Him saying that made me want to see what he would use for a fight, so I asked. Again he tried to squirm around it, “I don’t want to burn down the entire field. You need something to burn up when you finally learn.”
“I’m sure that somewhere in this world there is an overgrown field of grass for me to burn,” I said hopefully, wanting him to show me exactly what he could do.
“Okay I’ll do it, but if something burns up that you wanted to keep around it’s your fault, just let me charge up first.”
I stepped back a few feet to give him some room. In an instant Johnny started to glow a faint dark green. As he charged up more the light became brighter and brighter, I finally had to shield my eyes from the light. Then just as quick as it had started it was done.
My eyes took a second to re adjust to the normal light that was around me and I saw that Johnny had walked out from underneath the overhand of the porch and was looking up into the sky. I walked over to where he was standing, “See anything interesting?”
“I’m trying to figure out how to place this bad boy without blowing up the house. I’m aiming up so it’ll drop on the field, not just pass it by and keep on going then blow up the nearby neighborhood.” He looked like he was ready and pulled his arms by his sides then threw them in front of him. A huge fireball arched up into the sky and then fell down on the field. Instantly a wave of fire and heat swept over the field. The only thing that was left of that once grassy field was a pile of smoldering black, burnt grass.
With all of his advanced planning, Johnny burnt exactly the grass that he wanted to burn. The fire stopped at the edges of the lot and didn’t go on, and from where we stood it come within two or three feet of us, then the raging inferno stopped.
When everything stopped, I looked over to him, “So that’s how much power you can throw around, I’m impressed.”
“Not really, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. If I give it everything and Mike does too we could possibly destroy the world, I say possibly because I haven’t tried to destroy the world, yet.”
“Now that’s something you could share at show and tell,” I said imagining a teacher in front of her class, ‘Okay Johnny, lets see your show and tell,’ then Johnny getting up and just blowing the school apart.
“Enough of my showing off, lets get to teaching you.”
The rest of the day both Mike and Johnny tried to teach me. They showed me a million examples of how it was done, but not once did I loose announce of the energy I has stored up.
When we stopped for dinner I pulled out my homework and started to work on it. Johnny went inside the house to cook dinner and Mike stayed out and helped me with my homework.
After about 45 minutes Johnny walked out, “It’s time to eat.”
We all headed inside. When I first walked in the house there was this smell. There was nothing I knew at that time that could describe this alien smell. When we walked in to the kitchen the room stank of the smell. On the table there were a few plates on one was a bunch of brown disks, on another it looked like some sort of leafs, the next was more disks however these looked red and juicy, and then on the last plate there were a bunch of white rings. Also on the table were three bowl full of some liquid, one was red, the other was yellow, and the final one was a chunky green. At the very end of the table there were these tan balls that looked to have seeds on them.
“What’s this?” I asked in amazement.
“This is the food of the gods, hamburgers,” Johnny said, “They’re high in everything except for what’s good for you.”
“Hamburgers?” I said repeating the word that seemed foreign in my mouth.
“Yeah, it’s made out of… don’t worry it’s good and that’s all that matters,” Mike said sitting down at the table, “are you going to sit down and eat with me or are you just going to stand there and look at us like we’re insane?”
I sat down and Mike and Johnny showed me how to make a hamburger. Basically all you do is take whatever is out there and shove it into a bun, or at least that’s what I thought it was called. You them hold it horizontal and take a bite, chew, swallow repeat.
My first bite was heaven. All of the flavors practically jumped out at me. It wasn’t like the goop that we usually had to eat. This had flavor, taste, and texture. It made my mouth salivate, this food actually made my stomach feel full.
With my mouth half full of food I passed my congratulations along to Mike and Johnny, “This food is like nothing I’ve ever had before.”
“It’s no Burger King, but it gets the point across,” Johnny said munching down on his triple decker hamburger.
I swallowed my food and took a quick drink of water, “Burger King?”
“Don’t worry about it, it’s something that’ll be part of the culture shock of the past,” Mike said biting into his sandwich.
I took his word for it and went back to devouring my hamburger. We all sat around the table for a minute or two and just talked about food. Mike and Johnny sounded like they were speaking a different language. Egg drop soup, foot long sub, hot dog, pop corn, sushi, and pizza were just some of the words that I didn’t understand.
Once we were done talking about food we all got up from the table and went back outside again, to see if I could throw a fireball. Even after four hours of trying to do it, I couldn’t get a single flame to come out of my hands, “I give up, we’ve tried for over ten hours and I am not getting this.”
“No, we’re not stopping,” Mike simply said, “try again.”
“No, it isn’t working we’re only wasting our time.”
Mike seemed a little ticked off, “I’ve not wasted half of my day just to see you quit.”
“Well then why don’t we stop now so I don’t waste any more of your precious time?” I snapped back at him ready to sit down and stop.
“I have all the time in the world, I just don’t want to waste it on a person that obviously can do something but won’t put his mind to it and do it!” Mike yelled obviously frustrated, and very close to blowing me to bits with a close range fireball.
“I have put my mind into it, it’s just not working. I push that hard when I do my mental ability and it works.”
“Yeah, it works on animals. Well I hate to tell you but you’re playing with the big boys now so stop thinking that mental powers are the only thing that’s out there. Mental powers are the geeky kid that gets beat up at school while the power is the straight A, all state jock, that beats up the little geeky kid, just for the fun of it,” Mike said, trashing my grandpa, and even me.
“Don’t you ever say that again,” I threatened with a very open threat.
“Or what, you’re going to make a bird fly away? Oh no, I’m so afraid, I’m shaking in my Vans,” I didn’t know what Vans were but I could tell the Mike was making fun of me.
At this point I was so upset that I just wanted to go over to him and just plant my fist into his face quickly followed by my knee to his groin. All of the energy I had stored up in me felt like it was boiling hot, making me want to just get ever for everything Mike had said. I didn’t know what come over me but I pulled my hands to my side and quickly threw them in front of me yelling out fireball. In the back of my mind I knew that this wouldn’t work and that I would only give Mike another reason to make fun of me, but that idea quickly got squashed because in front of me a small ball of fire came out of my hands. It was roughly only two feet in diameter but it was heading straight towards Mike.
Once it was out of me a thought flashed into my head of it hitting Mike and killing him. My sudden thought of his death was denied to me because Mike quickly threw a fireball of his own and the two countered each other with a flash of light.
As I realized what had happened I suddenly felt very weak. My legs suddenly felt weak and they buckled underneath me. Mike ran over to me and held me up before I collapsed to the ground, “Here, let’s get you to sit down for a second.”
He dragged my sore body to one of the lawn chairs on the porch, “Charge up. It’ll make it feel better.”
Anything could have felt better than how I felt right then. I felt like I had just ran a marathon, swam across the Pacific Ocean, and was in a ten round boxing match with a prize fighter, all within a 24 hour period. My legs were sore, my eyes were sore, even my ears were sore. If there was one way to say how I felt right then it would simply be sore. I kept my eyes closed, because they too were sore and I started to charge up. I charged up fully, which seemed to be a bit more than before but the soreness just wasn’t as intense.
I heard Johnny walk over to Mike, ‘That’s one way to get him to throw a fireball.”
“Hey whatever works,” Mike tapped me on the shoulder, “Trip?”
“What?”
“How are you doing, the first one is always the hardest on your body. After this, I won’t have to get you upset.”
“You did that on purpose?”
“Yeah, but it worked didn’t it?” “It did but did you mean any of that?”
“No. Mental powers are like the bread of a sandwich. Without it the sandwich isn’t a sandwich. They may not always taste the best but the bread is important to a sandwich just like mental powers are the bread to the power. They have to be around, to keep us power people in check.”
“So you didn’t mean any of those things? You did that just to get me mad?”
“I only meant that I hate people that quit on me, and of course I did it on purpose. It worked didn’t it?”
“It worked but why do I feel so sore?”
“Simple,” Johnny said patting me on the opposite shoulder, “You gave it all you had. But do you know what this all means?” I shook my head no trying to conserve energy, “You’re one of us now,” Johnny said sounding excited.
At that point I didn’t care, “Can I go home now?”
“Yeah, you should. An hour or twelve of good sleep is sort of recommended after your first fireball, just hold on, you’ll be home soon,” Mike said placing his hand on my shoulder. In an instant I was home in my bedroom. I didn’t waste time and I fell on top of my bed fully clothed and went to sleep.
Two hours later I woke up to my alarm clock. I slowly got up and turned it off. My alarm must have woken up Adam as well because he was right outside my door dressed in some weird clothes. I only caught a glimpse of him because when he saw me he relayed a message, “Go back to sleep. You need your rest and you don’t have to go to school today. Super hero’s orders.”
I chuckled lightly because they were not doctor’s orders and then I walked back into my room. I changed into my pajamas and crawled underneath my covers. I slept the entire day. I woke up twice, once to use the restroom and once to get a quick bite to eat. I didn’t wake up for more than a few minutes until 6:00 at night.
When I woke up I saw Bethany in front of me, “You’re alive.”
“Yeah, I try to do that occasionally.”
“Good, you’re okay. I’ve never seen someone go through this before so I wanted to see what was going on. Mike and Johnny swore to me that you were safe, but you never can really trust them all too often. They did tell me that you should charge up, they said it would take a bit of the hangover feeling away.”
I laid in my bed motionless and let the energy surrounding me slowly flow into me. Slowly as the energy came into me I started to feel a bit better. “Did it hurt this much the first time you shifted?”
“My hurt wasn’t a physical pain, it was more of a mental confusion. Trust me, you’d be confused too if you woke up one morning and when you looked in the mirror and you saw one of your good friends.”
“Whoa, creepy…”
A knock on my bedroom door interrupted me, without even asking if he could come in Adam walked in, “I heard that you were awake. I haven’t seen someone sleep like that since Mike and Johnny did their first.”
“Did you come in here to tell me a story or are you going to talk like a normal person?” Bethany asked Adam.
“Actually I came to get you, we’re trying to figure everything out so we can go to the past. If you want to come with me, you can.”
“Just give me a second to change and I’ll be out there,” I said not wanting to miss anything that involved heavy powers like Mike Johnny and Adam.
Adam walked out of my room and Bethany just stayed where she was, “Do you think you have enough energy to do this?”
“I’ll do it. My legs are a little weak but I’ll make it,” I said getting out of my bed.
“Once you change I’ll help you out, so you’ll be able to stand,” Bethany said heading towards the door.
I didn’t ask any questions about what she had in plans for me, I just trusted her. I quickly changed to my uniform that I always wore. When I walked out into the hall Bethany was standing there waiting for me, “Still a little weak?”
“A bit,” I simply said.
“Don’t be afraid with what I’m about to do, I’m just trying to help you.” Suddenly Bethany started to shift and she jelled out onto my arm, and started to cover my body. The more surface area of me that she covered the more strength that I could feel.
Hoping that she could hear me I said thanks, and then headed towards the living room. In the room were four people that I had never met before. Before we could get introduce or I could get a good look at the new people Mike and Johnny teleported all of us to their house in their large living room that could seat all of us. I looked around and there were ten of us: Mike, Johnny, Adam, my mom, Bethany, me, and the four other strangers.
Adam walked to the front of the room by the TV, “I’m glad that you were all able to come to this little meeting. The ten of us are going to change the past and save the future in the process. Just because not every one knows everyone in this room we’ll go around and introduce ourselves and our power, or area of specialty. I’ll start. I’m Adam, simply Adam I don’t have a last name, and I have telekinesis.”
A large black guy stood up. He had short spiked bleached hair, one eyebrow was half bleached and the other had the middle third bleached. He was huge. He wasn’t all too tall but he was just built. “I’m Cisco Alimar, known to most as the Red Dragon. I get that name simply because I can turn into a red dragon. Basically I’m like the Hulk but on steroids.”
Cisco sat down and the girl next to him stood up, “I’m the slayer, and my name is Natalie. Enough said.” I liked this, short and to the point and it did help that she was a little attractive. She had her perfect straight brown hair tied up into a tight bun behind her. She had on the normal regulation clothes but she made them even look good.
A red headed girl stood up next to her, “I’m Heather. To put it basically I’m a summoner and a pretty powerful wica or as some as you like to say a witch.”
An Asian girl that was sitting next to me stood up, “I’m Anna. My gift is that I can memorize anything. I know practically everything that there is to know. I do know things like Judo and Karate but that is only book knowledge, I have no first hand knowledge.
I realized that it was my turn, “I’m Trip, actually Timothy Miller, but please just call me Trip. From the limited training I’ve had I think I have telepathy and the power.”
My skin felt like it was crawling off of me and I realized it was Bethany, she shifting off of me, “I am Bethany to most people. If you couldn’t grasp it by now, I can shape shift.” She then returned back to a pile of goop and covered my skin in a soft coving infusing me with strength.
My mom was next, “I’m Michelle Miller, or as some of you know me as Michelle Walters. I can start fires any where and best of all I can control them.”
Mike stood up next, “I’m Mike, me and the dude next to me, Johnny, are the strongest people that harness the power.”
Johnny chimed in, “Yeah, he already introduced me and we can brag about being the strongest people with the power only because three people have the power right now.”
I realized that it was true and it gave my mood a well-needed boost. I could say I was the third most powerful person on the planet, which has powers. That to me sounded really nice that I was third, I just didn’t think too much about there only being three people.
Adam started talking again, “good now that we all know each other, lets figure out what’s going to go on. Anna, you can take the stage now, you’re the expert on this, and everything else.”
Ana stood up and basically told us that we’d go back to around 2004, destroy the leaders, and then come back to our time and live happily ever after. But, she used big words and complicated sentences. She rattled off facts, percentages, everything that could possibly put me to sleep, and at one point I almost did doze off. The only part I remembered o heard was at the end of it if we had any questions.
“When are we leaving?” Cisco asked.
“Hopefully by Monday of next week or four days from now.”
“How are we going to get around in the tows, I know that back then people didn’t take so well for kids dressed in khakis, white shirt, and tie. It looks like we’re going to church,” Mike complained, “We need to go on a shopping spree if we want to blend in.”
“We won’t have to blend in. If everything goes as planned we’ll just teleport straight there and then blow things up, then time warp back here,” Anna said.
“You’re saying that we don’t even get to play around back then?” Johnny said shocked.
“That’s right.”
“Can we at least go on a little tour?” I asked, “I need to do a history report and it would be really good if I could experience history first hand so I could write about it.”
“No, sorry. Not only are you dealing with the wrong part of history, but we are not messing with the time line. If we do more than just killing the leaders we could screw up everything we know.” I didn’t like the entire deal about time travel, and at that point I was to tired I didn’t think at all about all of the paradoxes that we would be dealing with.
“If that’s it, then I’ll touch on the last matter of business. By tomorrow we need to all be here to train,” Mike said, “This house has everything that you’ll need so after you all go home tonight just come tomorrow with nothing packed, and the clothes on your back. We need to train tomorrow because we’re all a little rusty, and we need to get you guys to get use to the time slip. From what I can tell only traveling back twice, it’s worse than teleporting.”
My mom spoke up, “Is that possible?” She had a good reason to say that. Teleporting was brutal, it’s like getting lifted up by your feet and violently shaken.
“It’s possible. So people just be here by tomorrow but until then just act normal, or at least as normal as we can get,” Mike said getting a slight pity laugh from us, “Now if there is nothing else we’ll take you home now.”
Mike walked over to Anna and teleported out with her. Heather stood up and started to chant in a strange language in a flash of light she was gone. Johnny walked over to Natalie and held out his hand, “May I have the pleasure?”
Natalie grabbed his hand, “Sorry I think you’re a few centuries too old for me.”
“But I’m only 14,” Johnny said.
“Yeah, 514 years old.”
“That doesn’t matter, I still look 14.”
“Yeah, but I’m 22 how would that look?
Johnny hung his head don, obviously defeated, then teleported out. I was stuck with Bethany, Cisco, Adam, and my mom. Adam headed out to the back yard, my mom stood up and started to follow him. Mid way to the door she turned around, “Come on Trip, it’s time to train.”
“Are you serious?” I’m still sore from that fireball I threw.”
“You have to, if we’re going to save the world, we need as much fire power as we can get.”
I reluctantly stood up getting out of the comfortable chair, “You just have to throw that whole ‘save the world’ thing into the argument don’t you? If it wasn’t for that I would have fought training today.”
“At least you know your priorities, hurry up before Adam leaves us.”
I walked out into the back door onto the back porch. In front of me was a completely different back yard than it was only 12 hours before. There was a few trees growing, the ground was covered in a nicely mowed carpet of grass, and in the middle was a clear pond that had a few koi fish in it. Adam was standing next to the pond with his eyes glowing an intense blue. As I got closer I could tell what he was doing. Adam lifted a part of the pond up into the air and it had a fish in it. It looked like it was just a hovering fish tank but with a second glance you could tell that there was no tank.
He noticed us walking up to him. As if gravity finally applied to the sphere of water the fish and the water that surrounded it, fell from the air and safely landed in the pool of water.
“Sorry, got bored,” Adam said pointing to the fish, which was now swimming with the other fish. “I’m so use to always having to do about something, just waiting for someone bores me. That’s why I can’t wait to go back in time; I’ll spend hours upon hours on those nice beaches of Hawaii. I’ll just sit and finally relax.” Adam who usually looked young and spry in this brief moment showed his age. In his eyes you could see him remembering the good times in Hawaii. It was like he suddenly aged to the age of an old grandparent that always tells you how good the olden times were. Just as quickly his eyes snapped back to reality. “Lets get to work on you projecting your thoughts.”
“You want me to talk to the fish?” I asked Adam, questioning his sanity.
“No I want you to talk to your mom, while she’s sitting on the porch,” Adam said, “Sorry Michelle but you get to go sit on the porch this time.”
My mom started to walk back to the porch, which was a good 15 years away, “Trip don’t make me sit over here for too long.”
When she finally reached the porch Adam started his lecture, “This is going to be just like before, just do what you did last time and see if it works. If things go a way that we don’t want, we’ll fix it, if it works the way that we want, we’ll move on.”
“What should I say to her?”
“Whatever you want, I don’t know. Say hi, or do the ever classical, testing one two three, just do something.”
I stood next to the pond and tried to empty my mind. I closed my eyes and like my previous attempt the mental voice in my head yelled in the general direction of my mom, “Can you hear me?”
I heard my mom yell back, “Yes!”
I opened up my eyes and Adam was almost smiling, “I even heard that.”
Mike and Johnny who were both back by now came out of the back door. Johnny yelled over to me, “Trip was that you?”
“Yeah, it was me.”
My mom, Mike, and Johnny by now were all standing near me and Adam. “It is weird to hear that,” Johnny said, “I was just standing in the room next to the porch singing a little song in my head when suddenly it was like my thoughts got split in two. One half was singing the song while the other was you asking me if I could hear you.”
“Were you trying to just talk to Michelle?” Mike asked.
“Yeah, I didn’t want everyone to hear it but you all seemed to hear me.”
“This could be a problem,” My mom said, “if you’re going to be our eyes and ears connecting everyone, we don’t want people listing in.”
“Well then what am I suppose to be doing?” I asked obviously out of the circle, not knowing what they had planned for me.
Johnny tried to explain it to me,” When we time hop we won’t always be together. Instead of using radios or some other thing that could get tapped into we planned to use you. You would pay attention to our thoughts and if we had anything to relay to other people you would do that.”
“All you’re using me for is so I can link you together? I don’t even get to fight? I don’t get to even battle with a single one of the leaders?”
“Sorry but that’s what we want, or rather, need you to do, so either take it or leave it, because we don’t need another person with a power,” Adam said very bluntly.
Johnny shot Adam a look, “What?”
In some other language Johnny started to yell at Adam. The two of them went at this verbal sparing for a while, and then Mike stepped in and started to try to calm them down. It didn’t work. The three of them just started to go off on each other bickering in some other language.
I looked over to my mom, “Do you want to break them up or do you want me to?”
“You can try, if everything else fails I’ll roast them.”
I tried to project my thoughts but it just wasn’t working. I looked over to my mom, “Sorry no go.”
“No need to say sorry, that’s why we’re here to test your limits,” Her eyes started to glow red then a wall of fire separated each one of the feuding super heroes. It separated them, one to each section, like a pie, but with only three slices.
This got the yelling to stop, “Will you guys be civil now?” my mom yelled.
“As long as Adam isn’t teaching Trip any more,” Johnny spat out. This just brought the yelling to a brand new level.
The walls of fire that were previously almost warm flared up into an immense heat, and then died back down, “Will you guys be nice now? Johnny let Adam teach his way, Adam don’t threaten Johnny with the end of the world, and Mike for all of our sakes, don’t push Trip too hard, I don’t like my son hibernating. Am I clear?”
A slight mumble of voices came from the circle, “Sorry I didn’t hear you,” my mom said.
In unison the three of them in all said, “Okay, we won’t fight any more.”
“Thank you.” My mom dropped the walls of fire, “Times like that make me wonder if you really are in control of your sanity. For a while there you didn’t sound like three 500 year old friends you sounded like you looked, three teenagers that shouldn’t be friends,” my mom said.
“We’re really good friends in fights, it’s because we haven’t killed any one lately that we have some differing opinions. Enough about us, lets figure out what’s wrong with Trip,” Mike said smoothly changing all eyes to me.
“How do we do that?” I asked hopping that something weird wouldn’t happen, but I knew that was unlikely. Hopping for a normal solution with these people would be like asking the leaders to be nice and give the world back.
“Since none of us know how to do this, lets think it out. Trip, why do you do to get all of us to hear you?”
“I just mentally yell in the general direction of the person I want to hear my thoughts.”

31-40

We all stood there in deep thought for a few minutes trying to figure out what was wrong. “Could you do it again?” Mike asked, “I just want to test one thing first before I come up with my cure.”
“I don’t think so, it just seems like I’m drained after that first time. I don’t’ want to get a super headache while I’m already sore, but what do you think is wrong?”
“Okay, you yell mentally right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, when you normally yell every one can hear you right?”
“Yeah.”
“Wouldn’t it be the same way with your metal yelling, that every one would hear it?”
“It’s possible, but how do I change it?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t gotten that far yet.”
We all went silent again thinking about how I could get to talk into someone’s mind instead of yelling. While every one was thinking my mind wandered over to me hearing the thoughts of people and how I could do that. I thought that if I could hear their thoughts just possibly I would be able to talk to them. I decided that I might as well give it a try considering every one around me was thinking so hard, that it quite possibly could be easier.
I chose to try it out on Adam who was standing next to me. I didn’t know how to do it but I had a plan. I assumed that if I had a mental voice that I must have some sort of mental ear. I kept my eyes opened and tried to get that mental ear going. I concentrated on Adam, but to any one else all it looked like I was doing, was standing there staring at Adam’s head.
While I was looking at his head my vision went yellow. My first thought was, ‘oh, man, I don’t want to charge up now,’ but then I realized what was happening. When I looked my entire vision was yellow, like I was wearing yellow sunglasses. It wasn’t like charging up when I glowed, this way my entire world was turning yellow.
When I focused my attention back to Adam I could suddenly hear him. It was like he was just talking to me but his mouth wasn’t moving. I started to hear this when he was mid thought, “… but that wouldn’t work, that’s too advanced. Huh? What in the world is that, no one here glows yellow.”
I broke off my connection with Adam because my brain started to feel like it was going to explode. I looked around me and every one was starring at me. “Adam the answer to your question is that I was listening into your thoughts,” I said messaging my temples near my eyes trying to cut down on the oncoming pain, “Can I go inside now? My head is hurting more than my body right now and I just need to lie down.”
“Yeah, if you’re that tired you can. You can go use a guest bedroom,” Mike said.
I didn’t waste any time and I started to walk directly towards the guest rooms. I quickly said my nightly prayer and jumped into the bed fully clothed.
The next morning the sun was shining into my room and woke me up around 9:00. As I woke up I noticed the pain that use to cover my body was completely gone, there was a strange taste in my mouth, but the pain was gone. I crawled out of bed and I realized that on the nightstand near me was a pair of pants and what looked to me like an undershirt. On top of the pile was a note from my mom.
Trip, put these on, you need to get use to wearing clothes from back then.
Love, Mom
I held up the shirt in front of me. It was a dark blue shirt that said Vans on the front of it. I didn’t realize what it was about but I took off my buttoned up white shirt and put on the tee shirt. The shirt was comfortable but it felt like it was two sizes too big. The shirt was just so baggy that it felt like it was about to fall off of me. I then held up what I thought were pants but I realized that they were way too short to be pants. The waist seemed to fit me but the legs only went past my knees. I didn’t want to ask any questions, because I didn’t want to look stupid so I put on the strange pants. Underneath the pants were two white socks and a pair of shoes. The socks didn’t have an upper part to them, they didn’t even cover my ankle. The shoes were my size but just like the shirt they seemed almost too padded. As I looked closer the shoes had the same name on them that my shirt had, Vans. I still wasn’t too sure about that so I put on the shoes and the second that they were on I felt like I was walking on pillows. My normal black leather shoes were so painful compared to the heavenly feeling of these new shoes.
Thinking that I was ready and correctly dressed I walked out of my room and walked through the maze of hallways to the living room. When I finally made it there the only person there was Bethany and she was watching TV. “Hey Beth, do you know where my mom is?”
Without looking at me she said, “Yeah, try the kitchen or the back yard. She may even be out in the back training by now.”
I thanked Bethany and headed towards the kitchen. Sitting around the table was my mom, Cisco, and Adam. They were all eating out of bowls what looked to be some sort of soup.
I walked over to the table, “So, how do I look?”
Adam looked up from what he was eating and a white spray of liquid came out of his nose because he was laughing so hard. “What? What’s so funny?”
By now Adam had stopped laughing but he looked like my mom and Cisco who were trying to hold in a laugh. “It’s just even in street clothes you look geeky, and no offense but you need a tan.”
I looked over to my mom, “Translation?”
“He’s just saying you wouldn’t fit in. Don’t worry, we’ll fix that. First thing, un-tuck your shirt, never, never, ever tuck in your shirt because when we travel back in time, you’re trying to look lazy and a little sloppy.”
I pulled out my shirt, “What now?”
Cisco with his bleached hair looked over at me, “Your hair. Sorry but parting it on the side and plastering it to your head is not the way to go. Cisco stood up with his bowl and put it in the sink. He turned around and faced my mom, “Can I spike it?”
She started at me trying to imagine me with spiked hair, “Yeah, go ahead, and while you’re at it, bleach the tips.”
Cisco had a smile on his face, “Yeah, that’ll look good. I’ll use some of the ghetto stuff. Sorry but where you live people don’t know a thing about hair. Only in the slums can you get the good stuff. I’ll get Mike to take me there.”
Cisco headed back to the back yard and I took a seat at the table, “What are you guys going to do to me?”
“Spike, color, and bleach your hair,” Adam simply said.
I tried to think about it, “But won’t I stand out then?”
“No. If you dressed how you normally do then you would stick out. This way if you walked through a crowd they’ll just think you’re a teenager,” my mom said scooping some of the soupy stuff up and eating it, “and since we’re going to be using clothes from around 2030 people will love your clothes because they’re different and your hair is coming from 2045 so people will defiantly like that.”
“So you’re saying for me to fit in back in 2004 I have to wear these strange clothes and make my hair as weird as possible?” I asked not quite getting it.
“Yes. The stranger, the brighter, the better off you are in not sticking out or getting beat up,” Adam said.
“I could get beat up because of the way I look? Isn’t that racism?”
“Not by your skin color, by the way you dress. If you dress like you normally do and go back then I can guarantee that you would get beet up,” Adam said.
Cisco teleported back into the room with Mike right next to him, “I want to see Trip go punk,” Mike said smiling an evil smile at me.
“Punk?”
“Don’t worry it’s a good thing,” Mike said, “Plus once you’re done, Cisco said that he would change the mop on my head back to what I like it as.”
“Mop on your head?”
“Don’t worry we’ll go over eaubonics latter,” Adam said.
“Eu… huh?”
“Don’t worry we’ll go over this latter but first lets get your hair done,” Cisco said walking away from us, “come Trip, to the bathroom!”
I followed Cisco over to the nearest bathroom. “Okay this may smell a little weird, just live with it.” Cisco pulled off his backpack and pulled out a few tubes and started mixing them in a plastic bowl he had with him.
He was right the stuff was wretched. It was like a skunk getting ran over than a dog coming over and puking on it. It smelled of acid and something else that just made me want to throw up. Cisco took the bowl and started dumping its contents onto my head. He put on two plastic gloves and started to rub in the goop into my head.
Two minutes latter he stuck my head underneath a stream of hot water from the sink, washing everything out. Once I was out of the sink he didn’t waste a second and started to whip up another batch of the dye. This time it was a little more complicated but Cisco managed to only put the dye on the last inch of my hair. Another two minutes passed and we washed out the dye again.
This time when I pulled my head out Cisco put a bunch of blue gel in my hair then spiked my hair. Having my hair spiked looked so weird to me. I was so use to my normal hair that when it was spiked into the air I looked almost like a different person.
Cisco packed up all of his chemicals, “Go outside, and sit in the sun until it dries. Once it all dries, you’ll finally be able to see the colors that I put into it.”
“How long will it take to dry, I still need to eat breakfast.”
“At longest 15 minutes at shortest only three or four minutes.”
I decided that I might as well go outside to see how every one was doing. As I was walking outside I passed the library. Inside the library was Anna and Heather reading books. I decided to see what they were doing, “Aren’t you two suppose to be training outside?”
Both of them looked up from their books and got a shocked look on their faces. I realized it was my hair, “What? What is wrong with my hair?”
“Nothing,” Heather said still looking at my head, “It looks good, it’s just you look different.”
“They said I would fit in better like this, so would I fit in?”
“Yeah, you’re good, don’t worry,” Anna said.
“Every one keeps on telling me that but it’s hard not to worry about going back in time and changing the future. What if we screw up and we make our time worse?”
“We won’t,” Anna simply said.
“So why are you guys in here?” I said trying to get back to my originally reason for being in there.
“Because our powers come from books. The more I read and the older the books I read, the more likely I’ll find a killer spell,” Heather said, “and with Anna here, I can cover twice the ground I normally would.”
“Sounds better than fighting out with them,” I said pointing to the window that over looked the back yard.
“Yeah, but it’s boring. How much fun is it to read an entire book in Latin, just to find that there is nothing important in it,” Heather said, “The only fun part of this job is the big summons. I only know half of the spell but once I learn the other half I can’t wait to summon Tiamat. She is a five-headed dragon that is really strong. The one other one that I want to get my hands on is Bahamut, I won’t even go into how powerful he is. Let me put it this way, he breaths kamaiahmaiahs. He doesn’t breath fire, he breaths 5 by 5 by 160-foot ray of pure destroying energy.”
“She gets all of the fun,” Anna complained, “I don’t even get to use any of the stuff I know. For example I know the other half of that Tiamat spell but I can’t teach her it because I’m not a summoner. All I’m good for is information.”
“Why don’t you go and get the Tiamat spell from whoever owns it?”
“Yeah, and why don’t you just go to the leaders, and tell them to change the world back to normal. The second I step into the room where he keeps his books, I’d be roasted alive, but why are you bugging us about our training aren’t you suppose to be out there training?”
“I should, but whenever I use a power I either get a headache or my body gets sore, and I don’t want that to happen again, too much pain.”
“I thought I took care of that,” Heather said, “I thought that I stopped your pain.”
“What?”
“This morning I casted a cure spell on you. You should be feeling just fine now.”
“I am, it’s just how long will this last?”
“It’s gone right now. The spell worked it’s magic then stopped but don’t make that worry you, I have a few more of those ready to go. I know that on training days someone always seems to get hurt. In other words go out there and give it your all, just remember that during a battle make sure I don’t get hurt or else there goes your healing.”
“It’s a deal, you heal me, I’ll protect you.”
“Good, now go out there and train so we can.”
I walked out of the library and headed outside to let my hair dry and to watch the others train. It was a little weird to say the least. That day only being the fifth day having a power, and never seeing a single person truly use their power. I was shocked.
Mike and Johnny were off at one said sparing with each other. In their first life they both were very good at martial arts so they were just having a short refresher course on how to do it, and exactly what their new 14 year old bodies could do. They didn’t hold back either, both of them were punching and kicking like it was a real battle.
Near them was Natalie and Bethany and the they too were sparing, but it was more along the lines of Natalie completely destroying Bethany. The punches and kicks were always accurate and always at full strength. You could tell just by watching that Natalie had seen a few good battles, just by the way she fought.
Farthest away from me was my mom and Adam. Both of them were flying through the air. My mom was surrounded by fire, and because hot air rises, she was flying. Occasionally she would throw a chunk of fire at Adam but he would dodge out of the way. It was like watching a strange aerial version of cat and mouse. Adam would run, and my mom would follow. Once he got caught positions would change and the chase would be on again.
After watching for a while I realized that my hair was dry so I decided to go inside and have some breakfast. As I walked in I saw Cisco sitting at the table eating the same soupy stuff that Adam and my mom were eating before. “Haven’t you already eaten?”
“Yeah, but you don’t often see Fruit Loops any more. By the way, how do you like your hair, have you seen it yet?”
“No, I haven’t but what are Fruit Loops?”
“I’ll tell you once you get back from looking at your hair,” Cisco said shoveling in another spoon full of food.
I walked over to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I almost yelled because it looked like a different me. My hair was strange beyond belief. The base of my hair looked to be it’s normal dark brown self but when you looked closer or caught it in just the right light it turned into a dark green, then the tips of my hair were white. Not the bleach yellow of Cisco’s hair, my tips were white. Someone could have taken whiteout and thrown it onto my tips and you would have seen no difference in hair color. I turned my head back and forth, trying to see how my entire head looked.
I heard Cisco yell from the dinning room, “Do you like it?”
“It’s different,” I yelled back, “are you sure that I won’t stick out?”
“No you won’t. At most people will leave you alone because they don’t want to look stupid and ask you how you got your hair to do that.”
I walked back to the kitchen, “I look like what I expect my evil clone to look like, or something like this.”
“You look just fine. The best part about it is that I put in a few dozen extra chemicals so you can go to sleep and when you wake up not have to worry about bed head.”
“My hair will never go un-spiked?”
“Right. If you want it down you either have to exposed to mass amounts of radiation or wash it out with a shampoo that only I know how to make.”
“So I could go swimming and when I came out of the water all I would have to do is shake my head a few times to get some of the water out and my hair would look like this again?”
“Yeah.”
“Neat, but isn’t that breaking some sort of law of chemistry of gravity or some other basic scientific law?”
“Probably.”
I stood there and was a little bit disturbed by Cisco’s attitude about the laws of science that run the entire universe. It was like they were just little things like the speed limit that every one broke all of the time and no one really cared. I didn’t think about it too much and got back to what he was still slurping down, “So what are Fruit Loops?”
“Only the best thing ever invented. Here try some.” Cisco passed me a box, a bowl, and a jug filled with some white liquid.
“What do I do with these?”
Cisco spelled things out for me, “Pour some of the boxes contents into your bowl, then pour your milk into the bowl, and then you eat.”
“Milk? Where exactly does milk come from?”
“Cows, where did you think it came from?”
“I don’t know, it’s just I’ve never had milk before. I’ve seen little kids have that powdery stuff is that milk?”
“No, that isn’t milk that is just vitamins as a powder, but how is it that you have never had milk in your entire life?”
“I don’t know, it’s just my life and the leaders only let you eat certain foods. But we’re already here so lets start breaking the rules, pass me the box.”
“Yes sir,” Cisco said sliding the box over to me.
I poured out about two cups of these colorful little rings into my bowl. I dumped on some milk and picked up a near by spoon. I scooped up a spoonful of cereal and put it in my mouth not knowing quite what it would taste like.
Cisco was right this food was great. It just had its own taste. Nothing IN knew of had this taste. I couldn’t have enough of it. I had to have at least three bowls of this food before I finally felt like I had enough.
When I got done I started to put up my dishes, “Hey, Cisco, do you want to train with me?”
“Not really, most people can’t really handle it when I shift into my normal form.”
“Probably, but I don’t want to fight you, I know I couldn’t beat a single person in this group fighting them. All I need you to do is just sit and see if I can get my thoughts to you without everyone else hearing me.”
“All you want me to do is sit down?” Cisco asked, “I think I can do that.”
“Good, lets go on outside,” I said heading towards the back yard.
Cisco followed me out to the back porch, “Let me get this straight, you want me just to sit here on the lawn chairs and do nothing?”
“Yeah.”
“I think I’m really starting to like training with you Trip,” Cisco said laying down on a reclining chair, closing his eyes, “I’m ready whenever you are.”
I decided just to sit on the other side of the porch because I didn’t want to waste my power. I sat down on a chair and tried to think about how I would get only Cisco to hear me. As I was in deep thought I heard Cisco start to snore very lightly, I decided that I would be a good thing because then I could have a chance to wake him up without anyone else hearing me.
About ten minutes latter I decided to try my luck. I think I knew how to do it. I sort of relate it to a radio. The radio won’t pick up anything unless it’s tuned into the right station. Basically every person’s brain has its own little frequency, I just have to find the right frequency or that person then I could transmit over that line. There was just one minor problem; I didn’t know how to find that frequency.
My mind started to wander trying to get the right frequency for Cisco. As mind started to wander, somehow it stumbled into Cisco’s minds. I was about to pull out, thinking that I screwed up but I decided to try to push around my power a bit. I decided that because I was able to hear his thoughts that maybe I’d be able to let him hear mine.
I opened up my mind a bit and I noticed that his thoughts started to follow my own thought patterns. I decided to open my eyes just to see if I could make him do things while he was asleep.
When I opened up my eyes, my vision was flooded in yellow. After adjusting my eyes a bit I could see Cisco sitting on the chair. I didn’t want to wake him up so I started out with small things. My first command I slipped into his mind that there was a fly on his face.
His cheek started to spasm a few time trying to get rid of the fly. Before he tripped out and woke up I told him mentally that the fly was gone.
Suddenly Cisco went back into his comatose sleep and I decided to push my luck and see how much I could get Cisco to do. I decided to get him to walk in to the back yard. I told him that he saw a new car out in the back yard, as if knowing what he wanted to do Cisco stood up still with his eyes closed and walked to the back yard. When we got out a few yards out I decided to make the final request of him. My description to him was a little blotchy but I told him that he was surrounded by a bunch of enemies. I didn’t say what type of enemies, for all I knew his subconscious could have put him in a group of teddy bears or little fluffy house cats.
This got him to do what I was looking forward to. His black skin started to change to a red scaly covering. His head started to morph into a dragons head, then he started to get bigger, and bigger. As he grew, wings sprouted from his back and his tail was growing out of his tail bone. Cisco morphed enough that he wasn’t able to stand on two feet so he fell down on all fours and continued to grow. He just got bigger and bigger. It looked like he was going to start attacking whatever he saw so I let go of my grasp of his subconscious and in the process woke him up.
By the time he stopped shifting Cisco was huge. One of his immensely large claws was bigger than me. Height wise I only came up to what would have been his ankle. He had to have been 30 feet wide and over 80 feet long, including his tail. He reached well above my head topping out somewhere around 60 feet above the ground.
Suddenly Cisco started to shrink back to his normal size. It looked like he was some sort of freak near the end of the transformation. He still had his claws and most of the head but the rest of him was human.
When he got to human form the first thing he did was run inside. Sorry but it’s true. When you go from being that big you’d tear your clothes to shreds too. As he ran inside all of us politely looked the other way but once he was inside, everyone outside ran over to the porch to me.
Natalie and Bethany made it there first, followed by Mike and Johnny, then finally Adam and my mom.
“What was that all about?” Mike asked, “Cisco never shifts, unless it’s an emergency. I’ve only seen him shift four times.”
“I don’t know. I think that I pushed him and he did id,” I said honestly.
“You pushed Cisco? Is that even possible?” Johnny asked in unbelief.
“Are you sure that you made him do that? That is skipping a few steps. Are you one hundred percent sure that Cisco was wide awake and you made him shift? Adam said, a little excited and a little worried.
“He wasn’t awake, that was the only thing that you didn’t list. Cisco was asleep until he was at full size, then he woke up,” I said trying not to freak out with everyone watching and paying attention to every little thing I did.
My mom Bethany, Mike, and Johnny, all let out a small sigh, “Good, he wasn’t awake,” Adam said in relief, “We all thought that you had skipped a few levels and went to pushing people.” Adam looked to every one behind him, “Okay you guys don’t worry just go back and practice Trip obviously needs some down time so I’ll stay with him.”
Every one went back into the back yard and started to train again. Adam stayed with me, “Are you okay you seem a little shaken up.”
“It’s just I was only trying to talk to him and then he started doing whatever I thought. It wasn’t really my fault.”
“I know it wasn’t your fault. If anything it was his fault for falling asleep. When you’re unconscious people like you have complete or close to complete control over people who are asleep. For this don’t worry you are just learning how much easier people are to take over when they are asleep. Now you know why hypnotists can get people to do such crazy things.”
“What I did was perfectly normal?” I asked still a little scared about the crazy results of my little experiment.
“Yeah, it’s perfectly okay, but just to give you a little break from your mental power you need to practice with your normal power.”
“Can do.” Just then Cisco walked back outside with some new clothes on, I felt a little worried on how he would react, “Hey, Cisco are you okay?”
“Yeah, it’s just a little weird waking up and having wings, scales, and being able to breathe fire. It was just weird, my dreams just changed, very creepy, but I’m still okay.”
“Good, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to do that,” I said trying to cover up what I did.
“What? You did that to me? You couldn’t have you can’t even talk with one person with your mind without getting a headache,” Cisco said not believing me.
Adam stepped into the conversation, “It’s true. Once you fell asleep a person with slim to no telepathic powers could make you do that. Trip has some power, so to him it was a cake walk.”
Cisco stood there in deep thought for a few seconds, “Hey it’s my own fault,” he said patting me on the shoulder. You wanted someone to try out something new and I was the winner. It wasn’t your fault, don’t sweat it.”
I gave a deep sigh of relief. I thought that it was my fault and Cisco was going to come out blasting me for doing that to him. I was so happy that he was at least able to see that it was just by an accident.
After my emotions calmed down a bit I went to the back yard and headed towards Mike and Johnny. As I got closer the fireballs seemed to get constantly larger from the last one they threw at each other. What they were doing were throwing fireballs at each other but they were so together that the two fireballs diffused in the middle of them.
They saw me walk up to them, they stopped and both teleported over to me, “Good job with Cisco,” Johnny said, “It didn’t harm him one but, but if anything, he needed that.”
“He hasn’t shifted for so long, that he probably didn’t remember how to shift. It’s good that you jogged his memory,” Mike said, “but enough mental powers lets get down to the ugly nasty stuff, that can blow people into pieces. Lets see if you can still do a fireball.”
I hadn’t charged up at all that day so I decided to charge up right then. I went through the usual routine of charging up, and the power started to flow through me as usual. The powe4r seemed to take a bit longer to flow into me and fill me up.
Once I was done, mentally I changed al of the energy into fire energy. Into that flaming inferno inside of me I added a few extra gallons of gasoline known as me emotions which I had quite a bit of after the whole Cisco ordeal, and all of the times people had told me, ‘don’t worry, trust me,’ as if I wasn’t able to survive on me own.
By that time I felt like I was overflowing with fire energy. I didn’t want to let it go right then because I wanted to see how long I could keep that mass amount of power going through me, before it either died out or I finally threw a fireball.
Mike was watching me and noticed that I had stopped, “What are you stopping for?”
“I want to see how long I can keep this in me.”
“Have you switched it to fire already?” Mike asked, “Because if you have, get rid of it. Just like your normal energy that slowly come out, if you keep it in you you’ll slowly get a really bad case of heart burn. Normal energy diffuses and gives you energy, fire diffuses into your body and gives you heart burn.”
“That means that I have to use it up, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, but this time, try to only use up a small amount of the power and throw it into the air. Johnny and I have a little have a little game that we like to play but we need a fireball to start it off. We could throw it ourselves but you need the practice so we want you to throw it.”
“What’s the game?”
Johnny tried to explain to me, “It’s like pong but a whole lot better.” I’d heard of the old video game but knowing Mike and Johnny it would be a little bit different. I was about to throw the fireball but Mike stopped me before I could throw it, “We need to charge up first, it takes a whole lot of energy to do this.”
I paused and let the charge up. They were probably only half empty on power but their charge up time took probably three times longer than mine did.
The light around them dimmed down, “Are you done yet?”
“One more second, we’re almost ready,” Mike said facing Johnny, “Okay Johnny on three. One, two, three.”
Together they chanted, ‘paper rock, scissors.”
Mike threw out his hand flat and Johnny had his balled up in a fist. Paper beat rock so Johnny lost. Johnny looked up, “Okay since I lost I’ll get the fun of being up there. Once I’m up there start it off Trip, so I can beat Mike again.”
I tapped back into my power and tried to only take a chunk of it. I did manage to only take a chunk, but the chunk was almost all of my power, but it was still a chunk. I threw it into the air, and it was a decent size somewhere around two or three feet in diameter.
I watched it sail into the air thinking it was all a waste of my power but then I looked over to see what Mike and Johnny were doing. When I looked over Johnny wasn’t down with us. “Where’s Johnny?” I asked Mike.
Mike strained his neck to look up, “Up, there. Just watch you’ll see.”
I looked up into the air and above me was my fireball still going up. Suddenly another fireball came out of the air, which I hopped came from Johnny, and ran into my fireball. Instead of the usual diffusing of the fireballs, the fireball going up, ricocheted off of the other fireball that Johnny threw and started to fall towards the earth.
I tried to figure out where the fireball was going to land and if I was right it was about to make me a burnt human. I noticed Mike out of the corner of my eye move a few feet towards me then throw a large fireball straight up.
The fireball that use to be coming straight for us got reflected back up into the air. The fireball continued to go up and down with Mike and Johnny hitting it back to the other person. It was almost like a vertical version of tennis. But as usual Mike and Johnny couldn’t live with just going straight up and straight back down after about 30 seconds Mike looked over to me, “I’m getting bored so keep watching because this little game is going to get a whole lot harder.”
The fireball came back straight down as it usually did, but Mike walked away from underneath it. I personally thought that he had lost his marbles. True, it was only my little fireball that was coming down straight for my head, but it was a fireball and those hurt, I was a little worried.
When the fireball got within Mike’s normal range, Mike threw a fireball that did it’s usual job, just with an angle. My fireball spun up to the right, still heading up, just now heading up and to the right. Johnny was able to get to the fireball and did the same thing, but hit my fireball towards the left. This kept going and somehow the pace of my little fireball started to pick up. It really did look like a game of pong the more it went on seeing Mike madly run back and forth trying to mess up Johnny and Johnny doing the same back to Mike.
After about two minutes the pace really started to pick up. It got going so fast that Mike had to teleport to his next place he wanted to be because if he didn’t the fireball would hit the ground and he would lose.
The game ended after three minutes of playing and Johnny won only from a very lucky shot. If I had to bet on who would have won that game, I wouldn’t have betted. From what I could tell if it wasn’t for luck the two of them could have kept that game going for quite some time.
Johnny teleported to the ground and both he and Mike looked close to being tired. They didn’t’ let that stay around too long because they both charged up to full power, again.

41-50

Once they were done charging up Johnny started to gloat, “I was just about to give up because I was using so much power flying around but then I beat you. What happened Mike? Did I get to fast for you?”
“Shut up Johnny. You and I both know that the only reason that I screwed up is that you had a lucky shot. You know that both of us are equally matched and it’s only by luck or someone else helping one of us out,” Mike said, “If we were to kamaihamaiah each other full power, you and I both know that they would only negate each other.”
“Yeah, I know, but still can’t a person be happy that he won?” Johnny asked, “Even if it was only by luck that I won, I still won. But that whole kamaihamaiah thing reminds me, when are we going to time shift.”
I didn’t get Johnny’s thought process, “How did you go from winning a game to going back in time?”
“Simple, when we go back or forward in time the two of us need to throw a kamaihamaiah against each other and any living thing within ten feet of either of us travels with us. That connects with what we were talking about because Mike said something about throwing kamaihamaiahs against each other, and that is how I connected the two together,” Johnny explained, ‘So where are we going?”
Mike thought for a few seconds, “Probably after dinner tonight. Then when we go back we’ll stay in a hotel for the night.”
“What do we do now?” I asked, “We still have an hour until lunch.”
“Maybe then we’ll time hop after lunch then we’ll have dinner at a buffet in Vegas. Then We’ll sleep downtown in one of the hotels,” Mike said changing his plans a bit, “That would work, right?”
“Yeah it would work,” Johnny said, “We could even give Trip a quick tour once everyone goes to sleep.”
“Okay, let’s do it. Let’s go start on getting lunch ready then when we’re done we’ll travel, and see how many people get sick,” Mike said walking towards the house,” How does pizza sound?”
“Pizza?”
“Yeah, the second food that is just as good as hamburgers but a little more healthier,” Johnny explained, “It’s good and that’s really all that matters.”
I didn’t want to ask questions because I still had a reputation to uphold, even if it was only a reputation with people that could quite possibly blow up the world.
I knew I couldn’t help them cook because quite simply I couldn’t cook. I didn’t know how to cook. The only thing I knew had to do with food was packets but by that time I hated food packets. I finally realized by then why every one considered them bland and didn’t taste like anything. I had only eaten at that time hamburgers and cereal but still I knew that there was food out there and it tasted good.
Instead of helping Mike and Johnny out I decided to look for Bethany and see what she was doing. I finally found her in the arcade room playing a game called Taken 5 but she was playing against herself. She grew two extra arms so that her left side could control the left character while the right side controlled the right character. Just watching her made my brain hurt. It was like each side of her was thinking on it’s own planning what to do next. It was really confusing but it was worse after her left side beat up the right side. She went to tag team mode where it’s suppose t be two people going against two computer characters at the same time, but with Bethany it was more of one person with two people against the computer. She did everything perfectly. Right after one of her characters finished up their combo the other character would start up before the enemy had time to hit the ground. It would just go back and forth like that until she won the round, and within a few minutes the game.
After Bethany wrote her name in she turned around and saw me, ‘Hey Trip, what do you need?”
“I just wanted to relax, what do you suggest?”
“Is this the type of relaxing like you want to kill something relax or mind numbing, get lost and you don’t care relax?”
“I just want to relax and not worry about life for a second or two,” wanting to get all of my thoughts off of my head.
“This one you’ll like and I’ll even turn on the sound so you can get use to the music of when we are going to travel,” Bethany said pointing over to what was then a lifeless screen. She morphed her arm back behind the screen and the entire thing jolted to life in color. Suddenly the room was full of pulsating music that had a heavy bass and some sort of odd vocals.
I yelled over to Bethany, “Can you turn this down? I feel like my eardrums are about to pop!”
Bethany stretched her arm back again and the sound came down to a more bearable level, “Is that better?”
“Yeah, but now one problem what is this and how in the world do I play?”
Bethany pulled herself back together, “This is Dance, Dance Revolution 8th mix, shortly called D.D.R. How you play is simple, see hose arrows on the ground in front of the screen?”
“Yeah.” “Well, on the screen arrows will start to scroll up and when they get to the top you step on the corresponding arrow. So if the arrow is pointing right, you step on the right arrow. If there are two arrows that means you have to step on both arrows, it’s that simple.”
“Why are there two pads then?”
“Duh, so we can both play, but I’ll only play one time with you then I’ll let you solo it, because I have other things to do, and also so you can get the hang of things.”
Bethany stepped up on the right group of arrows and I decided that I might as well try to play and moved myself over to the other pad, “What now?”
Bethany hit the two player button, chose beginners mode, to give me a chance, “You chose the song. Use your feet, left for left, right for right.”
I searched through the selections and chose one that sounded easy, ‘stomp to my beat’. Bethany pressed go and the arrows started to glide up my screen. That level was okay, I got a C+ rating, but Bethany got a perfect A+. She chose the second song. She quickly knew where she was heading and turned to a song called Afernova, and then pressed start.
Chaos is not the word to sue to how the arrows looked to me. It was only my second song and I already felt depressed. My feet were so clumsy I could barely get a quarter of the arrows.
Whenever I looked over at Bethany she was grooving right along with the pulsing beat. She made it look like a dance gliding her feet along the ground. It looked like she wasn’t even deliberately hitting the right arrows. After watching her I just gave up on even trying on that song.
Once we were done with that song Bethany looked over to me, ‘What’s wrong Trip?”
“When coming to this I have the grace of a dying bird, I can not do this.”
“All I have to say to that is shut up and keep trying. No one is good at this their first time. Shoot even Adam cheats using his powers every not and then. The only person I know who has just jumped up here and has not failed Afernova their first time, is your Mom but she had previously played this game,” Bethany said, ‘plus don’t worry not every one can play this. Cisco still can only do only two of the songs, and even then he looks like a robot. That kid has no grace whatsoever.”
“Okay, I’m in, but I get to chose the next song.”
We played on more song, I filed, but as promised Bethany went over to the other side of the room and played some pinball. I was left standing on the pads all by myself. I decided I had nothing to loose so I started it up again and started trying to learn how to play.
Bethany was right, before I knew it Johnny walked in announcing that it was time for lunch. I checked the time and I had played that game for almost an hour and a half. I must have gotten lost in the music and arrows. Playing that strenuous of a game actually relaxed me too.
As we walked to the dinning room this strange smell drafted over to me. Since I had nothing to compare this to I decided that the smell was the much awaited pizza.
The eight of us sat around the table waiting for Mike and Johnny. As they walked into the room I noticed each one of them carrying a round tray with something on it. Each tray was at least two feet in diameter. On top of them was something I won’t even try to describe. I latter found out the two pizzas we had to eat were a pepperoni and a Hawaiian.
At that point I didn’t care I wanted to sink my teeth into those two things. We said a quick prayer and the pizzas were served. I ha two slices on my plate and I was wondering how to eat them. There were no forks or any other utensil so I know I had to eat it with my hands. I looked up and every one had their own way to eat pizza.
Cisco folded his in half and then started to eat. Anna had torn off the crust and was then eating it. Natalie had put the two pieces of pizza together and ate them like a sandwich. Heater was just eating the pizza from the tip down and so were Mike, Johnny, Adam, and my mom.
I decided that this was just the way to eat it so I picked up one of my slices and took my first bite. That bite was heavenly. I let the food just sit there on my tongue trying to take in as much of the taste as possible. The food was wonderful. I only had my original two slices but that was by far the best food I had eaten up to that time.
When we all got done Mike quieted every one down and had an announcement, “Okay, we’re all here for one reason, to save the world. I’ve thought about this and I’d just like to suggest that we don’t wait and we just leave right now? Is there any one here that really needs to sit around and train for another day or two?”
“I’m good to go,” Anna said.
“I’ll go,” Heather added.
“I’m always ready,” Cisco said.
“I’ll go whenever you want, I’m in no big rush,” Bethany said.
“I’m sick of this time line, I was ready to change it ten years ago,” my mom said.
All of this time I was thinking hard and right when it was my turn to say if I was in or not, I mentally said, “I’m as ready as any one could be for only having their powers for a few days.” That got a slight laugh from a few people.
Adam said, “I don’t’ have a choice, if I didn’t come who would keep you and Johnny in check?”
“Good, it’s settled,” mike said, ‘if you have any last minute things to do, do them now because we will never be back here exactly how it is right now.”
My mom looked down at her jumpsuit, and right in front of me her suit shifted to a baggy pair of pants and her top got slightly tighter, “Okay, I’ll fit in now.”
Bethany did the same change of clothes but she went to a skintight pair of jeans and a halter-top shirt. She also shifted so that she had a little bit more cleavage than usual, “Okay lets go.”
With all of our old clothes on we all headed outside. Mike and Johnny split us up into groups. Near Mike was Adam, my mom, Bethany, and me. Johnny had Cisco, Natalie, Heather, and Anna near him. The two of them charged up even more then walked so they were standing no more than 15 feet from each other.
They nodded their heads in unison, one…two…three.
After the third nod both of them threw what I would come to know as a kamaihamaiah. Each one was at least seven feet in diameter, and that’s just a rough guess. As these two forces of energy ran into each other the entire world around me started to go white. It was like the blast surrounded me. Suddenly it stopped and where everything was once bright and white, everything was black. This blackness was beyond any darkness that I had ever experienced. The only thing that I could make out was my hand, only if I held it right in front of my eyes.
The blackness finally ended about thirty seconds latter, but in my perspective is felt more like two hours in the blackness. The end of the blackness was replaced by the immense light of the two kamaiahmaihs. The light died down and the entire world around me seemed different. Instead of being in the backyard of Mike and Johnny’s mansion we were in the middle of a forest.
Mike yelled out to every one, “Okay every one hold on to your nearest Super Sain and we will be out of here.”
Everyone grabbed onto Mike or Johnny then we teleported. When we stopped we were in another forest, exactly where the forest was I didn’t know. As we were looking around I finally felt a little queasy. I bent down for a few seconds staring at the ground trying to get my stomach to stop doing flips.
Once my stomach stopped I looked around to see how every one else was doing. The only person that was still a little sick was Anna but after a minute she was good enough to stand up and talk. I looked over to where Mike and Johnny were and they both looked like their bodies were void of all life.
“Are you two okay?” Adam asked them looking at them.
“Yeah, just give us a second or two, we’ll be better. It’s just doing that takes a whole lot out of us,” Mike said.
Heather went up to Johnny who she was closer to, “Stay still I’ll try to help you out.”
Johnny sat down on a fallen tree, “Okay do your thing.”
Heater started chant in a strange language then placed her hands on Johnny’s shoulders. Once she touched his shoulders her hands glowed a dull white and then it stopped. “Do you feel better now?”
Johnny stood up and stretched a bit, “besides having no energy I’m feeling better.”
“That’s why I love this time. IF we tried that back when we’re form that would have been lucky to stop major bleeding. It’s just a point to say that the healthier the earth the stronger the magic.”
“Enough talking, Heather are you just going to leave me hanging here?” Mike asked.
“The thought did cross my mind, but I’m coming don’t worry.” Heather wasted no time and healed Mike.
“Thank you,” Mike said, “now all that we need to do is charge up.” Mike and Johnny both stood up and started to charge up. Thirty seconds latter both Mike and Johnny were full on power and were ready to go.
Once they wee done Johnny asked everyone, “Who’s ready to go to Las Vegas?”
“I am but how are we going to pay for everything?” Cisco said, “I know that people don’t pay for things with credits, they deal with dollars.”
“What we’re going to Vegas? When did this happen?” Anna said shocked.
Bethany stepped into the conversation, “Give me a dollar and in an hour we’ll have enough spending money for any hotel we want. And Anna, all of us want to stay and play if we’re going to be back in time, so we’re staying.”
“In Vegas? Are you nuts? The timeline…”
Adam stepped in, “Anna I know this will rub against every logical cell in your body but we like this time, and we want to spend some time in it. And Bethany you rig your craps tables and I’ll rig the roulette table.”
Johnny added in, “Anna, I know it will go against everything that you know but we need money if we’re going to be staying in a hotel, but who won the football game today?”
I could see the memorized scores, dates, and the entire game flash in front of Anna’s eyes, “It matters who’s playing what.”
“Okay then. People you know what you need to do when we get there but before we hit the tables we need ID’s and I know a person that will help us out,” Adam said, “It may be completely illegal but these are the best out there, nothing is different. Not even the FBI can see the difference.”
“Lets go then. To Vegas!” Mike said. He started to rattle of instructions, that to me sounded pointless but every one else seemed to enjoy them, “Okay kids please keep your hands on the Super Sain. Please do not exit the ride until the Super Sain comes to a full and complete stop. Thank you for ridding Super Sain Teleporting and have a nice day.” Every one placed a hand on either Mike or Johnny again and we all teleported into a parking lot at one of the casinos.
We walked out of the parking lot and the neon lights and all of the noises stunned me. Everything was bright and flashy, it was only 5:00 in the morning, the sun was about to come up over the mountains but cars were everywhere and life was busy.
Adam waited for most of us to get use to the showy downtown and then he headed off walking down the street. We passed up dancing fountains, a volcano, and pirates, all on our walk down the street.
After we passed up a large building call the stratosphere the surrounding building got a little more ran down. Hotels turning into motels. 80 dollars a night for a room turned to a sign reading ’15 dollars a night with free cable and adult movies!”
Adam took a quick turn and walked into a run down pawn shop the read, ‘we buy gold, and ‘Rolex only $20!’ Adam walked up to the counter, “Hey Bill get out here you have customers!”
A fat guy wearing a dirty white shirt and smelling like he hadn’t taken a shower in two decays walked out, “We’re closed, go home.”
“Bill, Adam sent me these people and myself need some ID’s.”
Bill’s face tried to remember who Adam was and from what I could tell the guy didn’t remember who Adam was, but customers were customers so he snapped into his polite made, “Right this way, any person that’s a friend of Adam are good friends of mine.” Bill headed back into the shop and we all followed him. He brought us to what looked just like a photo shop. There was a camera and if faced a blue. “Who’s first?”
Adam sat down on the stool, “Me, and for your info I’ll be using Adam’s name and info.”
“But…”
“Bill, shut up and just do it.”
“Yes sir.”
Bill fumbled with the camera for a second and then snapped a picture. He turned around and started to type on his computer. Midway through he stopped, “I don’t remember all of Adam’s info, you can type it in, if you want to.”
Adam got up and walked over to the computer and started to type away at the keyboard. Then stopped. Next to him a printer started to print his drivers license.
“Next person please.”
Mike sat down, Bill took the picture, and Mike went over to the computer and started to fill in the information. “What do I get out of this?” Bill asked, “Everyone knows that I don’t do these sort of things for free.”
“I’ll get you an Ashton Martin DB7 by tomorrow. You then do anything for us for the next five years,” Mike said typing at the computer.
“You’ll do that for me?”
“As long as you keep helping us out for another five years,” Mike said printing out is ID.
“It’s a deal.”
Bill finished up the rest of the group. I kept my birthrate, just added a few years onto it. I was an organ donor, and I lived at my grandpa’s house, Adam’s house.
We all had our ID’s and before we left Adam had one more question for Bill, “Hey Bill do you have a quarter? I need to call up Adam, and I don’t want to call collect.”
“Yeah, here,” Bill threw Adam a metal coin.”
“Thanks man, we’ll try to get you that car as soon as possible,” Adam said walking outside. We all followed him. He headed straight towards a gas station that was across the street.
The gas station was just like any other one I knew but this had video poker and slot machines. The ten of us crowded around one of the slot machines. Adam put in the coin and pulled the lever, “Let’s see if I can still do this.”
The three dials started to spin randomly and Adam’s eyes started to glow blue. The dial slowed down and showed straight across 7, 7, 7. The clinking of quarters in the metal catch bin started to fill the air. After about two minutes the coins stopped falling. We filled up three little plastic buckets full of coins and we brought them to the counter. “Will you please put these into bills, no larger than twenties please,” Adam said.
The girl on the other side of the counter took the buckets and cashed out all of the coins. She gave us $750. We split it up and each of us got $75. With my money I bought a wallet and put my money in it.
We left the gas station and walked down the street to the next gas station and this time made $800.
We all agreed that we each had enough money and that we should hit the tables where the big money is at. We all split into groups. Adam was followed by my mom and me, Heather was followed by Cisco and Mike Bethany was stalked by Johnny, and Anna headed off to the sports book with Natalie. We all agreed that we would meet at the Caesars Palace in two hours.
We separated and my little group headed down the road towards the larger hotels. Our first stop was the Mirage. Adam headed straight towards a game called roulette.
The three of us all turned our money into chips and my mom and Adam gave me a quick lesson in the game. We rigged this one quite easily. When you pick something to bet on you can pick you can either bet on a single number or a color. One of us would put all of our money on a number while the other two people bet a few dollars on something else. When the wheel started to spin Adam would use his power to get it to stop on the number for whoever bet all of their money.
We played our two hours and the last bet before we left we put all of our money on one number. Adam did his thing and we left the hotel with a few hundred thousand dollars richer.
We all met together in the front foyer of the Caesars Palace. As a group we walked up to the front desk and rented out five VIP suites and paid with cash. We all got our key cards and we headed up to our rooms.
Each of us shared a room with one other person. I shared my room with Adam, Mike and Johnny were together, Cisco shared a room with Bethany, my mom was with Anna, and Heather and Natalie were together. Once we were all settled in we met together in Mike and Johnny’s room.
In Vegas time it was 8:00 but the clock we were on it was almost 5:00 at night. We talked about what we were going to do and we all agreed it would be best if we got back onto Vegas time so we would be rested for our big fight with the leaders.
We split up and went different ways but it seemed that we always seemed to group together from time to time. I always tended to stay with either my mom, Mike, Johnny, or Adam.
Our first stop was a car dealership. We quickly bought Bill his car and gave it to him, but then we went back and test drove some of the cars. It was my first time driving but after an hour I was a decent driver. Each of us bought our own cars, each one was no less than $90,000 and we paid for each one in cash. The rest of the day we spent our time driving from place to place.
Around noon every one else went back to the hotel and went to sleep, that left Mike, Johnny, and me time to joy ride. Our first stop on the tour of Vegas was Las Vegas High School, the place where at that time Adam, Mike, and Johnny were going to school. At this time they were just going to go considering that they already had 300 years behind them.
We parked our cars at the church across the street and walked into the school. School was in session, the hallways were empty, but we just walked in without a single person stopping us. “Are we allowed to do this? Isn’t this illegal?” I asked.
“No, we’re in street clothes, they can’t see our jumpsuits. Plus they don’t look exactly like we do,” Mike said.
“I’m not talking about you and your past selves, I’m talking about the school district. Are we allowed to be in here at school?”
“Why not? Hey, Johnny, which class did we have last period our Senior year?”
“Didn’t we have weight training?”
“That sounds right.”
Mike headed through out the school and surprisingly not a single hall monitor or dean stopped us. We walked over to the weight room and Mike opened the door and looked in. He looked in quickly and then pulled his head back out, “What year were those cars that we bought?”
“2001, why?” I asked trying to follow Mike’s thought process.
“Those were brand new cars.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’re in 2001 not 2004, we’re off by a few years, and I think that we’re in June, not November.”
“That would explain the heat,” Johnny said, “The question now is what class did we have in Freshman year at the end of the day?”
Mike and Johnny both stood there trying to remember what class they took Freshman year. After a short time Mike finally came up with the answer, “Chemistry.”
“Are we going to go see the little yous or are we just going to stand here and think about the good old days?” I asked impatiently.
“Lets go,” Johnny said heading off to the class.
We followed him and when we did make it to the class Mike looked in and looked at the clock, “We have two minutes then school’s over.”
We waited the extra two minutes and the school bell rang. When Mike and Johnny walked out of the class, my Johnny walked up to the younger version of himself, “Excuse me, what is the date?”
Johnny simply said, “May 31st.”
My Johnny walked the other way, “Thanks man.”
“Any time,” Johnny answered continuing to walk down the hallway.
My Johnny walked towards us, “Mike was right, it’s late. It’s already May. Let’s keep on watching them… us… whatever.”
“Aren’t you afraid of yourself finding out that you are following… you?” I said trying to figure out what tense I would use, “And why? Why would you even want to follow yourself, you already know what you did, why do you have to watch yourself do it?”
“I’m not worried, right now we’re so drenched in thinking about the Dameon battle that we can barely notice girls,” Johnny said walking down the hallway following after himself.
I won’t go into the boring details of this little walk to their locker, then finally outside towards their houses. I along with Johnny did not want to follow them all the way home, but Mike wanted to visit the olden days. Luckily we out voted Mike and we didn’t have to go.
Instead we all jumped into our cars and we drove over to Adam’s house. Mike wanted to give me a tour, so we drove by his house. We didn’t dare go into the house, but for me it was nice to see where my grandpa grew up.
By this time I was getting a little hungry so we went to a place called In and Out. According to Mike and Johnny this place had some of the best hamburgers. After eating for a half and hour I couldn’t agree more. Those hamburgers tasted almost completely different than when I had hamburgers at Mike and Johnny’s house.
Once we were done with lunch it was close to 2:00 and we drove back to the strip. We needed to waste some time away so Mike and Johnny took me to a place called Gameworks. It was basically a huge arcade that had all of the newest games, from that time.
We each bought a hour of free game play and we started to play the games. One of the games that I liked better was a virtual Taken 3. It was a few steps lower than the game at Mike and Johnny’s house but this was so much better in some ways. The best part was that you stood on a blue dot and if you punched your character punched, if you jumped they jumped. The only bad thing about it was that you couldn’t go off and do your own combos. For that one reason I beat the two karate masters, Mike and Johnny. They would try to do their own combos and the computer couldn’t process them. It was sort of funny to watch them get upset because they got beat on a game that they should have won.
After we got done with that game we played a few other games until our hour was up. Once we were done we walked outside to the parking lot and stood by our cars trying to figure out what to do next. Johnny suggested that we go back to Gameworks and just go until we beat every game there was to beat. Mike and I beat that idea down.
We sat there on our hoods thinking, Mike came up with the idea that we took to, “What if we go to Hawaii? Only in Hawaii can you sit around, do nothing, and still be tired.”
We agreed and we teleported over to Maui. We took a quick trip to the international market and grabbed us each a pair of swim trunks. We headed off to the beach and we changed into our swimsuits. We laid on a group of lawn chairs that we bought off of a coupe and enjoyed the view, the view of girls that is. I had never seen so much skin from a girl. The little thongs and g-strings they wore even tempted a good little Mormon boy like me.
It didn’t stop Mike or Johnny they yelled out cat calls, hollered at people that sat in front of us blocking our view. At one point they were even brave enough to slip a few of the girls their numbers, their real Las Vegas phone numbers.
The only thing that got me more than the clothes, was the attitude of the islanders. They just didn’t care. Yes, they worried about things but they worried about them in a way that said, I don’t care. To them if you had a problem it could be all solved by surfing. Screw baseball, here surfing was the choice sport. The strangest thing was how welcoming they were. The little time I spent there I realized one thing, they don’t have doors. I could walk from the beach to any hotel without passing through a single door, and no one cared! Then by far the strangest thing for me was that no matter who you were you were treated the same. The king of some small little country would be treated the same way I would be, with a hearty smile and a deep, from the heart, aloha!
The four hours that I spent there with Mike and Johnny changed my entire outlook on why I was there, I finally knew why the other nine people were risking their lives for this. I could also see why everyone hated the future that I lived in.
After the rest on the beach, I got a quick tour of Hawaii complete with surfing and of course some sight seeing. Once we were done we teleported back to Vegas. It was close to 7:30 when we got back into town.
When we teleported back we teleported into the garage next to our cars. Without a word we all got into our cars and we started to drive. Mike headed the group and lead us to another hotel called the Rio.
We parked our cars and walked into the casino. The sounds and noise still had a slight stunning effect on me, but I got over it quicker than before. Once I got use to the noise I turned to Mike, “What are we doing here?”
“Simple, we’re going to one of the best buffets this side of 2040,” Mike said, expertly walking through the crowd, “Then hopefully after dinner we can try out a few of the clubs.”
“But won’t the people at the clubs think I’m too young?”
“Did the hotel care when you showed them your card?” Johnny asked from behind me.
“No.”
“Then neither will the clubs, as long as it looks like we’re close to official they wave you in. I got in once with a student ID card from high school,” Mike said, “with these ID’s I’m sure that there is no way we won’t get in.”
I trusted them and hopped that Mike was right about the clubs. After a few more turns past the machines and tables we finally made it to the Carnival world Buffet. We went through the VIP lane, we each paid our $30 and gave them a tip of $100 each, just so we got a good seat.
We were given our table and I sat down like at any other restaurant. Mike and Johnny looked at me like I was crazy. After a few seconds of silence I asked, “Don’t we sit down and order?”
Mike and Johnny straightened my buffet knowledge out a bit. The first area that we visited was the China area. I tried out things like sweet and sour shrimp, egg rolls, rice, stir fry, and many other oriental dishes in that area.
After that plate I just worked my way down the line in each area which specialized in a certain food. Mexican, Italian, South American, American, Japanese, and an area in the center dedicated only to desserts. I tried everything; Lasagna, steak, sushi, fried chicken, bread sticks, clam chowder, won tong soup, ice cream, jello, potatoes, roast beef, burritos enchiladas, salsa,

51-60

tacos, fajitas, chocolate cake, lemon meringue pie, and corn were only some of the many things I tried, and everything I loved.
After an hour of shoving my face full of food we were finally done. The three of us sat around the table, full of food and quite lazy at that time.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“Wait.”
“Why?”
“It’s only 9:00, clubs don’t open up for another hour at the earliest,” Mike said.
“Lets go back to our cars and take an hour or two nap, we need to let this food digest some before we go out and rave the entire night,” Johnny said.
I didn’t know what raving was but I knew that I needed a nap. We all agreed and we all headed back to our cars and fell asleep. AN hour and a half latter I was woken up by my car radio turning on quite loudly, “This is 101.9 Kiss FM, my name is DJ Sammy. Tonight we’re out at S.R.O. and we’re broadcasting live. Come on down and join us this Thursday night!” I snapped awake and turned off the radio. I looked over to the passengers seat and there was sitting Johnny.
“Wake up sleepy head, we have to go clubbing tonight,” Johnny said turning the radio back on and putting it to a more bearable level, “We’re going to go to the hotel and get cleaned up then we’re going clubbing. Don’t worry while you were asleep we went out shopping and got you and us and entire new outfit so we can go to the clubs.”
By that point I was awake, “Okay then, what are we waiting for?”
Johnny smiled, “I like the way that you think,” and then he teleported over to his car. I started up my car and I saw Mike and Johnny driving away. I saw that they wanted to leave me behind, I wasn’t going to go for that so mentally yelled at then, “You want to race? Lets go!”
I pressed down on the gas pedal and with some luck I passed by both of them, and quickly drove out of the parking lot. I didn’t dare look back knowing that if I did Mike or Johnny or both of them would be right on my back bumper.
I drove fast and crazy not worrying a bit about the cars around me. Stop signs meant nothing to me, I went right through them. I used both sides of the road hopping that Mike and Johnny wouldn’t be able to get through the chaos that I created.
I was doing so good until I noticed a police car behind me trying to follow me. I knew I would have won but I knew that cops at this time were a little brutal to the people that they captured.
I wasn’t ready to deal with the police but I decided that I might as well try to beat them. In the middle of an intersection I made a quick u-turn. The back of my car drifted and gave me the extra spin that I needed and started to drive back from where I had just came from.
The first hotel to my right was the Balagio. I turned in and drove up to the Valet parking. One of the young boys, maybe only 21 came up to my car as he got into the car and I got out I have him $100, “Bring this back up here in ten minutes.”
He gave me this bizarre look as if I had gone nuts, “Just do it, and if you bring it back in good shape I’ll give you another $100.”
He slammed the door closed and drove away. I tried to calmly stand outside and look at the water in front of me, waiting for the fountain show to start.
Within thirty seconds the cop cars came through the place I was standing blasting their sirens and continued to drive thinking that I had kept on going. As they drove by I sighed a deep sigh of relief knowing that I was safe from the cops.
In ten minutes the same guy stepped out of my car and I gave him his $100 and drove away. I safely drove one hotel down to the Creasers Palace.
I parked my car and took the elevator to the top floor where all of our sweets were. As I got up there I pulled out my key card and walked into my room.
Adam was asleep on the bed under the covers of the king sized bed. I stumbled around in the dark and made it to the bathroom. I needed to use the restroom, it’s not every day that you go back into time and get chased by the local cops.
Once I flushed and washed my hands, I walked back outside into the room. Adam was sitting up in the bed and a few of the light were on, “I thought that you guys were going out to the clubs,” Adam said.
“We are, we just want to get cleaned up first,” I said, “But I think Mike and Johnny got caught.”
“By who?”
“The cops.”
Adam started laughing. At first it was a chuckle that he tried to hold back but then it turned into a full-fledged belly laugh, “Yeah, right. The day that they get caught by the LVPD is the day that I’ll go on a killing spree,” Adam said trying to calm down by taking a few deep breaths, “What were you guys even doing that could get you caught?”
“Street racing down Las Vegas Blvd.”
“You were in cars?”
“Yeah.” “Mike and Johnny are safe. If anything they are trying to get as many cops on their tails before they teleport out.”
“They teleport out of their cars?” I asked a bit confused.
“No, they teleport with their cars to the parking lot.”
“They can do that?”
“As long as they are in sports cars, or little euro cars. They are in sports cars right?”
“Yes.”
“Those should be light enough. If anything they’ll only be a few yards off of their target when they teleport but that’s about it. But if they’re still running how did you get out?”
“I was in front of them. I only had one cop car on me. I just made a few quick turns and lost him.”
“Cisco would be proud. He was a street racer at this time, he out ran more cops than any person in Vegas. He brags occasionally that he ditched every cop in the force at least once, and in all reality I believe him.”
“That’s weird, but can you get in touch with Mike and Johnny, I want to see those clubs that they’re always talking about.”
“Sorry, I can only help you out if I know where they are. I could stop every vehicle on the free way, but I think that’s a little too much, just so you can go out to a club.”
“Okay, I’ll wait,” I sat down on the foot of the bed and grabbed the remote control. I turned on the TV and surfed through the channels never really watching just one thing.
About twenty minutes latter the phone next to our beds started to ring. Adam picked it up, “Hello, Dr. Walter’s office, how can we help you?”
The person on the other side of the phone said something. Adam responded, “No sir during a hernia surgery we don’t use anesthesia and no sir we won’t let you take pictures during the surgery so you can remember that moment.”
Both Adam and the voce on the other side of the phone started to laugh, Adam handed me the phone, “It’s Mike, for you.”
I grabbed the phone, “Hello?”
“Yeah, sorry we’re late we had a little police problem. Johnny will be over with your clothes, and we’ll leave in a half hour, see you then.”
“Okay, bye.”
Mike didn’t even say goodbye he just hung up the pone. A few seconds latter Johnny was in my room with an armful of clothes. He dumped them onto my bed then teleported back to his room. I took the pile of clothes into the bathroom and closed the door. I got my shower ready while I looked through the clothes. These clothes made much more since to me this time but I still had a question with one of the pieces of clothing. I stuck my head out of the bathroom and showed them to Adam who was watching TV, “What are these?”
Adam looked over and he almost started to laugh, “Those are boxers, they’re underwear. Just put them on you’ll see that they’re a little more comfortable than what you normally wear.”
I didn’t ask any questions and stuck my head back inside the bathroom. I took a quick shower and the water felt wonderful. The water relaxed all of my tensed up muscles and relaxed me just enough to make me feel refreshed.
When I got out of the shower I dried off and got dressed. Everything I wore seemed to feel looser and baggier than before. The black pants I wore, covered up my shoes because they were so big at the bottom. The black silk shirt made my slightly muscular torso look tiny.
I looked at myself in the mirror after I was done, and I looked like a completely different person that I was only 24 hours previous. Dark baggy clothes covering my body and spiked green hair with white tips. I was no longer the over protected nice little kid, I was what I considered a stylish powerful kid that was going out to change the future.
I brushed my teeth, checked my hair, which was still pointing to the air, and headed out. I walked over to Mike and Johnny’s room. Right when I was about to knock on their door, the door opened up.
Mike was in a pair of baggy jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. Johnny was in a dark blue pair of baggy pants and a large white tee shirt with Adidas written across it. I couldn’t ask about either one of their outfits because once they saw me Johnny said, “Nice threads, they suit you, just wait until you get under the black lights.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t worry, Just wait till your dark clothes go under a black light, they don’t look to dark. To put it simply your shirt and pants are not just your normal shirt and pants.”
“Whatever, lets go.”
We headed out to the parking lot. I thought that we were off a level but Mike and Johnny started to walk around talking to each other.
Mike started it off, “Dude, where’s my car?”
“I don’t know dude.”
“Dude, where’s my car?”
It kept going like this for a few minutes. I finally just got upset at them and headed up to the next level to my car. I got into my car and lowered the hood down into the trunk making my car have no top. I found a good radio station and drove down to the level where Mike and Johnny were still walking around looking for their cars.
I drove up next to them, “hey idiots your cars are up stairs go up and get them. I would like to go sometime today.”
Johnny hung his head down, “Okay,” Then both of them teleported up to their cars and drove down to meet me on the bottom level where I was waiting for them. As usual they drove in front of me and I had to try to keep up.
The first hotel we went to was the large pyramid called the Luxor. We saw the hour long waiting line to get into the club and decided that we should just pay off the bouncer. We walked up to the front of the line, paid $500 and we were allowed into Ra.
As soon as I entered my ears were attacked with the loud bass of the music. As I walked in I noticed that my clothes started to change. As I got closer to the dance floor parts of my clothes started to glow. As I stood there I started to notice the pattern that appeared in my clothes.
My shirt was covered in orange and yellow strops. My black pants had a green line that spiraled down each leg. I also noticed that in a nearby mirror that the tips of my spied hair were glowing an eerie blue color.
The mass of people surrounding me didn’t even seem to notice, they were all in their own world grooving to the music. I could see why people loved these clubs so much, the lights, the music, and the peoples. The people were what made the club so good. Everyone was accepted, just as long as you didn’t care. Those clubs were almost like Hawaii, but in almost complete darkness and with music pumping in the background.
After an hour there Mike and Johnny found me and dragged me over to the side so we could talk to each other without yelling at the top of our lungs, “You ready to go?” Johnny asked.
“I didn’t want to leave, but let’s go, I do want to see other clubs.”
Johnny grabbed my shoulder and we teleported to another club. We went like this all night long, spending a half hour to an hour at a club then teleporting to the next. We visited a whole bunch of clubs from S.R.O. to Studio 54. Every place that we went it was close to the same stuff going on, lots of people, loud music and close to no light.
At 6:00 in the morning most of the clubs were closed so we teleported back to our cars and drove back to Caesars. When we got up to our floor, right when we were about to go into our rooms Cisco and Bethany came out of their room.
Cisco saw us first, “Look the partiers are back.”
Bethany looked over, “We were about to check to see if you guys were in your room. We’re going out for breakfast and we wanted to know if you wanted to come with us.”
“Who else is coming?” Mike asked.
“We’re seeing that right now but so far it’s just Bethany and me,” Cisco said.
“Yeah, we’ll go, just let us clean up from clubbing all night. Don’t ask people about breakfast, tell people that they are coming, we have some things to talk about and we need every one here to talk,” Mike said pulling out his key card and opening up the door to his room.
“What about me? Do I get new clothes or am I stuck in this the entire day?” I said.
“Just take a shower and by the time that you’re done, we’ll have a pair of clothes waiting for you,” Bethany said, “What do you want pants or shorts?”
“Shorts.”
“Long sleeves or short?”
“Short.”
“Boxers or Briefs?”
“What?”
“Your underwear.”
“Um… boxers.”
“Good, I’ll go get you your stuff right now.”
I headed towards my room and opened up the door. Adam was just getting out of the bathroom zipping up the back of his jumpsuit. His hair was dripping and he looked wet so I took a wild guess and assumed that he just got out of the shower. Adam saw me walk in, “How were the clubs?”
“I’ve never experienced anything like that, I don’t even know how to describe it,” I said thinking about the night.
“You must be tired or low on energy, why don’t you charge up?” Adam said walking around barefoot trying to find something.
He was right I was a little low on energy so I stood there and charged up. The energy that flowed through me felt more powerful. It just felt like the power carried more of a kick. It wasn’t that I charged up more, it just seemed to be stronger. I just assumed that it was because of the health of the planet, sort of like what Heather was talking about the day before.
Once I was done Adam looked a little upset that he couldn’t find what he wanted. “Hold onto something, I’m literally going to through this room until I tear everything upside down.”
I didn’t act fast enough n my grab for a coat rack and I felt my feat float off of the floor. Everything around me was floating up as well. When my head almost hit the ceiling everything including me flipped upside down. Everything that wasn’t bigger than a chair fell to the floor. Adam walked over to the pile of stuff that had fallen and picked up the remote, “There it is, I thought for a second there that we lost it.”
“Hey Adam, good job with the remote, for the television but can I get down now? Be nice too, I don’t want to land on my head.”
“Okay, but I personally like the bed up there.” I started to notice that I was falling and that I was spinning so I could land on my feet. Just as a little joke for my whole, ‘I don’t want to hit my head,’ comment right before I was about to touch the floor he dropped me. It was only an inch or two but it still shocked me a bit.
“Thanks, by the way, we’re having breakfast as a group, Mike says that he has things to talk about.”
“It’s probably about the Dameon battle. We’re only six days away now,” Adam said turning on the TV and flipping through the channels.
“Dameon what?”
“Our battle with Dameon, pure evil, is in six days. He probably wants to wait six days so we can see the battle and all the commotion around it. I lived through it and I don’t need to see all of the hate again.”
“But aren’t people at this time open minded? I thought they accepted everyone.”
“We thought that too, but from what we can gather people like any one as long as they can’t destroy entire towns without breaking a sweet.”
“Why didn’t you try to fight it, that’s unfair to you, you were still a human being.”
“Not by what they thought. According to them if you had a power you couldn’t be human because humans don’t do those sorts of things. Just to show you people and things are not always what they seem to be.”
“How did you clear it up? I know that I’ve never read a thing about there being people with powers.”
“You haven’t. MIB, the same people that cover up aliens, helped out and covered us up. Basically and one that watched TV within a month of the incident got their memory wiped and a different one put in.”
“How do you still remember it?”
“Simple, I was told about the whole TV mind wipe thing so when it started to wipe people out, I didn’t watch the TV.”
“MIB can do that? Take control over the broadcast of the television and wipe your mind?”
“Yeah.”
“Was there anything they missed that I would be able to look at and not get my memory changed?”
“Not right now, because they haven’t had to do anything like that yet, it’s going to happen in six days. If you went forward in time to when we came from, one thing that they chose never to change was the national inquirer.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a newspaper. It does storied like, ‘Bigfoot Sighted!’ or in our case, ‘Teenagers can destroy world!’. Usually the stories that they do are real but no one believes them because MIB covers up so good.”
“What else has MIB covered up?”
“9-11” “The terrorists attacks?”
“No, the alien attacks. Those were space crafts.”
“What about Osama, why the big hunt for him then?”
“The government at the time always wanted to get rid of him and most of the middle east. The MIB just gave them an excuse.”
“But what about those passengers that died and called home?”
“MIB does their job, those passengers were MIB members. But since the MIB is so secretive, the families just thought that the people were all unrelated in all forms and they all died. For example my good friend in MIB, X, supposedly died in the first airplane that hit the twin towers.”
“What about all of the people that died in the buildings were those fakes too?”
“Sadly no, those were actual people, those deaths were completely real.” “Creepy, just when I thought I knew most of the secrets about life, with there being people with powers, these secrets pop up and screw up everything.”
“That’s nothing, wait till we change the time line and we go back to what we thought was our present. Things get scary, I was with Mike and Johnny and we changed what we did a month earlier. When we went back to our time everything was different.
That was only a month in the past, just think how big a change we’re throwing in with close to 50 years. People that were your best friends could possibly not even exist, just because one of their ancestors stepped in the way of a speeding car that you were driving.”
“That would be scary….”
Someone knocked at the door cutting me off, “Hold that thought,” Adam said. The door handle opened up and the door opened up all at Adam’s will. There standing in the hallway was Bethany, holding a pile of clothes.
“Are you going to come in or are you going to throw Trip his clothes?” Adam asked.
I looked over to him, “How did you know that they were mine?”
“Simple, my clothes are over in that dresser.”
Bethany walked in and handed my clothes to me, “By the way, Adam, Mike wants us all to have breakfast together so get ready. We’re leaving in an hour.”
“I already heard the message from Trip, but why the hour long wait?” “Girls. I like being one of them but it’s sad how long that they take to get ready. It’s not Michelle that takes forever, she’s happy because she can wear pants and a tee shirt again, but it’s those other three. They take so long. You’d think that after all of these years of living with and being a woman I would understand them but I still don’t.”
“Join the club,” Adam said, “I’ve been around for ever and I still don’t understand them. Mike, Johnny, and guys in general I can understand, but girls, they’re just plain confusing.”
Bethany looked over to me, “Aren’t you suppose to be getting ready, not listing to us complain?”
“Yeah,” I said heading towards the bathroom with the clothes in hand. I closed the door behind me and took a quick shower. Once I was done and dried off I changed into my new clothes.
This time my shorts passed up my knees by a few inches and were covered with pockets. For a while I thought that it was just a bunch of pockets sewn together in the shape of shorts. Even though they were a dark green they felt cool and light. My tee shirt was a black shirt with the logo ‘Blind’ on it. On the back was a grim reaper, hood and all, holding a scythe with an evil smile on his face.
I quickly dried my hair, brushed my teeth, and slapped on some deodorant, and walked out bear foot into the room. Bethany saw me come out and threw me my shoes and a pair of socks. I sat down on the bed and put them on.
As I put the socks on I noticed Adam and what he was wearing. He had on a bright orange shirt that had an odd symbol on it and beneath it, it read, Atari. The shorts he wore were a royal blue, and I placed them as his jumpsuit just reduced to a pair of shorts. He wore a few beads around his ankles that I recognized from the club, I pointed them out, “Did you get those from a club? I thought that you didn’t go to the clubs last night.”
“No, I didn’t go to the clubs, but if I dress like a raver I might as well have a few raver beads.”
“Raver? Raver beads?”
“Yeah, a raver. They practically live at clubs. They are all about techno and a drug called ecstasy. The raver beads, known in the raver community as candy, is just sort of proof about you going to raves and being a raver.”
“Uh… sure,” I said not understanding a word he said, “Don’t worry about explaining, it’s nothing important so I’ll just let you do your thing.”
There were a few seconds of silence when Bethany stepped in, “Excuse me, but what are we waiting for? Lets go eat breakfast.”
“I’m in,” Adam said walking over to the door picking up his wallet as he walked by the dresser.
Bethany stood up and followed Adam shifting into a new pair of clothes. I had nothing else to do so I stood up and followed them. Bethany headed over to Anna and my mom’s room, I walked over to Heather and Natalie’s room, and Adam walked over to Mike and Johnny’s room.
Each of us brought the people from the room out into the hallway. Cisco was in Mike and Johnny’s room so all ten of us were standing in the hallway. We all crammed into the elevator and headed down to the bottom floor. We headed over to the restaurant and took up three tables.
After we placed our orders Mike started the conversation, “Okay, the reason that we are here is simply, it’s 2001 and the Dameon battle is only six days away. Now what I want to talk about is if we can extend our stay in the past for at least two week. Not only do I just want to see the battle but I want to run around scaring people by using powers in public.”
Adam who was sitting next to me nudged me, “I told you so.”
“You want us to hang around and watch you guys fight and wait for the world to hate all people with powers, while we are suppose to be going after the leaders? Shouldn’t we bash the leaders first, before we open up to the world?” Anna asked.
“Hey, it sounds good to me, I don’t see any problems in Mike’s plan,” Heather said, “I want to see the battle. Come on Anna, it’s legendary, we have to see it.”
“But why don’t we take care of the leaders first?” Anna replied trying to argue her point, “Won’t it be easier to get to the leaders before they know that there is competition? Right now they can clone people with powers but their aging is sped up, either way, the leaders think that their clones which have close to no powers are the first powers. They think that these clones with lesser powers are the strongest thing out there. Once they hear about the battle they get proved wrong so they beef up their research and try for more powerful clones that live longer. Why don’t we just strike now, while they’re weak?”
“Because we want a challenge,” Cisco said, “What good is bringing all of this fire power if we don’t have a reason to use it?”
“I totally agree with that,” Heather said, ‘Plus, won’t Dameon know if something big like us roll in and blow things up? It’ll be like a huge calling card screaming to the world, ‘Here we are! We’re here to kill you!’.”
I think that I would notice something too,” Adam said, “No offense to you guys but at this time Mike and Johnny were still a little zoned out so I had a whole lot of free time. I would seriously think something was up if I heard about an entire town in South Africa getting blown into tiny pieces.” “And didn’t you say something about not messing up the time line?” Johnny asked, “If we give any person in the Dameon battle a reason to think twice about what they’re doing, we’ll screw up the time line, really bad. Let’s just assume one really bad scenario. Somehow Jason doesn’t get us our jumpsuits but still casts the spell. That means that we are not at our full power and we don’t have the extra help of Adam so we loose. We loose then twenty years later, Dameon destroys the world. With that example, I don’t like the outcome. I’m staying with waiting until we watch the Dameon battle.”
This hit Anna and finally made Mike’s idea sound logical, “Okay I’ll do it but on one condition.”
“Name it,” Mike said.
“I get to watch, front row. I want my face to be right next to the gate when you guys start to fight.”
“Deal, does any one else want something from the battle while we’re at it?” Mike asked.
Heather spoke up, “Yeah, I want a vile of Dameon’s left over remains. It’s for a spell that asks for evils remains as one of the components and I think that Dameon’s remains will work a whole lot better than what I was working with when I tried it the first time.”
“Okay, we can do that,” Adam said.
I spoke up, “I wouldn’t mind a jumpsuit,” I said wanting a free ride to ultimate power, “Or a refill on my orange juice.” That got a slight laugh from every one else.
Our food arrived and we all chowed down on tour food, sharing storied in the process. After we got done Mike guided us to the parking lot. “Just don’t ask questions, everyone get into either your own car or someone’s car. Try to follow me if you can.”
All of us paired up, one driver and one passenger. My passenger was my mom. We hopped into the car, and I started the car. Mike drove out of his spot quickly followed by Johnny. I didn’t skip a beat, I pulled out and followed them. Behind me I saw Cisco’s yellow car and just behind him Natalie was driving her car.
The race was on. Before we were even out of the parking lot the wild driving had already started. As I took a quick right hand turn my mom looked over to me, “How did you learn how to drive like this?”
I swerved around a car that got in our way, “I taught myself. With Mike always driving like this, if you want to keep up you have to be fast.”
We finally got out of the parking lot and moved to what seemed like another parking lot, Las Vegas Boulevard. Cars were almost bumper to bumper, barely moving but we took up every opportunity we could fin. Cutting off people driving through red lights, were all normal for us. We finally hit the freeway and it was a little backed up but the cars were still moving. Mike didn’t care, he just drove around them.
I looked behind me to see how Natalie and Cisco were doing and I could only see Natalie, “Where’s Cisco?”
“Look at the car in front of Johnny and Bethany.”
I sat up a bit and occasionally in front of Johnny’s car I could see a yellow car with Cisco and Anna in it, “How…? When did they do that?”
“Where we were joy riding downtown, he passed up everyone and almost pasted up Mike but realized he wouldn’t know where to go.”
As my mom was explaining Mike cut off three lanes of traffic and went out an exit ramp onto the street roads. All of us tried to do it and almost caused an accident. The ground roads were littered with a few cars and that gave us free reign over the streets. Once all of us were on the streets the racing began. Mike took off followed by Cisco. Johnny and I were battling out for third place and Natalie was let behind.
I thought I had passed up Johnny when I noticed that in front of me Mike wasn’t there. “Which was did they go?”
“I think that they went left,” my mom said, “However I think I know where they’re going so we’re going to take a shortcut. IF they aren’t there then we’re screwed and I hope that I can still remember these streets.”
I trusted her and she started telling me directions, left, right, straight, in different orders. We ended up in a parking lot that only had a few cars in it, none of which I knew, “Are you sure this is the right place?”
“Yeah, just give it a few seconds.”
A few seconds turned into a minute, “They still aren’t here yet.”
My mom looked around, got out of the car and even looked down the street. She came back and sat down, “They took the long way, they’re coming down the street right now.”
A few seconds passed and Mike drove in followed quickly by Cisco then Johnny, and then taking up the rear Natalie.
When they drove in everyone had a surprised look on their face. They got out and Mike was the first one to ask questions, “Trip, how did you do that? I was in front the entire time.”
“I had help.”
“What help?” Natalie said, “I thought that we agreed on no powers.”
“We did, I just used knowledge. I didn’t use my power in any way to get my car to go faster, I just used another person’s knowledge.”
This got Mike a little worried, “You read my mind?”
Adam chimed in, “He couldn’t of have, he doesn’t have enough control to read thoughts and do something else right now. He couldn’t even write his name while reading someone’s thoughts, let alone street race a car.”
My mom cleared things up, “I helped him.”
“How?” Anna asked, “Did you accelerate the car to faster speeds with helping out the engine and adding extra compression?”
“No, I just know Mike, once a skater, always a skater. I recognized the neighborhood and realized that he wanted to go skate. It was a little hard, considering I’d only seen this place five or six times in my life, but it got the job done.”
“Your family always creeps me out,” Johnny said to Adam, “I don’t even know how you guys do it.”
“It’s simple, we’re smart , you’re not,” I said getting a look from both Mike and Johnny that could have petrified Medusa herself.
“You mental people, I can never understand you,” Mike said.

61-70

In retort Adam said, “You people with the power, I can never understand you.”
I thought to myself and accidentally broadcasted it to everyone around me, “Oh great, that means that no one really understands me.”
I realized that I had broadcasted my thought out to the group when Heather spoke up, “Hey there is absolutely nothing wrong with being weird. It’s just with us, the weirder we get and the more we embrace it, the stronger we get.”
“Yeah, so be proud you’re weird. I’m weird! IF anything that’s one thing that we can understand about each other, how crazy things seem to get at times,” Cisco said, changing just his eyes into his red dragon eyes then morphing them back.
Mike brought us back to the topic, “Are we going to skate or not?”
My mom patted my shoulder, “Don’t worry, I’ll teach you, you’ll have fun.”
We all headed to the skate park. The man behind the cash register seemed a little dazed but he finally got to us, “How can I help you?” he asked drawn out as if he had to think about each word before it came out.
“We want to skate and rent a few things,” Mike said.
“Adults are $15, students are $10, kids under 10 are free. Boards we don’t’ rent pads are $5 an hour. We also need you to sign a few wavers to make sure you don’t sue us.”
Mike handed him a large roll of bills, “Here, now for the rest of the day the park is free. Also these ten people behind me can get whatever they want from the shop right?”
The guy was still staring at the wad of bills.
“…Right?” Mike had to say again with a little more pressure.
The guy snapped out of his temporary daze, “Yeah, whatever you want.”
Mike guided us to the shop, “Okay people, and pick your weapon of choice. Just remember skateboarding is better than everything else.”
Johnny who was already walking through the shop yelled over to Mike, “Shut up Mike you know blading is better.”
Natalie who was looking at the bikes yelled out, “I disagree, two wheels are the way to go. You guys work with too many wheels. Bikes are where the big boys play.”
“Yeah, sure the big boys like you? Do I have to remind you that you are not one of us?” Mike yelled over.
“Watch it…”
“Or what you’ll try to stab me to death with a wooden steak??
“Hey, it worked against Asmodeus didn’t it?”
“Asmodeus? Who’s he?” Mike said taunting Natalie.
“Dameon’s boss, remember.”
“I remember that,” Mike said picking up a skate board and heading towards the pads and helmets, “Didn’t you need our help and almost half of SN on that one?”
“Yes, but who killed him, you or me? As I remember it was me who killed him.”
Bethany broke up the fight, “Okay you two stop it. Get your junk and go out, and skate, blade, or bike. Whatever you do have fun with doing it, that is why we are here.”
Every one quieted down and grabbed their gear and walked out. The only person inside the store with me was Bethany, who was looking over the wall of skateboards. She looked over to me, “Wasn’t your mom going to teach you?”
“Yeah, but she’s out there with every one else.”
“I’ll teach you then. First things first, your ride. Which one do you want, rollerblades, bike, or a skateboard?”
“What do you even do with them? The only thing I recognize is the bikes, but they seem too small, they don’t even come up to my waist.”
“You do tricks on them.” Bethany said trying to explain this completely new subject to me. She must have seen the confusion on my face, “Here, lets go outside to the park so you can see what I’m talking about.”
We walked out to the outdoor park that was like no other park that I had seen before. Even with only twelve or thirteen people there it was confusing. People were jumping, spinning, sliding, and falling. It looked like people were defying all of the known laws of physics. It just looked weird watching a person go off a little wooden ramp with wheels strapped to their feet and watching them do a back flip.
I tried to watch each type of person, I immediately threw out rollerblading, all you could do with roller blades is hold them different ways. There is only so much you can do with roller blades.
With this decision I was left with skateboarding or biking. I chose to throw out biking. It just seemed limited. Yes, you could spin the handle bars, or swing around the tail end, but it just looked difficult. Plus you couldn’t do grabs like you could with a skateboards. Yes, you could try some grab tricks but from what I saw you needed a whole lot of air time, to do them, and I didn’t want to fly through the air twenty or more feet in the air quite yet.
This left me with a skateboard. This I liked. The amount of tricks and the possible tricks were endless. You could flip the board, grab the board, spin the board, or do any combination of the three.
I decided that this was my type of sport, “Bethany okay, I know what I want to do. I’ve chosen the skateboard.”
“Good, then lets get you a board.” Bethany headed towards the skate shop and pointed at the selection of boards, “Chose one, as a beginner they’ll all seem the same for you. The only thing that is different is the picture on the bottom, just grab one that looks good for you.”
I looked around the shop and pulled out a board that just looked neat and brought it over to Bethany, “What next?”
“Pads, not only are they required, it would be smart considering you’re a newbie, you’ll fall a lot. Learning how to skateboard is like learning how to ride a bike, but it’s twice as hard, and with no training wheels.” Bethany handed me a helmet, elbow pads, and knee pad, “Put these on, they should fit you.”
I put on the elbow and knee pads, and hesitated with the helmet. I was a little worried about my hair but then I remember Cisco’s hair job and that no matter what I did my hair would spring back to life. I strapped on the dull black helmet, grabbed my skateboard, and followed Bethany to a relatively flat chunk of ground in the corner of the park.
Bethany then tried to teach me how to skate. By lunchtime I could get from one place to another but I couldn’t do any tricks. After a quick lunch I had headed back out, this time with my mom because Bethany wanted to go skate and my mom wanted a break.
After about two or three hours I had two or three tricks fully down, that I could land at any time and another four or five that I could land but only if I was really lucky.
When it was about 3:00 people started to come in from the streets. Mike gathered together the ten of us together. We decided that we just liked it being the ten of us so we kicked everyone out including thee manager. Then the freak show began.
Every one that had a power that could help them used it. Natalie used her slayer dexterity to do insane stunts, Heater casted a spell on her skates that would make her move faster, Adam was floating above the ground, Mike and Johnny were flying and teleporting, Bethany would give herself extra feet or longer arms to do tricks, and my mom was skateboarding on a piece of fire.
It was weird to say the least watching what people could do when the laws of physics really didn’t apply. When the normal laws of nature do not apply to you anything can happen. However the winner of the creepy trick of the day had to have gone to Natalie.
What she did wasn’t completely impossible, like Adam who was working on flipping his board 500 times before it hit the ground, her trick just made you feel weird. It was just weird because you knew that someone out there could possibly do part of it, it was just she put all of the parts together.
What Natalie did was that she started out with any grind, where you slide on a rail or some other surface not using your wheels. She would then reach down and grab onto her bike and do a handstand on top of it. That didn’t look too bad, it got worse after that. When the end of the rail or whatever she was grinding on was coming to an end she would spring off of the bike and do half a back flip, putting her right side up again, and in the process of that back flip flipping the bike up into the air. She would then just reach up into the air, grab the bike and then land sitting on the bike as if nothing had happened.
The worst part about it all was that Natalie could do the entire thing from start to finish on only a 12ft long rail. When Natalie did the trick in such a short distance it looked like her body bent in places that just shouldn’t have bent that way.
Finally at 6:00 we stopped and decided to have dinner. We didn’t want any of the nearby fast food so we closed up the park, and headed out.
Mike took us to a shopping center that had a little restaurant in one of the corners called ‘The Lotus Garden’. Johnny told me that it was good Chinese food and that it was some of the best he’d ever had.
When we sat down and were looking at what to order and I noticed that my mom was a little preoccupied with something else. I finally got a little curious as to what was going on in her head so I asked, “Mom, what is wrong? You look upset.”
“Nothing, I’m just thinking.”
I looked around the table to see if any one would help me. Anna saw my concern and came to my rescue, “Two door down, what is now a 99 cent store, is where her arch nemesis has his headquarters set up in a few more years.”
“What?”
“The first guy that she killed and tried to kill her family worked as a karate teacher.”
“At the 99 cent store?”
“No, no, no, he changes it to his dojo in another ten years. Until then it’s a 99 cent store.”
“My mom’s first ‘super villain’ has a dojo in what use to be a 99 cent store?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s almost funny.”
“It’s not funny when you’d only had a power for a week and you already have a crazy person stalking you and your family,” my mom said, “It’s just a little scary.”
“He chased after our family? How did he know?”
“Who know,” Adam said sounding defeated, “He did some crazy things for a person with no power, that I can’t even try to explain. It’s almost like he prepared for us, before we even came into his life. Creepy isn’t the word to even begin to describe Aaron.”
After a little while our food came and we started to eat. Midway thorough the meal my mom snapped to life, “I’ve got an idea. What if we kill Aaron, before anything happens. We wouldn’t change the timeline too much; it’s only one person. IF anything we’d probably making the future a better place.”
Anna swallowed the food that was in her mouth, “We can’t. What if one of the rebels that keeps the leaders at bay needs to take karate from Aaron? What if somehow something important relies on you burning the building? Anything that we do changes the future no matter how small. All of this joy ridding and money spending is changing the future in either small or large amounts.”
“Us just racing down the strip is changing the future? Something as small as us eating dinner here could change the future?” I asked trying to understand how such pointless things could change the future in any way.
“Something as small as us breaking up a fight could change the future enough that the leaders would have complete control and we would all live in slum type towns, “Anna said. “Now you know why I didn’t want to spend too much time here. Simply because the more that we stay here, the more we have a chance of drastically changing the future.”
That hit most of us pretty hard, but after a short time, we all got over it and moved the thought of screwing up the future to the back of our mind. The rest of the dinner we spent talking about random stuff. Nothing important, it was just something to talk about. Once we were done and had paid the bill we all jumped into our cars and played a little game of musical chairs. This switch of people in the cars left me with Bethany as my passenger.
As we started to race back to our hotel Bethany started to shift into a different form. As she was shifting she asked me in a somewhat feminine voice, “Trip, do you want to visit Adam before the Dameon battle and not change the time line too much?”
“I would love to but how?” “It’s simple. Adam has an old friend that he doesn’t see too often. If I shifted into her and said that you were my friend that was just tagging along with me, he’ll let us in, and we’ll sit around and talk for a while.”
“Won’t he be a little suspicious? With us just driving up to his house at 7:00 at night?”
“No, if anything he’ll want company. His parents don’t let him just go out by himself after 6:00. So just imagine, 7:00 on a Friday night not able to go out and being stuck with your parents. Wouldn’t you like some company?”
“Good point, Let’s go.” I made a quick u-turn and headed towards Adam’s house.
I pulled up and parked in front of his house. I looked over to Bethany who had shifted again, this time into a younger looking girl that had dirty straight blonde hair, and was a little dirty, “Now that you’ve changed, what’s your name now?”
“Lucy, Lucy Carolton. Just remember Lucy is my name now, and your name is still Trip,” Bethany said straitening things out, “Just remember, I’m Lucy, you’re Trip, and Adam has no powers at all, right now. Give him a week and he’ll have full powers, but right now he has no powers. Most importantly, do not bring up anything about Dameon or powers, if you say a single thing about any of that you’ll definitely change the future.”
“Okay, I get the point, no powers,” I said stepping out of the car, “I won’t let my mind wander, and I’ll keep my powers in check, don’t worry. Now Let’s go, the longer that I wait here, the more nervous I get.”
Bethany got out of the car and headed over to the front door, followed by me. Bethany rang the door bell. Once the bell started a dog started to bark. After a few barks a boy’s voice yelled at the dog, “Shadow, quiet down!” The dog was muffled a bit by the yelling but still growled a bit.
The door handle juggled a bit and then the door opened up a crack. Adam poked his head out to see who it was. He saw Lucy and his face practically lit up, “Lucy, I didn’t expect to see you out here. Come on in, sorry about the dog, she doesn’t like strangers all too much.”
“Thanks Adam,” Lucy said walking into the house, closely followed by me.
“Who’s this?”
“The name is Trip, he’s a friend of mine, from the Academy.”
“I still don’t get why you go there. I know that it isn’t because of the magnet programs they have there. Anyway, why’s he tagging along?”
“He just moved in around this area and wanted to meet a few people.”
Adam looked at me, “So why the academy? Why didn’t you just go to a normal school?”
I was trapped in a corner. I knew of no way to get out of this without blowing our cover. Fear swept though my body. I decided to let it ride and hop I hit the right area of specialty for the school that I then became a student of. “I’m there for music.”
“No duh, I knew you weren’t the type to got there for languages, dancing, or drama, so what do you play, or are you a singer?”
I sighed a deep sigh of relief, I was in the clear, anything I said would work, “Oh… I’m in orchestra.”
Lucy seemed to tense up next to me. I later learned that I hit the one instrument type that Adam played, “Which instrument do you play?”
I was stuck and I had to take a stab at it. I hoped that I didn’t pick Adam’s instrument, or else then I’d have to lie through my teeth even more. I thought about it and just took a guess at an instrument, “The cello.”
Lucy next to me tensed up even more.
“I play that too,” Adam said, “Which orchestra are you in.”
I didn’t want to make me sound like I knew what I was doing, so I said, “The lowest one, I’m really not that good.”
Adam’s eyes lit up even more, “Do you know Hannah Jensen?”
I recognized the name, it was my grandmothers name before she got married to Adam, “Yeah, I know her.”
“Tell her that I said hi.”
“Okay I can do that.”
“Enough about the Academy,” Lucy said, “Adam so you have any deep thoughts for Trip while living over here on this side of town”
Adam thought for a second. He must have bee shifting through years of deep thoughts trying to find one that would sound good, “Trust only those who trust you.”
We sat there in silence with that deep thought running through our heads. Lucy being the ‘teenager’ she broke the silence, “Where did you get that one from?”
“It’s just something I thought up.”
“I doubt it, I think that you stole that out of a book, it sounds like something my grandpa would say.”
“Whatever,” Adam said trying to brush it off to the side.
“You only get all deep and philosophical when you’re upset, worried, or you just watched Shakespeare. What’s going on?” Lucy asked. This got me a little worried about the whole, not breaking our cover, but Adam took it as a real question.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he said trying to change the subject.
“Try me.”
“Okay, at school there’s this bully and Mike and Johnny set up a fight with him, you know how Mike and Johnny are. Well, I’m afraid that Mike and Johnny aren’t ready or the fight. They’ve been practicing for it but I don’t think that they are strong enough.”
I couldn’t believe it. Adam basically just told us the entire Dameon story without telling us. Change the bully to a girl named Dameon, then change the fighting to a power fight, then change his worries about Mike and Johnny getting beat up to Mike and Johnny dying. It was weird that he could do it, tell a lie and make it sound so truthful. He put a whole new meaning to stretching the truth.
“What if you helped them out?” I asked, “Even a weak person can help out a bit.”
“You sound like you know what you’re doing,” Adam said, “Have you fought before?”
“Not much but I do know every bit helps, even if you do is distract the bully that gives your friends a better chance to win. You may not give the final punch but you can help.”
Adam thought about it for a while, “Yeah, I can help, even if it’s just a small thing. Thanks Trip.”
“You’re welcome. But when is this big fight, after school?”
“No during school, only six days from today.”
“I wish I could come, I’d help out if I could, but when is it during school?”
“Second lunch, near 12:00.”
Lucy tried to help me out, “That’s good we get our lunch at 11:00 we should be able to drive over there in time. It’s open campus, plus we have a few ‘sick’ days that we need to take. We’ll be there, just consider us your own little cheerleading section, and if anything goes wrong we’re jumping in.”
Adam smiled a bit, “Thanks guys.”
“What are friends for?” Lucy said, “Plus we all know that I like a good fight every now and again.”
That made Adam laugh a bit, then he looked over to me, “Thanks Trip, I know we’ve barely met but it seems like we already know each other.”
I thought to myself, ‘buddy if you only knew,’ then I said, “I know it just seems like we’re related or something like that.”
For the next hour the three of us just sort of rambled from topic to topic never staying on just one subject for too long. The clock finally struck 8:00 and we excused ourselves and said our goodbyes.
When we got back into the car Lucy changed back to Bethany, “I didn’t believe him when he said it, but it happened.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Adam, our Adam. He said that one of the things that happened before the fight was that Lucy and a kid named Trip showed up to his house to talk to him. We just gave Adam the courage to hop the fence and help out Mike and Johnny.”
“Huh?”
“Let me try to explain. Before the Dameon battle Lucy and some dude named Trip showed up to his door and talked to him. That little pep talk we just gave him gives him the courage to help out Mike and Johnny with the powers that he’d only have for a few hours.”
“So we kept history on the right track by out rightly interfering with the timeline?”
“Exactly.” “That’s creepy. Everything I just said, our Adam already knew I was going to say. Why didn’t you or Adam tell me?”
“We didn’t want to psyche you out. If your words were not straight from the great Adam would have deemed you a fraud and wouldn’t care what you had to say.”
“Is there anything else that I need to know about with changing the future?”
“Nope, just go back to the hotel, I think that Mike and Johnny want to get some training time in with you.”
I drove back in silence; we even turned down the radio a bit giving me time to think, about the paradoxes of time travel.
I was a bit confused. If our Adam knew about that conversation that means that we’d gone back into time when our Adam was about to face Dameon, for the same reason we went back, to defeat the leaders. Even though there was some proof that we had gone back in time before, the bad time line had still happened. So the question that kept running through my head was if we were doomed to failure from the beginning? Was our time travel even going to do anything? The questions ran through my head like a drug dealer running from the cops.
The one question that frightened me was if by some freak accident killed the other Adam, my grandpa, would my mom, and myself just disappear into nothingness?
We finally got into the parking lot and Bethany got out, “Stay here. I’ll go get Mike and Johnny. If they aren’t here in three minutes just come up and get them yourself.”
Bethany started to run towards the hotel and I sat there with my thoughts trying to figure everything out. After a minute or so Mike and Johnny teleported in front of my car.
“Come on, out of your car, we’re going to go out and train.”
I got out of my car and walked towards Mike and Johnny, “You won’t even believe what I just did.”
“You can tell us when we’re done teleporting,” Mike said reaching out a hand and grabbing me. In a second we were teleporting. At the end of the teleport we were in some place that was pitch dark, I couldn’t see a thing.
I stayed where I was, not wanting to run into anything dangerous. “Is this where I think it is?” thinking about the only other place that Mike and Johnny were known to train in.
“Yeah, we’re in India. Could you charge up for a bit so we can see around here?”
“Okay,” I started to charge up and the yellow glow surrounded me. Mike and Johnny both acted quickly because they knew that my charging up only lasted a few seconds. Piles of wood were bursting into flame from fireballs that Mike and Johnny were throwing.
I got done charging up and looked around the cave, “What do we get to do here?”
“We’re going to get you caught up with some martial arts. I know it isn’t the whole big flashy stuff, but you’d be surprised how often you’ll use it,” Mike said.
We started to train and we kept training. I took off my watch near the beginning just because it got in the way so time just passed us by. Occasionally we would charge up because we would get tired, but nothing ever really showed us the time.
After a long time Mike teleported out of the cave to get us some food. We had a quick food break and then kept on training.
Finally after what seemed only to be a few hours we took a break and I checked my watch. It said 12:00 and I just assumed that it was midnight. I didn’t think too much about it but in reality it was 12:00 noon, but we didn’t know so we just kept on training.
I was getting good at the whole martial arts things but I wasn’t up to the level Mike and Johnny were at. They could break boulders with one punch, but at least I could defend myself. One trick that I did learn was a way to buff up my punches so they would be stronger. All I had to do was take raw energy and force it into my muscles. Basically I supercharged my punches, or kicks with raw energy. I couldn’t break large boulders in one hit, but I could punch my way through them.
We took another break and this time when I looked at my watch it was 6:00. I thought it was 6:00 in the morning but my concern was still legitimate, “Hey guys, we’ve been here for a while, lets teleport back so they don’t worry about us.”
Mike and Johnny put out the fires and we teleported out of the cave, to Vegas. When we got to Vegas the sun was just starting to set and the Neon lights started to flicker on. This got me a little shocked. I checked my watch again and looked a bit closer, it read 6:00 pm. I stood there trying to figure out how long we had spent in the cave. It explained how I got so good, training for 22 hours and only taking a few breaks, of course I would be good.
Johnny read my mind, “Time does fly when you’re having fun.”
“How long were we in there?” Mike asked.
“Almost an entire day, we’re short only by two hours,” I said double checking my watch.
“Let’s get back to the hotel. Adam probably wants some training time with you,” Johnny said.
We headed towards the hotel, went into the elevator and headed up towards the top floor. As we stood there in the elevator listening to the music a thought came to me, “Could I charge up my mental powers?”
“No, you can’t. Mental powers only work on what you have up there,” Mike said.
“Not like that. Could I use some of the power then push it into my brain like I did with my muscles?”
“Don’t know, I’ve never tried. See if you can when you practice with Adam. If it works you just may have a stronger mental power than Adam.”
I didn’t believe a word that he said about me being more powerful than Adam. Adam could move buildings, the best I could do was listen to surface thoughts.
The elevator door opened up and we all went to our rooms to take a quick shower, because we needed one. 22 hours of karate in a musty cave would make anyone smell a bit.
When I got done with my shower and changed into an extra pair of clothes I noticed a note on the desk from Adam.
Trip, once you get in from training, open up the windows as wide as possible and charge up as much as you can. The brighter the better.
Adam
I didn’t ask any questions so I pulled open the curtains and stood in front of the window. I started to charge up and continued until I was full. The light dimmed down around me and since I didn’t know if he got the message I laid down on the bed and turned on the TV.
After a half hour of channel surfing through the hundreds of channels the door opened up and Adam walked in, “You sure got home late.”
“Yeah, but now I can punch through a rock. Kicking through a rock still hurts a bit, but I can do it.”
“Are you ready for me then or do you need some sleep?”
“I’m ready,” I said turning off the TV and standing up ready to go, “Where do we get to go today?”
“You get to stay where you are. We are going to be training in here for the night. We still need to get you to be able to talk just to one person’s mind. I’ll go over to the next room with Mike and Johnny, and I want you to talk just to one of us, you get to chose. Other than that the night is yours to do what you want, as long as you can get your voice into one of our heads,” Adam said heading back out of the room.
I mumbled to myself, “This sounds like a fun night.”
The next 15 minutes were spent trying to tune into one of them. By some skill, but mostly luck, I landed in the head of Johnny. Once I was there I tried to get my presence known, but that took a while. After thirty minutes of failure I kept going, I didn’t want to drop out of Johnny’s mind because I knew that I may not be able to get back in.
After a short time, for some reason that I had no control over, his thoughts started to slow down. They weren’t as active as they usually were so I decided that he as either falling asleep or he was zoned out. I decided that I might as well try to do something before he fell asleep so I mentally tried to send out a message mentally. I just thought really loud, “Johnny snap out of it.”
Just as a response his thoughts started going at normal speed. His main thought was, “What was that? Trip are you in my head? I usually don’t get yelled at in my own head, so if you’re listening in tell me.”
I forced my way though his busy mind, “Yeah, I’m listing into your thoughts.”
Johnny yelled mentally back, “Dude not so loud! We’re all in the same brain here.”
“Sorry, it’s just I’ve never done this before. Could you at least help me out a bit and tell me what you guys are doing over there?”
“You don’t know? I thought that you were in my head.”
“Nope, I’m only in your thoughts I haven’t gotten good enough to see through your eyes and all of that fun stuff.”
“We’re watching some DBZ. But one question, how is it that I can get my words over to you? I know that I don’t have telepathy.”
“It’s simple, you think them. You aren’t projecting them like I am to you, I can just hear your thoughts.”
“Mental powers, they always confuse me.”
“Let me make it simpler. I can hear anything that you think. Images I can’t do quite yet but audio is just fine. In a way you can transmit thoughts but only if I’m connected to you.”
“You just made things even more confusing.”
“I’m sorry, but can you tell Mike and Adam that I’ve gotten into your head?”
“No.”
“What?”
“No. I want you to show them. Tap into Mike’s thoughts and talk to him for a while then go over to Adam’s mind, but good luck with Adam.” “Thanks I’ll need it.” I pulled myself out of Johnny’s mind and I noticed a slight headache that was quickly becoming a full fledge headache within a few minutes. I decided not to work on jumping into people’s minds and started to work on calmed down the monstrous headache that was growing by the second.
As I laid down on the bed my mind started to wander and I decided that I might as well try jamming power into my brain, considering I had nothing else to do.
It took a whole lot of effort to jam energy up there. Unlike my muscles who took the power instantly my brain was a little more stubborn. After then minutes I was finally able to force a sliver of power into my brain, the headache was gone almost immediately.
I didn’t know if my powers had been replenished but there was only one way to check. I let my thoughts travel over to the next room, this time with one purpose in mind, Adam. I wanted to go straight to the Mt. Everest of minds. I wasn’t going to hike all of Mt. Everest, I was just going to walk by it just to see how much there really was.
This time I hopped right into Adam’s thoughts, or at least I thought that I did. It felt like I was listening in, but there was just nothing to listen to. Adam had no thoughts in his head from what I could tell. At first I thought that he was asleep, “Adam are you awake?”
His response came back, “Yeah, why?”
“Your thoughts… they don’t exist. I’m in your head I just don’t hear all of your thoughts.”

71-80

“Sorry, I’ve learned how to make mental barriers. If you want me to, I’ll drop it down so you can get the full effect.”
“Why not, go ahead do it.”
“Just remember you asked for it.” Adam dropped the mental wall and I was attacked with his mind. Adam’s mind was completely different than Johnny’s. Adam’s was organized but it was just so busy. It was like a busy highway, but in fast forward, and with no wrecks. The noise that it created in my head was astounding.
It started to hurt my mind so I tried to yell through it, “Adam, shut your brain up!”
Suddenly all of the thoughts stopped and Adam’s voice came over to me, “Had enough?”
“Yes I’ve had more than enough of that. But just out of curiosity how do you deal with all of that?”
“Those little mental barriers help out a bit, but then living with it for 500 years always helps. It didn’t start out that busy, it just sort of progressed there. With always using things with my mind, I almost trained to get there.” “How did you lean how to do that whole mental barrier thing?”
“Practice, it really isn’t that hard, all I do is shove all of my surface thoughts towards the back of my conciseness, then just fence them off with a barrier.”
“It sounds simple enough, but do you think that we could teach it to every one else?”
“Why are we teaching it to other people?”
“Because I only want to communicate from one person to the next, I don’t want to read your mind in the process.”
“In that case I think that we could teach then the basics so that they have at least one wall, it shouldn’t take too long.”
“Only one, doesn’t that mean that you have more than one?”
“Yeah, I’ve learned how to trap my mind. I’ll only show you a bit because I don’t want your psyche to explode. All that I use them for is protection against people like you so my mind doesn’t switch sides and I start fighting for the wrong side, but I’ll just give you one of the smaller traps.
The peaceful silence of Adam turned into a high pitch screeching. My ears felt like they were bleeding, but just as soon as it had started it stopped. Once it was gone Adam still went on, “That’s only the second one, you should see number ten and what that does to people.”
Still with a minor headache from the noise I simply said, “I can only imagine.”
“That little thing that you just ran into compared to the higher traps is only a slap on the wrist.”
“That’s just wrong. But with all of this training, I wish I could talk with Ari or Tati because I don’t like just trying things and hopping they work, if I had their help they could just teach me what to do, instead of my current method of guess and check.”
“They would teach you a lot, because simply they are the best at what they do. They’re so good at their little games of deception that some how they rummaged through my mind without setting off a single alarm or trap. I still don’t know how they did it or how to protect against it.”
“If only we could just say, ‘screw the timeline’ things would be so much nicer.”
“If only…”
“Do you think that I could change people’s thoughts?”
“Not right now. You have to travel a bit farther into a persons mind to change what a person thinks or believes. The stronger the belief the harder it is to change, even if it is only a temporary change.”
“One last thing before I break the connection, could you start walking around your room first, then outside? I need to see what my range is.”
He said yes and I trusted him because every few seconds I would hear him, “Can you hear me now?” and I would answer. After a short time he started to get dim. His voice just didn’t seem as close, even though I was still in his mind.
“Hey Adam, I think that you’re pushing my limits, you’re starting to sound a little fuzzy, where are you?”
In his almost static voice he answered, “Down the hall near the elevator.”
“Okay thanks for all of your help, but I’m going to sleep now this has worn me out”
“Just remember to disconnect first because you don’t want me in your subconsence.”
I severed the connection and the silence of my room surrounded me. I crawled under the covers of my bed and fell asleep. My head was so tired that I almost instantly fell asleep.
The next morning I woke up to the shower running. I looked at the clock to see how late I slept in and it said 10:00. I did not believe it, I slept in. I traveled back in time just to sleep in, how unoriginal could I get? True, there wasn’t much for me to do, but still it was a bit pathetic.
I rolled out of the bed and looked in a near by mirror. My hair was perfect but as for the rest of me, that was a different story. My face looked like I had gone through all three of the world wars and had not taken a shower any time between them.
I laid back on the bed and waited for Adam to finish up. I dozed to sleep because I was still tired but then Adam woke me up. I was a bit shocked but then I realized what was going on, “What?”
“It’s 10:30, hurry up and get ready we, have o teach everyone how to block out their minds at 11:00.”
I gut up and dragged myself over to my dresser that was full of clothes and picked out an outfit that looked like I would be able to fit into it then headed towards the bathroom. My entire body ached from all of the training form the day before, the hot water did little to sooth me. While in the shower I charged up a bit and that took care of some of the muscles but I still had a slight headache. I pushed some energy into my head and my headache calmed down a bit.
After my shower a few minutes passed and people started to arrive in our suite. Mike, Johnny, and Heather all teleported in, Bethany slid in underneath the door, and every one else who didn’t want to destroy something of value just knocked on the door like a normal person and came in.
The ten of us all sat comfortably in the room. IT just took a while to get use to Bethany walking on the walls and Mike and Johnny hovering in the air. After a bit of yelling for quiet Adam started, “People, we’re here today simply because Trip needs us to learn this and it would be good for any one to learn.”
“Adam what are you teaching? Possibly I could help,” Anna said, “just remember what my power is.”
“This lesson is in no book that I know of,” Adam said, “I’m going to hopefully teach you guys the simplest mental barriers.”
“Why?” Cisco simply asked.
“Why am I teaching you or why is it the simplest?”
“Why do we even need to know this?”
I Stepped in trying to fill in a few holes, “When I just talk to individual people I have to get into your heads first. The only bad part about this is that if you don’t have a barrier I hear most of your surface thoughts. Not to be rude to any one of you but I don’t want to know what you’re thinking.”
“If we block our thoughts from you how are we suppose to communicate with each other?” Anna asked.
“I don’t want to go too far into this but to put it simply you selectively block your thoughts. If you want something to be unblocked you can have it that way,” Adam said trying to explain this to a group of people that have never dealt with any mental powers. “Enough about the minor details, let’s teach you guys how to block your thoughts. First things first, let’s get all of your thoughts in one area…”
Adam went on for another half hour just about how to block your thoughts. In an edited version of his speech he basically just told us to put our thoughts in one area and then put a mental fence around them. You didn’t have to confine them to a small place, you just needed to put them in an area. To try to compare it to something people might understand, it’s easier to get fifty people to stand in a parking lot than it is to get those same people into a sport’s car.
I know it sounds really abstract considering a thought an actual thing and a thought restraining a thought but not everything can make since.
After the half hour lecture we all started o try it. My job wasn’t to practice confining my thoughts it was to see if other people had the right thing going on. As I skimmed from one mind to the next I noticed Heather almost had it. She had about half of her thoughts hidden from me. I stayed in her mind a bit longer just to see if she could do it. A minute passed by and Heather finally had it.
I talked into her head, “Good job, now for the real test, can you talk to me?”
Heather closed her eyes and started to really concentrate, on talking to me, “Did I do it?”
“Yes, you actually did it.”
She opened up her eyes and looked at me, “What do I do now?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you see if you can help out other people? They need help, with me knowing what they’re thinking; they’ll like it if someone with a little more sanity than Adam helps them out.”
“Since you know so much about these people, who do I need to help out first?”
“Cisco, he’s the one who’s the most upset.”
“Okay, can do.”
I severed the link with Heather and I kept scanning back and forth the room, one person at a time. About every twenty seconds or so I would switch people. Since everyone else was training so hard and the only thing I was doing was watching, I decided I might as well train with them. I didn’t worry about the mental protection so I moved on to trying to link with more than just one person. I first linked into Adam and told him what I was planning to do.
“Whatever, just make sure that whoever you connect me to, I can’t hear their thoughts.”
“Huh?”
“If you connect us the wrong way, I’ll be able to hear their thoughts.”
“Isn’t that what we’re planning? I don’t want to be your guys personal mental message machine.”
“It is what we’re planning, but if they don’t have a barrier up everyone connected can hear them.”
“Oh… I know this is completely off of the subject but if I linked in with you and some stranger off of the street, would it be possible for me to somehow filter his thoughts?”
“It is possible but you need a bit more power to do that.”
“Thanks for the encouragement,” I said sarcastically, “Now could you please shut up for a second so I can concentrate?”
“What’s with the harsh words?”
“Nothing.”
“Okay, I’ll be quiet; it’ll be like you’re not even inside of my head at all.”
I took that as a good idea and cut him the connection with him completely and turned my mind back to Heather. “How are things going with Cisco?”
I saw her jump a little shocked that someone was in her head, “He’s doing better, but why are you in my head? I know your family, you don’t do things unless you have to. Your mom doesn’t always follow that general rule but I’m sure that you wouldn’t be risking a headache just to chat.”
“That’s a little creepy how well you know us.”
“True, but what’s up?”
“I’m just here to warn you. I’m going to try to link you up with Adam. Hopefully we’ll all be able to hear each other, if everything goes right.”
“What if something goes wrong?”
“Don’t know, but we’ll cross that bridge when it comes.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better, but who cares, go for it.”
I kept my connection with Heather and then focused my attention over to Adam. I took my normal steps to connect to him, but they didn’t work. It felt like the first time I ever even tried to connect to him. I pushed, I prodded, I poked, I shoved, nothing seemed to work to get me in. After five minutes of trying I started to pull back. As I pulled back I accidentally slipped into Adam’s mind.
I wanted to see who was connected to who so I sent out, “Roll call, who’s listening to me?”
“Me,” Heathers voice said through my head just like I was use to.
Adam’s voice was in my head as well and he was a little shocked, “Heather?”
“That’s me, and considering that I hear Adam in here, I’m assuming that you did what you wanted to do Trip.”
“I don’t know how I did it,” I honestly said, “If I had to do it again I wouldn’t know how to do it.”
“Then drop me,” Heather simply said.
“What?” “Drop me, disconnect me, make it so I don’t hear you. Drop me then reconnect me. It’ll give you a chance to try out your power,” Heather said to me.
Adam chimed in, “Sounds good for me. If anything you should drop both of us and start from the beginning.”
“Thanks for the advice, I’ll do that then.” I cut off both of them and decided to give my mind a quick break. I scanned through the group to see if any one had gotten the mental protection down yet. Bethany and Natalie were close to getting it, Anna was a close third, and then came my mom, Mike, Johnny, and Cisco near the end.
I connected back into Adam and turned my attention back towards Heather. This time I took my time and just let it come to me. It took me a bit longer than before to connect to her but it didn’t take as much energy.
Once we were connected we had a little conversation. Near the end Heather asked if she could leave because she was hungry.
Adam simply answered, “You know the drill Heather, we’re all stuck here until we can all do this.”
“I know, but training gets so boring sometimes. I just want to go out and get somth8ing that could actually help me out. Before the Dameon battle people don’t care about rare writings and scrolls, I just want to go out and hunt down some spells.”
“Once we get done we should just be allowed to do what we ant. I still need to work on how to throw a fireball. I know I need to work on that and from what I can understand Heather needs her own training,” I said.
“In some bizarre way that actually makes since,” Adam said, “Then we could all go clubbing or do whatever we want to do.”
“yeah real fun right there,” Heather sarcastically said, “Listing to heavy bass surrounded by thousands of people and hopping that someone doesn’t slip some drug in your drink, can’t wait.”
I tried to defend club culture, “They seemed nice to me on Thursday.”
“Exactly Thursday, this is Saturday. IT gets really freaky on the weekends. I won’t even go into how much trouble one person can get themselves into with only one night at the clubs,” Heather said, “Trust me, I’ve raved with the best of them, and I’m glad I’m out. Hardcore ravers won’t care about you.”
“Adam, any words of input?” I asked, “I’m thinking that staying here and watching TV is better.”
“All I have to say is that I liked the clubs in this time, and I didn’t have a problem with any one.”
Heather cut him off, “Because you had a power and two on call body guards known as Mike and Johnny.”
“… and what is Trip going to have with him?” Adam said, “Just to remind you even without us, he can defend himself.”
“I’m just saying he wanted to learn about life right now so he should. He shouldn’t learn the fluffy version where every one is kind and polite, he should learn the gritty, drug smuggling, stab you in the back version, or in other words, the truth.”
“What better way to learn about the proverbial food chain of life than to be on the top of it? He won’t have to screw up to learn about the real world, he’ll see other people screw up their lives and learn from their mistakes.”
This mental argument kept on going for another minute or two. Every one around us were going along like nothing was happening, little did they know about what was going on mentally. Finally after what seemed to be a long time, I just cut off both Adam and Heather because their yelling was giving me a headache. Once I severed the link they both looked at Heather and me whined, “Hey, we weren’t finished.”
“I was. It gets annoying when you two just go at it not worrying about who is connecting you two together. I just couldn’t handle you yelling. My mind right now is about to explode because of you two arguing with each other.” This got every one’s attention, they all stopped what they were doing and all eyes were locked on me.
“What was that all about?” my mom asked.
“It’s Adam and Heather. I linked the three of us together and they started to argue. I decided instead of hurting myself just to drop the connection and let them finish it up verbally.”
The eyes in the room went from me to either Adam or Heather. “What were you guys arguing about?” Johnny said interested, “I always like a good fight.”
Neither Adam or Heather wanted to answer. I think it was because they suddenly realized that it was something stupid that they were fighting about. Johnny tried again, “…So?”
“Nothing, it wasn’t anything,” Adam said trying to cover it up.
“It had to have been something or else my son wouldn’t have shut both of you up,” my mom said, “Now, what was it that you two were arguing over?”
“Really, nothing,” Heather said, “Don’t worry about it, we just were deciding that once we get done with this we’d go and do whatever we wanted.”
“You must have been deciding pretty loud then to get Trip to disconnect the two of you. He can put up with a lot, so you must have done more,” my mom said in her classic form of never stopping until everything was found out.
I quickly slid into my mom’s mind to try to get her off of the hunt, “Mom, don’t worry about it if you really want to know I’ll tell you latter.”
She took my advice and backed down, “Okay, I’ll trust you guys,” she said to Adam and Heather, “But you better have not been messing around with my son’s mind.”
This calmed everyone down a slight degree but we were able to move onto deciding what we were going to be doing afterwards. After a small debate we decided on going out as a group for lunch, then having free time the rest of the day till dinner. Dinner we would all go out and eat then afterwards as a group we would go out to one of the clubs. With the clubs we set one simple rule, once there was a sign of anything going wrong, we had to get out of there.
After the club we decided we would come back and sleep, simply because it would be 2:00 in the morning. The next day would be a Sunday so we would all go to church, if we had a church to go to.
Once that was decided we all broke back up to get the metnal barrier set up because we knew that we couldn’t go out and do a single thing, unless everyone was able to make a mental barrier. Slowly one by one people were able to get a hold of exactly how to do it, and one by one I was able to add more people to my mind. An hour after we had started to train all ten of us were mentally connected.
Mike thought up that we should all drop our barriers at the same time just to see what it would be like if we didn’t have them. Every one dropped their barriers at the same time and the noise was overwhelming. Everyone reached for their ears to see if they could muffle the noise but it didn’t work. No one was thinking enough to put back up their barrier so I just cut off everyone from the connection.
Once I disconnected everyone, the entire room was filled with a sigh of comfort. “I never want to do that ever again,” Mike said hitting his head sideways as if that would knock the ringing noise out of his head.
After a short break to give everyone time for their head to stop ringing we connected back together and headed down stairs. To other people we probably looked like freaks, the ten of us walking together occasionally looking over as a group to something someone mentally noticed or laughing out loud to a mental joke.
It would get hard at times. You would get so use to talking mentally that when someone, our waitress, would ask us something, we would be flustered. One of us would usually be able to answer but it was hard switching back and forth. It was just so much easier to talk mentally. Mentally you didn’t have to worry about other people listing in so you could openly discus things like the Dameon battle, which took up most of our lunch time. You didn’t have to worry about being heard because everyone was right there. Telepathy is the way to go when you want to hold a meaningful conversation with someone.
After we paid the bill we all headed up to our rooms and we broke into groups. Anna, Mike, Adam, and Heather were going to go hunt down some spells. Natalie went off to the gym with Cisco and Bethany. My mom went off her own way talking something about a forest fire she had to go put out. That all left Johnny and me to train.
Johnny teleported us over to the cave and we started to warm the place up with throwing fireballs. I was drenched in sweat when Johnny asked me, “You ready to cool this place down?”
“I don’t know how, or if I have enough energy but sure, lets do it.”
“Okay, let’s start from the very beginning, charge up, you’ll need as much power as you can get. It’s just as hard or easy, however you look at it, to throw a fireball, it’s just the first few times it’s a little rougher than usual.”
“What exactly am I learning?”
“Charge up first and then I’ll tell you.”
I charged up and looked back towards Johnny, “Okay what now?”
“I’m going to try to teach you how to throw an ice bolt. Its name changes to how you see fit. Some people call it an ice cloud, ice ball, ice bolt, frost cloud, cloud of frost, or whatever you see fit. Whatever you like you can use. Simply what we’re going to try to do is freeze something. The one problem is that once you start the first few times you don’t freeze anything you just make ice cubes.”
“Huh?”
“Let me show you.” Johnny faced one of the cave walls, “This is the wrong way.” He pulled his hands to his side, threw them out in front of him and yelled out, “Ice bolt!”
A large ball of ice flew out of his hands and ran into the wall shattering into a few million pieces. “See? That didn’t freeze a single thing, that wall is still burning hot. Here, is the right way.”
He went through the motions again but this time what came out of his hands was a bluish cloud. It ran into the wall and it was covered inst three inches thick. It covered up a good area, close to 100 feet, and it gave a bit of air conditioning to the sauna of a cave. “See, it’s that simple. The only hard part is the conversion of power. With a fireball you just changed the power into fire and that’s that but with this, it takes a little more control to it. The best I can compare it to is really cold air with just a touch of water in it. It’s hard the first time so good luck, you’ll need it.”
“Thanks, I think.” I just gave it a shot and changed the pure energy to some sort of ice frost mix. I decided the only way I would get the right combination of water and cold would be from trial and error.
I took a part of my energy, about half, and went through the motions of throwing a fireball. It didn’t work. Instead of being a cloud of ice, it was more like a big slushy mess. It wasn’t really water and it wasn’t really ice, it was just a strange mix of the two.
I charged back up and tried again. That time I had a whole lot of cold and way too much water so a huge ice ball came out and ran into the wall.
This process went on and on. By the twentieth time I almost had it down and by the thirtieth time I had it down. Once I know what I was doing I got a little trigger happy and started to cover the ground with a thin layer of ice. I only had a small area iced when Johnny realized what I was doing.
“Trip, fill up your leg muscles like you’re about to kick in a wall, and instead jump up, I’m going to cover this place in ice.”
I charged up and transferred the power into my thighs and calves, “Okay, I’m ready.”
“Then jump. I’m ready to go the second that you get in the air.” I took his word for it and jumped. I sailed into the air, almost hitting my head on the ceiling but what astonished me the most was Johnny. He was throwing out ice bolts but he was throwing a whole bunch of them really fast. He had to have thrown at least 100 or more in the short time I was in the air.
I started to fall and realized that just because I could go up easily, there was no way I would come down as easy. I let out a yell to Johnny as I started to get closer to the ground, not wanting to turn into a human pancake. I closed my eyes and curled up into a ball. When I didn’t hit the ground I opened up my eyes and Johnny had teleported underneath me and had caught me.
“I told you that I was prepared for this,” Johnny said setting me down on the icy ground, “So why do you want the ice?”
“I just wanted to slide around, but how did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Cover the ground in ice like that. You just covered the entire ground in ice. It wasn’t just cover all of the ground it was cover it with accuracy, you didn’t put out the fires that keep it lit in here.”
“Rapid ice, it’s less powerful than throwing just one and a little less accurate, but it gets the job done. It’s about the difference between a sniper gun and a machine gun.”
“The real question is how do you do that?”
“It’s hard to explain but to put it simply, you need a bit more power than what you have now.”
“What can I do to get there?”
After we get done goofing around with this ice, it’ll be your job to melt it.”
“All of it?”
“All of it. Don’t worry, the more you throw fireballs and ice bolts the more power you’ll get. Every little use of power helps out. The only thing that won’t help out your power is sitting around and doing nothing.”
“Thanks for the advice but let’s play.” I pushed some power into my muscles, pushed Johnny in the chest, and he glided across the ice and ran into the far wall.
“So you want to play that way, well lets go.” Johnny pushed off of the wall that he just ran into and was coming straight towards me. He was crouched down ready to ram his shoulder straight into me.
I thought quick and I charged up my leg muscles again, and jumped up. I didn’t jump up as high as before but I was able to clear Johnny as he slid underneath me. He kept on going straight towards the wall but this time, he was ready. He jumped up off of the ice, kicked off of the wall, and started coming back straight towards me.
I decided that if it worked once it could work again so I jumped up into the air hopping that he would slide underneath me, but it didn’t go exactly as I had planned. Right when my feet left the ground Johnny jumped up into the air coming straight towards me. He grabbed me in a bear hug and the two of us fell to the ground. I hit the ice below us and Johnny fell on top of me. Needless to say my back was killing me. I had just jumped vertically six or seven feet and landed on my back with another person landing on top of me.
I didn’t know if the cracking noise that filled the air was the ice or my bones so I didn’t dare move, but I was able to make a small, “Oww.”
Johnny moved off of me and went into crisis management, “Try charging up.”
“But I just did, why would I want more energy?” I asked in pain.
“Just do it, it wasn’t a question that was a demand. IF you can’t take any energy in, great nothing is wrong, but if you can take energy in, bad, keep taking it in until you can’t”
“What are you talking about?”
“Trip, ask questions latter, right now charge up, now. The longer you sit there talking, the harder this will be.”
I didn’t ask any more questions and I started to charge up. I thought I was full but energy started to flow through me. It was strange, the energy seemed to flow towards my spine. Finally the power around me wouldn’t go any farther so I stopped, “Can I get up now?”
“Yeah, you can get up now,” Johnny said sounding relieved.
I slowly stood up and shuffled away from where I landed. Where my body landed, there was an imprint of my body hands and all, if you looked really close you could almost tell that I had spiked hair. “Why did I have to charge up, and why was I able to charge up?”
“It’s hard to explain but it’s sort of like a reflex for the power. If you get hurt it’ll rush over and help your body regenerate. When you just fell you most likely broke something, probably your spine, and the power helped you out enough so you could charge up.”
“You’re saying that if I didn’t have the power I should have just died?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow, that’s a little intense, but let me get this straight. Lets’ say I cut myself with a paper and get a paper cut. The power inside of me will rush over and heal me? I don’t have to do a thing, it’ll just do it on it’s own free will?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“Now this is when it gets interesting. Mike and I have some theories; the simplest is that the power can think for itself, it’s sentient. However it likes being inside of people, that’s why it is hard to get rid of even after you convert it to fire or ice. Now because it likes to be inside of people it will go to the extreme in trying to heal up the person that it is in. Usually that just means healing small things very slowly, however because we have so much of the power it heals larger things faster. It’s basically a two way street, it uses us for a free ride around the world, and we use it for fighting and everything else that we do.”
“Neat.”
The two of us just stood there in silence for a while, because I was trying to understand what was going on but then I looked over to Johnny, “How did you jump off of the wall like that?”
“Lets melt this ice first, so you don’t kill yourself, and then we’ll compare strategies.” Johnny said. We started to throw fireballs melting the ice. For every four or five of my fireballs Johnny would throw one, and melt just as much ice.
When all of the ice had evaporated into the air Johnny took me up next to the wall and taught me how to do that. It was actually quite easy; there was even a way to throw a fireball while doing it. After you had kicked off of the wall, while you were falling down you could throw a fireball, or now an ice bolt, towards whoever was behind you.
The more we goofed around with jumping off the wall the more power we put into it. By the end we would run at the wall at full speed and jump off of the wall. Once we would jump off of the wall we would do a full back flip with a half twist. Midway through the flip we would throw a fireball towards your back, which would hopefully hit a person behind you.
It was a little confusing the first few times that we tried it, our timing was a little off, but after landing on my neck, head, and almost breaking my foot, I learned faster so I wouldn’t hurt myself. Another thing out of all of this was how to fall. I still got hurt b the fall it’s just if I fell ten feet I would be able to walk away. I couldn’t do it as well as Johnny, but then again nothing I did was as good as Johnny.
After we had gotten done goofing around, jumping off of the wall, we started to work again on getting me more power. All we did was just throw a mass amount of fireballs and ice bolts. I would throw out everything I had then charge up and do it again. Doing this did help out how much power I could carry around but my body got sore every time I used up all of my energy.
Two hours after we had first started Johnny had a little lesson for me, “Trip, good job with the fireballs, they’re getting big, but try to make them more condensed. Bigger may be better in some cases but not here. It’s not all too often that you want to throw a six-foot wide fireball. Try to put the same amount of energy into your fireballs, just make them more condensed. The more condensed they are, the stronger they can burn, or freeze.

81-90

“How do I condense it down? It’s not like I can just take out the bad parts of energy and keep the strong stuff.”
“For me it’s more like compressing it. I mentally take a chunk of energy then compress it down to a smaller size. Almost like those old cartoons where there would be a car and then they would compress it down to a few inch cube.”
I got what he was talking about but I didn’t know if it would work for me, or even if it would work at all, however I gave it a shot. I just used my mind as a huge trash compactor. I tried to take a huge amount of power and compress it down to the size of that little cube. I thought I had it down so I threw the fireball out. When it came out I was oddly proud of myself, the fireball was no larger than a soccer ball but it radiated heat, filling the cave in a dry heat.
Johnny looked over at me and gave his nod of approval, “Good job, you catch on fast.”
“I think it’s the teacher,” I said trying to sound sincere, because it was true. “Who else would I want to teach me something than the grand master of it that practically wrote the book on the subject. If you wanted to know plays you would go to Shakespeare, you want music you head over to Mozart or Bach, and if you want to learn about the power, who better to teach you than the person who has been doing it for over 500 years.”
“Not 500 yet. Seven more years is our 500th birthday,” Johnny said correcting me, “But thanks, I’ve never been compared to people like that. I’ve been compared to things that I’d rather not mention, but never to people like Shakespeare or Bach.”
“It’s true.”
“No it’s not. Those people are all known and people in schools study their works across the world. Not even one thousandth of the world’s population knows who I am, let alone studies what I have done. The only people that understand how powerful I am are dead, because they didn’t know just how strong I am.”
“Adam…”
Johnny cut me off, “Sorry, to say this but Adam doesn’t quite know what it’s like knowing that with one wrong move the entire world could be disintegrated only leaving a thin pile of dust floating through space. The only person that understands me is Mike, and that’s just because we’ve been friends for so long.”
“Buy you could make yourself known,” I said thinking he could go out and introduce himself to the world.
“How? MIB is so thorough they almost wiped out my memories of the Dameon battle. Plus you haven’t seen people react to outsiders. You’ve seen a bit form when we come from with racism, but you haven’t seen it first hand. You haven’t seen people take a quick picture of you then run away because they think that you’ll kill them. You have never been called a freak by a homeless old man wearing a tin foil hat. You’ve never had your own parents look you in the eye, and see that they are afraid of you. NO, you don’t quite know, not yet anyways.”
“What exactly goes on after the Dameon battle to get you so upset about this?”
“Nothing, at first. People were just a little cautious wondering what we were doing, why we were here, and all the usual questions people ask to two teenagers that could destroy the world. By day two or three people start getting ugly, real ugly. Reports start going out, rumors get started, and what doesn’t help at all is that the rebels are joy ridding around town demolishing everything that they can get their greedy hands on. SN tried to stop some of the rebels and that just leads to more trouble. Finally a week passes, and MIB decides to step in and wipe every one clean making it all seem like a fain dream that never happened.”
“And then?” I asked urging him on.
“And then we all go back into hiding and go back to our ‘normal’ lives, and we all live happily ever after.”
“I love happy endings.”
“It isn’t too happy of an ending but if it works for you, then I won’t ruin it for you. But that’s enough about me lets get back to you getting more power. Why don’t you try condensing an ice bolt to cool of the cave, then we’ll go back to Vegas.”
We headed back to Vegas and got cleaned up. If we were suppose to be going out into the clubs we didn’t want to be sweaty and dirty.
After I showered I changed into my clubbing outfit, the black pants and shirt that seemed to glow in the right light, then headed over to Mike and Johnny’s room, our unofficial meeting room.
When I walked in Bethany, Adam, Mike, Johnny, and my mom were already in there waiting for people, watching TV. Mike opened up the door when I knocked and said, “You look good for a person that’s almost killed themselves.”
That got my mom’s attention, “What? Trip you almost killed yourself? How?”
“Michelle calm down,” Johnny said. “He only landed on his neck once and his spine twice, he didn’t get shot or anything like that.”
“Land on his neck? That’s not a bad thing?” My mom said a little stressed out, “How can you say such a thing? My son could be in a wheel chair right now and all you can say is that it wasn’t anything?”
“He’s alive isn’t he?” Mike said pointing out the obvious.
“If you only knew how close I am to changing that with you Mike, but, you’re right he’s back and he is alive. I won’t roast you, this time.” My mom said, slowly calming herself down.
“It’s nice to see that your temper hasn’t changed,” Adam said, “You always did have the temper that matched your power.”
My mom just stared at Adam, “It is so hard when a teenager as old as my son acts like he’s my dad, who’s dead.”
“I don’t act, I am your dad. Get use to it. You can control fire, and I get reborn, it is that simple.”
“It’s just weird that’s all.”
“Like it isn’t weird all of the time? In the past few days, have we done anything that is normal?” Adam asked, “I’ll give you a little hint, going back in time isn’t normal.”
“And we wouldn’t want it any other way,” Bethany said, “Normal people are boring. You go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV, campaign about your weight, and then go to sleep. A normal boring person on an exciting night stays up till 10:30. What sort of fun is there in that?”
“I was normal once,” I said, “not too long ago and right now I see that normal was as dull as food packets. Right now I don’t ever want to be normal again.”
“What even makes a person normal?” Mike asked, “IN a group like us we’re all normal. Over in Israel it’s normal to wear a yamika, but you don’t see me sporting one.”
“Being normal is just a state of mind, you want to be accepted by other people. Once you’re accepted you consider yourself normal,” my mom said.
“That’s deep,” Mike said.
“Too deep for me,” Johnny said, “Let’s get off of that topic and move onto where we are going to eat tonight.”
We started to debate exactly where we were eating. The names interested me more than the food; Hard Rock Café, Planet Hollywood, Outback Steakhouse, and TGI Fridays just to name a few. By the time all of us had gotten into Mike and Johnny’s suite we had decided to go to TGI Fridays. According to those who knew, this was the place to go, we could talk, be loud, and be us, and no one would care.
We separated up and drove there. When we first got there the people’s eyes went wide, it’s not every day that you serve a party of ten. After we ordered our appetizers the conversation as usual now with us went mental and drifted towards the subject of the Dameon battle. “When should we get there?” Mike said, “It’s open campus right now, but I think the kids will notice Michelle and Cisco. I hate to say it but you two are a little old to be in High School.”
“Like you aren’t?” Cisco asked, “And what about Anna, she’s 20.”
“It your appearance, Anna could pull off being a senior, you guys just look older.”
“Thanks Mike,” my mom said, “I just feel so much better about my age now, but since you are the expert on this topic what do you suggest?”
“You guys could be student teachers, you look young enough to be college students.”
Cisco liked that idea, “College, now that’s a time I liked. The parties… oh how the parties live on in my mind.”
“Down boy, down,” Bethany said trying to calm down Cisco. “The problem is how are the rest of us getting through the gates?”
“It thought that you were going as Lucy and I was going as me.”
“Yeah, that’s right, but what about every one else.”
“I’ think I’ll just go as me,” Heather said, “Unlike every else here, I don’t have a single connection to Las Vegas or this high school.”
“Same here,” Anna said.
“The only connection I have here is a slayer, the slayer. She goes there and us slayers can just sort of tell who other slayers are, it’s almost like us knowing who’s a vamp. No offense to any one from that time, but the slayer from back then was, is, a little stronger than me.”
“What’s the problem then?” Mike asked, “If Angie sees you all you have to say is that you’re in town just because you heard about a big demon that’s running around in Vegas.”
“Will that work?” Natalie asked not really believing that something that simple would work.
“Yeah,” Adam said, “Angie, at this point knows that there is a big demon running around, she just can’t find it. If you told her that, if anything she’ll become good friends with you.”
“Just to recap, who’s who?” Heather asked, “I’m going to be a senior.”
“I’ll be a senior with you,” Anna said.
“I’m just going as me,” I said.
“I’m Lucy.”
“I’m going to be a student teacher direct form UNLV,” Cisco said.
“Sadly I’m with Cisco,” my mom said.
“I’m going in just as me,” Natalie said, “I don’t care if I’m twenty two, I doubt that anyone will stop me from waling in.”
“I’m just going to be me, I just can’t walk in with my jumpsuit on,” Adam said.
“Same with me,” Mike said.
“As usually I’m with them,” Johnny said.
In a short time our food showed up and we started to eat. As we ate the metnal conversations started to die down to a dull roar, just like World War Two was just a little skirmish. There was really no meaningful conversation going on, mostly it was just people trading stories about back in the good old days. Everyone had at least one story about a good fight or battle. Some of the younger crowd; Heather, Anna, Natalie, and myself, had a few stories, but not nearly as many as the people that lived pre-leaders.
After dinner we all headed out to our cars. We stood around outside talking about exactly where we were going and if we were going any where in the first place. After a quick discussion we decided to head off to the clubs, namely S.R.O. In Bethany’s opinion it was the best club in Las Vegas.
The rest of the night was filled with dancing. Adam was right about one thing. My little experience on Thursday was nothing compared to Saturday. I originally thought Thursday was a busy day, after that night I knew that Thursday was one of the slowest days for the clubs.
We all left the club at 2:00 considering not every one was able to charge up and church was at 10:00. However, Mike, Johnny, and I stayed up. The three of us didn’t want to train so we just sat around and watched TV. Midway through the night Mike went out and bought a game console called Play Station Two, a few controllers, and a stack of games back with him. The rest of the night we played games.
The morning came and I got ready for church. When the time came the only people that were going to church was Adam, my mom, and me. As we drove to church Adam warned us a bit, “Just to tell you guys we are not staying for classes. Adam will get too suspicious and with it only being four days until the Dameon battle, I don’t want to push my luck.”
“What if someone asks why we’re there?” my mom asked.
“It’s simple, we’re family members of the Owens. They barely ever come to church so no one will know one way or the other. Hopefully that’ll work for Adam considering that Bethany, Lucy, introduced Trip as a new person in the area. Also Trip if any one asks Michelle is our mom and I am your older brother by one year.”
“I think that I can handle that.”
“I can’t,” my mom said, “do you know how weird it is to have your dad turn into a teenager?”
“No, but I do know how it is to have your grandpa become my age,” I said putting things into my view for her.
After a half hour in the car we pulled up to church just in time. We had five minutes until the service was suppose to start. As we walked in, the person that was greeting at the door was none other than Adam.
He saw me and he smiled, “Trip, I didn’t know you were a member. Come on in, come on in, are you going to introduce me to your family?”
I started to say something but it only came out in stutters, “This is my mom and my brother…” I realized that I didn’t want to introduce my grandfather Adam, as Adam my brother to the real Adam, things would have been a little to confusing.”
My Adam realized I was stuck, he held out his hand and introduced himself, “Ryan, the name is Ryan.” The Adams shook hands.
Well it’s good to meet you,” he looked over to my mom, “Are you guys moving up here?”
My mom showed a skill I had never seen her use before, lying, and she made it sound completely convincing, “No, we’re only going to be up here for a week. Right now we’re staying with my brother in law, Jerry Owens, and hopefully by the end of the week our house over in Green Valley will be ready.”
Adam took it like it was the truth, “Okay then, either way we’re glad to have you with us this week.”
We walked in past Adam as he greeted the next group of people behind us and sat down. I looked over to my mom, “was any of that stuff you said to Adam not a lie?”
“No, but he didn’t notice. It helps lying to a person when you’ve lied to them for most of your life.”
Adam spoke up, “Actually I always knew that you were lying it’s just I’d let it slide every now and then because your cover stories were so interesting.”
“What? I can’t…” my mom started.
Adam held his fingers to his lips, “Quiet, Mom church is starting.”
Adam was right church was starting but my mom wanted to finish up the conversation. While the bishop went through announcements she leaned over to me and whispered to me, “I know that I shouldn’t be asking you to do this with young Adam here but connect us together, I have some business to settle with Adam.”
“Which Adam do you want me to link you with?” I asked making sure that I connected her to the right person.
“Our Adam, the dude that’s sitting next to us.”
I linked the three of us together and my mom started her mental argument with Adam, “You knew when I lied to you?”
“Yeah, I just let it slide most of the time. If you wanted to lie to me I let you. I only stopped you when you made really big mistakes or your lies were just so off the wall that it would had been hard not just to laugh at you.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously.”
“And you never said anything?”
“No, why should I? A normal person isn’t able to tell your lies from truth, so why would your normal dad be able to?”
“You’re saying you used your power to see if I was lying, but how is that possible? Telekinesis isn’t telepathy, you can’t read a person’s mind.”
“I didn’t use a single power, unless you consider my knowledge a power. You personally, I can tell when you lie because your eyes dilate and you start to mess with your nails a bit if you lie for a long period of time. They aren’t noticeable things unless you look for them and since your normal dad can’t tell if your eyes dilate then I had to act like I couldn’t tell.”
“I can’t believe that, every thing that I thought I tricked you on was just you letting it float on by. I feel so betrayed,” my mom said shooting a look at Adam.
“Get over it,” Adam said a little harshly, “Not to be rude, but I’m sure that you’ll get over lying to your dad.”
“I will, actually I’m okay right now, it’s just a little shock to realize that all of my lies weren’t lies at all, but enough about that, Trip, cut the connection, let’s do what we came here to do.”
I cut our connection with each other and we paid attention to the meeting. After the first hour in the chapel everyone else broke up into their classes and the three of us headed off to the car. We packed back into the car and I drove us back to the hotel.
When we got back to the hotel every one else was either asleep or gone. I decided that I needed a break and since it was Sunday and I didn’t want to desecrate the Sabbath I decided to go to sleep.
I woke up latter that day around 4:00. Nothing was really happening so the few of us that were up there in the hotel, Adam my mom, Bethany, Heather, and me just gathered together and we just sat and talked. It was so nice knowing that there was no pressure, if you wanted to say something you said it, if you didn’t want to say a word people would be okay with that.
We ate a light dinner and we all met in Mike and Johnny’s room, to figure out what we would do until Thursday. After a quick discussion we decided that basically the week was ours to do what we wanted. Officially we didn’t have to meet with each other until Thursday morning. We all knew that ‘accidentally’ a few of us would always stick together.
After the quick meeting we all went to our rooms and fell asleep for the night. The next morning at 6:00 Johnny had teleported into my room and woke me up, “Wake up, we get to go train today.”
I was half asleep and opened my eyes a bit, “What?”
Johnny tried again, “We get to train. Come on, if we wait any longer Adam will just say that you want to train with him.”
The bed was just too warm and comfortable to give up, “Just give me a few more minutes.” I closed my eyes and pulled up the covers around me.
Suddenly I felt Johnny punch me in my stomach, “Wake up, we have to train.”
Not wanting to get hit again I got out of bed and shuffled over to the dresser, “I think this time has done this to me. Everyone is just so laid back that it’s hard not to join in.”
“Enough excuses, lets go train.”
After I changed clothes Johnny teleported me to the island where Mike was waiting for us. Once we got there the training started. It went on and on, never stopping for a break. We got a lot done, by the end of the training my power had almost tripled in size, simply because I threw so much power in that time. Even though I had increased my power so much that day, Mike and Johnny had more power than me when they were only half full.
Even though we had trained all day, by dinner time, when we stopped, I was still a million steps behind Mike and Johnny. In the last two hours of us training they tried to teach me how to rapid fire, and it just didn’t work out. I got what they were talking about but it just didn’t work out.
With this mass amount of power surging in and out of me, my body was sore. This rivaled the pain I was in after my first fireball. Because of the massive amounts of pain pulsing through my body I skipped the dinner that was planned and went straight to bed. That night I slept peacefully, and very deeply.
The next morning I woke up at 8:00, somewhat by my own will but mostly by a crashing noise in my bedroom. I sat up and looked around. There sitting on the little coffee table was Adam.
“It wasn’t me,” Adam quickly said.
“Then who was it and what was that noise?”
“It was the table.”
“The table made that noise?”
“Yeah. Let me explain, to keep my power close at hand and finely tuned, in my free time I just start floating things. I had the entire room up in the air and I was jumping from one thing to the next when I thought I heard someone at the door. I put everything down softly but the table that I was standing on got a little hard to manage and it didn’t go down too quietly.”
“You need to train?” I asked astonished that the master of telekinesis needed to train.
“It’s not really training, it’s more of keeping me strong and mentally fit. It’s just like a world-class weight lifter, if he wants to stay a world-class lifter he still needs to lift weights every day. He can’t just stop lifting then a month latter expect to lift more than his max weight. Just like him, I need to constantly use my power or else I’ll become weaker, not stronger.”
“That’s weird, does every one do that/”
“Most people do, just look at Bethany, how often does she change, or how often does Heather cast spells. The only person who doesn’t practice every day is Cisco, but that’s for obvious reasons,” Adam said.
“Will I have to do that?”
“You’ll do it, but it’s more of just a thing that you do in every day life. You just get use to using it in every single day. For you, you will probably just get use to using mental conversation with people. Not only does that help you communicate, but you also keep your power strong.”
“Creepy.”
“Not really, if you don’t use it, you’ll loose it.”
“Other than that whole thing, what do I have to do today? Am I training with you or with Mike and Johnny?” I said finally lifting myself up out of bed.
“Me. We’re going out to the strip, we’re going to see if you can push normal people.”
“What? Like I can’t push you? I’m strong enough to break boulders, I think I can push a normal person. Just a few days ago I pushed Johnny into a wall.”
“Wrong type of pushing. I don’t want you to push them away from you, I want you to push people mentally and get them to do things. I want you to get people to everything from scratch their head to run into a wall.”
“How?”
“That, I don’t know. Unlike everything you’ve done so far, no one with us knows how to do it. You have to do what the rest of us have done, figure out your power without anyone’s help.”
Sarcastically I said, “Now that sounds like some fun.”
“Hurry us and get dressed we need to eat brunch and get out on the street.”
“Give me a while I still need to take a shower, I’m still dirty from yesterday.””Okay, hurry up, the sooner we get out there the sooner we can get back. I don’t know about you but I don’t like to just stand around in the desert in 90 degree temperature.”
I got his point so I picked out my clothes and headed to the bathroom for a quick shower. Once I got done and changed, Adam and I went to eat. We got in quick because we paid off the greater and a few angry customers that thought we had cheated them out of their seats. After a quick meal we headed out to the strip.
What we did, to give me a chance to clear my mind, was that I sat on a bench, supposedly reading a newspaper. I knew I had to be quick because people wouldn’t stop just O I could probe their mind. I knew right off that if I wanted to do it, I needed to do it fast.
The first problem I ran into was getting into someone’s mind. It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t like the person I was trying to get into would be nice and stop moving. I learned how to get into people’s minds real fast because of that, but then I ran into the bigger problem in life, pushing people.
The first few times I tried, the people just looked around like they heard someone but they couldn’t figure out who said it. After a half hour, I started to get a hold of things. I learned how to get my voice to blend in with their thoughts, I still couldn’t push people, but at least I was in their head.
Two hours after we had started, I stopped. My brain was killing me. Adam noticed what happened to me, “Do you want to go back to the hotel?”
“No, it’s okay, I’ll take care of it,” I said walking towards where he parked his car, “Just drive me someplace where no one will see me, I need to charge up.”
“How will that help you?” Adam said, pulling out his keys from his pocket and unlocking the car doors.
“I power up my mental powers with a little help from the raw power,” I said trying to explain it to him.
Adam started his car and turned down his radio for the sake of slowing down my headache, “Just hold on.”
We drove down the strip and into an empty parking lot. We drove up to the top level where there were no cars, “Okay, do your thing,” Adam said, “I want to see this.”
I charged up to full and took a deep breath to get use to the power flowing through me. Adam commented, “Wow, I haven’t seen that before.”
“Hey, you said you wanted to see this, so be quiet. Unlike everything that you’re use to, you can’t see this. Just be nice and be quiet for a minute or two.”
“Adam pulled his had across his lips as if zipping them closed. I took this to mean that I could do my thing without any interruptions from him. I slowly shoved a small bits of power into my head, bit by bit slowing down my headache. By the time I was done my headache died so it only seemed like a dream.
I looked over to Adam and Adam looked back at me, “That was it?”
“That’s it. I told you that it wasn’t flashy, it does it’s job and then it’s done.”
“It just proves that everyone is a little different. If your mom tries to do anything with her power it’s realy obvious. Just with you, your mental powers are just a little hidden, to see or to notice your powers you have to be a part of it, otherwise all we see is your yellow eyes.”
“Yeah, I’m different, get over it. Now are you going to drive us back to where we were or are we just going to stay in this parking lot until we get shot at, or something like that.”
Adam started the engine and we drove back to where we originally started. I sat back down on my bench and picked up the newspaper that I had left there and started back into trying to push people. After a half hour I accidentally slipped into a deeper part of a persons mind.
The only way I was able to do this was because the guy I was targeting was sitting at a bus stop across the street. I say I got deeper into his mind because I could finally hear what his mind was saying to his body, I finally heard things like, ‘move your leg’, ‘walk this way’ or ‘sit down.’
It was a little odd to listen in to how a person works. There were still some limitations to me from his mind, I couldn’t access his memories, I still couldn’t push him, and the one that I was looking forward to, I couldn’t get input from his mind ( I couldn’t sense what he could sense).
I didn’t get to play around in his mind for too long because his bus came an I had to pull out of his mind. I then started to work on getting deeper into people’s minds.
This I picked up pretty quick. Within ten minutes, I could do this really fast, but I was still blocked by the fact that I couldn’t do a single thing. After another hour, and another recharge of my power I made a break through. I was able to finally push a person. It wasn’t much; all I did was to get a girl to itch her arm. It was nothing spectacular but still, I made a girl do something that her body didn’t really want her to do. I practiced a few times on other people then I got Adam’s attention.
“Adam, I think I’ve got it.”
Adam was a little excited, “You’ve got it?”
“That’s what I just said.”
“Prove it.”
I looked through a crowd of people and spotted a good person to prove that I had it down, “Okay, see that muscle man with the white shirt and sun glasses?” “Yeah, what about him?”
“What do you want him to do? Preferably something simple.”
“Get him to stop, flex, and try to make it look like he’s not obviously flexing, yet he still flexes.”
“I’ll try, but that’s a bunch of commands.” I concentrated and slipped into his mind, which wasn’t too difficult and slowly started altering his movements. He stopped walking down the street, bent over, and started to supposedly tie his shoe. As he started to tie his shoe his shirt started to tighten against his muscles. To most people he was just tying his shoe but to Adam and me he was showing off his muscles. Muscle man stood back up and jogged a bit and caught back u with the group of people he was with. I pulled out of his mind and looked over to Adam.
“Wow, now that was a little creepy. Have you gotten them to do things, yet that completely go against what they think?”
“Not yet. I got one person who was walking with their group to just stop and stare at something, but they wanted to do it, I just pushed them to do it.”
“That doesn’t really count, does it?”
“Nope. I’m sure it’ll take me a bit longer so if you want you can leave and go do things that you want. I know that I’ll be able to take care of myself. You can go out and do your thing now, I’m okay here.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I need to learn by myself. Just like you I need to learn how to do this on my own, plus it’s useless for you to just sit here.”
“You sure? I’m here if you need me.”
“Just go, If I get into too much trouble, I know how to fight back, even if I do destroy half of the town.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of, wait, you can destroy towns now?” Adam said in all seriousness.
“Not yet, I think I can take down a few hotels right now.”
“Good, I thought for a second or two that you some how went all powerful,” Adam said relieved.
“Nope, but are you going to leave or not?”
“Yeah, I’ll be going, but I’ll be back sometime soon to check up on you and see how you’re going.” Adam said slowly standing up. He walked away and headed towards his car.
I gave him a few minutes just to make sure he was gone then I stood up and started to walk behind a group of people who where walking by. My thoughts were that if I was to go even deeper or push harder than before that I would need more time. Instead of waiting for a person to stop and just stand still I decided to follow people just close enough to probe people’s minds but far enough so it didn’t look like I was stalking them.
Foe the next two hours I followed different people up and down the strip. My favorite place to practice on people was on street corners. There would always be at least one person waiting patiently for the light to change so they could cross the street without getting ran over. This was where I made my first push of someone’s thoughts. The girls standing in front of me, who was wearing a pair of short, shorts and a shirt that was three sizes too small for her, was my target.
As I entered her ditzy blond brain the idea came to me of what I was going to make her do. I dug around into her mind and came to the area that I was familiar with, the area that made her body move. I pushed with all my mind into her mind, ‘turn around and hug the boy behind you as if he is your boyfriend.’
I didn’t think it had worked because she didn’t react immediately but sure enough the twenty something busty blond turned around and gave me a hug, her hands roaming from the top of my shoulders down the by butt. When she grabbed my butt, I tensed up a bit and must have cut the connection because she realized what she was doing and let go of me. She quickly started to apologize. She rambled on and on about how sorry she was.
I tried to calm her down and said it was okay but it didn’t seem like it worked considering she still looked a little shaken and depressed. I decided as she walked away to implant another command into her head. I simply put in, ‘this never happened,’ and ‘once you see your boyfriend run up to him and give him a big hug.’

91-100

I could tell that the first one had kicked in because she was walking with more of a spring to her stop but I would never know if she hugged her boyfriend.
At the next stop sign there was only two people, two guys, and I wanted to see how well I could push two people at the same time. It took me a little struggle to get into their minds but once I was finally there the fun began. I planted in the first guy, ‘guy your friend,’ and of course he followed commands.
His friend turned and looked at him, “dude, what’s wrong now? You’re not going to start crying again are you?”
I couldn’t help myself; I had to act when he said this. My excuse at that time was I was extending my powers but really I was just being an annoying teenager who wanted to mess up people’s lives. I pushed the first guy to admit to his friend that he was gay and liked his friend in ways that go beyond simple friendships.
I barely had to push my next command into his friends mind because his fist was already balled up and ready to punch, I just gave him the command to skip it for a few steps and go straight to punching. He pulled back his arm and hit his friend with a right hook that Muhammad Ali would have been proud of.
The right hook sent his friend back a few feet. He was a little stunned but he didn’t need my help to get up off the ground and run up to his friend and fight back.
I felt bad making these two friends fight so I implanted into their heads, ‘you’re drunk, almost about to pass out.’ Both of them immediately started to act like they were drunk. I took the opportunity to add some more stuff in, ‘neither of you will remember this entire morning, and you’ll be friends no matter what happens in life.’
The two of them still drunk staggered down the street yelling a lot and sounding like good friends. I passed them up and realized what I had just done, I was finally able to effect a person’s emotions. I was able to make them feel love and hate.
The way that I figured it was that now that there were emotions behind the commands there was more logic to the crazy things that I was making them do, instead of just hitting someone they were hitting them because of a reason and that small reason was enough to justify their actions.
Even though I could make people feel emotions I couldn’t affect their senses. I couldn’t make a person want to jump because they saw something like a bug or monster, but I was happy with what I could do, for then. The basic emotions of people can get them to do quite a bit, to see someone that is depressed become happy and cheerful, was a big step for me.
After the long walk down and back up the strip I made it back to the chair that I spent all morning at. I sat back down and started to work on my basic control of people, trying to get people to do random things, simply because I wanted them to.
It started out with just a few people at a time, but it turned out at the end to be as many as thirty or forty people. As I was playing around with the flow of traffic on the sidewalks every now and then I would have to get up and charge up so I wouldn’t run out of mental power.
On one of my trips when I was coming back, my mom was stitting in my chari waiting for me. I carefully walked up behind her and quickly grabbed onto her shoulders and yelled out in classic form, “Boo!”
Her body jumped and she quickly turned her head around to see who had just scared her. She saw that it was me and calmed down a bit, “It’s not a good idea to scare me. I almost roasted you for that little prank.”
I walked around the bench and sat next to her, “A kid can have fun can’t he?”
“Yeah, he can, but just watch out on who you pick on,” she looked me over in her motherly look to make sure my clothes were just right and I didn’t have dirt on my cheek or something like that. “What’s with the sunglasses?”
“What?”
“Your sunglasses, you look like you should be blind or something like that because they’re tinted so dark.”
I realized what she was talking about, “It’s for my eyes. I don’t want people noticing my eyes glowing. Adam picked me out a pair before we came out here.”
“It makes since, only Adam would buy a hundred dollar pair of sunglasses. Anyways, since you’ve been here for so long, show me what you an do.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Anything.”
I thought about it for a second. I pointed out a guy walking on the sidewalk, “Okay see that guy with the grey pants and matching suit coat, well he’s been picking people’s pockets for the past half hour or so.”
My mom looked through the crowd, “Okay, I see him, what about him?”
“I’ll push him to pick pocket some people, which shouldn’t be hard because he’ll probably do it without my help. Once he picks pockets then he’ll walk one way and they’ll walk the other. They’ll notice he stole their money because I’ll push them to check and they’ll yell out that they’ve been robbed. Pick pocket boy will take off running. I’ll then take a random person and push them to run him down and tackle him to the ground.”
“You can do that?”
“What you want me to do more?”
“You can do more?”
“Yeah, I can mike it so he steals a car and tries to drive away and a pedestrian hops into another car and chases him down. Or even better I can make every person around him hold him down and an old lady beat him with her purse.”
“You have to be joking, you can’t control that many people.”
“Okay I’ll prove it. Everyone that is in their car at this intersection will want to blow their horn.” I tapped into the twenty something drivers and made them all want to honk their horns. In unison all of the horns went off then stopped.
“Wow, that doesn’t help that much in a battle but still, wow.”
“Yeah, and now to the pickpocket.”
“You’re still going to do that?” my mom asked in unbelief, “Why? You’ve already got your point across that you can push people.”
“Just to simply put it I have some what of a vendetta against him. I just wouldn’t feel right if I just left him there to keep doing his thing.”
“Oh…why didn’t you just say that you’ve just ran into the whole god complex and you want to always use your power only for good, even if you completely screw up a person’s life, you’re doing it for the greater good.”
“Yep, unlike some people I’m trying to be good with my power,” I said, “Is there something wrong with that?”
“Just remember you can’t be a super hero, and you can’t go any where close to exposing yourself.”
“I’m not going all super hero, I’m getting a person that’s close by to go super hero. All I am going to do is sit her, everyone around here can swear to you that I didn’t do a thing.”
“Okay, it’s your choice but if you get into trouble don’t come running to me.”
“At least stay for the show.”
“Okay, I’ll stay but if things get ugly, it’s your bad and I’m out of here.”
“Good.” I didn’t waste a second and started the process. My little pickpocket didn’t resist a second and went right up to his victim and stole their wallet and started to walk away. I quickly tapped into the victims mind and got them to check for their wallets. They checked their pockets and found out that they were missing. They quickly pointed out the thief and yelled out.
When the thief started to run I quickly shifted my attention to where the thief was running and a good person that could stop him. I spotted an adult that looked like he played football at one time in his life and jumped into his head. Before I could send out a single command he was running towards the thief with one thought on his mind, ‘stop.’ He tucked his head down and speared the thief right in the stomach knocking them both to the ground.
A crowd started to form and some cops arrived at the scene. My mom looked over toe me, “Was that you with they jock?”
“No he actually did that on his own. Seriously he did it all without any help from me.”
“See, you don’t need to solve all of the worlds problems with your power, people already have good in them,” my mom said, “Let’s get back to our rooms it’s getting hot out here.”
We walked to Caesar’s and went to the top floor. My mom followed me into my suite. As we entered in Adam and Anna were talking what sounded like a different language. I paid a bit more attention and realized that they were talking about how we would attack the leaders, they were just using a larger vocabulary than what they normally used.
When we got in the room and I sat down on the bed Adam and Anna snapped out of their daze and Adam looked over to me, “How did it go?”
“Good. Still can’t do what I want to do but I have some control,” I said.
“What can you do?” Anna said wanting to know more.
“I can get people to emotionally feel things, love hate, and the other big ones, and I can get their bodies to move, but they can tell that they aren’t moving on their own free will. I still can’t reach their memories or their senses.”
“So, you have basic rudimentarily control of their appendages and their stronger emotions about life, but you can’t access their senses,” Anna said in her normal way.
“Yeah, it’s like that if you want my power to sound like a science experiment,” I said, “But now that I’m up here what do we do now?”
“We get to plan the battle against the leaders. You get to practice your long distance powers. You get to see if you can use your power on the people down there while you’re up here,” Adam said.
I sarcastically replied, “Yeah, just what I wanted to do, train,” I pulled up a chair next to the window, sat down, and looked outside down onto the strip. The first person I tried to contact, I quickly went into. I got them to jump up and down, run around in circles, moon people, run through traffic, and other fun things. Up in the room looking down onto the street made it feel like a video game, it’s just with this video game you didn’t have extra lives.
After playing around with the guy for a few minutes I turned to Adam, Anna, and my mom, “Is it okay if I bring a person up here to see if I can mess with their memory? I think I’ve done it with one person but she walked away and so I can’t prove it.”
Adam just simply said, “Sure, bring them on up.”
Anna stopped him, “No, don’t do it. If you screw with people’s memories it will mess up the time line. We still need to remember we’re in the past, we don’t want to mess up more than we already have. If anything you shouldn’t even be practicing with pedestrians. You might as well just send every person that you’ve practiced with to an insane asylum.”
“Then who do you suggest that I practice on?” I asked.
The room went silent. Adam and my mom were quiet because they both wanted to see what Anna had to say and Anna was quiet because she didn’t know what to say. She finally said, “Me. I’ll let you practice on me.”
“You do know that I’m new at this, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you do realize that my mind may slip and things may go wrong right?”
“Yes, I realize all of the dangers, but this is logically, the only choice.”
“Just remember that when you’re paralyzed from the waist down and you can’t do anything,” I said slipping into her mind.
The rest of that afternoon was spent trying to get Anna to forget something or to change her memory. It never once worked. There was the fact that her entire power dealt with her memory but even the simple little things like who sat next to her in 6th grade math would not change for even a second. What annoyed me was that I couldn’t’ access her memories. If I wanted to know ho that person was in 6th grade she had to tell me.
That night we had a good meal at an Italian restaurant. After dinner the forum of us headed back to the hotel and the ten of us met in Mike and Johnny’s suite.
“Okay people we’re here because tomorrow is an important day,” Mike said, “Tomorrow isn’t the big battle but tomorrow just like them we have to get ready for the big battle. We need to blast out all of our energy tomorrow so for Thursday in the power since we’ll be normal. We don’t want Dameon to notice us, so if you have any power tomorrow you need to get rid of all of it, if you can. For those people who are naturally with their power, Anna, just try to get use to not constantly using it.”
“Run that by me again,” Heather said, “I lost you about mid way through.”
“Okay, I’ll try to slow down. Basically Dameon can sense any amount of power in people. So, tomorrow, I want us to use as much of our powers as possible so if she looks into the crowd we’ll only stick out a bit. If we don’t do it we’ll be as obvious as a gay couple at a rock concert,” Mike said.
I understood what he said but I had to harass him just a bit, “You know Mike, I love you like a brother, but if you ever compare me to a gay guy again, I just may have to show you some brotherly love and beat you up.”
“Well besides this homophobic guy does everyone get what I’m trying to say?”
We all nodded our heads, and said yes and then it was Adam’s turn to harass Mike, “See, Mike, it’s clear with us, about as clear as much.”
That set off an attack of jesting and laughing throughout our group. After a few minutes Anna stopped us an looked over to me, “Can you connect us together, I want only the ten people in this room to even have a chance to hear what I’m about to say.”
“Can do.” I linked us together and Anna started on her talk about when and how we would take out the leaders. We decided as a group that we would kick up the date and fight them on the next Monday. I knew it was going to be a hard battle from the second everyone started to talk about it. It’s not just everyday that ten people just go up against the worlds leaders, or future world leader’s, but then it’s not everyday that you would run into a group of people like us.
After we figured out exactly what we were going to do we split up and went to sleep. That night I woke up in the middle of the night because my mind won’t let me sleep. When the largest battle between good and evil, this side of the end of the world was happened the net day, you wouldn’t be able to sleep much either. I tossed, I turned, I couldn’t sleep.
As I looked around the room in all of my tossing and turning I tried to find Adam. I couldn’t find him, however for some odd reason I decided to look up. Sure enough there was Adam three feet above his bed with his covers and sheets around him. His closed eyes radiated a faint bale. As I watched him he rolled over in the air and was still asleep.
I wanted to talk to someone so I gently slipped into his mind, “Hey, Adam, you asleep?”
Adam fell from the air and landed on his bed, “I was, but I’m not anymore, what is it you need?”
“How can you just go to sleep? It’s only two days away from the largest battle.”
“You just have to tell yourself to get over it,” Adam said, “If you do, then you’ll be calmer during the battle. A good nights sleep changes a whole lot in how you battle.”
“But, I’m not even fighting on Thursday, so why am I all wound up like this?”
“It’s like waiting in line for a roller coaster, you just can’t wait to go on it so you get really nervous. It’s the same thing but you aren’t anxious for a ride, you’re anxious for a fight.”
“That sounds good and all but what’s a roller coaster?”
“Go to sleep, I’ll tell you in the morning.”
I cut the connection with Adam and pulled the covers around me and tried to go to sleep. Within a few minutes I was in a uncomfortable sleep.
The next morning I woke up to the sun racing over Sunrise Mountain through my window right into my eyes. I tried to roll over so I could go back to sleep but the deed was done, I was awake and nothing could change it. I got dressed and showered, not in that order but they still both got done. When I got done Adam was still asleep. I decide I might as well go out and blast away my mental powers first. I grabbed my wallet that was sitting on the dresser and headed outside to the strip.
I decided to walk around a bit. I dug around in people’s minds until I was spent mentally. I still wasn’t able to get where I wanted to be with my control but my power was all used up and that was the whole reason I went outside.
I went back to our floor and as I came out of the elevator Mike and Johnny were standing there waiting for the elevator. They saw me and Johnny looked relieved, “Good you’re here. Your mom made us start looking for you when you didn’t leave a note. I said that you could protect yourself but she insisted that you were only a kid in a world you barely know about.”
“I am a kid, and I am in a world I don’t know much about but I am a sain and I can defend myself,” I said firmly.
“Wow, where did you come up with that sain thing? I don’t remember ever teaching you about that,” Mike said.
I waved my hand in front of his face, “Hello? I can read your thoughts. Every now and then your thoughts will start mentioning sains and super sains. I can only guess as to what it all means, but my thoughts are that weak people with the power are sains and stronger people are super sains.”
“That’ not completely true, but it’s close enough. Just make sure you realize that what you said isn’t right, just close. One of these days we’ll straighten things out,” Mike said.
We stood there looking from one person to the next when John finally said, “What do we do now?”
“Let’s go to the moon,” Mike said, “It’s a little over rated but it sure is fun. Just remember this time not to wave at the satellites going around the Earth, Johnny.”
“Me? I would never… well maybe not never. At least I don’t scare jet pilots by sitting on their wing, or flying in front of them and mooning them,” Johnny said to Mike.
“He started it. The pilot was the one that kicked me out of the hanger when I said I was part of the self tour program and my tour guide left me.”
“We were at area 51, there are no tours!”
“How was I suppose to know that/ when they locked me in that room they never aid that I couldn’t look around.”
“They brought you there because you were a break of international security. They locked you in a room that was eighty feet underground surrounded by a mob of officers and the best security on the planet. It’s assumed when that happens that you aren’t welcome.”
“It’s not my fault they couldn’t make the room teleport proof. Plus they had no proof to what they were accusing me of. There wasn’t a single thing left that they could hold against me.”
“Exactly, they couldn’t hold a single thing. You demolished an entire town to a fine dust that blew away in the wind. How can the death of an entire town of 3,00 people not be considered weird?”
“How can you defend them? You’ve destroyed towns in your days just as much as I have.”
“Yeah, those were the good times. But back to the topic we’re here for. What do we do now?”
“Moon? Mike simply asked Johnny.
“Moon.” Johnny said back. He looked over to me, “Take a deep breath, because where we’re going, there isn’t any air.”
I took a deep breath and held it in. Johnny grabbed my shoulder and we took the longest teleport in my life. When we were done we were on the moon. Before I could think of what I was doing, I opened up my mouth, “Awesome.”
I was creped out when I heard the word. That usually doesn’t happen in a place that has no atmosphere. Mike looked over to me, “The joys of powers. It’s not something we use too often but it makes a ghetto atmosphere in places like these. If we weren’t in this make shift atmosphere right now, we’d be gone into the vacuum that we call space.”
“That’s nice, but what do we do now?”
“Do what we do best, screw around,” Johnny said, “go ahead, try a back flip without any power.”
I did, I jumped up and threw my weight back, sending my body spinning backwards doing a perfect laid out back flip. I tried again this time with a small twist. The small twist turned into a 720-degree turn. I looked over to Mike, “It’s almost like a trampoline.”
“Yeah, its fun, but after a few minutes, it’s about as fun as walking from one place to another,” Johnny said, “But until that time comes, lets have some fun.”
We did have fun, and a lot of it. It’s not often that you can just jump up and pull off a triple front flip without thinking all too much about it. Being able to lift boulders without a single power was an extra bonus all within itself. After about fifteen minutes of playing around on the moon Mike and Johnny teleported us back to Earth onto the island. When we appeared on the island that was so familiar to us. Once we landed I looked towards Mike, “What are we doing here?”
“Getting rid of our powers,” Johnny said walking away from us. Hopefully a few kamaiahmaiahs should do it.”
“But won’t that send us back or forward in time?”
“No. Time travel works of differing frequency of the power in the blast. The faster the frequency the farther in the future you go. The slower the frequency the farther into the past you go. If we use the usual basic frequency we won’t rip a hole in the time line,” Mike said, “But you hopefully won’t learn about any of that any time soon.”
Johnny by that point was at least twenty or thirty feet away. He stopped and turned around, Mike looked at me and simply said, “Get out of the way.
I didn’t ask questions and headed out of the no man’s land between Mike and Johnny. Once I was a good distance away from them they started out small. Just to get a feel of things they started out by throwing small kamaiahmaiahs towards each other. Once they had a good balance between the two kamaiahmaiahs, they slowly became larger and larger. After a minute the two opposing kamaiahmaihas were huge, they were at least eight feet tall. They were only a few inches away from hitting the ground and they were taller than both Mike and Johnny.
Suddenly the blinding light of the kamaiahmaiahs, died down to nothing. My vision went back because my eyes were trying to adjust to the sudden lack of light. After blinking a few times my eyes slowly went back to normal.
On the beach where they originally started were Mike and Johnny, but they looked different. They looked like all energy from them had been sucked out. They were on their feet and walking towards me but they didn’t have their usual spunk. They made it to me and up close when I could finally see their faces, they looked twice as back. “Did you two use all of your energy?”
“No we each have one more teleport in us,” Johnny said leaning up against me for support.
“What happened to you two? You don’t look healthy.”
“In real time we haven’t slept for the past three months. The only thing keeping us on our feet was the power. Now that the power’s gone we’re three months short of sleep.”
“Lets get back then.”
Mike didn’t waste a second and disappeared. Johnny grabbed onto my shoulder and teleported us back to his room. When Johnny and I got into their suite, Mike was already in his boxers asleep and snoring. Johnny didn’t waste any time and jumped into this bed with all of his clothes on. I walked out of their room and decided to check on Heather to see if she had any spells that could help out with three months of sleep deprivation.
I found her and after explaining Mike and Johnny’s small problem she hunted around her room and found a wand. I pointed at it, “Isn’t that a little stereotypical? The whole wand and all.”
“Now at all. I’m using it as a part of the spell. For it to work right the spell needs a piece of silver to be held against the person’s ribs. The silver can be anything that you want, from a ring to a silver bar just as long as it’s silver.”
We walked out of her room with her still chatting about spells and their components when we made it to Mike and Johnny’s room. The door was locked. I was about to knock over the door by boosting my muscles with power but Heather stopped me, ‘Here hold this,” she handed me her wand.
She grasped the door by the handle with both hands, and started to chant. A click was heard and Heather opened the door, “technology can never stop magic. That spell has been in use since doors were only lock with a piece of wood, and it still works.”
She walked into the room and over to Johnny’s bed first, because it was closer to the door. She lowered the covers slowly not wanting to wake Johnny up. She saw the tee shirt on him and looked over to me, “Does he like this shirt?”
“I don’t know.”
“good.” She said a quick word and with a wave of her hand the shirt slid over Johnny’s head and left him shirtless. She looked back over to me, “Do you have the wand?”
“Yeah.”
“Then, can I have it?”
“… oh… sorry, I didn’t…”
“I know, just give me my wand.
She placed the wand against the brown skin of Johnny and started to chant. The silver rod started to glow a faint red. The faint glow flowed through Johnny and diffused throughout him. Heather stopped, picked up her wand, and moved over to Mike. At Mike she did the same thing. Once she was done the two of us went into the hallway.
“When will they get beter?”
“When they wake up tomorrow morning they’ll only have some minor heart burn. They’ll be just fine.”
“Heartburn?”
“Yeah, it’s a side effect. Just like with some drugs that cure infections that have crazy side effects usually with magic there are side effects as well.”
“You learn something new every day,” I said referring to the side effects, “So, have you followed Mike’s advice and wasted away your power yet?”
“Not yet. I still have a few spells that I can cast,” Heather said walking back to her room. “What about you have you used your powers yet?”
“MY mental powers are fried but I still have some raw energy pulsing rhought me.”
“Want me to help? I have a few summons left and I need to blow them one way or another. If you want I’ll summon up a few easy summons and you can kill them.”
“You can do that? Just bring things here, just so I can kill them?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
“Will they be hard for me to kill because I definitely do not want to be on the wrong side of a casket by the end of today.”
“I’ll start out with really simple things, you should be able to get through them fast. About the third or fourth summon I’ll start stepping up the summons. I won’t summon up big things like my new Tiamat summon.”
“Okay, I’ll do it, but if it starts to look bad you pull back your summons and even help me if it looks that bad.”
“It’s a deal. Lets do this.” Heather then started to mumble something and it turned into a full out yell. She stopped yelling and the world around me started to blur together. The room un-blurred and the world around me was changed. It was basically the ideal heaven. It was light, it was fluffy, and it looked like clouds. Heather was standing here just standing on a near by cloud.
“Where are we? Did we even leave the hotel?” I said looking at the cloud underneath me expecting me to fall through.
“We’re in a different plane of existence; this is the plane of air. The clouds can support you only because I want them to and you want them to.”
“This is a different plane?”
“It’s hard to explain but don’t worry about it. Most people don’t’ deal with the planes especially the inner elemental planes. I know it sounds like I’m speaking a different language but just trust me. Nothing here will hurt you. The only thing that you have to worry about is fall in, but that’s a problem all in itself. So, just get use to your surroundings and once you’re ready tell me.”
I started to walk around on the cloud and quickly found out that tit had ledges. I looked over the edge of my cloud and a deep sense of vertigo came to me. As I looked over the edge I could see no ground. If I fell off of the cloud I would fall for what looked like eternity. I stepped away from the edge and made a mental note to myself to remember to not fall off of the side.
After figuring out the dimensions of my cloud I called out to Heather who was ridding her cloud around. She was standing on her cloud and controlling it magically, so it would go where she wanted to. She flew up next to my cloud and stopped right next to me, “You ready?”
“Yeah, I’m ready, just remember, start out easy.”
She hovered back a few feet from my cloud and started to chant. I turned around and saw in the center of the cloud a small ray of black coming up. The ray started to grow a bit bigger and then completely disappeared. Where the ray use to be was a tiny little thing. It was no larger than a lawn gnome but it looked twice as evil. It had a reddish black skin, a red tail, and fire red eyes.
I didn’t get much time to look at it because the little terror had his razor sharp teeth ready and was running straight towards me.
I charged up my right leg muscles just a bit and when the little thing came at me I kicked him. When I kicked him it was obvious that I had used too much power. It’s face was flattened, his purple blood splattered over my shoe and his head got disconnected from his spine leaving nothing but his spinal chord behind, where his head use to be. His head sailed off of his neck and flew off of my cloud.
Heather flew over to me, ‘See besides having his insides covering your shoe that wasn’t too hard.”
“You’re right. I’ll let you kick it up a notch but I think that is so sick having his brains all over my shoe, but why was that thing even coming for me? I haven’t done anything to make him mad. All I did was stand there and he went off on me.”
“It’s part of the summon. They get called here and I get to control them. As I summon them within the spell I tell them their commands as to what they have to do, it’s that simple.”
“Yeah, that sounds simple, I said sarcastically.
“It is. To me it’s just how I do things. It’s just as weird sounding to me when you tell people how your power works. To you, it just works out but to the rest of us your power is foreign as… well because a lack of a better term, reading a person’s mind.”
“Okay enough about powers, throw me something a bit harder to kill this time, but not too hard.”
“Watch out then because here it comes.” Heather started to chant just like before starting out quiet and getting gradually louder. This time her language was a bit rough4er almost sounding like German, but I didn’t have time to see if I recognized any of the words. A larger pillar of green light this time started to grow in the clouds in front of me.
This time when the light disappeared it showed a large monstrosity. IT was a humanoid but it was ugly. Warts were covering it’s body, a green slime dripped form it’s black hair, and he carried a large club. He took only two steps and he was towering in front of me. I made a quick decision and ran between his legs.
I turned towards Heater and shouted, “What is this thing?”
“It’s a forest troll. He’s just a little hungry right now, just wait till he gets angry, now that’s a sight to see.”
“That isn’t helping me! How do I kill this?”
“What fun would that be? You get to find out for yourself, but just as a warning he doesn’t like it when his dinner runs from him.”
The hulking troll realized that I was done and turned around to face me again. His dark green eyes looked right at me and scared me to death. My body and mind both were screaming at me to run, but I didn’t knowing that the only place for me to run to was straight off of my cloud.
The huge troll made it to me and took a swing at me with his giant club that was larger than both of my legs put together and heading straight towards me with the intent to flatten me. I held out my arms as if to shield me form the blow. When the hit never happened I opened up my eyes and looked around to see what had happened. After opening my clenched eyes I looked up and saw that somehow my

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arms had stopped the blow. My hands were holding on to both sides of the club, and holding it still. I know that it wasn’t me who planned to do that but it worked whatever it was. I decided to practice my ice bolt on the troll.
I took a handful of my power and turned it into the ice and water mix that I was then use to. I let the transformed power just slide out of my hands and onto the club. The entire club on cue turned into a large club-sickle.
I let go and the troll looked at me then back down to his club that was frozen to his hand. He was a little confused at what happened and didn’t know what happened to his club so he did what any tow year old would do, he licked it. Sure enough the troll’s slightly blue tongue got stuck to the club.
Heather on the sidelines started to laugh a bit but I was still fighting for me life. I ran around the troll who was still trying to remove his tongue from his club. When I got behind him I decided to see how bad I could make this large troll look.
I threw a small fireball towards the small leather underwear looking thing that he was wearing. The seat of his underwear caught on fire. This got the attention of the troll.
He wasn’t too bright, but he knew one thing, cold stops heat. With that knowledge he ripped the club off of his tongue tearing way the first few layers of his tongue. He then started swinging the club at the fire hopping to put it out. Instead of putting out the fire with the club he fanned it. The fire grew to his front side and he started to hit the fire there as well in hopes to put it out.
His lack of intelligence showed through when this happened. He took the ice covered club which was frozen to his hands and repeatedly hit himself in the groin. Each time he hit himself in the groin he let out a little yelp and staggered back a few feet. By the fourth hit to the groin he was only a few inches away from the edge of the cloud. The fifth hit literally sent him over the edge.
Once the troll was gone off of the cloud I looked around and found Heather. She was laying on her cloud clenching her stomach laughing. Her laughing sent me into a small giggle at first then into a full laugh. The more I thought about it the funnier the thought of a troll beating himself to death by hitting himself with his own club into his groin, got.
We finally composed ourselves and Heather flew over to me still giggling a bit, “I told you that things wouldn’t be too hard. You just have o know your opponents and then you can attack their weaknesses. In the case of the troll as long as you used some common sense and stayed away from the club, you’re good to go.”
“Speaking of the club, you saw that crazy block I made, right?”
“Yeah, I couldn’t believe that you did that.”
“That’s just the point, it wasn’t me that did that, it was something else. If I had a choice I would have curled up and taken the hit. So was it you that did that to me?”
“Me? For once I an honestly say no. I can swear on anything you want me to, I didn’t do a thing.”
“You sure? I know it wasn’t me that did it.”
“I know it wasn’t me.”
“Then who or what did it?”
“When we get back tomorrow when Mike and Johnny are awake ask them, they would probably know what it was all about. If not, good luck trying to figure out what happened.”
“They will probably know, so lets stop worrying about it. I only have a bit more power left so either summon me up something big that will eat away your power or an army of little guys.”
“Okay, one large summon coming up.” Heather flew back onto her cloud and went a few feet away from me. This time in front of me the pillar of light was a twisted color. It looked like a really large candy cane, but the colors were different. Instead of the colors being a twisted white and red they were a twisted black and red. The ray became larger and larger. Before it disappeared the ray took up most of my cloud. When it finally died away a black dragon stood in front of me.
For all of those people who have never had the opportunity to run into a black dragon that was tweaked with a little fire magic let me tell you one thing, run.
That was my first thought when the huge dragon stared down at me with his fire red eyes and I could smell the brimstone on his breath. Just from the looks of this monster I knew I was screwed. There was no way that I could beat down the black fire dragon, not only was he big, strong, and twice as smart as me the dragon also had one little thing called fire breath.
As I stood there starring at him a small hint of fire came out of his nostrils. This put me into action. I yelled out to Heather to help me, “Heather, you said you would help. I know I don’t want tom become dragon food so help me out here!”
“I’m working on it, give me a second. Just keep Cliffy busy for a while.”
“Cliffy? What type of name is that for a dragon like this?”
“It’s better than Peaches, or what I was originally going to call him, Bob,” Heather’s eyes went wide as she was talking to me, “Trip, when I say three jump as high as you possibly can.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask, just… three!”
My mind kicked into high gear when she shouted three. Everything almost seemed to slow down. I jammed my legs full of energy and jumped like it was the only thing that would keep me alive to see another day. As I started to sail through the air time kicked back into it’s normal flow. I looked down to where I use to be standing and all I saw was a large black claw swooping down to where I use to be.
The dragon didn’t like this all too much and he showed his appreciation. His large tail arched over his back and slapped me down onto his hot scaly black back. I grabbed onto the scales around me and held on for my dear life knowing that he would start to buck me off within any second.
The dragon didn’t waste a second. From the moment of my impact the dragon started to toss and turn. IT was a miracle that I held on as long as I had. By the time I was bucked off, Heather was summoning up something else.
In front of the dragon was a growing green ray of light. This was taller and larger than any of the previous rays that I had ever seen. When it faded away there was a monster that was made entirely of thorns. It was as if a bunch of thorn bushes had gathered together, grew to an immense height and got smart. It’s eyes were tiny brown shrubs, it’s hair were long thorns, wooden thorns covered it’s body like a natural armor with some of them being larger than me.
The dragon near me stopped playing around with me and perked up as if he was aware that finally he had some challenge.
Heather yelled out to me, “Trip, get out of there! If you can try to jump up the thorn elementals body up to where his head should be, hopefully you won’t get hit!”
“Hopefully,” I said quietly to myself wondering what would happen if I did get hit. I didn’t spend too much time on that thought too much because behind me the black fire dragon had spread its wing to full length and let out a roar that made my skin crawl.
Once the roar was done I didn’t hesitate, I charged up my legs and jumped straight towards the thorn elemental. I caught a hold of one of the larger thorns near his ankle and then started to jump from one large thorn to the next, slowly working up the large body of the monster.
When I made it to where it’s hips should have been the dragon beneath me let our another roar and started to flap it’s large wings. This only made me work harder and in no time I was up and on top of the thorn elementals head. On the head it wasn’t too hard to stay on, there were enough roots and stems to hold on to that it was almost impossible just to fall over.
As I was appreciating the view Heather flew up to me on her cloud, “How’s life ten stories above the ground?”
“Not bad, now that I’m not getting killed. Speaking of which, when are these two bad boys going to start?”
“Once you start commanding him to fight. With no mental power you should be able to access his body control, memories, sense, and all of those good things. Give it a shot.”
I did and it worked. With very little pressure on my part I slid into this things mind. It was so different from what I was use to. I was able to see what it saw, hear what it heard, and most importantly I could find out what it had learned in its life. As I went into it’s memories I gained a new respect for the pile of plants. I isn’t have too much time to ponder because I needed to fight with the dragon right in front of me that was a little upset.
I dug quickly through it’s thoughts and found out the basics to what the pile of thorns could and could not do. I switched over to movement and tried out on of the things that I skimmed over in its memories.
A few large thorns appeared on the palm of its hand. The palm was facing down towards the dragon, then I let go. The seven thorns flew towards the ground and pinned the dragons wings into the cloudy ground.
With the dragon pinned to the ground my mind went straight through the thorns memories to see what could help me next, and then I found it.
I moved the thorn elemental around so it had it’s back to the dragon. Thorns started to grow just a bit more on the back of the elemental then it started to fall. It fell backwards, as stiff as a board onto the dragon with its spiky back poking into the dragon. As we laid on top of the dragon I wanted to get my point access so the thorns on the back of the elemental that were inside of the dragon all doubled in size. The dragon underneath me stopped twitching then suddenly both the dragon and the thorn elemental disappeared and I fell on my back, onto the clouds. I was a bit stunned but one I stood up I saw Heather flying towards me.
“Did you have fun fighting as a ten story tall bush?”
“It was different,” I said, “but how did I control him so easily? Not even humans are that easy to push along.”
“Part of the spell sets that up. During the casting of the spell you can decide who gets control of the summon. Most times I get them but occasionally I’ll let other people control them.”
“Do you always control them directly like I just did? Isn’t that a little hard to do?”
“Not usually. I usually just give my commands to them at the beginning then I let them do their thing. I do that because usually they can control themselves better than I can.”
“Good point. Are we going to do anything else because if we do it better be small, my power is almost gone. How’s yours?”
“O only have a spell to get us back, other than that, I’m spent. It’s not everyday I try to throw out two large summons really close together. I could maybe somehow pull off a tiny summon but then we would be stuck here.”
“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go back home.”
Heather closed her eyes and said a few quick words then the clouds around me started to blur together like before. Things started to come back into focus for me and my view shifted back to where we started, outside our hotel rooms right next to the elevator. When the spell was done I looked up at Heather, ‘What now?”
“I don’t know, what is there to do at 12:00 in Las Vegas?”
“How about gambling?”
“No, too boring; too predictable.”
“Adam talked about something I didn’t know about, possibly you could help.”
“Try me.”
“Roller coasters, what are the?”
“You don’ know what roller coasters are?”
“No.”
“You’ve seen the front of New York, New York don the street haven’t you?”
“Yeah, what about it, it’s just the New York sky line.”
“It’s not the sky line, it’s the stuff in front of it. What do you think all of the red metal is that’s in front of it?”
“Nothing, I just thought it was some twisted metal rods that were painted red and that had some sort of weird cars on it.”
“That jumble of metal is a roller coaster. I know that to you, you’ll just see it as physics at work and you’ll be calculating every part of it, but for the more normal people in this world, we just like how if feels. For us it’s just the thrill of being rocketing around with only a few inches of metal separating you from falling, and the wind in your face.”
“People are willing to ride on those things? They look like death traps, and they sound like it too. If they are so safe, why is it people are always screaming?”
“You scream because… well… just because. It’s almost like a scream of joy, but you’ll have to experience it to know the answer to that question.”
“Now that’s an open ended answer if I’ve ever heard it.”
“Since you don’t believe me lets go to one,” Heather said pushing the down call button for the elevator. “Were going to take a little field trip.”
The elevator doors opened up and the two of us went down to the street level. We walked to my car and we drove out of the parking lot. Heather gave me directions as we drove. We ended next to a big shiny pink dome. As we drove near it I asked Heater, “what’s the dome? I may not know roller coasters but I know that the dome is not a roller coaster.”
“Just wait you’ll see,” Heather said making me even more anxious to see what exactly was going on.
I parked our car and we walked through the hotel and into the pink dome that I learned was called the adventure dome. When we first walked in I was amazed. On the outside the little dome looks just like that, little. Inside there was everything. We walked around first and Heather told me the names to al of the rides and attractions. There was everything from a thing called laser tag to bumper cars.
The two of us walked up to where you can buy tickets fro rides and Heather bought each of us an all day pass for all of the rides.
When we got the wristbands put on our wrists I headed straight for the roller coaster. Heather tried to stop me saying that I wasn’t ready yet but I knew that for me it was all or nothing, I just kept walking towards the line. When I made it to the line I headed straight for the first row, so I could sit front seat. Doing this got another reaction from Heather, warning me.
I turned around in the line and simply said, “I think you’re more worried than I am.”
Her jaw dropped and she was stunned, “I am not, I just don’t want you to get sick.”
“We’ll see about that.”
The train came in and the people before us unloaded out of their cars. I walked right into my seat, sat down, and pulled the harness over me. I looked to my right and Heather was ready too. Over the station intercom the attendant said the usual keep your arms and legs inside and have fun speech, pressed a button, and the car started to roll forward.
We took a turn right and the chain on the first hill caught us. ON the way up Heather looked over to me, “Just remember I warned you about a loop coaster.”
“I know, I know, but just let me have some fun and try something new.”
The train made it to the top of the hill. We took a small decline then took a left turn, and then the long drop loomed in front of me. Suddenly the train jerked forward and we were speeding down the first hill heading straight towards two loops, followed quickly by two corkscrews.
Midway through the second loop heading towards the two corkscrews, I don’t know what came over me but I started to yell. It was weird, the ride wasn’t scary at that time and I didn’t feel at harm for any reason but I yelled out. After doing that I could finally see what Heather was saying about how you just yell.
When we got off of the ride I was feeling great. The ride was nothing compared to Mike and Johnny teleporting but it was fun. Heather was happy too and wasn’t showing signs of sickness. “Can we do it again?” I asked a little excited.
“Of course, we just have to hope we can run fast enough to get back in line before the rain leaves.” Nothing more was said, we were both running towards the entrance for the ride. We made it back with only seconds to spare. Someone else took the front seat but we didn’t care, we just found two open seats and sat down somewhere towards the middle.
The car lurched out of the station and started to go up the long incline. I looked over to Heater, “Do you think there is a way to make it so we can ride it over and over again without changing seats every time?”
“Yeah I’m sure if we gave the manager a few hundreds he would let us.”
“Should we?”
“Later. For now let’s try out the different seats and see which one we like the most.”
“That’s good with me.”
The train finally made it to the top of the hill and we were off again, yelling just a little bit less than the time before, just to save our voices.
After the end of the ride we were off running around the station, this time heading for the last car. We rode the ride a few more times trying out different cars each time. By the seventh or eighth time I knew where I liked within the ride, the back.
In the back you didn’t get the good view like the front but that was what added to the fun. Also the back had a rougher ride. It wasn’t smooth like the middle; you got torn up ridding in the back. While all of the cars picked up speed going down the hills the back got pulled down the hill by the other cars. The back of the train was what I preferred.
During the next ride while going up the lift hill I told Heater about my preference. She said that the next time we got off if I wanted to w
We could pay off someone an ride it until we got sick. I agreed and we rode the ride again. Once it was done we walked out of the station and headed towards the place where we got our tickets.
Heater went up to the window and acted as if she was about to kill someone, “ I need to talk to your manager, now.”
The teenage girl on the other side of the glass practically ran into a back room and within a few seconds was walking back with an adult man. The man came out side of the office and asked with a hint of nervousness in his voice, “What do you need mam?”
Heather smiled nicely and completely changed attitudes to be a nice bubbly personality, ‘Yes I was wondering if there could be a way for me and my nephew here to ride the roller coaster continually, without getting off? Could we do that?”
“You could, but it’ll cost you some money.”
“How much, we’ll pay it.”
“For the two of you, $3,000, until the park closes.”
“$1,500 each to have the ride until the end of the day?”
“Yes.”
“Could we bring more people near closing and the ten of us just constantly go on it, never stopping at the station?”
“The same rules apply, $1,500 each even if it’s only for two or three hors.”
“Thank you. We’ll be back in less than an hour with 15,000 dollars in cash ready to pay,” Heater said, shaking the manger’s hand, “We’ll see you then.”
Heather grabbed my hand and we left the manager and the teenage girl standing there with confused looks on their faces. We headed out o my can and we drove to our hotel. On our elevator ride up Heather and I broke up the rooms we would check on and get the group together. I got to check my room, Mike and Johnny’s room, and Bethany and Cisco’s room. Heater got her room and my mom and Anna’s room.
When I got to Mike and Johnny’ room I yelled at them a few times to get them up and told them that we would be leaving in three minutes and they needed to get ready. I left them getting ready and still half asleep and headed towards my room.
When I walked in Adam wasn’t there but surprisingly his jumpsuit was lying on a chair. I was going to leave a message on a notepad for him but I wanted to try something else. I went over to his jumpsuit and flicked it where Adam’s right elbow would be if he was wearing it. Nothing happened immediately so I punched the jumpsuit a few times.
Suddenly Adam pushed open the door, “Stop doing that!”
I pulled my hand back form the jumpsuit and looked at him, “So you are connected to your jumpsuit.”
“Yeah, I am, just don’t let it out. Just because of that one reason now you know why we, the people that own jumpsuits always seem to be wearing them. Now that I have bruises all over my body, what is it that you nee?”
“We want to get the ten of us together.”
“We?”
“Heather and myself.”
“And were are we going, what are we doing?”
“We’ve set it up so that at that pink dome…”
“Grand Slam Canyon?”
“Yeah, that’s the place3. Well, Heather set it up so that for only $1,500 per person we can ride the rollercoaster until we puke.”
“Only the roller coaster?”
“I think so.”
“We should pay them twice that per person and let us have the park to ourselves until midnight. I’ll talk to them when we get there and we’ll see was I can do.”
“I just need to talk to Bethany and Cisco, and we’ll be off,” I said heading towards the door, “Just hang out by the elevator and wait for us.”
I walked over to Bethany and Cisco’s room and knocked on the door. It opened up and there was my mom standing in her jumpsuit. “What do you need Trip?”
“Can I come in?”
“Of course you can.”
I walked in and sitting on the bed wearing warm up pants and a tee shirt that was from e-promo wear was Cisco. With him lounging on his bed I finally realized that my mom was really Bethany. I turned towards Bethany, “Okay you can drop the shift now Bethany, I know it’s you.”
My mother’s features slowly melted away into Bethany’s normal form, “I never have liked you Walters, you’ll never let me have my fun.”
“What can I say, it must be in our genes to hate fun. Speaking of which, we’re going to rent out the adventure dome, that big pink dome for the rest of the night and wanted to know if you wanted to come.”
“Both of us?” Cisco asked.
“Yes both of you.”
“Wow, that’s a first, you always seem to exclude me.”
Bethany looked at Cisco, “Shut up,” she jokingly said, “If we wanted someone to complain we would have brought along Chris. Plus you don’t look too excluded when we street race.”
“Good point, I’m in.”
“Great, just meet up by the elevator and remember your wallets because we do have to pay quite a bit of money to get in and do this.” I started to head back outside to the hallway, “I’ll see you guys there, I need to check up on Mike and Johnny.”
I headed over to Mike an Johnny’s room, the door was unlocked so I walked in. When I walked in Mike was pulling on a shirt and Johnny was lacing up his shoes. Both of them looked awake but they looked like something was still wrong, “How are you two feeling?”
“Strangely better,” Mike said, “I was sure that I wouldn’t feel this good for another three or four days.”
“Heather helped you guys out with a spell,” I said sitting down on Johnny’s bed.
“That explains the heartburn,” Johnny said, “but I’m glad she did it. I’d rather have heartburn then being asleep for the next two days. It just feels weird not having the power going through me.”
“It feels normal for me, it feels abnormal when I have energy,” I said.
“Well, after 500 years of having power you get use to it, so when you don’t have it you feel empty,” Mike said slipping on his shoes, “Okay, I’m ready, lets go.”
We left the room and outside waiting for us was the other seven people of our group. The ten of us crammed into the elevator and went down to the ground level. We walked through the casino and into the parking lot. The five drivers were Mike, Johnny, Cisco, Anna, and me. We had in our cars my mom, Natalie, Heather Bethany, and Adam respectively.
Yet again once one of us started our engine and pulled out of the parking spot the racing started. I knew where we were suppose to be going so I passed up Mike, who was in the lead, and turned off onto a side road. I floored the gas and took off. While we were driving there Adam tried to say something to me but he was drowned out by the loud techno that was blasting from the radio.
I turned off the radio and the hum of the engine and a loud siren filled the air, “ I tried to tell you a while ago that the cops are on our tail but you wouldn’t listen.”
“How long have they been after us?”
“Since we turned off of the strip. I hope your driving skills are up, these guys aren’t your normal pigs in normal cars, these guys are meant to get street racers.”
“They were waiting for us?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“Then let’s go and meet them.” I drifted the car around and made a quick 180 degree turn and drove straight towards the three cop cars behind me. They swerved out of the way and I drove through them I took a few quick turns and hopped that they wouldn’t follow me, but after a short time they were back on me.
“Adam do you by any chance have anything that can help me out? I could loose them in a long chase but I don’t want to take that time.”
“Yeah, just keep driving straight ahead, do not turn, even if it looks like we’re going to run into a building, just keep going. I’ll keep care of us.”
I floored the pedal, revved the engine, and took off straight towards a large industrial building. As we got closer to the building Adam’s eyes started to glow a dark blue, and I felt the car lift up off of the ground. We drove over the building and landed on the other side.
“Quick, get us to the park, fast. I’m sure after that little trick the cops want to find us. It’s not until tomorrow that they’ll be use to seeing things like that.”
I drove recklessly to the park. Once I parked the car we gout and walked slowly into the casino. We made it into the park and next to the ticket register was Anna and Bethany.
“How did you guys not get caught by the cops?” Adam asked.
“We let you guys take all of the cops. Once you went off getting chased, then we drove straight here without a single problem,” Bethany said.
We waited for the next ten minutes by the ticket stand and slowly the other groups came in. Of course Cisco and Heater walked in last. Cisco said it was because he didn’t know where to go but we all knew that he just enjoyed making the cops scratch their head as he lost them on the streets.
Once we were all together at the ticket booth, Heather, our forced representative got the manager to come out again. When he came out and saw the ten of us, his eyes went wide. Heater wasn’t doing so great with the negotiations so Adam walked up to him and pulled him aside. As they talked to each other the manager started to look more and more excited.
When they got done Adam came over to us and the manger headed back to his office, “Okay this is what is going to happen. As a group we’re going to pay a mere $50,000, so $5,000 each and we will get the park all to ourselves from 8:00 to closing at midnight. Until that point we get free rides on whatever ride we want.
“We have five hours until everyone else leaves then another four hours without anyone?” Mike asked.
“Yes.”
“And we can do anything; play any game that we want?” Bethany asked.
“Yes, that reminds me everyone keep track of these cards, I know they look like credit cards but they will get you anything here. Just show your card or swipe your card and you can get anything until midnight tonight.”
Adam passed out the cards and we went our different ways. I headed off with Adam, Mike and Johnny. The four of us, the only young teenagers in the group, went first to a few of the midway games. We all had our own games we were good at. Adam was strangely good at the game where you shoot the water at the clown and the balloon inflates and then explodes. Mike was the best at the straight forward gave of where you hit the pad with a sledge hammer and it shows how strong you are. Johnny was good at the games that required dexterity like the one where you throw a ring on top of coke bottles. While I had a strange knack towards ski ball, the game where you roll a wooden ball up a small ramp aiming for the ball to drop into a hole.
We played every game there was available, we even spent some time on some video games, but they were not as much fun as the games that were rigged against us at the midway. After the games we started on laser tag. We played laser tag time after time for an hour and a half. We got pretty good at it. Adam the only one still with access to powers, would float us all up to the ceiling and we would just lay on top and shoot people as they walked by.
After cheating at laser tag, we started riding the big rides. At this time we rode them just to ride them. Once we rode the rides it was only two hours until we had the entire park to ourselves. By then it was 6:00 at night and none of us had eaten dinner, so the four of us went to a small restaurant that was inside the dome. After a nice dinner we headed off to the rollercoaster. When the train came into the station Cisco and Natalie were in the middle of the train. Mike and Johnny got in front of them and Adam and I got behind them. On the way up the lift hill we had a small conversation. We couldn’t see each other because we were strapped into our chairs but we were still able to yell to each other.
“Hey, Cisco, how long have you guys been on this thing?” Mike yelled back.
“Only for a few rides, I think this is number three or four,” Heather yelled, “How long do we have until the park gets cleared out?”
“An hour,” Adam yelled up.
“That’s a long time to ride a rollercoaster,” Cisco said.
“Actually, it’s only 20 more times,” Adam said, “That is if every ride goes at an average speed of…”
Mike cut him off, “Thank you Adam, that’s enough from you, but seriously why would we want to sit here for another hour? We need to do something else while we’re waiting for our free time.” Mike then looked over to Johnny and they had a quick conversation, but we didn’t get to ask them what about because we were finally on the top of the hill and the ride was going.
When we got done, Mike and Johnny left and the four of us stayed. I looked over to Adam, ‘Where are they off to?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Don’t make me pull it from their brains because if I want to I can.”
“You can’t pull memories, or at least that’s what you’ve been telling me.”
“I can’t but if I push you to think of something then I can hear your thought’s It’s not exactly the best thing to do but it’s a loop hole and it works, for now.”
“Yah, it’s a loop hole, but you’re all out of mental powers, you couldn’t even transmit your voice if you wanted to.”
“All I would have to do is charge up. Remember I’ve found a way to get normal raw power to convert into mental power.”
Adam sat there and thought about it trying to see a way around what I could do and what I wanted to know, “Okay I’ll tell you. They’re going to get stoned.”
“Who would want to do that?” I asked thinking of the actual punishment of stoning, where everyone picks up a rock and throws it at a person.
“I don’t know, I think they’re just addicted to it.”
“How can anyone be addicted to something like that?”
“I have no clue. Just be careful when they come back, they are usually really messed up after they get stoned.”
“I would assume so, but I still don’t get it, isn’t doing that illegal?”
“IT is, but some people do it just because they like to break the law.”
“So people put themselves in a place where they could die or be seriously messed aup and mutilated just to go against the law?”
I asked still think about Mike and Johnny getting stones thrown at them.
“Yeah, they just like it.”
“But doesn’t it usually work better if there’s a crowd. It’s a little boring to stone yourself.”
“That’s why they went together.”

111-120

“You can get stoned with only two people?” I said thinking how mike and Johnny could do that.
“Yeah, why couldn’t you?”
“Wouldn’t it just be painful, because it would take so long?”
This finally caught Adam’s attention, “what are you talking about?”
“Getting stoned. That old punishment where people picked up a stone and then threw it at a guilty person until the guilty person gets killed. What were you talked about?”
“Smoking weed.”
“Weed?”
“Marijuana. It’s a narcotic that effects your senses and emotions. It’s just a drug,” Adam said.
“Marijuana? I’ve never heard of that before.”
“Don’t worry about it, just be prepared for them when they come back, they’ll be a bit different. I don’t know how to say it any other way, just wait and you’ll see.”
We rode the roller coaster two more times before mike and Johnny came back. When they did come back they acted a little weirder than normal. There was no obvious thing that you could say what was wrong with them, they were just a little happier and friendlier than normal.
Finally after a few more rides and some quality time with Adam, who seems a whole lot more talkative when he’s strapped down, the park was closing to normal customers. Just so we wouldn’t stick out we got off of the ride and waited by the ticket booth. Only a short time after closing the manager came up to us, “The park is now yours to own. You can use anything you want our people are waiting for you.”
“Actually let tem go home, “ Adam said, “You too. I’ve worked rides before and it isn’t too hard. We don’t want to waste your time. So, go home and we’ll close up.”
The manager was shocked; he was like a deer in headlights. All he was able to do was just nod his head. After staring at us in unbelief he walked into his office and over a loud speaker announced, “This is your manager Mark speaking. You are allowed to go home, you will still get paid your arranged overtime.”
Nearby an operator for one of the rides let out a loud yell, “Yet! I get to go home!” and practically ran out. Twenty or thirty other ride operators quickly followed him. Once the lower level people left every one from inside the office grabbed their stuff and left leaving the ten of us with the entire park to ourselves.
As soon as the park was empty my mom started to walk towards the roller coaster, “Come on let’s get this ting going. If I paid that much money I want a good ride.”
We all started to walk to the ride but then someone started to walk a bit faster. The power walking turned into a jog and then into a full out sprint towards the roller coaster. Adam stood behind the control for the roller coaster and started playing with a group of buttons. After a few tried he finally got the restraints up and we all piled into the cars. I sat in the third car from the front with my mom right next to me. In the front was Cisco Mike Bethany and Anna. Behind me was Heather sitting next to and open seat for Adam followed by Johnny and Natalie in the back of our group but near the middle of the train. Adam pressed a few more buttons and then walked over to his chair. He yelled out, “Everyone grab your restraints and pull them down.”
We all did as he said and when we were all done he yelled out again, “Okay everyone hold on, were doing this hyper speed.”
The train jumped to speed and the world around me blurred out of view. I had to blink a few times until my eyes and brain adjusted to the speed I was traveling at. Finally I realized that we were already plummeting down the first hill headed straight towards the loops and quark screws. We sped down the hill continually going faster, speeding through the loops. In a matter of seconds we were back in the station but we didn’t stop we went right on through at break neck speed.
We went through the entire ride another five times at that speed until we stopped, finally. Adam didn’t stop us in the station he stopped us when we were upside down on the second loop, “How do you like that?” Adam yelled out.
“I would like it better if I didn’t have a person yelling in my ear the entire time,” Natalie said, “It’s surprising that at 200 miles per hour, or however fast we were going that Johnny can still get air and yell.”
“What can I say? Rides just aren’t rides unless you yell a bit,” Johnny said.
“I’ve got a request, “ Cisco said from in front of me, “Adam can you kick this thing in reverse?”
“Sure, let’s just get to the station first,” Adam said, “I think some people want to go to the restroom first.”
“Yes,” Anna simply said.
The train lurched forward at a normal speed and we rode the ride until we were back to the station. The restraints lifted up and all of us got out. Some of us got out to stretch our legs and other got out to run to the restroom.
When everyone get back we pilled into the train and pulled down the restraints. Adam yelled out, “Okay we’re going to start out relatively slow but then each lap we’re speeding up.”
The train jumped to life and we started to go backwards. Adam did take it slow the first lap, he was only going roughly 50 miles per hour. The ride backwards was different. You couldn’t see what was coming so you got tossed around in your seat and at 90 miles per hour or so getting tossed around in your chair wasn’t a good thing. The more times we went around the smoother the ride seemed, just because we knew how to prepare ourselves for the bumps and turns.
Adam seemed to like going around 190 miles per hour. It was weird though because the world around me was a blur of lights, but next to me sitting ever so calmly was my mom, playing with her fire. One of the crazy things that she would do was make a tiny ball of fire and throw it up into the air. That wasn’t too abnormal however the arc that the ball of fire was traveling would end at another section of the roller coaster, where she would catch the ball of fire. She was basically playing catch with herself while traveling at 190 miles per hour.
Another thing my mom did really freaked me out. She took rods of fire and cooled them down to where they produced no heat, then put them on the track. I wasn’t too worried about the fire, it was where the fire led, it diverted off of the main track onto it’s own track. This got a little scary; going backwards, on rails of fire; through the entire park was defiantly something new. After about a minute of joy riding through the park she put us back on the normal track, and Adam slowed us down as we stopped at the station.
Once we pulled in to the station the restraints lifted up and we all got out of the train. My mom walked over to Adam, “Do you think I can sit in the front car? I wanted to do more when we were going backwards but I couldn’t see where we were going.”
“Just ask Cisco and Mike, I don’t know if they will give up their seats, other than that, I see no problem with you pulling it off, just remember to always have a track, I’m not so sure people will like it all too much if they start falling with nothing to stop them.”
“Good. Do you think other people will ride it?” my mom asked, “I don’t know it Anna can take this.”
“She’ll get use to is. She’ll either throw up or finally be able to teleport without getting sick. I know it sounds rude but it’s for her own good. Every one else will love it, the more complex you make it. Just go and do it, and try not to kill us.”
“Thanks Dad… I mean Adam,” my mom said hugging Adam.
She walked up to the first car and sat down and motioned for me to come up with her. I stood next to the car, “Aren’t Mike and Cisco going to be upset that we took their seat?”
“They’ll understand,” my mom said pulling the restraints down over her head, “Are you going to get in and ride the best roller coaster out there or are you going to worry what people think about us taking their seats?”
“Okay, I’m in.” I sat down next to her and pulled down my restraints. Other people started to file in, and they started to sit down in different spots. There was no commotion at all about the new seating arrangement like I expected.
Once the last person was in, Adam started the roller coaster at it’s normal slow speed. It felt good to go slow, but then my mom started to do her thing and we branched off of the track..
She kept it simple at the beginning but then Adam kicked it up a notch in the speed. Once we got going at our usual 190-200 miles per hour, my mom started to get a little creative.
The ride started getting a little wild. One time we were only three feet above the ground, and then the track twisted around. That made it so we were upside down only three feet from the ground. It was so close that I didn’t want to put my hands up because of the fear of my hands scraping against the ground.
It was just weird because when I looked ahead of where we were the track wasn’t there. The track was building itself only five or six feet in front of the train. It was the craziest ride, there was never a part where we were going straight and flat, we were always turning, flipping, rising, or dropping. We did everything, and then we did it again. By the time we were done we had traveled every square foot of that dome in the roller coaster train.
After riding in the roller coaster for so long we finally stopped and got off. By that time it was almost ten and we all agreed to go back to the hotel to go to sleep because we all knew that the next day would be a big day and we all needed to be ready and awake, so we went back to the hotel and went to sleep.
The next morning we woke up around 10:00 and got ready for the big day ahead of us. I put on my favorite pair of pants, which were a dark green and very large, and also a white tee shirt that had a little green man on it that every one called Gumby. I checked my hair in the mirror and it was still in perfect form. Every one else dressed up too. Instead of just wearing street clothes to the battle we considered it more a concert so we all dressed up in the best street clothes we had on hand. The only people that were not wearing street clothes were Cisco and my mom, because they had to act like student teachers, but they still dressed up. My mom was wearing a dark red suit coat with khakis and Cisco was wearing a nice white shirt with a sweater vest over it and a nice pair of dress pants.
As a group we headed down to the parking lot. We didn’t eat breakfast or do anything because the Dameon battle was suppose to happen around 11:20 and we wanted good seats so we needed to get there at the beginning of lunch that was at 11:00. We separated into our cars and raced over to the high school.
We pulled into the parking lot right at 1:00. We parked our cars and walked into the school. It wasn’t too full because it was open campus and most kids left school to go eat some real food. Once we walked into the quad area Adam said, “Okay people time to break up. Trip; link us together so we have a connection with each other. Just remember that the ten of us should never be seen as a group.”
I was about to remind him that my mental powers were shot but then I remembered that whenever I sleep my powers regenerate themselves. I linked us all together, with my eyes closed so no one would see my yellow eyes. I sent through the group, “Okay we’re together so everyone is free to go where they want.”
Everyone split up into different groups. Adam, Mike and Johnny went up stairs and stayed up there looking over the quad area. My mom and Cisco went towards the teacher’s break room to fill their cover. Anna, Heather and Natalie stayed together and headed off to one corner of the quad. With everyone gone Bethany and I were stuck together. Bethany who was in Lucy form took my hand and started walking towards the lunch room, “Let’s go say hi to Adam. He’s just a little stressed out right now and it’ll calm him down a bit to see his friends here. We won’t go and talk to him because he’ll be talking with Dameon but just seeing us walking around and possibly a quick wave will boost his morale a bit.”
“Won’t that mess up the time line? Couldn’t that somehow stop them from killing Dameon?”
“It could but we’ll only find out if we do it. Let’s go,” Bethany said dragging me into the lunch room by the arm.
I caught my footing and tried to catch up with Bethany. Thankfully she slowed down and I was able to walk comfortably next to her. We walked in together into the lunch room, and the sensory overload hit me. There were probably 500 kids, all talking at the same time and all eating food that smelled really good. B3ethany didn’t let me look for to long she pulled me one way and started walking, “Hurry, Adam is this way.”
I ran to keep up with her, “Where? Where is he?”
Bethany pointed to a table near the middle of the lunchroom, “There.”
Right when she said that Adam turned around and saw us. His face lit up and he smiled. Bethany smiled and waved. Adam turned back around and started talking to whoever was at his table. Bethany turned to me, “See that girl sitting next to him with the brown hair?”
“”Yeah, I see her. What about her?”
“That’s Dameon.”
“Dameon? That girl is Dameon? That is the supreme evil on the world? The thing that is meant to destroy the earth is a skinny plain brown haired girl?”
“Yeah, and it takes three people to kill her.”
“I don’t believe you, but I have to.”
“Let’s go outside and get a good seat. I don’t know about you but I want to see the entire thing close up.”
“I headed towards the door, “With the ultimate battle of the century happening I think I’ll want a good view as well.”
We walked out into the quad and took our place right next to the fence that separated the gym from the rest of the school. As we sat there I decided to try to calm my nerves with a joke. I broadcasted through our mental connection, “I have $50 saying the Adam, Mike and Johnny will win.”
“The actual odds of them winning are quite low. The only thing that helps their odds is if Adam tried out his power. If Adam doesn’t find his power, things will get ugly real fast,” Anna said through the connection, “The odds are in Dameon’s favor 1:30, or I should say 30:1.”
“Don’t worry about the odds,” Adam said, “If all else fails we’ll jump in and help out.”
“We’ve killed her once, why not again?” Johnny said, “I wouldn’t mind blowing Dameon to shreds, again.”
“Could we have screwed the timeline up so much that the battle is unbalanced more than normal towards Dameon?” Heather asked.
“It’s possible, but since we haven’t destroyed the time line too much, there should be no change in the battle. Minor things may change with us living it up so much, but major things like this fight shouldn’t be affected,” Anna said.
I thought about that for a second then my mind wandered over to the thoughts of the leaders. “How many times has someone or a group of people threatened to take over the world, and actually have the power to do it?”
“Just about every month for the past 40 years, our time,” my mom said. “Before the leaders every month we had either and evil genius, a person with powers, a demonic messenger, or an alien race trying to take over Earth.”
“They all thought Earth was an easy target but most of them didn’t know about S.N.” Johnny said, “It got boring after a while. Once you hear one evil scheme to take over the world you’ve heard them all.”
“It became a joke in SN about who had to defend the world from the evil master mind. It got so bad that Chad had to assign people because no one wanted the job of world protector,” Adam said.
“Before SN got broke up Chad was trying to make the MIB take care of it but MIB said that they wouldn’t because they don’t deal with world safety unless it’s from aliens,” my mom said.
“Stupid MIB,’ Cisco simply said, “The only thing they’re good for is killing aliens.”
“They kill a whole lot of aliens, so you should appreciate them. They also cover up what we leave behind. If it wasn’t for MIB powers would be known about even before the Dameon battle,’ Anna said, “It’s just like Natalie here. If it wasn’t for her our little world would be swarming with devils, demons, and other bad little things.”
“Thanks Anna, it’s nice to hear that someone knows that I do something important,” Natalie said.
“Every one does something important. MIB kills aliens, Natalie and slayers in general kill demons, and we get stuck with everything else. We each do our own things, and we all hate what we do, get use to it,” Bethany said.
“That was deep,” Johnny said.
“Too deep fro me,” Mike said. He then broadcasted through the group another little thing that he made sound so normal but in reality was really important. “Hey guys we’re coming out of the cafeteria with Dameon getting ready to fight. If you want a good view I suggest you find your spot now.”
I turned around and sure enough Adam, Mike, and Adam were walking out of the cafeteria with Dameon behind them. I looked over to the other side of the quad and Cisco and my mom were heading towards the gates. Mike, Johnny, and Adam stood up, where they were sitting above the quad. Anna, Heather, and Natalie moved out of their corner and started to head towards ‘Lucy’ and me.
Everyone was in good viewing area right when the supper sains and Dameon made it into the little fenced off area in front of the gym. All of the people that were standing around in front of the gym took one look at Mike and Johnny who were giving everyone ‘the look’. ‘The look’ makes any one afraid, it’s the way Mike and Johnny look at you, it basically tells you, get out of my way or else I’ll make you get out of my way.
Once every one left the mayhem started. In a split second Adam was teleported up on a nearby roof, for safekeeping, by one of the two super sains, but it went so fast that I couldn’t tell. As soon as Adam was on the roof Mike and Johnny practically tore off their clothes and were standing there facing Dameon, with their jumpsuits on. Adam wasn’t quite as fast as Mike and Johnny but he was standing there in his jumpsuit too.
A few words were exchanged between Dameon and Mike and Johnny but then the fighting really began. There was more fire power in the first few seconds of the battle than I had even dreamt of. I mentally asked Mike and Johnny, “You guys can still do most of that?”
“Yeah, now days we can even do it faster and with more power,” Johnny said.
“That’s crazy.”
By then the fight was getting noticed by kids and there were mobs of kids on each fence trying to see what was going on. I could see what was going on but it was too fast fro my brain to understand. I could tell Mike and Johnny were trying to hit Dameon with fireballs, ice bolts, and ball lightning but whenever they got close to Dameon she just reflected them up, or something like that, because they just couldn’t hit her.
After a few fireballs Dameon’s eyes started to glow a deep red and all of the open gates around them slammed shut, locking everyone out. Dameon then went a little powerful. Her eyes were glowing an even stronger deep red and started to hover off of the ground. She flung her hand out in front of her and Mike and Johnny were thrown back into the gate behind them.
From what I could tell the gate led to the back parking lot but there were still a group of people there, standing next to the gate watching the fight. Some of the kids reached through the gate and patted Mike and Johnny on the shoulder encouraging them. While they were still on the ground Dameon flew over to them and taunted them a bit.
Mike said something but it was in a different language so I couldn’t understand what he said. As soon as he was done Johnny teleported behind Dameon and started blasting her with the elements. This gave enough time for Mike to stand up and start blasting. Once the two of them got a good rhythm going they started to teleport around Dameon in hopes to disorient her, and hopefully hit her with something, but it didn’t work. Every shot was deflected into the air.
IN the background I could hear cop sirens and Adam must have too because he yelled out to mike and Johnny, “Hurry up, the pigs are coming.”
Dameon who was mainly concentrating on Mike and Johnny, spun towards Adam and looked him over. I could see Adam was a little nervous but he returned her gaze. Dameon looked back towards Mike and Johnny, “What do we have here?” she looked back to Adam, “You’re dressed like a super sain, and they seem to like something about you, but I can’t feel the power inside of you.”
Mike threw a large ball lightning towards Dameon to get her attention, “Leave him out of this Dameon. We’re the ones that are about to kill you, not him.”
Dameon got a little upset when Mike said this, and she flew to the opposite side of the caged off area. She summoned up two girls that she called Cathy. Mike didn’t want to waste any time, he threw a 5-foot kamaiahmaiah straight towards the two girls.
The girls seemed to just unravel, like a sweater when you pull a loose thread. The two piles of thread started to mold together, and started to form a large version of the two girls.
While the huge girl was coming together Adam yelled out to warn Mike and Johnny about the cops coming. Johnny spun around, singing a tune I didn’t recognize and threw a wide ice bolt straight towards the oncoming swarm of cops. They stopped in their tracks and tuned into a huge ice wall that blocked any person from coming form that direction.
I looked back to the girl and she was just finishing up at a massive 16 feet tall. She opened up her eyes, and they were glowing the same dark red, of Dameon’s eyes. She started to swing her boulder sized fists towards Mike and Johnny.
They dodged out of the way and started to fly around the girl trying to kill her with fireballs and the sort. It didn’t help that Dameon was fly around trying to hit them with little bolts of black electricity, but they were doing okay from what I could tel.
My Johnny broadcasted through our mental link, “Hey everyone look, Adam’s about to use his power for the first time. IF you can look at his face, it’s part confusion and part gleefulness.”
Adam defended himself, “All I have to say is that after close to 450 years of watching you two get all of the fun using your power, it’s a god feeling to finally be able to fight back.”
I turned my head over to Adam and he was crawling down a drain pipe. He made it to the ground, stood in front of the crowd, held out his hand, and then people flew. The entire crowd flew back twenty feet through the air. One kid in the large mass of people got up and ran towards Adam. Adam just stood there and the kid flew back with the group of people. Adam looked like he was thinking hard and then he turned around so I could see him, Johnny was right. He looked a bit confused but he had a grin on his face that was fit for a jack-o-lantern.
I looked back to check on Mike and Johnny and I couldn’t see them. I broadcasted through our group, “Does anyone where know where Mike and Johnny went?”
“Were charging up,” Mike said.
“Why isn’t Dameon going after you? When you guys charge up you’re open targets,” Bethany said.
“I think she thinks we’re waiting for her, trying to set a trap. So, she thinks that right now she’s avoiding our trap but really we’ don’t have a trap and she’s just giving us a whole lot of time and power to kill her with,” Mike said.
“We’re almost done charging up,” Johnny said, “Look for us right above where it says Las, in the Las Vegas.”
I looked up to the roof above the Las and sure enough Mike and Johnny were fling over it ready to fight. As they were coming over the wall, they pulled their hands to their sides and threw small kamaiahmaiahs towards the large girl. It caught her off guard and she full apart into a small pile of ash.
While they were getting done killing the girl, Dameon caught them off guard and start started to lift Mike and Johnny up in to the air mentally. Mike filled the group in on what was going on, “Dameon sucked out all of our brand new, fresh power. She’s planning to slam us into the ground from 400 feet in the air.”
Adam saw that Mike and Johnny were in a little trouble and tried out his new power. Dameon flew across the small fenced off area and rammed into the fence by the frozen cops.
Dameon didn’t seem to like that too much and started to lift Adam up off of the ground raising him up slowly up to Mike and Johnny’s level. Adam was twenty feet in the air and started to drag Dameon up with him. At around 100 feet up into the air Dameon let go of Adam. Adam dropped a few feet but then realized that he could control his own accent and brought himself up to Dameon’s level. When he made it up to her level his eyes went a dark blue and were glowing with a vengeance.
Daemon then flew up a few feet then she looked like she was forced down, headed straight for the wall of police men. She rammed into the wall and her body went limp.
Adam flew down to Dameon and saw that she was unconscious then flew back up to Mike and Johnny. The three of them landed on their feet, then Mike and Johnny started to charge up. Adam’s eyes went blue again and Dameon’s unconscious body rose up from the ground.
The three of the standing there was the perfect picture. Mike and Johnny were standing charging up about two feet apart and a bit behind them was Adam, his eyes glowing blue. The colors were amazing, but then my world was lit up. Mike and Johnny both at full power threw seven-foot high kamaiahaiahs both focused on Dameon.
Damon didn’t take the power too well. The massive amounts of pure energy pulsing through her body over loaded her system and she died, disintegrating into a fine black dust. Once Dameon was dead the gates opened up, Adam took Mike and Johnny and flew off, while the onlookers pushed against the fences and started to come through the gates.
I saw Heather run in real fast and take a tablespoon or two of the Dameon dust and then the group of us from the future headed back to the parking lot by our cars. “What happens now? What does everyone say and do?” I asked.
“You get to see that for yourself,” Adam said, “Let’s get out of here before everyone in town is over here.”
We got into our cars and as we were driving away from the school it looked like most of the town was going to Las Vegas High School. It looked as if every cop car and news van within a fifty mile radius was heading towards the high school. News copters were flying through the air, trying to get a good picture, and the ten of us were the only ones trying to head away from the fight with the three people that everyone was looking for, just 40 years older.
As we were driving I dropped the connection with everyone except for Mike and Johnny. “Hey guys, have you ever noticed how when you’re fighting, somehow you do things you’ve never thought of?”
“Every time,” Johnny said, “Why?”
“What do you think does that? I just want to know because it happened to me.”
“It’s the power. The power has a will of its own. It wants to be in a living being so occasionally the power will take control and help you out a bit,” Mike explained, “It’s just an added bonus of having the power.”
“I feel so honored,” I said sarcastically.
“You should, you’re not having to learn everything by yourself you have people to teach you. You may not be all powerful right now, but you should be happy just because you haven’t had to teach yourself,” Johnny said.
“Good point.” I revved my engine up a bit so people could hear my car around me and I broad banded my next thought, “Any one want to race?”
Mike didn’t even answer; he just took off full force. We started to race back but it just wasn’t as fun as before, all of the cops were gone, but just the speed was fun enough. As we were driving Anna, my passenger turned on the radio to news radio. The only thing they talked about was the fight. They had an ‘expert’ panel of people that all thought they knew what was going on. None of the panel had a clue about what was going on.
One person thought it was a group of mutants in a gang fight, one said that it was a sign of the end of the world, and my personal favorite was that they were aliens that had come to abduct every person in a high position and put in an alien in their place, and that Mike, Johnny and Adam were protectors of our planet.
By the time we got to our hotel I was sick of hearing the news reports. When we got up to our rooms we headed into Mike and Johnny’s room and turned on the TV. The news wasn’t much better in their reporting they played the same video tape each time and guessed about what was going on, and none of them were right.
Natalie finally stood up and turned off the TV, “I can’t stand this any more. They never say anything new. A person could shoot another person and they wouldn’t give it a second of air time.”
“Who’s up for some rioting?” Bethany asked.
“I am! My mom said, “Crazy mobs know hot to do things right.”
“I didn’t know you had that inside of you Mom,” I said.
“You didn’t know a week ago about anything. We all have our covers, it’s just my cover is almost completely opposite of what I am really like.”
“There is nothing wrong with being part of a mob,” Bethany said trying to defend my mom.
“I never said there was something wrong, “I said correcting Bethany, “If anything I want to be part of the mob, from what I hear it’ll be the only time in the history of the world that I’ll be able to openly use my powers and not get looked at funny.”
“So you’re in?” Bethany asked.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Good, now is there anyone else who doesn’t want to riot?” Silence filled the air, “Wonderful, then lets go be an angry mob.”
We pilled out of the room and headed back down stairs to our cars in the parking lot. When we made it to our floor my mom pushed us back inside of the hotel.”
“Why are you stopping us?” Natalie asked.
“Are their cops out there or something like that?” Cisco asked. “No.” My mom’s eyes started to glow red then instantly every car in the parking lot, except ours, were ignited. Even from inside the hotel, behind closed doors, the heat was immense. “There’s nothing out there, nothing at all.”
“Wow, I never knew. Michelle Walkers; the anarchist,” Adam said.
“What are we waiting for? Let’s go loot and pillage!” Cisco said heading out side into the smoldering parking lot.
“Lets not, and say we did,” Anna said, “Or at least let’s go to a different city. Not only is this town the capital of weird, with a big W, but not to sound stupid or anything but don’t Mike, Johnny, and Adam all live in Vegas?”
“What about that?” Cisco said.
“well won’t they be just a little ticked if their hometown starts getting attacked by a bunch of crazy people powers?”
Cisco looked over to Mike and Johnny, “Well...?”
Johnny looked crushed to think that Cisco couldn’t figure it out, “What do you think Cisco?”
Cisco turned back to Anna, “Okay, if not in Vegas where to?”
“Simple, Miami.”
“Miami?”
“Yeah, we’re going to Florida, is there something wrong with that?”
“Nom it’s just I expected someplace closer like LA or San Diego.”
Mike grabbed Cisco on the shoulder; we’ll keep it local just for you. We’re going to Hong Kong, China!” Mike reached out and pulled Anna, Heather and Natalie towards him, “come on girls, and Cisco, tonight we riot!” Then he disappeared with the girls and Cisco in had.
I walked over to Johnny, “Okay Johnny lets go.” Adam Bethany and my mom grabbed onto Mike and we teleported to Hong Kong. With the time change it was about 6:00 in the morning, the sun was just coming out above the horizon and people were waking up. Street vendors were arriving at their carts started to open up shop for the day.
As a group we started to walk down the street looking at all of the goods. The first person to start the mobish activities was Cisco.Cisco ran into a group of people that were just standing around and talking and he started shifting into a dragon right in front of them. Some of the group ran away screaming but a few people stayed and just admired the view. The older people stayed just because they were superstitious and knew that dragons were protectors of good, the

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other people that stayed around were the young kids and the teenagers. The young kids stayed around simply because they wanted to see the dragon.
Adam was next, he flashed his eyes blue and his clothes flew off of him leaving him in his jumpsuit. Most of the people looking at our group were then at a full sprint heading directly wherever they could hide.
Mike and Johnny both teleported a foot in front of them leaving their clothes behind them, so they too were standing in their jumpsuits. My mom burst into a column of fire and was then standing there in her jumpsuit with her hair up, held by a few strands of fire. Bethany’s skin went a metallic grey that started at her feet and moved up to her head.
I was a little left out, I didn’t have a thing to do. Every one else, except Heather, Anna, and Natalie, had some cool thing that they could do, but we were stuck just in the background being us.
I thought Heather was one of us, the people who had nothing flashy but I was proved wrong a few seconds later. A green glow surrounded her body then it died away. Once the light was gone she was in a suit of some sort. It was like she was inside of an animal, or at least wearing the animal. Her arms were covered with boney white spikes that could be counted as both weapon and armor, and her legs were covered with the same spikes.
I looked over to her, “How did you do that? I thought you only summoned up big fat creatures.”
“I did summon up a creature I just infused it with me. It makes me a bit stronger but the creature doesn’t fight. It’s a give take relationship.”
“Whatever.”
Standing there watching everyone run away form us gave me an idea. I walked up to the small group of people that weren’t running away and just went wideband and mentally told them, “Just wait until you see me mad.”
The message must have translated into a language they knew because they went wide eyes than ran away. Once they were gone my mom started to laugh. “That was an open ended threat if I’ve ever heard one. The only thing that you can do when you get mad is threw a few fireballs and make them jump up and down.”
“You heard that?”
“I think that everyone in an 80 foot radius of you heard that, and I’m sure that all of them know it was you, the yellow eyes are a dead giveaway.”
“It worked didn’t it?”
“Good point. What are we waiting for now?”
“Absolutely nothing, let’s go!” Mike said heading down the street, “Just remember no killing, only mass destruction and chaos. Cisco, you’re just so big, just fly around. You can try to follow us but good luck being that big.”
From the dragon that was Cisco came a voice that actually wasn’t too loud, “Okay, point taken, I’ll take to the air. If anything comes like Godzilla, I’ll care of them.”
A few flaps from his wings and Cisco was in the air soaring away from us. We grouped together and started to head down the street. As we were walking I noticed one thing that was wrong, Bethany wasn’t with us.
I quickly connected us all together and I still couldn’t find Bethany. I broadcasted through our group, “Does any one know where Bethany is?”
No one knew but then Anna spoke up, “She’s on me. She wanted to help me out because I have no power, that can really scare people, unless quoting to them Shakespearian sonnets in Cantonese and Mandarin and half of them in Latin.”
“That would scare me,” Johnny said, “but then everything you know scares me.”
“But it’s not enough to turn you into a crazy rioting mob is it?”
“Nope, sorry, your little power just makes me a little creped out, not frightened into rioting.”
“Okay then, now that we know where very one is, lets get moving,” Natalie said walking again towards the end of the street.
Then we started to riot, with our powers. If we wanted to destroy something we did it. Windows meant nothing to us, and cars…well cars were made to fly up into the air like little rockets.
Our little group of rebels started groups of anarchists and soon there were mobs of people destroying anything that got in their way. The best part was that after the first few times of showing off our powers people finally accepted us. It was nice to finally feel accepted by other people while throwing a fireball towards a car. I knew that this time would only happen once so I took it all in, not wasting a single second of the bliss that I felt.
About an hour into rioting, the group I was with found another group that was headed by another person. As we got closer I noticed two things, first off, they destroyed everything. If a person got in their way, within a few seconds that person was dead. With them you were either with them or against them. Second, who seemed to be their leader had powers.
It’s a dead giveaway that a person has a power when they turn to look at a car full of people and open their mouth. Then once they open their mouth a pitch that is just above human hearing comes out and ignites the car, killing every person in the car in the process.
Seeing the people in the car get killed really sent me off over the edge. I’m perfectly okay with rioting, but rioting and killing people are two different things. I dove inside the guys head, “That wasn’t very nice. What did they do to you?”
The guy looked around trying to figure out where the voice was coming from. He finally looked at me with my glowing yellow eyes, “That’s right, I said that.”
I turned around to the small group of people around me, ‘Get out of here fast, this is between me and him.” It translated mentally and they understood what I said and scattered into alleys and side streets.
I then turned my attention back to the other guy, “Get rid of your followers, this is just you and me.”
He sent back to me, “I’m not as stupid as you are, I do things my way.”
Okay then we’ll do things the hard way.” I dug deeper into his mind and started to command him. He turned around to face his group of people and let out an ear piercing screech that made you want to cover your ears and run. Luckily enough for me the group of people around him thought the exact same thing and took off running.
I turned him back around to face me, and I walked towards him, making sure that the entire time I had a firm mental grip on his mind and body, I didn’t want him to start screeching when I was right in front of him. I got within three feet of him when I broadcasted into his mind, “Today’s moral of the story is; don’t screw with people who haven’t done a thing to you, it’s not nice.” I pulled my hands to my said, “And by the way, have a nice day.” I gave him a toothy smile then threw a large ice bolt at him and turned him into a human ice cube.
His brain functions started to slow down, and then he went unconscious, so I let go of my grip on his mind, knowing that I wouldn’t need to do a thing because he wasn’t avle to do anything.
I still had my mental link to the group so I targeted Anna, “Anna, where is the police office, or better yet, the jail. I have a person with me who isn’t so nice. He’s on ice for now but that will only last for two or three hours.”
“Does he have powers?”
“Yes.”
“Give him to Mike or Johnny, they’ll take him to Area 51. Right now they’re the people who deal with super powers because SN isn’t even made yet.”
“Thanks Anna.”
“Any time I can help.”
I moved my attention over to Mike’s brain, “Hey Mike, I have a person with me. I need you to teleport them to…um… Area…”
“51? You mean Area 51?”
“Yeah that’s the place. Anna told me that’s the place to send people with powers, for now.”
“And as usual Anna is right, I’ll be right over give me a second. I’m running from some cops right now and I want to freak them out by running down a dead end street and the teleporting away.”
“How will you know where to find me?”
“Send up a fireball. Just a flashy big one, nothing too powerful.”
I grabbed a bit of energy inside of me, turned it to fire and let if flow out of me. Once the fireball made it above the roof of the nearby stores I heard Mike yell at me form down the street, “I see you!”
I didn’t want to waste my voice so I broadcasted to him, “It’s the guy in the ice. When you take it there warn them about him and tell them to wear ear plugs… really good ear plugs.”
‘I’ll pass along the message. If you could, once I teleport away could you run from the cops like you were me? All you need to do is hold my spot for a few seconds then I’ll be back.”
“Okay, I’ll do it, but how many cops are there following you?”
“Only a few. Last time I counted only twelve or thirteen, there may be a few more now.”
“Are they on foot or in cars?”
“On foot, but I heard some of them radioing for air and ground support, so I wouldn’t put it past them for having cars or even a helicopter after you.”
“it sounds fun.” Mike was getting closer to me and then he was right next to me. He grabbed the ice block then teleported away. I powered up my leg muscles and started to run.
I started out slow at first, nothing that a normal person couldn’t do, but then I saw the cops behind me. There were three cars racing towards me, behind them, just a bit farter were roughly twenty cops on foot running towards me. I quickly readjusted my speed so the cars could barely keep up with me.
I sped up even more when they pulled out the guns and started to shoot. One time they shot at me and missed me by inches. The bullet grazed right by my ear and I jumped, I jumped high. Just because I had powers didn’t mean that I couldn’t get killed by a bullet.
When I jumped I dodged away from my right side because my right side was where the bullet almost hit me. Since I dodged left, I landed on the roof of the nearby buildings. Once I landed I took off at a full sprint, jumping from building to building.
After jumping from building to building across streets and alleys for a few minutes I jumped down into a back alley and took off onto the streets again.
As I was running down the street Mike teleported back, right next to me. I slowed down then finally stopped so I could talk to Mike.
“How is the great man hunt going?” Mike asked.
“Good, until they tried to shoot me. Once they pulled out the guns I took off at full speed. I don’t like guns.”
“How far behind us are they?”
“They aren’t behind us, I think that they are more to the side of us over that way. I jumped a few buildings and left them behind.”
“You think that they’re over there, thanks for keeping them running, but I’ll take over from here.” Mike teleported away and left me by myself.
I slowly started to walk away but as I walked next to an alley something jumped on me and knocked me on the ground. Whatever happened it wasn’t good because in a short time I was unconscious and not having a clue as to where I was.
When I woke up I was lying on a table with a light shining in my eyes. I tried to move my arms but they were attached to the table under me.
I made a quick mental check and every one was still with me in my mind. I didn’t care what was going on I yelled through our group connection, “Help me now!”
“Trip is that you?” my mom asked.
“No, it’s the tooth fairy, yes it’s me! If you didn’t quite catch onto things, I need some help!”
“Okay just calm down,” Natalie said, “deep breaths.”
“Where are you and why do you need help?” Bethany added in.
“I have no clue where I am, but I got knocked unconscious and woke up strapped to a table. From what I can see around me whoever did this to me is ready to play doctor.”
“I really have to be the person to inform you of this, but it’s sort of obvious, remember you do have powers. I think that just possibly you can blast yourself out of there,” Adam said, “If not give us an hour and we’ll tare this town apart looking for you.”
“Thanks for the encouragement; does anyone else have a better plan?”
“Trip, just suck it up and do it,” my mom said, “Just start blasting everything that gets in your way and don’t stop until the bodies stop twitching. Plus, it’ll be good for you to go on a rampage and let some anger out.”
“That was so touching,” Cisco said with a fake sob, “If only every parent out there was cool enough to let their kid go on killing rampages.”
“Thanks Cisco, it’s nice to know I’m appreciated by someone.”
“Okay, I get the point! Just remember when you guys get kidnapped by crazy people and you get locked up, I’m not coming to save you.”
“That’s good to know,” Bethany said, “I now feel safer.”
“Okay, can every one just be quiet for a few seconds I’m trying to escape right now.”
“We’ll shut up sooner or later,” Mike said, “but most likely later.”
After that comment everyone went quiet for my sake and I went to work. I first tried to twist and turn out of my restraints but then Adam’s comment came into my head. I charged up all of my muscles and then broke loose of the metal restraints.
Once the restraints were broken alarms started to sound and people started to rush into the room I was in. I didn’t feel like fighting so I ran to a nearby wall and kicked through it with two quick kicks. Once I made a hole large enough for me to squeeze through I jumped through it into another room that looked a whole lot the room I had just came from, but there was a girl lying on the table.
I ran over to the table, broke the restraints and picked up the girl. I threw her over my shoulder. I then started busting through the next wall hopping that they next room led out, but it didn’t. The room next door led into yet another room like before but this time there was a guy, quite possible around 22 years old. I bust him out of his locks, and gave my mental power a shot. I connected to him and the girl and gave a mental yell that could wake the dead. They snapped to life and slowly woke up. Once they were away both of them thanked me for my help. From what the three of us could tell the guards surrounded us and we were cornered.
“Okay, I’ll be the first to say it, we’re screwed but why? I know my power, but why are you two in here?” I said trying to figure out some sort of way out without blowing the place to pieces.
“I can change into different types of matter. Solid, liquid and gas are all par for me,” the girl said.
The guy who was rummaging through the room trying to find something finally gave up and gave a shrill whistle and held out his hands. A whistling noise came back then in his hands appeared two large axes. They couldn’t have been more than three feet long, but the blades were huge. The blades were a half inch thick and at least 18 inches long and ten inches wide. “There are why I’m in here.”
It then finally hit me, “You two know English?”
“Yeah, we’re here together. We were here because of a vacation with a few friends but it didn’t work out all too well,” the girl said.
“Are there more of you… well… with powers?”
“There use to be one other but she’s gone, luckily she got away fast enough. I know she’s out there trying to get a group to save us, but it’s been two weeks now,” the guy said almost complaining. “Don’t worry. If you guys need anything in the future just give a group called SN a call. They’re based in the US, but wait a while because right now they are a bit busy. Give them a month or two before you talk to them, and they will be more than willing to talk with you.”
“Thanks for the advice, but we first need to get out of here sunny,” the guy said.
“Never call me that, you’ll end up on the ground faster than you’ll be able to understand. If you want to call me a name just call me Trip, I’ll actually answer to that without blowing your head off.”
“Okay, Trip,” the guy said with an edge, “what do we do now?”
“First we charge up, I’m a little low on energy right now.” I stood there and in front of him and the girl charged up to full power. “Now, I go out and kick some butt. IF you would like to help, go right ahead; just don’t get in my way.”
“Just as long as you don’t get in the way of my axes,” the guy said swinging them around a bit just for show.
The girl finally stepped into the conversation, “Will you two stop fighting? You sound like little boys. Just because you both need some guidance, Ryan you take the hole in the wall with me, Trip, or whatever your name is, you take the hallway.”
Ryan dragged his axes towards the girl, loudly scraping them on the concrete floor, “Okay January, whatever you say.”
“One more thing,” January said, “You don’t need to kill everyone. I can already tell that both of you want to make this place full of blood and guts, but try to restrain yourself. Not all people will be trying to hunt us down.”
The door next to me which had been barricaded by a few chairs was finally broken in by the swarm of guards behind it. The guards of men came in through the door with their guns drawn and ready to shoot. I dropped my group link with everyone and pulled into all twelve of the guards that were in the room. I got them all to stop cold in their tracks. I motioned for Ryan and January to join me, “don’t worry, they’re under my control. We’re going to make it look like they have caught us and that they are taking us to someplace new, but really they will take us outside and let us go. Is that bloodless enough for you?”
January looked at me, “Can you actually make them do all of that?”
“I think so. I’d rather make them all sing songs from Broadway musicals, but that won’t help us out too much, unless you want to hear the rent-a-cop version of Cats or even better yet Chorus Line.”
“That’s tempting but I’ll have to save that entertainment goliath for another day.”
“Then let’s not delay, let’s go.”
We were escorted out of our room by our captors and after a few wrong turns we finally made it outside. Ryan and January went there way while I sent the guards back inside. I knew that once they realized that I wasn’t controlling them any more that they would be after me. Every second that I was controlling them, they were aware and alert, and most people don’t like it when their body is taken over and used against their will.
Once I let go of them, I took off and jumped up onto a roof then from that roof I took off towards down town Hong Kong. I jumped up onto one of the high rises and threw a large fireball up into the air, hopping it would get someone’s attention.
The first blast didn’t get anyone to me so I threw a few more into the sky. Finally Cisco flew by and I connected into his mind, “Cisco, could you fly a little lower? I need a ride.”
“Can do.” Cisco swooped down low and I jumped onto his scaly back. I moved up to his neck and held onto the large scales on his neck.
“By any chance do you know where any one else is? I think it’s time that we leave Hong Kong. After getting abducted and getting almost killed, I want to go back to our temporary home.”
“Did someone have a bad time in Hong Kong?”
“No it’s just, Vegas time it’s almost 7:00 in the night. Not only do I want to sleep, but I want to see the 8:00 news. I want to see what is going on in the search fro what was going on with the Dameon battle.”
“Sorry, but you’ve missed the news, it’s on at 5:00 and 6:00 but at 7:00 you start the sitcoms. There is CNN and they could have something about it, but the national news is just starting to catch onto things. It won’t be nationally known until tomorrow morning. It took, will take, whatever, it’ll take time to go nation and worldwide because the nation and international media don’t think that something like this could happen.”
“You’re saying that all of those people that were rioting were rioting, just to riot? They didn’t know a single thing about the battle?”
“They didn’t know a single thing. A few of them may have known because of the internet but most of them were rioting, just to riot.”
“Are we changing the timeline because of this?”
“Yes,” Cisco said bluntly, “There was no riot before we came. I know that this will change the future. Before us, there wasn’t a single riot until tomorrow. MIB will still wipe out the memory of everything that happened, but us people that don’t get wiped will have a new memory.”
“Anna is probably upset about this; she doesn’t want to even touch the idea of changing the future, even in the memories of just a few people.”
Cisco landed in a large open area and told me to get off. I jumped off of him and Cisco started to shift into human form. As Cisco shifted into himself and got clothed Mike, Johnny, and the rest of the group walked into the open square.
“What went on while I was gone?” I asked them.
“Not much,” Anna said.
“We only destroyed close to everything that could be destroyed,” Johnny said, “but we were good little super heroes and we didn’t kill a single person, just because we wanted to. We did kill a few people, but that was for a completely decent reason, they shot me.” Johnny made his jumpsuit arms roll up and on his left arm between his elbow and hand were three or four dime sized holes in his arm that were slowly rebuilding themselves. “People just don’t realize how much a bullet hurts, it just hurts. They say it’s painless, but I say to them painless like the Great Wall of China is just a little pile of stones.”
Adam leaned over to me, “We all have our pet peeves, and Johnny just hates getting shot. He’s an expert at it, he’s gotten shot 15 times now, and he’s still going strong.”
“Fifteen? Is that it? I swear that it seems more like twenty or even thirty,” Johnny said.
“Shotgun shells count as one, not however many bee bees his you,” Adam corrected.
“Still, I’ve been shot more than fifteen times,” Johnny started to name off the list of how many times he’d gotten shot and who shot him.
My mom finally put an end to his list which seemed to repeat over and over, “Johnny, shut up. Charge up, fix your wounds, and then get us out of here. No one cares how many times you’ve been shot; just get us out of this place.”
Johnny shut up and started to charge up. Right there in front of us Johnny’s wounds seemed to heal themselves. It was like you were watching a move but it was rewinding itself. When he was finally charged up we split up into two groups and teleported back to Las Vegas into our hotel rooms.
I headed towards my room and when I entered I turned on the TV and started searching through the 100 or so channels that I could view. I finally found a channel that was saying something about the Dameon battle and how it was just a hoax and that no one could ever do something like it in reality.
I was getting a little upset at the reporters. They always work with the facts and report the facts, but this time every fact available to them pointed towards a world with powers and they just wouldn’t accept it. When I was about to turn the TV off they went to a reported who was live in front of Adam’s house saying that they were waiting outside of the culprit’s house to see if they had anything to say.
Just then the front door opened and Mike and Johnny followed by Adam walked out of Adam’s house. The reported attacked the three of them with questions. Adam tried to answer them but it just wasn’t working with all of the noise they were making.
Suddenly the screen went silent and Adam’s eyes were glowing. Adam had clamped every reporter’s mouth together, so they couldn’t talk. He took questions one by one and the chaos of the media soon died down and the basics of who they were and why they did what they did came to the surface.
Once they were done with their makeshift media conference, the name of the game within the news was ‘twist their words around.’ The media quickly took every word that they had said and tore it to shreds.
Angry wasn’t quite how I was feeling, it was worse. I could not believe that in a society that accepted gays, lesbians, and other extreme groups like the KKK, that there would be such outward hate towards people with power. No one in the media knew a single thing about powers but they all talked like they were experts. We were called everything from freaks to mutants. It just showed how that people are afraid of what they don’t know.
Adam was in the room lying on his bed staring at the ceiling listening to the news reports, “Can you turn that off? They never get it right. Everything we tried to say got twisted around. By next week we’ll be on trial for murder.”
“Murder? Why?”
“We killed a person, and it was defiantly premeditated.”
“But you killed Dameon because you needed to, for the good of the entire world.”
“They didn’t care. They thought that if you kill someone you are bad. Plus we can’t prove that prior to today Dameon was an immortal. We were screwed, so MIB stepped in. It was because we saved the world that MIB decided to help us out. They thought that if we helped them out with saving the world, they would help us out with our stuff. All you need to add is a few people from the FBI, and you get SN.”
“Do these news reports get any better?”
“Nope.”
“Then why don’t we just cut our trip short and go take out the leaders tomorrow?”
“I’d love to.”
“Then why don’t we?”
“Everyone else in our group doesn’t have the same opinion. Personally, I don’t see why we didn’t just time hop to the Dameon battle when we first got here. We did absolutely nothing important in those few days. I want to go rampaging through the leaders hid out but I know that I’ll need some back up so I stay with you guys.”
“We should talk to every one tomorrow and see what they think. Maybe we can get a few people to change their minds about staying in Vegas.”
“Talk to people, and tell them.”
I quickly linked into everyone who was in their room, “Okay people, we’re going to have a quick meeting tomorrow in my room at 8:00. We are going to be talking about the leaders because some of us want to kill them now. See you then.” I cut off my connection to every one so I didn’t have to deal with all of the arguments and comments that would have started up. I looked over to Adam, “Okay every one knows.”
“You are such a slacker,” Adam said lifting up his had. A glass of water floated from a near by table into his hand, “And I’m proud of you for that.”
“It’s just a lot easier with powers.”
“Now you can see what I was talking about when I said you just use powers in your every day life and it’s hard not to.”
I laid down on my bed and stared up at the ceiling just thinking about everything that was going on. It just felt good to think and rest. It was peaceful to just lie there and realize everything that had happened to me in the past two weeks.
All of the announcements of powers, the teleports, the battles, my powers, finally it all hit me. It was just so weird to think to myself I had powers, that I could control people just with a thought. It finally hit me that Adam, who looked like my peer was my grandpa. I also realized that I was in the past and I was going to change the future. One little teenager from New York was going to save the world, and that was me.
Everything finally cleared up to me while lying on that bed. Some things scared me while others comforted me, but it was just generally good for me because I could finally figure out everything. Things finally made sense to me. As I lay there deep in thought I started to get sleepy and I fell asleep.
I woke up the next morning to CNN talking about the Dameon battle. They had everything backwards and upside-down. It was if they just couldn’t understand anything that was told to them. Even after the press conference with Mike, Johnny, and Adam they still got the facts wrong. There were still people who thought that they Mike Johnny, and Adam were everything from aliens attacking earth to a cult trying to recruit members.
I mumbled to Adam who was sitting on the ceiling, “Can you turn that off?”
“It’s not too bad; the only people that are sort of out of it right now think that we’re spies from communist Russia, even though that Russia isn’t communist any more. However those few strange people are convincing everyone that knows the truth towards their own twisted views,” Adam said as he stood up and jumped down to the floor doing a front flip and a half and landed on his feet. He walked over to the television and turned it off.
We headed downstairs for a quick breakfast. All during breakfast people were staring at us. Some looked at us and just turned away while others would see us and try to get out of the restaurant. I looked to Adam, “Why do they look at us like that?”
“We’re strange teenagers. They are suspicious about teenagers. They don’t suspect we have power, they’re just afraid of teenagers.”
“Can we show them we have powers? Just give them a good scare? I just don’t think it’s right to stare at people just because you want to.”
“Go right ahead, MIB will take care of them, just remember, we don’t want to change the time line too much.”
I turned around so I could face all of the people that were watching us, and I pushed out my mind a bit to try to burn off some power because all I wanted to do was to get my eyes to glow yellow. I burned off my power for a few seconds then I turned off my power and turned back around to Adam, “Okay I’m done with breakfast, you ready to go?”
Adam forked in some eggs and bacon and stood up. He pulled out a fifty dollar bill, dropped it on the table and we headed out of the restaurant back up towards our rooms. We went upstairs and into Mike and Johnny’s room where everyone was waiting. As I walked in I connected everyone in the room mentally, just because in my perspective mental conversation was so much better than verbal conversation. “Thanks for coming everyone;” I broadcasted through our connection, “We need to talk. We were staying here because most of you wanted to see the Dameon battle and the results of it. Not to be rude or anything but we’ve seen the battle and the after shock, now let’s go and do what we came here for.”
Johnny stood up rigid and gave me a salute, “You should join the army that was a speech that Lewis would have been proud of.”
“Simple and to the point, I like it,” Mike said.
“Does any one have any meaningful comments?” I asked.
“Anna do you see any problems with this? This is the reason we brought you so we could use your brains,” Natalie said.
“It doesn’t mater any more,” Anna said, “We’ve already screwed up the timeline enough. One more blast won’t screw up the line any more than we already have.”
“Good,” my mom said, ‘but do you know if it will work or not?”
“Right now all I can tell you is that we’ll go back to one of three futures. It’ll either be messed up, just about the same as before or better. Which one, and to what extent, I don’t know. I just know the facts, I can’t foretell the future.”
“Just fine Anna,” Cisco said, “We aren’t all powerful.”
“So when do we go kick the leaders in their balls?” Bethany asked.
“Tomorrow?” I said putting the idea in the air to see what people would say.
“What about this afternoon? Adam said bumping up the time.
“Whenever,” my mom said, “I can burn them any time.”
“Does any one not want to kill them in a few hours?” Mike asked.
The room was silent, except for the slight buzz of the air conditioning, “Good, then we’ll be leaving at noon. Right after we battle them we’re leaving so pack up and clean up your rooms. Leave all of your money here because you can’t take it with you.”
“Why?” Cisco asked, “I like these clothes.”
“It’s simple, when we go back to the future our bodies will go to where our bodies would be with the new future. So, when we go back if you live in a mansion, you’ll wind up in a mansion when the time travel ends.”

131-140

“That sucks. Where are we going to meet since we won’t be in the same place once we time travel?”
“Our house, just try to get to our house,” Mike said, “Even if our house is a pile of rubble when we go back, it’s a place we all know."
“Great, it’s official, we’re going to change the history, yippee!” Anna said sarcastically, “We can’t turn back now, let’s go do this.”
We broke up and started to get ready for the battle. I headed off to my room and Adam was right behind me. When we got into the room Adam’s jumpsuit flew off of the chair that it was laying on and into his hands. Adam was in his jumpsuit before I could even go over to my closet.
When I made it to my closet and I looked over to Adam who was making adjustments to his jumpsuit, “What should I wear for this?”
“Something you can move in. Just make sure it’s not too baggy, or makes you feel uncomfortable.”
I pulled out a pair of dark green shorts that came below my knees and a gray tee shirt that had in orange letters, ‘Ozone’, “Is this okay?”
“Can you move in it?”
“Yeah.”
“Will you be comfortable wearing it while running around killing the leaders?”
“As long as I wear a belt with these pants.” I dug around in my dresser and pulled out a brown leather belt, “What shoes should I wear?”
“Anything that’s comfortable. If you want to wear sandals go right ahead, just make sure you can run around and kill people while wearing them.”
I pulled out my favorite pair of Vans and put them on and laced them up. I put on the shirt and shorts that I had picked out and stood up. It felt good to wear those clothes, they were airy and baggy. “Why can’t people just wear things like this? Not to pick on people but Superman, why does he wear spandex? It is definitely not comfortable to wear spandex. Spandex is definitely a little tight around places that don’t want to be cramped together.”
“They say that they like the spandex because there is nothing in their way,” Adam said.
“But don’t they feel a little naked running around with everything hanging out? I asked heading over to the bathroom picking up my tooth brush.
“Spandex is for those people who are really secure about their body. It’s very rare that you see an overweight or flat chested person running around in spandex, it’s about as rare as a black guy at a KKK meeting.”
I spit out my toothpaste and put the toothbrush back, “Isn’t it also a little bit dependant on sexual security?”
“Yeah, that too. People that wear spandex are either very gay or very straight,” Adam said from the other room, “But then again it’s just a personal choice too. Some people just like spandex just because.”
“Whatever, they can do what they want, but you won’t see me in spandex or a mask any time soon. Masks are another one of those things I don’t get. They limit your vision, hearing, and the amount of oxygen you can get to your head. I see why you would want one, to cover up your identity, but still it’s not worth it.”
“I agree with the masks, but that’s one thing I never quite understood with cartoons of superheroes. They would go around fighting without a mask but yet no one was smart enough to figure it out. For example Rouge from X-men. She doesn’t even change outfits from street to battle, but no one is able to figure things out.”
“Just another way to show that the comic world is a fantasy, even for us, the people who are most like the comics.”
“The irony in life astounds you sometimes doesn’t it? It’s just funny everyone dreams of being a super hero, but us the people most like the super heroes dream to be super heroes, like Dare Devil, Spiderman, or any other super hero that is accepted in their comic world.”
“Enough of that,” I said lying down on my bed, “What info do you have on the leaders, because I want to know what we’re going up against.”
“Didn’t you take history at school?”
“Yeah, but just because everything else that has happened lately I don’t trust the book at all.”
“Okay, I’ll try to fill you in. Anna would be a better person for the job, but I’ll try to get in all of the basics.” Adam said lifting his feat up in the air and reclining back on the air. “The leaders right now are Judy Blore, Eric Rapp, Sean Purtill, Michael Chapman, and Andree Reed. These five are the scientists and mathematicians that came up with the way to alter human DNA so that clones were born with powers.”
I butted into his background on the leaders, “Didn’t they see if the government wanted part of the research?”
“They asked and every government said no, because cloning is illegal, it’s an international law. Eric, who wouldn’t take no for an answer and who is also a bit insane, convinced the other researchers that with enough time they could take over the world.”
“But they don’t take over for another 30 or 40 years, won’t they be dead by our time?”
“Did you even pay attention in your classes?” Adam said a little upset.
“Not during American History.”
“Okay, I’ll try to give a quick review of that problem. As the original group got older they started to recruit people for their cause, that were smart. At one point they even asked me to joint them but I wasn’t too keen on the whole take over the world idea.”
“Who do they have cloned for us right now?”
“This is when it gets tricky. They have two types of clones, as they have labeled them norm and speed. Norm clones grow up just as fast as you and me. All of the people that over throw the world in the future are norms, and are babies in test tubes right now. Speed clones live a life cycle of a short three months. Speeds are mainly meant to test out new mutations to see what happens, and form what the research that I read said, it’s nice to live with a speed clone. They have a high learning curve, are intelligent, and they only go through youth for two weeks, then they are well trained adults.”
“Do you know who there is to battle or not?”
“Or not,” Adam said, “There is no record of it, not even Anna will know about it. We could give you some educated guesses but that won’t help out too much. We won’t know who we’re going against until we’re standing in front of them blasting them into a million pieces.”
“That’s exciting.”
“It is, so right after we teleport there get ready to fight. Also, get ready for hand to hand combat. The clones right now usually have enhanced strength.”
“That won’t be too hard, I’ll just fireball them and that’ll be that.”
“Good luck trying to use that plan, I’ll just tell you one thing that you’ll need to remember during the battle, they’re only dead when they have no head.”
“Most things are usually dead when they have no head, but thanks for the very obvious fact of nature.”
“You’d be surprised what these guys can live through. Because they have no care about their lives they do not care if they are missing an arm or leg, they’ll still come straight at you. These guys are not dead until you either stab them through the heart a few times or you chop off their heads.”
“Thanks, I’m sure I’ll sure that in a fight,” I said doubting that I would ever have enough guys to chop off a person’s head. I could barely fireball a person without going into a nervous breakdown let alone decapitating their head from their body, but then again I was relatively new at this whole saving the world thing. To everyone else, this was just another day at work. I was greener than a freshly mowed lawn, and it showed. I looked over to Adam who was playing around with the size of his jumpsuit still trying to get things just right. “What do we do now?”
“We wait. It’s only an hour away from when we need to go. Just calm down I can tell you’re already starting to get nervous. The more you think about it the worse you’ll be when the fight happens.”
“You aren’t helping out too much with that, you keep talking about the battle. Why don’t you change the topic so I don’t constantly think about killing the future rulers of the world?”
“Okay, well what do you want to talk about? Trust me, I have so much useless information running through my head we can talk about anything.”
“Lets start with something you started, SN.”
“What about SN, there is quite a bit to cover when you talk about SN.”
“I already know the basics to how it got started but what was it like in the good years where you guys kicked butt?”
“Well it was fun. The things I remember the most are all of the gadgets. MIB was always giving us gadgets that were old and low tech for them, but for us they were fancy new toys to play around with. We had everything from hooded jackets with thin stereo speakers in the hood and a microphone near you chin so you had a two way connection with any other person. We had so many gizmos and gadgets we didn’t know what to do with all of them. Laser shooting pens, x ray glasses, shoes with telephones in them, watches with little guns inside of them, and other crazy stuff were all things that we played around with.”
“Didn’t those items get in your way?”
“Just because we had access to them didn’t mean we used them all of the time. We’d usually just use all of the toys in our every day lives, but once a fight would start you wouldn’t catch a single one of us trying to use those little toys instead of our powers.”
The rest of the time we were together Adam reminisced about SN and the good old days. Finally an hour passed and it was time to go. We finally got out of our room, leaving everything behind us, and headed over to Mike and Johnny’s room where everyone was already inside waiting for us.
“Better late than never,” Bethany said as we walked into the room.
“Enough of that, we can pick on them latter, lets charge up and get this show on the road.” Mike and Johnny started to charge up and the room started to glow.
Adam bent over to me and whispered into my ear, “I think he means you too, considering you can charge up as well.”
I got what he was saying and started to charge up my power. As I looked around the room the colors were amazing. Usually I could only see everything as a dull grey power until it got to me, but every one around me had their own type of power. Mike and Johnny were glowing with white and green, Adam was a dark blue, my mom was a dark red, Bethany never really had a constant color, Cisco had a pure red, Anna had a grass green, and Heather had an orange aura. Sadly Natalie had no color at all simple because all of her power was completely straight training and personal strength.
I dropped out of charging up before Mike and Johnny did and waited for them to finish up charging. Once they stopped we broke up into two groups. The first group would clear out the area and start blasting things up while the second would come in a bit later and help as backup. Mike and Johnny played paper rock scissors to see who got to go with the first group and Johnny won.
Johnny took Adam, my mom, Natalie, and Bethany with him, leaving Cisco, Anna, Heather, and me with Mike.
We split up into our two groups with one group on each side of the room. Right before Johnny’s group left the room, my mom looked over to me, “Trip, relax, have fun, and come back alive,” and then she was gone.
I tried to relax in the short time we had to wait but the more I thought about relaxing the more stressed out I got and then the shakes started to come. My entire body started so spasm from my nerves.
How was I suppose to have fun killing people?
Mike put his hand on my shoulder, “Don’t worry we’ve all been there. Just remember two things, one they are going to be trying to kill us so it’s kill or be killed, and two you’re here for a reason we need you to help us out, without you we’re down a good communication line and some extra fire power. What you do will change the future. Now everyone grab a hold, it’s time to go save the world.”
“All in a day’s work,” Cisco said as he grabbed onto Mike.
“Just another day at the office,” Heather said, and then we were gone.
When we teleported in I expected mass confusion and chaos but things were relatively quiet. No one was fighting, no one was trying to kill us, and no one except for us was even outside. Mike nudged me, “Hey, it’s time for you to earn your pay, link us up.”
I quickly linked all of us together, “What’s going on? I expected a battle zone, not a college campus.”
“I don’t think they got the memo,” Anna said, “But that’s okay with me. The red brick building to the south east with the grey roof is their main headquarters.”
“Then lets get going,” Cisco said.
We started to walk towards the building Anna pointed out. When we were about half way there people started to finally show up, however they had the idea of shoot first, ask questions later. Instantly barrels were pointed at us and bullets were flying.
I could swear to you that I dodged out of the path of a few bullets before Adam could put up a barrier but I thought it was just my nerves. Once Adam threw up the mental barrier that kept things out but let us get to them, life got a little hectic.
Adam tore the guns out of the hands of the shooters, Cisco started to shift, Heather started to summon up what looked to be something big, Bethany’s skin turned into a shiny metal, Mike and Johnny were blasting people into charred pieces of flesh, my mom was surrounded in flame, and Natalie… well Natalie was running straight towards a group of about twenty men all dressed in riot gear.
I looked over to Anna who wasn’t doing anything, “What do I do?”
“You do what you’re good at doing, fighting or taking over people’s minds. Go.”
Adam broadcasted over the connection before I could get to work, “Trip, Pyra, come with me. Someone take care of Anna, the three of us need her brain while we run through the building. Everyone else try to pull out as many people as you can away from that building.”
“Dibs on body guard,” Mike said as he teleported in next to Anna.
“Don’t worry I’ll take care of the crowd, these guys fight like girls,” Natalie said. I looked over to where she was and 19 guys were laying on the ground and number twenty was flying through the air towards a building.
My feet lifted off of the ground and Adam yelled to me, “Trip, pay attention, we’re going.”
Adam put me back down and I took off running towards him and my mom who were already a few yards ahead of me. They made it to the glass doors first. Adam didn’t even wait to check if the doors were open he shattered all of the glass in the doors and windows to the first floor.
The short time that he stopped to blast all of the glass away gave me just enough time to catch up with him before we started to run through the main lobby of the building. When we were almost half way through Anna shouted through the mental connection, “It’s a trap! Adam block all three of you, now!”
No later than she said this a hail of bullets from the walls themselves shot towards us. Adam in a reflex blocked the bullets.
“Why are we even going through this death trap of a building?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be a lot easier just to demolish the building and assume they all died in the collapse?
“It should be safe now, keep going. The door you’re looking for is down the next hall, third door to your left,” Anna said, “And we need to go through this Trip because quite simply we can’t destroy the basement.”
“I’m really starting to hate evil master minds,” I said as we started to run again. We made it to the door that Anna told us about and inside was a stairwell that led down, straight down. “They can never work on the first floor they always have to work in out of the way places don’t they.”
My mom looked behind her to me, “Stop complaining. Not only are you annoying me but you need to save your breath for the run down twenty seven flights of stairs.”
We started down and we continued to go down. My legs were starting to get tired and so I gave them a bit of energy but then I started to get bored. I tried to ask Anna for a check up on how the battle above us was doing, but no one answered. Either they were all dead or I was out of range, I was putting my money on them being too far away and my power not being strong enough.
We finally ended up on the last flight of stairs and we finally ran into our welcoming committee. I could tell that the two girls walking towards us were just two of the test tube babies that the leaders had created. The bulging biceps always helped out but the clear give away that they weren’t your normal girl were the multiple arms. Six arms are usually the dead give away that you aren’t normal.
Adam transmitted through our small connection, “Let them take us prisoner. Not only will we get a free trip through the facility but hopefully we’ll get close to the leaders who we are trying to kill.”
“Are you nuts?” my mom said, “We should blast this place and then nuke it a few times just for good measure. With your plan people can get loose, and we could get killed.”
“If you’re about to get killed you have full permission to blast your way out, until that time comes raise your hands and let them take us.” Adam said while raising his hands up in the universal position of surrendering. I reluctantly followed his lead and then my mom slowly lifted up her hands.
Adam was right in that the two girls dragged us through a maze of hallways until we were pushed into a dark room and we were thrown onto the cold cement ground. Without really thinking all too much as to who was watching I asked out loud, “Hey mom can we get a light in here?”
That was the wrong move, Adam went in for the kill with a mental lashing. “Do not even think of using a power. We are suppose to be people without powers. We can not start fires, move objects, or control people, we are weak. Do I make myself clear?”
My mom didn’t answer but said, “Sorry honey, I don’t have my lighter with me.”
While we were waiting in the dark I asked Adam, “Why the sudden no powers mentioned rule? It’s sort of obvious that we’ve got powers, just look how we got here and who we’re with.”
“You’d be surprised what people don’t assume. If we’re lucky they’ll think that we don’t have powers but the best way to get that lucky is to remain quiet. “
“I’ll trust you on that one, just next time you change the rules on what I can and can’t talk about in public, make sure I know before you go all psycho crazy mass destructor of the universe on me, okay?”
“Can do.”
We waited in the dark for what seemed to be hours when finally a guys voice came through the dark, “Why are you here?” He simply asked all of the sudden.
I felt Adam, who use to be sitting on the ground next to me, stand up. “Who are you?”
“We are the ones in control here, we ask the questions.”
“There are more than one of you, that’s good to know,” Adam said. I think he was trying to make them a little nervous, but I don’t know. “However we are here from a little group that you may have heard of called the FBI of the USA.”
“You lie,” a woman’s voice now came over the speaker in our room. “You look no older than 16, you are imposters.”
“Well thank you for saying I’m younger than I really am, because in reality, I’m a bit older than only 16 years old. However, Judy, you always try so hard to be correct don’t you?”
“How do you know who I am?”
“Let’s try to get one thing straight here. There are thousands of things that you’ll never be able to understand, one of those things is that I know where all of you are. I know that you and Eric are in room 206, Sean and Michael are in room 210, and poor little Andree is all by herself in room 237.”
“What? How do you know that?”
“Like I said, you’ll never be able to understand. Oh yeah, and by the way, you aren’t the only people who can screw with the human genome.” Right then Adam’s eyes glowed a strong blue and two glass mirrors shattered and our room was finally illuminated by the two adjacent rooms. The four scientists just looked down at us in astonishment, “Yep, that’s right, your little clones than can barely lift a paper clip with their brain are yesterday’s news, we’re the true version, straight from evolution.”
Adam switched over to our mental connection, “Pyra, Trip, you two stay together and take anything that moves that comes any where close to these offices. I’m going to go clean out a few labs that have some embryos in them.”
“Don’t try to be a hero Adam,” my mom said, “we need you back in one piece.”
“I’ll try.” Adam said as he took off running towards one of the broken mirrors. He jumped into the room then he was out of sight, then chaos erupted around me.
The four nearby leaders had all pulled out small handguns and the one door that led into the room was busted in and a horde of mutants and freaks pilled into the door.
I rammed my mind deep into the closest leader and started to control him. He shot his partner that was in his room then started to aim across the room, but they were all out of their room. He turned his attention back towards the mass of people that were swarming our room and took them out one by one with his gun. After killing ten of his creations he was out of bullets. I slipped out of his mind and jumped into his office. I pushed energy into my arm and punched him right between the eyes collapsing his skull in on its self.
I yelled over to my mom who was still torching monstrosity after monstrosity, “There’s a way out over here, lets go!”
A few more people burst into flames then she jumped into the side room and went out into a back door. The hallway that it led to was empty. My mom looked over to me, “Why are we back here? The fight is back there.”
“I just wanted an escape route if we needed one.”
“We’re Walters; we don’t need an escape route, because when we leave, we leave with style.” She opened up the door that led into the room we just came out of with her eyes glowing and people burning.
I took the hint and walked back in behind her. I decided that I had nothing else to do so I started to take control of people, but before I could do anything my mom would kill them, so I decided to take a different route. I went back to the hallway and walked around until I found the other side of the mob of mutants. I threw out a mental yell towards the group sounding a little braver than what I wanted, “Hey freaks, isn’t it me you’re looking for?”
This got the closest fifteen mutants to turn around and come straight towards me. At that moment I finally realized what Mike meant when he said kill or be killed, and I knew what I had to do.
I pulled my hands to my side and yelled out, ‘fireball’. The ball of fire I was so use to flew towards the group of mutants. The first eight people got hit by it and were up in flames while the other seven were slightly burned but were still running towards me ready to kill me as soon as they got close enough to grab me and throw me into the ground.
I heard my mom yell to me mentally through our little connection, “Come on Trip, now’s the time to put your balls to the wall. Do it.”
I took a deep breath and took off at a full sprint towards the seven remaining mutants that were coming towards me. I pulled my hands to my side ready to fireball them all.
I let loose a fireball but it only killed three of the remaining seven. That left the odds four to one. If we were all equal strength I’d be worried but since I cut the odds from fifteen to one down to four to one I wasn’t too worried.
I didn’t have enough time to throw something else so I took the more physical approach towards killing. I jumped into the air towards the leading member and kicked it in the chest, throwing it back a few feet. The other three that I was now very close to were excited that I went to hand to hand combat because that was what they were good at. If you had five hands, you’d like hand to hand fighting too.
The fists started to fly towards me and I reacted, then the fight was over, the four mutants lying at my feet. I can’t really tell you how I did it, it was as though all of those hours of training just kicked me into auto drive and I didn’t have to think about what I should do or anything. In all reality I was probably thinking about something random at the time that I was killing those four mutants. It’s scary to realize that it happens that way, but I that’s what training is for, so you don’t have to think about things, you just react.
Once I realized what was going on I broadcasted over to my mom, “I’m on fifteen, seventeen if you include the two leaders I took out.”
“I lost count of kills after thirty and that was a few minutes ago,” my mom said, “But can you come help me out down here? Things are getting a little thick on my side of the door.”
‘Yeah, I’ll come the back way so don’t burn me. Also don’t burn mutants that are fighting other mutants, they’re with me.” I ran down the hallway a bit more and the mob of mutants was a bit smaller but there were still quite a few of them.
I picked out the one mutant that seemed to look the biggest and strongest and invaded their mind and took control. It was difficult at first, but once I got the six legged, three armed guy to start to attack people I slowly started to fight along side him. It was hard at first splitting my thoughts into two different parts but after a while I was somewhat proficient with it.
Slowly me and my mutant took out the mob with the help of my mom. When it was down to the three of us I looked over to me mom, “You kill him, I can’t it would be like killing a part of myself.” She didn’t ask a question and just lit him on fire leaving me and her alone in the hallway.
“What do we do know?”
“We find Adam.” “How do we do that?”
“We follow the line of dead people that we didn’t make. Just as a small warning, when we’re looking for his trail, don’t look for whole bodies, you won’t find them.” My mom walked over the piles of bodies that we had created and we headed down the hallway in search for Adam.
I followed after her down the hallway. After a few turns in the hallway the walls became messy with blood and mutant inners. They weren’t your normal white washed walls, these were covered in blood. Body parts were on the walls pinned up, some bodies were in torn apart and separated by a few feet. Most of all, the blood was amazing. The floor we were walking on was covered in blood; there wasn’t a part of that tiled floor that didn’t have at least a thin covering of blood on it. It was a bit sickening seeing all of that blood and destruction and having to walk through it. I just couldn’t believe that Adam, the guy I street raced with and did countless other stupid things with could do something that destructive so I had to ask my mom just to make sure that it really was him.
“Yeah, he has a weird since of humor when killing large groups of people. His theory is that the bloodier it gets the more fear that he creates with his opponents. The more they are afraid of him the better he has a chance in killing them. Then there is also that small little thing that Adam calls leaving his mark as to who did the destruction. He says that with Mike and Johnny each one of them try to take the other person’s kills, this way he can prove to them that he got the number that he said he did, and they can’t say they killed someone and get the point for the kill. Don’t ask, it’s their little game that they play.”
“You guys have some serious problems.”
“And you’re one of us.”
I didn’t want to admit that I was among the worlds craziest group of super heroes so I started to continue my way down the hallway. I was about halfway down the hallway when the double door in front of me burst open and Adam came flying through. “Run the other way, things are falling in over there.” Adam passed us up and both of us took off running after him. “I completely knocked out the main support columns for this building; it’ll fall in on itself any time now.”
We started to run faster, and we started to make our own path. My mom would burn holes in walls or anything else that got in our way and Adam would throw any thing that was too large or too metallic to burn in an instant. With the two of them working together we had a straight line to the staircase that we had to run down. The second I saw it I looked up it and mumbled to myself, “I am not running up those stairs, that’s twenty-seven flights of stairs I can live without.
“Don’t worry, we don’t need to.” My mom looked up at the stairwell and a small hole started to burn through the layers of the stairs. Within a few seconds there was a manhole size hole going through the staircase up to the top.
Adam didn’t say a word and flew up through the first hole, I felt my feet lift up off of the ground as Adam dragged me up through the hole, and my mom was beneath me flying up her hole.
In a few seconds the three of us were standing outside watching the building implode on itself. I saw everyone standing in a group waiting for us so I reached out my mind and linked us all together.
“We’re back!” Adam said, “and in other news, the leaders are dead too.”
“Things, aren’t so good out here, these guys just keep coming,” Anna said.
“Can we just blast them?” Mike said, ‘You guys are out, so why don’t we just destroy the place now?”
“Go for it,” Adam said.
“Sweet,” Heather said, “I’ll finally be able to try out some big spells.”
Cisco swooped down from the air and landed in the open quad area and turned his head towards a building and transmitted through the group, “I haven’t done this in so long, I almost miss destroying entire towns in one breath.” Then he let out a cone of fire lighting the entire building on fire. This started the mass destruction of the area around us. The world around me was destroyed in an instant.
Entire buildings were lifted up and thrown by Adam, kamaiahmaiahs were flying freely, and dragons (Cisco and Heather’s dragon) were creating destruction in ways only a dragon can do. The nice college campus that was once was around me was reduced to a pile of ruble.
Surprisingly once the dust settled and we finally regrouped we only came out with a few scrapes and bruises. The person who was hurt the most was Natalie but she got healed up by Heather after we regrouped. As we were standing there in a circle Adam who was standing next to me patted me on my shoulder, “You did good, for a newbie.”
“Thanks.”
“Are we going back to our present or are we going to swap thanks for the next few hours?” Bethany asked.
“We’re going, just give us a second.” Mike said. Mike and Johnny charged up to full power and Mike announced, “Everyone, split up into the groups that you were in when we came here.”
Everyone went to their super sain. Adam, Bethany, my mom, and me went to Mike while Johnny had Cisco, Heather, Natalie, and Anna. We all grabbed a hold to Mike or Johnny then the two of them threw their kamaiahmaiahs towards each other.
My world instantly went black around me.
Part II
I woke up in my sleeping bag in my home which consisted of a makeshift tent in a back alley in a town where only the outcasts of society lived. It use to be called St. George, however was a dump. I rubbed my bald head as I slowly got up and muttered to myself, “That was a strange dream.”
My dad must have heard me, “What was it about?”
“Life was different. The leaders sided with the whites, not the Asians. We lived in New York, in a nice house. We didn’t have the best life but it was better then living in the streets. The rest was just crazy dream stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Super powers, saving the world, and other stupid things like that.”
“Saving the world? From what, having money?”
“We didn’t have the perfect life, we wanted things to be better.”
“Who did we go against to get the perfect life?”

141-150

“We traveled back in time and tried to kill the leaders. It worked but I woke up before we came back to our time.” I said getting out of my bag and putting on the pair of hiking boots that were too big me but were padded so I could wear them.
“Weird dream, but what do you want to do today?” my dad asked as he got out of his bag, “Mom’s already out trying to get fuel for fire.
“I’ll take guard duty, you can go try to get some food,” I said knowing that usually people didn’t try too hard to steal things when there was at least one person watching over them, plus I didn’t want to get into the continual fight for food. I knew someone that got their leg broken while fighting for a half a loaf of stale bread, and I knew I didn’t want to do that.
“Okay, but tomorrow you get to go for the food.”
“Deal.”
My dad got out of our tent and I was left there to fend for myself for the rest of the day. I said my morning prayer just out of tradition, I hadn’t gone to church since I was eight but even then it wasn’t an official meeting.
I tidied up my little slice of the world and then got up and out of my tent. My next door neighbor Matt was already out of his tent sitting on the hard ground staring at the cement around him. “Hey Trip, I heard about the dream, was it nice?”
“Of course. Every day wearing clean clothes, fresh food, and a nice bed to sleep on, it was heaven. The crazy part is that it was so realistic, I swear that if you dropped me in New York that I could tell you how to go anywhere.”
“You said something about super powers, what was yours?”
“I had telepathy and could throw the elements.”
“Say that again, this time use words that an outcast that has never lived in New York would understand.”
“I could control people with my mind, I could read people’s minds, and I could throw fireballs and ice bolts.”
“Ice bolts?” Matt said scratching his head, “come again?”
“They’re clouds of frost that can freeze things.”
“Your mind was doing some over time last night.”
“At least my dreams are dreams. Your dreams are always about what has already happened in your life.”
“Sometimes they’re about the future.”
“And how often have those been right?”
“We’ll see.”
“That’s not even an answer, how many times have you hit money with your dreams?”
“So far, I’ve been on, every time, but we’ll see. Las night I had a dream, and we’ll see if it comes true.”
“That’s rigged, for all I know you could have had no dream at all and are just putting me on, how do I know what your dream’s about?”
“I’ll tell old Jimmy, he isn’t affected by it one way or another. If it’s right he’ll be my witness, if it’s wrong, he’ll tell just the same.”
“Deal.” We shook on it and Matt went to tell old Jimmy. Old Jimmy wasn’t any older than us, it’s just he was both balding and starting to go grey so we always called him old Jimmy.
Matt started to whisper into old Jimmy’s ear and Jimmy started to laugh, “Are you serious?”
“Don’t say a word,” Matt said, “Just remember what I told you.”
“Matt you’re going to loose this bet, this will never happen.”
“We’ll see.”
“We went on shooting the breeze for a few hours passing from topic to topic, never staying on one subject for too long, but then the usual gang bangers showed up. I expected them to leave us alone like they usually did, but they didn’t keep walking by. Usually when there is one or two people the gangs don’t want to waste their energy so they won’t fight, this time it was different, the group of teenage boys dressed in the best clothes an outcast could get walked up to us.
I tried to defend my little part of the world that was my home, “Jacob, step down, it won’t be worth it.”
“Timothy, we need to, we need the goods.” He said my name just because he knew that I hated it, but that’s what I got when I always called him Jacob instead of ‘Black Eye’, his preferred name.
“Why don’t you go over by the old hotel? People don’t take care of their stuff over there.”
“We’ve tried but the RFK has already taken everything from there, sorry guys, we need everything you got and no one gets hurt.”
I looked at the ten people he had with him and a small little voice came into my head, ‘you can take them’ so I stood up for myself, “No.”
This caught a few people’s attention Jacob turned his head towards me, “What did you say?”
“No, I won’t let you take our families stuff; we’ve worked to hard to get what we have. I won’t let you just walk in here and have ie.”
“You and what army?” Jacob asked, taunting me, “Matt and Jimmy won’t help you, and even if they did they wouldn’t help out much. Admit it Timothy you’re out numbered. Even if it was one on one you’d be out classed, you’ve barely even fought in your life.
“Try me.”
“Just remember, I warned you,” Jacob said taking off his coat, “And just because I want this lesson to stick, I’ll do it myself.”
I looked at my clothes and decided that I didn’t care about my clothes getting dirty, they already were covered in dirt and sweat. “I’m ready, let’s end this, so you can go back to your home and cry.”
Jacob slowly walked up to me and I leisurely got into the traditional fighting stance that you always see, with my left foot forward a bit and my fists raised up to protect my head. Jacob playfully swung at me a few times just to see how I would react and before he even got close to landing his first blow I reacted.
I pulled back my weight so I was balancing on my left foot and raise up my right leg. I kicked high and hit him in the head. He started to stagger back and so I lowered my right leg a few degrees and kicked him in the knee. This sent Jacob falling forward, I got my feet underneath me, balled up my fist and uppercut his falling head with enough energy that his body came off of the ground and he landed on his back.
I straddled his body and pulled my hand back ready to pound his head into the pavement, “Admit it Jacob you’ve lost.”
Jacob who still couldn’t understand why he was lying on the ground with me on top of him said, “Yeah, I’m beat.”
“All I ask of you and your entire gang is to get the word out to stay away from this block. If anyone asks why tell them the truth about how you got beat up.”
“I will, you have my word.”
“Good.” I gave Jacob a hand to help him to his feet. “I hope I didn’t hurt you too bad.”
“Nah, it’ll just be sore for a few days. But besides me, where di you learn how to fight like that?”
My mind went back to my dream; but how could I say that I learned how to fight from a dream, “I don’t know, it just came to me.”
“Whatever happened, with skills like that you could make it as a boss in a big town like Seattle. You could probably even join the ranks of the rebels.”
‘Thanks, but no thanks.” I said being polite. Just because we lived in tents and just fought each other didn’t meant that we couldn’t be nice to each other.
Jacob walked over to his little gang and put his jacket back on, “See you around Tim.”
“Yeah, later Jake.”
Once they were gone Matt turned to Jimmy, “I told you so.”
“He did Trip, he called it. I don’t know how he knew it but he knew you were going to take down Black Eye. I didn’t believe it when he said it, but to see the BCW walk away from here without a thing in their hand and their leader hurt, was proof enough for me,” Jimmy said.
“You really saw me doing that?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe, you’re the one with super powers, not me.”
“You have to have super powers, just look at the way you bashed in Black Eye’s head. There had to be some sort of super strength involved with that,” Matt said.
“Or it could be adrenaline, I’ve heard of people being able to lift up cards because adrenaline was pumping through their body so much.” I said trying to figure out what was going on.
To me things were going a little weird, before that day whenever a gang came around, even if they were a tiny gang like the BCW we would always just let them have some of the unimportant things that we had lying around and everyone would be happy. I just couldn’t understand why I wanted to fight, and how in the world I was able to fight so well. My mind kept drifting towards my dream, but to me it was just a dream nothing more.
“Yeah, and I’m a leader,” Jimmy said, “I don’t care what you two say, you both have something a little freaky going on with you. You may both not want to admit to it but I think that you two have natural powers. You’re not cloned like all of the leaders powers, you guys are the real thing.”
“But we can’t do a thing with my power,” Matt said, “What am I going to do, predict someone’s future until they die of boredom? That’s even assuming that I have a supper power, it aint so supper if I can’t do a single thing with it. Plus, I’m just a kid from the slums, I’m no super hero.”
“I don’t know what to think about this. Lets just wait for a while. Let’s get off this whole subject of super powers, at least until tomorrow.”
Matt quickly changed the subject, “I wonder what it’s like to swim in the ocean.” I was about to answer him, but then I realized that I was using my dream as though it was my memory, not just a dream. I didn’t answer the question and we continued on our normal routine of doing nothing the rest of the day.
The first person to come home was my mom. She came hoe with a few things that would keep us warm during the night. She always seemed to be able to keep a fire going five times longer than it should have. She made it so that I never woke up cold in the morning.
“How was your day?” I asked as she got close to our tent.
“I’ve had better,” she said lying down her backpack and sitting down on the overstuffed bag.
I pointed at the bag that she was sitting on, “I don’t get why you keep that thing around. I’d think that if you were going to save something and keep it around you all of the time that you’d let people at least know what it was that you were carrying around.”
“Why would I do something like that? If you had something like… lets say one thousand dollars in fresh clean bills that you could use to buy whatever you wanted but you could only use at certain times. Would you keep it close to you?”
“Duh, yes.”
“Would you make sure that it never left your sight?”
“That money wouldn’t even have a chance to leave my side.”
“What about telling people about it? Who would you trust to tell? Remember some people may not want to steal that money, but they would harass you to use that money for them.”
“Well… I’d tell you and Dad.”
“Would you? We’d tell you to use it to help us out, some of those things may help you out, but things like new clothes for us wouldn’t help you out it would just be us wanting your money.”
“Okay then, I’d tell I’d tell Jimmy and Matt.”
“What’s stopping them from blabbing their mouth to every one else about your money? You know that they can’t keep secrets all too well.”
“I don’t know, I think I would just have to tell no one.”
“That’s my problem. I could tell people but then I have to worry about explaining to them about what’s in the bag and that’s complicated. Then once everything is explained to the best it can then I have to worry about them being jerks and trying to use me to get something they want. The worst part about mine is that it’s helpful, but if I let it get too public then the leaders will start coming after our family. And yes Matt and Jimmy I know you’re listening in through your tent walls and yes it is that dangerous.”
“So who have you told?”
“Dad.”
“Any one else?”
“Grandpa use to know before he died, but then only a few friends that have helped me keep what’s in that bag a secret.”
“You’ve had that bag since grandpa was around?”
“I haven’t had the bag it’s self but I have had the contents of the bag ever sense I was 16. I’ve had some really hard days trying not to tell everyone what is going on but then things get dangerous, too dangerous. Before I didn’t want the entire world to feel the repercussion of that bag, now that the leaders are out and about the effects would be a bit less, but still dangerous to too many people that I love.”
“This is weird, a little too weird for me. I want to think that you’re joking about this but for some reason I think you’re telling me the truth. I want to think that it’s something stupid that you’re hiding from me like a jacket to keep you warm or something stupid like that, but I don’t believe it when I think about it, so I’m getting off of even thinking about what’s in that backpack.”
“Good, let’s get off of it then, how was your day?”
“Decent. I did have a weird dream last night, but other than that nothing exciting happened,” I said deciding to leave out the finer details of my day.
“What was this strange dream about?”
“Nothing much, it was just a dream.”
“If it’s just a dream, then why did you bring it up? Just tell me.”
“It’s a little complicated, it may take some time.”
“Don’t worry I’ve gotten our fire for the night, I’ve got the time to spare.”
“First off, the world was different, the leaders went with the whites instead of the Asians. That meant that we lived in New York. Both you and Dad had great jobs and life was good.”
“That’s it? That’s your long story? I’ve heard poems longer than that.”
“That was the normal part, then things got weird. In my dream I then learn that grandpa Walters isn’t really dead, he was just reborn, and not only is he reborn he also has telekinesis. Stacked onto that you have pyrokinesis and I have telepathy mixed in with a little super sain power. If that is enough we ten meet together with two crazy friends of grandpa Walters named Mike and Johnny that have the whole super sain power like me but a bunch stronger. And then there was this girl named Bethany that could change shapes, not just shapes but everything, it was really creepy. Then there was Anna, Cisco, Heather and Natalie. Anna knew everything that there was to know, I mean that she was able to tell us when we were once we time traveled simply by the way things looked around her, but I’m skipping ahead of myself.”
My mom looked at me a bit stunned while I was telling her all of my dream, I got to that point and then she cut me off, “Trip, come on, we need to go talk in someplace that’s private.” We walked out of the tent and started to walk around the streets. “Okay let me ask you this one question and I want you to think about it real hard then tell me your answer. In your dream we toured through Las Vegas right?”
“Yeah, but how did you know that?”
“Don’t worry, the question I want to ask is why did we stay in Las Vegas? Why didn’t we leave?”
I didn’t even think, “The Dameon battle at Adam’s old school.”
“Good, good, one more question just to make sure tings are gong towards our favor. Have you use any of your powers recently?”
“My powers?”
“The ones in your dreams, have you at least tried to use those powers in your dreams.”
“No.”
“Try it. Get inside of my head because if it works, we need to talk.”
I thought my mom had gone insane but I didn’t ask any questions and tried to get into my mom’s thoughts like I had done dozens of times in my dreams.
I was shocked when I slipped into her mind, “Okay this is weird, start talking, I’m listening.”
“It wasn’t a dream, we changed the future, but something must have gone wrong. I don’t know what it was that we screwed up on but the future got messed up.”
I stood there and tried to process what she was saying, after a few minutes of accepting that my ‘dream’ was really my memory.
“What do we do now?”
“We go to Mike and Johnny’s house like we were suppose to. We’re going to be a little late but at least we’ll be there.”
“What about Dad?”
“He’ll survive, but if your could tell him, mentally, that we’re going off to do some business for SN, he should understand.”
I was only a block away from my dad so I reached out my mind and found him. “Dad, this is Trip. Mom and I are going off for a little while and doing some things for SN. We’ll be gone for a while so don’t worry about us.”
My dad’s thought were confused at first but then he focused and found out a way to talk to me, “Trip you’re one of them?”
“Yeah. That creepy dream was really the time line that I came from. We must have screwed up the time line one way or another so that we got screwed over in the long run.”
“So you’re going to try to change it again?”
“Exactly.”
“Can you just humor me and tell me what your powers are?”
“I have telepathy, as you can tell, and a weaker form of Mike and Johnny’s power.”
“Now those are two names I haven’t heard for a while, how are those old guys?”
“They died, but because they’re reborn after they die, they’re my age now. Other than that, they don’t look or act a day over 15.”
“That’s good to hear. Well good luck with saving the world, again.”
“Thanks for the encouragement.” I said, “But if you could tell Matt for me that he really does have a gift and that he should work on it.”
“I’ll get that to him.”
“Thanks Dad.”
“I love you son.”
“I know, I love you too.” I broke off the communication line at that comment. I looked over to my mom, “Okay I’m ready, let’s go.”
A sphere of heat and fire surrounded us and we were off. I took a bit longer than teleporting, but a three hour flight from St. George to Denmark is good in my mind.
When we made it there to Mike and Johnny’s house the front porch light was on, and a few lights were on in the house. We landed on the door stop and my mom rang the door bell which started to play the first few lines to ‘I will survive.’
An old man opened up the door, “Sorry, I don’t want to buy any girl scout cookies right now.” After chuckling to himself for a second he shifted into Bethany. “Pyra, Trip? Is that you under all of that dirt?”
“Yeah,” my mom said, “We got screwed over with this timeline. We definitely need to change the past, but first a nice shower and a pair of new clothes wouldn’t be half bad.” My mom handed Bethany her backpack that she always had with her, “And could you please just throw this in the washing machine, it’s my jumpsuit and it’s really dirty.”
Bethany took the bag and let us in. “You guys are in the same rooms, we have clothes that are waiting for you in them. The only people we’re waiting for now are Cisco and Natalie.”
I walked into the house and headed straight for my bedroom. Once inside I stripped down to nothing, throwing all of my old grungy stuff into the garbage can. I grabbed a shirt, a pair of shorts, boxers, and headed off towards the nearest shower, which was right next door to my bedroom.
I turned on the shower and while I was waiting for it to warm up I charged up to full power. Once charged up I climbed into the shower. That was the most comfortable shower I had ever taken up to that point in my life. It felt so good to see the dirt that had caked itself to my body finally go down the drain.
I stood there underneath the needles of hot water for an hour and then I finally got out. As I looked at myself in the mirrors I was happy about my figure. It was obvious that I was starved but I had some muscles on my bones.
The best part about the entire event of getting cleaned up was the clothes. It felt so nice to wear comfortable, new, clean clothes that fitted me. The feeling of new clothes is heavenly after a lifetime of dirty second hand clothes. There are not enough words to even begin to describe the absolute bliss those new clothes gave me.
As I was finishing up and putting on my shirt my stomach growled loudly, for once I knew that I would be able to feed myself. I headed downstairs to the kitchen and the light was already on in the room. Mike and Johnny were sitting around the table eating a snack and talking.
As I walked in Johnny saw me first, simply because his chair was facing the door in. He saw me and then he gave me a weird look, “Trip?”
“Yeah, we just got here.”
Mike turned around and his eyes went straight towards my head, “Your hair it looks… different.”
“Yeah, in the slums we have the theory of when you get a hair cut you get it as short as possible. Needless to say I got my cut three days ago.”
“That bites,” Johnny said, “but I’m sure Natalie or Anna knows something to get your hair back.”
“It’s okay, it’s nice this way.”
“Yeah, if you want to look like a cue ball,” Mike said.
“Shut up,” I said as I walked over to the fridge, “What do we have to eat today?”
“That stuff in the blue container next to the milk is good. I think we may even still have some lasagna in there somewhere,” Johnny said.
I pulled me out something that looked close to edible and threw it in the microwave. At that point I was hungry enough that I would have eaten a rotten squished banana. I pulled the hot container out of the microwave and headed over to the table. “Why didn’t anyone tell me about the whole transfer from past to future. I seriously thought that all of this was just a dream. Luckily enough for you people my neighbors wanted to know more and more about my so called dream.”
“I thought we told everyone about the whole dream factor of time travel,” Johnny said taking a bite out of his sandwich.
“You didn’t, and that means that quite possibly Cisco and Natalie didn’t believe their dream and went on with their normal lives.” I said forking down some more of what tasted like a mix between a chili dog and an under ripe orange.
“I doubt it. Those two are just the only ones that don’t travel at speeds above mac one. Me and Johnny can teleport, Adam flew here, Heather cast a spell and got here, Anna being the rich person she is with this new future came here in her personal jet, Bethany was just here, I don’t know how she got here, and you and Michelle did the whole jet propulsion thing. Cisco has to fly here with his own two wings and Natalie has to find her way out here on her own, but for some odd reason I know Natalie will somehow get in touch with us before Cisco even gets here.”
“Whatever. Once everyone gets here where are we going to time travel to this time, or should I be asking when?”
“We’re aiming for sometime around 20!!. Your mom won’t like the date all too well because it’s when she was getting stalked by her first bad guy named Laymil.”
“Are we going to wait and watch this battle? Personally I don’t need to see it. Not only is it not monumental, it’s stuff I’ve already seen before. If my mom was brand new with her power and Lamil was trying to destroy every living thing, I may have wanted to see it, but it’s not.”
“Good, because we aren’t staying. This time we’re going in and out, no questions asked, blow up everything. Mike said. “Plus, I don’t think that it’ll be exciting, when we go to Las Vegas for the second time.
“Unless we’re lucky and catch it during new years eve,” Johnny said, “There are always crazy parties during new years. Lots of people and lots of alcohol equal a whole lot of fun.” He looked over to me, “Have you learned how to control a large mass of people yet?”
“Was I able to before?”
“No.”
“Then no, I can’t control more than one person at a time, I can give a large mass of people a general suggestion, but past that I can’t control them.”
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